One of the best ways to stand out in a crowd and attract your ideal patients is by making sure you showcase the unique personality and values of your weight loss practice in your marketing plan as well as just about everything you do.
Many practitioners don’t realize that their weight loss practice has a personality. This personality is built — and evolves — based upon your vision, your values, your environment, your communication (online and onsite), your team, your goals, and your care delivery experience.
What’s your unique practice personality and how is it perceived by your current and prospective patients? This is something to think about, especially if you are struggling to build a strong patient base or experiencing poor profitability. Let’s explore further by addressing what weight loss practice personality is, why it is important, how to put more personality into your marketing and where to showcase your personality and what you have to offer.
What is Practice Personality?
While I choose to refer to it as practice personality in this blog, in the marketing world, this phenomenon is commonly called brand personality. You have likely experienced brand personality with various businesses such as restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, automobile dealerships, clothing boutiques and many other organizations in between as you contemplated making a purchase. Whether it was excitement, trust, sophistication, quality or thoughtfulness, their brand personality elicited an emotional response from you that made you more inclined or less inclined to buy their products or services. It’s the same in your weight loss practice.
You see, brand personality is a framework that helps an organization shape the way people feel about its product, service or mission.1 It the field of weight loss, it plays into whether what you have to offer is desirable or not to those you wish to work with most. Those that decide to purchase from you want to have a connection with you — something in common with their values. This connection comes primarily from you and your team and how you influence the way your patients feel with every interaction.
Similar to people, there are a variety of personalities your practice can represent. Here are the five main recognized types of positive brand personalities — along with two personally added types — and the common traits associated with each as it relates to weight loss practices:
- Excitement: motivation, fun, cheerful, energetic
- Sincerity: kindness, empathy, acceptance, honesty, family oriented, great listening skills
- Ruggedness: high degree of accountability and tough love
- Competence: experienced, reliable, many success stories/testimonials, influential, leader in your field
- Sophistication: elegant, exclusive offerings, prestigious, high quality
- Concierge Style Services: higher level of service, value add services included, high degree of convenience online and onsite
- Groovy: uniquely different making the experience unique and enjoyable, doing things in a refreshingly different way
Your personality is reflected in many ways such as your website, your office décor, your hours of operation, the way you answer the phone, how quickly you respond to inquiries, the products you carry, the services you offer, your sales process, your new patient intake process, your e-store, your billing and collection process, your social media posts and everything in between. Sound overwhelming? Not really. It all comes down to embracing the vision you have for your desired personality and letting it shine through with each patient interaction and marketing message.
Why Is Practice Personality Important
Your practice personality will influence the types of people you attract as well as whether or not they choose to utilize your services and products. Your practice personality can benefit you in many ways such as helping you stand out from your competitors, creating emotional attachment for better outcomes and more sales, creating a memorable experience for more patient referrals and bringing increased joy to everything you do.
How to Put More Personality into Your Marketing
From a marketing perspective, the best way to add personality is through content marketing. Essentially, instead of using generic graphics, quotes, blogs, articles and videos that may not resonate with your patients, consider creating some of your own. It has never been easier than today to make this happen. Even if you outsource your social media, make sure you are a part of creating the plan and making sure everything reflects the personality you wish to share with the world. This goes for your website as well. From your logo to your brand colors and the content on each and every page, you and or a representative from your team needs to be involved.
You see, people want to do business with people they like and trust. If you aren’t represented (and showing up regularly online), you may be putting a barrier up for those that would benefit from what you and your team have to offer. Or worse, you may be the best kept secret in town. If you need help with this, the Beginners Guide to Content Marketing for Your Weight Loss Practice is a great place to start.
At a minimum, share patient success stories as well as blogs or videos of you and your team answering common questions you hear every day, with eye-catching graphics at least three times a week. In addition, make sure everything includes your branding (logo/website) and has a clear call to action so those interested know the next step to learn more or get started.
Where to Showcase Your Personality and What You Have to Offer
The top places to showcase your personality and what you have to offer include:
- Your ‘About’ page on your website is likely the second most visited place on your website after your home page. Be sure that it shows a little bit about your company “story” and a bit about your experience including why you choose to do what you do each and every day. This goes for your ‘About’ section on all social media platforms as well.
- For social media, you want to show up where your ideal patients are hanging out. This is usually Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Share your content via your channels on these platforms and be sure to always include links back to your website for added SEO and calls to action.
- Once a patient reaches out to you, be sure to have a way to stay in touch with them. Send them a welcome e-mail or video/audio message and see if they have additional questions. Don’t stop there. An e-mail sequence can be a great way to stay in touch so you are top of mind and they are always aware of how you and your products/services are uniquely able to help them achieve weight loss success.
Your personality can be magnetic for those you desire to serve. Conversely, if there is no way to differentiate how you are uniquely capable of helping patients attain success, they are more likely to keep looking until they find an option that they relate to more. If you aren’t already, evaluate the personality of your practice. Is it what you want it to be? Set a plan in place to make any necessary modifications. Then begin to infuse the personality of you, your team and your practice into your marketing and each aspect of your practice so you can enjoy the many personal and business benefits.
Sources:
1 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-personality.asp#