Marketing Essentials for Private Practice Clinicians

Mental health professionals establishing private practices have to balance the responsibilities of maximizing clinical value for their patients while optimizing and running a successful business. From choosing the right liability insurance to learning the intricacies of business tax management, the learning curve is steep and littered with myriad obstacles to overcome. Despite these challenges, private practitioners do a great job navigating the hurdles and start building their client lists. This is usually when a deeper appreciation is built for the importance of marketing when building strong rapport within local communities. Marketing and demand generation is not as simple as some might think, and can be a giant blocker to success. To help make it just a bit smoother, let's go over the basics to help get things started. Determine your ideal customer Before thinking about spending money on advertisement or hiring professional help, you should spend some time thinking about who your practice is aiming to reach. Think about the ideal groups of people that you are best equipped to help, or want to be working with, and describe them to the best of your ability. The goal is to understand your ideal client. If you’re having trouble getting started, start with these questions. Is there a specific field you want to focus on? Is there a specific gender you do / don’t target? Is there a specific age range you do / don’t target? Is there a specific type of therapy your clients are looking for? Thinking about who your client is will help you generate one or multiple client personas. Think of personas like fictional representations of your perfect client that best describes their primary characteristics and hopefully answer “why” they are your perfect customer. The level of detail you use can be as simple or complex as you’d like, and it depends on how specific you believe your client is. Don’t worry about being perfect - as you gain more experience, your views will change and mature, along with your client personas. Determine your ideal marketing channels People from different backgrounds and life experiences interact with the world in different ways. Some might look to traditional media for mental health support, while others start online using search engines and social media platforms. Your location, the services you provide, and whether you provide virtual services all have an impact on the optimal strategy for marketing your practice. Let’s go over examples of some different marketing mediums. Traditional media channels are difficult to navigate and are cost prohibitive in more ways than one, like print media or digital advertisement using a pay-per-click model. Although these channels are powerful under the right circumstances, it might not be the right choice for most small businesses. However if capital is not a major concern and your services are mostly local and conducted in person, it might be worthwhile to consider traditional media options in your area. This can come in the form of magazine and newspaper ad placements, analog and digital billboards, flyers and leaflets in public spaces like community centers, and good old-fashion business cards. Professional directories for mental health services can also make a difference for new practices, and has the benefit of reaching a much larger audience. If your practice supports virtual sessions then keep reading. Mental health professionals have the benefit of being surrounded by directories that want to help people find the right clinicians for them. Clinicians pay to get a listing on such directories and in return receive exposure to people searching for professional mental health services. You’re essentially paying to reduce your personal marketing expenditure and the associated risk. Professional organizations like the American Psychological Association also provide services to list your business for people searching if you are a member. There are many specialty directories as well that focus on specific communities of people or geographic locations, so depending on what your practice likes to focus on, there might be a perfect directory out there for you! Social media can help you present your business and start building a relationship with potential customers before ever interacting with them for the first time. For those starting your first private practice, we definitely recommend this route for its ease-of-use and affordability. This still takes a considerable amount of passion and effort to do well. Don’t feel the need to create an account for every social platform out there to start. Focus on building a good website if that feels relevant for your business and choose one or two social media platforms that you feel comfortable communicating through. You don’t need to engage with everyone and everything online. It's more important to choose a few avenues to reach out to future customers, and engage with them in a meaningful way. This is a good time to break things up and talk about branding. Building your brand With your audience and marketing channels decided, the last step is to begin building your brand. This doesn't happen overnight and requires a lot of iteration, but there's no better time to start than the present! First things first, your customers need to find and recognize you without too much effort. To do this, think about creating some basic brand assets: Business Logo Business Name Business Social Media Usernames These alone can make a world of difference in keeping you and your business memorable to those who stumble on it. Now let's find a way to educate your potential customers about your business and brand. Building a business website is an effective way to spread word about your private practice. You can leverage your other marketing channels to share your website, and keep your most important content and information there so you can guarantee every visitor has the perfect experience you have laid out for them. Feel free to be creative and make it reflect who you are and what you (and your practice) stand for. If you produce written content on a blog or want to start, there’s always the option to bring that into your website so you can drive more interest and traffic there. The best part about a website is that it doesn't have to be very expensive. These days there are plenty of services online that simplify the process. Some final thoughts to bring it together Regardless of what path you choose to grow your practice, remember this one rule to maximize the value of anything you spend your time on. Be consistent!!! Make sure each platform clearly communicates your business name, business location, website details, and contact information to avoid confusion. Keep branding assets consistent. Use the same logos, colors, images, brand assets, and concepts, so that your digital presence feels cohesive and does feel jarring disjointed. Create dedicated business accounts. Don’t reuse personal social accounts to manage business content. It will lead to confusion and create a poor experience for others if the nature of content strays too much from your business messaging. Don’t feel pressured to produce daily content. It’s okay to tweet or post an instagram story once or twice a week. If you're creating written content, start out producing content once a month. Regardless of the schedule you decide to go with, make sure to stick to it. The consistent and predictable effort will help search platforms like Google figure out how best to promote you! We hope this crash course on marketing gives you some idea of how to get started. There's so much more we could dive into but we will save that for more dedicated future articles. Keep your eyes tuned for more detailed content on how to mature your marketing game soon!

Marketing Essentials for Private Practice Clinicians

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