As a private health practitioner, knowing how to attract clients with social media is crucial for your business to thrive. One effective tool that can help you boost your business is social media. With the rise of these platforms, health professionals such as yourself can now reach a wider audience and market their services more effectively.
Moreover, social media channels provide many ways to make money as a health professional, whether you are in the area of integrative and functional nutrition, physical and personal training, or any other health-related field. This article will discuss further why social media is an effective tool for attracting more customers.
It will also explore different ways to acquire paying customers through social channels, so you can grow your business and achieve your financial goals. From defining your target audience to utilizing paid advertising, it will cover the most important tactics that can help you succeed in the competitive world of social media marketing.
Why Use Social Media to Attract More Clients
Among the most notable reasons you should use media to attract customers is its ability to inform people about important health-related topics.
By using social media to educate people about such subjects, you can showcase your expertise and attract more customers who may be interested in learning more about these health-related discussions.
Need more convincing? Below are additional benefits to leveraging social media to expand your reach and engagement while turning leads into paying clients.
Increased Visibility for Health Professionals
With about 4.89 billion users worldwide, there’s no doubt that social media is among, if not the most effective, ways to get fresh eyes looking at your business. This reach also offers an excellent way to connect with potential customers you may not be able to access through other means — thereby expanding your customer base and increasing brand awareness.
You can create and share valuable content on social media platforms, such as informative blog posts, videos, or infographics. One example is infographic-related educational content that explains complex health-related topics and makes it more understandable for the layperson.
For instance, Canva has lots of beautiful plug-and-play templates that you can use to create visually appealing posts (including infographics) to help your prospective clients discover new ways to better manage their health. For example, depending on your niche, you could share a graphic with “Three core steps your ideal client can take today to reduce sugar cravings”.
Providing valuable knowledge like this example puts you on the radar of potential customers who are looking for information on specific health-related topics.
Another example is creating a “roadmap” highlighting the 3-5 key pillars or steps to your unique approach to treatment and healing of an autoimmune disorder
- Personalized Approach to Diet (by eliminating food triggers and swapping to reduce inflammation)
- Strategic Utilization of Supplements. Medications, and Functional Testing (to kickstart life-changing results)
- Leveraging Lifestyle (daily decisions such as sleep, stress, and movement can have a big impact on results!)
- Minding Your Mindset for Long Term Results (how to maintain a positive mindset even in the face of setbacks)
Can you see how sharing your unique approach in an infographic via social media post can be a game changer in helping your audience understand how you can help them?
Another way to increase your visibility is by hosting a live question-and-answer session on social media. Doing a live-stream enables you to converse with your audience and provide a more thorough and straightforward answer to their inquiries about how your programs and services can help them get “unstuck” and achieve the desired outcomes.
I love the idea of doing a weekly live stream and positioning these events to repurpose your other weekly content. For example, why not repurpose this content into a weekly live show if you are writing a weekly blog? Ideally, you’d show up the same day and time each week to help create a habit of “showing up” with your audience to share this content via live-streaming.
It also allows you to connect with your audience more personally and authentically and attract new ones by demonstrating your personality and professionalism as a private health practitioner.
Establish Trust and Credibility with your Social Media Posts
Aside from increasing your visibility, providing informative content on your own site and social media channels enables you to establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field and a credible source of information.
Using your platform to consistently impart knowledge on health, provide tips and advice, and answer health and medicine-related questions also helps you maintain trust with existing customers and build rapport with potential clients. It also increases confidence in your ability to provide quality healthcare services.
In addition to online posts and live Q&A sessions, another way you can use social media to establish trust and credibility is through user-generated content. Reviews, testimonials, and success stories from satisfied customers are all essential to have on your channels as they provide potential clients with the information they need to know about your services.
This type of content is social proof of the effectiveness of your company or offering, and prospects are inclined to believe them since they are written and published by fellow customers. It can also help potential customers feel more confident in choosing your services and increase the likelihood of making an appointment.
Social Media Platforms are Cost-effective (Free) Marketing
Another advantage of using social media to attract customers is that it’s a lot more affordable compared to traditional forms of advertising such as print ads and television commercials. Creating your profiles and making posts are free on most social media platforms, allowing you to reach your audience and prospects organically and at no cost.
Boosting your content and spending for paid online advertisements is also less expensive than conventional marketing since both of these new digital strategies depend on several factors that you can control and customize to cut on the costs as much as possible (e.g. expected number of views, number of days that you want your post to be advertised, target audience, etc).
Aside from boosted content and paying for online ads, networking is another cost-effective strategy that you can undertake using social media platforms. By connecting with other professionals in the field, you can build relationships with them that can lead to new customers.
Engaging with other practitioners and sharing content with them also helps you grow your reach and attract new customers who are interested in your services. Other people you can collaborate with to expand your customer base are influencers, who have a loyal following of their own that they can direct toward you.
Targeted Marketing with Paid Advertising
Social media platforms enable you to reach your ideal audience with surprising precision. As a result, you can customize and target your advertising efforts based on demographics, interests, and behaviors — ensuring that the most relevant (and profitable) audience sees your content.
Unsurprisingly, when content (i.e., a Facebook ad) is shown to people not interested in that particular topic or service, it’s highly unlikely that it’ll convert into a sale. Conversely, suppose your posts and advertisements reach people already interested in the topic or service. In that case, you are more likely to get more engagement, higher conversion rates, and a better return on your investment for paid social media ads.
Case in point – one of the best ways to prioritize your ad spend is to do a retargeting campaign to target people already on your email list to promote a specific service or program. Or you can install a pixel to your website or sales page to retarget the folks who have expressed a degree of interest by visiting your page. This repeated “messaging” might be the magic ticket to nudge them into action!
Bottom line? Social media platforms provide detailed and customizable targeting options to help you reach your ideal audience. For example, Facebook allows you to target your advertising based on age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors.
Its sister platform, Instagram, enables you to aim your marketing efforts based on similar factors, hashtags, and user behavior. These targeting options ensure that the right people see your content, leading to more successful marketing campaigns.
Increased Engagement Through Social Media Posts
Social media provides a platform for two-way communication between you and your audience, which allows for greater engagement and interaction. Online platforms offer a range of features to encourage engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares. These parameters can be visible to other social media users depending on the channel.
They are also the same criteria that most platforms use in their algorithm — meaning the higher the numbers for these parameters are, the more likely your posts or ads will be shown to new people.
And when more people see and engage with the content you put on social media, it shows that a significant number are interested in the topic or service and are willing to take the time to interact with your content.
This outcome establishes you as a trustworthy and credible health-related information, education, and service source. It also allows you to build a sense of community around your brand and create stronger relationships with your customer base.
Moreover, increased social media engagement can help you stay top-of-mind with your audience and keep them interested in your services. You must consistently produce high-quality, informative content to engage your customer base.
Using Social Media to Attract Clients
After understanding and exploring the advantages of using social media to attract clients, followers, patients, and customers, it’s now time to dive into some specific ways you can use these digital platforms to grow your business. By implementing the strategies presented below, you can boost your online presence, establish your credibility, attract your ideal audience, and eventually turn those leads into sales.
1. Define Your Target Audience
Defining your audience is a crucial step in using social media to attract customers, as it sets the foundation for the type of content you need to create to generate sales. By knowing your audience’s interests, pain points, and goals, you can tailor your promotional materials to their specific needs and build a deeper connection with your customer base.
Creating a buyer persona is among the most popular strategies you can undertake to define your audience. According to HubSpot, a “buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer that you want to attract”.
You can create this persona through surveys, interviews, and using analytics tools to track and analyze your audience’s demographics and interests. These mechanisms are also used to determine other psychographic information — such as values and pain points — and behaviors, such as how they engage with your content.
2. Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Social Media Profiles
As mentioned, the results from defining your target audience dictate the type of content you will release. However, those outcomes are not enough to launch your online promotional campaign.
To do that, you would need a content marketing strategy. With this plan, you can ensure that you provide high-quality content to your audience that keeps them engaged with your brand.
Defining your goals and objectives and gaining insight from your customer base and competitors are essential steps in creating a content marketing strategy to better understand the type of content that resonates with your existing and target audience.
Your content should not only be engaging but also moving enough that it will turn your audience from mere onlookers into paying customers.
3. Utilize Visuals and Hashtags to Attract Ideal Clients
Publishing your content is not the end, especially if your goal is to boost your sales. When using social media to attract paying customers, visuals and hashtags can be crucial in capturing your audience’s attention and increasing engagement.
Visuals can help showcase your products or services and easily catch the attention of social media users. It also makes your offerings and brand more appealing, which can increase the visibility and engagement of your business.
Additionally, using relevant and targeted hashtags can help ensure your content reaches the right audience interested in your offer. Incorporating popular hashtags in your posts — or even creating your own — makes it easier for potential customers to find and engage with you online.
4. Be Consistent with Your Social Media Posts
Consistent on social media is crucial in building a robust online presence and attracting paying customers. Consistency leads to increased visibility and better customer engagement, which helps establish trust and credibility with your audience and keeps your business in mind for potential customers who may need your services.
Creating a content calendar allows you to maintain this consistency and ensure that your social media platforms will always have something new for your audience to engage in. A content calendar should outline your content’s topics, formats, and timing.
Your social media calendar should be tailored to the specific social media channels you are using and should consider each platform’s unique features and preferences. You can also plan your content in advance and utilize scheduling tools to ensure your social media posts are published consistently.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to post every day. Putting out as much content as possible may be ideal, but doing so may affect its quality. That’s why you must strive to balance creating high-quality, informative, engaging content that resonates with your audience and posting regularly.
5. Paid Advertising on Social Media
If you want to boost your content for exposure and increase your chances of acquiring more paying customers, consider investing in online advertisements.
This marketing strategy enables you to create targeted ads that reach specific demographics or interests, ensuring that your message is seen by people likely to be interested in your services.
It’s essential to clearly understand your target audience and what messaging resonates with them before investing in paid advertising. Additionally, monitoring and adjusting your ads based on their performance can help ensure you get the best return on your investment.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even Google all offer online ad placements on their websites with varying rates depending on specific parameters. These channels also have a set of guidelines that you need to follow to ensure that your ad is appropriate for their sites.
Using Social Media to Attract Clients: Conclusion
Using social media to attract customers offers numerous benefits to your online health business. The increased visibility, cost-effective marketing, targeted marketing, and increased engagement make it an effective tool to grow your brand and create multiple income streams.
It allows you to inform people about health-related topics so you can showcase your expertise, establish trust and credibility, and connect with potential customers who are interested in your services. What’s more, leveraging social platforms’ customization and targeting features enables you to reach your ideal audience and encourage greater engagement and interaction to eventually lead to a sale.
