69: Marketing For Modern Therapists
Marketing Mindset for Therapists
As a therapist, your money mindset impacts the ways you think about marketing. Why? Because for most of us, we think about marketing as "sales." And for many mental health professionals, we think of uncomfortable experiences we've had with sales. Instead, I invite you to think about marketing in a different way.
Marketing is about letting people know who you can help and how you can help them. Marketing is a form of validation for those who are struggling with the things you know you can help with. Marketing is a form of service, and it’s the entry point for potential clients to get a sense of your style, too.
Marketing vs. Advertising for Therapists
Marketing for therapists means speaking to your ideal clients and helping them be aware of your services, products, and how you can help. Advertising, on the other hand, is paid marketing. All therapists in private practice need to market. Not all therapists need to invest in advertising.
I recommend organic (aka unpaid) marketing to start before considering advertising. For the therapists I coach, they never need to pay for google ads, Facebook ads, or Tik Tok promotions. I’m not opposed to advertising, but I’m a firm believer that your marketing should be working before you throw money at it. Otherwise, you’re likely paying a lot for things you aren’t sure are working.
Marketing Ideas for Therapists
To create a marketing plan as a private practice owner, I invite you to think about what's going on in your client's life before they make it to your office. Often, they are reading books on the subject they are stressed by, seeking help from a Primary Care Provider, or turning to google for guidance. If you can connect with people in those spaces, that is marketing.
Contact primary care providers or allied healthcare professionals and share with them who you help. Write blog posts on topics your clients are searching for (more on that soon). Talk to other therapists in your area and see if there is a mutually beneficial way to be in connection with each other. For example, maybe you meet a therapist that helps couples navigate divorce amicably. If you help children of divorce, that's a natural and mutually beneficial fit!
Digital Marketing for Therapists
Digital marketing simply means how you show up online. Digital marketing is a non-negotiable for private practice therapists. 81% of customers visit a website before making a purchase and you can bet your potential clients are also doing a google search on you or your practice.
Your website should be your largest digital marketing footprint and the anchor of your online presence. Other forms of digital marketing for therapists include creating psychoeducational social media posts on platforms like Instagram, creating Pins for Pinterest, quick tips on TikTok, starting or guesting on a podcast, having any therapist directories correct and authentic to who you help, and ensuring your "Google My Business" information is correct and up to date.
SEO for Therapists
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is taking steps to improve your website’s visibility when people search for you, your practice, or the things you help people with, on search engines. When your website shows up on that first page of Google, especially at or near the top, it’s more likely that people will click on your website. SEO creates a compounding effect; the more people find and click on your website, it tells Google and other search engines that your website has valuable content, and google pushes your content to more people.
When I invested time into SEO, my website traffic increased by 187%, and my traffic from searches increased by 1,138% in six months. Investing in my SEO means more breathing room for me when I'm working on my business. I worked with Kristie of TherapieSEO to help me write content and do keyword research, and it's made my marketing more passive and fruitful. She wrote a guest blog post on the 7 ways SEO reduces marketing overwhelm for therapists that you can read here.
Practically speaking, I can write a blog post for SEO, hit publish, and know that folks searching for help on the topic will find me. If the Instagram algorithm changes (again) I don't sweat about potential clients finding me. SEO has been a great addition to my marketing plan and is the closest thing to “passive” that it gets when it comes to marketing your private practice.
Networking as Marketing
Networking is one of the secrets to quickly filling a practice when you first start out. My go-to line around marketing as a therapist? “If I need clients now, I rely on my network; if I need clients in six months, I’m relying on SEO.”
Remember that marketing is helping people become aware of you. When you connect with allied professionals such as primary care providers, lawyers, school counselors, etc. you are helping more people become aware of you.
Think of how you found your last healthcare provider, such as a massage therapist, primary care provider, or psychotherapist. Most of us ask people in our network and turn to google. Networking allows your name and practice to be brought up organically in conversation.
Challenge yourself to set up a few networking meetings this month! Not sure what to say in an initial email? Try something like, “I notice we serve similar populations. I’d love to learn more about your work and share with you some information about my practice. Plus, I have openings for therapy clients right away!” Of course, only use that last bit if you really do have openings.
Speaking as Marketing
I love speaking engagements as a marketing strategy. I've done speaking engagements at healthcare systems, for new professionals, for financial planning organizations, at a parent-teacher group, and at colleges, to name a few audiences and venues. Speaking is a great way to show people who you are and who you help. It helps people get some tools and tips right away and exposes you to more people that may turn into clients in the future. As a bonus, many speaking engagements are paid so you are being paid to market your services!
Foundations of Marketing
In my group coaching program for therapists in social justice or of marginalized identities, Grow a Profitable Practice From the Inside Out, we cover the foundations of marketing. To me, the foundations of marketing include having a niche, a beautiful and hardworking website, and writing content for SEO. We don't get into marketing until we cover money mindset in depth. As I mentioned at the start of this post, if we don't rework our relationship with money, it's very difficult to have a sustainable marketing plan. Learn more and apply here.
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So I threw a poll up on Instagram the other day to see if people were more interested in learning about money mindset for therapists or marketing for therapists. And the poll is pretty close, but the marketing won out. And at first I was like, I don't know if I really want to talk about marketing. But then I was doing my own housekeeping stuff. And I was taking a look at my website, and seeing where people were coming from. And as I'll talk about later, a lot of them are coming from me optimizing Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. But what I was looking at is what are the keywords that are driving people to my website? And there is a post of mine that is trending right now on my website. And the terms that people are typing into Google to get to that blog post are leaving social work, why are social workers paid so little, when to quit social work, social workers underpaid, and getting out of Social Work, this is a huge problem. We are experiencing wave number kazillion and one of stressful shit coming out in the world and coping with 1,000,001 things. And the last thing we need is a wave of mental health clinicians leaving the field. And to me, that means we need to have therapists have financial stability. And that's why my group Grow A Profitable Practice From The Inside Out is built on the foundation of getting comfortable with money. Because I think if we are paid more than we are less likely to quit social work, we're less likely to burn out of social work, we're less likely to turn to something else and to use the skills that we can use if we weren't fried, on both ends, you know. So with that kind of kickoff, I'm going to talk to you guys about marketing, and how to market yourself as a therapist. And of course, there will be a little squeeze of money on it, twist off money on it, whatever. You know what I mean?
Alright, so let's get into marketing as a therapist, and how money and money mindset impacts your relationship with marketing. So just to back it up. If you are new here, your money mindset is how you think about, which then in turn impacts how you feel about and how you interact with, your money. It sets the standard for what you think you are able to earn as a clinician, what you are able to spend your money on, and what things you consider to be an appropriate use of said money. And as therapists our money mindset inevitably impacts our relationship with our marketing. Why? Because so many of us automatically jump to marketing = sales = bad. And we think about all of the experiences we've had with sleazy uncomfortable or pushy sales tactics where we've ended up buying something that we really didn't want or need. And we're so worried that if we market ourselves, that we're going to be behaving unethically or harming somebody or putting ourselves in that category of sleazy slimy people. And I think we need to do a little reframe, because we need to be thinking about marketing, not as pushing, but as offering. Marketing is speaking to your ideal clients, the people you know, you can help and help them see that you are available, whether that's through your services, your products, how you show up in the world, to help them with that specific stressor. And when we stop thinking about money is bad, we can start to think about marketing in turn as not a bad sleazy thing. And before we get into the meat of today, I want to also differentiate marketing from advertising because I think those terms are used interchangeably but they are different. So marketing is visibility is how I think of it. And advertising is paid marketing. So it's visibility, but you're putting dollars behind it. That's when you see Facebook ads, Instagram ads, ads pop up on blogs, etc. That is paid ad or abs are advertising is paid marketing. I'm not opposed to advertising. But I do not think it is this quick win magic pill that a lot of people in this space claim it to be. If you don't know what you're doing with advertising, and I will raise my hand and say, I do not know, you are going to be lighting your money on fire. So first, get your organic marketing down. And then if you want to zhuzh it up, consider advertising, but I do not recommend advertising right out the gate.
Okay, so let's talk about marketing strategies for therapists. And let's just rewind to what people are doing before they seek out therapy? Where are they hanging out? What are they googling? Who are they talking to? What are the questions they're asking? And if we think about what's going on in a client's life before they send that email inquiry to say, Lindsay do you have space in your practice for another financial therapy client, they've probably done some different things in their lives. So for my clients, since I'm a financial therapist, using shame free financial therapy, a lot of people are turning to personal finance podcasts, they are listening to tips on how to budget, they are reading books on money and on how to talk about money, they might be going to a financial planner, or to a financial advisor, they are doing things like that. And then if they are continuing to get stuck, then my clients because financial therapy is so new are turning to the internet and typing in things like how to talk to your partner about money, how to stop fighting about money, how to stop feeling guilty about spending money, right? Those are the types of things they're looking for. And because I have organic marketing, through search engine optimization, or SEO, my website comes up. So I know what's going on in my clients world before they come and see me. So for you, let's say you are a therapist for older millennials, young Gen X or professional women who are anxious and perfectionistic. And they are high achievers, high performers. And they're really struggling during this pandemic to kind of maintain the juggling act that they used to be able to maintain before they come see you. They're probably buying self help books. They're probably listening to Glennon Doyle, and Brené Brown, they're probably listening to some stuff about the Enneagram or want to listen to that Enneagram episode with Jasmine Reed Clark, they are probably doing some soul searching, they might be going to their primary care provider, or their OB-GYN to talk about their mood and anxiety, and if it's impacting things like their sleep or irritability, they might be talking to a nutritionist about what foods can help support their energy and decrease their fatigue or decrease their anxiety, right, they might be doing a lot of those things. But before they get to a therapist, when they decide they're ready to go to a therapist, they usually do these three things. They ask their friends and family if they have a therapist, they would recommend they ask a physician or nurse practitioner that they trust who they would recommend. And then they do the last thing which is turn to Google or turn to therapy directories. Right? Those are the things they do. So how can we as therapists make sure that if we are to help that specific type of client, that we are connected with family, friends, physicians, and the Internet in those areas? Well, we have to talk to physicians, nurse practitioners, dieticians, yoga teachers, who are helping clients in that space, because then when they call their PCP and they say, Hey, I really need a therapist. I've been trying to do these things on my own. I've read the self help books, I've tried sleep hygiene, and been going for walks. I've been doing all the things and I'm still just like fried and burnt out and I feel like I'm dropping the ball, then their primary care provider can say, hey, I have a great therapist in town or via telehealth, whatever it is, who does exactly that, let me get you their information. Right. And that is how organic marketing can work is if you are connected to other people who are going to be in the realm of what your ideal client is going to do right before they come and find you. So the other thing is friends and family which is really word of mouth. I think as therapists we forget that we're marketing all the frickin time when we do therapy, and I don't want to spin you out there. But when we do good work with the clients, we are meant to work with, they tell people about us! How many of us is therapists have gotten somebody's neighbor or somebody's third cousin recommended to come in and work with us. I'm not talking about having unethical relationships where you're seeing a bunch of people in the same family, I'm saying, we tend to when we do good work with the right clients, people tend to talk about it, right. So you're doing marketing when you're doing therapy, because people are saying, hey, go work with this person, or my therapist really helped me with x.
Then the third way is what I mentioned is search engine optimization, or therapists directories, that's the last kind of place that people go. So search engine optimization, is this idea that when you type something into Google, you're optimizing your posts your website to come up on page one of Google so people can find you. And it is free. And in my opinion, very, very passive. My clients who work with me inside Grow Your Profitable Practice From The Inside Out, they don't necessarily want to be doing the latest tick tock trend, they don't really want to be going live on Instagram every day, they don't want to have to carve out a Facebook group and manage it, in order to get clients, that's a ton of fucking work. Instead, what they can do is write a blog post specifically for their type of client. And when they optimize it for Google, that blog post will show up. So if I'm a person going back to this idea of the the anxious, older millennial, and I'm typing in, you know, something like can't perform at work, maybe then your website shows up, and you give them a beautiful, rich, helpful blog post on what might be going on, tips to try, things to consider. And then they see another blog post that's about why can't I sleep anymore. And then they see another blog post about how to enjoy your downtime and not stress about work. And now they've read a few of your blog posts and like, I like what this person has to say, oh, plot twist, they live in my same state, and I can do teletherapy with them. Right. So that's what search engine optimization did. And for me, I am an advocate of it, because it has freed up my time, in ways that I didn't really think were truly possible. And I know that sounds very magical thinking or magic bullet or whatever you want to call it. But it's very, very true. I worked with Kristie Platinga of TherapieSEO, I've talked about her before on this podcast and on Instagram. I worked with her in January of 2021, saying I really want to work on search engine optimization. I wrote literally two blog posts a month using her formula, figuring out which keywords to use. And six months after I implemented what I learned about search engine optimization from her, in the year 2020, 3,000 people found my website through social media. In one month 3,000 People found my website via Google. Do you see what I'm saying? The amount of time and energy and effort I put out on Instagram drove 3,000 people to my website versus writing two blog posts driving that number of people to my website in one month. Meaning when I invested in SEO and I continue to invest it, I continue to write blog post or you know, essentially summarize these podcasts that work as blog posts. It gives me more breathing room to work on my business. That means I can write a blog post for search engine optimization for SEO, hit publish, and know that people looking for that will find me. If the Instagram algorithm changes again, I don't have to sweat about people finding me. It means also that there's greater mental health accessibility because people who aren't ready to work with me or are unable to work with me get information in the form of free content. In short, what it does is it supercharges the results of having a beautiful and hardworking website from Monica at Hold Space Creative. It's like the website plus search engine optimization is magic. And it allows me to not have to be on all the freakin time mine. And because I have a hard-working website, when people find me through a blog post, all they have to do is click a button to request an appointment with me. They don't have to email me, they don't have to call me. They don't have to search for where to connect me. They just go click, I want to see Lindsay, next Thursday at noon, there's an opening, I'm going to request that time slot, boom.
So marketing is yes, talking to other people about what you do and who you do it for. It is making sure that your website really clearly speaks to the types of clients you want to work with. It means writing a blog post once or twice a month. It can also be other things, I think we think that marketing is only digital. And yes, marketing can be digital, right? If you think about creating social media posts, or joining as a guest on a podcast, yes, those are digital forms of marketing. But also running things like a support group, or a free workshop on psychoeducation of some sort. That is also marketing marketing is again, letting people know who you help and that you exist and how you help them. So there are so many ways to market that we don't actively think about. And we're also doing it all the time. Back in the day when you could go to a barbecue and tell somebody what you did for a living--that's marketing. You say me, because I'm my own example here, Oh, I'm a financial therapist. I help people get their minds and money and balance using shame-free financial psychology. And they go What does that mean? And I get to say, I do less of the how to make a budget and more of the what's making it hard to create and stick with a budget, right? That's marketing. And then what people do is they Oh, my gosh, I wish I knew about that. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. Oh my gosh, my neighbor needs you, my cousin needs you whatever, right. So it is not just showing up digitally. It's also showing up in person. And that might mean running support groups, running workshops, connecting with people in real life. Those are all forms of marketing.
One of my favorite forms of marketing is speaking engagements. And I know that sounds strange, but it's it's this win win and my opinion, because people hire me to speak for them. I've spoken at financial advisor panels, I've spoken at healthcare systems, I've spoken at colleges, I've spoken at a bunch of different places. And it does two things for me and for my practice. One is it helps people with the psychological side of money just to help them start thinking about what that might look like in their workplace or with their clients depending on what I'm talking about. But it also exposes me from 20 to 500 people who might not have heard of me before who let's be honest, likely haven't heard of me before. And then they go, Oh, I really liked what she had to say, I want to join her newsletter or I want to buy her book, and then they understand who I am, they get to know me a little bit more. And maybe they decide to work with me one day. I love speaking engagements as a way to market myself that isn't just about marketing, right, I'm providing education, I'm providing a service and providing tips. But also I'm providing myself additional exposure so more people can know who I am and who I help with. Cool.
So, to summarize, marketing for therapists is simply letting people know that you exist, who you help and how you can help. It's different than advertising because advertising is paid marketing. Our money mindset tends to get in the way of our relationship with marketing, because we tend to as therapists associate money with bad and then we go marketing = sales = bad. But I want you to reframe and say marketing is about showing up as my full self. It's about visibility. It's about D. stigmatization, it's about helping, and then thinking about all of these different ways that you can market your practice, talk to therapists in your area, talk to primary care providers in your area, talk to allied health professionals, talk to yoga teachers, dieticians, anybody who is in the realm of the types of services or things that your ideal client is doing or working with. Those are the people you want to be in touch with. Right? You will mark it every single time you have a therapy session, because somebody's going to go tell their friend, I had a great session with Lindsay today, or they're not, you know, just depends. Search engine optimization, using blog posts once or twice a month is a great way to market yourself. Yes, you can use social media but I don't think you have to yes, you can do therapist directories to market yourself. I think they're hit or miss. Ithink some are great. Some are not so great, whatever, use them, don't use them. And then other ways to market yourself are by providing support groups, workshops, joining people on podcasts, and doing speaking engagements. Okay. It's so much more than just handing out a business card or a brochure that let's be honest, is automatically just going to get tossed into the recycling bin. I can tell you I've printed many your brochure, and I don't think they moved the needle. And I worked a long time on like, the formatting and making sure the colors were cute and like, whatever, I think they all went in the recycling bin.
Anyway, that is what we talk about at the very tail end of my group coaching program Grow a Profitable Practice From the Inside Out, we first talk about money mindset, because we cannot talk about money, or I'm sorry, we cannot talk about marketing and marketing strategies until you sort out how much you need to be charging, why you need to be charging that amount, how to adhere to those boundaries, and all of the weird, icky uncomfortable feelings that come up when we talk about money. That's why niching, SEO, marketing all comes at the end of the program, because you need to have that foundation first. if I came at you with this is how to market but your money mindset was not on point, you likely would not adhere to it, you just wouldn't. That's why I see so many therapists in this like shiny object syndrome space, where they're chasing all of these, like marketing ideas, marketing ideas, I need to do this and you do this. And you do do that. But they haven't figured out their money mindset. So they're constantly just in this state of anxiety versus going, I know how much I need to earn by earning that I can sustainably support myself. And when I financially sustainably support myself, I'm a better therapist for my clients. And I don't have to see 300. In fact, I don't have to see 26. In fact, I see 12 I realized I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was there like how many clients are you seeing? And I'm like 12, literally 12 a week, because I know how much I need to charge. I know how much I'm able to take on. Pre pandemic, I could see more clients than that a week. But my capacity to hold space for clients has shrunk massively, which again goes back to the top of this episode, that we need therapists in the field who are not burning out and to prevent burnout, it means giving more spaciousness to their lives. And that usually means bringing in a bit more money so they can have that breathing room so they can be present for their clients. Anyway, that's why grow a profitable practice from the inside out was structured the way that it is. I'm accepting applications! It's the last time I'm running it this year, I could cram into more, but I needed to honor my own energy. And I'm just doing one more. If I run it again, in 2022, the price will go up. That's just me being transparent. Every single time I run it, I tweak it, I modify it, I make it better. And then because the value of what I'm providing goes up, so does the cost. If you're thinking I'll do it later, I want to just briefly remind you of where we have come last month, oh July of 2021. I was getting ready to have like hot vaxx summer, I was texting a friend that I wanted to go clothing shopping in this month, I'm back in my jams and back into lockdown and back to outdoor things only. Life has a way of throwing us some curveballs. Life was feeling really glorious in May of 21. Now in August of 21, I am like ready to like just bury my head in the sand and have somebody wake me up when it's over. So tell yourself you'll do it later when things settle down.
Let's just acknowledge, like with some radical acceptance, that the last 18 months have probably not gone how any of us thought they would. So if you're like I want to do it, I would encourage you to apply. Applying does not obligate you to anything. It just gives me some insight about what's going on in your practice and tells me whether or not you sound like a good fit. Okay, so if you're feeling like yes, I want to do it. But I want for you to think about what is that but? What is the objection that's going on through your mind? And is it real? Or is it a false fear? And I don't say that to like scare you. I mean it to be very, very real. For some people. The cost of the investment is very real, as you heard with the bonus episode with Shari, I think it was last week, she shared that the investment was a mindset issue. And it wasn't a real one she literally could afford to join but she was anxious about joining because she didn't know if it would be worth it. And she said she would pay that cost again and again and again based on what she got out. And then the other thing if you're telling yourself, " Oh, I'll do it later. And when you think about all the times in your life when you told yourself things would be easier next week. And tell me how true it is that like things got easier the next week and the reality is our lives stay pretty busy. It's just like our energy shifts from space to space.
Last thing I will say if you were thinking about joining is hearing from somebody else who went through the program. Okay, I want to share with you what clients, a past participant, a new alumn of Inside Out had to say when I asked them, What was the most worth while enjoying it? Like what specifically did you get out of joining grow a profitable practice from the inside out and this person's initials aren't AM, they said, "All of it. Some of the modules and lessons that really stood out were money stories, money mindset, private practice growth stages, CEO date, fee setting and niching. Group coaching sessions were very helpful, especially hearing the feedback from Lindsay and other group members. All the worksheets and handouts with specific examples of language and numbers were fantastic. The fact that Lindsay openly shares documents and examples is so valuable. I was worried that joining the group would increase my anxiety about moving full-time into private practice. But I found that it made my anxiety more manageable. It empowered me and helped me realize that this is doable. The support encouragement and validation from Lindsay and the rest of the group was amazing." And if you are curious about having that support and encouragement in the tangible language and numbers, I'd invite you to apply. You can go to MindMoneyBalance.com/ProfitablePractice, and I look forward to reading your applications.
I'll see you in a few weeks.