Managing the wellbeing of our aging population often dominates the industry’s spotlight. Often, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that younger audiences outnumber baby boomers.
It’s for this reason that it’s important to gain a better understanding of your younger target market. To develop successful marketing strategies for our millennials, you should leverage psychographic segmentation to elements such as lifestyles, interests, and values.
Wellness Clinics and a Younger Audience: The Big Picture
Millennials are digital natives. We know that. Thanks to advances to the internet, smartphones and social media, younger audiences have grown up in a world of instant access, and they expect your industry to fit into that mold.
Younger audiences are comfortable with collecting, curating, and sharing pertinent data. They live in the moment. They’re less committed to traditional forms of marketing. Most importantly, they’re not hanging out on Facebook the way they used to, and that means that wellness clinics need to find new ways to engage such customers.
Your clinic exists to make a profit, millennials know that, but they don’t want to see that as your only drive. Your business needs to be people-focused. Younger prospects want to feel you’re looking out for things they’re passionate about before you worry about profits. That’s why it’s important to take time to notice what this prospective audience enjoys and then find ways to connect with them on that level.
Reaching Out Through Twitter
Twitter is ideal for sharing timely and brief updates. For wellness clinics, timely updates might include information about a new member of staff, changes to service provisions, the launch of a new service, and even courses.
Getting your Twitter marketing just right is key. You should avoid being too focused on internal team activities, using poor quality images, and failing to offer a human face to your clinic. Also, posting demanding messages, like “reduce the amount of time you spend sitting all day” isn’t likely to encourage great audience engagement. Instead, share helpful tips.
Another way to reach your younger audience on their Twitter feeds is to segment the feed according to their interests. By aligning interest groups, you can also amplify your messages, as they’re more likely to be shared.
Hitting the Right Target with Instagram
Instagram is the most popular platform for sharing photos. Obviously, it works best for sharing short messages and high-quality visual content. Instagram is highly popular with younger audiences and offers a great opportunity for audience engagement and the chance to share insights into your services.
The ability to convey an expert view of health and wellbeing services proves helpful when it comes to overcoming engagement barriers.
To make a success of this platform for your wellness clinic marketing, you need to generate a great deal of visual content. While this isn’t always within the realm of the wellness industry, you can make it work. Instagram makes it incredibly easy to run photo contests and encourage even greater engagement.
Informing Through YouTube
Video has become the most favored content medium among younger audiences. YouTube, especially, is the most visited social platform in the world, not to mention the second biggest search engine. It’s also the go-to for tips and how-to advice.
Many younger audiences favor video over other types of content, so you simply cannot ignore the power of video marketing as part of your wellness clinic’s digital marketing mix. What’s more, video is a highly effective way to connect and engage with your audience, while also getting your point across quickly.
Interestingly, Facebook has been favoring video content in its algorithm, but it’s more how-to content. With more millennials hanging out on other platforms, though, your videos could simply get lost on Facebook.
Creating effective videos is a time-consuming and sometimes costly exercise, which is why it pays to delegate video content to a company with the right skills. Having a team on your side to brainstorm amazing video content about your wellness services, along with tips and advice gives you the edge when it comes to reaching a younger audience.
Best of all, your videos don’t need to stay in one place. To maximize their effect, it’s a good idea to share your videos on Twitter, for example, and take time to mention those who have worked on the project using their Twitter handles for even greater audience reach. Also, make sure their business is referenced, as they’re a lot more likely to share the videos with their own followers and that means an even better boost to reach your audience.
Effective videos don’t need to be very long – 2 to 3 minutes is best for grabbing and retaining attention.
Ditch Facebook and Get Creative
In an age where advertising and marketing messages are everywhere we look, younger audiences are used to tuning it out. They ignore traditional ads like billboards and TV commercials, and they don’t give direct mail a second glance. It’s up to you to get your voice and messages across and make sure your younger audience pays attention and to do this, you need to get creative.
The trick is to come up with unique creatives that grab your audience’s attention. Think of fun ways to get your brand’s name out there that don’t rely on Facebook and other traditional marketing methods. Facebook is great for keeping in touch with distant cousins, but not so much for marketing your wellness clinic.
Plenty of Other Ways to Be Heard
These days, there are so many other social media platforms, and it may just be that some are more suited to your wellness clinic and target audience. Your younger audience is hanging out on Instagram, they’re Tweeting, and they’re most definitely engaging with out-of-the-box videos. What they’re not doing is slowing down as they scroll through their Facebook feed to read ads.
With that in mind, isn’t it time you changed direction and started targeting your audience on the channels they’re actually engaging at?
Get in touch with Bob Mangat today to find out how you can reach a younger audience without needing Facebook.
