Why You Shouldn't Market Your Ketamine Clinic On Social Media
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok….there are so many social media platforms out there. You’re probably on a few yourself like everyone else on planet earth! Since you and the entire universe seems to be on some social media platform, should your ketamine clinic be too? The obvious marketing industry answer is YES! A loud and resounding YES! But in this blog, we are going to give you four reasons why you should think otherwise when starting your ketamine infusion clinic!
Reason #1: You Don’t Like Social Media
Perhaps you are not on social media. You don’t like posting pictures of your pets or food. You think it is a waste of time. You have your reasons, and they are probably good reasons. If you don’t already enjoy being on social media, forcing yourself to start posting and being on social media for your clinic will be difficult.
There is a good possibility that you are opening up a ketamine clinic because you were tired of being told how to practice medicine in your old or current traditional clinical practice. In your old job you were doing a lot of things you didn’t want to, so why would you want to continue doing that by adding social media for your clinic? It takes a lot to start your own private practice, so save that time, energy, and money for the other tasks.
Reason #2: Social Media Is Time-Consuming
Maybe you love being on social media! You’re the exact opposite of reason #1. But unfortunately, you now have to juggle your personal and business accounts. You are going to be busy with both the business and clinical end of your ketamine clinic when you first start out and trust us it's a lot!
There are a lot of important things you need to focus on when you are starting out. While marketing is important, it’s not as important as finding a clinic location or ordering the ketamine! We can’t forget to mention this, the algorithms for each of the social media platforms are ever-changing and also never truly understood. You want to make good content, so that people get to know your business, right? But what makes good content can change over time. So you’re thinking, “No problem, I'll hire someone to help me with this!”...which brings us to the next reason…
Reason #3: Social Media Marketing Can Be Expensive
You’re serious and committed to having your ketamine clinic be on social media, so you hire someone. Great idea, we’re all about outsourcing where appropriate in your business. But let’s go over a few items about hiring a social media marketer. You can hire someone to make the posts and schedule them. Great, but what kind of posts and what kind of content? You have to figure this out, train and or inform them. This now takes more of your time plus money.
Also, consider that more and more platforms are becoming more “pay-to-play”, i.e. you have to pay money for more people to see your posts. Is that in your budget? To help you figure all this out, you will need to consider hiring a “social media expert” or outsource the whole thing to a social media company. They will charge you a lot and rightly so since you are paying for expertise in figuring out what works. Plus paying for boosting your posts or for your ads. Which brings us to our final reason…
Reason #4: The Goal Of Social Media Success Can Confuse Your Goal Of Seeing Patients
For most social media success, it is getting lots of “likes”, “comments”, and “followers” aka engagement. Who wouldn’t want all that? More engagement means more free organic reach, i.e. more people see your content for free. More people who see you means more people who might want to be your ketamine patient. Hurray! But STOP! Take a moment and ask yourself, “Why am I doing this all? Why am I on social media? What’s my end goal?” Your goal is to have patients for your ketamine clinic. Patients who will be the right fit for your practice.
It is so easy to get caught up in improving engagement or being advised by “experts'' on the importance of more “likes,” but at the end of the day, you need to see patients. And for some clinics, being on social media isn’t going to help reach the goal of getting more patients. The target market, or the particular type of patient you want to serve may not actually be on social media or rather don’t use social media as their means of gathering information.
Final Thoughts: To Be On Social Media or Not, That Is The Question.
Starting your own private ketamine clinic is hard. There is no easy way to do it, and if anyones says there is, take that as a red flag. You have a finite amount of time, energy, and money. You want to use those resources thoughtfully and intelligently to launch your practice. We encourage you to use your resources to do the important things like actually getting your clinic up and running. Don’t get hung up on the minutiae of should or shouldn’t be on TikTok or the color of your logo. Seriously, keep your focus and when you are able to spare some of your precious time and money, then consider if adding social media is right for you.
And by the way, keep your eye out for our next blog where we take on the other argument, why you SHOULD market your ketamine clinic on social media!
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