Why Am I Not Getting Clients? Marketing Needs to be Consistent and On Point
The industry of Mental Health Therapy seems to be on its ear right now. Statistics that used to be so dependable for what to expect in private practice just don’t make sense these days. There is a lot of disruption in mental health private practice and we are all feeling the strain of uncertainty.
One question I have gotten a lot of lately in consulting for other private practices is “Why am I not getting clients?” The answer, there is a lot to unpack here…
Let’s look at some of these disruptions:
First, there are a lot of players in the game now. With the onset of services like Betterhelp, Cerebral, Alma, and Headway everyone feels like they can go it alone and be their own boss. Sure, these help us to create a lot of flexibility in our sphere for control, but Betterhelp and Cerebral are both sweat shops to work for and that “control” goes out the window as soon as you see what it takes to make any money working for these services. Let alone all the legal troubles that Cerebral has found itself in over the course of the last year.
Alma and Headway are both billing and credentialing companies that have sold therapists on the idea that they can get tons of clients through them. One advertisement I saw for Alma today literally read “I used to get 3 clients a week, and once I joined Alma it changed overnight to 16 a week.” The thing nobody is telling you is that the game is changing. The whole industry is changing and we have to adapt to change with it.
Another disrupter is the current political and economic environment. While politicians may like uncertainty and fear, our society largely does not. When people are uncertain and scared, they don’t know what to trust. Uncertainty largely freezes people when it comes to decision making in buying services and products. If you have not noticed over the last few years, our political cycle now seems to be a never ending ongoing thing. No matter what side of any fences you may sit on politically, rhetoric and fear mongering is the flavor of the day.
So, how do we get clients with all these crazy disruptors going on?
One thing that is not and will not change is the need to have a sales funnel and marketing plan for your mental health private practice. Most of us do this without even really thinking about it. If you take insurance only, then your sales funnel and marketing plan is being found on the insurance directories and hoping clients engage you from there. You may even do a little local networking and referral sourcing to help this a bit. This used to be a tried and true method for getting new clients. This seems to be shifting a bit though in some areas.
If you are self pay, or are working toward being self pay, then the game is much different. You really need to have a thought out marketing and sales funnel. Especially in these uncertain times. What does this mean? Well, this means that you really need to establish a relationship with your potential clients and build trust that you can help them meet their needs.
That, in a nutshell, is what marketing is.
It’s the process of establishing a relationship built on trust that you can meet your potential client’s needs and sell them your services. This process can look a little different for every private practice out there, and it probably should look different depending on who you are serving. It’s based on really understanding who you are serving and why, along with where to engage them to start that relationship.
I have written in some previous blogs about writing copy for your potential clients. This is one part of the relationship building process that is the marketing and sales funnel. When you really look at the whole thing in the gestalt it comes down to this:
Understanding your ideal client (who is this person you want to serve and help?)
Engaging that ideal client and building a relationship with them (you have to establish yourself as the answer to their pain point, you have to build trust)
Call to action for the ideal client (asking for the sale, a lot of people lose the opportunity to start working with a client because they simply don’t ask them if they want to move forward)
Streamlined sales funnel (Making it easy for that ideal client to do business with you)
This is a gross oversimplification of the overall process, but these are the main things that have to be done in order to reach your ideal clients. These are the things that will not change no matter what platform you marketing on or how you are reaching your clients. I would also say that consistency is extremely important in step two. This relationship building is very one sided at first, and you have to show up for it over and over again.
We can help you build a custom marketing strategy and process. We can help you automate this process so it is streamlined and efficient. We can help you establish that relationship that you need to build with your ideal clients.