If you are finding it hard to make ends meet in your natural therapy business you may find help is not far away. Industry expert, Lawrence Ellyard who is the author of The Secrets of Spiritual Marketing offers some down to earth advice on marketing your natural therapy business without compromising your values.
Truth be told, most natural therapists are excellent at what they do. They have undertaken all of the training in their chosen field, have spent hours in clinical practice and in many respects they are experts in facilitating their natural health therapy. However, not all is well for the wellness professionals. When it comes to promoting and advertising their natural health therapy practice, most therapists are less than capable of effectively promoting and marketing what they do.
One of the primary reasons why natural therapists lack the ability to effectively promote themselves is simply due to the fact that little or no time is devoted to learning about marketing or advertising, (perhaps a few short units on business practices at best).
It makes sense then that in order to successfully build a practice where we not only bring in new customers and clients but retain our existing clientele that we need to receive an education in achieving this.
Marketing by definition is the art of selling and is defined as being the business of delivering goods (your services) from you (the producer) to the consumer. Spiritual marketing is defined as a way to share what you love to do and be financially supported by providing your services in order to help others.
Whether you like it or not, if you are running a business, no matter what it is, you are in the business of marketing it. No matter what you do, every profession involves helping others solve their problems or offers a service to improve their lives.
Because most natural therapists have little education about advertising and promoting their natural therapy practice, they often look to what everyone else is doing. The result is more advertisements that fail to be effective simply because almost everyone is copying everyone else’s badly written and poorly designed ads. The good news is, there is help.
To be successful in your natural health therapy practice you need to solve your clients problems through your experience and training. However, in order for you to help more people, they also need to know you exist.
The opportunities for natural health practitioners to make a living in the wellness industry are better today than ever before and conversely there are many more wellness industry practitioners in practice. This presents a great variety of natural therapy options in the market place for consumers, which also equals greater competition for natural therapists. How will you make your business stand out from the crowd?
The following are seven simple steps you can take right now to help market your natural therapy business.
1. Keep in touch with your existing clientele every 90 days
When it comes to finding new clients some statistics report that it is ten times harder to obtain a new client than it is to get a repeat purchase from an existing client for your product or service. With this in mind, we can do many things to retain our existing clientele and entice them in many exciting ways to purchase again and again.
Create a database of your existing clients (if you have not done so already) and offer an e newsletter providing news about your services and a special offer to entice your previous customers to come back and do business with you again. You might offer a discount off their next treatment or create a compelling up-sell to an additional treatment or service. Remember to keep track of birthdays or anniversaries of their first treatment and create a compelling offer to bring them back.
2. Provide Excellent Customer Service
You are only as good as your last treatment. To ensure your customers come back and refer new customers to you, make sure you provide an excellent service and give 100% each and every time. We can extend this level of service to promptly replying to calls (if missed) and providing an efficient and friendly service. You may wish to obtain the services of a call centre for any missed calls if you are in a session. Alternatively, work from a clinic where a receptionist receives enquiries for you.
For email enquiries, the faster you can respond the more likely you will be to secure new business over your competition. Remember, your customers are one click away from your competitors websites so ensure you respond quickly to any enquiry and reap the rewards that comes with speedy service.
Remember your clients’ name, always thank them for their business and treat them like they are the people who keep you employed, because they are. Bottom line: The Customer is King, or Queen, as the case may be.
3. Ask for Referrals and offer Rewards
Provided you have offered great service, your customers will be happy to refer you. To ensure they do there are several things you should offer. Start by asking. At the end of your session, ask your client what they thought and if they are happy, then ask for them for referrals. Let them know your business is mostly shared by word of mouth and that you’d really appreciate it if they could hand out some of your business cards to friends.
I am a strong advocate for handing out not one but five business cards. It goes without saying that your business cards should have all you contact information and the services and benefits you other.
You may also wish to add a space on the reverse of your card where it states: Referred by… where the person who refers can write their name. Any referrals that come in as a result of your previous customer sharing your services with others can be recorded and offered as compensation in the form of a small gift; or a discount off their next treatment and, at the very least, an acknowledgment for their referral.
4. Get your brand out there
This simply means having an easily recognizable presence and continuity across all your promotional materials and advertising. You will need a logo which defines your service. This does not necessarily mean it has to be a graphic, a logo can be your business name but written in a stylized form. You will need business cards. You will need a website; your logo on your email signature; signage at the place where you work and perhaps even mobile advertising such as signage on your car.
It makes sense that you should employ the services of a professional graphic designer and web master in order to create a uniform and professional image. Basically, get your brand in as many mediums as possible and become a recognizable and reliable source that people will come to rely on, know and trust.
5. Create an award winning website
You may be a sole practitioner however, this does not mean you don’t need a website. The internet is fast becoming the main avenue where people research services and, unlike display advertising that can cost thousands per month, your website once established can contain unlimited pages of useful information that can convert those who are looking into customers for life.
Ensure you register a website domain (URL) that reflects your business. Make sure your website is content rich, meaning it has interesting articles and news related to the services you offer. Utilize the internet to its fullest and get involved in online social networking; write a Blog, use Twitter; Youtube; Myspace and Google Adwords to name a few.
Create an Online booking form for your customers; register with search engines, make your information user friendly, leave out industry jargon and gain a hunger to learn more.
6. Network your business
You will be surprised just how many opportunities there are to network your business. Form strategic alliances with other practitioners who are not your direct competitors but have access to networks and are prepared to share your benefits with others. Advertise in e newsletters from other business owners. Try a combined mail-out with other practitioners. Become a sponsor for a major industry event or get a company to become your sponsor. Write articles for industry related publications and alternative health journals. Always carry business cards (I mean everywhere). Let everyone know what you do and most importantly how what you do helps others to solve their problems.
7. Ask for testimonials
Ask your existing clients to give you a testimonial and ensure you have their permission to use these in your promotional materials, on and offline. If you have few existing clients, offer a free treatment to new customers in exchange for a testimonial. Try to receive endorsements from high profile people, such as authors, industry experts and alike.
Testimonials offer great credibility. Remember a person is more likely to try your services if they know others have benefited from your services already.
Of course these seven steps are just the tip of the ice berg in terms of the full scope of Spiritual Marketing. But if you only apply some of these suggestions you will see a measurable change in your natural therapy business for the better.
To find out more about The Secrets of Spiritual Marketing, click here
One Membership to Serve them all
- The IICT Story by Lawrence Ellyard
Founder and Managing Director of the IICT
Many people have asked me over the years how the IICT got started and for the sake of posterity I want to take this opportunity to share with you our humble beginnings; how we got where we are today and where we are headed.
Like many things, necessity is the mother of all invention, and so it was with the IICT. In 1996, as some of you may know, I was running the International Institute for Reiki Training. At this time we had several practitioners ready to practice in the marketplace so I was seeking to provide a banner for our Reiki Therapists as well as access to insurance cover. However, I wanted to provide an alternative to the path traditionally offered by Associations.
Being active in the natural health industry through my teaching and speaking engagements, I came across the same complaints from practitioners from all walks of life. Common concerns were high membership fees as well as the need for continued education, which for the most part seemed like adding on courses that were not always seen as useful by the practitioners concerned. Another complaint was the costs associated with travelling to training courses to accumulate points to maintain Association membership.
I decided I wanted to provide my Reiki practitioners with a membership that had all of the benefits, but none of the limitations, that many Association memberships entailed.
After a considerable effort I was able to secure an agreement with our current broker to provide professional affiliation and insurance for our Reiki graduates. With everything in place, we announced the membership to our Reiki therapists.
As soon as we launched the membership, a funny thing happened. We had Reiki practitioners asking if the insurance could cover them beyond Reiki and would also cover them for other natural therapies.
I took it upon myself to contact our broker and found they would also be happy to cover these other common natural therapies.
Because we had one of the best rates available at the time, soon word-of-mouth spread and we found that complementary therapists, other than Reiki therapists, were approaching us. As more and more therapists joined our Reiki Institute banner, we continued to provide professional membership for therapists who had additional modalities to Reiki.
For other practitioners who held qualifications across several therapies, it often meant joining several associations and taking out different insurances, simply because they could not roll all their therapies under one banner.
All this got me thinking - ‘Someone should do something about this’. Then one day I realized, I was that someone. It was time; the practitioners were many and there was a definitive market need for an all-encompassing body for the industry.
In 2003, I decided it was time to create a new banner to cater for all our members who did other complementary therapies.
I wanted a name that had room for growth and encompassed the industry as a whole. Thus the name was born: The International Institute for Complementary Therapists or IICT, for short. The vision was realized - to become a professional body for the entire natural therapies industry.
In preparation for founding the IICT I carefully compared the codes of practice and ethics of many therapies and associations. From these I developed our own unique code that contained all of the necessary items for professional practice yet provided enough flexibility and diversity for natural health practitioners.
By forming the IICT we found our niche in providing a general banner for therapists who practiced many different therapies, yet did not necessarily require professional affiliation with different associations for each modality practiced.
After much negotiation with our insurance brokers, we were able to extract their recognized list of natural therapy modalities, at the time 120 in total. Over the years, this list has grown to over 650 therapies and modalities, making the IICT the largest modality list in the world.
Aside from representing thousands of practitioners throughout Australia, the IICT began increasing momentum in the area of recognizing modalities that were new to these shores. Whether a practitioner had pioneered a new modality or it was imported from another country, we were the first organization to take the initiative to recognizing new modalities.
Some of our first members were from new and emerging modalities, so through word-of-mouth our membership base increased dramatically. Some of the modalities we helped recognize in Australia for the first time, included: The Journey; Reconnective Healing; Heal your Life; The Mace Method; Theta Healing; Calmbirth; Oneness Blessing and Wu Tao, to name a few.
Today we are acknowledged as the only organization that actively assists practitioners to have their modality officially recognized for membership and insurance services.
Australia was moving forward at an encouraging pace, it was now time to make the IICT name truly international. As the variety of modalities practiced in New Zealand was similar to those in Australia, it seemed the next logical step (and they are our closest neighbour after all). In July of 2008 the IICT launched its operations in New Zealand.
It was at this time that we also decided to expand our modality list to include all of the various treatments from the Beauty Therapy industry, as well as Day Spa treatments.
This meant a great deal of research on the treatments as well as taking the opportunity of trialing quite a few of them myself. One must know what one is endorsing, which is one of the perks of the job, I guess.
The next installment was to look at new membership categories. One area I felt was very under serviced was the Psychic arts. Here was an area where it was uncommon to derive formal qualifications, yet there must be a way to verify a suitable standard for spiritual healers, clairvoyants and psychics, to name a few.
After a great deal of going back and forth with our insurance broker we were able to create a policy to cover practitioners in this area and provide a set of criteria to determine adequate standards for anyone working in the psychic arts arena.
Shortly after, we expanded our memberships to Students in training as well as re-sellers of natural therapy products and devices.
The stage was set to take our unique system to a wider market.
In 2010, I was reading Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-Hour Work Week. I had read this book a few years prior and it really changed my routine from working all hours to drastically reducing them. The revised edition had just come out so I thought I’d read it again for good measure to see if I could gleam further inspiration.
In fact, the second reading didn’t yield a great deal of new inspiration except for one sentence from the Preface that read: “Selling your services to the UK to earn in a stronger currency”. Something went ‘ping’ in my brain. What if we were to share the IICT in the UK market?
Having no contacts in the country and no established business relations seemed like a tough market to crack. Also following the Global Financial Crisis, the timing didn’t seem all that great, yet despite all this, something in my mind said, ‘give it a go’.
After six months of doors closing in my face and several insurance ‘dead ends’, my idea seemed like it was unachievable.
I was about to give up when by chance I came across a specialist insurance company online. They were a small team in the UK who provided an extensive modality list similar to ours – it seemed like a perfect fit.
I picked up the phone and made an international call to their office.
As luck would have it, the receptionist was off ill so the head of the firm picked up the call. After a one-hour conversation and going back and forth from one another’s websites, a decision had been reached. We had an official provider and were set to launch in the UK.
Months of web design and problem-solving resulted. But after all this work had been completed, the formal launch of IICT UK occurred in November of 2011.
To date we are making steady progress in the UK as well as forming strong alliances in the natural health field.
This brings us to today. The IICT has become a symbol of freedom for many practitioners. This is to say, we have become a refuge for the many and varied therapists who are no longer limited to the confined structures of Associations. We have also become a community to many who without our banner would otherwise be left out in the cold with no professional body to call home.
In many respects the industry, together with the IICT, seems to be undergoing a quiet revolution. Many therapists who have previously operated under the Association banners are jumping ship to the IICT where they can operate under a broader and free banner for the natural health industry.
Almost every week I hear from at least one of our new members, how happy they are to have found us. It brings me great comfort to be of service in this way, knowing I have created something that was seriously in need and that is more and more gaining traction in the marketplace as a viable option for natural health therapists.
So where are we headed? Our next port of call is to establish a branch of the IICT in the United States. We are currently in negotiation with a broker there and are hopeful that we will be able to commence operations for the US market by year’s end.
The IICT membership is a combination of many therapists from over 650+ modalities. As we grow, so our community grows. We are an online community but more importantly, we are a community offline. And this is where you implement your talents that help others and touch others’ lives. I’m pleased to be in some small way, part of that collective journey.
Thanks for reading our story. Being a member of the IICT makes you part of it.
Regards,
Lawrence Ellyard
IICT Founder and Director
