Marketing Your Private Practice - Part II

C.J. Hayden, in her book “Get Clients Now!,” outlines the six basic methods you can use to market yourself:

– Direct contact and followup. Look at who has referred to you in the past. Call and ask if you can take them to lunch to thank them and learn more about how you can help the people they know.

– Networking and Referral Building. If you specialize in infertility counseling, for example, you should get to know a couple of different audiences. The first is infertility docs. They are going to be your number one source of referrals, likely. The second is OB-GYNs in general, with general practice physicians coming in after that. You’ll want to find out if there are any local chapters of support groups, like RESOLVE. You might also want to connect with local pastors or ministers, who might work with parents who lost a child during birth, or before. Send them a letter and business card and then call to follow-up.

– Public Speaking. Look for opportunities to speak and educate prospective clients — which also increases your visibility with referral sources. Or, look for opportunities to speak to groups of your referral sources. Every therapist in the state has numerous opportunities to speak at professional association meetings. Whether you’re speaking to the public or peers, make sure you create a handout with your contact information; have plenty of business cards on hand; and have a drawing or sign-up sheet so you can collect people’s contact information.

– Writing and Publicity. Article writing is another way to increase your visibility. You can write articles to publish on your website, your blog, or for publication in newsletters — for example, association newsletters, or group newsletters. If your area has chapters of national organizations, like CHADD, they are always looking for content.

– Promotional Events. Consider hosting a luncheon for a group practice of physicians. These types of events aren’t limited to pharmaceutical reps. Call the local practice and ask if you can bring in lunch and introduce yourself. Or participate in local community events, like health fairs or outreach events. You can host events for prospective clients or referral sources, or both.

– Advertising. Finally, there’s advertising. This encompasses everything from newspaper and magazine ads to Yellow Pages, direct mail, and much, much more. Advertising won’t get you the results that some of your other efforts will, but it can help increase your visibility and name recognition.

More in Part Three.

Marketing Your Private Practice - Part I

 I often say in my marketing presentations that there is no secret formula or magic bullet to filling your private practice — the key to success is to select a few simple tactics and do them consistently.

I like to use the model developed by C.J. Hayden, author of “Get Clients Now!,” to help you understand how this works. Marketing is like a water system; it’s constantly “in flow.”

You start with buckets of prospects, contacts, leads, and referrals. The first stage is filling the pipeline. The second stage is following up. Then you get to the third stage — which is the “presentation” stage. For therapists, this is usually a phone conversation. Prospective clients either say “yes” or “no.” Yes is they book an appointment. No is “I’ll get back to you” or “No thanks.”

The key questions to ask yourself are: Where in this cycle are you stuck? Which stage needs more work? Do you need more people contacting you? Do you need help getting them to the point where you can talk on the phone for five minutes to see if what they need and what you offer is a good fit? Do you need help following up with folks who don’t say “Yes” right away?

Do you consistently capture the names and e-mail addresses of people who contact you? Few therapists bother to build a database of prospective clients to keep in touch with until they say yes. Even fewer actually keep in touch with those prospects. Yet it’s easy to send an informative quarterly e-mail newsletter to prospective clients who contacted you at one time.

There is also a mathematical formula at work here. The general guideline across all industries is that you need 30 people in your pipeline to yield 1 client. Because therapy clients “self-identify” themselves for the most part, I believe the ratio for therapy clients is actually closer to 6-to-1. For every 6 people who find you, one will become a client.

In order to effectively build your private practice, you need to cultivate relationships. These can be relationships with prospective clients, referral sources, insurance companies, EAP providers, or anyone else in a position to either become a client or send new clients your way.

Build your visibility in order to be in touch with enough people to convert into clients. To gain visibility, you need to market yourself.

Marketing is telling people what you do, over and over again. It’s a process where prospective clients get to know, like, and trust you.

More on this in Part Two.