Why Now Is A Good Time to Revamp Your Website… Even if Your Calendar is Completely Full
Due to COVID-19, there has undoubtedly been a considerable uptick in need for mental health services this year. And we shouldn’t expect this need to fizzle out anytime soon, especially once the weather begins to cool and we begin spending even more time indoors. The demand for mental health support is at an all-time high, and new potential clients are looking for you online, even if your calendar is full.
While your current schedule might be full right now, between online school, the challenges that come with working from home, and the holidays sneaking up on us, your clients are going to have less time on their hands to schedule consistent sessions. This could create new gaps in your future schedule that will need filling.
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The good news is, there are things you can do right now to get ahead of any possible gaps in your schedule while improving the day-to-day operations of your private practice. In this blog post, we will walk you through the top three reasons why you should update your private practice website and how to do it.
3 Reasons to Revamp Your Private Practice Website (and how to do it)
#1. Make More Money And Work Less By Moving Into Private Pay
By working for yourself and not splitting your profits with the insurance agencies, you can make more money and even consider seeing fewer clients. If you want to stop doing all the extra paperwork, enjoy more freedom to practice the way you believe works best for your clients, and want to make more $$ per session, then transitioning to private pay would be extremely beneficial for you.
If you move into private pay, it is essential to note that your marketing efforts become extra important. Since you will no longer get referrals from insurance companies, you will have to make up for it with your marketing efforts. But this is not as intimidating as it sounds. Updating your website can make a massive impact on your marketing and is a great place to start.
How To Do This
When you move from accepting insurance over to private-pay only, marketing yourself becomes even more critical. You will no longer receive referrals from insurance companies, which means you need to do everything you can to attract new clients to your practice through your own methods.
To ensure your efforts aren’t in vain, start by stepping into the shoes of your ideal client. Private pay clients are generally paying much more out of pocket, and for this reason, they are looking for an expert. Then, update your website to speak directly to their needs. The more precise you can be when writing the content for your site, the better. Having information relevant to the specific type of client you see or niche you serve will help establish you as an expert in your field and instill trust in that particular group of potential clients.
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Updating your content not only helps you speak directly to your ideal client – it also simultaneously helps improve your SEO. Since most private pay clients are looking on their own to find a clinician, they will most likely be turning to a search engine for answers.
No matter which search engine they use – Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. – you want to make sure you are consistently ranking as high as possible. It’s essential to regularly refresh your website’s content to achieve a good ranking. Google takes into account both content quality and content freshness as part of its ranking algorithm. Hence, keeping your content current is a great way to raise or maintain a good search results position.
Finally, you will also want to fine-tune your design to look professional and envoke a specific feeling with your ideal client. The appearance of your website is a direct reflection of your business. Make sure your overall design is conducive to the audience you’re trying to attract.
For more information on how to design your site and write content that speaks directly to your best-fit clients, check out these posts:
- Choosing the Right Color Palette for Your Private Practice Website
- How to Write the Best Content for Your Private Practice Website
#2. See More of Your Ideal Clients
If your client list is full, but you’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed with your practice’s day-to-day responsibilities, it could be because you’re casting your net too wide and are merely seeing many clients that are not your best fit.
It can be tempting when you first create a site to appeal to a mass audience because it makes logical sense that the more general you make your services, the more clients you can see. BUT, in reality, attracting too broad of a client base could be harming your practice.
How To Do This
You should be writing for your ideal client, which means you should pick a specialty and a niche and write to that one specific audience. By refocusing your website on your ideal client, you can then start attracting the particular people you do your best work with. This helps avoid burnout on your end, helps establish you as a professional in the industry, and can help dramatically increase your client referrals. Once you have narrowed down your specialty, you should then consider developing a referral relationship with other therapists.
Niching down and catering to a specific client base can also help you gain many more referrals from other professional associates, especially those who aren’t able to accommodate the specific type of client you’re known for working best with. Choosing a specialty gives you the unique opportunity to build up a reputation as an expert in that field, and will allow you to refer clients back and forth to each, helping both practices avoid the burnout that can come with being a generalist.
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#3. Transition To A Group Practice
If your client list is already full, this may be the right time to consider hiring another clinician and forming a group practice. While starting a group practice comes with its own set of responsibilities, once the transition is complete, you will be able to make more money and see more clients as a practice while splitting your caseload with another clinician.
In a group practice setting, you can leverage resources, no longer work alone, increase your opportunity for collaboration and connection, generate additional income, leverage different marketing strengths by marketing to different niches, and improve internal referrals.
Having a pool of qualified mental health professionals in the same office can make it much easier to provide referrals when necessary. For example, say you primarily work with teenagers dealing with depression. Your newest client talks about depression in his first session, but he mentions that he is more so struggling with family issues in the second session. You lack experience working with families, but your colleague (whose office is right down the same hallway) has specialized family conflict training. In this situation, you could recommend your client continue working with you to address their depression while also working with your colleague to address the issues with his family.
S.L.A.Y Group Practice’s Brighter Vision Website
This can help maintain a sense of security and trust in the process of therapy and seem less like rejection to your clients, even in cases where the suggested therapeutic relationship does not flourish.
How To Do This
When starting a group practice, the most important thing to consider is making sure that the people you bring on will be a good fit. Make sure their goals for having a private practice are in line with your own. It is also a good idea to bring in someone who has already established a niche that is different from your own. Hiring someone with another specialty means they will bring in their client list and will be able to take on clients who don’t fit within your own specialty.
BUT when you bring on a new clinician, you’ll want to revamp your website to reflect this change – even better if you can do this before the new clinician starts! This way, potential clients can view a full list of all the services you will provide, not just those you have been providing as a solo practitioner. Updating your site ahead of time will also help avoid any gap between the new clinician(s) starting and new clients booking sessions with them.
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Final Thoughts
Even if your practice is currently full, with customer behaviors being more unpredictable than ever before, you never know when that will change. Redesigning and updating your website will ensure that you stay ahead of the curve and allow you to find a new or better fit stream of clients ready to pay out of pocket for your services.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can take advantage of this time and opportunity and start generating more revenue, or if you just want to learn more about why now is the perfect time to revamp your website– please consider registering for our upcoming free webinar: Why You Should Revamp Your Therapist Website – Even If Your Client List Is Full
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