CLINIC WITHIN A CLINIC

Lisa Kelly explains why owning your niche is the way forward, as patients move away from fleeting trends in favour of a specialised, 360-degree approach

As a clinic owner, your natural impulse is to conclude that the more treatments you offer, the wider the appeal and therefore the better chance of success. However, now we are seeing more clinics taking a “less is more” approach.

One way to differentiate your clinic is by adopting a specialisation approach. We call this the “clinic within the clinic”. Clients are now searching for healthcare specialists who really understand their concerns, rather than the latest buzz tech they saw on TikTok or Instagram. This is a multidisciplinary wellness approach that incorporates lifestyle changes, different treatments and medication, starting with a 360-degree consultation that produces a plan.

THOUGHT LEADER

Being a big fish in a ‘niche’ pond means you can develop a reputation as a thought leader more easily than you can by offering a wider range of services that are already available in the local community. While more difficult to achieve, it will gather momentum, and you could contribute to local media and do guest speaking on relevant podcasts.

EXTENDED AUDIENCE

Developing a set of specialist clinics enables you to break out of the confines of your local areas and extend your marketing reach, appealing to a group of potential clients willing to travel to get the right treatment. Particularly if you have been able to cultivate a positive reputation.

GREATER REFERRALS

Patients tend to attract one another through general social interaction and social media. When one individual receives successful treatment and feels they have been seen and understood, they tend to communicate their experience to their “tribe”, and your word-of-mouth referral marketing will grow exponentially. This approach can also foster “loop-partnerships” where GPs, gynaecologists, dietitians and aesthetic professionals work together in a wellness partnership, referring clients to each other as required.

ENDURING RELATIONSHIPS

Taking this approach means moving away from a transactional relationship with your client and designing custom, whole-life care plans. Taking a long-term partnership-based approach attracts a loyal, recurring client base in what is a growing market. This leads to better care and represents a recurring revenue stream for your clinic.

INCREASED PATIENT SPEND

Designing customised treatment plans provides a natural way to bundle services. Treatment plans are built around the patient’s wellness and treatment evolution -ranging from initial consultation, addressing immediate concerns, to ongoing maintenance requirements, and can require the use of different treatments at different times as the client progresses through their journey.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE

Specialisation is a very efficient way to focus investment of time and money into a narrower set of priorities. This means you can get better returns on your investments in technology and equipment because the “use times” are extended. Better value out of your staff training investments and reduced cost by bulk buying your consumables.

EFFECTIVE MARKETING

Developing key opinion leader status means that your marketing channels become more productive, appealing to special interests and are more likely to attract the attention of the social media algorithms. Even if you do not become one of them, getting noticed by the algorithms will direct more followers to your website.

CONCLUSION

The importance of your website in this strategy can’t be understated. As many as 95% of your referrals will check out your clinic online via your website before making contact. Ensuring that each of your specialised clinics is given its own real estate on your website with the appropriate search terms embedded is critical. Starting and maintaining a blog will be core to your awareness strategy. It takes time to establish a reputation, but when you have achieved this, it will attract the attention of the increasingly important AI summary search results and spawn backlinks, from other websites leading back to yours, adding to your site’s provenance, raising your ranking status and driving traffic.

Being recognised as the specialist in each area is more rewarding financially and professionally than being the jack of all trades.

LISA KELLY

Lisa Kelly is the founder of Websites for Clinics by Salon Solutions, industry experts helping aesthetic clinics, doctors, dentists and nurses attract new clients and generate new bookings to grow their clinic business.