Growing your practice is an ambition that many therapists have worldwide. The journey of growth requires extensive knowledge of advertising for therapists. In the following 6 insights, we aim to cover the most fundamental elements to consider along the journey. Once you’ve established this foundation, practice growth should progressively become successful.
The Fundamental Elements: Advertising for Therapists
The order of operations
Setting your Foundation
Your brand represents your business along the entire journey. Having a well designed and developed brand is key to communicating value to your clients. It shows people that you have taken the time to do things well, which translates into trust and a higher perceived value.
Once your brand is established, you will need a website that communicates information regarding your experience, your areas of focus, as well as the demographics and psychographics you service. Your website should be indexed through the back-end, to ensure it is driving SEO results effectively. There are many best practices for SEO that we also cover through our guides.
You may be wondering – should you make the effort to set your foundation thoroughly for SEO? What if your efforts were focused first on Google Ads, local networking, and social media? Our insight is that your SEO foundation is the key for long-term, sustainable and scalable success. Every single effort you make will contribute to your SEO performance synergistically, making it the key first step in advertising for therapists.
Moving forward, you can begin investing in paid ads. This is a progressive strategy that will drive leads to your website, email, CRM, or phone number directly. It is important to have a profficient person responding to these leads to realize an effective conversion rate. A common question we get is whether Facebook (Meta) or Google is more effective. Our insight is that generally Google drives better results, as Google is more effective for searches based on needs, especially for services that have a high-involvement purchase decision.
Taking advantage of directories is an effective method of advertising for therapists. These directories have numerous people interested in looking for the right fit for their specific needs. Listing specific information such as specialties, experience, and approach is essential.
Social media is a modern approach of growing your caseload as a therapist. Posting quality content consistently is essential to timely growth. Leverage the insights that social media platforms provide to assess which kinds of content are engaging and resonating the best with your audience. Facebook has an older general audience, while Instagram and TikTok have a younger audience. Focus your efforts on the platform that aligns the best with your audience, and the produce content that works the best with that platforms audience. Instagram commonly has a more produced and curated style of content, while TikTok has a more candid and short-form approach.
How to concentrate your efforts
An essential element to effectively advertising for therapists is determining how to focus your efforts on the marketing channels. Understanding which marketing channel is driving the most high-intent traffic is a vital metric to this critical-thinking. Additionally, it is important to assess how much effort you are designating to driving this traffic.
You can assess your service, and the specific niches you may be targeting as an asset to these decisions. The niches you service have specific levels of competition that they have, which are an important indicator of how effectively you can acquire patients in the niche.
Moving Forward at Scale
Leverage Locality
Becoming an established service provider is a key step in the journey of advertising for therapists. You can service more patients by driving more leads organically through your presence and perceived brand value at this stage.
A high ranking in search engines with locality is an effective way of leveraging locality. Google will rank you higher when people search you in your area if you’ve configured your SEO effectively. Additionally, you will rank higher when people search using locality in their keywords.
Another effective way of leveraging locality is by connecting with local institutions, associations and related service providers that may be looking for a professional servicing a specific niche that you treat. Once you’ve established these connections, you can list on their platforms for increased visibility.
Double Down on Specializations
Often times, people want to advertise to the masses. This can appear attractive as the potential reach is high in quantity, however often times you can increase new patient acquisition rates by increasing conversion rates of leads. One method we’ve proven to work – is by increasing your advertising focus on your specific niches. This way – you can be seen by more people that are likely to become clients, rather than reach more people in general, in a reach with less potential clients.
Stay Informed on Profitability
Another vital metric to improve advertising for therapists is measuring profitability. Certain services and that you offer and certain audiences have different profitabilities. For example, you may offer individual therapy, couple therapy, assessments, and workshops. Out of these services, you may have different segments such as age groups and reasons seeking service.
Analyzing this information provides valuable insight on which forms of advertising are most profitable for your business. You may realize that focusing on certain services, or audience segments result in much higher profitability and sustainability for your practice.
Measuring Along the Way
Focus your Efforts on What Works
Once you’ve taken the time to measure results of your advertising efforts, you can ensure you focus on what is working best. This is an impactful step in advertising for therapists, that will separate you from most people in your space as you continue growing.
Understand Your Audience
As you continue servicing patients, your core audience will become more defined. It’s important for you to clarify this progressively, to ensure that you are connecting with them in the best ways. Whether that’s readjusting efforts to specific marketing channels, adjusting your paid ads strategies, or creating more valuable content such as blog posts or webinars for your audience – this will propel your growth and establish you as an authority for your specific niche.
Culminating Insights
An organic and free-flowing approach can work, but a strategic and intentional approach to advertising for therapists is proven to work best. Being methodical and understanding your audience is the path to success, with an actively evolving landscape to propel your growth. Once your advertising efforts are progressing, measuring results are fundamental to sustainable and scalable advertising success. The more effective your data collection and analysis, the better you can actively generate new patients through your advertising strategy adjustments.
