I spend a lot of time on this blog inviting you to try things out and generally being bossy.
In this post I’d like to offer you some words of encouragement. Be brave. Which is sort of related to my post on The Fear. When running our own practice we can become guilty of camping out in our offices, hiding almost. We’re accountable to no one but ourselves (as business people NOT as clinicians). I don’t know about you, but when I meet with my supervisor, I spend all of that precious time going over client work…that’s what I’m there for, that’s what my supervisor does and it’s an ethical obligation I take very seriously.
But who holds us accountable for our businesses? Usually no one. So it can be hard sometimes to creep out from the office and try some new things.
I did this just last night. It had been a long but enjoyable day and I’d put an evening networking event in my diary. As the hour approached I became more and more unwilling to go. Even as an extrovert, I find it hard sometimes to rock up to a room full of people and just start chatting to them. I baled out and spent an indulgent evening catching up on trashy telly which I enjoyed enormously but I didn’t make any new connections by doing that and I talked myself out of going using a gazillion great sounding excuses.
I’m not going to beat myself up about it because it was my choice but it did remind me that sometimes when we’re promoting our businesses via networking face-to-face, reaching out to ask people we admire for referrals and so on that sometimes we need to take a big gulp and be brave. You might get a no, but you definitely won’t get a yes if you don’t ask.
As the hockey player Wayne Gretzki said – you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
A quick post this one! I’m going to be sending out a some special how to’s across a series of newsletters over the coming weeks.
It’ll be a marketing mini-blitz course for therapists covering the stuff that I’ll doing in my workshop. I know not all of you can make it to London. Maybe some of you can but you don’t to. You’re exercising your free will, I dig it!
Sign up for newsletter now and make sure you don’t miss out! It’s free and I’m not trying to sell you anything, so don’t worry. I just want to share all the fun and goodness that comes out of the workshop.
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.
Do it. That’s my tip.
Reading about marketing, going to marketing courses, reading this blog, surfing the web to see what the competition is doing…all good stuff but if you aren’t actually DOING any of the stuff that you’re reading about, it won’t generate a single new client.
I know someone who freelances. Like the rest of us who escaped the tyrany of working for someone else, this person has to hustle for new clients and new gigs. They’ve spoken about setting up a blog – great idea! But has deliberated for literally months over the name – bad idea. No blog means no readers, means no one knows about you, means no new business for you. You lose. The name of this person’s blog is not nearly as important as actually having one. While they’re not blogging, someone else out there is. That person is probably booked until September.
Don’t wait, stop deliberating, leap! You don’t have to do everything, but you do have to do something.
Send an email, send a bunch, remind the people in your network what you do and who you help. It took my dad ages to properly figure out what I do, bless him, but there may be people in your network who’ve forgotten, or don’t quite get it. Remind them.
Start a Twitter account. It’s easy and it’s free. You can start by following me @twochairslondon. Then find some other people who are in your area. If you’re a therapist, look at who I’m following and start following them. It’s a great way to network even if you hate leaving the house!
This information isn’t groundbreaking, or new, or exciting or in any way an original concept in marketing. However, applying it to your private practice might seem new and not very exciting (more like scary) and probably not groundbreaking.
Pick up almost any marketing book and they’ll be telling you about niches. If you sell a service (which you do) rather than a product you might think “ppfffffttttt…that’s got nothing to do with me. I’m a therapist, I don’t like pigeon-holing my clients”. Or maybe you thought “pppfffttt, I’m a therapist and I know full well that the depression effects the eating disorder effects the relationship and of course the fact that mother died when client was 8 is crucially entwined in all of these issues”. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But this is blog about marketing, so stay with me on this one.
One size does not fit all. Your potential clients have unique problems for which them want unique solutions. Magazines and newspapers are very good at really focusing in on their niche, so let’s use them as an example.Vogue readers aren’t Cosmo readers. Nuts readers aren’t Finanacial Times readers. Anyone who wants anyone to buy anything from them needs to create trust between them and their customer/client. Remember the post on John Lewis? People buy from John Lewis because they trust them, really trust them. Why do they trust them? Because they feel that John Lewis understands them. When you feel understood by the person trying to sell you something, you’re more likely to buy it. (Pay a bit of attention to the electioneering going on at the moment…the political parties want us to trust them so we vote for them…same thing).
When you select a niche you’re able to demonstrate that you really understand that group. Ideally in your marketing, your speaking to just one person. Let’s go back to our Vogue and Cosmo readers – based on my 9 years in PR actually working with journalists from both magazines the picture I’m about to paint of their readers should (I hope) be reasonably accurate:
- The Vogue reader is – 33, extremely fashion literate, beauty conscious, she’s a senior executive, possibly at an ad agency which handles FTSE 100 clients, she skis, she went to public school, she lives in Notting Hill in London, she is engaged to someone with a job at a hedge fund, she is culturally savvy and a member of Tate Modern.
- The Cosmo reader is – 24, she’s been a personal assistant for the past two years but it’s not what she wants to do forever, she’s single at the moment but goes on lots of dates, she lives in Leeds, she loves going on holidays with her girlfriends to hot places eg: Greece, she’s been to Ibizia a couple of times, she shops in Topshop & Miss Selfridge, she has a bit of credit card debt but she’s not too worried about it.
Now of course, loads of other people who are nothing like that buy and read both of these magazines. But the people who write them write for these two people. They are slavishly focused on their target reader. Why? Because they have got to be relevant to those readers, those readers have got to feel like Vogue/Cosmo understands them, that the magazine is written just for them because if Vogue/Cosmo understands them, they trust those magazines and they will buy what those magazines recommend.
How does relate to you? Essentially, if you’re running a generalist practice ie: a practice that works with everyone who’s suffering with anything, you’re not only saying you understand Vogue readers and Cosmo readers…you’re also saying you understand GQ readers, Times readers, NME readers, Angling Times readers, Horse and Hound readers…I could go on but hopefully by now it’s becoming clear how ridiculous this sounds, how could you possibly understand all those different readers? And if you say you do understand all those different, it’s very hard for me to believe you, which means I don’t trust you. If I don’t trust you, I’m not calling you.
I’m going to be coming back to this topic a lot. I’m going to be helping you to pick a niche and I’m also going to be interviewing therapists out there who have already done this. Hopefully, they can provide you with some inspiration and you can learn from their mistakes!
If you’re in London on 5th May, you can join in my workshop…we’ll be dedicating a big portion of the evening to this topic. Brainstorming with others can really help, so book your place now, you can book here
I think this is a post we can all relate to by Susan Giurleo – What do when you’re scared sh**tless about building your business
She talks about The Fear. The fear that if we leave our jobs, we’ll fail. The fear that there aren’t enough clients that want to pay us. The feat that we’ll screw it up, fall flat on our faces and everyone will laugh.
I’ve had it, I still get it. I’ve had it right from the beginning. Way back when it finally dawned on me that what I should be doing with my life was practicing psychotherapy, I was afraid I’d never get on a training course. But I did. And what’s more, my intuition was proved right, it was what I was meant to be doing because I took to the training like a duck to water.
Then came the fear that I’d never get a clinical placement…I’d get overlooked for applicants who had better experience or who already came from mental health backgrounds. But I got clinical placements. Then I started to get great feedback from my clients, clients asked if they could work with me once their contract was finished. They wrote me thank-you letters which made me cry. They are among my most treasured possessions because they remind why I do the work I do when The Fear is stalking me.
The Fear also comes along when I hear too many “can’t’s” – other professionals telling me “you can’t run a business that way” or that psychotherapists “can’t have blogs, can’t be on Twitter, can’t engage with social media”. In these situations, I take a step back and try to work out whose fear it really it is and more often than not it’s their fear and not mine. They are afraid of change, they are afraid of or don’t understand new technologies and decide that “I can’t” when in fact they don’t want to, which is so different.
But something I’ve realised is that I’m OK with The Fear…it reminds me that I really care about what I do. I never felt this way when I was a salaried employee, I cared about my work but in a very different way. The difficult decisions where someone else’s responsibility.
What I like most about having the fear is that with a few deep breaths it’s possible to take that energy and turn it into bravery. And I love my new found courage. I’ve dared myself to do things I never would have done when I was on the payroll. I’ve pushed out of my comfort zone and made some great stuff happen, not just for me but for other people too.
What about you? Do you get the fear, what are your strategies for handling it? Post your ideas in the comments below.
If you’re a therapist in private practice you are a small business owner…you may not have quite come to terms with that yet but you are. You wear two hats – one as clinician and one as someone who has an accountant. That was my defining moment when I really realised I had a business, was when I appointed my accountant. Blessed be the bean counters!
So you’re a business owner, even if you’re still freaking out about this stay with me. If you are a business owner with an email address that ends @googlemail.com or @hotmail.com or @btconnect.co.uk every time you send a professional email relating to your business to a client, you are promoting their business and not yours. You also look like a small time operator, more like someone who has a hobby, rather than a business. If a service provider I engage with doesn’t have their own email address I do always wonder why they couldn’t be bothered…that’s just me. To me it seems like laziness. You might disagree, but I would encourage you to at least think about it if you haven’t before now. If you want a hobby, that’s absolutely fine but if you’re the primary breadwinner in your household and you’re not “you” in your email address, it’s time to think about changing that. Because every time you send an email from Yahoo or Hotmail or BT you are promoting their brand messages and their corporate messages and not yours.
What’s more, you’ll be at the mercy of their servers and security policies. If they decide that an inbound email is spam, they will not deliver it to your inbox. That email could have been a potential new client inquiring about your services, a referral from a colleague…once you start to think about it, it becomes horrifying. But the upshot is that you don’t get the email, so you don’t respond and you look unprofessional without even realising it. So not worth it.
I would encourage you to think about it – which looks more professional tamarisk@hotmail.com or tamarisk@twochairscounselling.co.uk? By the way, the former address isn’t mine so please don’t email whoever has that address! The second is me…email away if you’ve got questions or queries.
I’m a bike rider, I cycle pretty much everywhere. It’s my no-brainer way of getting some excerise into my day. But every time I hit the road I encounter something that frustrates me (and that’s the polite way of saying it).
I encounter cars. More specifically I encounter cars and drivers who think I’m clairvoyant, psychic or maybe both. For some reason, car drivers in London think it’s perfectly OK to turn left or right without indicating. At best, it’s annoying, at worst it’s literally fatal. I’m not psychic nor and I clairvoyant. I don’t know that you’re turning into that road and if you don’t show me, I can’t get out of the way. So you’ll forgive my fist shaking and unlady-like language because in a collision between bike and car, car will always win.
Now what’s this got to do with marketing you might be wondering. Indicators are as important in your marketing as they are when you’re driving. All your marketing materials and all your marketing efforts need to be geared towards showing your client why they should hire you rather than someone else. Don’t make them guess, they aren’t clairvoyant or psychic either.
When your potential client clicks onto your website or picks up your brochure, they are wondering “can this therapist help with my depression/stress/relationship/anxiety attacks” or whatever problem it is that they’re struggling with right now. Your job in your marketing is to make it simple and straight forward – if your problem is X the solution is Y and I specialise in Y.
So turn your indicators on in your marketing, don’t let potential clients click away or call someone else because you left them wondering whether or not you can help them with their unique issue. And please from this cyclist to all car drivers – indicate on the roads too!
It’s been a couple of weeks now since I bought SEO School and I’m still glad I did. It’s helped me understand things that were totally passing me by before. For instance, I’m really keen on learning more and more on how write better copy, so I read lots of blogs about blogging. Try as they might, there is always going to be some jargon, no matter what. But now that I’ve gone through the ebook, I feel much more confident taking on board all the excellent information that’s out there.
Also…drum roll please, I’m going to relaunching this site, my website and my other blog pretty soon to make them all fancy pants. More on that later! But having read SEO School, the whole process of relauching them has been so much easier. Re-writing my website copy in a focused, targeted way having done my keyword research really made me think much harder about what to say and when to say it (buy the ebook and you’ll understand what I mean a bit more with regards to this!).
I’m also about to start some PR activity around the relaunch of both sites and, once again, I’ll be writing my press releases so that my keywords are optimised. If I hadn’t read the book, I doubt I would have even thought of it, but now I feel more confident that I can write press releases that will generated targeted traffic to my website and both blogs.
Finally, working out your keywords forces you to think about your areas of speciality. Think you can optimise for depression, stress, bereavement, relationships, communication issues, life transitions, gender issues, domestic violence…and and and. Be my guest, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be pulling your hair out by the end of it and you’ll have website that makes no sense!
So once again – SEO School. Totally worth it!
I was twisting the dial on the radio in my kitchen on the weekend and managed to get a gazillion north London pirate radio stations. One of them made me stop because it was one of my favourite songs of yore – Janet Jackson’s “What have you done for me lately”. I bopped around the kitchen and then flopped onto the sofa to finally get around to reading Therapy Today (or any non-therapists reading this, it’s the magazine the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy put out for its members).
I enjoy Therapy Today but I noticed on the inside cover that the they state the mission of the organisation. The first one they state is that their mission is to raise the profile of counselling and psychotherapy within the public sphere.
And this is where Miss Janet came in…what, exactly, has the BACP done for me lately? What’s it done for you lately…marketing wise?
When a friend confessed that when he finally admitted to himself he needed the help of a therapist, he had no idea where to turn. He’d never heard of the BACP, and although I found that disappointing, I wasn’t all that surprised. Don’t get me wrong, I am a member and I do think they do a great job in representing us to all sorts of different parties (the public, the government etc). But they can’t do everything, we can’t just kick back and say it’s not my job to make it clear and obvious what I do, how I do it and who I help.
And that’s ultimately the point of marketing. Marketing is just another way of saying “the stuff you do to get people to know what you’re selling and why they should buy it from you and not someone else”. We have to be more proactive, the BACP can’t do the job of marketing everyone’s individual practice.
My feeling is that if we all dedicated a bit more time to marketing our practices, more people would be hearing our messages and more people would be understanding the value of counselling. And guess what? This will become a positive feedback loop – the more people who know about the value of counselling, the more people will seek us out, the more clients we all get. Everyone wins.
What do you guys think? Does marketing still just bamboozle you? Is it scary and something you just don’t want to do or are you excited about it? Leave your thoughts in the comments, esspecially if you want to see more posts here on topics I haven’t been covering.
