If you expect to hit large inbound traffic at the start, you may be in for a surprise.
The calculation demonstrating the number of available potential businesses at any given time will show how few prospects are available now.
Hearing care products are not like food or other commodity products that people use regularly. It’s a specialty product which takes time before one is ready to buy.
How many people are buying at the same time?
Do you know how many people are looking for hearing aids now?
Let’s do the math together.
According to market research in Europe, the median age of hearing aids before replacement is six years. In China, it’s three years of age.
For North America, particularly Canada, data isn’t available, but we can say that government subsidy funding typically allows people to qualify to buy hearing aids every 3-5 years. Furthermore, some reports are showing three years for the US.
So, if people are in the buying mode every 3-6 years, how many people can we say approximately are buying at any given time?
The population invested in hearing aids.
We need to look at the number of people who are aware they have hearing loss and those who are starting the process of buying hearing aids.
According to the World Health Organization, 42 million people have hearing loss and would require hearing aids. However, only 10-20% of this population live in high-income countries. So, 4-8 million people qualify.
About 4.2-8.4 million people may have hearing loss, but not all will be invested in hearing aids.
Let’s say about 80% are willing to buy hearing aids. We don’t have the exact figure for this percentage, but we will approximate it for now. Now, we have 3.36 – 6.72 million people in high-income countries seeking to buy hearing aids at any given time.
Yet, not everyone is ready to buy at the same time.
Only 10%, on average, are ready to buy
At any given time, the percentage of people who are ready to buy are less than 10%. It could be as low as 3% or as high as 10%.
Given that someone buys hearing aids every 3 to 6 years, we will approximate the average industry standard of 10%.
336,000 to 672,000 people are in buying mode now in a high-income society.
But not everyone lives in your neighbourhood.
It could be 50 or 200 people or even as low as ten.
If you market on Google by trying to get to the first three spots or you paid for ads, your results on potential customers reaching out are very competitive.
70% of people click the first three pages listed on Google. Only 1% click on a Google ad.
It’s very hard to expect your ads to work right away, knowing that you have a small chance of targeting customers.
Instead, most of your advertising should get people’s attention when they are not in the buying mode.
Your brand will be familiar when they are ready to buy, but you still need to capture their attention to ensure they will choose you over someone else.