The Patient Who Got Away
She found your website at 9:47 PM on a Tuesday night. Scrolling through symptoms that matched hers perfectly. Thyroid issues. Chronic fatigue. The brain fog that made her feel like she was living in a haze. The carefully crafted language about discovering root causes and not just falling prey to symptom management on your “our approach” page made sense to her. She was ready.
Then her phone buzzed. A text about an early morning meeting. She made a mental note to call your office in the morning.
She never did.
Not because she chose another practitioner. Not because she decided to stick with her conventional doctor. She simply got swallowed by Wednesday.
Dinner. Emails. Laundry that somehow multiplied overnight.
By the time she collapsed into bed, she’d completely forgotten about you.
You just lost a patient. But not to a direct competitor.
Redefining Competition in Functional Medicine
Most practitioners think about competition in straightforward terms: other functional medicine practitioners.
These are your direct competitors. People offering similar services to the same audience.
But there’s another category that’s quietly stealing your patients before they ever become patients: indirect competitors.
Indirect competitors aren’t offering functional medicine services. They’re not in healthcare at all. They’re everything else demanding your potential patient’s attention, energy, and time:
- The morning chaos of getting kids to school
- The pile of bills on the counter
- The Netflix show they’re binging to decompress
- The Instagram scroll that numbs the overwhelm
Every single one of these things is competing with you for your patient’s next action. And they’re winning.
The Emergency Room Advantage You Don’t Have
If someone breaks their arm, they’re going to the ER. The urgency overrides distraction. The problem is acute, visible, and intolerable.
Your patients have been suffering for years. They’ve learned to function despite the fatigue, the digestive issues, the hormonal chaos. Their problems are chronic, often invisible to others, and they can be pushed off until “tomorrow” indefinitely.
This means your window of opportunity is razor-thin. When someone finds you and feels that spark of hope, that “finally, someone gets it” moment, you have a brief window where taking action feels possible before the overwhelm closes back in.
That window might be 30 seconds. It might be three days. But it’s not infinite.
How to Win Against Your Most Pervasive Competitors
Build your marketing strategy around a simple principle: capture their attention in the moment, get their contact information before they disappear, then stay present while life pulls them in every other direction.
1. Eliminate Friction at the First Touch
Every additional step between interest and action is a place where you lose people.
Instead of: “Call our office during business hours to schedule a discovery call”
Try: A calendar link on your homepage where they can book a 15-minute discovery call instantly
Instead of: Requiring them to comb the website to find a solution to their problem
Try: Offering a condition specific infopacket for them to download via form. It clears the clutter for them and you collect an email address.
Regardless of how you get the job done, the goal is to get their contact information while you have their attention, with the absolute minimum barrier to entry.
2. Create Value-First Lead Magnets That Meet Them Where They Are
Your potential patients are researching, often late at night, often feeling hopeless. Give them something immediately useful that also establishes your expertise.
I’ve had success with lead magnets like:
- Decode Your Symptoms pdf
- Lab Results Demystified pdf
- Boost Energy in Just 5 Days: A Step-by-Step Reset Plan pdf
- Root Cause Quiz: What’s Really Behind Your Symptoms?
These serve two purposes: they provide genuine value and they capture the contact information that lets you continue the conversation.
3. Build a Follow-Up System That Persists Through Their Chaos
This is where most practices fall short. They get the email address or phone number, send one generic follow-up, and then nothing.
Your potential patient is standing in line at the grocery store. Their mind is on what they need to grab before pickup time, when your email pops up on their phone. They’ll read it later.
You need to be there when “later” comes and be there again the next time “later” comes.
A good, basic functional follow-up system includes:
- Immediate delivery of whatever they signed up for
- Educational email sequences that address common objections and build the case for your service, complete with examples and case studies (sent over 2-3 weeks)
If you want to level up, add:
- SMS reminders for those who opted in (with a 95% open rate, texts get opened even when emails don’t)
- Retargeting ads that keep your brand visible as they scroll social media
- Calls-to-action in every communication (book a call, take the assessment, download another resource, join a webinar)
You’re not being pushy; you’re being present. You’re meeting them in the scattered moments they have, the grocery store line, the carpool line, the 3 AM insomnia scroll.
4. Make “Not Now” Mean “Later,” Not “Never”
Not everyone is ready to book a consultation on day one. That’s fine. But you need to keep them in your ecosystem.
You want to create multiple on-ramps at different commitment levels:
- Low interest: Free guide, email newsletter, social media follow
- Medium interest: Free workshop or webinar, challenge
- High interest: Discovery call, paid program
Someone who downloads your thyroid health guide in March might not be ready to book until June but if you’ve stayed in touch with valuable content, you’ll be the first person they think of when they’re finally ready.
5. Automate the Presence, Personalize the Connection
You can’t personally text every website visitor or call every download. But you can create systems that feel personal while running in the background.
Automation that works:
- Email sequences triggered by specific actions (downloaded the gut health guide? Send gut-health focused emails)
- Segmented lists based on primary concerns (fatigue vs. hormones vs. autoimmune)
- Re-engagement campaigns for people who went quiet
- Post-webinar follow-ups with replay links and next steps
Personalization that matters:
- Video messages for discovery call bookings, Looms work really well for this
- Personal replies to email responses (even in an automated sequence, when someone replies, reply back)
- Custom recommendations based on assessment results
The goal is to use automation to maintain consistent presence, but inject humanity at every opportunity.
The Real Battle Is for Attention and Timing
Your marketing doesn’t need to be about being louder or flashier than other practitioners. It is about being present, persistent, and low-friction enough that when someone has 30 seconds of energy and hope, you’ve made it possible for them to take action.
That’s all the time you get. And if you’re not ready to capture it, life will fill that space immediately.
The laundry won’t wait. The kids need to be picked up. Dinner won’t cook itself.
But if you’ve captured their email and can follow up with something valuable you’ll be there when they finally have the moment, the energy, and the courage to take the next step.
And that’s how you both win.
