Advertising Wellness Clinics Health-Based Product

Advertising Wellness Clinics

Health-based product

More and more, the illnesses afflicting the American public are lifestyle-related ailments. Obesity, a lack of physical activity, stress, and a life-work imbalance -- all are common complaints today. Rather than treating 'sickness' and managing chronic ailments after they negatively impact the life of the sufferer, there is a new focus upon 'wellness' as a goal of healthcare, on helping people to live a more healthy life to prevent them from becoming sick in the first place. Wellness centers enable the sick to make changes to their lives that do not merely involve medication or formal medical treatment. They enable people who are not ill to maximize the benefits derived from their life choices. Wellness centers often have nutritionists, personal trainers, and specialists in alternative and conventional medicine, all in one area, to create a holistic plan of care.

Advertising

Increasingly, weight loss alone is not seen as the answer to all lifestyle-related woes. The focus upon appearance in 'wellness' weight-loss promotional strategies have become less prominent. Also, weight gain is no longer viewed as a 'calories in/calories out' equation, but also as a product of the modern lifestyle -- a lifestyle that includes too much sitting and watching, not enough doing, too much stress and too little sleep, and not enough time for cooking and family. Even Weight Watchers has revised its famous point system to give greater consideration to nutritional considerations, making it more 'costly' to eat processed snacks and less 'costly' to eat fruit. (Gootman 2010). Health and a more 'balanced' and 'centered' life have become of greater concern.

A wellness center can have a variety of types of clientele, spanning from people who are interested in yoga and alternative medicine to amateur athletes rehabilitating from injuries. This clinic would focus on helping individuals to engage in weight management strategies in a positive and healthy way, without resorting to packaged 'diet' foods. It would emphasize weight loss as a lifestyle change, rather than as penance for one's dietary sins. It would also offer a series of services that could aid in each client's weight loss goals, such as nutrition and stress reduction counseling for families as well as individuals, personal training and fitness classes.

The target marketing group for the center would be mostly women, given that women tend to be more concerned about their health as it relates to weight loss and fitness. While men are more inclined to go to a traditional gym than seek a 'wellness' solution, women are more likely to emphasize the psychological component of wellness and weight loss. Women are more apt to take fitness classes than work out on their own, and while more men are joining groups like Weight Watchers, the predominant audience for group-based wellness still tends to be female. "True, men frequently show up in classes such as spinning or 'boot camp' workouts. But women dominate other classes, especially those that touch on mind-body techniques (Sorgen 2010).

One common way to encourage people to try fitness sessions is to offer them a free class, such as a free personal training and/or nutritional consultation. Provided the counselors and instructors are charismatic, this might be the ideal way to generate initial 'buzz' about the center. Sending out free coupons for free sessions, and offering free 'teaser' yoga or Pilates classes in public venues (like on the Boardwalk during the summer or an in-store location like the mall) can generate publicity and interest. For fitness, marketing should be experiential as well as about selling a particular image.

Since a wellness center is marketing a service as well as a product, one extremely important, but often overlooked component of advertising is good training of the staff. Staff members must be friendly and helpful, and project the right type of 'image' for the center. Given the center's emphasis on personal self-improvement in its marketing strategy, staff members should embody the likely ideal of the target female consumer: they should be fit, knowledgeable, friendly and ready to answer the likely questions of prospective and current customers.

The emphasis on promoting the brand through local venues seems warranted, given that a national print-based strategy would channel too many advertising dollars into reaching people who lived too far away to access the center. Also, the target market of middle-aged women looking to improve their lives is sufficiently narrow that such a broad-based strategy would throw the marketing 'net' too wide in terms of the demographic it reached. However, radio advertising can be sufficiently local to effectively market the center, given that radio as a medium allows the seller to select a popular local or regional channel, rather than a national one. The seller can also focus on a station that transmits music or news of particular interest to the target demographic (such as a station that plays 80s and 90s music or light rock).