Find Your Market Niche

Whether your practice is located in an urban setting, a suburb or a rural community, you are likely to have competition. Your competitors may be solo practitioners, groups, physician-owned or hospital-based. You may have many competitors or few.

Finding your market niche is of critical importance to the success of any marketing effort. In addition to knowing who your competitors are, you should also be aware of how they market themselves and what their reputations are in the community. What services are they promoting? What are others saying about them?

By finding your own niche, you can often eliminate competitors. If, for example, there are 12 competing practices in your area and only two treat balance problems or vestibular disorders – services your practice is particularly adept at – you can effectively eliminate the other 10 competitors and compete against two by heavily marketing your balance training and vestibular rehab program. Follow these three steps to find your niche:

1. Look Around
Look at competitors. Are they actively marketing? What are they saying about themselves? What services are they promoting? Do they have special qualifications for treating sports injuries, work injuries or balance problems? What are your patients telling you about them?

2. Look Inside
Look at your own practice. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What services do you offer? Are you the only hands-on manual therapy practice? Are you the only orthodontist in the area offering a new technology? What special qualifications do you have? What are you known for in the community? Where do you get your best results? What do your patients say about your care?

3. Choose Your Niche
Based on everything you learn about your place or position in your market, you can choose a niche that suits your strengths and exploits your competitors’ weaknesses. Think about what really makes your practice different – and better than – the others. What can you offer patients that the others cannot?

Practice Builders helps healthcare practitioners define their market niches and successfully market their practices every day. Ask us how we can help you today. www.PracticeBuilders.com