The Real Secret to Inspiring Word of Mouth For Your Practice

All hail, word of mouth! The holy grail of all small businesses, and the number one marketing tactic of every naturopathic doctor. And with good reason: when you have happy, satisfied, and deeply loyal patients who can’t stop talking about you, your practice grows exponentially.

By far, the most common way your prospective patients learn about your practice is through word of mouth – friend to friend, mom to daughter, husband to wife. As consumers, we rely on our network of trusted friends and family to make decisions about where to go, what to do and what to buy. Ninety-two percent of consumers trust referrals from people they know, and 77 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when they learn about it from friends or family. According to Jonah Berger, Wharton marketing professor and author of Contagious, word-of-mouth is 10 times as effective as traditional advertising.

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know word-of-mouth isn’t simple to generate. Why? Because your existing patients need to have a relevant (and often life-changing) experience with you before they’ll put their social credibility on the line for you. The fact is, they need a fantastic experience before they’ll say a thing. We don’t talk about mediocre or okay experiences to our friends and family, we share amazing, life changing and the wonderfully unexpected.

For that to happen, your brand needs to be felt and experienced. From the core of your brand, outward. And this is called your brand essence.

BRANDING is all about defining, promising and delivering a unique experience consistently.

The simple truth about branding is that it’s not your logo, or a slogan, or even your products and services. It’s all those things, and more!. Your brand is something much deeper, more ethereal, almost intangible. Almost.

If your brand vision, mission and values comprise the soul of your business, then your brand essence is the beating heart of your unique naturopathic practice brand. Practically speaking, your brand essence is the perfect starting point for your brand development. It’s the essential foundation to create all the other components of your brand, like your logo, tagline, look, feel, tone and ultimately, your brand strategy.

Why? Because your brand essence represents the fundamental nature or quality of your unique brand. It’s ingrained in the DNA of your business, and qualifies the essential value your brand brings to all the people who come in contact with you - from your patients and employees, to your suppliers and partners. It is a feeling; it’s how your patients and your prospective patients feel and think about you whenever they come in contact with your business, your customer service, your products and your services. It’s how your business shows up in the world of your patients, and your competitors. It’s what you build your business upon, those front-facing truths come from the heart of your business. Your brand essence is your North Star. Your guiding light in an ocean of me-too’s and not-quite’s.

Branding is more about what you don't say.

Your brand is all about the intangibles – the things you can’t touch, taste or see – it’s the thoughts and feelings that surround your brand that are important. What you make people feel is as important as what you do!

Every day, millions of people make decisions about what to buy or which company or business to invest their time and money in, based on how they FEEL about the company. It’s not logical – it’s not even rational (although they will tell you why they do it!), often its just about an alignment with what they WANT to feel. When your prospective patient doesn’t perceive the intangibles, when they don’t have a feeling or connection to your brand, then you’re just a commodity – a same-old-same-old that won’t resonate at a deeper level.

I’m pretty sure at this point, everyone understands the importance of branding to help you differentiate your naturopathic business in a sea of wannabes, me-too’s, not-quite’s and legitimate competitors. But for many NDs, brand – as a concept – is a strange, nebulous spectre that seems to lurk at the periphery of your business consciousness. You know it’s necessary, and you may even believe in it’s ability to create loyalty and patient advocates who can’t say enough about you. But then, you can’t say exactly how the process of brand development works, or how to actually create a brand that inspires and builds lasting relationships. Somehow, it all seems too complicated, out of reach or just plain confusing. And you’d be right. Mostly.

Every strong brand stands for something. One differentiating attribute. We call this the Brand Essence.

Spend any kind of time investigating a sample of the how-tos and brand development articles or books available today, and you’ll find a cadre of theories, processes and methods by hundreds of experts. There is no shortage of ideas on how to develop your brand. And that’s the challenge. Everyone and their agency has their trademark(ed) idea about how to capture the illusive qualities of ‘brand’ and tame it to our purpose – creating a unique experience, customer loyalty, and market differentiation. Much of the mystique (and intimidation) seems to stem from the fact that there are no clear, universally accepted steps for brand development. Consequently, you, as a small business owner, are forced to put your brand into the hands of relative strangers – who may or may not have the know-how and expertise to uncover your unique brand, for your unique industry.

So, where do you start?

My advice, begin with the heart of your business. Your brand essence.

A strong brand is critical to your business strategy. If you want your patients to be clear about what your brand stands for (and articulate it to their family and friends), you need to be clear about it first. And that starts with your brand essence.

The brand essence describes who you are and what you do. It is not a slogan for your advertising. It’s the IDEA that drives all your key messages and communications. It’s your foundation, it’s your truth, it’s your power. Your brand’s essence connects emotionally with your customers. And that means removing yourself from the equation and focusing solely on your customers. Few brands get it right. Why? Because the essence is intangible. It’s felt. Not just seen. It’s embraced. Not just heard. It’s alive. Not just lived.

Usually stated in two to three words, your brand’s essence is the one constant upon which you can rely. It’s rare that your brand essence and slogan or tagline will be the same. Take Nike – a master class in brand building – their essence exists as ‘Authentic Athletic Performance.” The feeling-based statement translates irrefutable to their timeless slogan: ‘‘Just do it!’’ It’s contextual, specific to their market position and the customers they serve. They understand what their customers want from their brand, need from the experience of their products. Lacing up a new pair of Nike feels inspiring. It’s a new beginning, where anything, and everything, is possible in my quest for my authentic athletic performance. It’s about me. Not Nike. It’s about what I want to achieve, live, experience and evolve to as a weekend warrior, part-time marathoner, or just a regular gal who likes to hike my neighborhood.

The most memorable, loyalty-inspiring and profitable brands have a well-defined, easily grasped, and simply obvious brand essence.

To get your brand essence right, you have to know what your Ideal Patients really want. What they want to experience in the context of what you do. You have to understand what they value about you, and the experience they hope you’ll create for them to meet their goals. You have to walk a mile in their shoes. Hear what they say, and experience their truth about your brand. Only then will it become your truth. Your foundation. Your power.

To create a brand essence that helps you generate word of mouth, it has to be:

Uniquely yours

How are you different? Really. If you don’t know, you need to find out. And the only way to do that, is to identify what is valuable to your patients about what you do. The truth is, every naturopathic doctor has the same training, the same tool box of clinical expertise, and the same scope of practice. And yet, you bring something no one else in your profession can. What is it and why is it valuable? You need to know this, and then own it.

About 10 years ago, every naturopathic website out there had some variation on the rocks-bamboo-flowing water-cool green-theme about it. It said something about those business who took a natural approach to medicine. It carried with it a feeling of ‘gentle, natural, protected.’ It elicited a feeling that was born of mother nature and non-invasive cure. It was medicine that was safe, warm and clean.

Today, that feeling and those images are everywhere! They’ve been co-opted by everyone from nutritionist to days spas and consumer packaged goods. It’s not unique anymore. It doesn’t even have a feeling about it anymore. It’s become a clique. And it can never be owned by you – ever again.

Clearly understanding your value means going deeper, digging into the specifics of what you provide your patients that meets their needs, desires and aspirations. And then translating that into a feeling that can be evoked by the words, pictures, tone, products, services, and customer service you offer up.

That means you have to know your Ideal Patients. Inside and out. 

Rooted in real feelings

Your Ideal Patients’ choices for which brands they buy, love, and talk about are driven more by emotion than necessity or common sense. It’s far more heart, than mind, so it makes sense that your brand strategy must be designed to to elicit a specific emotion. One that is crystal clear, and deeply authentic to why you became an ND in the first place. But again, this is more than just your story. This is about your patients. You need to articulate your brand essence in relation to the experience they need to have in relation to your mission. Your purpose for being. If you want your patients to leave every encounter with you – with your brand – feeling deeply empowered by the experience, that can change lives. Right? Your job is to qualify that feeling of empowerment in the context of what they want to feel empowered to do. 

Clear and focused

A couple of words, three max. More than that, and you risk losing your focus and your power. Your brand is meant to deliver a unique experience – by design. When you start extrapolating and qualify the experience, you lose your focus.

First-hand experience

Harley-Davidson built an empire of seething steel and black leather on the backsides and shoulders of die-hard riders who want to embody a ‘rebellious independence.” This ‘outlander’ brand tapped into the heart of their brand by making real the feelings of their riders. Even if you’ve never ridden a Harley, you see one – you see their advertising – you know what it represents – outlaw, bad boy, a little bit dangerous, unconventional, outlier, sleek, heavy, growling, black-metal-motorcycle-heaven. Because they tell you. They show you. Every time you come in contact with them. Even if it’s just your suburban neighbor on the back of that bike on the weekend, somehow your image of her changes the minute she swings her leg over that seat. She might soccer-mom it all week with the mini-van and 2.5 kids, but the minute she puts on those leathers and kicks that soft-tail into life, she’s an outlaw.

The truth is, you’re no more independent on a Harley-Davidson than any other motorcycle. But somehow you feel like it. It’s connected to SAMCRO, Hunter S., counter-culture, the 70s, and rebels without a cause. It’s the open road, man. Harley-Davidson owns independence. No other motorcycle can compete with that. So, they own every customer who craves, needs, and desires that sense of freedom and no-holds-bar.

Your brand needs to aspire to this example. Take a page out of the Harley playbook, and tap into the feeling you want and need your patients to have every single time they come in contact with you. If you don’t know, ask them. They’ll tell you.

Meaningful to your patients

It all comes back to your patients. Always. Serve them, and you’ll serve your business. It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense.

There’s no point in embodying an essence that doesn’t matter to your ideal patients. They won’t gravitate to it because they’ll sense that’s not about them, but about you. Brands fail when they neglect this simple axiom: know thy customers.

As business owners, we get caught up in our own heads. We forget that we’re in business to serve. If you don’t know what’s important and meaningful to your patients, you need to figure that out and fast. And you need to be unbiased in your pursuit. Put on your doctor’s hat when you do this – seek the truth, not the verification of your own biased notion. Your skills as a scientist are crucial here. And you can leverage that thinking in pursuit of your patients needs and desires. If you’re really committed to meeting your patients where they are, you’ll carry that tenet into creating the foundation of your brand.

Consistently delivered

When you nail down your brand essence, you job is to ensure that it’s represented in every single thing your brand does. Not just represented, but actually embedded into your website, your messages, your content, your look & feel, your tone of voice. Every piece of collateral, every word, every program, every promotion and service must have your brand essence stamped into the fabric. 

If can’t figure out how to weave your brand essence into the fabric of your brand collateral, marketing, customer service and operations, they you've got the brand essence.

True, bold and genuine

Playing it safe never got anyone anywhere. And that’s especially true when you’re trying to create a brilliant brand your patients love. Don’t fall in to the clique trap or try to fit into what you think people want to see from you. Customers are like dogs, they smell a fake a mile away.

Go with your instincts and your training, find out what your patients really want to see from you and then serve it up from your heart.

That’s the true secret of your brand essence, and what will ultimately connect deeply with the people who will grow your brand beyond your wildest dreams.

Be true. Be bold. Be genuine.

This article was originally published on Practice|Bright