Choosing a clinic location, consider demographics - part 2
Sorting out your demographics is important. This should form an important part of your planning. The first thing you should think about is what kind of clientele you want to attract. For example, I am interested mainly in fertility and pregnancy. That means that I need to place myself either in a place where my target demographic goes or in a suburb that is where they live. There is no point me setting up shop next to a retirement village, it just doesn’t fit. Unless of course you are specialising in working with older people in which case it may be a great location for you. So think very carefully about WHO you are trying to attract and try and find a location that suits that market. The other aspect of demographic has to do with price. You can do a search and get very detailed demographic information, suburb by suburb, region by region if you use for example the ABS in Australia. Then you can match your target demographic with particular suburbs. You can do that based on age, occupation, gender or income. All of these factors are really important in helping to decide where to locate your clinic. Do not guess, get the facts first. Sometimes the stats will surprise you about a suburb or location. The next factor in determining location has to do with visibility. This is really important. I don’t think there is much point be tucked away in a house in a suburb where there is no through traffic. You need to be accessible. Make sure that your location is easy to locate, is well signed and has plenty of parking. We moved from a home clinic that was on a busy road and had plenty of traffic, to a really busy local shops with lots of road and foot traffic and it increased turnover by ateast 30% immediately, that I believe is because of the visibility. There are some great audio recordings available to members on this very topic which would fill in the detail. Keep an eye out for it on clinicsensei.com Until later, get cracking on implementing what you learn. Clinic Sensei.
