Create a marketing strategy for your private practice in 2023: The marketing machine

To market your practice effectively you need a strategy. That strategy needs to take people through a logical journey including:

Entry - where they meet you for the first time

Nurture - where you develop the relationship and trust

Sales - where you tell them how they can work with you

Sounds simple, right? In this episode, I walk you through examples of what this can look like in real mental health private practices. Listen now (or read the transcript) to make sure your marketing helps you achieve your goals with no overwhelm in 2023.

Useful Links

Psychology Business School

Client Checklist 2021

Course Creation Guide

Authority episode: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/27c69a61-a513-4e5d-9991-64bc6962f778

Reach on social media episode: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/cb92a113-e24d-456a-8477-dee43c6f7f01

Relationship marketing episode: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/651f430a-8b8c-463c-a030-6080bc8e3e46

Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Business of Psychology, and today

we're addressing something, which when I talk to my members in psychology

business school or to my coaching clients, always comes up as pretty much

the most important topic when we are dealing with marketing a private practice.

And that is making sure that you have a marketing strategy rather

than just lots of marketing activities that you are doing.

And the way that I like to think of a good marketing strategy

is a bit like a machine.

Every piece of the machine has to be crafted to fit together properly.

If it doesn't, then you just end.

With lots of.

Bits and bobs all over the place, which don't add up to anything useful.

So the first thing we need to do is think about what we actually

want our machine to achieve.

So you start by thinking about the outcome you want your machine to perform what

is it that you want out of this machine?

What's the output you're after?

Is it more clients?

Is it more signups to your online course?

Is it more people to listen to your podcast?

What's the outcome that you're trying to achieve?

. Once you know that you need to then map out each stage of your customer journey.

Sometimes you'll hear this referred to in marketing speak as a funnel, and that's

not my favorite word for it because basically all we are doing is mapping out

the steps that somebody would logically take in order to make that decision to

take the action you want 'em to take.

So let's talk through a really simple customer journey

for a typical independent.

Okay.

Step one might be a person is told about you by a friend or a health professional.

Step two, that person visits your website.

Step three, that person emails you.

Step four, that person receives a personal email response from you

or your VA and a booking form.

Step five, A person attends a consultation.

Step six, that person receives an email follow up.

Step seven.

That person books a therapy session with you.

And finally, step eight, a person then receives an email requesting

feedback about their therapy with you.

. So as you can see, there's nothing complicated about that, but there are

things you need to make sure are in place at every stage of that journey.

So to make sure that step one happens, you've got to be out there

networking, building relationships with people who might recommend you.

For step two, you've gotta make sure that you've got a decent website that

communicates what you do and gives people a way to book and email you.

For step four, you might need to make sure that you've got a templated email

response so that it doesn't take you ages to write personal replies every time.

, step five.

You've gotta make sure that you give somebody a good experience when

they come to you for a consultation.

and step eight, you might need to make sure that you've got a

feedback form, ready to go so that that doesn't take you ages either.

So you can see, even with a really simple customer journey, you still need to

think through each stage and think about what is going to make this as optimal as

possible, so that you get the best out of your marketing, whatever your strategy.

Now things do tend to get a little bit more complicated when we are trying to

build a marketing strategy for passive income products, so books or online

courses, because for these we need to be creating bigger audiences because

it's not likely that we are gonna be getting everybody that we need.

As a result of direct relationship marketing, so networking and,

and people who already know us or have worked with us before.

So this type of customer journey might look a bit different.

The first point on this customer journey might be somebody seeing a social media

post or a paid ad on social media for your podcast, your blog, or your video.

The second stage might be somebody listening to that podcast or

blog or video, which then links them to a free downloadable.

The third stage might be them downloading that free downloadable, going to the thank

you page and joining your mailing list.

The fourth stage might be that person receiving nurturing emails

from you where they get to know you and get more helpful content from.

. The fifth stage might be a person reading your weekly emails that

you send to that email list.

The sixth stage might be that person consuming your weekly podcast blogs

and videos for a little while.

The seventh stage might be that person following you on social media, watching

more videos, maybe reading more posts, and generally getting involved in

the conversations that you're having.

The eighth stage might be a person receiving sales emails from you

that directly ask them to buy your online course or buy your book.

And stage number nine might be the person purchases that course.

That's what we'd hope for anyway.

. So you can see here that at each stage of this customer journey, you are

going to have to create resources.

You're going to have to make efforts to make sure that each stage goes

smoothly and that enough people are coming through this customer journey.

To keep it nice and simple, there are three essential parts that

every customer journey, every marketing machine needs to have.

The first part is outreach.

This is where people have never heard of you before and you're

going to bring them into your world.

You can think of it as an entry point to your customer journey.

So this could be through relat.

Through networking.

It could be through social media, it could be through Google,

your search engine optimization.

or it could be through paid advertising.

. It could also be your cornerstone content.

So if you work really hard at optimizing your podcast or your blog or your

video series so that people can find it, then some of the right people

who are most likely to be interested in working with you, taking your

online course or reading your book might find your cornerstone content.

First off, I'm willing to bet some of you found me through

this podcast, for example.

in some cases, your free downloadable can also be an entry point for people.

Most often it's not.

Most often it's 0.2 or three on your customer journey.

But if you make the right kind of downloadable and you optimize it for

search engines, it is possible that somebody might be searching for the

problem that downloadable solves.

Find it and enter your list that.

, the next stage that every marketing machine needs to have is some

way of nurturing and deepening relationships with the people that

have just met you effectively.

So this often involves emails.

This is still the most effective way to deepen a relationship with people.

So often it might involve a nurture sequence.

So emails that you send to help people get the most out of the free

downloadable that you've created.

It might involve, sending out weekly content to people.

So a newsletter, a podcast, a blog post that you make sure that everybody

on your email list is aware of every.

it might be presenting people with an opportunity for free training.

So you could provide webinars, either pre-recorded or you could do those

live so that people get a taste of what it's like to work with you.

But it could be something else, like a private podcast that you offer to your

subscribers, or anything really that gives them a little bit more contact with you,

so they get to hear from you and see.

it could also be a community.

So lots of people really successfully nurture their relationships, by using a

private Facebook group, for example, where they can give people who are in their

world a bit more attention, a a bit more of an opportunity to show their authority

and demonstrate their expertise to those.

and the final stage that every marketing machine needs to have, and

most psychologists and therapists struggle with the most is a sales stage.

And this is where you are putting out posts and sending

emails, which directly promote.

the action that you want the people on your list to be taking.

So that could be, you know, sign up here for my online course.

This is why it's great.

It could be about having discovery calls or free consultations if you're offering

therapy or another high ticket service like coaching or small group work.

But it is about being confident at this point that you've given people

a lot of free content already.

They've come through the outreach stage, they've come through the nurturing,

deepening the relationship stage.

They're now at the point where they want to hear from you how they can work with

you and get your expertise in their life.

So those are the three stages that every marketing machine needs to have.

It's, it's really, really important that your machine makes sense that

you think about that, that journey that you're expecting people to take

from the beginning to the end and take great care to make sure you've got

everything in place at every stage of that journey to make it logical

for people to keep progressing.

Now, one thing that people often get wrong when they're building their marketing

machine is being too general about.

. So often somebody that's got say a private practice and they're

developing an online course will ask me whether they can have the same

marketing machine for both things.

And the truth is there might be some overlap.

There might be some components that are the same.

So for example, you might.

develop an email nurture sequence that is useful both for people who are,

interested in therapy with you and people who are interested in your online course.

But the fact is that the strategies that will work for those two different

outcomes, Are pretty different.

as I said at the beginning, those two examples I gave for, a typical

private practice, your outreach, the most effective outreach

is likely to be relationship marketing, maybe directory sites.

But if you're building an online course, that is very unlikely to be enough.

So you do need to think about what the outcome is you're trying to

achieve, and make sure that , all of the different tactics that you are

using to get there match that outcome.

and that's kind of all about knowing your ideal client again.

So if you know your ideal client really well, you can work out okay.

Where are they likely to want to hear from me?

And the fact is, for a private practice, people really want

recommendations from people that they trust that is still as true as it.

25 years ago.

Whereas for online courses or books, people are looking on social media

for influencers who they think have the authority to help them.

So that's why we have two different outreach points.

So even though the principles are the same, the tactics you're gonna use

are gonna be different depending on the outcome you want and your ideal

client for that product or service.

So I really hope that makes.

Because I think this is a gap in some people's understanding of marketing.

That means that people end up wasting a lot of time.

Like there is no point in having an amazing Instagram if you don't

have any way of deepening your relationship with those followers.

If you don't have a downloadable, you don't have a nurture sequence.

So you're not doing the rest of the customer journey.

You are not likely to be successful.

Similarly, you could have the best email sequence in the world, but if

there is no way of people learning about you and coming onto that

email list, it's not going to work.

I.

. And you know, even if you do all of that brilliantly, you've got great outreach.

Your nurturing of people is fantastic.

You are brilliant at building relationships with them.

If you forget to do the sales bit, which many of us do, and I think it's

an unconscious bias thing, then you're gonna really struggle to make the money

you need to keep your business going.

So, Take home message.

You need all three of these stages and you need to have thought really carefully

about the outcome you want to achieve and which, which tactics are most likely to

get your ideal client, to take the action that you want them to take at each stage.

I hope that's helpful.

We are gonna be talking lots more about this in the rest of this series.

so if you've got any questions at all, Please do let me know.

I'm over on Instagram at Rosie Gilda Thorpe.

Send me a DM and I'll make sure that we cover the questions that you've

got, in the rest of this series.

Thanks very much for listening and I will see you next time.