As a business owner one of your main focuses must always be putting your message out to your audience. It might feel weird coming from the background of being a healthcare professional but it's your duty.
If you truly believe in the service you offer then you need to be sharing the benefits of it all the time.
Your audience needs you and needs the treatment you provide.
They're looking to you for hope that things can get better and that the problem they're facing can be solved.
While human behavior and emotions are infinitely complex all actions can be boiled down to gaining pleasure or avoiding pain. The latter being a much stronger pull.
Our brains are hardwired to avoid pain first. It's the reason we've succeeded as a species. The caveman who didn't see the threat couldn’t pass on their genes.
This means we're always looking at the downside and the negative first. And we hold onto that more than we do the upside.
What your prospects need from you in your messaging is hope. They need to know that their problems can be solved. That there is a way out. That they can feel better.
This is especially true because we're healthcare professionals dealing with what can be the very personal problems of our patients.
What this also means is you won't see the same sort of outward engagement on social media posts as a beauty post or if you were a travel agency. These fears and problems are hard for people to talk about.
It's your job to start that conversation and give them the space to come in their own time.
In a world where everything is being automated we cannot forget the importance of the human connection. The personal message. The extra phone call. Or the 10 minutes of listening. This will do more to grow your business than any of the latest software or marketing gimmicks.
Having these conversations with your prospects will help you understand what they need to hear and see from you to move them away from pain and towards pleasure.
Focus your messaging around that. Meet them where they are at and show them there is a way out, that their problems can be solved.
I know this a little high level and not necessarily the actionable advice most people are looking for but it's far more important. Simply teaching you tactics and telling you exactly what to do or what to write isn't going to help you grow and develop as a business owner. Every practice is different and the exact words that attract patients to various practices can be different, but if you keep a handful of guiding principles in your mind as you craft your marketing materials and their messages you will be poised for much higher rate of success.
The most successful business owners and entrepreneurs are the ones who spend the time learning about human behavior, psychology, and motivation. Whether that's understanding how to motivate your employees to run your business without you or getting more patients to say yes to solving the problems they desperately want solved, successful business owners learn, implement, and make ongoing improvements.
It's worth reading this email a few times and spending some time thinking deeply about it.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts…
– Jason Duprat, MBA, MSA, CRNA