Radial’s nine rules for graceful, customer-friendly wellness marketing:
1) Use your inside voice
You’re not selling used cars. Over-the-top screaming in-your-face promotions usually backfire.
Health and wellness are deeply personal. Whether it’s high cholesterol, a bad back or destructive stress, most people are seeking out help for a problem that they either already have or desperately want to avoid.
They’re not looking for a circus. They’re looking for help that relieves their nagging worry, gives them hope for a better future, and increases their sense of safety and security.
2) Talk to them
…not AT them. This means more open-ended questions, fewer statements. More listening to them, with follow-up questions and restatements, less talking about you and your stuff you want to sell them.
Think “conversation” rather than “conversion.”
3) Don’t lie to them
They’re not going to lose 30 pounds in 30 days without even trying.
4) Don’t spam them
Email only people who give you permission.
Don’t bombard them with relentless promotional emails. (Google “law of diminishing returns.”)
In fact, there are several things NOT to do (especially online), which I talk about here.
5) It’s not all about you
Is your marketing customer-focused? Does it connect to their problems, goals, challenges, experiences, and hopes?
Or is it all about your business, and what you want them to buy: your healthy living program, your nutritional products, your personal training packages, your class cards, your seminars?
6) Be of value
Simply being of service is not enough. Demonstrate your ability to make your potential clients’ lives better. Share resources, lessons learned, tips, advice, inspiration and anything else that would make your potential clients’ lives better.
7) Amaze them
Amazing people is easy and cheap. I stayed at a Best Western – very nice people, but if you forgot your toothpaste, they charged you. A week later I stayed at a Hampton. They gave me a long list of the amenities they’d be happy to provide FREE if I forgot anything.
You run a wellness center? How often do you walk customers to their cars with an umbrella when it’s raining?
You run a health club? When’s the last hot summer day you handed a free, icy bottle of water to everyone who walked in, even though you normally charge for it?
8) Move at their pace
Many of us make a fundamental mistake: we try to make potential clients do things on OUR timeline. We want the revenue NOW so we pester them with emails and phone calls – or we try to buy their business with “one-time only” (yeah, right) specials. We insist on talking about pricing – when they’re still a few steps back, wondering if we even really get their special concerns.
You might not close that health club membership sale with just one tour. That complimentary consultation may simply not have checked off all the boxes for your potential new weight loss client.
Be patient. Follow them. Don’t try to lead them.
9) Market to qualified leads – ONLY
One way to avoid annoying people is to market only to qualified prospects. That means they are ready to listen, WANT to listen, and ready to sign-up/purchase/buy. If they are qualified, they are already interested. Read about how to recognize qualified prospects.
