10 Marketing Ideas for Therapists to Attract More Clients

As a therapist, you must know what to do and how to approach and treat whenever a client steps in your office. But we understand how it can be difficult for you when it comes to marketing your therapy practice to attract more clients and grow your therapy practice.

Here are 10 marketing ideas for you to attract more clients to your therapy practice:

Define a Niche

Offering therapy to simply any random person won't give any direction to your therapy practice and will give you difficulties to sustain your practice.

For example, if you offer various types of therapy such as couple therapy, therapy related to issues such as depression, therapy for issues related to anxiety, therapy for teenagers, you won't be able to sustain your business. The reason is that such information is already widely available on the internet or available with many experts who specialise at one of such things.

You need to define a niche for your business and work on targeting your services to that niche. This will help you in attracting the clients who actually need your services and who would be willing to pay more and stay for the long term.

To define your niche you need to:

Find out the area you're exceptionally good at
Understand the pain points and how you can solve them from your skills and knowledge
Find the people who are facing such pain points and want a special solution

For example:
You can use your therapy practice to provide therapy specifically for children for a certain age group. Show how your skill set and expertise can help them with their mental health. This will help your therapy practice stand out.

Free Consultation

One of the simplest ideas to attract more clients to your therapy practice is to provide a free consultation. This gives potential clients an idea of how it will be for them if they start coming to you for weekly sessions.

Set up a Referral Program

Referral programs can be beneficial in getting new clients for your therapy practice without spending too much on promotions. It helps in building credibility and trust.

It influences your existing clients to spread a nice word about you.

Why?

The answer is simple. When you offer special benefits along with amazing service, your clients feel happy with you and start trusting you. This also influences them to let others know about your therapy practice and convince them to take a session with you.

Some benefits you can provide to your clients once a referral signs up with you:

A free therapy session for any family member or a friend
A discounted 3-month package
Or 10 sessions at the price of 8

The person coming in from a referral will be more likely to stay since they have already heard a good word about you from their friend or family member.

Host Workshops

You can conduct interactive workshops on mental health and wellness.

Prepare a deck of what you want to cover in the seminar and leave some time at the end of the seminar for a short Q&A session with the participants.

At the end of the seminar, you can share a free guide with the participants. Make sure to provide your contact details along so they can reach out to you if they want to take private sessions with you.

Take their basic information such as email address and other contact information so you can add them to your email list. You can use it to send them your weekly newsletters, offer them free consultation, and promote any upcoming events and workshops.

Out of all the participants, you may only be able to convert a few as your clients. For the rest, you can keep on reaching out to them through emails since you would already their email ids and other contact details.

Provide Online Therapy Sessions to Clients

While you must usually take your therapy sessions in person with your client at your office, sometimes, it may become difficult for your clients to come to your office due to some personal issues or old-age issues. Also, there might be people who have heard a good word about you but may face difficulty to reach you since they live in a different city.

Providing online therapy sessions will help ease your existing clients to reach to you at any time and also give you a wider audience to target which will help you in attracting more clients.

You can keep a specific period or specific days in a week to take online sessions while the rest of the time you take the sessions at your office in person.

Create Content on Mental Health

You need to show your knowledge and the value you can provide to people to build trust in people's eyes about your calibre and expertise. Create and distribute content on various platforms to show your expertise in your field.

There are various ways you can distribute content:

Create a blog focussed on topics surrounding mental health and psychology
Host a podcast where you can share tips on how to handle anxiety, low moods, etc
Create videos on YouTube teaching people various concepts about mental health to help them understand the reasons behind various illnesses

For Example:

Leora Fulvio offers psychotherapy to adults and adolescents as well as couples and families. She specializes in treating Eating Disorders, Codependency, Self Esteem Issues, and Relationship Issues.

Here is a snapshot of her blog Binge Eating Therapy :

Make a Client Friendly Website

A well-designed website is one of the most important things to do to get more clients for your therapy practice. A client-friendly website increases the credibility of the business and makes it easier for people to contact and communicate with you. At the same time, you can provide a call-to-action on your website so people can book a session with you by simply clicking on a link.

Provide basic information about yourself and your therapy practice along with contact information, address of your office and images of your office to make yourself more trustworthy to people who visit your website. Provide the necessary credentials to show your credibility to anyone who visits your website.

Along with your information, provide various client testimonials and reviews as they are the best ways to make people trust your expertise.

Send Educational Newsletters

Your email list can help you in getting new clients. Most of your leads don't convert to clients. Use their information such as email ids and start sending in weekly / monthly email newsletters.

Providing them with information that can educate and make them more aware may help you win their trust and convert them as new clients.

You can provide information such as guides on how to handle anxiety, work stress or low moods, etc. For example:

"10 easy ways to handle your work stress."
"7 things to think of when you're feeling anxious."
"8 simple ways to fix your bad mood."

Along with the valuable information, provide your contact details and a CTA to book a therapy session with you at the end of each newsletter.

Pro Tip:

Don't send too many emails as that can make your subscribers feel overwhelmed which may influence them unsubscribe.
Also, update your email list consistently. If someone is not regularly engaging with your emails, keep removing those contacts. Else, the email service providers would start landing your emails in 'Promotion' or 'SPAM' folder.

Today, it goes without saying that one needs a solid presence on social media to grow business and attract clients and customers. Staying active on social media helps you to engage with your audience and educate them through informative content.

It also helps you to promote your therapy practice and earn the trust of your audience. Social media platforms also help in promoting your therapy practice through ads.

Here are some of the social media platforms that you should be using:

Facebook
Facebook is the platform with the most number of users. You can use Facebook Groups to build communities to engage with your audience.
You can also use Facebook ads to promote your therapy practice by targeting people who come right under your niche.
Instagram
Post pictures of various insights regarding mental health and also around your therapy practice. You can also take live Q&A sessions and engage with your followers.
Quora
Quora is a Q&A platform which is great for driving traffic to your website and increasing your lead generation. You can answer various questions related to your therapy practice. You can use this platform to further distribute your educational content on mental health.

Collaborate with Wellness Centers

You can collaborate with various wellness and yoga centres. You can ask them to place your business cards on their reception counters.

Jointly, you can work with wellness centers to provide various offers to your customers that benefits you both in getting new clients.

This will help you in reaching a new audience and getting more clients for your therapy practice.

The Takeaway

Try to use as many ideas as you can to market your therapy practice to get more clients. While these marketing ideas will help you in setting a base and getting new clients; providing them value and offering proper treatments will increase your credibility and build trust.