What Men Want – An Interview With Dr Phil Tyson

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