It’s not enough to just have a website anymore. Marketing psychology practices means investing in digital marketing strategies if you want to attract more clients and grow your businesses. Digital marketing is the process of promoting your practice through internet channels, including social media, blogs, search engines, email lists and video sites like YouTube.
This blog post will discuss how psychology practices can use digital marketing to expand their client base.
Running a psychology practice is a lot of work. Keeping your therapy team scheduled with the best clients can seem like a full-time job in itself. After all, in addition to running a practice group, you have your own clients to support. Digital marketing can help psychology practices get more clients in their practice. Excellent digital marketing ensures those clients are a good fit for your team.
Not only does digital marketing allow you to reach new potential clients, but it gives your existing client base an opportunity to share the benefits of engaging with your services and telling everyone they know about you. This type of word-of-mouth referral is invaluable for growing a successful business.
Finding the right clients means understanding your own practice and the niche it fills in the market. Is your website attracting the best clients? How do you know who your “best clients” are, anyway?
Who Are The “Right Clients?”
Finding the right clients means understanding your own practice and playing to your team’s strengths. Is your website attracting the best clients? How do you know who your “best clients” are, anyway? This is the most important element to successfully marketing psychology practices.
First, you’ll want to identify your target market. Who is the right person for your practice’s services? What are their interests, lifestyles and opinions about things outside of therapy sessions?
By looking at who has already found success with your practices site, you can get an idea of what kind of people would be interested in working with you. You might even ask some existing clients whom they think should seek out counseling from your business. If it turns out there aren’t many potential clients fitting into this group, you might want to try a different approach.
Next, you’ll need to figure out what your clients are looking for in a psychology practice website. Do they prefer sites that offer the latest research on mental health? Are they solely interested in finding an affordable option or do they care more about convenience? Marketing psychology practices is a lot easier when you know how to use Google Analytics and other tools to help identify which websites draw the most traffic from certain demographics. Once you’ve got some ideas of who is engaging in search, it’ll be easier to know how to target those new patients online.
Referrals: Using Digital Marketing To Generate Leads
Who are your “best” clients? What do they have in common? Chances are, those clients have friends and associates who may need counseling. How do you leverage your most successful clients to generate more ideal clients?
The best (and most affordable) way of marketing psychology practices is through word-of-mouth referrals. You want clients who are already succeeding with the services you offer, right?
Also, referrals don’t always happen naturally. Get in the habit of asking clients to share your name with their network. Make it part of your process. If your services are effective for your current clients, they may need “permission” to tell their friends about. Don’t assume they will share your name and tell their friends how great you are.
Keywords: How Counseling Clients Find You Online
Marketing psychology practices requires a significant amount of self-awareness as a practice group. While many use referrals to help identify a therapist in their area, people who are looking for a counseling help will almost always Google terms such as “anxiety treatment,” “depression counseling” and “life transition services.” These specific search terms let people know exactly what they want to find, which means it’s your job to make sure you’re among the first ones showing up on those searches.
To do this, you’ll need to understand how keywords work on the internet. Keywords are words or phrases that describe important aspects of your practice. They can be anything from general topics (like anxiety) down to more detailed descriptions of problems you treat (like relationship issues). The important thing to remember is that keywords are generated from the user’s perspective. You can’t control what words potential clients will use to find you, so keyword research is essential.
Keywords aren’t limited to a single term. Most therapy practices are local businesses. It’s common for potential clients to add geographical information to specify their needs such as “anxiety treatment in St. Louis.”
Once you’ve identified a list of relevant keywords your community likely uses to find help, you can use them in your site’s content. Make sure to use those keywords as often as you feel is appropriate and include links to pages that go into more detail on the subjects they mention.
You’ll also want to make use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which allow you to share similar information with a wider audience. Even sharing regularly with your own friend network on social media will increase the likelihood that they will mention your name as a referral. Much of successfully marketing psychology practices is about being on the mind of your audience as much as possible.
Use Practice Content To Generate Digital Content
You have a lot of talent within your practice. Clients can be treated in a variety of ways – not just through one-on-one therapy sessions. Leverage the experience and expertise of your entire staff to generate content for blog posts and social media.
The varied services you offer are, in and of themselves, launching points for content creation. Marketing psychology practices involves meeting your prospective clients where they are, no matter what learning style works for them.
Therapy groups can be a solution for clients who can’t afford one-on-one sessions. Your groups, promoted on your website and through social media, are rich sources of content. Groups for children, adolescents and parents present many opportunities to generate blog posts and social media content.
If you offer courses in meditation, parenting and caregiving, some of the details of those lessons can be highlighted in website content and social media posts.
Once you’ve identified the different types of therapy options available to clients, figure out how best to present them online. For instance, if your practice offers group counseling as an affordable alternative to one-on-one sessions, write a blog post about it that includes helpful information for those looking for more than just individual treatment. Then share the link on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter so anyone who may benefit from this service will know they’re likely able to afford it. By including keywords throughout the content – such as “affordable” or “life transition,” you’ll help search engines identify what kinds of people might be interested in reading your post.
Your “Google My Business” Listing May Be The Most Important Digital Marketing Asset
Your Google My Business listing displays your business information and allows plenty of customizations.Google My Business is a free tool that is a must for any psychology practice.
At DecemberPress, we love GMB and have to admit that a listing may be more important than your business website. And it’s FREE.
This is a great way to encourage potential clients to get in touch with your practice. You can also use Google My Business to update local information, which helps you appear more professional and reliable when people search for services in their area. It’s important that you submit all the necessary details so everything about your business comes up correctly on search engines.
This includes things like hours of operation, contact information, payment methods accepted and other key pieces of info anyone would need before visiting the office for the first time. The good news is that it only takes a few minutes to complete this process online at any time!
Search Engine Optimization for Psychology Groups
When you’re looking for digital marketing options, it’s important to remember that some methods are more useful than others depending on the type of clientele your practice works with. For instance, people who use search engines while researching mental health information might be interested in seeing what organizations have to say about specific issues. These types of visitors aren’t necessarily looking for a therapist or counselor right away – they just need an unbiased opinion from someone who is well-versed in these particular topics.
For this reason, organic SEO can help psychology groups reach out to those individuals. By including good Search Engine Optimization practices in your blog posts and including other helpful details like service offerings and contact information – potential clients will find it easier to locate services offered by your group rather
If you don’t have time or bandwidth to manage your own social media and website content, DecemberPress offers full-service content creation and formatting at affordable prices to help in marketing psychology practices. We produce digital content that respects client privacy, too. Contact us today for more details.