Many natural healthcare practices confuse their potential patients with unclear messaging. StoryBrand provides a formula to craft your message so that your ideal patients will be captivated and want to engage. Follow this blog series to discover how StoryBrand is a natural fit for marketing your naturopathic, chiropractic, acupuncture, or functional medicine practice.

This article is part 4 of 11 in a series on StoryBrand for Health and Medicine. Check out the entire series here.

StoryBrand for Health and Medicine Part 4: Your Paradigm Shift Could Make You Money

Some people love to be early adoptors. Others make decisions about spending money based on social consciousness or sustainability. Lots of people like to have things that are revolutionary or on the cutting edge. Almost everybody likes to think that the decisions they make are good and philosophically correct.

Naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other functional medicine practitioners are all doing things that go against the grain. You’re forging new paths in medicine and standing up for what you believe is right.

Whether you realize it or not, your business probably teaches people a paradigm shift. That makes them feel smart, special, and unique. It gets them excited about your brand and fired up to tell others about you.

If your paradigm shift is central to how you practice medicine or run your business, it could be the part of your marketing message that will unleash wild success.

How to Define Your Paradigm Shift

You might already be clear on your paradigm shift. If not, here are some questions to get the ideas flowing:

• What do you stand for? Is there a cause, belief, or value that guides your company or business decisions? If this is challenging to answer, is there a cause you stand against?
• What makes you different than the norm? There is a status quo in modern medicine. How are you different? What is different about your approach that is particularly appealing to your patients?
• What do your cheerleaders say about you? Think about the people who spread the word about your practice or business. What do they say? What are they so excited about? Does it have anything to do with your approach being different or better than what they get everywhere else?

How to Use Your Paradigm Shift in Your Marketing Message

Talking about your paradigm shift as part of your marketing message needs to be done gracefully. When you start talking about how your approach is philosophically better, you run the risk of sounding arrogant or self-righteous. Here are some ways to tactfully share your paradigm shift:

• Stay positive. Positioning yourself against somebody or something is a dangerous thing to do in your marketing message. When it comes to a paradigm shift, you’re better off focusing on the positive benefits that your approach brings. You could say, for example, “you deserve a doctor who considers you as a whole person—rather than like a machine with separate parts.”
• Ask a question. Questions are a way to present ideas in a softer tone than statements. Questions also make people think. You can say, for example, “Have you ever imagined there might be a way to treat all of your symptoms with one single remedy?”
• Claim your beliefs. Paradigm shifts can be deep, philosophical, and personal. If you are going to emphasize a paradigm shift as part of your marketing message, you need to OWN it. Use the words, “we believe.” For example, “We believe that healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and patients—not by the companies paying the bills.”

Paradigm Shift in the StoryBrand Framework

Read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller or check out the free online BrandScript tool. You won't find a section about a "paradigm shift" on the framework, but the ideas most closely correlate to the "philosophical problem" section. You can learn more at storybrand.com or by hiring a StoryBrand Certified Guide.

Up next

This article is part 4 of 11 in a series on StoryBrand for Health and Medicine. Up next is Part 5: Coming from the Heart Matters