Midwife Marketing: 10 Rules to Win
When it comes to midwife marketing, no one brings as much experience as Marketing TEA. We’ve seen what’s worked, what’s failed, and how midwifery practices are actively growing their client base and businesses all across the country. It’s been awhile since we made a nice, big list, so today, let’s talk about the Top 10 things that come to mind when people ask us about how to win big with midwife marketing:
- Use real midwifery content marketing
You cannot skip this step. When it comes to marketing your midwifery practice, you need to establish an authentic relationship with your community, and the only way to do that is to create true, original content. Videos, photos, and written content of your actual practice, showing your midwives in action. There are a million ways to do this, certainly, but we know for a fact that our Content Sessions are by far the best way to accomplish creating original content for a midwifery practice. Your content fuels everything that you do – it’s the basis of your website design, the core of your social media marketing, and the lead in your advertising materials.
- Tune up your midwifery website
Your website is the home base of your brand. It’s where all the hard work you do on social media and in your advertising pays off. You have a very specific target market as a midwife, and when you get the traffic to your website, you need to have a website that will capitalize on the traffic. You need a midwifery website that makes a connection, builds trust, and makes it easy for a potential client to reach you. It’s a key part of midwifery care to make your clients feel that they are going to be safe and cared for, and having a solid website is one of the first points of contact where you’ll establish yourself as a credible, professional care provider to your potential client.
- Focus on your conversion rates
We went into a LOT of detail on this in another blog about sales. We don’t believe that midwives should do a poor job in ‘selling’ services. Good sales is all about communicating well and making sure that the service you provide will fit a potential client well before signing them up. That said, all the marketing in the world can’t make a difference if only 10% of the people that walk in your doors actually sign up for care. Put some attention into your intake process and make sure that you are creating a cohesive experience for your target market.
- Target your midwife advertising market
Your message is meant for a very specific population when it comes to advertising your midwifery services. You need to make sure that your targeting is just as specific. We can’t give away all the secret sauce on this one, but we are often amazed at how wide the targeting is on advertisements when we come in and begin taking over advertising for our midwife clients. You need to put some serious time into targeting your exact market in your paid online advertising, or hire a pro to help you do it – we obviously know which one we think is going to go better. Have you considered every factor that might be important in your targeting? Which platforms give you the best targeting options? And what is a good cost per click or ROI metric? These are things we’d be happy to talk with you about on a quick chat anytime.
- Stay consistent with your social media marketing
There is nothing quite as disingenuous as a brand that cannot remain consistent in their social media usage. It’s a clear sign that you as a business are not actually interested in creating relationships with your community – you are just looking for an easy way to bring in attention rather than beginning a relationship. One promo video does not a marketing plan make! You need to have a plan to remain consistent, create a commitment to establishing and maintaining a relationship with your audience. That’s how you win on social media – by playing for the long term.
- Don’t slow your marketing efforts in slow times
We KNOW this rule is hard to follow. In a slow time, it’s easy to feel that you need to cut back, and, operationally, that might be true. But a slow time is NO time to slow down your marketing. We know there are nationally consistent fast and slow times in the world of midwifery throughout any given year, but when you experience a slow time, it’s time to speed up your marketing. Launch new advertising, create new content, give your community something to be excited about, and put more effort into building new relationships. That’s the only way to handle a ‘slow’ time in your midwife marketing.
- Utilize a professional where you need one
Yes, this could be us. After all, we have an entire agency with marketing professionals who specialize in exactly their role as a part of your direct marketing team. But sometimes, a professional is only needed for some specific piece of work. Maybe you have a design eye for websites, but do you have the technical expertise of a professional SEO expert? Your front desk person may be up for creating a TikTok video or two, but will that last over time? Will they also know how to run professional digital advertising on that content? A professional is not ALWAYS the answer, but you’d be amazed at the difference it can make when you put your business’s needs into the most capable hands.
- Grow your midwifery practice email list
We are recommending this more and more to our midwifery practice clients. In a world where social media is becoming increasingly challenging to utilize (too many platforms, too many algorithm rules), your future is in your email list. Your email list is the way that you can OWN your own relationships with your clients and potential clients without interference from the powers that be at the big social media platforms. Build it, grow it, maintain it in any way you can.
- Incentivize midwife Google and Facebook Reviews
Some reviews may come in naturally, but we find that it’s a great idea to regularly incentivize your biggest fans to leave you Google and Facebook reviews. If you forget to ask, even your fans may forget to leave a review. When we run a review campaign for our clients, we almost always find a way to incentivize action through giveaways or other prizes. Reviews can be your lifeblood if you focus on them.
- Address real issues (don’t be vanilla)
Within your brand as a midwife, it can be tempting to avoid the big issues or to challenge the status quo of birth in the USA. You need to handle this professionally to maintain your relationships as healthcare providers, but don’t forget this tip. Speaking out strongly about what you believe in as care providers is how you connect with people who have the same values as you – the strongest potential client market you have. You’ll even find yourself avoiding bad-fit clients and avoiding bad reviews the more honest and upfront you are about your values as a midwife.
We hope these tips help you to be more successful with your midwife marketing, whether for your independent midwifery practice or for your birth center. And, as always, if you are ready to really experience growth like you’ve never seen before while taking the task of marketing off of your plate, we’re always available for a chat to see how we can help.
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