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What Needs to be in a psychology private practice business plan? Getting Money In to your Psychology Private PracticeBuild it and they will come… Sadly this is not true. You do need to market your private practice in order to get clients. Thankfully the therapy side of business is not too difficult to market if you know where to look. Interventions other than therapy (books, workshops, events etc) require more “audience building” and therefore more marketing knowledge BUT it is sooooo worth it! It is likely however, that at the start of your private practice journey most of your income will come from therapy so let’s start with how to get therapy referrals…
Marketing your private practice: Referral Sources for Psychology PracticesGoogle search – SEO and paid ads. This basically means doing things that help get your website seen by the people that need your help. It is an art and one worth mastering in my opinion as referrals coming through your website tend to be the best fit for your work and they cost the least. Google actually provide pretty good advice on how to rank well in Google. It is almost like they want good content to be found! Here are the big hitters:
·     Get other people to link to your website (this is why getting press coverage is worth it). It gives your website more “domain authority” which is a trustworthiness score Google uses to decide where to put you in search results.
·     Use the phrases potential clients would be searching for in your headings and blog posts (in this post I am trying to rank for “psychology private practice” so it is in most of the headings. You can use tools like “Keyword Finder” and “Answer the Public” to see what people search for but common sense is pretty helpful here.
·     Publish regular content like a blog
·     Keep it simple! Google can’t make sense of complicated navigations so keep client experience at the forefront of your mind when creating your website and that will help it get found. I find it helps to imagine a very anxious person landing on my home page. In a hyper aroused state we aren’t good at concentrating and need things to be very clear. Build your site with that person in mind and Google rewards you.
·     All the other stuff is too technical for me!
Referrals from people you have worked with in the past – colleagues and previous clients (this is a great source if you are setting up in a place you have built a decent network)
Social media (There is so much to say on this but in brief, I find social media is a great place for promoting messages about mental health and promoting low cost workshops and events but I don’t think it is a great place for therapy referrals. Think about where you would look for the kind of thing you are offering. I think I would google search for a therapist so I put my marketing effort for therapy clients into Google and SEO but I use FB to promote low cost items like e-books and hypnobirthing workshops.
Directory sites. There are loads of options if you are promoting your therapy services. I find I get the best quality referrals from Psychology Today. Findatherapist.com also provides lots of referrals but they take 20% of every session fee. Counselling directory works for some people but I look expensive on there so don’t get much. Timewith is a platform to watch, especially if you are an online therapist as they are innovating a new search algorithm which should help those of us who work online to get found more easily.
Insurance companies. You can sign up to several at once through Healthcode. The big hitters seem to be AXA-PPP, Vitality and BUPA but there are others out there too. It is worth signing up for them all when you first