You’re likely reading this post because you want what every other couples therapist wants: to improve your work-life balance and your revenue.
Or, put another way…
Profit for your small therapy practice without adding more hours to your schedule.
We’re here to let you know that this is entirely possible!
As Certified Gottman Therapists, my husband Alapaki Yee and I (Sam Garanzini) co-founded the Gay Couples Institute. Ours is a thriving six-figure practice, delivering therapy to more than 200 gay couples per year across the US at about 10 direct-care sessions per week.
But it didn’t start out that way. We really had to wrap our minds around being business owners and what that meant regarding marketing our practice.
Knowing Where to Start: A Roadmap to Success
Most therapists have no idea how to start or what to do to maximize their return on investment when it comes to marketing. They just put up a generic profile on Psychology Today and hope for the best.
To achieve the goals you’ve set for your practice, you need the right marketing tools. That’s where we come in.
Our Advanced Couples Therapy Mastermind is the perfect place to learn about theory and ideas that will improve your practice. Most importantly, it will provide you with a concrete plan that you can implement to market your practice.
Here’s the plan you need…
Using this process, you will know exactly what to do today, this weekend, and every weekend after that to develop your business.
4 Marketing Tips
Here are some tips we tell our students on how to effectively market your practice. They don’t even cover the tip of the iceberg of what we teach in our course, but these will help you get started in the right direction.
Tip #1. When naming your private therapy practice and website, focus on the outcome your clients are looking to achieve.
While a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” no one is going to know where to find you if you don’t use words that target your audience (Sorry, Shakespeare). In today’s marketplace, customers shop primarily online for products and services. This trend is even more pronounced thanks to the pandemic. You need to use words that will get your website a steady stream of visitors, which can then convert into calls.
We suggest you avoid basing your business and website name on:
- Your first and last name (which I did initially at samgaranzini.com).
- Your location (a mistake I also made with sfgaycouplescounseling.com).
- Cliché therapy phrases
Instead, create your business and website name based on the language your potential clients use to speak about their challenges and frustrations. Research your target audience. Take a look at how they interact on social media. Listen to the way they phrase their goals on intake calls. By doing this, you can create a business name that will speak to them.
When these potential clients do their online searching, your practice will come up. If your content resonates with them, they can relate to you and feel secure in bringing their issues to you.
Let’s look at the website of one of our students as an example of this tip in action: Transfamily Alliance by Shawn Giammattei, Ph.D. With our help, Shawn refined his practice interests. He began to look deeper into families who want help with their teens while coming out as transgendered. Often during the coming out process, the parents are forgotten as the focus turns to the teenager’s needs. Shawn went on to serve more people using a membership site. We’re now helping him create online courses that attract more clients to the membership. Way to go, Shawn!
Tip #2. Even the simplest website can score you full-fee clients.
You’re going to love this tip. It’ll save you thousands of dollars on a multi-page website.
No client wants to be overwhelmed with a ton of information about you, your numerous publications, or high-resolution images of incredible horizons and landscapes. They want only to know that you understand their needs and that you are easy to contact.
That’s why the most important part of any therapist’s website fits on one page. And it works best if there’s a simple path that leads the visitor to schedule a consultation with you.
Tip #3 . Set yourself apart from the competition and brand your practice.
It’s easy to think that the market is saturated. Especially when you note that 99.9% of all Psychology Today profiles are virtually clones of one another.
What sets you apart?
First, know who you are. Do you have any passions that might overlap with your practice?
Next, know who your ideal client is.
Understand their pain points and the outcomes they want to realize. Then convey this understanding in all your marketing materials.
Tip #4. Download our handy (and free) “Ultimate Private Practice Builder Checklist” and email series at our Advanced Couples Therapy Mastermind program.
We’ve got a proven model and specific framework that can help you become an expert couples therapist and build up your small but profitable therapy practice.
If you’d like our help, we can show you how to reduce your direct care caseload down to 10 (or fewer) sessions per week, while keeping your income at a comfortable $150,000 (or more) per year.
Advanced Couples Therapy Mastermind members:
- Get access to the most important Gottman training tools.
- Receive advanced training on affairs, addiction, meta-emotion mismatch, and much more in our video library.
- Learn how to generate more revenue without adding more direct therapy hours to your week.
- Learn how to raise rates without losing clients.
Final Thought
You deserve to have a life outside your practice. And you deserve to be paid well for the quality help you give your community. All you need to do is get yourself connected with those potential clients.
Are you using the Gottman Relationship Builder? Give your clients the best of the Gottman Relationship Coach in this all-new, relationship-saving program. Sign your first couple up for free!
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