17 Common Marketing Mistakes

Marketing is key to successfully finding clients and thriving as a holistic practitioner. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to how you market yourself - you must discover your own marketing recipe. There are, however, some common mistakes many practitioners make that sabotage their ability to attract clients – here are the common ones.

#1 Not Doing Any Marketing

You may be amazing at what you do, but if you don’t market yourself, you’ll be the best-kept secret. Clients won’t automatically discover you exist; you have to let them know you’re there and how you can help them.

Marketing is often seen as some sort of dark art, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Marketing is about connection and building relationships and can be done with integrity.

It’s important to market yourself in a way that fits with you and your values rather than trying to fit into someone else’s blueprint or formula. You get to decide on the activities that are ethical to you and that fit with your strengths. But you do need to be visible and let people know what you do if you want to thrive.

#2 Trying to Appeal to Everyone

We’ve all been there, trying to keep our options open and appeal to the widest audience possible. Yes, you can help all sorts of people with all sorts of issues but sadly, trying to market yourself as a generalist will make your marketing hard work. It will be hard for you to appeal to people as it won’t talk directly to them and their individual problems. People will struggle to identify with you specifically being able to help them and you’ll get lost amongst the noise.

If you’ve been trying to market yourself as a generalist and it’s not working, check out this blog on how to niche your holistic business.

#3 Not Asking Clients How They Found You

The best and simplest way to know what marketing is working is to ask clients how they discovered you. Make this a habit every time someone enquires about your services, and you’ll soon learn what marketing is working, and what’s not. Once you understand this, you can focus your time and resources on doing the marketing that’s actually attracting clients to your practice.

#4 Not Responding to Clients

Whether it’s not answering the phone, returning calls, or responding to emails or messages quickly, people won’t wait around for you. There are a lot of other practitioners out there, so you’re missing out if you don’t maintain good communication and response times.

#5 Not Following up on Enquiries

When someone enquires about your services, they’re interested in finding out how you can help them. You’re missing a trick if you don’t follow up on an enquiry to see if they need any more information. People are busy and often just need reminding you’re there to help.

#6 Missing or Bad Profile Photo

People buy people and your clients will want to see you before booking. A great profile photo will help prospective clients connect with you and trust that you are the right practitioner for them. Make sure your photo is current and represents you and your brand - don’t hide behind a logo. Then use it on your website, social media profiles and anywhere else you appear online.

#7 Holding Back on Your Personality

Being you is the best way you can differentiate yourself from every other practitioner out there. Not everyone will love you, but some will and they’re the people you want to work with.

I’m guilty of doing this – when I started out in business, I felt boring – my husband even nicknamed me Captain Sensible. As a marketer, I thought people would want someone who’s extroverted and entertaining. But this wasn’t me! Everything changed when I owned ‘Captain Sensible’ – my marketing got so much easier because I stopped second-guessing myself and the right clients started to find me.

#8 Having a Bad (or Broken) Website

A website isn’t a necessity for holistic practitioners, especially those just starting out or wanting to build a local business. Depending on your business and how you want to work, it will be useful to have a website if you want an online aspect of your business, like selling products.

A bad or broken website can be worse than not having one if you’re building an online audience. Having a simple and functional website is a great asset to your practice and will provide you with options for creating different income streams.

#9 Not Having a Marketing Plan

Most practitioners don’t need a full-blown business plan unless they want to get funding. A simple plan to provide direction and focus your marketing efforts is all you need. It’ll help you make good decisions, be consistent with your marketing activities and ultimately find clients.

#10 Doing the Wrong Marketing Activities

You could be busy marketing yourself but if you aren’t working on the right activities, they won’t help you find clients. Be strategic about the marketing you do and make sure you know why you’re doing every activity.

Different marketing activities will take different amounts of time to achieve results. You need a mixture of activities that are designed to find clients quickly and those that set up clients for the future.

#11 Not Focusing on Core Marketing Activities

I often hear practitioners comment that they’ve tried every type of marketing and nothing works. They jump around from one to another, trying lots of different things but nothing attracts clients to their practice, and they’re left overwhelmed and deflated.

Most marketing is a long- game and you’re better off picking a couple of core marketing activities that work to your strengths and available resources. Then focus on those to the best of your ability rather than trying to do everything and be everywhere. You will get better results and build an audience in one or two places that you need to maintain rather than spreading yourself too thin across different places.

#12 Not Being Consistent

As with anything, consistency is key to getting things to stick. It works with habits, exercise, diets, and treatment plans, and it also works with your marketing. If you do different marketing activities in an ad-hoc way, you’re not giving anything a chance to work. Marketing is a long-term game, and you need to give it a chance to work. Most activities especially online can take months or even years to start delivering results.

#13 Not Emailing Your List

Your email list is a huge asset to your business, are you sending out regular emails to yours? People don’t give away their email addresses easily and will only give you permission to contact them if they are interested in what you have to offer. If you’re not taking advantage of emailing your list regularly, you are wasting a huge opportunity.

#14 Paying for Advertising With no Strategy

Advertisers just want you to use their services and will try to convince you to pay on a promise it will bring clients to your door. Whilst advertising is a good way to market your practice, you need to be strategic about it. If not, it can be a very expensive lesson with no or few results.

#15 Not Being Active in Your Local Community

This is especially important if you’re running a local practice - you need to get known in your local area. The more you raise your local profile, the more you’re likely to be recommended for your services. Your local community and the relationships you build will help you to build a sustainable practice.

#16 Trying to do Everything Yourself

You’re one person and running a business requires you to wear lots of different hats. Trying to do everything yourself is a problem as you will soon run out of steam. Be selective over what you do, work to your strengths, and find help for the things you’re not good at or hate doing. It comes down to making sure you’re efficient with your time and energy – it’s often not worth trying to do something it will take a professional a fraction of the time to do with better results.

#17 Not Investing in Marketing

If you’re a medical herbalist, your clients come to you instead of going to the local health food shop because you’re an expert. If you’re an osteopath, they come to you rather than buying a shiatsu massage cushion because they’ll get much better and safer results. Why then would you try and do all your marketing instead of employing an expert to do it? You’re not a graphic designer; web designer or marketer so get professional help where you can as soon as you can afford it.

Marketing is key to helping you find clients and succeeding as a holistic practitioner. It takes time to develop your skills in this area and understanding the main mistakes practitioners make will help you to create a marketing recipe that works for you and your available resources.

If you struggle with your marketing, let’s have a chat about how I can help you.