Personal branding is the art of visibly influencing public perception in order to position yourself as a subject matter expert. Your personal brand is your professional story.
Your personal brand is also the face of your clinic. It communicates your professionalism, skillset, trustworthiness and values, while providing a platform for marketing and, of course, sales.
The end result of personal branding should be a trusting, brand conscious audience who are willing to engage your clinic’s allied health services. For existing clients this is a fantastic way to keep them loyal and their sales consistent.
Creating and driving your personal brand is a sound, long-term sales strategy that will pay dividends if done right.
“Focus on identifying your target audience, communicating an authentic message that they want and need and project yourself as an “expert” within your niche,” said Kim Garst, online business strategist.
Why a personal brand?
When offering personal services such as massage or physiotherapy, the bond between your clinic’s brand and yourself becomes almost inseparable. Work with this angle of trust and interpersonal interaction.
People need to trust you in order to place faith in your health practices and put money in your wallet. One of the best ways to build that trust is to make yourself known, and market who you are and your particular expertise.
Who the heck are you?
This is not an existential question. ‘Who are you?’ is the launching point for a personal brand and will guide every other iteration of this endeavour.
Write down answers to the following:
- What am I best at?
- What gets me genuinely passionate?
- What do others see in me?
- Why do I want someone to visit my clinic?
- In what area do I feel the most confident in giving advice?
If you have expertise in sports physiotherapy for example, be sure to build on that perception through your marketing activities. Don’t be shy about promoting yourself to your social network.
Who are you talking to?
Or perhaps, ‘who is your audience?’
You need to have a very thorough understanding, not only of who you are and what you offer, but who you’re selling yourself to.
If you don’t know who your clients are and what they want, this may be a disappointing ride.
Personal branding drives your clinic’s marketing
By forming and presenting your personal brand to the market, you’ve not only given a face to your clinic, you’ve also granted yourself an excellent marketing platform to build on.
Once you have your identity laid out (and pinned down your audience, purpose and areas of expertise), use this as a foundation to create content.
You should be creating marketing and social content regularly, no matter your particular health clinic.
When you think of your personal expertise as a marketable commodity, the content for blogs, videos, podcasts and webinars almost create themselves.
Social media is your friend
No matter your expertise or chosen mode of content creation, you should be looking to social media first and foremost to build your personal brand.
You could concentrate on having a great Instagram feed of you in your element, a ton of great fitness and strengthening tutorials on YouTube or a LinkedIn feed full of interesting occupation specific articles and how-to’s.
You can quickly grow your personal brand and gain market attention through visuals on social media. Build a large following and even pay to boost your posts, especially at first.
You’ll eventually become the face of your clinic and, in one swoop, you’ll build a personal and business brand built on genuine information and trust.
Blogs and articles
This is one of the most accessible forms of content. You don’t have to be a wordsmith to start writing your own blogs and articles on the subject matter of your choice.
If you have a topic you’re well-schooled in, like say injury prevention or sports medicine, have a go at creating written content like tip lists or insightful articles that will genuinely assist others.
If you’re not feeling confident, keep them short and sweet by using a list style or tackling one topic at a time.
Make sure your portrait, name, clinic and title are always clear when you publish copy. Post these to your clinic’s website or blog platform and then link to them through social media to drive traffic.
Instructional videos and tutorials
This is a fantastic medium for many health clinic practitioners who really get a boost from visual content.
Setup your iPhone or camera and make a few videos of yourself demonstrating, for example, stretches for injuries or exercises for injury prevention.
Talk people through the movements or instructions and prove to the market you know what you’re talking about. You’re the one people should be asking for advice.
Go and check out the most popular videos on YouTube from competitors or people in your field and see what they do. You can bet the people who have come before you have personal branding on their mind too.
Podcasts and webinars
Podcasts have exploded in popularity in recent years. It seems people really do enjoy long, ponderous content on a particular topic.
Why not start one of your own based on the topics you excel in and become a thought leader? Get yourself a decent microphone, decide on your favourite health subject and start ranting.
Similarly, educational health webinars with a live audience are another fantastic way to mix up your content and provide instructional value to your audience.