I met with Dr Phil Tyson over the weekend. He runs a Manchester-based practice called Men’s Therapy. I asked him a couple of questions about his pratice:
How did you get started marketing your practice?
I did what I saw all the other therapists doing – I took out an ad in the Yellow Pages. At huge expense. It got me no business at all. I realised that I needed to be found where my clients where looking and they were looking online. So I taught myself HTML so that I could build myself a website and then have the skills to change and update as I saw fit. Organic search engine traffic is how the vast majority of my clients find me.
How and why did you decide on a niche practice?
Again, I took a look around at what other therapists where doing and I kept seeing a “one-size fits all” approach to service delivery. Lots of long, long lists of problems that looked like shopping lists. I thought from the client’s perspective, this isn’t going to instill confidence if I say I work with every type of client who presents with every type of problem. So I decided to focus on a particular type of client that I thought was under served – men seeking therapy.
And how’s that worked out for you!
All my client hours are currently full and I’ve got a waiting list! The feedback I get from clients is that they’re relieved to find someone who “gets” them. Men aren’t particularly interested in hearing a lot of the usual cliches that are found on therapy websites – warm holding environment….life’s journey…all of that sort of stuff, they’re interested in hearing about the solutions. The choice of words I use on my website are very deliberate – phrases like “reaching your goals effectively and efficiently” make men feel much more comfortable about engaging with me.
Evidenced based practice is also very important to me. I’m sure it’s important to every therapist but I actively make it part of the conversation I have with potential clients but referencing research findings in my blog posts and so on. For my clients, that’s important. It does a lot to instill confidence and trust in me.
Why did you pick men as your niche?
Well, obviously I am a man, that’s an important part of it! But over and above that, counselling and psychotherapy are very female dominated professions. In fact, a lot of services are subtly more female orientated. Men perceive GP surgeries as being more welcoming to women. When do you ever see reading material in a surgery that men want to read? It’s usually women’s interest titles. Lot’s of other services are gendered as well – abuse, domestic violence, eating disorders. However, men are victims of sexual and physical abuse, domestic violence and they increasingly suffer with eating disorders. It’s more difficult for them to access these services when they’re excluded right from the get-go and nothing’s stepping into the breach to support them. Which is why so many of my clients are glad to have found me, they really do feel like someone out there gets them.
Apart from being busy and in demand, what other benefits have you found from niching your practice?
Media coverage! Journalists have found me because of my blog and my website. I’m now a regular contributor on radio and the Manchester Evening News and because I have a niche, I’m perceived as an expert.
Check out Dr Phil Tyson’s blog Mens Wellbeing
I’ve talking about therapy niches here quite a lot recently and my feeling is it will be useful to look at some cool niches that are out there.
This coming weekend I’ll be meeting with Dr Phil Tyson. His practice is called Men’s Therapy and he has a great, super focused blog called Men’s Wellbeing. I’m going to be interviewing him about his practice, the types of clients he works with and how focusing in on a specific client group has helped to grow his practice, not shrink it.
I’ll get our interview up by Monday at the latest, so check back to hear how creating a niche has helped Phil develop a powerful and fulfilling practice.
I’ve spoken about niches here before, I’ve advised you to get one…so I thought it might be helpful to start offering some pointers on how to go about doing that. If you missed the post on my I think getting a niche is important, you can read it here.
To recap, a refined niche marketing strategy not only attracts more clients because your “right people” will automatically read your website or brochure and think “that’s me!” (instead of “well, she talks about some of the stuff I think I’m struggling with but I’m not seeing myself in this picture, I’m not sure if she can help”), it also makes your marketing a million times easier and more focused. You’ll instantly know what’s going to work and what will speak to your niche. Let’s just soak that in for a minute, finding niche + more focused marketing = life is easier. MMMmmmmm, that’s goooood!
OK – onwards to finding out how to pick your niche. You’re going to want to get a pen and paper and spend a bit of time on this. Don’t feel you have to arrive at a decision within hours, spend some time really thinking about it. This is the most important decision you’ll make in your marketing strategy so have some fun with it and stay open.
We need to look at the following “where” and “who” and “what” questions:
- Who do you work best with?
- Who do have the most experience of working with?
- Who is naturally drawn to the way you work (CBT types are pretty good with phobias for instance)
- Thinking back over your client work, who did you experience those real “a-ha” moments with?
- What are the commonalities that link the clients with whom you do your best work? (are they mostly men/women? Do they present with similar problems? Are they mostly mothers of toddlers? Are they struggling with issues around their sexuality?)
- Who are clients you don’t work well with? (this is as important…if you don’t enjoy addiction work, don’t pick that as your niche. You won’t enjoy the work and you’re client’s won’t the best of you)
- Where do these clients hang out? Think of online and offline places.
- Where is the greatest need coupled with the greatest appreciation of your work?
- Who have you never worked with? I’ve never worked with addiction so establishing a niche based on that alone wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Remember that a niche is made up of two key elements – demographic and specific concern.
A demographic describes a particular group of people – Gay men, gay women, mothers of toddlers, fathers of teenagers, children under ten etc.
A specific concern is hopefully fairly obvious – bereavement, chronic pain, addiction, sexual dysfunction, autism, eating disorders and so on.
Now it’s over to you, get thinking about which groups of people and which problems they have you work best with. Please do post in comments your findings and experiences with this one, I’ll respond to every comment as I really think task is important in developing a truly thriving practice.
