Becoming Iconic in Your Community and Growing Relationships with Other Local Businesses
In 2021, Jay Baer , the author of best-selling book Talk Triggers joined our Book Club to share the key lessons from his book and share how they can be applied to private practice hearing care.
The conversation shared all the ways that clinics can build a powerful word-of-mouth strategy to have patients excited to talk about them behind their back. It’s a great interview, and book – highly worth checking out.
But one of the things that Jay mentioned during that interview has stuck with me.
?He effortlessly and casually said:
“Advertising is a tax paid by unremarkable clinics”
Ooft!
Doesn’t that hit hard??
It’s so true.?
Often the businesses that have to advertise the hardest are the ones that are the most unremarkable and have no organic reason why somebody would find them and choose them.
Think about the clinics that advertise the hardest in your local area, and you may come to the same conclusion.
The question is, how do you become remarkable?
Well, if you reflect on the small businesses in your community, there is likely a handful of them that have a remarkable reputation.?
They almost stand out as landmarks.?
If you can have your business become a similar “landmark” that is known by everybody, talked about behind your back, and the natural name that is on the tip of everybody’s tongue when the topic of hearing loss comes up in conversation, then you’re going to establish something incredibly powerful.
But that’s easier said than done.
Truth is, there are ONLY 3 ways to have your business become rooted in your community.
1.??? TIME – you’re open for so long that you become well known as a bi-product of just “always being there.”
2.??? ADVERTISE – you spend so much on advertising through radio, television, and newspaper that your name becomes known and recognized.
3.??? RELATIONSHIPS – you become well connected and build a local network of people that know, like, and trust you.?
Time is something that is going to happen organically, and unless you fancy throwing tens of thousands of dollars at radio, television, and newspaper with no short-term expectation for a return, then that should be ruled out also.
But establishing relationships throughout your community is a strategy that you should be driving in 2024 and beyond.?
The benefits of this include:?
Your Plan for Building Relationships ?with Local Businesses?
Do you want to know the secret to having people like you?
Come close, I’ll have to whisper.
Closer.
*soft voice*
Say nice things about them
It’s that simple.
?The way that you start to build relationships with local businesses is by saying nice things about them, publicly.
Let me share two examples with you of private practices that have done a wonderful job with this.
#1 – South Shore Hearing Center Monthly Spotlight
?South Shore Hearing Center’s ‘Tip of Arrow’ is focused on how they’re trustworthy, caring, and compassionate for their local community.
That’s why they have a monthly feature where they spotlight a local business in the community and write an article about them that sits on their website, is shared on socials, and is featured in their monthly email newsletter.
Every month, they focus on an entirely new business. Best of all, this has become a fun exercise that all the team gets involved in.
Everybody in the team has been tasked with choosing one local business and completing a questionnaire to document what they love about the business, their top tips, and advice. It results in a process where a new business is being featured every month.
The business being featured is the contacted and tagged on social media, often resulting in them then sharing the article with their customers.?
It’s growing local reputation, aligning them to fellow local businesses, and growing relationships with other local businesses.
#2 - Aim Hearing & Audiology Services ‘Month of Love’
Another great example comes from Aim Hearing & Audiology Services based in North Carolina. In February, they ordered 50 large boxes of cookies and had custom thank you cards printed. They then visited 44 local business to gift them a box of cookies and share how they appreciate all they do within the community, documenting every visit.
It resulted in them creating a large in-depth article that spotlighted every business as well as a short write-up on each one (including the reason they were chosen).
It also resulted in a video being created as well as all the photos being used on their main homepage to further prove they are who they say they are as part of their ‘Tip of Arrow.’
It resulted in their website receiving the largest amount of traffic during February that it has ever seen, them receiving a large number of thank you cards in exchange, and them growing their reputation throughout the community.?
The full effect of that work will not be felt for a long-time, but they will be the hearing experts on the tip of the tongue of hundreds of people in the community as a result of the investment of effort that they made.?
How You Can Spotlight Local Businesses
Unless you feel heavily motivated to buy cookies and visit lots of local businesses – the most popular approach for our Inner Circle members has been the first option of spotlighting singular local businesses.
#1 - Choose a Local Business to Spotlight
You have full freedom to choose who you spotlight, but I encourage you to make one consideration. Knowing the purpose of this is to build relationships with potential referral partners, I would encourage you to think of a business that shares similar clientele to you. Who also caters for people that are similar to your patients?
Could it be a spa, a gym, a health center, or even a vet?
As long as you are also a customer and can genuinely recommend them, then these would be the type of businesses that I would focus on spotlighting.
Who knows, you may even need to take an expensed trip to their facility (especially if a spa) to help you with this article.
#2 - Developing Your Spotlight Article
Now that you know who you’re featuring, my encouragement would be to answer the following questions to craft the content for your article:?
This structure should give you the bones of your article that will need a little love/formatting to craft your article. Once again, this can be written by somebody in your team, or you can hire a freelancer writer from UpWork.com
#3 – Upload to Your Site and Share
Once you have the article completed, then share it with your marketing team and have it uploaded to your website.
Once it has been uploaded, you can then share it.
There are two steps. First, share it on social media.
Note that it links through to the article, it features the top-line reasons why they’re recommended, and it tags them directly (important).
Secondly, reach out to the business featured.
Contact them and share that you’ve spotlighted them through your website to recommend them to your patients/followers, and link them to the article.
With all of us often scratching our heads wondering what to post on social media, it will likely be music to their ears, and they’ll share it with their customers/followers.
#4 -?Rinse & Repeat
Once you have done this once, then consider how this can be built into a repeatable process. Could you task different members of your team to come up with a business to spotlight and write their own article? Would they even get a kick out of having their opinion featured through your website? ?