| To become a successful health professional takes a | | | | learning all you can about your subject and start |
| great deal of hard work and effort. However the | | | | offering your services to local soccer clubs - after all |
| one major step you can make to take away some | | | | you have to start somewhere. |
| of this hard work is to choose a specific area of | | | | Perhaps you could offer reduced fees for soccer |
| interest to work in. | | | | players, or guarantee the players they will get to see |
| Rather than focus on trying to serve everyone, be | | | | you within 24 hours of injuring themselves. As your |
| choosy! Focus on who you really enjoy working with. | | | | expertise and reputation grows, so will your practice. |
| This may be sportspeople, office workers, or | | | | If you have a few ideas of a target market floating |
| pregnant women. | | | | around your head, take some time to work out |
| The object of this exercise is twofold: firstly, by | | | | which group of people you really would enjoy |
| working with patients that you enjoy treating, you | | | | working with. Which group would you be proud to |
| will have a better attitude to work and your practice. | | | | serve? After all this is as much about fulfilling your |
| Secondly, it is much easier to become known as an | | | | life's purpose as it is about building your health |
| expert in a smaller field, and becoming an expert is | | | | practice - the business boost is simply an added |
| one of the best things you can do to build your | | | | bonus. |
| practice. It gives you much greater respect and also | | | | The main advantage of having a target market made |
| allows you to really focus your efforts on working | | | | up of people that you are drawn to work with is |
| with a particular target market. | | | | pure enjoyment from your day to day work. I have |
| To give you an example, by choosing to work with | | | | worked with too many clients who, as health |
| teenage dancers, a client of mine was quickly able to | | | | professionals, are not engaged in their daily work. |
| establish herself as an expert in her chosen field. She | | | | More often than not, when we delve deeper, we |
| studied the injuries that dancers get, she studied the | | | | find that often they are not enjoying the type of |
| type of problems that active teenagers are likely to | | | | patient/ client that they are working with. By |
| suffer from. She also worked on marketing herself as | | | | choosing a target market that is attractive to you, |
| an "expert" in treating young dancers and as a result | | | | not only will you enjoy each and every working day, |
| her practice grew and grew. | | | | but you will possibly also prolong your career. |
| The basic idea here is to try and identify the type of | | | | For now, start sketching out some ideas for your |
| people you choose to be in service of. For instance, | | | | target market and reduce the list to a couple of |
| if you have always dreamed of working with | | | | choices. Take some time to think about each option, |
| professional soccer players and feel thrilled at the | | | | decide which one area stands out for the above |
| thought of treating them day in day out, then | | | | reasons and then start to become the "go-to" |
| choose this as your target market. Then start | | | | person for your chosen audience. |