How to Harness Online Marketing To Promote Mental Health And Propel Your Private Practice
Are you unsure how to combine your clinical expertise with marketing? Or about how online marketing and mental health promotion might blend together? Maybe surprisingly, the two fuse seamlessly to form a perfect practice-building combination. So, how exactly can you use your knowledge in the digital space to explode your business growth?
Whether online or offline, building trust, rapport, and familiarity are key. When caring for clients, this develops within a clinical setting over time. However, face-to-face is not the only way to develop affinity. In fact, you don’t need to speak to a person to build a perceived relationship and confidence.
Think about your favorite author or celebrity therapist. Do you know them personally? No… But is there a level of trust? Is there a good chance you’d like to speak with them? Maybe even book a consultation? Would you feel as compelled if they were an unknown quantity?
The reason online marketing and mental health promotion are a perfect mix is this: As you educate your visitor and help them gain greater understanding, clarity, and implement meaningful actions, you become seen as the expert. As they return to your site and consume more of your content, the relationship strengthens. By sharing your knowledge freely, you rise up the totem pole of trust. Familiarity does not breed contempt, it cultivates respect. At a certain point, you become viewed as the “go-to” expert. This translates into bookings.
Sharing mental health resources with your audience and network, then, not only spreads the word on mental health awareness but also promotes your private practice. Obviously, this is a win-win.
With this in mind, how can you maximize your impact in the mental health field with online marketing?
Here are our top six tips…
1. Choose your words carefully and appropriately
Whether you are recording a YouTube video or writing a blog post, speak in a way that matches the formality you use in practice. Be professional and engaging. Avoid large words for the sake of proving yourself smart. Use terms that your ideal clients do. Never act condescending, always be respectful. Treat this just as you would an in-person communication.
Check for typos. You’ll lose visitors quickly if you mistake “your” for “you’re”, “there” for “their”, “were for we’re”. These unprofessional slips reflect on your professionalism. People will discount your expertise (and so your care) on this basis. Yes, potential clients do judge a book by its cover!
2. Spend time creating a plan
Before you create any content, spend time creating a game plan. Decide what the aim of the piece is; what you wish to teach. Think about the best way to convey your idea to make a crystal clear impact. Consider bullet points that will keep you on track. Make sure not to dilly dally and waste your visitors’ time. And don’t be boring!
Visitors are often in a hurry. Few will follow your piece to the end. By staying on point, you can deliver mental health advice that gets seen and followed. This promotes psychological wellbeing. As a wonderful offshoot, it also increases the chances of a return visit, a comment left, a budding relationship continuing its growth. Over time, this may bloom into a booked consultation.
Tip: When someone lands on your site to consume your content, offer them a free gift in exchange for their name and email (called an opt-in). This allows you to communicate in the future, share more advice, build stronger relationships, and gain more clients.
3. Prove your expertise
People love to hear from — and listen to — the best! Position yourself in this way and establish yourself as a thought leader. The result is synergistic: You will get noticed, which means people will take heed and act. This will translate into an uptick in mental health and encourage new clients to reach out for therapy.
Ways to do this include:
- Write and post regular, high-quality blogs
- Share industry news, including your expert insights
- Create informative PDFs that people can download, print, use, and share (make sure they’re branded with your practice details, including ways to contact you)
- Provide quotes or interviews for media: Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is an easy way to become a source and connect with journalists. Your local newspaper may be open to an idea that is topical and relevant, approach them
- Once you’ve been featured as the expert, share this widely! Place relevant media logos on your website, in plain sight. Share links and images on your social media accounts. Think about how else you can use this exposure to get noticed for all the right reasons? Then act.
- Hold an information-packed webinar. Then share the recording on your website and social media accounts. You can take this a step further. Reach out to non-competitive, complementary health professionals whose patients would benefit from your presentation. They may love to share it with their tribe, too
- If you have written a book, make sure people know about it. If you aren’t yet an author, consider becoming one. If you’d heard the saying, “They wrote the book on that!”, then you’ll understand a completed manuscript’s magnetic pulling power
4. Discuss on-point topics that reach into the hearts of your ideal clients
Stick to concepts that are relevant to your ideal clients; those you wish to help and attract.
If you specialize in helping divorcees maintain a healthy mental outlook during and beyond divorce, post about this. If your expertise is in recovery from depression or anxiety, that’s your topic! If you deeply long to help teens with eating disorders, start sharing online.
See, you may support clients with a raft of illnesses or challenges. But it’s important to understand that everyone is NOT your ideal client.
Understanding who you best serve is crucial for marketing with impact. So crucial, in fact, that we’ve developed a range of resources to help you find and connect with your niche. This is key to your capacity to promote mental health and promote your practice.
Here are our top five recommended resources:
- Who is your ideal client? Our Ideal Client Worksheet will help you find out!
- Why does this matter? Listen to our podcast: Importance of Brand Clarity & Knowing Your Ideal Client
- How do you woo your best clients? Knowing Your Ideal Client & Strategically Mapping Out Your Time to Acquire Them
- For most therapists, the majority of their clients are local. This means you can distill your approach to those with local impact. In our article, 7 Creative Ways to Reach Local Clients, you’ll learn easy-to-implement approaches that enable you to promote mental health and propel your private practice
- In our post, 4 Easy & Free Giveaways to Get Even More Clients, we share simple ways to attract clients. Each one shares a mental health promotion strategy. As we, humans, love “free”. The right gift can bring hordes of potential clients. Just remember, tailor your give-away to your ideal client for best results
5. Focus on creating mental health content
In your posts, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, blog content, and others, focus on creating mental health content. Share insights, advice, research, and resources that matter; those that move the dial.
The aim?
To be helpful.
Are there actionable pieces of advice that really help your clients? Can these be performed safely at home to soothe or heal? Perfect! Create a post around each one.
Do you use affirmations or mantras? Share these so your visitors can incorporate them into their days.
Do you teach a reframing paradigm to your clients? Can you produce a PDF that walks people through this approach? Do it.
Are there breathing techniques you use to calm stress? A video that guides viewers through — step-by-step — will add value to the participant’s life, deliver a small win, and raise your reputation.
6. Utilize online tools
Many therapists believe that “If you build it, they will come.” While this is a lovely notion, it’s not that simple. The internet is a massive place. You need to wave a virtual flag to entice visitors to, well, visit.
Once you’ve created great content, promote it. Pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), and paid social media ads are different ways to get in front of your ideal clients. Once there, they can “meet” you, get to know you, consume your content, and gain benefit. This will promote their mental health. And, you guessed it, as a percentage will convert into clients, it will build your practice in the process.
Appropriate and targeted online marketing is a wonderful way for therapists to make a profound difference in the lives of others and propel practice growth. These are not mutually exclusive.
By choosing your words carefully and appropriately, creating a plan, proving your expertise, discussing on-point topics directed at your ideal clients, creating mental health content that matters, and then maximizing your reach with digital tools, you can achieve startling results with online marketing for mental health. We’ve helped many clients to do just this.
Remember, the world needs to hear from you. Your insights are especially poignant in this pandemic time. By sharing your advice in the right way you will propel your practice growth too. That’s a win-win!
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