Do you struggle with attracting your ideal clients and generating more leads? Well, I hear you. Without an effective marketing strategy, it can be hard to attract the right audiences that’ll be interested in paying for your services. In this post, we're going to find out what came first: is it the “fully-booked” ergonomics business or the fancy website? This is something that I’m really passionate about. I love helping Ergonomics Professionals put into place marketing strategies because oftentimes, there's a low supply of ergonomists in many cities and many people need our services. So if you’re having difficulty figuring out exactly how to attract those people you love working with, this is the blog post for you. 

Marketing Ergonomics: Does Building Your Website Guarantee Quality Leads?

In this post, I really want to put you in a different direction in terms of how we think about marketing, and content, and reaching to our ideal clients. Read on to find out what you exactly need to get started, how to build up the marketing foundation to your business, and how to get traction on this. By the end of this article, you'll learn how to leverage the various outlets that are available to us that will help convert our prospects into long-term clients.

Marketing Your Services 

There's a few things that I want to plant the seeds with. First of all, how does your audience find out that the type of services you offer exist? Maybe they've heard of you and they want to know what your expertise is in, or what kind of services you offer. Does that need to happen through a fancy website or are there other methods that you can share your message? That's essentially what marketing is. It’s a way for us to share our message so we can attract people that we really want to work with. Marketing is vital to our business success, and I want you to view it like a machine. Content is the fuel that drives the engine forward. It's like going to the gas station, you pump up your marketing machine with content. And that allows us to go forward on any platform, whether it's a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, forums, or emails. The machine and the content should work together in order to optimize your marketing strategy.

In this post, I want to show you that our websites are not the be-all and end-all that we think it is. But how does your website fit into the bigger picture of how you attract clients, build that relationship, and then sell them services? Most of the time, you don't need to solely depend on a fancy website for you to be successful. Of course it is essential, but your business needs more than just a website. My point is that you don't have to put everything on hold while your website is being developed. If you do that, you’re going to miss an opportunity to serve your clients. And I want to share briefly about one of the programs that I'm so passionate about, it's called Accelerate. This program is where I show, specifically Ergonomics Consultants, how to develop a marketing plan. This allows them to spend less time and effort developing the content of their plan, and more time executing it. 

Now I want to ask you this question, what's the most important thing to you: is it perfecting your website or making an impact with your clients? In this post, I’m going to talk about options. There are 3 things that I'm going to cover below to give you some clarity on how to move forward with your marketing strategy. Firstly, I’m going to discuss the purpose of a website. Secondly, I’m going to share if you can achieve the same thing from another platform or another method. And lastly, I’m going to talk about clients' value.

Attract Clients Via Your Website 

In order for your ideal clients to find you, I encourage that you map out your customer journey. You can use whatever outlet that you like, it could be a LinkedIn post, or a Facebook post. Perhaps a networking event, word-of-mouth, or maybe it's an affinity business.  And if you don't know what an affinity business is, it's other businesses that you form a relationship with that can serve your ideal customers. Maybe you're going to form a relationship with a chair manufacturer in your area. Because once an ideal client gets a chair, they would want to know how to adjust it. So that’s how the affinity business works. Perhaps it could also be all of these things together, and they just keep on seeing you pop up in their worlds. 

After they find out about you, think about their next steps.  How will they learn more about your services? How do they book you? In order to do this, you have to come up with a direct call to action. The best way to introduce your ideal clients into your world and encourage action is through a landing page and a thank you page. These two are all you technically need to get started with a website. I know it’s something that's very counterintuitive, but at the end of the day, that's really all you need in a website. A landing page is where you exchange something of value in exchange for their email address. They can turn those website visitors into leads that’ll end up paying for your services. That's really one of the first things that I recommend for my members when they start building a website. And the magic happens with an email address, because it gives you that ability to develop the relationship. People buy from people who they know, like, and trust. Remember that it can take anywhere between 7 and 13 touches to turn a prospect into a client. If we miss the opportunity for that value exchange, we can lose the attention of our ideal clients. What you basically want to do with that email sequence is to nurture that relationship and deliver your elevator pitch. With the sequence, you can continue to provide value by sharing literature facts and cool graphics with them. And then, you can eventually make them an offer for your services. 

I want you to build your own machine because that's where the value is. This is why the Accelerate program that I offer is so cool because I give you the timesaving information and teach you how to set this up, so you can focus on executing. The specific features that I want to talk about here is that I give monthly new infographics and monthly content via curated literature reviews. You can white label them with your logo and share with your subscribers, or you can share it on your platforms, or talk about it in networking events. This will help you build your system, so you can be known as the go-to expert in your town, city, community for ergonomics. 

Using Another Method

Let's talk about another method that I want you to consider. Can you achieve the same thing via another method? The short answer is yes. The long answer is that it takes time to feel out what you love doing and how the market responds. And honestly, it’ll be a combination of leveraging social media, having a barebones website (a landing page and a thank you page), an email list, and networking in your community. Having that type of combination is going to be so useful, and that’s how I’ve gotten many of my clients.

Reputation, in many ways, is greater than a website. Many of my students in the program have received clients for their ergonomics businesses in many ways, much of it has to do with reputation. We want to have that long-term relationship so we can mediate fires as they come up, address risk before they turn into fires, and look at other aspects operationally to make our clients more profitable. There are many ways to get into your ideal client’s world, it could be through LinkedIn messages, Facebook messages, direct email, or referral programs. There are endless ways to attract your ideal clients, however, it all boils down to what your system is. There needs to be a machine that can support you with your marketing efforts, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new post. As professionals, we make more of our revenue in providing our services, executing the marketing, and building relationships rather than building the content for our marketing world. Although this method takes effort and time, you’ll certainly see success in the long run if you keep it up.

Provide Value

Lastly, and this is just kind of a controversial thing to end this article, is that our clients want someone who knows what they're doing and won't screw them over. People do business with people, and it's incredibly important to get people into your email so you can talk to them directly. And the easiest way to get people on your email list is through the power of a website, specifically a landing page and a thank you page. We need to be delivering regular content to our list to show that we are known, liked, and trusted to help solve our clients’ challenges. 

We're less like a flavor-of-the-month type of resource for our clients, and more like an accountant or bookkeeper. Hence, we need to be giving our clients quarterly or yearly checkups, help them to put out fires, offer value, and deal with small challenges before they turn into massive problems. There’s so much value that we can provide to our clients. The only challenge for many Ergonomics Professionals is letting their communities know that they exist. 

What’s Next?

If you’re interested to know how other healthcare professionals are adding ergonomic expertise to their services, consider joining my training. In late March 2021, I'm going to be opening my marketing program, Accelerate, for enrollment. This program only opens 4 times a year. If you’re interested in working with me for you to build a system so you can focus on executing your marketing plan, subscribe to my podcast. I'm going to share more details about how we can work together and what this whole system is as we get you closer to the date.