One of the first steps in determining if opening a new practice or implementing a new service in your established practice is worthwhile or not is by doing some market research! The last thing you want to do is open a new practice or provide a new service in a SATURATED market. Remember, it is always best to deliver a NEEDED and IN DEMAND service in your area vs. being a sheep and doing what everyone else is doing. Unless you want to start with LOTS of competition. If you do, then GOOD LUCK (it can be done by delivering excellent customer service, CONVENIENCE, and superior care though).
So, how do you determine if opening a new practice or providing a new service is feasible or not? GOOGLE SEARCHES. Seriously, it is that easy. You need to search for what is available already in your area to determine if you have lots of competition or not.
Did you know 86-97% of consumers search for a business online through Google and Bing alone? Yep! Therefore, you need to start here.
Here are the steps:
- Open up Google on your PC browser AND Google Maps on your phone (you want to ensure you are looking at both interfaces, so you are getting the most accurate results).
- Type in as many keywords as you can about the type of practice you want to start or what service you want to integrate. If you want to open an IV infusion clinic for example, then you would search for “IV clinic near me” “IV Nutrition” “IV Hydration Clinic” “Hangover IV” and so forth and so forth. Use Googles Keyword Finder to determine what people are searching for when it comes to the particular niche/service you are interested in providing.
- Go through the search results of each keyword you used and begin to tally up how many competitors you have and where they are located.
- Use this information to determine if the service you are wanting to provide is feasible or not.
When I opened up my second men’s health clinic, I did this thoroughly within a 300-400 mile radius of my home. I found that the city 50 miles south of me was already saturated. I found that the city 200 miles north of me was saturated, but I found that the city 300 miles north had no men’s health practices! BINGO! That is where I am going to open.
I did the same thing with my telemedicine transgender HRT practice (that I sold) when I was trying to determine where I was going to market digitally. I searched in various cities in the states we were in to determine which cities had transgender HRT providers or not. Then I used that information to market DIGITALLY in those cities vs. in cities in the same state that already had available services. This MAXIMIZED my marketing dollars.
This isn’t hard folks. Don’t hire a marketing agency to do this for you. Just get on Google and do some searching!
2 Responses
When you say saturated, do you mean 5 or 6 clinics of the same service near me or 20 clinics ?
Could be 2 clinics or 20 clinics, it just depends on the population density of your area. A town of 100,000 can usually support 2-4 clinics. A city of 1,000,000 could support 10-15, etc…