Grow Your Psychology Practice With These Top 3 Marketing Strategies

Marketing for psychologists can be challenging, especially if you never studied the subject. Fortunately, Amelia Virtual Care has you covered! We’ve provided a host of marketing actions to boost your practice’s standing and attract/maintain patients. Take a look to discover more!In 2019, the United Kingdom had approximately 38,000 psychologists either employed or self-employed. The US Bureau of Labor estimates a 14% growth (much higher than average) in the number of psychologists between 2018 and 2028.  If these figures mean anything, it is that psychologists and therapists will face difficulties standing out against the wave of new competitor practices.  For that reason, Amelia Virtual Care has created a list of the top 3 actions to help grow your practice today. These marketing tips coupled with additional resources will build your online presence while reinforcing your reputation offline. Even for those whose marketing skills are not up to par, you will find easy-to-integrate, cost-savings advice to foster engagement with past, current and prospective patients. This is marketing for therapist 101. Ready to start learning? Let’s dive in. 

1. Discover Your Niche Target

Before you can implement any further marketing action, you need to have your target well defined. It is not enough to say that the potential target client is an individual who suffers from an anxiety disorder or marital problems. This is a generalized conception of the target client that will not differentiate your services from those of a competitor. Rather, it is essential to discover a niche segment of the population, for whom your services are the most suitable. For example, depression is a common mental health problem that occurs in many individuals. However, people living with HIV have a twofold-increased risk of developing depression when compared to those who do not have HIV.  If you could hone in on your services to provide support to this at-risk population, that is, writing blog posts about HIV and mental health, establishing support groups among people living with HIV, etc., your practice could become the “go-to” location for individuals with these specialized needs and rise above the more general competition. 

2. Create a Google My Business Account

According to data reported from Think With Google, more than half of smartphone users contacted a business directly in the search results, e.g. “click to call” option. Similarly, more than 2.5 billion people from around the world have access to a smartphone. Math may or may not be your forte but these numbers suggest that there is a sizable (and growing) client base online at your fingertips. If you want to attract new patients from around the world, especially given the benefits of virtual therapy sessions, a Google My Business account can offer you this opportunity.

3. Create and Optimize Your Content 

Developing content that includes blogging, infographics and videos is an excellent way to build leads and position your practice higher in search engine results.  While it does require some planning beforehand, it is not challenging at all.If you’re new to the process, here is a following list of questions that can set you on the right path to creating effective content:

• Who comprises your target reading audience? Are there different groups? 
• What problems or doubts do patients have? What concrete solutions can you offer?
• What type of format (blog, video, infographic) will best resonate with each of those groups mentioned above?
• What channels (website, social media, external blogging) are the best to share such content?
• How frequent (and realistically) would you need to publish to build engagement with potential and ongoing patients? 
• Is it worth investing in producing eBooks or white papers?

Once done, you can begin the next phases of content creation: brainstorming ideas and writing the actual content. Many low-cost or free tools are available online to help you generate ideas for content. For example, Google Trends shows the relative popularity of any given search term and  reveals event-triggered peaks in keyword search volume. In this above image, you can see that when users entered “anxiety” in Google’s search engine, related queries that were most recently trending in the United States were “coronavirus anxiety, covid 19 anxiety and promethazine for anxiety”. If you’re considering what type of content to publish during this particular season, especially amid the pandemic crisis, it may be worth writing about “promethazine for anxiety” and addressing users’ search concern. Of course, this is just one of many examples of the brainstorming and content creation process. To be more effective, you’ll want to organize an editorial calendar, publish frequently, use eye-catching headlines and stay up-to-date with changes in SEO practices and keywords.—Here at Psious, we provide the tools and resources to help grow your practice and build a strong client base. Our virtual reality technology supports mental health care professionals in treating different mental disorders or conditions.

Other articles that might interest you:

• The Advantages of Online Therapy
• Why it’s important to have a good website and what it should feature
• 8 apps that will make your life easier as a psychologist