Marketing Strategy for a San Diego-based Acupuncturist
PROJECT: STRATEGY INTENSIVE
OVERVIEW:
Kara has been in business several years and is doing quite well despite having little to no marketing strategy. She has relied on referrals from health insurance companies as well as from existing patients but she wants to move away from accepting health insurance and move towards a cash-based business. She also has a long-term goal of incorporating online health coaching.
This meant we needed to not only get her in-office practice self-sufficient without health insurance referrals but we also need to set her up as an expert beyond her local community.
Here’s what the marketing strategy and process looked like for Kara:
Kick-off call: Along with a questionnaire, I always have a kickoff call with clients. It was really exciting to hear Kara’s short-term and long-term goals. As mentioned, she wanted to shift from accepting health insurance to being a cash-based practice in the short term and in the long term wanted to include online health coaching as well as having more time to spend with her family. Kara also wants to focus her work on providing relief for not just pain but also digestive disorders and sleep/stress issues as well.
We also discussed her current marketing efforts which were pretty minimal at the moment as well as her knowledge of her local market and her competitors.
Market research: Kara was already aware of her competitors but didn’t have much else in way of her market research and analysis. This is the foundation I build all my marketing strategies on so I definitely wanted to dig a lot deeper, not just in her competitor analysis but her overall industry as well.
Competitor names removed for purposes of this case study
SWOT analysis: This helped us identify Kara’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Through this process, I discovered Kara has an extremely high retention rate so we dug into why that might be a little more. This was an important strength to know so we can use it to our advantage moving forward. She is newer in a very saturated marketing so we knew we had to work to establish her a little better within her local market.
Competitive analysis & landscape: Through our competitor analysis it became very clear that while the majority of Kara’s competitors are established within the area, none of them have a compelling online presence. This means Kara has a huge opportunity to step into the online sphere (within her local market) to become a resource for those looking for more information on acupuncture or the disorders she treats as well as set her up for success in the long term through her online health coaching.
Unique Value Proposition & market positioning: Only one of her local competitors has specific disorders and conditions they focus on, but they don’t focus on the areas that she does which means she’s positioned to become the go-to acupuncturist to treat digestive and sleep/stress disorders in Rancho Bernardo. Combine this specialty with her caring nature (which leads to her high retention rate) and her past experience as a massage therapist with pre-med knowledge and she’s in a great position to stand out among the more established acupuncturists in the area too.
Target audience & mapping the buyer’s journey: Kara actually has 3 different target markets - One for pain management, one for digestive disorders, and one for sleep/stress disorders. I helped Kara take what she already had for her target markets and refine them a little bit more to create really clear client avatars.
With this information, I could then map each avatars’ buyer’s journey but while I was doing this, I realized her digestive disorders audience and her sleep/stress disorders audience had the same buyer’s journey so I ended up combining the two.
Through mapping her buyer’s journeys, it became clear that the majority of her clients are going to either be referred to her or discover her while searching for relief from their symptoms. This will be the main focus of her strategy.
Brand purpose, core values, + attributes: Because none of Kara’s competition had a compelling online presence, I wanted to make sure we updated and refined Kara’s brand to perfectly position her within the market. This meant updating her brand purpose, identifying her core brand values, and the tone and attributes to use throughout each touchpoint for a consistent experience.
Brand identity: Kara loved her brand colors but didn’t necessarily like anything else about her visual brand. After evaluating it, I determined if we simply changed the font she was using in her logo, it would elevate her brand to fit her new positioning. I also slightly adjusted her colors to give a little bit more contrast between them while still maintaining their integrity.
Website audit & SEO recommendations: I typically try to give clients improvements for their websites but for Kara, I thought it would be best for her to do a complete redesign. Her site was on Wordpress which she had mentioned she found difficult to update so I knew she would have difficulty getting the website updated to fit the new branding and messaging.
I provided Kara with both a proposed website navigation as well as a flowchart on how people will likely flow through the site based on the buyer’s journey we mapped out previously. This helps us determine where CTAs should be placed and where they should direct people to on the website.
I also created a rough wireframe for both the homepage and the services page to give Kara an idea for the structure of those pages. I paired the wireframes with suggested copy to illustrate how she can use her web copy to connect with her target market from the second they land on her website. The copy touched on her target market’s desire to for relief from their discomfort and infused a story to illustrate how life could be without that discomfort.
SEO is also going to be really important for Kara’s overall marketing strategy so I provided researched keywords she can use on her site as well as recommendations on how to use them to boost her SEO.
And last but not least on the website front, I provided guidance on the website analytics she should keep an eye on to help her identify if her marketing efforts are working and/or if she needs to make any adjustments.
Key messaging & content pillars: Because we’ve identified that the majority of clients will find Kara through search, I wanted to make sure we had Kara’s key messaging established in a way that truly highlights her Unique Value Proposition. This will not only give her target market an idea of what it’s like to work with Kara but it will also help educate them on how acupuncture can help with their discomfort.
Marketing strategy: Once we had all the foundational elements developed and clear as well as the brand really taking shape, it was time to layout all the tactics to be used within the strategy and how each of the foundational elements works into these tactics. This included the following:
Content marketing: Content marketing is going to be the single biggest piece of Kara’s strategy. This is going to provide a ton of educational content for prospective clients but it also provides fresh content for search engines to crawl regularly to assist with her SEO strategy. We also discussed how she can repurpose her blog content for her social media content and her email marketing content. This will not only keep her marketing and messaging cohesive and consistent but also make life a lot easier for her since her schedule is already pretty full with clients.
Social media strategy: Because content is just one part of social media, we discussed other strategies she can use to effectively reach her target audience on social media as well. Her social media strategy included Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook (including Facebook groups).
Email Marketing: We not only discussed various lead magnet ideas to encourage people to sign up for her list but I also provided a flowchart to illustrate the funnel she could create to capitalize on the lead magnet. The lead magnet would provide valuable information but then encourage people to sign up for an acupuncture session. After their first session, they would be put into an email automation to not only gather a testimonial (which is also important for her SEO strategy) but also encourage them to purchase a package of 10 acupuncture sessions and then downsell them on other services that Kara offers.
Networking + partnership opportunities: While mapping the buyer’s journey, I identified that referrals would also be a really big part of how clients find Kara. Because of this, I wanted to put an emphasis on networking both in Facebook groups but also with local physicians, physical therapists, and chiropractors to get on their referral list. Having a trusted source like a doctor refer another specialist already cuts the buyer’s journey down significantly; While providing resources and connecting with people in Facebook groups allows Kara to establish herself as an expert and connect with her target market directly.
PR strategy: While I don’t see PR being a huge part of Kara’s overall strategy initially, getting backlinks will be helpful for her SEO strategy so I wanted to include it for her. We discussed best practices for pitching herself to podcasts and I provided some resources to help make her public relations efforts a little easier.
Timeline: I prefer to give my clients a comprehensive marketing strategy so I layout every single tactic they should use and then provide a 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month timeline to show when they should implement and integrate each tactic. That way the strategy isn’t overwhelming right off the bat and will grow with them as they grow their brands.
I did include a “future efforts” step for Kara of integrating YouTube into her strategy. I don’t think it’s necessary to add it in in the next 12 months but I do think it could be a great option for her in the future to not only bring in new clients but also to create a passive income source.