THE ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR ONLINE PRACTICE
THE ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR ONLINE PRACTICE
You might have recently graduated or you already have 15 years of experience, or you can be anywhere in between, it doesn’t matter, you share the same dream…
TO HAVE AN ONLINE PRACTICE!
You want your online practice, so that you can:
- Work on your terms at your pace
- Work from anywhere in the world
- Be in charge of your future
- Make passive income
But, I know, life can sometimes be daunting, and you don’t even know where to begin to start building your business.
I know, I’ve been there myself… many times…
That’s why I put together the ESSENTIALS you need to have in place to attract clients and succeed online!
The essentials are listed by priority!
So here they go!
#1 Identify your niche
As a doctor, it can be difficult to determine your market niche and you might end up falling into “Functional Medicine” niche trap or try to help everyone…
To avoid that, you need to find your specific market — a market that resonates with your unique skillset and your zone of genius!
This is not an easy task, I know, it’s actually one of the hardest things in creating your online practice.
To help, I have a few questions you can answer to start narrowing down your niche:
1- Have you been through any specific health struggle? Did you find out what was going on?
Maybe you can help those that are going through the same…
2- Are you good at finding the root cause of anything specific? Are these root causes connected to anything specific?
Maybe you can target people with these specific conditions…
3- Looking back to your client list, who were your favorite clients? Which clients did you feel motivated/energized to meet with? Can you see a trend?
Maybe you can find more of those “amazing” clients by focusing on the same niche…
At the end you want to work with clients that motivate you!
TIP: To find your ideal client, look back at your own history.
TIP: Only work with clients that motivate you, because if you aren’t excited by the people you work with, you’re not going to last long in business. I know, I’ve seen that over and over and I’ve lived that myself… As weird as it might sound, you will start to self-sabotage so that you don’t have to work with those draining clients.
#2 Adequate website (aka not a typical “doctor” website)
I’ve never seen an online practitioner or any online business without a website BUT I have seen some not so great websites that will bore people to death after 10 seconds on the homepage…
Your website is your business image! So please, dedicate some love and attention to it!
It can either be a website you put together yourself on wix or squarespace or it can be professionally made (I do suggest the later).
So you, as a successful health professional want your website to be:
1- Clear looking
The fewer distractions the better!
2- Easily understandable
Short sentences that say exactly what you do and how you can help in a way that resonates with you and your audience (BUT make sure you aren’t boring them — you must say it how your client’s would say it themselves…)
3- Professional looking
You don’t want it to look like a kid put it together, do you?
#3 Social Media Presence
It doesn’t matter if you have 15 years of experience in the market or if you are starting out, you need to be on Social Media.
I understand that for more experienced practitioners, it can be more difficult to jump on the Social Media wagon, but it can be done (and you definitely should jump on it now).
Why?
Your Social Media presence can be more important than your website, because it’s the way bring people over to your website. In other words, a beautiful website does not matter if you don’t have an online presence to get people to your website.
Also, Social Media is often the first contact your clients have with you, and you know how much first impressions matter.
Social Media is crucial to attract clients and to make your biz thrive.
You don’t need to have 10K followers on instagram to start making “good” money!
Most of my clients have less than 1K followers and most of them are booked out (& now they are finding ways to make passive income…how beautiful is that?)
And me for example, I got my first client off of Instagram with less than 200 followers!
The key is to convert those LIKES into LEADS into CLIENTS!
To do so, all you need is:
1- Consistent posting
2- Use hashtags (the more the better [max 30])
3- Active interaction
4- Quality content
TIP: Don’t have time and energy to build your Social Media? Leave it to the pros. Schedule a 30-min introductory meeting.
#4 “Free thing” / Freebie / Opt-in
For me, a freebie is a piece of actionable information which will lead to sales, because when you give people actionable information for free, you trigger two psychological behaviors:
- First, they feel in debt to you, because you gave them something that changed their lives free of charge.
- Second, they will think: “If her freebie was this amazing, imagine how it’s to work one-on-one with her. I need that!” and they will get to trust you and your services.
Those psychological triggers will make the sales process so much easier, whether they realize it or not…
Besides starting the sales process, of course, the ultimate goal for your free thing is to get people’s emails.
But, why do you need their emails??
Because an email address is a direct connection where you have more control and time to sell.
But please, avoid conventional opt-ins. People are really tired of them (ahem…free recipe books)…
A few examples of good opt-ins are:
- Live trainings (FB live, webinar’s, etc)
- Recorded trainings
- Giveaways
- “Coupon” codes
- Ultimate Guides
- Deep Dive Case studies + action steps
- Quiz
- Top mistakes of “your target market” and what to do instead
- Short email course
TIP: Make sure to add the links to your all Social Media profiles on your opt-in.
TIP: If you don’t know what to do with your email list or still can’t see potential in it, don’t worry, collect as many emails as you can, then you can figure it out!
#5 Online Appointment Scheduling Software
I know people who work online and don’t use a scheduling software, but for me it’s a life saver!
It not only frees up so much mindspace, but also makes the process of scheduling and rescheduling super straight forward.
There are many options of online appointment schedulers out there. I first started with Calendly, but now I am using Acuity Scheduling.
Acuity is my favorite because it’s super visual and incredibly user friendly.
I also love the custom reminders by event type on Acuity — super handy when you have multiple types of events with different forms to be filled out by the client.
TIP: On the appointment scheduling software of your choice, I recommend setting up a 15-30-min FREE consultation meeting so that you can advertise it on Social Media as a freebie.
That’s it!
These are the five ESSENTIAL things that will get your online practice up and running!
Let us know in the comments if you want more tips about anything specific.
Your questions mean a lot to us! We love to answer them!
We will make sure to answer all your questions on a Facebook live or a post on Instagram, so stay tuned!
