Four Switches to Make to Get a Cash Based Practice

Deah Curry, PhD

Switch #1 ~ Speak Marketing

Most health care practitioners speak clinician-ese. This doesn’t connect with people who are seeking help, and may in fact be intimidating to them, creating a counterproductive barrier that actually drives them away. To attract a cash paying clientele you must learn to speak the language of marketing.

• Talk directly to an ideal client type. Use second person tense.
• Talk about them, not about you.
• Save all information about your credentials for your About Me website page.
• Talk about their negative experience of their problem, using phrasing they would use.
• Talk about the outcome they want from you, using phrasing they would use.
• Talk about these things in the emotional language of a 5-7 year old.
• Use direct, concrete, specific descriptions of what their suffering does and/or prevents.
• Use direct, concrete, specific descriptions of the results they are desperate for, and will pay for.

Switch #2 ~ Niche Yourself

Niche marketing is NOT the same as limiting the scope of your practice. It will not prevent people outside your niche from wanting to work with you. This is one of the most difficult concepts for clinicians to understand, and one of the most crucial mindset switches you must make. Niche marketing is only about putting a bright spotlight on you. It is not about how you practice or who you accept as a client.

Niche marketing positions you as a specialist or expert. Marketing psychology shows that people naturally make the intuitive leap from understanding that you excel at a particular problem, to assuming that you must also be good at other problems. To establish your niche you must:

• Focus on one ideal client type in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Decide what problem they have, and describe it in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Make that “problem” what you most enjoy helping solve, heal, or change.
• Be confident about the outcome you can help people achieve, in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Exude trust and rapport in all marketing efforts.
• Resist watering down your niche with too many variations and options.
• Be focused and consistent in marketing to your niche in multiple venues.
• Plan multiple ways to market to your niche (see reverse for some ideas).
• Continually refine your language to make it even more specific and emotion-connecting.
• Give your marketing efforts enough time to bear fruit – usually 6-12 months.

Switch #3 ~ Be Persistent

Marketing is an ongoing endeavor. It is a necessary part of running a successful business. Just like bookkeeping, marketing needs to be done on a continual basis. Having a marketing plan helps you be focused and consistent in your efforts, rather than hit and miss. Working your plan ensures that your efforts are timely in connecting with the felt-need of your ideal clients, and also guarantees that you don’t miss advertising deadlines. When you don’t have a plan, or aren’t continually working your plan, it’s difficult to establish a steady stream of cash-paying clients. Persistence in niche marketing might include:

• Contracting to run advertising for 6-12 months in monthly publications.
• Running advertising for 9-16 weeks in weekly publications.
• Having a signature talk and presenting it where your ideal clients go for information.
• Having a website with a well maintained blog.
• Producing a patient education ezine on a monthly or quarterly basis.
• Networking with potential referral sources, such as doctors and other allied professionals.
• Getting hard copies of your ezine on display in others’ offices.
• Teaching a community education workshop on a regular basis.
• Keeping track of what type of marketing works well for you and do more of that.
• Keeping track of how your competition does their marketing and learn from that.
• Keeping track of what type of marketing does not feel natural or energizing for you, and stop that.
• Making appointments with yourself to work on your marketing plan, and keeping them.
• Using half a day a week for marketing when you have all the clients you want.
• Using 2 hours a day for marketing until you have all the clients you want.

Switch #4 ~ Invest in a Sticky Website

A sticky website not only makes visitors want to stay and read more, but return time and again because there is so much of value, or because there is new information posted on a frequent (meaning, weekly) basis. Research shows that when a website isn’t sticky, visitors click away within 3-10 seconds. You have only that long to connect, establish rapport, and stimulate the desire to know more.

Research also shows that 98 million adults use the internet to search for health care services each year. NAMI reports that mental health sites are one of the top 5 searched for sites. That’s good and bad news – good because it makes the relatively inexpensive venture of having a website a good investment, but bad in that your competition likely has one too. There’s more pressure than ever to make your website really do its job for you in terms of attracting potential clients and converting them to appointment-makers.

Website Do’s

• Speak marketing (see Switch #1).

• Speak to your niche (see Switch #2).

• Engage visitors with something interactive (leaving blog comments, ezine sign up, take a quiz, etc).

• Give away free tips in exchange for getting their email address (creates a pool of prospects).

• Repeatedly insert a call to action (a suggestion to call for an appointment).

Website Don’ts

• Link to others’ websites – it encourages people to wander off and not call for appointment.

• Extol your own virtues except on your bio page – exception: do say I can help.

• Write in the third person as if you are writing a book report in high school — it’s cold and impersonal.

• Use professional jargon – it’s confusing, meaningless, distancing, and intimidating.

Find Deah Curry online at thenohypementor.com and on the No Hype Marketing Mentor Blog.

Deah Curry, PhD, is the “No Hype Marketing Mentor,” helping clinicians build and promote their practices.  She talked to WTCI via email about what she does and how she came to be doing it.

What’s your background?

I’ve always had an unusual braid of writing, psych, and entrepreneurial spirit flowing through my life.  My first career was in journalism and public relations, putting my BA in Communication Arts to work in the post-Vietnam era by writing human interest stories about members of the US Air Force and teaching squadron commanders how to use language effectively to communicate better with their troops.

While I worked for the Air Force in Germany, I took on the secondary civil service job of Federal Women’s Program manager – which amounted to career and affirmative actions counseling — and I also started a masters in psychology at that time. Eventually I ended up in the Whole Systems Design degree program at Antioch University Seattle where I wove together an individualized curriculum in counseling psych, adult education, and organizational transformation for my masters.

I opened my private therapy practice in 1990, and taught various courses at a business college early that decade.  For a while I also managed a private healing arts community center and what we called a business incubation service, advising and teaching other solopreneurs how to set up and market their practices.

After I started teaching psych courses to naturopathic medicine students it was impressed on me that I needed a PhD.  In that period of 1997 to 2003 while I was learning to use the Internet for psych research and developing knowledge and interest in e-learning,  I began to see therapists venturing into online marketing.  I realized that my background in journalism, teaching, and entrepreneurialism  was converging  into a unique combination that I could use to coach colleagues on promoting themselves more dynamically on the web.

What do you do now?

The No Hype Mentor was born from my discovery that tele-coaching other solopreneurs in the healing arts on web-presence marketing and using my counseling skills to help them overcome the feelings of insecurity and low self-confidence in business networking is much more fun for me than having a limited, local, routine psychotherapy practice.  In fact, I’ve been intentionally shifting my client base over the last few years so that now about 90% of my clients are therapists, life coaches, or NDs [Naturopathic Doctors] who are struggling to attract and retain clients.

Recently I completed training as a business-life coach, and have become a licensed facilitator of CJ Hayden’s Get Clients Now! program — a system that increased my client load by 75% in the first month, so I’m a big fan of the program. I mentor-coach individuals and groups on constructing a compelling marketing message, and using it in powerful ways that are comfortable for introverts.

Who is a typical therapist client for you; how do you go about helping?

I typically work with clinicians who have either been in practice a number of years and have relied on insurance panels for clients, or those who are relatively new to private practice or have always had a cash-based business model.  They are highly motivated and focused on attracting more self-pay clients, aren’t fully comfortable with promoting themselves, and want mentoring in how to craft an action plan for marketing that uses the internet effectively, easily, and inexpensively.

Using the nine-week No Hype Mentor Method that I developed based on what really works for solopreneur healers, I coach them through a process of honing their ideal client definition and specifying a very clear marketing message.  By the time that’s done, usually they have an excellent homepage for a client-attracting website.  From there, I mentor on using their personality and communication style along with a few new skills to build an effective and sustainable marketing action plan.  The Method includes the 10 Essential Step by Step Keys that walk my clients through all the basics, a detailed self-assessment tool, a counselor-specific online resource guide, along with coaching on designing a sustainable Get Clients Now action plan.

What have you seen working best–and worst–for therapists trying to build a practice?

Marketing is either a new world for my therapist-clients, or one in which they feel uncomfortable, overwhelmed, and impatient.  Most are introverts who feel intimidated and discouraged by the idea of networking, and referral-system building.  They try to market the way they practice:  as generalists who hold the space, reveal little about themselves, speak gently, provide informative options, and let the client come to their own conclusions.  This doesn’t work as a marketing approach — the lack of niche market definition is the biggest mistake I see — and consequently they feel stuck and scared.

The three other big mistakes I see are:

(1) not using genuine personality and natural communication style for connecting with prospective clients

(2) not following a consistent action plan, and

(3) not giving efforts enough time to work before moving on to some other idea.

The top four best marketing tactics for therapists I’ve worked with have been, in this order:

(1) precisely defining their ideal client

(2) crafting an emotionally compelling marketing message

(3) having a sticky, rich content website

(4) using several means of providing free information of value to prospective clients on a frequently refreshed basis

Any final words of wisdom…?

Beyond needing to learn new skills, marketing a private practice is challenging for many of us because it invariably brings up our own issues.  For some, promoting our own business feels like standing in the center ring and turning the spotlight on ourselves, then worrying that everyone will see we’re not good enough.  I’m grateful that my background as a therapist myself can help clients overcome those obstacles while helping their business thrive.

Find Deah Curry online at thenohypementor.com and on the No Hype Marketing Mentor Blog.