Productize

It’s a jargon word from marketing--but it simply means to make your service into a product that potential therapy clients will understand--in their own language.

Therapists can easily productize their practices--or areas of practice--to make sure that people understand what the experience of therapy is like. When people understand, they are more likely to reach out to you and start therapy. It’s an authentic way of marketing your therapy practice.

They will start therapy because they understand--from where they are--what will happen.

Productize the Therapy

Suppose you’re a therapist who works with people on their mindset--helping people find the effective ways to handle situations, and thus reach their full potential.

There are lots of ways you could express the process of therapy, but most would involve jargon--which is not client-friendly at first.

Instead, you can simply tell the potential client that what the two of you will do in therapy is “learning, practicing, becoming”.

It’s a three-step process which tells the client what will happen along the way--it also doesn’t commit you to a specific time frame since that’s far more open.

But with your experience you know that your mindset clients go through a process of learning, then practicing what they’ve learned, and living into that practice in their lives--becoming the person they want to be.

Another therapist, who works with depression and anxiety, describes their process as “accepting, planning, completing”. First, the client works through to accepting what their issues are and what causes them. The therapist and client then plan ways to handle those issues and causes. Finally, the client is able to follow through on those plans--completing them.

Productizing your therapy is a process

You begin by thinking through how you do therapy with the clients in your niche. Ask yourself what happens at each stage, and how you know when a client is ready for the transition to the next stage.

We’ll look at this with a three-step process, but it can be modified to work with your process.

  • Stage 1--What does the beginning of the journey look like? What is going on? Clearly summarize this stage.
  • Stage 2--What is the client doing? What reflections, learnings, discoveries are happening? What does the transitional phase look and feel like?
  • Stage 3--What does the end stage look like? What words capture it? How do I know the client is there? How to do we look back to Stages 1 and 2? How do we know when we can finish our work together?

Go through the process you’ve found through your therapy. You may recall some words and phrases you’ve used with different clients. I bet there are several you’ve used. Focus on them to help create the keywords for your process. Those keywords will become the basis for your productized practice

Once you have the keywords for each stage, some may become the obvious candidates. I think you might have some candidates in mind already, but think them all through.

And you’ll have a practice which is productized:  “Learning, Practicing, Becoming”.

Productized therapy practice and getting your message across

If you productize your practice, you’re actually keeping your client in mind. It helps clients with their self-talk--speaking to them as they are. They will relate to you more quickly.

If it sounds clinical, it’s not the right way to say it--at least at first.

You’re trying to help your clients as they make the decision to go into therapy with you. You’re working on what you’d say during the first phone call--whether it’s the free 20 minute call you offer as a promotion, or just the first call which begins your therapy relationship.

You are helping to create some degree of expectation with the client. Your intake session/intro call will be clearer, and you will help the client determine if you are a good fit for them, and vice versa.

Productizing your niche practice will help prevent drop off after the first or second session. If your practice works in several niches, you may end up having several different “products”.

The productized practice can also be featured on your website and Facebook page. Set it up with a strong call to action--setting up the free 20 minute phone conversation, for example--and I think you’ll find clients readier to make the commitment to the process.

They’ll have the key expectations, which you reinforce during your first session. The expectations are set, and you and your client will be able to get more quickly to the work that needs to be done.

Productizing doesn’t mean changing

Thinking through your practice in this way doesn’t mean you’re changing what you do. It won’t take away from your professional background.

It simply helps clients buy into therapy--they can understand better what will happen. You will at the right times know when to be clinical, and your clients will trust you more because they’ve bought in.

You’re not committing to a set period of time for therapy. You know that you shouldn’t guarantee results in a set number of weeks. And the transition between steps of the process, between “learning” and “becoming”, for example, is rarely clear cut. Some clients may be in both stages at the same time.

But this approach does allow you to describe in a nutshell what will happen over the course of treatment with you. And it works because you show that you can speak to them, in the terms they would use.

And speaking in the client’s mode builds trust.

And creates clients.

Facebook’s wide reach makes it a strong marketing platform for many businesses--including your therapy business.

I’ve found that many therapists hesitate get into marketing--and I totally understand. And some might thing that Facebook is too personal.  But if you use it well, you can build a positive community and gently find new clients from your practice’s FB page.

Facebook was originally set up to connect people, at first personally, and then in good, constructive professional ways. Your use of Facebook could create a new safe space for people to form that type of community, and it will give you a chance focus on people in your area--on boosting the niche your practice may be in.

I think if you look at it as creating an  opportunity to share information on your area of expertise, and not on promotion, you’ll be able to invite people to contact you.

How Can Facebook Help Therapists?

Facebook can connect you with two major audience.

First, you will connect with people who are aware of your practice. They’ve “liked” your page.  But because they already know you, they might be less willing to share your page--I think that people are, unfortunately, still hesitant to give the impression that they’ve looked (or been in) therapy.

But many people may not yet be aware of your practice, and they are the ones you want to bring into your caring community on FB. They may be people searching for therapy themselves, or thinking about the issues your practice might raise.

Five Best Practices for Therapist Facebook Marketing

If you want to use Facebook to your best advantage, these five best practices will help you get there.

  1. Your FB page should nice and clean--keep it simple. That helps you--it’s easier to manage.  It also helps others--it feels safer for them. Provide full information about your location and your hours, since many people choose therapists based on convenience from home or the office. If you offer video therapy, especially, you should introduce yourself by video. I’ve got more about videos later on.
  2. One of the things to be clear about is your niche. Therapists with a niche tend to draw more clients, and that niche should be obvious.

Facebook has a lot of communities, and your goal is attracting those who might be potential clients--or people who know them. Establishing your niche in your area will give people the sense that you are focused on them, whether you work with people struggling with PTSD, or married couples handling empty-nest or child-rearing concerns, or whatever other niche you have found for yourself.

  1. People want a variety of content--and you will probably keep more interested if you create a variety of items, too. I think the top four things you can do are these:
  • Many people appreciate helpful pdf checklists or easy guides to experiences you’ve found through your therapy. You could make a “10 Tips for a Healthier Relationship” guide if you work with people in relationships. Another might be “5 Ways to Handle Surprise Triggers” for PTSD clients. Don’t be afraid to give away information and guidance--giving information away helps make new clients.
  • Quizzes can be easy to create, fun, and engaging--and give rise to thoughtful responses. Quizzes after all ask people to talk about themselves--and they allow interaction. A number of services will help you create quizzes while still protecting the privacy and personal information of users, or you can simply ask people to take the quiz for themselves.
  • A video series can help create community and give people a sense of who you are as a therapist. You can provide short comments on various aspects of your niche, and invite conversation in the comments. YouTube will make it easy to upload the videos (which you should also label for access there).
  • Connect all these things to a nurturing email campaign. Make sure that when people interact with you they have the opportunity to give you their email. Via email you will provide even more invitations into your practice.
  1. Continuing the video theme, you should record a video introduction of yourself for FB and for your website. This recording doesn’t need to be fancy, but it will give everyone a 3D sense of who you are. People are looking for both a connection and a fit with a therapist, and this can help begin that process.
  2. One final idea might be a bit controversial, but it could provide even more buzz for your practice.

You could pose a “Question of the Week”--and create the opportunity for online deep discussions. Ask key questions about your niche--or in the neighborhood of the niche--and invite people to respond to them; you could even ask about therapy in general.

As people respond, engage with them, creating a good, solid conversation about the topic. Boost the post on Facebook to increase its visibility, and you can create the community which Facebook can be about.

Facebook and Practice Confidentiality

Obviously, you will not be violating client confidentiality on Facebook. That said, your therapy experience will provide you with a strong grounding in a range of issues, and how they can be addressed.

Just as therapists who speak to community groups--whether about eating disorders or addiction issues--can speak without violating confidentiality, so too can you speak on Facebook.

You know best how to incorporate your experience-based insights into anything you present in public--you may already have experience doing that.

Marketing the Therapy Practice

Sharing your insights, however, will boost your practice.

Therapy marketing is a specialized business, because therapy is based so much on the individual. You want people to come to you--and so much advertising and marketing is impersonal; it can chase people away.

But if you do it gently and carefully, using the advantages that Facebook provides, you can find ways to reach new clients with low fuss and low stress.

Defining your ideal client will bring you more clients.

You can define your ideal client precisely, and you don’t need a lot of words to do it. Therapists who define their clients--who set or create their own niche--will find their practices grow. And the work will be easier.

This Authentic Practice post focuses on precisely defining your client--on establishing your niche--and the challenges and advantages of being precise in that definition.

Defining Your Client

This is the hard part.

I think there are two general paths to your definition of the ideal client. First, you can focus on the types of therapy you do. For example, you could say, “I help individuals with anxiety and depression.”

That definition makes it clear what you do--and don’t do.

  • You don’t do group, family, couples, or relationship therapy.
  • Your practice doesn’t directly deal with eating disorders or sexuality issues, except perhaps as they connect with depression and anxiety.
  • You have a process for working through anxiety and depression.

It also may suggest you’re open to a less-regular schedule of therapy, as people’s anxiety or depression changes from overwhelming to manageable to overwhelming again. That’s part of therapy--and it’s ok.

Another way to define your client is to focus on the audience--on the types of people you find to be your ideal clients. While there may be some therapeutic language in the description, this approach deals mainly with the audience.

One therapist I’ve worked with, as I mention in the video, focuses on therapy for stepmothers. This focus allows for a wide range of therapies, including family, children, and relationship. It opens her practice to group therapy sessions for stepmoms, as well as opportunities to present in a variety of settings. It’s become her specialty.

Benefits of Precision

Both of those definitions are precise--anxiety/depression on the one hand, stepmothers on the other. The degree of precision is up to you, but being precise is a valuable exercise for your practice on several levels.

First, it can be an act of self-care for you. If you define your practice, you will not feel the need to be all things to all people. Once free of that burden, you will help manage your expectations and your energy. It will help you prevent burnout.

Maybe we can put it more positively--you will continue to love your work. You will remain fresh, and eager to find new ways to help your clients. You will know where to look for those ways, and you will be more engaged in the therapy. And that engagement will mean that your clients will also do the work--for themselves.

The focus your ideal client also benefits your practice. You will find it a better route to marketing--you can tailor your message to have maximum impact. You will spend less energy and effort on the business side of the practice.

Precisely defining your client also builds your credibility. It boosts your confidence in your own expertise, and you bring that expertise into each session. In addition, it can lead you to greater public exposure--the media may come to you for comments on your niche.

Finally, the focus will bring clients to you. People will find in you the therapy they need, because you will make them feel like you’re speaking directly to them--on your website, in your presentations, during your interviews.  

Following Your Therapy Passion

The key to finding your niche is following your passion.

Too often, we all do what others expect of them. You may have been advised in school to be open to everyone. Your supervisor may have suggested not bringing yourselves into the practice. We all know of “the rules” which we “should follow”.

But you need to be true to yourself, even as you learn to become a therapist. If you want to have a practice which is both successful and a reflection of your best self--if you’re ambitious like that--you should follow the passion you find along the way.

Keeping two questions in mind as you develop your practice is key to defining your practice:

  • Who are the clients who have had the best experiences in therapy?
  • What is the work I have felt the best about?

Your passion will emerge from those questions.

Ambition Overcomes Fear

One obstacle many have in following their therapy passion--in precisely defining their ideal client--is fear. Part of the fear, of course, is that narrowing the client base will cost money--you won’t have as many clients, and therefore your income will go down.

Part of the fear, though, comes from stepping outside the boundaries you’ve set for yourself and were set for you. How useful, though, are those boundaries for you? How much do they hinder you from getting to where you want to be with your life and your therapy practice?

Defining your client is bringing yourself into your practice--your practice of helping people becomes part of you. Your interests, your creative talents, your understanding of the world all come with you into each session.  

Through therapy, you ask clients to step beyond where they are, and what limits them. Defining your ideal client is simply you, as a therapist, asking yourself to do the same thing. You should be able to do what your clients, through your therapy, will be doing. Without fear.

You Are The Expert

One thing to remember is, in therapy you are the expert, and your clients come to you because of that expertise. I know there’s sometimes a hesitation to boast, but--therapists are experts. Even if you have touches of “imposter syndrome”--you’re not.

And precisely defining your ideal client through your expertise will help get rid of those feelings.

You are the expert to your clients, and they come to you for that expertise. You have the special knowledge and training which will help them make the breakthroughs that make the rewarding moments in therapy.

p>Your expertise--which includes your experience--can also help you define that client. Ask yourself informed questions, which will lead you to the precision you’re looking for.

  • What clients do I most enjoy working with?
  • What is the story of this potential ideal client?
  • Is the issue or concern chronic, situational, or otherwise affected by time?
  • What is the history? What’s going on in the client’s life?
  • Are there patterns which lead to the issue or concern?

The answers to these questions, and others, will lead you to the precisely defined client--not just “middle-aged men” but “middle-aged men who have lost jobs and/or who are underemployed”. Unemployment and underemployment can lead to a range of issues. Another therapist might find the questions lead them to “adolescents and young adults with sexuality concerns causing depression”.

Your expertise will help bring you clients (and will probably allow you to charge more, too).

Challenges

Even though precisely defining your ideal client seems advisable, it does present some challenges.

One of the challenges might be simple geography. You may discover that your definitions comes down to children and families. If you’re not in an area where a lot of children live, you may have a geographic problem seeing many of them. If you’re in a rural area, there simply might not be the population base for many potential therapy niches.

Another challenge to defining the ideal client is the fact that your ideal client might change at some point. That’s true. But it shouldn’t stop you from having an ideal client right now. Ideal clients won’t change on a seasonal basis, but most likely after years of practice. That evolution is OK--and you should always be thinking about your practice and your interests.

Your Authentic Message

The best advantage of precisely defining your ideal client--your niche--is it will help you create your authentic message.

Your authentic message is

  • The most correct expression of how you help people
  • Told to the people who need your help the most
  • In a way they can understand the best.

In many ways it’s like the elevator speech in the business world--the short, 30 second version of what you do best.

Defining your ideal client goes directly to the second part of the authentic message. Your ideal client is the person who needs you the most. By defining them, you will find them, and that will make your practice both more satisfying and lucrative.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is about much more than keywords. You may be already using targeted keywords to improve search results for your therapy website, but is your SEO perfect?

SEO for therapists is no different than SEO for most other websites. It’s based on some fundamental rules that outlast search engine algorithm changes. The thing about SEO is that you just can’t do it once and then forget about it. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that requires cyclical checkups, just as your car does.

When you neglect your SEO, it shows in your search engine ranking. You fall below more SEO-active competitors and can even drop from the first page of the results (if you’re there already). This can be a big blow for any therapy practice today, when so many people use web searches to find local services.

Improve your therapy website SEO by making sure you’re not repeating the critical SEO mistakes below.

1. Low Quality Content

If you create all your website content yourself, it may be hard to consider it objectively. Try to separate yourself a moment from it and ask yourself the following questions:

If the answer to one or more of these questions is no, you need better content. This can mean hiring a freelance editor to improve your content, or a freelancer writer to create it for you.

As a therapist, you may not have enough time to write enough content. When that happens, outsourcing it makes for better SEO for therapists than neglecting it, or creating something rushed just for the sake of having content.

2. Using the Wrong Keywords

Weak or inaccurate keywords can hurt your SEO ranking. The best SEO for therapists is based on rigorous keyword research. Without researching keywords, you may be surprised to discover that your clients use totally different search terms than you have imagined.

Keyword research will also help you determine the optimal length for your keyword phrases and the precise location you should be targeting based on the website traffic you’re getting. Investing in professional keyword research before launching your therapy website SEO campaign can prove to be an excellent investment.

3. Broken Links

Bad links are bad not only for therapist SEO, but especially for your website and blog readers. Imagine that one of your blog posts or service pages features a call to action that invites clients to contact you for an appointment. If the link is broken, some of the readers, if not most, won’t take the trouble to click on your contact page.

Other broken links that can be especially harmful are those to services pages, social media pages, and to external websites such as organizations that verify your accreditation or an accolade you have received.

You don’t have to hunt for broken links. You can use a free link checker to quickly identify broken links.

4. Neglecting Alt Tags

Search engines cannot make sense of images without an Alt tag. This tag is essentially a brief description of what an image is about. For best therapy website SEO practices, include your keywords in the Alt tag. But remember again that you want to avoid duplicate tags – try as much as possible to write unique Alt tags for every image on your website and blog. This includes images on your homepage, services pages, testimonials section, or contact page. WordPress makes Alt-tagging easy whenever you upload a new image to your website.

5. Not Minding Your URL Structure

The URL is the web address of every page on your website, and looks something like www.website.com/soho-therapy-services/anger-management. Notice how clean and simple this structure is. Google can make sense of it. But how different things would be if instead it looked like www.website.com/services-services-cheap/4583447?

Apart from being clean, a good URL structure includes your keyword phrase (soho therapy services in the example above) and is relevant to the page it stands for. One thing to keep in mind is that your URL structure may keep branching as your therapy website grows. Best therapy website SEO practices entail that you check the URL structure frequently and name pages accordingly.

6. Poor Mobile Performance

How fast your therapy website loads and how well it runs on mobile devices is a key SEO ranking factor. We won’t go into the details of how Google figures this out, but it does. What this means is that even if your website is full of great content and you avoid all the other five critical SEO mistakes above, it may still not rank well if it’s not mobile-friendly.

The simplest way to make your therapy website mobile-friendly is to use a responsive theme that can scale down images. Test your website on both smartphones and tablets to make sure. Also important is to use a good web hosting provider. It’s worth paying a little extra money to get a high-performance hosting server that can retrieve your files fast.

The Bottom Line

SEO for therapists does require work, but it’s straightforward enough. You begin by making sure that your content is as good as you can make it, and that your title tags, meta tags, and URL structure are all clean and relevant. You avoid using ineffective keywords that can dilute or harm your SEO. You don’t neglect broken links or Alt tags, either, but make sure they do their work. Lastly, you optimize your website for mobile devices with a responsive theme, to make it accessible to all web users.

All this may seem like plenty of work, but remember that you can break down these jobs into smaller tasks, working on one thing at a time. A good quality theme will help you control many of these issues. And if you just don’t have time to do any therapy website SEO, you can always outsource it. It’s an investment that pays

9 Ways to Create a More Engaging Therapist Blog

When you create a therapist blog, there’s one thing you must remember – most other good therapists already have a blog. Their blogs have been around for longer than yours, which means they enjoy a better SEO ranking and a more solid online reputation. In other words, for your blog to get noticed, you have to make it stand out.

This requires first of all a good understanding of what makes your practice different from all the other practices in your area. Is it your specialization? The care you offer your clients? The good pricing? Make sure you integrate that into your blog. Build your content and your calls to action on your unique benefits.

Here are some ways in which you can increase therapist blog engagement. Let them inspire you to create a more compelling blog.

1. Speak Directly to Your Clients

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for therapists when it successfully connects them to their clients. Clients come to your blog to learn more about your practice and find solutions to their problems. They are not that interested in mental health news that doesn’t concern them, therapist conferences, or any specialized subjects not easily understood.

Remember that first and foremost, your blog is most effective when it’s used as a social, not professional platform. Keep the language simple and the topics accessible.

2. Use a Mobile Responsive Theme

Today, many people read blogs on the go on their smartphones and tablets, while they travel or commute. If your therapist blog doesn’t run flawlessly on mobile devices, you are losing traffic and possibly clients. The simplest way to ensure anyone can access your website on mobile is to run it on a platform like WordPress and choose a responsive theme (note: Therapist Marketing designs are built on WordPress and checked regularly to maximize device responsiveness). Test the theme on your own mobile device to see how it performs. Make sure the images load properly and that the font is easy to read and can be easily magnified.

3. Be Personal

Visitors will more easily interact with you if they can see your photo and read a friendly description of yourself. If you only offer them an enumeration of qualifications and hide behind your practice logo, like some therapists do, it will be harder to connect with them. The voice behind your posts is also crucial. Leave out any psychobabble and speak openly.

Don’t be afraid to share details from your life. It will invite your readers to open up. Take the time to create an About page that presents you not only as a professional, but also as a person. If you feel comfortable in front of a camera, consider recording a video of yourself greeting visitors. It not only makes a more powerful impression, but is good for search engine optimization, too.

Even if you share your practice with one or two other professionals, it’s still important for each of you to have your own identity. Feature photos and bios accordingly.

4. Make Your Titles As Attractive As Possible

Visitors to your therapist blog will run a mental check on a title before deciding whether to continue reading a post or not. A clumsy, long, or dull title will reduce the time visitors spend on your website, which can mean fewer leads. Here are some tips for writing titles that increase therapist blog engagement, with examples:

5. Build a Community

Your therapist blog will become more exciting if it becomes an exchange of experiences, rather than a monologue. If you are the only voice that is talking on your blog, and all others listen, the level of engagement for users won’t be as high. Invite users to share their thoughts and experiences at the end of every post. Respond to comments that add to the discussion to encourage further comments. Successful blogs are two-way conversations: in return for the expertise they are receiving, your readers can share their own experiences.

6. Be Fresh and Specific

There are so many therapy resources on the web that it may seem that every topic has been covered. It is reasonable to assume that many people who come to your website know about common cures for depression, anxiety, and other popular topics. Serving them the same information they know already isn’t a very encouraging way to attract clients. Look instead for new information available for the same old problems, such as fresh research and studies.

7. Limit Your Calls to Action

Too many calls to action on your blog can confuse readers and actually decrease engagement. If you include a call to action at the end of your posts, one in your sidebar, and another in the footer, the power of each will be diluted by the others. Decide what action you want visitors to take and build your calls to action to support that. If you want people to call or schedule an appointment, use a visual sidebar or footer call to action. If you want people to check your social media profiles or discover your other content, add links at the end of your posts.

8. Invite Guest Posts

Guests posts can add freshness to your blog. They are also a natural way to generate content for your blog. As a therapist, you may know other therapists and professionals in the industry who would be willing to share their expertise with you. You may not even have to pay any of them to write a post or two for your blog. Posting on your blog will increase their visibility online and leave a valuable backlink to their own blog or website.

Many will also feel flattered to share their expertise with you. Don’t expect all you ask to say yes, but ask nevertheless. Going a step further, you may also want to feature guest posts from clients (under fictitious names, of course).

9. Enable Facebook Comments

To encourage comments on your blog, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to comment. If they have to log into WordPress or manually enter their email address and name before they can comment, that can discourage them. With a simple plugin you can enable all people who visit your blog to comment using their Facebook account. Since so many people use Facebook, that makes it much easier for anyone to comment on your blog.

Increasing therapist blog engagement is an ongoing effort. There’s no single strategy that can make your blog engaging to everyone instantly. Approach blogging with as much care and consideration as you approach your clients and make it a part of your life. If you do that, you’ll find that it transcends the bounds of marketing and becomes a powerful platform through which you can communicate and connect with people.