Marketing Done Right: Tips for Your Clinic from Aphrodite Fertility
When Emily Marson started her career in fertility acupuncture, she saw a gap in her local market: clinics weren’t marketing specifically to her generation. That realization motivated her to open her own business — San Diego’s Aphrodite Fertility Acupuncture. “I wanted to create something with my own spin on it,” Emily says. “More modern and millennial.”
So, how did Emily tap into the collective millennial psyche?
Before she even had a website and social media accounts, the clinic owner laid out a very clear profile of millennial women, including which brands they associate with and what is on trend (like Apple watches, Charlotte Tilbury skincare, and Lululemon).
“Looking closely at these brands helped me make decisions in my own branding and marketing,” Emily explains, emphasizing that it’s easy to build a relationship with your audience if you understand their brand preferences.
From there, Emily developed Aphrodite’s tone and voice.
The clinic captures attention with conversational copywriting chock-full of personality — every word sounds like it’s coming from a close friend: “Hi, we’re Team Aphrodite,” reads the homepage. “We’re here to be your number one cheerleaders, your expert TTC (trying to conceive) advocates, your mystical acupuncturist gurus, and your sarcastic besties that make you laugh even in the heaviest of times. We wear all the hats, so you don’t have to.”
As a millennial myself, I joke with Emily about how much our generation loves pop culture references. That knowledge alone helped her stand out with her blog writing — she even quoted '90s boy band *NSYNC in a post, saying, “Bye, Bye, Bye” to products that may disrupt hormones.
Social media is the new storefront
Once Aphrodite’s relatable tone was set, Emily looked to expand her audience reach on social media. Both Instagram and TikTok have been major tools for Aphrodite to understand how to market to prospective patients. “To stay up to date with the latest trends, you have to be on social media,” Emily suggests. “As soon as you open your business.”
Emily often pairs up with Ghoncheh Ayazi, Lead Fertility Acupuncturist and Chief Operations Officer, to create content on Instagram and TikTok. Together, the two share behind-the-scenes footage of clinic life, expert advice, and supportive messaging around the emotional journey of navigating infertility — including text reminders like, “Infertility isn’t a path you have to walk alone.”
Instagram, in particular, is a popular platform among millennials. Emily views Instagram’s grid as her online “storefront,” and Stories (the short video clips that appear on Instagram profiles for 24 hours) as that first impression when someone walks into the store — it’s a chance to show your brand’s personality.
If a patient likes the look of your Instagram grid content, Emily says, they will then go “into the store” on Stories. “At that point, they can relate to and trust your business enough to click on your website,” she explains, “which is the equivalent of picking up a product in a store to buy. By the time the patient gets to the website, they know you. They like and trust the experience. And then, they go on to purchase the product — which, for us, is the service.”
Now, Emily is pivoting her social media strategy to include TikTok. She assures me she’s not on the platform to learn the next big dance trend, but to research how Gen Z communicates — as they will be the next cohort looking for fertility acupuncture.
“I have to be relatable to this new cohort, or else they won’t decide on me,” she says. “Marketing is all about communication. It’s important to research how your audience is using platforms so you can speak to different generations.”
Your online experience needs to match real life
Aphrodite has built credibility in their field and trust with their patients — who are often at a vulnerable point in their fertility journey — by developing a consistent brand, both online and off. The clinic’s website, Instagram, and TikTok bring you into their physical space, showcasing the brand’s warm, bohemian color palette and whimsical personality (in the clinic you’ll find plenty of plants and pink arches painted on the wall).
For Emily, it’s crucial to have Aphrodite’s online branding match up with the warmth and care their patients receive in the clinic. “The patient can trust that the service they are signing up for will be consistent with the emotions generated by the look of your website and social,” Emily explains. “Consistency from all sides of the branding, social, and in-office setting can expand your presence even after a patient has left the office, leveraging an even more expansive and memorable business identity.”
Where to invest your time and money
As a business owner, Emily knows what it’s like to juggle a million things off the side of her desk. While marketing might not always be on the top of your to-do list, she recommends focusing on a few key areas to build your brand reputation and, ultimately, grow your clinic:
- Purchase a basic website. You don’t have to pay a pretty penny for a nice-looking website anymore, and that means you can free up more of your budget for other areas you want to invest in. There are many affordable, high-quality tools, depending on how involved you want to be in the process of creating your website. A few options include Squarespace, Wix, Showit, Wordpress, and Clinic Sites.
- Prioritize search engine optimization (SEO). With the money she saved on her website, Emily decided to hire a freelancer to run an SEO audit. The research revealed that her audience was searching for local fertility acupuncture. So, she focused on adding ‘San Diego’ as a keyword for SEO, which helped her rank higher in Google results for fertility acupuncturists in the area. “If you don’t have the location on your website anywhere besides the contact page, Google will not pick up on you as the authority of that location.”
- Develop a brand kit and stick to it. To establish your clinic’s visual identity, you’ll want to create a brand kit, which includes your logos, templates, fonts, and color palette. Emily suggests starting with Pinterest to source ideas. “Once you find several images that speak to your design aesthetic on Pinterest, download the image into Canva, and use the color selection tool to select the hex code for your brand kit. You can create a mood board there and return back often to keep your choices consistent and on brand.”
4. Hire out as soon as you can afford it. At the time of this interview, Emily was getting ready to move to a new clinic space. “We decided to add yoga and Pilates as part of our clinic offering because it was a service our patients were asking about, and we were consistently referring out for,” she says.
As Aphrodite has grown into a bigger space, Emily has been able to hang up her marketing hat and hire a part-time website designer and SEO expert.
While she’s glad she learned the skills herself when she first opened her clinic, she’s also more than happy to budget for marketing support now.
“People are making careers out of what you’re trying to learn in between treating patients,” Emily says. “They will do it better than you can. Trust me.”
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Liked this article? You can also check it out in volume 3 of Front Desk magazine along with even more business insights. If you like what you see, you can get print issues delivered right to your clinic — subscribe today! 📖
And if you want more from Aphrodite...
Listen to this deep-dive interview on Radio Front Desk — our podcast hosted by magazine editor-in-chief Denzil Ford. 🎙️
Happy reading and listening!
