Top Mistakes New Pracs Make When Marketing
When you first graduate and go out into the world of practitioners, it can be exciting! But it can also be nerve-wracking when you need to put yourself out there and market yourself.
After 5 years of working with new pracs, I’ve started to see some common mistakes pop up. Let’s take a closer look at the major marketing mistakes that new practitioners make.
The Biggest Marketing Mistakes New Practitioners Make
Trying to do it all at the one time
When you first start out, you might see others doing heaps of marketing. So you go out, start multiple social media channels and marketing platforms, and dive in.
Think you can keep doing that forever AND build a successful biz? Think again.
All you're going to do is burn yourself out and overwhelm yourself. What happens when you actually start to get clients in the door, and that marketing drops off? Your clients drop off, and you end up on this rollercoaster of marketing and quiet patches.
Instead, pick one social media channel and one form of juicy content. Nail those, and then add more from there if your time allows for it.
Marketing without any idea of who you actually want to be working with
As practitioners, we can help serve many different types of people. But that doesn't mean that we should be trying to help all types of people all the time.
Working as a generalist makes it a lot harder to market because you're trying to appeal to everyone's potential issues.
For example, it’s easy to give really handy specific tips for an exhausted first-time mum on how to boost her energy and get better sleep. But if you try to explain to everyone in the world how to boost their energy and get better sleep, there are so many different factors involved! You’d end up with a list with 50 different tips and that is not something people will read through.
Keep it simple, and remember a niche is not a life sentence.
You can start off by talking to one group of people. And if it doesn't feel like it's a fit for you, you might like to pivot to something more specific or move across to a different kind of niche. That is fine - just start with one.
Not considering your branding
How you visually show up online can make a big difference to the impression you make on potential clients. It can look really DIY and unprofessional if you're using multiple different colours, fonts and image styles.
Instead, you want to get clear on a brand early on. That means having a couple of colours that go well together, 1-2 fonts, and a simple but professional logo that speaks to your niche and ideal client.
Ideally, you’ll set some funds aside to get this done professionally. But if you need to DIY due to budget constraints, I highly recommend picking up this affordable Branding Guide from Tech For Pracs.
Doing things that you absolutely hate doing
If you really hate doing a particular type of marketing - please do not do it. It comes across that you don’t like doing it, and that’s not going to give you the outcome you want.
If you hate blogs, don’t write blogs.
If you hate Facebook lives, don’t do them.
Think Instagram Reels are the worst? Don’t waste your time on them.
Stick to the forms of marketing that you are naturally better at - whether it’s written, audio or video-based. You can always hire a VA to help you cover forms of marketing you don’t like.
Keep in mind this is different to trying things that are outside of your comfort zone. We all need to learn how to do things the first time around which can feel uncomfortable to start with!
Not talking to people where they're at
I know you’ve just come out of 3-4 years of talking academic talk. But now it’s time to dump the multiple-syllable words and come back down to earth!
If you go to lots of really complex information about disease processes, you are going to overwhelm people. Make sure you are talking to your ideal client where they are at unexplained things in easy to understand terms.
Remember the average person has much less knowledge about the human body and about health than we do! When in doubt, make it simple and assume they don’t understand processes like inflammation or conditions like dysbiosis.
Not putting your offers out there!
If you don't tell people what your services are, they cannot book them.
Please do not think that you can just post one link to your booking page on the first day and then never mention it again! You need to constantly remind people how to book in with you and what you have to offer. That way, they know exactly how it is that they can work with you.
Think it’s not necessary? Every single time I launch a course or a new offer, I will do 2-6 weeks of promotions across social media, website, newsletter and more. And every single time, I will have someone at the end of the promo who comes across it and says ‘how did I not know about this??’
Remember, offers are out there for the right people. So you want to put them out there regularly in case the right person happens to be watching!
Want to avoid these common marketing mistakes and more?
My Practitioner Marketing 101 course might be just what you need. Check it out here.
