Episode 6: The Power of Simplicity In Marketing Your Practice
Why Less Can Be More When Marketing Your Practice
As a mom therapist juggling multiple responsibilities, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that more is better—especially when it comes to marketing your practice. But the truth is, simplicity can be incredibly powerful. In this post, I want to expand on how focusing on a few effective marketing strategies can help you build a thriving practice while preserving your sanity. Spoiler alert: You don't need to do it all.
The Overwhelm of Doing Too Much
When I first started my solo practice, I did what many of us do: tried every marketing strategy under the sun. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, newsletters, networking, directories—you name it, I tried it. What happened? I ended up overwhelmed and stretched thin, spending time and money on efforts that didn’t yield the results I wanted.
Many of us are mom therapists with so much on our plates already. We don’t have time to waste on strategies that aren’t effective. This is why it's so crucial to simplify your marketing efforts and focus on what truly works for you.
Tailoring Marketing to Your Ideal Client
One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was not considering where my ideal clients were actually looking for a therapist. I had a business Twitter account and a LinkedIn profile, only to find out later that my ideal clients weren’t searching for therapists in those places. It was a huge waste of effort.
When you scale back and only focus on a few marketing strategies, you can get better at those techniques and truly hone in on where your clients are. Ask yourself: Where is my ideal client going to be searching for a therapist? For instance, if you work with teens, it might be the parents looking for a therapist, not the teenagers themselves.
The Must-Have Marketing Tools
There are endless marketing tools out there, but in my opinion, two are absolutely non-negotiable: a website and networking. Let's dive deeper into why these two should be in your marketing toolbox.
Your Website: Your Most Powerful Asset
In today’s digital age, if you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on potential clients. People generally turn to Google first when searching for a therapist, not social media. Having a well-optimized website allows you to control how you present yourself and your services. It’s not just a place for information; it's a space where you can truly connect with potential clients.
However, I understand that creating a website can feel overwhelming. In the next couple of episodes, I’ll discuss how to get started and what elements are crucial for making your website an effective tool for attracting clients.
Networking: Building Relationships for Long-Term Success
Networking, whether online or in-person, is vital for building credibility and relationships. When you share your practice with others—be it fellow clinicians, medical professionals, or community stakeholders—you create a network of people who can refer clients to you. Networking also helps you build a list of resources that can support your clients in various ways outside of therapy.
Next episode, I’ll delve deeper into the benefits and techniques of effective networking, but for now, start thinking about how you’re currently networking and how you can improve.
Choosing 3 to 5 Key Strategies
The beauty of simplicity in marketing your practice lies in its effectiveness. I recommend picking 3 to 5 key marketing strategies that align with your practice and your ideal clients. If something you’re currently doing isn’t yielding results, it might be time to let it go. Focus on strategies that feel manageable and bring in clients.
For example, if you’re getting a lot of likes and comments on social media, but it’s not translating into bookings, maybe it’s not the best strategy for you. Instead, could you put more effort into something more effective, like SEO for your website or local community networking?
Conclusion: Less Is More
It’s so easy to look at what everyone else is doing and feel like you have to keep up. But remember, your practice is yours to build as you see fit. By focusing on simplicity and honing in on what truly works, you can reduce overwhelm and build a successful practice that aligns with your goals and values.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what marketing strategies have been most effective for you. Leave a comment or hop over to my Instagram or Facebook to join the conversation. Let’s keep growing and empowering each other!
See you next time!
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Check out our latest podcast episodes for more tips and strategies, and as always, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your support means the world to me!
Transcript for Episode 6
[00:00:00] Ashley Comegys: You are listening to the Raised to Empower podcast. I'm your host, Ashley Comegys, a licensed clinical social worker with a multi-state online therapy practice. I have a passion for empowering women and mom therapists to break free of the fear, overwhelm, and oppressive systems that hold them back from taking action and building the private practice of their dreams.
[00:00:23] My goal is for you to boldly believe in yourself as a clinician and business owner. If you're looking for a place to learn, practice, building, strategy and skill, while also claiming your own power as a woman and a therapist, then you are in the right place. Welcome to the show. Welcome to this week's episode of the Raised Empower Podcast.
[00:00:44] I'm so glad to have you back here with me today. You know, when we are starting out the therapy practice, our primary goal is to make. I mean, that's the truth. We wouldn't have a business if our goal wasn't to be able to have money to live on, [00:01:00] to save, to spend. That's why we start a business. But in order to have a business, in order to have that money in our practice, we have to have clients coming in.
[00:01:10] We have to have people scheduling with us. We have to have people booking appointments. That is how we're going to make money. In order to get clients to then come see us, what do we have to do? We have to market our practice, but one of the things that so often we will do, and I have definitely fallen victim to this myself, is we will do.
[00:01:34] Everything to market our practice because we just need to get people to come in so we do anything and everything we think we need to do to have people say, yes, I want to book a session with you. What we end up doing is we overcomplicate things. We end up spending time on things that are not necessarily producing the outcomes that we're looking for, or really giving us the return on investment, either [00:02:00] time-wise or financially.
[00:02:02] Today I really wanna look at the power of simplicity. You know, as women and as moms, we have a life outside of our practice, so we need to make sure that we are not giving of time and resources to things that are not necessary. That's what we're gonna be looking at today in this episode. One of the things that I think tends to get us caught up in this idea of we have to do a lot of different marketing tools or, or techniques, is we will see other therapists doing a certain marketing technique and we think, oh, well maybe I should be doing that one too.
[00:02:40] we may be struggling to fill our practice, whether we are just starting up or we have been in practice for a while and we're like, I just need more people booking appointments. And so in that struggle we ask others, Hey, like what have you done to try and get more clients? What have you done to market your practice?
[00:02:59] [00:03:00] And so we listen to everybody else. And then we try to copy what they have done. We take this, throw the spaghetti at the wall approach and just kind of see what sticks. And so then we're doing all of these things. We're spending time, we're spending money, we're spending effort on things that may not necessarily be beneficial or are actually going to attract our ideal client.
[00:03:24] And I think that's one of the things that we sometimes. Either get caught up on or we don't consider that how one person is marketing their practice and it works for them, may not necessarily be beneficial or as effective for us either based on location of where we live, the types of clients that we're working with compared to who they're working with.
[00:03:48] If we are able to kind of scale back and only focus on a few marketing strategies rather than doing all of them, or a lot of them, it really [00:04:00] can help us to get better at that technique or that tool. It takes time to figure some of these things out and so maybe it, it means okay, we have to pivot how we're using that tool or change how we're using that strategy, but it doesn't mean we necessarily have to throw it all out.
[00:04:16] Also, when we are able to stop and scale back on the amount of things that we're doing to try to market our practice, it gives us time, , right? Especially as a mom, I have so many things on my plate already that I don't have time to be doing things that are not truly beneficial to me or my practice. I need to make sure if I'm spending time on a marketing technique or utilizing a specific tool to market my practice and spending time and money on those things, that it's actually giving me that return on my investment.
[00:04:53] It's actually bringing in the kinds of clients that I want to be working with. When I first started in my solo [00:05:00] practice, like many of us do, we look to people who have been in the field or who have been in private practice longer than us, and we ask them, how did you do this? We may get courses, we may attend some live trainings, we may have a program that we're a part of, and we're just seeking advice.
[00:05:20] We're seeking direction from the people that I was learning from at the. There was never really a conversation around choosing marketing strategies that really are. Where your ideal client are gonna be. It was kind of presented as, here are all of these marketing strategies, and you should probably do the majority of them.
[00:05:43] So things like Instagram, Facebook, having a website, having an account on Twitter and posting there. Networking not only with other therapists, but definitely with doctor's offices having a LinkedIn profile. Having an email newsletter for my [00:06:00] practice, sending letters to doctor's offices and posting and having accounts in various directories.
[00:06:07] Maybe starting a podcast, having a YouTube channel, posting things on Reddit, having Google my business, sending out flyers and mailers, all of these things. And I know I am missing some of the ones that were shared with me and that I have seen over the years, but it was this sense of you need to do it all.
[00:06:27] I spent a lot of time and money. Many of those things, and I really felt overwhelmed. I was like, is this really how it has to be? I wasn't necessarily clear in how I was marketing. I wasn't focused in my strategy to really speak to my ideal client. It was not shared with me or kind of taught to me to think about how is my ideal client going to be looking for a therapist?
[00:06:53] I was spending time marketing in places where my ideal client wasn't actually gonna be looking for a therapist. I had like a business Twitter account [00:07:00] and a business LinkedIn account. My ideal client is not going on those places to look for a therapist. So once I recognized that not all of these tools and strategies were going to attract the clients that I actually wanted to work with, I really significantly cut down on my marketing strategies and I found myself so much less overwhelmed and busy, and I actually found myself.
[00:07:26] Getting fuller because I was spending time marketing with specific tools and strategies that I knew were going to get in front of clients, that were wanting to work with me and were going to attract them and bring them into my practice. So it really helped to fold where I wasn't just speaking out into the void to everyone and anyone, but really focusing on where is my ideal client going to be searching for a therapist, and how do I reach them?
[00:07:56] The truth is we don't need to do it all, and I think [00:08:00] so often we fall victim to this of, I've seen other people do it this way, so I'm supposed to do it that way. Is it really beneficial to that other person? Does it actually work for them, or are they just doing it because they think they need to as well?
[00:08:15] What I typically recommend is picking three to five strategies. And just focusing on those. I mean, I just listed off probably close to 10, and there are many on there that at the surface level may seem like, oh, that's a great way to reach clients, but may not actually be where people are searching for a therapist.
[00:08:37] Being able to take some time to consider what marketing tools and strategies you want to use. and what you're going to consider of where your ideal client is going to hang out. Some of that is going to be where you're looking at, where are they gonna be like searching for that therapist. It's gonna be dependent on their age.
[00:08:59] It may be [00:09:00] dependent on their gender identity, phase of life they're in. Also, who is the person that is actually searching for the therapist? For your client, it may be the client themselves. But if you work with couples, is it one particular spouse that is searching? If you work with children or teens, is it the parent who is actually searching for the therapist or is it the teenager?
[00:09:22] You really wanna think about those things. When you're choosing where you're going to invest your time and where you're going to invest your money, is that the same place that your ideal client is going to be hanging out, and is that a place that they're actually going to be searching for a therapist?
[00:09:42] We've all been told we need to network in our private practice, but no one actually tells us how to do it or what to say. Enter comprehensive connecting effective scripts that expand your networking community and actually fill your online practice. This free guide will give you effective scripts to connect [00:10:00] with fellow clinicians, medical professionals, and community stakeholders.
[00:10:04] To build strong networking relationships that will help fill your practice. In this guide, you will get tips and tricks for building relationships that will lead to referrals in your practice. Real life examples of messages used to connect with referral sources and customizable plug and send scripts for your specific practice needs.
[00:10:23] So download your free script guide today by going to bitly slash comp Connecting. Hey, hey, bang. Social media a lot of times is touted as like, oh, this is a great way to market, but is that really how people are searching for a therapist? Are people going on Instagram and searching for a therapist in Tampa, Florida?
[00:10:50] or are they going other places to actually search for that Doesn't mean you can't get found, doesn't mean, yeah, you may get a client that way, but is that going [00:11:00] to bring you the majority of your referrals? It's just something to think about. For some people, they do get a lot of referrals that way. For others, they don't.
[00:11:08] And so again, it's how long does it. To grow that audience. How long does it take to, um, have people find you and to get known that, okay, this is a person in that state or in that area that provides that type of therapy service. Now, regardless of the characteristics or the demographics of your ideal, , there are two marketing tools that, in my opinion, are non-negotiables, regardless of what three to five strategies you choose.
[00:11:42] These next two, in my opinion, are a must, and that's having a website and networking with others about your practice. I'm not somebody that believes your practice has to look like everybody else's. You will build your practice the way you do. I [00:12:00] will build it the way I do, and that doesn't mean that one is right or wrong, however.
[00:12:05] These are two tools that I truly believe are absolutely essential to have as part of your marketing strategy. Now, in the next couple episodes, I'm gonna be talking in more detail and actually having some guests on. To talk about the benefits of having a website as an asset for your business and how to effectively network with others about your practice.
[00:12:30] So I'm not gonna go into a ton of details about these today, but I do just wanna kind of highlight the importance of having these in your marketing toolbox, just to kind of get you to start thinking about that networking, whether it is in person or in line, is so important. Because this is a way to build credibility with other people.
[00:12:53] This is a way to build relationships. It's a way for you to get the word out about your practice and [00:13:00] using the help of others to attract clients when you share with somebody else about your therapy practice. And, Hey, I have this practice and this is who I work with and I've been open for this long and this is how people can reach me.
[00:13:13] And this is an ideal client I work with. And then they meet somebody else who fits that description. They're an asset to you to be able to help get that ideal client into your appointment. You are able to use the help of other people. To get the word out about your practice. It's also a way to build support for you and resources for your clients.
[00:13:36] If you are being strategic with who you're networking with, and if you're spending that time networking with people who are kind of adjacent to your ideal client, you're gonna be able to build a list of resources that are gonna be beneficial to helping support your clients in ways outside of therapy.
[00:13:56] In a few weeks we're gonna talk about the benefits of having a professional [00:14:00] network to support you and your practice, but I wanna get you just start to think about how am I currently networking with others? Is it efficient, is it effective? And if not, okay, let me put a pin in this cuz I need to come back to it.
[00:14:14] The second tool that I told you that to me is a non-negotiable, is having a website for your practice. This is an absolute necessity, especially in the world we live in today. The majority of people, when they are searching for a therapist, They're not gonna go to social media first. They're going to do a Google search and they're going to search for a therapist in their area, or a therapist that treats O C D or addiction, or that provides couples counseling or whatever the issue is that they're struggling with.
[00:14:49] Some people will try and use a directory as a way to be their website, and that can be an effective way to do it at the beginning. Sometimes people are hesitant to wanna start a website [00:15:00] because it can be an investment, it can take time, it can feel overwhelming. I'm gonna go next episode into more details about how to get a website set up so that it can be that beginning place of really bringing in your ideal clients.
[00:15:16] It's an asset that you have. So just know that if you're saying, okay, I'm interested in this, but I, I'm not quite there, that's okay. But this is something to be working towards because if you are someone that says, I'm just gonna have a directory, the truth is that the directory doesn't give you as much room to truly attract your ideal client and showcase your practice.
[00:15:38] You're at the mercy of how that directory sets up their profiles. How they choose to optimize profiles and what their algorithm is to have people show up. It's something that, yeah, that may be a starting point for you, but I want you to really be thinking about at what point is it gonna be time for me to go all in [00:16:00] and actually have my own website?
[00:16:02] And so like I said, next episode we're gonna go in more details about having a website, what to include and why it is so important. If you're struggling to grow your client base and are wondering if you need to do more marketing, I'd really encourage you to first look at what your current marketing strategies are.
[00:16:19] How are those actually working? If you have a specific strategy that's bringing you clients and it doesn't feel overwhelming, it feels manageable. Keep doing that. Right. Don't give that one up. That can be one of your three to five strategies, but if it's not actually bringing you clients in, do you need to keep doing that?
[00:16:41] If you are on social media and you're like, I'm getting all these views, I'm getting all these likes, I'm getting all these comments, and that feels really good, I'm getting known, but if it's not bringing you in clients, is it really beneficial? Can you drop it all together? Or is there a better place to [00:17:00] market to the clients that you wanna work with?
[00:17:02] A different way of using that strategy to attract them. So it's just something to think about before saying, I just need to do more. Let's look at what you're actually doing and do we need to continue to use those tools and strateg. . So I really wanna encourage you to focus on choosing three to five marketing tools or strategies that work best for you.
[00:17:25] Again, look at the ones that you're currently using. If those are already working for you, keep doing 'em. And if not, then I want you to ask yourself, why am I continuing to do this and do I need to continue to use this strategy? And if not, Let it go. I really want you to look at, do I feel a pressure to do more than I actually need to do?
[00:17:50] Do I feel like I have to do more cause I see other people doing more, or is it that I don't have to add more, but maybe I need to take some [00:18:00] of the strategies I'm using off and move to different ones. Thank you for listening to today's show, and I would love to hear what you found to be the most effective marketing tool for your practice so far.
[00:18:13] You can leave a rating and a review, and in that comment let me know what has been your most effective marketing tool. Jump over to Instagram or Facebook and let me know in the comments there. What has been your most effective marketing tool for your practice. Thanks so much for being here today, and I will see you back here next week.
[00:18:34] Thank you so much for listening to the Raise to Empower podcast. Check the show notes for all links and resources mentioned in the. If you found today's episode helpful or inspiring, be sure to share it with your therapist friends, and don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave your five star rating and review.
[00:18:51] It truly means so much to me and will help us get our message of empowerment out to other women and mom clinicians, and I'd love to connect with you in our Facebook [00:19:00] community. So check out the show notes for the link or head to Bitly slash raise to empower to join us. I'll see you back here next week.