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Holistic Marketing

Holistic Marketing. Effective marketing of your herbal practice. Two Observations. We didn’t become herbalists in order to ‘get rich’. Marketing is NOT the same as promotion. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan. Research the market (Global and Local) Segment it Check out the competition

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Holistic Marketing

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  1. Holistic Marketing Effective marketing of your herbal practice

  2. Two Observations • We didn’t become herbalists in order to ‘get rich’. • Marketing is NOT the same as promotion.

  3. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  4. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  5. Research the Global Market • The herbal medicine industry is growing fast due to: • aging population • increased health awareness • preventive healthcare trends • concern over allopathic medicines • growing demand for dietary supplements • rise in multi herb formulae

  6. HM is Buoyant 2017 global HM industry set to exceed $105 billion. Holland and Barrett turnover set to reach £1 billion by 2020. In 2014 NYO turnover was edging towards £30 million

  7. Global Market conclusions Makers and retailers of supplements and natural products are growing fast. There’s a growing demand for herbal medicine. Shouldn’t we all feel positive, buoyant and be rushed off our feet?

  8. Research the Local Market Look at what else is on offer in your area – not just herbalists. Look at their websites, their charges and their social media accounts.

  9. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  10. Segment the Market • Segments must be useful. Firstly look at what you do or plan to do: • Herbal consultations • Teaching, workshops and demonstrations • Making and selling products

  11. Segment the Market (2) • Now think about your customer types: • Eg for herbal consultations; • elderly, retired • young mums • business/working people • natural/eco/local products seekers

  12. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  13. Check out the Competition • List the different practitioners you find. • Are they directly competing for the same patients? • Create a price comparison table. • How busy do they seem? • Other notes about their ‘offering’. • What makes them different?

  14. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  15. Work out your Offering During the course of your market research you will have found out what makes your practice unique. Now decide what you are going to offer and to whom. Think about what each segment wants and who you will aim at.

  16. Work out your Offering (2) Try to get inside the heads of each of your customer groups. What do they want when they are looking for natural healthcare? Try to find common threads as well as points of difference.

  17. What They Want: Elders • You to be trustworthy, knowledgeable, confident, approachable • Knowledge of and ability to work alongside allopathic medicine • Easy access to your clinic • Time to be heard • Daytime appointments

  18. What They Want: Young Mums • You to be trustworthy, knowledgeable, confident, approachable • Knowledge of pregnancy and paediatric issues • You to be comfortable with small children/babies • Easy access to your clinic • Daytime appointments

  19. What They Want: Business People • You to be trustworthy, knowledgeable, confident, approachable • Efficient communication (email & phone) • Evening and weekend appointments • Up front approach in terms of likely cost and time it will take • Professional clinic space and attitude - not too openly ‘alternative’

  20. What They Want: Eco-folk • You to be trustworthy, knowledgeable, confident, approachable • Use of local/sustainable/foraged herbs • Chance to learn to play an active part in their own treatment • Energetic and spiritual aspects of herbs • Recycled packaging, environmental awareness within practice

  21. What They Want: Conclusions Decide what you are going to offer and to whom. Eg if you are working from home and need to fit appointments around the school run you might choose to focus on one to one consultations to elders, young mums and ‘eco folk’ rather than business people.

  22. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  23. Pricing: What the Market will Bear Make a list of prices in your local area/sector. Rank them from low to high and consider how your offering compares. Where do you fit into this? If your offering is ‘more’ then your price should be higher. If ‘less’ it should be lower.

  24. Pricing: Break Even Analysis What are your fixed costs? Rent, rates, electricity, insurance, membership, CPD, a fixed wage. What are your variable costs? How much time is involved in each patient consultation? How much margin is there (if any) when you sell herbal medicines?

  25. Pricing: Break Even Analysis (2) Work out how many consultations you need to do per month to break even. See how this number changes if you change the price per consultation. Now decide on your prices.

  26. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  27. Communicate Your Offering • Thinks about the wants of the people you are aiming at. • Trustworthy, knowledgeable, confident, approachable - they need to ‘meet’ you. • Give talks • About ‘me’ on website • Proper social media profile picture • Photos of you on website • Testamonials

  28. Communicate Your Offering (2) • Willing to work alongside allopathics: • Say this in talks, on website & social media • Availability: • Say if you offer ‘out of hours’ or ‘daytime’ appointments. • Remember very ready availability at short notice can be perceived negatively

  29. Communicate Your Offering (3) Make sure you sell on benefits rather than features: ‘I use locally sourced/ grown/foraged herbs’ OR ‘I use locally grown and wild crafted herbs so you can be sure that your herbal medicine is sustainable, locally sourced and prepared with integrity’

  30. Communicate Your Offering (4) ‘I offer evening and weekend appointments’ OR ‘I offer evening and weekend appointments so that you don’t have to take time off work unnecessarily’

  31. Communicate Your Offering (5) Reach your target groups: Talks (WIs, gardening clubs, mother & baby groups, rotary clubs, U3A) Foraging walks, short courses & demos Social media, blog, newsletter Press releases Not advertising! Word of mouth is best.

  32. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  33. Objectives & Measures Set objectives: I’m running a course on treating colds and flu for £50/head . I want to get 12 people to sign up. OR I want to get to a stage where I’m consistently seeing 10 patients a week.

  34. Objectives & Measures (2) Monitor how effective your communications are: Where have your bookings and enquiries come from? What subjects do people most respond to on Social Media? If they are through word of mouth, what sort of patients are your most powerful advocates?

  35. Seven Steps to a Marketing Plan • Research the market (Global and Local) • Segment it • Check out the competition • Work out your offering • Get your pricing right • Communicate with your customers • Set objectives and measure your progress

  36. Conclusions To thrive as herbal practitioners we need to feel confident in our abilities to work with herbs, people and the business/marketplace.

  37. Conclusions For our herbal medicine sector to thrive we need to be economically viable and fulfilled as individual practitioners.

  38. Conclusions We are in a very buoyant sector. With a good marketing plan we can grow our practices with confidence and help more patients experience the benefits of professional herbal medicine.

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