More client enquiries means more opportunity to help people who are struggling.
Helping counsellors in private practice with their marketing frees up their time to focus on clients. An effective marketing activity plan can generate more enquiries over time. This means the practice is in good health but, as importantly the counsellor is able to help more people in need.
An empathetic tone and style
Mental health is a delicate area. Working with counsellors we have learnt about subtleties of tone and language to write about you and your practice in way you recognises and are comfortable with.
Marketing is about little and often
Promoting your practice less about a big bang and more about doing the right things consistently over time. We can tell you what to do.
What, who and where.
The words that govern effective marketing of counselling practices. What are your skill sets, which groups in society can benefit and where are they located?
Caught in the wrong web?
Are you frustrated with the inflexibility of the website from your current provider? It does not take much to freshen things up, put you in control and show your business in a fresh, new and effective light.
We would expect to earn your trust first before working with you.
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.
TIP: Consider different people who may need to looking for a counsellor?
It’s not just the individual themselves that may be looking for help. A partner/friend or family member, or a healthcare professional might be looking for a counsellor on behalf of someone else. On your website be sure to have content that talks to people who may be concerned for someone else they know.
TIP: Be as specific as you can in terms who who you can help and how
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 a subject, but very broad. What is causing the depression? Take a theoretical example, that low mood is being caused by factors relating to pregnancy. Drill down further and the issues might be:
- Difficulties conceiving
- Antenatal depression
- Pregnancy choices
- Miscarriage / loss of a baby
- Post-natal depression
At this granular level, you can create content this is relevant to people and which is relatable.
This is just an example, but shows how you need to be thinking when writing about what you do. 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.
How we can help
- Bring clearer understanding of who your clients are
- Manage social media
- Advice on networking
- Training to become self-sufficient in marketing
- Designing website content that ranks well for SEO
- Content creation
- Writing effective profile listings for referring websites
- Local media and PR
A Quick Win – Improve existing website listings
Does your practice have listings on one or many ‘Find a Counsellor’ websites? It’s time to stop neglecting these. Instead, take a look again and follow our simple steps to make sure your listing is optimised and sending strong signals out to Google about where you are and what you do.
What should be on a checklist for effective counsellor marketing?
We have written a blog about 10 top tips to help market a private counselling practice. These are some of the techniques that we are implementing and are working for counsellors who are receiving a greater number of enquiries.
A testimonial for our marketing advice to a counsellor in private practice
Over a period of time, his honesty, integrity, and passion for helping people shone through. I decided to engage Sixth Sense to provide more visibility for my business. I am now getting found on social media and my diary is full! I can thoroughly recommend Sixth Sense for their unassuming, yet hard-working desire to do the best for all of their clients
Debs Wallace
Harmony Counselling
Counselling practices we work with
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Call: 01252 213131 / 07881 784753
Email: hello@sixthsensemarketing.co.uk
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