The Internet is a very crowded place, and standing out is not easy. In fact, the temptations to do something outrageous in marketing your practice is omnipresent. Because your practice does not have the marketing dollars to compete with giant corporations for consumer eyeballs, so-called guerilla marketing can attract attention.
An image of Susan Hallowell, Director of the TSA research lab. Taken with backscatter x-ray system, which is in use for airport security passenger screening.
Proceed with caution in marketing your practice
Attracting attention is different than attracting clients. Imagine that you rent one of those airport full-body scanner machines and place the machine on the busiest street in your town. You connect the machine to a giant two-story LED display. And then, you climb in and the display shows an alternate-wavelength image of your naked body with a caption scrolling on the bottom of the screen, “Acme Therapy, We Look Into Your Soul“. This will attract a lot of attention, but it is not the attention that your therapy practice wants or needs.
Potential clients are seeking a trust-based relationship
When guerilla marketing tactics are used to promote a brand or deodorant or a new energy drink they can work great. But, in those cases trust is not a critical part of the relationship.
Clients are looking for someone they can trust with the most intimate parts of themselves. If you go over the top with smoke and mirror marketing tricks, you will undermine the perception of you and your practice as professional, reliable and competent.
You are not a performance artist. You are a highly trained, licensed mental health professional. Marketing your practice requires you to tell a compelling story about how you can help.
Does marketing your practice require Groupons?
A new hair salon or manicurist in your neighborhood may have had success using Groupon to start building a client base. But, if you are a mental health professional, don’t do it.
Marketing your practice using a Groupon raises privacy issues (Groupon knows who is redeeming the coupon) and may violate state regulations against fee-splitting. Even more importantly, your efforts in marketing your practice should be aimed at creating a perception of quality, competence, and skill. Using a Groupon undercuts that message and replaces it with, “I am desperate”.
So what’s a therapist to do? Content. Content. Content.
We are suggesting that when marketing your practice you refrain from cutting edge tactics that can get you attention but undermine the confidence that you need to aspire. No groupons. No full body scans. No posters on buses showing models in underwear emblazoned with, “Have You Hit Bottom? Call Acme Counseling”.
Instead, think about using content to attract clients seeking a competent therapist that can address their needs. Do you have an expertise? Write about it, get it on your web site, and promote the content.
If you are an expert in helping children who are being bullied, write and promote content about bullying.
Do you help clients recover from grief, trauma, divorce? Do you work with clients with diagnosis of bipolar disorder? Do you help clients with social phobias? Whatever your speciality, write content on your website and promote that content.
Get Help With Content
As therapists, we are great at telling clients when to get help. In marketing your practice, consider asking for help in creating content (text, images and video) and promoting your content. TherapyEverywhere is here to help. Just call or fill out the contact form and click Send.