Mental Health Marketing Beginner’s Guide
Introduction
Mental health marketing is a critical skill to have for mental health professionals in private practice or small group practices. Clinical training programs focus on client care, ethical issues, laws and licensing, treatment modalities, and more. These programs don’t cover marketing or running a business, because in many job environments you simply don’t have to worry about these things.
Mental health professionals often step out into a private practice to gain freedom over their time, financial abundance, and freedom from administrative oversight. Those were my motivations, at least!
When this occurs, an issue may arise when a provider finds themselves in business, but not getting clients. It is likely at this point that some efforts have been made to secure clientele, but the results have not yet been obtained. Perhaps the provider has created a website, obtained business cards and a logo, set up profiles on online directories, credentialed with a third party biller, and attended networking events. Still, the clients don’t come. Maybe they do come, but the reimbursement rates are low and the administrative burden high, which leads to a general feeling of disappointment.
The pressure can quickly heat up in these situations when one holds on to hope, keeps doing the things that are thought to be effective, and the results don’t come. It may come to a point when one asks themselves, “If I can’t make this to work soon, what am I going to have to change?”
The reality of failing and need to take a job elsewhere, sacrificing one’s goals and aspirations, may set in. Otherwise, maybe one takes initiative to really sit down and learn what needs to be done to get those clients in the door, and make their dreams a reality.
This guide is for those who resolve to take the next steps to make their practice thriving and successful. All-in-all, one thing I have learned is that it does not happen over night. Steps need to be taken and a real commitment must be made to opening your mind to a new way of doing things. You may have to do things you never thought you’d do, or spend more time and money than you’d otherwise have liked to. If you’re ready for that, dear reader, then read along! Do know that this is meant to be more of a beginners guide and we will not get deep into any high level strategies, but I’ll provide some resources at the end for continued learning.
Mindset Change
Probably the biggest thing to start with is changing how you think about your practice. Maybe you’re already there, but you have to think of yourself as a business owner. It’s easy to dread the business tasks when your expertise is in the client interactions.
My biggest piece of advice is to start working to reframe how you treat your practice. You are a small business owner and you should be proud of that! Small businesses can have a huge impact on your community and the world at large.
Think about someone who is a really, really good cook. Perhaps you know someone like this. Let’s imagine their speciality is tacos - every time they host a taco night you are blown away by how good they are. You tell them they should start their own business.
They are working a corporate day job doing something they don’t really like, but one day they decide they are going to go for it and start a taco truck.
Soon, they will learn that running a taco truck isn’t just about making good tacos. They need to buy a vehicle, outfit it for cooking, follow some health guidelines and possibly get a license, design a menu, possibly secure a loan, and learn where to even go to sell their tacos and make a profit.
A lot of questions arise that need answers! How would you advise this person to find success? You might encourage them to read some books on entrepreneurship, join a local food truck owner community, take a course online or at a local university, and more.
So, it is the same with you! You are a small business owner just like the taco truck owner is. What are you doing to make your business successful and learn the things you need to?
Exercise #1: Pause for a moment to answer that question. Write down how you are solving the problems that your business presents you with.
Okay, now that’s done! The reason I wanted to include that up front is that it can be really hard to make progress in your business if you are feeling some internal resistance toward your business. Think of it like a client who is a resistant to change versus motivated for change. The motivation for change can be the single biggest factor in treatment, because we know they are going to take the right steps to grow both inside of the session and outside of it!
Insurance Options
Now, this guide is for all mental health professionals! For me, that’s anyone who performs a service that has a direct or indirect effect on clients’ mental health. I, personally, come from the therapy world. My partner, Shannon, is a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, so she is also steeped in that world. There are some specifics, like insurance, that come with that. However, the guide, and our clients, include coaches and other types of professionals. So, I’ll touch briefly on insurance strategies which can help with your clients if you are the type of provider that can take insurance. If you are not or don’t want to take insurance, you can skip this section and I’ll provide more information on what you can do if your clients are cash-pay only.
The question of whether to take insurance is a big one, and largely outside of the scope of this document, but I will briefly address it. In the context of marketing, it often boils down to this:
Do you want to reduce the amount of time and money you spend on marketing by accepting insurance, and, if so, are you willing to accept the burdens that come with that?
Some of the drawbacks I hear about this approach are:
You are at risk of clawbacks. This means that the insurance companies can audit all of your treatment notes, and dispute the fact that the client really had the diagnosis you administered, your treatment methods or choice of treatment or more. They can, therefore, ask for all of the money that they gave you back, causing a big financial headache. There are some trainings and things that you can do to mitigate the risks of this, but it can be really tedious to do what the insurance companies want you to do… plus, what is required in your notes varies by insurance company, so it can be a lot to keep track of.
Lower rates. This varies by how you choose to take insurance, the specific insurance company, and more. I’ll get into the details below, but companies like Sondermind only give you $92 per 60-minute session. Many private pay clinicians charge $150 or more for a standard session, so that’s an almost 40% difference! That can be the difference between making $95,680 a year before taxes and making $156,000. I don’t know about you, but that extra $60k sounds nice to me!
More requirements around administering diagnoses (i.e., the client must have a justified diagnosis to be in therapy), as well as the treatment modalities you use. You must use an evidenced-based treatment for the diagnosis you administered, show how you implemented that, and then terminate therapy once the client no longer meets diagnostic criteria (unless they have another diagnosis to treat). Now, that may be a good thing after all, but many clinicians understand that a client’s presenting concerns may not always boil down to a DSM-5 diagnosis, and the evidence-based treatments available may not always be the best treatment route. Thus, you have to change the way you treat, or adapt your notes to reasonably fit these guidelines.
Now, I want to mention some pros as well!
You are able to help clients without asking them to take out an expense. For lower income clients, they probably wouldn’t get the treatment they need without competent clinicians willing to take insurance.
Much more clients! Many companies will do the marketing leg-work to get clients to you, so that you can get a full caseload with having to do as much work. This is a pretty big benefit. Now, of course, even if you take insurance you may still have to do a lot of marketing! It can also be the case that clients find you because you take insurance, so that can help you get more clients if you have more immediate revenue needs.
Some of the options for third-party companies that handle claims include Alma, Sondermind, and Headway. These companies differ in how they pay you, whether they take a monthly fee, and how much marketing they do. I encourage you to look into these companies and speak to a representative or other providers that use these services to compare. I’d encourage you to stay away from Betterhelp due to the fact that they settled in a $7.8m lawsuit for selling user data… plus they only pay about $21 per session!
You can also work with a medical biller to get credentialed directly with insurance companies, and the biller will help process your claims and ensure you are in compliance with what the insurance companies want. Some providers choose to use a hybrid strategy, credentialing with the insurance companies directly and also using a third-party company to help get more clients.
Ultimately, the choice is yours to make. If you do not want to take insurance (or can’t for some reason), my belief is that you need to have a well-thought out marketing strategy in place!
Exercise #2: Pause for a moment and write down whether you want to take insurance, why or why not, if it aligns with your values, or, if you already take it, if it’s working for you? Are you willing to take the steps to get a cash pay case load if you don’t want to take insurance or are unable to?
Tools and Strategies
Marketing is, fundamentally, a business skill that all businesses engage in. The question for you is whether you want to have a game plan and a strategy that you follow, or if you are going to just do the same out stuff that you heard about from word-of-mouth and hope that people discover you and buy your services. That can work, but it’s more a factor of luck and the stars aligning, rather than building out a system that nurtures and grows. In this section, I will outline some tools and strategies that many practitioners employ. This is not designed to build your full strategy, but to get the wheels turning in your mind to what you can be doing as part of your overall strategy.
Choosing your Target Market
Choosing your target market is another really important aspect of marketing. This comes up a LOT when you read marketing books. It essentially boils down to the question of whether you want to be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond.
In general, you want to speak to the needs of your ideal client. You have to put yourself in the shoes of your client. Let’s go back to our taco truck example…
Let’s say you are at your nephew’s soccer game on a Saturday evening. Your niece and nephew both have games that day, so you’re stuck in the sun and hungry for a long day. You notice a group of food trucks parked by the parking lot. You’re starving for something that you will satisfy your hunger. You look around… there’s a kettle corn stand, a coffee truck, a shaved ice stand, and a taco truck. At that point in time, the taco truck directly meets your needs. A coffee truck might not!
However, there may be someone else who is sleep deprived, and they didn’t get enough coffee that morning. They already had lunch, and they are getting to the fields in the afternoon. Now, the coffee shop can meet their needs but the taco truck cannot.
Now, ask yourself who your target market is. Maybe it’s someone with addiction issues, young men who can’t find their way in life, or women experiencing career transitions. What is your training in, and who would you really like to serve?
Exercise #3: Pause for a moment and write about who your ideal client is. What is your target market, or niche? Who do you really want to serve, and why? What does your ideal client look like, what do they spend their time doing?
Social Media and Newsletters
The question of using social media comes up a lot! It often comes with a lot of grunts and groans, and sounds something like, “Ugh, I don’t want to use TikTok to get clients, but I feel like I have to in this day in age!” Don’t worry, you don’t need to use TikTok if you don’t want to! In fact, you don’t even have to use social media if you don’t want to. It is not a necessary marketing tool, but it can be a powerful one to raise brand awareness, demonstrate your value, engage with clients, and bring in referrals.
Ultimately, it’s important to think about what strategies you have in place to capture clients. This could be a newsletter or an instagram account, or something else. Think about where your ideal clients go, and work backwards from there. If your ideal client is teenagers with ADHD, maybe TikTok is the right place to go! If your ideal clients are professionals that are burnout, maybe it’s LinkedIn.
The drawback to using social media is that the social media company owns your profiles. If you build up a following of 10k people in Instagram, it could get shut down, or Instagram could change their advertising policies. Ultimately, building up an email list allows you ‘own’ your own marketing platform. Social media can still be a really good place to share value and get your brand out there, though. It’s never a one-size fits-all, or one platform is best. I prefer to use multiple platforms!
Regardless of whether you use social media or newsletters, I’d encourage you to think about giving value away. As providers, we have special training and experience in solving particular problems. My guess is you’re probably very well read in some subject matters, and you have something useful you can share! The way to use social media or newsletters is to constantly be giving away value. For example, a trauma therapist may share posts about nervous system regulation, or how trauma affects the body, symptoms of trauma, etc.
Making regular posts that provide value is a great strategy to bring in new clients. When a client follows you or signs up for your newsletter, they’re consenting to let you share with them - probably because you’ve helped them or they want your help. Making regular posts that are valuable for them is like planting seeds, and watering them, that may eventually grow into beautiful fruit that can be harvested! As you help a client by providing value, you are showing them what you know, and how you can help solve their issues. Eventually, it can be helpful to make your ‘harvest’ post (after about 3-12 value posts, average of around 7), by telling people what your services are and where to find you. Remember, though, it’s important to have built the trust up with your possible clients by having provided them a lot of value before you try to cash in! Make them want to see before they even know you have services available, and they’ll become an instant client when they find out you can meet their needs.
I use Canva to design my social media posts. It’s free, unless you want some upgraded tools and things, but you can do a lot with the free version. I found a great YouTube video for making carousels (multiple page scrolling type posts). It’s a great follow-along tutorial.
Exercise #4: Pause for a moment and write down what your social media strategy is. What platform(s) are you using? How often will you post? What will you post about?
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is like a hot new buzz word. Once you know it, you’re in the cool kids club or exclusive people that really knows things… just kidding. But seriously, it kinda feels that way! If you’re just hearing about it for the first time, don’t worry. It’s not as scary as it looks! It basically just means that when people search for you on Google, your name is the one that pop ups. If you don’t have good SEO, you are unlikely to show up even if people are searching for you specifically!
I am not an SEO expert at all. For specific help, I’d recommend hiring a professional that specializes in this. I can hook you up with an SEO for Therapists professional if needed!
I can offer you some wisdom I’ve picked up from the pros.
First off, it’s important to have a website. If you’re in practice without a website, get one. I’ve made my own on SquareSpace, but I have a knack for that sort of thing and it takes a lot of trial and error to get a decent looking website. Mostly, you’re best off hiring a professional here as well.
Having good SEO really is about having an active website. Google reads your website for how active it is (how many times it’s being updated and how much people are using it). Website that are more active appear higher in the search rankings. Thus, a simple way to improve your SEO is to make regular changes. You can do this simply by creating regular blog posts and sharing them. If you’re already using social media or newsletters, you can share the blogs there, and even recycle the blog content into social media posts!
It can also be helpful to find some good keywords. A lot of SEO specialists will do “key word research”. Essentially, they’re looking for keywords with low “difficulty”. This means that you won’t have a lot of competition for them, and they’ll likely pop-up when people search for them. A good example is that if you write a blog post on “What is Trauma?”, your post will get drowned out by the APA, NIMH, etc., who already have popular articles on these topics from decades ago.
Here’s an article on keyword research tools. Again, it can be helpful to hire a professional for this! They can do the keyword research for you and help you come up with a plan.
You should be using the SEO keywords in your blog posts, and the keywords that you use should also appear across your website and in your ads (which we’ll get into).
In general, it can take 6 months or more to build up some good SEO. Some therapy practices operate cash-pay off of good SEO alone. This is because people searching for “therapy near me” and things like that are going to see the active websites and businesses that have good SEO.
Another great tip is to work on your Google “Map Pack”. This is the area that pops up next to a map when you search Google for something. A popular example of this is searching for restaurants. If you’re searching around for restaurants, you’re probably seeing a business listing with an address, a phone number, hours of availability, ratings, and more. This is all included in the map pack, and this is where most clicks go after a Google search.
I am not an expert here either, but my suggestion would be to sign up for a Google business profile if you don’t already have one (it’s free), and start to fill in the information there. Just make sure you have an address, phone number, hours of operation, etc. It’s also good to ask some friends or colleagues to leave you positive reviews, and be sure to respond to the reviews positively as well! I’m told this strategy takes only about 3 months to get positive results from rather than the 6+ from SEO.
Exercise #5: Pause for a moment and write. What’s your SEO strategy? How are you going to get your services to pop up when people look for you?
Google Ads and Social Media Ads
Advertising is a great strategy. In general, you need to be allocating time and money to your marketing efforts! Don’t be afraid to spend money on advertising and marketing. Many businesses have a large chunk of their budget allocated to marketing, and the same should be true for mental health professionals. Don’t cheap out and just sign up for PsychologyToday (like I once did)…
I once spoke to the owner of a local counseling practice that has over 30 clinicians on-staff, with 4 clinical offices and 1 administrative office. He is able to hire clinicians and pay them a full salary ($70k+ and bonuses and benefits). He fills up their caseload in weeks. I asked for his secret sauce to get clients and he told me his wife and him reinvested every penny in the business for 8-years, yada-yada-yada. Then, he paused and said, “But, at the end of the day, we spend $600,000 a year on marketing and we generate between 120-150 new client referrals every week.” And… they’re all cash pay! Wow, let that sink in. Imagine investing that kind of money into yourself to get clients. For reference, if there’s 30 clinicians on staff that’s about $20k per clinician, or $1700 a month.
Are you spending that kind of money on marketing for your practice?
Google Pay-Per-Click ads are a popular option for many businesses. These are simple to set up. Just go to ads.google.com and it’ll walk you through the process with some suggestions. It will asks for keywords and a little bit of information like what you are trying to get clients to do (e.g., fill out a contact form, book a session, etc.) You get to choose a daily spending limit/budget. This budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend per day. Usually, Google will make a suggestion based on what your competitors are willing to pay. So, if you are willing to pay $20 a day to appear when someone searches for “Therapy Fort Collins”, but someone else is willing to pay $50, the person paying $50 is going to have their ad shown before yours is shown. Just keep that in mind - the budget is the maximum you’re willing to spend, but not necessarily what you will pay. You only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad! This is nice for small businesses.
Do note that I have heard from a therapist that it can take several months to get return on this investment. If you imagine that someone is hearing about your practice for the first time from your ad, they may not yet feel comfortable reaching out yet, but you may be on their mind. Usually, someone books a service when things reach a breaking point and they realize they need help. If you’re only their mind, and they know you can solve their problem, they’re going to book with you.
Overall, an ad is a good investment if the amount you spend is less than the lifetime value of the customer. Read that twice!
So, if your average client is spending $150 a session, once per week, for six months, that’s $3,600 in revenue. If it takes $3,000 in advertising money to get one client, then you’re still in the green! If you spend $5,000 to get one client and their lifetime value is only $3,600, that’s not a successful campaign. I know this can be hard to stomach if you don’t have the capital to invest in the ad upfront, but just keep it in mind.
It’s a good idea to try multiple different strategies with your ad. Many marketers use ‘A/B testing’. This is essentially using the scientific method to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. So, you cannot assume that every ad you run is going to get results. You need to be willing to test different ads, and only change one variable each time. You need to be looking at metrics. Google Ads will show you some basic metrics if everything is set up correctly. In general, you’re looking at impressions (how many times the ad was shown, clicks (how many times someone clicked on the ad), and conversations (how many times someone did the thing you wanted them to do, like filling out out a contact form or booking a consultation call with you).
Maybe 1,000 people saw your first ad (impressions), it got 60 clicks (clicks), and 1 person booked (conversion). Perhaps the second ad you changed one word, and it got 1,000 views, 120 clicks, and 3 bookings. Well, apparently that one word you changed makes a lot of difference! So, you’ll want to keep that word in your ad in the future. Maybe in your next ad you change up how people book with you, so instead of booking a free consultation call they now fill out a contact form. You’ll want to see how that ad performs as well. The idea is to keep testing, seeing what works and doesn’t work, and refine your strategy so you find what gets the best results.
You can do the same thing with social media ads, but many practitioners use Google Ads. In my opinion, social media ads are good for spreading brand awareness and getting people to sign up for your newsletter. Your mileage may vary, though, so be willing to try different things out!
Exercise #6: Take some time to pause and reflect on what your advertising strategy is. Write down what you will do for advertising, how much you can spend, the keywords you’ll include, and how you’ll track your metrics.
Conclusions and Resources
I have only begun to scratch the surface with this guide, but I hope it is starting to turn the wheels in your mind. Overall, be willing to experiment, to try to new things, and stick with what works. Traditional networking is great as well - don’t discount the time-tested strategies in favor of digital strategies. Be willing to have multiple different routes to bringing in clients! Also, give it time! Many of these strategies are a long-term game. If you’re not yet in private practice, I’d suggest doing this on the side while you keep a stable income. For me, it’s an engaging and rewarding process!
I also want to give a few book recommendations if you’d like to take a deeper dive:
The One Page Marketing Plan. This is a really value packed book. It focuses on developing a marketing strategy for any type of small business. It is a no BS, no frills type book which I really appreciate.
Book Yourself Solid. This book is specifically for service professionals (rather than people selling physical products). It’s a really great introduction to some core marketing concepts, and it includes a lot of exercises.
Building Your Ideal Private Practice. This is more geared toward therapists, but it’s for any healing professional. It teaches a lot more of the mindset-based approach.
At Integrative Care Collective, we help take care of the marketing for you. We implement these strategies to help drive potential clients to our website, and then we custom match them with providers in our directory. We also help build a supportive network of other professionals. We make ourselves available to help you solve these problems! If you are looking for more specific help in these areas, feel free to reach out to us!
Thanks for reading,
Cole Butler
Founder & CEO, Integrative Care Collective PBC
