How to Get More Clients in Private Practice [in 2020] - Themis Digital Marketing | Direct Marketing and Advertising That Works

This is the definitive guide for getting more patients in private practice. My goal for this article is for you to never need to seek out another source. This covers it all: in person, digital, outreach, content, social media etc.

Note: There are some exercises blended in throughout this guide, so take out a pen and paper and answer these at your leisure. Thinking about these questions now better shapes the future of your practice going forward.

Note 2: I won’t cover joining insurance panels. If you want to do so, you can read more here: https://www.simplepractice.com/blog/navigate-private-pay-insurance-clients/ I am sure you know that being on panels entails more clients. All of the following steps are worthwhile for private pay practices or in-network alike.

“How to get more clients in Private Practice?” If you are asking this, perhaps you have just started your company or maybe it has stagnated. You have it all: someone to do your taxes, you have a space to rent, but now you are sitting in your office staring at a phone that isn’t ringing. How can we change that? Well first let’s think about it from your client’s perspective.

So Let’s Begin, With Step 1 of the 6 Steps to Get More Clients in Private Practice

Step 1: Imagine Your Ideal Therapy Client And Create a Buyer Persona

The most basic step of any marketing strategy is creating your “buyer personas.” I made some of these for specialties like couples counseling (that I can share with you if you email me at [email protected]), but thinking of what clients are best suited for your practice is something that you have to do yourself for the most benefit. Think of the average client that will be most satisfied with your services.

If your answer is “someone who has a mental health condition and is looking for a therapist” then I am sorry, but that won’t do. In 2020, a generalist approach won’t get you far. What people want more and more is a specialist, and for that you have to define and brand yourself to stand out. See below:

It’s important to identify your ideal client at the start because it provides the following benefits to your client acquisition down the line:

Your unique value proposition is immediately highlighted at all stages of the potential client’s journey, giving them more reasons to choose you. Your practice also stands out, instead of blending in with 100 other general therapy sites saying “we can help you.”
All the content you produce will be targeted at this audience. This means better engagement with your site. Which means better rankings for niche terms on Google, faster.
Any ads you invest in in the future can be targeted at this niche audience. That way you get double the ROI compared to a generalist approach.

Bottom line: With a niche marketing approach you get better quality clients at a lower cost.

Exercise A: With that in mind write out 2-3 specific buyer personas that you want to target, be sure to note demographics, and also note where they would be likely to see your content/advertising. Be sure to save these somewhere and reflect every quarter to be sure that you are keeping your messaging focused on these buyers.

Step 2: Define and Build Your Psychotherapy Referral Relationships

Where are you getting your referrals? Be able to list 5-8 institutional referral sources. Some examples should look like this:

David Moche MD, at Park Nicollet Hospital (PCP)
The Mainstown Police Department Trauma unit
Steve Gunn, LMFT
Mary Smith, School guidance counselor
Jen Henry, OB-GYN

If you currently have no in-person referral pathways, let’s brainstorm. Think of the niche you developed in step 1, and think of where your buyers in this niche may hear about you in person.

Some ideas:

Teachers
Company HR department
Doctors
Divorce Lawyers
Chamber of Commerce Event
PCPs
Specialty health providers
Funeral Homes
Yoga studios

Keep these listed somewhere and check-in every month with them (be sure to refer these partners some clients occasionally as well). Also keep these sources in mind for any digital content you may need to create down the road. Successful digital marketing utilizes these in-person relationships as much as possible.

If you still aren’t sure where to start, think of where you would refer people to and reverse engineer who would be able to send you clients right back. If you send people to a nutritionist, talk with that nutritionist about how you can partner with them.

Here are some ideas to build a relationship with these referrals:

Join any of the numerous [city name] therapy groups where local therapists can share clients or look for a specialist that can better assist them with a problem.
Go door to door to potential partners on your day off and leave a business card in their hand. If you talk, you should discuss what a partnership would look like that benefits both practices. OR Schedule a time every week to call around to potential partners.
Go to networking events (Join the chamber of commerce, BNI or a rotary club).
Get involved with the community in some way. Be in the public eye. Talk at local TEDx talks or volunteer some quotes to a local reporter.

Exercise B: Think of 5 possible referral sources. What can they offer you, and what can you offer them?

Step 3: Hire A 24-7 “Sales Team” And Make a Counseling Website That Draws Clients In

Of course while steps 1 and 2 are key for any practice, we are in 2020, people are looking for your services online. This means you have to have a website that can go out and “sell” for your practice. Just as if you are hiring a salesperson, you want to ask the person making your site (or yourself) this question:

What is the sales record of websites you have created? What revenue has a website alone brought to a company similar to mine?
1. Is it tracking leads in order to measure this. This is VERY important so read more here: https://themisdigitalm.wpenginepowered.com/index.php/lead-tracking/

When it comes to websites I look for 6 things:

Does the website exist?
Is it fast? (load speeds have a major effect on showing up in search, 4+ second loading times are bad news) Check for yourself here: https://gtmetrix.com/
Does it look nice and demonstrate the company’s brand? (This increases user engagement)
Are all the technical elements set up properly? (To see a few examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9-AkZch4k)
Is it easily editable (I.e. Does it have a wordpress or squarespace interface, Wix is not friendly for this at all and I never recommend it).
Is your site responsive on mobile devices? http://ami.responsivedesign.is/

Optional exercise: Go through each of these steps and give your website a grade on a 6 point scale. Does it pass?

Often when I inherit a therapy website from a previous SEO (search engine optimisation) company or a web designer, I would say that 0% are able to answer at least 4 of these with a “yes.” This is unfortunate because I think this is a rather simple list. I think that the issue here is that when you put together a marketing strategy in piecemeal, all of the elements don’t work together how they should.

For example, you may pay a web designer to make a site to get more clients, but it tends to not work that way because the web designer is focused on the question “does it look nice?” Then you have to pay an SEO specialist to go through and fix these problems so that you show up in search results, but they don’t focus on creating landing pages for you ad strategy. So then you have to pay an ad specialist to go though and fix the client funnels to go to the appropriate pages that they may have to make that are not SEO friendly, and the back and forth continues. If you can find a good generalist to do this right the first time you save yourself a lot of headaches.

Themis Digital does this all in one fell swoop so you can set it and forget it, and see significant results after 4-6 months. However, if you wouldn’t like to work with me, I can find a reputable partner as well, after all I know the questions to ask and things to fix so that we don’t end up with a poor quality site if it ever comes back to us down the line.

A Note On Home Pages

There are many design concerns for the top section of a home page, the “top of the fold”. If your website is like a car dealership, the “top of the fold” is the sports car in the middle of the showroom. A lot of the time that sportscar is all that people see when they drive by, so make sure it is shiny. I can’t make an exhaustive list but here are a few elements that MUST be on your homepage:

A prominent “Call to action”, that means not a hidden hyperlink in the text of your website that says “contact”. Make it specific like “book and appointment today” or even better, instead of the button being a link to the contact form, put the form right on the home page.
Have a tagline that explains your brand. “The anxiety experts”, “Cutting edge therapy” (and not much else text on the page)
Make sure there is an image on the page that is welcoming, maybe a picture of your practitioners, or something along those lines. In the end, people are choosing a therapist, not an office space.

Step 4: Check Your Search Marketing Presence, and Ask: “Is My Practice’s Website Targeted Towards Key Terms?”

As I alluded to in Step 3, you want to make sure that your website is showing up in Google search for people that are looking for your services. Specifically, when it comes to first steps are you showing up for “bottom of the funnel” searches? And are you appearing in local searches?

An example of a funnel for a therapist specializing in anxiety may be something like what you see below:

Very few people search a specific term like “Seattle therapist”, but when they do they are looking for a therapist ASAP. Very few are searching “seattle therapist” on a lark or do so in order to learn something (other than to compare seattle therapists). So optimizing your site for terms like this is key, I’ve found that optimizing for counseling terms in particular works better than therapy, but they are both worthwhile to optimize for.

On the other hand many people search “why do I get anxiety at work?” and if you can break this down in a unique and engaging way that few other people have you are set to capture a lot of people who have anxiety but aren’t looking for therapy yet. If you have a solid engagement with potential clients where you add value to their lives they are more likely to think of you when they consider getting therapy down the road.

In Many Ways Modern Marketing Is All About Adding Value

You can also “capture” people who have engaged with your unique content ( really get creative: youtube, podcast, quizzes, webinars) to stay engaged through email or Facebook (something that I, at Themis set up very well, more so than most companies in this space).

I use special tools to see exact rankings for all the terms you rank for, but you can check for yourself how you rank for these key terms by doing this exercise:

Exercise : Find Out How You Rank in Search Engines

For example to check search results for acupuncture in Edina, MN you can use a URL like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=acupuncture&near=edina+mn

(This includes your keyword in the “q=” parameter, and your location in the “near=” parameter.)

However, this can include results for people trying to learn about acupuncture (as seen in those results) so you can use “near me” to be more specific:

https://www.google.com/search?q=acupuncture+near+me&near=edina+mn

Are you performing well in the results? If not, it is likely because you are not prioritizing engaging content compared to your competitors, OR it is not optimized for search results. You must do both to see success.

Step 5: Get Your Practice Ingrained In The Digital Ecosystem

While you are in the process of making a quality website, you can “rent” a proven salesman by using a therapy directory like Psychology Today (+100,000 users per month) or these other highly trafficked sites:

Some areas are more saturated than others for these directories, so if you want to know if the monthly dues for these services are worth it (don’t just burn your money here), be sure to install lead tracking on your site: https://themisdigitalm.wpenginepowered.com/index.php/lead-tracking/

Along those lines, one major factor that determines success for your brand is how authoritative it is compared to your competition. One way that Google determines that is by seeing how many websites are pointing to yours. In this way you want to make sure that your partners that you developed in step 1 are linking to the quality content on your site. Just reach out and ask for a link back, or you can make a blog post that they can upload to their blog (including links pointing back to your site).

Also make sure you are in citation directories (like yellow pages, plus hundreds more) and your Google My Business is set up and verified. Get reviews to review aggregators like Google and Yelp as quickly as you possibly can (keep in mind that while many licenses restrict direct solicitation of reviews that are ways to still get reviews without harassing your current clients).

Here is a simplified map of the local search ecosystem that you must navigate successfully.

Source: https://moz.com/learn/seo/local-search-data-us

Do You Have an Active Social Media Profile (or Three)?

Google also measures how people engage with your social platforms, so at the very least make sure you have them, and post something to each one you have set up regularly (say every week). Share the interesting content you make and boost or use lookalike audiences to reach people who may be interested in your content.

Step 6: Start Advertising Your Practice (Effectively)

The other clear way to get more clients for your practice is to advertise. The wonders of the digital world become clear here, where you may pay $1000 to get a billboard up that 1000 people see, you can now use Facebook (or Google) to show that ad to 3000 people that are super targeted and likely to buy your services.

On a side note, if you are interested in the marketing side of things. Watch this video. It explains why direct marketing is so effective and those generic “catchy” ads are so subjective.

Again step 1 is important in order to set up this step’s payoff. With Google Ads you can target everyone who searches for “Seattle anxiety” in a certain neighborhood that is in the top 40% of income (if you are out of network for example), and is 32-40 years old. The precentage of people who are in this group that will sign up for your services is high, so if you set up your ads properly you can make 1 conversion per $100-200 in Google Ad spend.

It takes some work to achieve that excellent ROI with Google Ads (many improperly set up accounts are paying $400-500 per lead and don’t even know) so hiring a trustworthy marketing group to set this up for you is highly recommended.

How to Get More Clients in Private Practice With Social Media

Social media advertising can be targeted as well, but it is by definition not for bottom of the funnel terms. No one is searching for “Seattle therapist” on Facebook, so you can’t target based on search terms like you could on Google. Also when it comes to Facebook ads, people are mostly looking at cat memes or in a fiery political discussion with their cousin, so not ready to convert, these are “cold leads.” However Facebook knows this, and so it is very cheap to reach many people on Facebook to promote a new product or service for example.

On the upside, advertising doesn’t take a long time to get up and running, so you can turn on results when you want and stop when you need. However, that is also the downside, if you haven’t invested in quality content on your digital profiles, once ads stop, so do your leads. Short term, this can be a good place to invest your time and money while your content is getting off of the ground.

These steps I have outlined are generally best done in this order, but only once they are all complete do you see what powerful synergies there are in this strategy. Having a unified approach to your marketing strategy and taking stock of each of these 6 steps is what eventually leads to you having a powerhouse of a marketing strategy with quality leads fueling your practice’s growth.

Briefly, What NOT To Do

DON’T just throw money at ads or a website without tracking your leads! Seriously, just track your leads.
DON’T assume that only having a website will bring you clients on it’s own.
DON’T be a part of shady link-building schemes or PBNS, make sure that anyone you are using for marketing is fully explaining what they are doing regarding “link building”
DON’T subscribe to any service that is just sending out a mass blog to all their “clients” your blogs should be unique for your brand otherwise they really don’t do you any good when it comes to Google’s watchful eyes. You may not even know this is what you are getting, so to check just copy a paragraph from your latest written blog post and see if it shows up elsewhere. It doesn’t actively hurt you, but if you are paying for it, it’s a waste of money.
DON’T let your website be made on Wix, please.

More Resources:

Two excellent podcasts on this topic are Joe Sanok’s “Practice of the Practice” and Melvin Varghese’s “Selling the Couch”. There is also BrighterVision’s “The Therapist Experience” and Amanda Puryear’s “Abundance Practice Building”. You can also considering joining a cohort of therapists in your position as well to compare what works and what doesn’t at practice of Therapy’s individual consulting or joining a mastermind group for example.

Or as Brighter Vision suggests, just write a book, you aren’t busy enough anyway right? (that’s sarcasm…)

In conclusion, that’s how to get more clients for your private practice in 2020. If you have any questions about your practice and what changes you can make to attract leads, contact me below and we can get started. I offer a full digital marketing audit so you know where you have room for improvement and I can set up lead tracking so you are in a position to start investing in marketing.