Philippa Kennealy is founder and president of The Entrepreneurial MD, an online coaching company.As a certified business coach and Physician Development Coach, Kennealy works with physicians striving to become entrepreneurs and build their own successful businesses or thriving practices.
Describe your business in a nutshell?
I was a physician until 1996. I left my practice a number of years ago, realizing that coaching was my real passion. In my early days, I had a couple of physician clients. And I realized early on that I really enjoyed working with them and could achieve great results. When I entered coaching, I was a generalist, idealistically assuming “I can coach anybody.” I quickly learned that it was a struggle to avoid focusing on a target market. After considering other potential market niches, I decided to focus my company toward helping doctors become entrepreneurs, grow their existing practices, build a specialty practice, add new product lines or start entirely new companies.
Did you perform any market research?
I did my homework before jumping in. I looked for obvious competitors, but I didn’t find any. This was promising, but a little scary. I thought, either coaches are not pursuing this niche because they’ve tried it and failed, or it’s just too tough to coach physician entrepreneurs. To validate my assumptions, I approached a colleague who’d amassed a large newsletter subscriber base of over 2,000 physicians knowing this could provide a goldmine of market research. I offered to submit an article to his newsletter, which would also prompt readers with a short survey in exchange for a free report.
After publishing the article, I got 83 survey responses, which were mostly positive about the types of services I wanted to offer, and felt that this feedback validated my business concept. On the basis of the survey, I launched the business in January 2006. It was a nine-month birth process from the time I made the decision to move forward with my new niche focus to the point I went live in September 2006.
What are your core marketing activities?
I’m a huge believer in educational marketing. So, I just do everything in my power to be a valuable educational resource. I took your Get Slightly Famous—Online Learning Program as I was preparing the Entrepreneurial MD blog. I realized that everything I’d done to market my coaching practice up to that point had been wrong. For example, my first website functioned like a pretty online brochure; it just sat there on the Internet, not generating much interest in my coaching business because I never promoted it.
After taking your class I knew my strategy would revolve around establishing credibility in my niche and providing useful information. Now, my core marketing activities flow through my blog. I consistently post an average of three times a week. I understand basic principles of search engine optimization (SEO). I pay attention to keywords and study the search phrases people use to find me. I make sure my blog posts incorporate keywords likely to attract my target market. I owe the majority of my traffic to Google; and regular blogging has been instrumental to my success.
How have you integrated your online and offline PR?
The blog has been instrumental in establishing my credentials as a media go-to person. It’s created opportunities for media exposure by positioning me as an expert spokesperson and source of information related to physician entrepreneurship. The blog helps medical journalists find me on the blogosphere. The blog has resulted in several interviews in medical trade journals and journalists contact me at least every other month, if not more.
Because doctors do not sit at their computer all day, I cultivate offline media exposure. In particular, I target medical trade journals because, as a former physician myself, I know that doctors make time to read medical trade publications, lend them tremendous credibility and act on the information found in these magazines.
I’ve been published in The Physician Executive, which is considered the premier journal for my target market. The magazine has a section devoted to physician entrepreneurship where I’ve published four or five articles. I use the reprints on my blog, which lends me tremendous credibility.
How have you cultivated relationships with other bloggers?
Developing relationships with influential bloggers has been very helpful. I track blogs in my industry, watch for interesting posts, and make a point of jumping into the conversation by posting comments. I’ve developed an efficient system using Google News Alerts, which track certain keywords that alert me to relevant blog posts related to my industry. I’ll then visit these blogs and, when applicable, make comments. This has helped me develop relationships with influential bloggers in the healthcare field, some with very large readerships.
How does public speaking fit into your strategy?
Public speaking has generated a lot of new business. I’m lucky in that I’ve targeted a couple of organizations comprised of physicians interested in leaving their practices, exploring new career alternatives or looking to rejuvenate their feelings about medicine. I was recently a keynote speaker at one of these conferences, which generated thousands of dollars in new business. They invited me back as a mentor and made nice comments about me at the beginning of the meeting. I spoke to 61 physicians in two days. It resulted in terrific business. So public speaking has been an excellent tool for me!
How would you summarize your overall results now that you are three years into your business venture?
I’ve taken a slow and steady approach. I see all my marketing and blog activities as part of a long-term lead generation strategy that begins when people learn about my blog, sign up for a free report, and become part of the Entrepreneurial MD community. I do what I can to foster an immediate personal connection with my readers. A couple of days after they sign up for my blog, they link to short videos which lets them experience me, in person.
Later, they receive an email with a little self-assessment test, and then I show up a couple of weeks after saying, “how is it all going for you?” This sort of reader-centric communication sparks all kinds of conversation and interaction with my readers. My mailing list is currently at 1200 subscribers. Though not huge, it’s an incredibly loyal list! People stay with me. As a result, my email list predictably converts readers who show up and say, “I’ve been reading your blog for some time, and now I’m ready to become a client.”
What do you say people about making this type of commitment to cultivating a Super Niche?
It seems counter-intuitive; the scarcity part of us often says, “Oh my God, if I focus I’ll give up on all these other potential clients!” Yet, if you cultivate a message that resonates with a core group of people, you’ll enjoy more success than trying be all things to all people.
Find out what keeps a certain group of people up at night, what’s bugging them, and speak to them in a way that makes them sit up and say, “Oh, is she talking to me?” People will pay attention!
In my experience, it’s about moving prospects from attention to interest to desire to action. When your message takes your target market through those four steps, the value of focusing on a niche is infinite. You get to be the big fish in a little pond. And you just don’t have to have that daily depressing battle of fighting against all the other big competitors in your field. Don’t just assume things. Check in with with your target market regularly because every market place evolves over time.
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