You decided to become a psychotherapist because you have a genuine desire to help people. But if you're like most therapists out there, what you didn't sign up for was the often harsh reality of owning your own business. Most therapists are put into the position of being an entrepreneur begrudgingly. They know that private practice is the best way to make a decent living and to help their clients on their own terms.
Many counselor struggle with building a successful practice simply because they have a resistance to, don't care about, or don't understand marketing. As a therapist, you have to learn to both understand and enjoy marketing. Building a practice is very difficult otherwise, even if you love what you do and you're very good at it. You have to be willing to put your business hat on and summon your entrepreneurial spirit if you are to succeed in private practice.
Fortunately, gaining this essential education can indeed by enjoyable. You can learn to love promoting yourself and your work, simply because you come to realize that marketing your practice is inseparable from your clinical skills. How you promote yourself is inextricably linked to how you approach counseling altogether which is why it's so important to emphasize this issue.
Once you give yourself permission to enjoy marketing, then it's a matter of knowing which are the right steps to take to build your practice. If you've already squandered money on display advertising, direct mails, or other expensive marketing tactics, you know how frustrating this can be. Yes, these methods can work-- but only if you know what you're doing and you are very clear about the best way to set it up.
We could spend some time on these traditional forms of marketing, but what I really want to do is to encourage you to get more creative than that. You need to think 'out of the box' because, as you likely already know, if you're doing what everyone else is doing, it is not going to be as effective as you'd like. You should start by making sure you are doing everything possible to establish a powerful online presence. Make sure you have a magnetizing, clean, and well-written website that has been set up for search engine optimization. Start a blog. Get on the social media websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and learn about this new wave of interactivity that has captured the world by storm. As of 2008, these marketing platforms are really just in their infancy in terms of helping therapists like you to get their message out to their local community. Give it a year or two, however, and I predict that this will be one of the most effective ways to build any business, including yours. Because of this, it would make sense to start engaging with these tools now instead of later.
People are looking for therapists in your area on the internet. Basically, you want search engines like Google and Yahoo to help you build your practice as much as possible. The beauty of this is that your website can be a completely automated way for you to get new clients. You don't have to do anything; the clients just find your website and call you. How amazing is that? It is absolutely possible, but you have to have a good web team to help you get there.
I hope this article gets you brainstorming about how you can leverage the power of technology and the internet to take your counseling practice to a new level of success.
Kevin Doherty is a licensed business development consultant with a specialty in helping therapists, healers, and holistic health professionals. He is the author of Build Your Dream Practice and The Purpose Principle.
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