Episode 227 | How Can You Differentiate Your Group Practice in a Crowded Marketplace?

Maureen Werrbach (00:00:01) – You’re listening to the group Practice Exchange podcast where the business development resource for group practice owners, where we talk candidly about business ownership and leadership from practice building tips to live coaching to real talk episodes with other group practice owners where the resource you’ve been looking for to help you grow your group practice. I’m your host, group practice owner and entrepreneur Maureen Werrbach. 

 

This episode is sponsored by TherapyNotes, TherapyNotes is an online practice management and billing software designed for mental health professionals. Therapy Notes says everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, create rich documentation and bill insurance right at your fingertips. They offer free and unlimited live support seven days a week. Their streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you need it. To get two free months, go to www.therapynotes.com/thegrouppracticeexchange. 

 

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Maureen Werrbach (00:01:17) – Welcome back. Today we’re going to be talking about different marketing, being able to set yourself apart from other group practices. And I’m going to be talking specifically about Mike McLeod’s book called Git Different. If you haven’t read it. It is such a good book. This is one that I wasn’t going to read because as you know, I’m an introvert. Marketing is not my strong suit. It’s something I’m actually not that interested in. It just doesn’t align with my personality and my style. But I ended up reading it because I wanted to support him and got so many good nuggets from it, So I want to talk about it. Many business owners are frustrated because they feel like they’re invisible in this crowded marketplace, especially as so many new group practices and solo practices are popping up. Right? They know they’re better than other people out there, but when they focus on the fact they get little or no return when they’re doing their marketing, and that’s because the client’s better is not actually better, different is better.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:02:22) – And those who can market differently tend to win when it comes to visibility and know like and trust factor. And so Mike talks about three concepts in his book, Different Marketing, which is does your marketing differentiate, does it attract and does it direct? And so what that means is that does your marketing methods differentiate from other people who are in your industry, other group practices? Are you marketing in a way that’s different from those other practices in your area? If it’s just like everyone else, you’re not different. You’re in a sea of the same. Does it attract? Are you actually attracting the people or the clients that you want to see your marketing? And does it direct? Does it have a call to action? Does it tell people what to do? A lot of times you might be differentiating yourself and you might be attracting the right people with your marketing, but you’re not directing them. You’re not telling them what to do. You’re just saying, Hey, I exist in a really cool way, but you’re not telling them what to do and people want to be told what to do.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:03:23) – And so this often, this direct piece or this call to action piece is missing in a lot of people’s marketing. So I want to give an example that Mike talks about in his book, which is this real estate agent. So real estate agents, their common method for marketing is signage. They have every time they are selling a house, they put a sign on the front of the house that says for sale. But then underneath it is this big square that has their company logo that says, you know, we are the ones that are selling this house. And for many, many years this has been the way that every real estate agent markets themselves is they put a for sale sign up with a big square sign that has their logo and information so that people in the neighborhood can see like, Oh, this company sells a lot of houses in our neighborhood. One guy wanted to differentiate his marketing and what he did was he made a sign that would spin in the wind. It’s a very small change, and this is one of the things that I really appreciated about the concept of different marketing is that it doesn’t have to be grand or spectacularly different.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:04:28) – It can be a small pivot or chain that makes all of the difference. And so this guy knew that signs on people’s lawns when he was selling houses was the way to market, right? That’s how people know the more signs you see from one specific real estate company, the more likely you’re going to think that that company is probably the most successful because they have the most amount of houses in the area that they’re selling. But if there are 100 different companies that have very similar signage that are, you know, these rectangular signs, even if the colors are different, it’s hard to differentiate from them. And what he did was made a sign that would spin in the windows like a windmill. And it would say for sale. And their logo and company information was on there. But the sign would essentially spin in the wind. And it really made a huge difference because he was a newer real estate agent that was competing in an area where there were a ton of real estate agents and companies already. And because his sign spun, it really caught the eye of drivers and ended up really exploding his business because he made one small and simple change.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:05:36) – He didn’t try to step away from one signage because that is the most visible way to catch people who are looking for houses, right? They’re passing houses. They’re seeing the front lawns. He made a small change by putting that spinning the sign in the wind, and that’s set him apart. It differentiated him from all the other plain square business lawn signs that real estate companies usually do. It attracted people that were looking to sell their homes because it stood out and it directed people to call him. That’s why call to actions are important. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about how can we differentiate our group practices when we’re marketing. There’s a lot of different options and it really depends on who you’re marketing to. So that’s the first thing to think about, is who’s your ideal audience? For example, in our group practice, we cater to a lot of young adults, and one of the things that we did was we made these vinyl stickers with really catchy mental health phrases that young adults gravitate towards.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:06:33) – And as most of us know, a lot of young adults will put stickers on their computers or on their cars, especially if they’re catchy and like really resonate with who they are. And so we have a handful of different types of vinyl stickers that we have given to colleges that they can hand out during orientation to their freshmen. We bring them to high schools and young adults really love to grab them and highlight that they support mental health and that they value mental health and put these stickers on their computers, which in turn they’re typically around other young adults who see that. And it’s a way to market on a grander scale than us sort of trying to market 1 to 1 with one individual young adult. So that’s one example. Another example is that we also cater to counseling business owners or C-suite level individuals. And so we made a deck of cards, almost like affirmation cards, if you will, And these deck of cards we made by hand, we found a local printing company who could make our boxes for us and print high quality cards.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:07:37) – And we made a deck of cards that had skills to manage and destigmatize mental health issues. About 30 or 40 cards in there that talk about anything from shame and resiliency to stress and coping with stress in the workplace. And we hand these out to business owners who then use it inside of their business with their C-level employees. And we found that that is a way that we can for free market ourselves while getting in the places that we’re trying to get into. And one of the cards that we have, obviously we’re definitely differentiating with these cards that no one else has them. It’s not common to send these things out. It attracts the right people because we can send them out with little notes on there, with sticky notes on some of the cards saying, you know, this is a great one to try out with your leadership team. But then it also directs because one of our cards has a QR code and it says, if you’ve been working with these cards and your employees need more support, scan this card and they can get an appointment scheduled with one of our therapists.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:08:40) – And it’s worked really well for us. And so these are two things that we do that differentiate. It attracts exactly who we’re looking for and it directs them to do something very specific. So start looking at who your ideal audience is and then ask yourself what thing would attract them and bring them to your business and what is it that someone else isn’t doing, and then making sure that you direct them to actually reach out to you, because that’s the most important part of it, right, is once you learn how to differentiate. Your marketing, you need to make sure that you’re actually going to get people who are going to call and schedule an appointment if that’s the goal. If that’s the directive. Right. If it’s something else, maybe you have a service or an offering and it’s not one on one counseling. How are you telling them to do a thing which is by your product, sign up for your program or call to schedule a one on one appointment, making sure that the call to action is also listed somewhere in your marketing is going to be key because that’s how you’re going to know that it’s working.

 

Maureen Werrbach (00:09:41) – So how are you setting yourself up for different marketing and what is working for you? If you have a different sort of marketing skill that is really working for your ideal audience, we’d love to know how you’re doing some different marketing for your group practice because we are so done with all of the same old, same old marketing. So I’d love to hear it talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to the Group Practice Exchange podcast. Like what you heard, give us five stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra support? Join the exchange a membership community just for group practice owners with monthly office hours, live webinars, and a library of trainings ready for you to dive into. Visit Dot members dot the group practice exchange.com/exchange. See you next week.

 

Thanks for listening to the group Practice Exchange podcast, like what you heard, give us five stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra support? Join The Exchange, a membership community just for group practice owners with monthly office hours, live webinars, and a library of trainings ready for you to dive into. Visit www.members.thegrouppracticeexchange.com. See you next week.