Your Digital Business Card
Online marketing for therapists starts with your website, your digital business card. A great website that ranks high is your posted sign that guides people in need to you and your helping services. No matter where you are working now, my guess is you have a printed business card. You use that in a very practical way for managing communications and scheduling activities and services between you and the people you work with. Most importantly, it has concrete information about how people can connect with you.
Your website performs these same functions. It lets people know who you are, that you exist as a professional and what you can do to help them. They also need to know when and how they can hook up with you to get started. Perhaps it’s difficult to think of what you do as a professional therapist as a business.
Therapist Yes; Business Person No
In school, you and I were certainly not taught to approach clinical counseling as a business. That’s what they did in the business school. It was assumed we would find employment one way or the other, in an agency or some form of private practice, maybe both. Clients would magically show up. Wherever you are working now, you expect monetary compensation in return for your services. That exchange model (service for money) is the essence of modern business.
The other critical factor that makes what you do a business is that you have people coming to you, willing to exchange money for your services. That process of attracting people to you and letting them know what you have to offer to help them with their pain and problems is called marketing. And it is not magic. There is a science to it.
“Marketing refers to any activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a service.” Investopdia
For mental health workers (licensed professional counselors, social workers, psychologists and others) marketing in general has been avoided and neglected as unprofessional. Historically, “self-promotion” was an idea not to be embraced. But things have changed. Ethical marketing of mental health is a positive idea and now is encouraged by all health organizations as a necessary part of being in business.
“No matter what your ‘thing’ is – – counseling, writing, babysitting, architecture, selling macramé cephalopods – – you probably find yourself doing some form of self-packaging, subtly or not.” Jena Pincott
Offline Marketing
In all likelihood you do marketing both offline and online. Offline marketing includes activities such as passing out brochures, giving speeches, writing and selling books, networking and spreading the word about your availability by word-of-mouth. Print ads, discount offerings and sponsorships are among the traditional methods of advertising.
Online Marketing
Online marketing for therapists, as with other businesses, revolves around a with a well-designed and optimized website.
Internet search marketing involves several activities which broadcast your website across the web. Your online business card, as it were, is distributed in a variety of ways including social media, good optimizing of your website for high rank in search engines and other activities which brand you and publicize your solid professional reputation.
You can find a great deal of information online about marketing mental health services. How all this works and how to get it done can feel overwhelming, so much so some counselors and mental health workers never get it done.
“Gone are the days when a new clinician could hang out a shingle, buy a Yellow Pages listing, and be assured a steady stream of clients. If you want to reach new clients today, you need an online presence. Even if clients find you through referrals or word-of-mouth, they will still want to research you online before booking their first session.” – – Daniel Wendler
I believe in the power of counseling and psychotherapy. For many years, I have used it personally. As an out-of-network, private practice psychologist, I offer it to others. I know it works. I also know the more counselors grow their practices, the more people will be helped and more lives changed for the better.
However, changing lives and marketing yourself uses two, entirely different sets of skills. You have the first skill sets. I can help you with the second challenge of letting the world know you are available and how competent you are. I can also make it very much easier for your new clients to find you.
Growing your business in this fast paced digital world requires a significant body of knowledge and the skills to apply and transform that know-how into clients actually showing up in your office. You deserve to be compensated for the help you provide. Dependable client flow can do that.
Reputation
What a website can do for you that your paper business card cannot do is build a living, long lasting positive reputation for yourself. Building an online reputation begins with a solid, well-optimized website. Your potential clients will vet you before they call for that first appointment.
Clients form an impression of you from what your website displays, the articles that you have written, what you write about, how you write or what you don’t write about in your blog. Even the images you display and the design of your website work together to convey a perception of who you are as a counselor.
Prospective clients will use your website to get answers to their major concern and question: What can they expect to get from you and how will you deliver it? What can you do for them? Your website is your online branding tool.
Branding is comprised of three ingredients:
- Creating a memorable impression about you and who you are.
- Branding forms realistic expectations about how clients will benefit from working with you. Using your website to create a positive reputation for yourself is essential. “‘Self-branding’ is necessary in a job world where reputation is everything. You must be your own head marketer for “‘The Brand Called You.” Tom Peters wrote that in 1997. It is so much more the case today.
- Digital marketing tools you control and know how to use. Some practitioners attempt to use social media and listings on professional directories, such as Psychology Today to perform this function. These are useful avenues to pursue, but because they are not under your control, you are vulnerable to their business policies and decisions. Furthermore, search engines do not index social media listings or business listings as regularly as websites.
I am good at helping people new to self-branding find comfortable, but meaningful and authentic ways to build their brand using a website. There is an art to it and I share that with all my clients. Whatever formula is used for online reputation building and branding, it includes a rock-solid website which in turn can be parlayed into numerous distribution channels online, including social media outlets, business listings and well ranked professional directories.
Bottom line: You need a website to be visible online and get the client traffic you can help.
Call Paul (913-991-2302) to implement your online marketing for therapists and self-branding program. 