Marketing for counselling practices

Advising Counsellors how to get more clients means they can help more people who are in need. 

You need more than professional competence to assist counsellors to market their counselling practice. You first need to earn and win the confidence of the Counsellor to represent what they do and to present that in an appropriate way.  The one thing that can never be compromised is client confidentiality. In many other marketing assignments, the value of happy clients, prepared to endorse the product or service is a key component of any plan. This option is not available but ways to exist to communicate effectiveness with compromising integrity.   

We think that our own innate personality types make us good people to with with Counsellors. Traits like sensitivity, empathy and emotional intelligence help us connect with a Counsellor’s work and let us represent them and their expertise in an appropriate and effective way. If someone who is need of help is able to find, or be introduced to a Counsellor because of the marketing advice provided by us, that is ‘off the scale’ satisfaction as far as we are concerned.

Who is looking for a counsellor?

The individual themselves, a partner/friend/family member or a healthcare professional might all need to be looking for a counsellor at the same time. It’s helpful to keep these different audience types in mind when planning any communications.

What are people looking for help with?

It is helpful to be as specific as you can when writing about mental health, particularly website pages. Take an example of depression that is caused by factors relating to pregnancy. It might be there is one page on a site that covers: 

• Difficulties conceiving
• Antenatal depression
• Pregnancy choices
• Miscarriage / loss of a bay 
• Post-natal depression

Of course the reality is that each is different and distinct. For this reason and because internet searches are getting longer and more specific consider a separate page for each. Another example is counselling adolescents (11-18 years of age). Self-harm, bullying, abuse and lack of confidence might all be presentation symptoms and each should be separated out on a website to make them easier to find. 

What should be on a checklist for effective counsellor marketing? 

• Your website is secure i.e starts with https:// 
• Your website has Google Analytics set up 
• Your website is responsive i.e. automatically re-sizes on tablets and telephones  
• All professional accreditation’s are listed on the website with reciprocal links set up 
• Each service or area of counselling expertise has its own dedicated page 
• Each web page is set up with a page title, page description, images are Alt-tagged correctly 
• The practice is listed on Google My Business 
• You know the geographic areas and boundaries in which your clients are likely to come from.  
• You have given thought to a personal networking strategy 
• You have a credible LinkedIn profile for both you and the practice 
• You have a plan of content that you will drip feed onto your website and share with your connections every month. 

A testimonial for our marketing advice to a counsellor in private practice 

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