Each year sees many qualified therapists being released into the workforce, experts when it comes to assisting people – yet without knowing the first thing about managing a practice. You’ve likely experienced the contradiction yourself: some practices are filled with appointments, yet other colleagues equally gifted are sitting idle, wondering where the clients are.
What differentiates one from the other? Visibility.
The uncomfortable truth about referrals
Until very recently, most therapists were educated on how a practice grows by word of mouth and professional referrals — and that was enough for decades. But the method with which someone finds a therapist has completely changed. Today, the first thing that a majority of prospective clients do is enter a search engine. They check out different websites, look through some pages, and select two or three therapists before even picking up the phone.
This implies that all those prospective clients who cannot find you, or those that visit your website but do not feel confident enough to contact you, simply become another therapist’s client without any explanation from your side.
Where most therapy marketing breaks down
The same patterns repeat across many therapist websites time and time again. The website features professional content regarding credentials and approaches, but nothing that answers the basic questions a potential anxious patient wants answered: you’re safe here. This is how it goes. This is how much it costs. First step is simple.
Other common flaws include websites that don’t show up at all when it really counts (“anxiety therapist near me” search) on Google, a social media account that stopped functioning after three weeks of activity, and no way of converting the interested person into a scheduled appointment. None of these say anything bad about your abilities as a therapist – they simply say that marketing is a completely separate skillset that takes years to develop.
Frankly speaking, hoping therapists can somehow learn it while working a full-time schedule, going through education and taking care of themselves is ridiculous. Every hour spent trying to fix something with a website is an hour wasted on not doing your job.
What effective therapy marketing actually looks like
Therapy practice marketing does not involve anything tricky or sneaky. The best way to do it is similar to the process of therapy itself – transparency, trust, and understanding the client’s needs. Typically, it includes the following things:
A website that appeals to the problems the potential clients want help with and converts their visits into inquiries. A search optimization strategy based on useful information – the blog posts that answer the questions your potential clients ask Google at night when they are ready to get some help. An ethical and consistent presence where your best customers are active. And an easy transition from just browsing your web-site to booking the first appointment – for instance, an introductory call for free.
None of this involves any dirty work. Done properly, the therapy practice marketing is all about the ease of access for the right people.
Leave a Reply