Defining your target market?
Who do you target your message
to? Have you ever truly examined why people call you?
What is your target market? At first, the questions seem
silly. Your target market calls because they want your
services. But if you truly understand what messages your
target market has to hear before they call you, then you can start
to concentrate on those messages and put them in places where your
prospective customers will hear or see them.
When a merchant does not target
the message
Have you ever gone to a website
intending to purchase and then clicked away and bought somewhere
else instead? Chances are that you went away because you couldn’t find
what you were looking for or that they simply did not inspire you
to make a purchase. You may
indeed be their target market, but they have yet to learn what
message to send you.
As a merchant, it is up to you to
understand what the motivations are that drive your client.
This isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and most people
don’t take this past the first level.
In the case of home care, the obvious answer is that they
are looking for someone to take care of their family members.
But this is only the service that they want, it is not what
motivates them. Ask
yourself why they want this, and you will find that these
motivations are more personal than shopping for an available
service.
Marketing home care
In home care and home healthcare,
the motivations are all about taking care of someone that they
care about and what drives those motivations is comfort level with
you. Your potential
client wants to FEEL like you care, and this is because you are a
real person.
It is easy to write about the
services that you offer. It
is much harder to dig down deep and use your words to turn
marketing collateral material into a meaningful message that your
company is the company that they want to trust to take care of
someone that they love.
Don’t’ just explain your
services, talk about them and why you offer them.
Before any client does business with you as a home care or
home healthcare professional, they want to know that this is more
than just a profession for you, and that they will be more than
just a replaceable business opportunity. By contracting with you, they are offering to let you into
their home to take care of themselves or someone that they care
about.
As with any message, you can go
overboard with the message of care. Trying to make the case
that the parent is as well off with you as they are with their
family probably isn't going to win you any new friends... or
clients! Family caregivers want to be supported, not
replaced.
This is not to say however, that
you can abandon professionalism in working with your clients.
You can be the most wonderfully personal and nice person
that they have talked to, but if they sense that you lack
professional courtesy and responsibility, it is all for nothing.
If they wanted to just hire a really nice person, there is
probably an unemployed cousin somewhere in the family who would
gladly sit around and collect a paycheck. Professionalism is
an absolute must.
