Discovering Your Ideal Customers: Tips for Health & Wellness Business Owners
Are you trying to promote your health and wellness business to “everyone” hoping to get enough clients in the door? While this might seem like a good idea, you're actually hindering your business's growth potential. What you really need is a targeted marketing approach, which is where understanding your target audience comes in.
While my clients may word this in a variety of ways, many of them tell me they know that their skills can be used to serve a wide range of people. They don’t want to feel like they’re turning anyone away. But finding and communicating with your specific target audience doesn’t mean you have to turn away people who don’t fit that exact profile.
Put yourself in the shoes of your potential patient: Imagine you’re looking for a health provider to help you with your hip pain. You enjoy running and pilates, and are interested in overall health & wellness beyond just addressing your hip pain. While researching physical therapists, you come across a couple options that would be convenient for you: one is a physical therapist who advertises broadly about helping people get out of pain, the other is a physical therapist who focuses on working with runners and also talks about her own interest in overall health & wellness. Which one are you more interested in scheduling an appointment with?
By understanding your target audience, you can tailor your marketing message to speak directly to them. They’re more likely to decide that you’re the ideal provider to help them if they see themselves and the problem they’re looking to solve in your communication.
In this post, we'll look at how to figure out your target audience and create customer personas to help you tailor your marketing to reach your ideal clients.
What is a target audience?
A target audience refers to a specific group of people that your marketing efforts are tailored towards. It’s a group that you are particularly interested and equipped to serve that are also a specific group of people who are most likely to be interested in your services.
It's important to understand that your target audience is not "everyone", "middle and upper class men", or “women who shop at Lululemon”. It’s difficult to connect with any particular group if you’re trying to appeal to a broad audience.
Instead, you want to identify a group of people with a particular set of needs, interests, and characteristics. By creating personalized marketing tailored to their needs, you can strengthen your connection with them and increase your chances of converting them into loyal clients who love what you do and want to spread the word about what you offer.
How to figure out your target audience
One way to figure out your target audience is to look at the data on your current customers. This can help you identify patterns and characteristics that are common among the people who are already using your services.
Start by looking at basic demographic information such as age, gender, location, and income level, but don’t stop there. Take note of any specific types of clients who you particularly enjoy working with. These may be individuals who share similar values or have similar goals that align with your business.
Identifying your most consistent clients can help you understand what types of people are most likely to benefit from your services and how you can target them more effectively.
Also consider: Do they have specific interests – runner, swimmer, yoga? Or maybe dancers or musicians? Are they in a particular stage of life (college student, recent graduate, new parent, etc.)? All this information can help you create customer personas and figure out who you should be targeting.
Creating customer personas
Once you have gathered data on your current customers, you can use that information to create customer personas. A customer persona is a detailed profile of a fictional person who would be your ideal target audience. If you have more than one target audience, you can create multiple personas.
A customer persona should include basic demographic information such as age, gender, and location, as well as information about their interests, values, and lifestyle choices. You may also want to include information about their needs, challenges, and goals as well as their preferred communication channels.
Creating customer personas can help you better understand and relate to the clients you’re trying to attract and serve. It makes it easier to tailor your content, messaging, and services to meet the specific needs and concerns of different groups
ChatGPT can be a helpful tool here. By providing details about your target audience that you’ve already identified, ChatGPT can help bring those details to life as a description of an individual person (or people, if you have more than one target audience), making them feel more real and relatable to you.
Here are a couple examples of customer personas
How to talk to your target audience
Once you have identified your target audience and created customer personas, it's important to consider how you will communicate with them. You need to ensure that your message resonates with them and speaks to their unique needs and challenges.
Start by identifying your audience's biggest challenges and the problems they're trying to solve. Figure out where they look for information online, what social media platforms they’re most likely to use, and what benefit you can offer them. Finally, consider who your audience trusts and how you can leverage those relationships to build your business. Are there other services that your target audience is likely to use? Consider ways that you might be able to partner with those other businesses and be able to refer clients (and them to you) to them.
Create marketing messages that highlight the benefits of your services and how they can help solve your target audience's problems. Consider using testimonials from satisfied clients to build trust and credibility with your target audience.
Keep in mind that your target audience may change over time. As your business grows and your customer base changes, you may need to revise your personas to better reflect your target audience. Regularly reassessing your target audience and updating your customer personas can help ensure that your marketing efforts remain relevant and effective.
How to use these personas in your marketing
Content Creation: Use the personas to guide creation of content for social media, blog posts, emails, and more. Make sure the content resonates with at least one specific persona's interests, challenges, and goals.
Service/Product Development: Use your understanding of what each persona needs and wants to guide the development or improvement of your services.
Customer Acquisition: By understanding where the personas spend their time, both online and offline, you can better focus your advertising and promotional efforts.
Customer Retention: By understanding the motivations and challenges of each persona, you can create strategies to keep clients engaged with your business.
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Feeling overwhelmed with marketing your health and wellness business? No need to stress, let me help you! Whether you need help with branding, website design, or email campaigns, I've got you covered. Contact me today and let's work together to take your business to the next level!
