7 Simple Tools for Marketing Your Private Practice
Growing your private practice requires a combination of sound marketing strategies and a kit of practical tools. To help you succeed, this article lists seven friendly tools that can boost your practice's visibility, increase patient engagement and satisfaction, and drive more leads to your business.
This article will cover the most user-friendly marketing tools that you can take advantage of for growing your therapy practice.
If you want to be efficient in running your private practice and don't know how to go about it, these tools will help you get started and organized. Before you get started though, you might want want to check out free marketing strategies to give you an idea of what you have at your disposal and what you'll need for marketing your private practice.
Choosing the right tools will not just make your life simpler, but will also help you automate mundane everyday activities that take a lot of your non-billable time. Creating a website, managing your social media, and organizing your billing can be a real time-sink. And you, dear therapist, don't have that kind of time.
Your goal is to have a sustainable practice that will help you be a happier and better therapist for your clients. I want to help you get there by showing you the best marketing and business tools for your private practice.
Besides being user-friendly, these tools are vital for creating the practice you can thrive in, but because using them can significantly improve efficiency in your practice management and help you decrease that dreaded feeling of burnout so many of us experience when we run our own businesses.
Whether you build your website on your own or use a company like Brighter Vision to outsource your website design, you will need to create your own content.
Creating your own content means that you'll need to write the text that is relevant to what people are looking for online. For that, you'll need to do some research about the terms people use to search for your types of services (a.k.a keywords).
Tool #1. The most user-friendly tool I can recommend for you to do keyword research is Ubersuggest.com With Ubersuggest you will be able to see how many people are looking for a specific keyword which can give you a direction for writing the content for your website. Additionally, you can use Ubersuggest to see how your competition's website is doing in terms of traffic, external links, and keyword rankings.
This is how the data on the keyword "child psychology nj" looks on Ubersuggest.com
So from this example, you can see that for the term child psychology NJ, there are approximately 110 searches a month. That's to say that if your content contains the keyword "child psychology NJ", your website will come up in search results on Google.
The good news is that SEO difficulty for this keyword is pretty low, with a 23 out of 100 grade. So if your written content on your website is optimized for this keyword, your website has a higher chance to rank among the top results on Google, on the first page. So the chance of people clicking on your website will go up significantly, resulting in more potential clients.
social media for therapists: best tools
Social media can be a controversial topic, but it can also be a great way to create awareness and educate the public about mental health. Moreover, it can help you grow your therapy practice with the right strategy in place. You can use it to create awareness about your brand as a therapist, promote your webinars and services and just interact with people who're interested in solutions for their mental health.
But unfortunately, social media is one of the most time-consuming marketing channels out there. You have to create content that people find interesting and engaging, and you need to spend time commenting on others' posts, but more than anything else, you need to show the way for people to get to your website and book an appointment with you. Being deliberate about choosing your social media platform will help you reach the right people for your practice.
After you choose a social media platform, you end up with the pesky task of actually creating content for your posts and directing your audience to your website. There are two tools that can simplify this task for you. Tool #2. Canva is the ultimate tool for creating beautiful posts without a professional designer's help. With Canva, you can create graphics, posts, and marketing collateral using beautifully designed templates. And you can do that for free. Of course, there is a paid version that offers you better design and imagery options, but you can absolutely get it by using the free version. And you should!
Here's a quick tutorial on making a logo in Canva
Tool #3. Linktr.ee is a nifty tool that can help you direct your Instagram followers to different areas of your website and online directories. You can add different links to your Linktr.ee profile and connect it to your Instagram bio. This way you can have your PT profile, your contact information, your services, and FAQ in one conveniently accessible place for your Insta audience.
Email marketing for your private practice
I'm a huge fan of email marketing. First, I like writing emails, but most importantly, I can measure my marketing success with an email marketing service. I can see how many people opened my emails and how many clicked on the links within my email.
Tool #4. After trying different services for my email marketing, I settled on Convertkit and couldn't be happier about my decision. It's important to remember that email marketing service is NOT meant to communicate with your current clients because it's not HIPAA compliant. It is, however, a great tool for attracting new clients and keeping in touch with your former clients. With Convertkit you can create automated emails to greet new subscribers and people who showed interest in seeing you, send updates about your practice, and create email sequences to educate about a specific topic and urge them to book an appointment. Email marketing still remains the most effective tool in digital marketing in terms of ROI.
For Your Emails and Forms. Because email communication with your clients needs to be HIPAA Compliant, having a reliable tool can prevent you from dealing with many future problems.
Tool #5. Hushmail is the must-have service for encrypted emails and HIPAA-compliant intake forms. Conveniently compatible with most website builders, Hushmail gives you the option to integrate the service with your website. From an efficiency perspective, online forms can save you a lot of time and frustration in communication with new clients and making sure they provide you with all the information you'll need from them.
billing software for therapists
Setting up an efficient payment system for your private practice is incredibly important. Besides the obvious reason, getting paid for your services, it's also an important element of your customer service. If your clients are confused about paying you, your payment will be delayed and you will end up chasing them with uncomfortable reminders.
Tool #6. Trusted by over 150,000 therapists, Simple Practice does not disappoint when it comes to online automation and billing. In fact, this EHR software is the only practice management software that allows you to go fully virtual, in-office, or anywhere in between. Integrated with telehealth, online appointment requests, paperless intakes, and more.
Tool #7. Another good option for your billing is Therabill. I love the straightforwardness that Therabill offers and how easily it can simplify your practice. It might not be the most affordable option out there, but it's an option that is built for the needs of a private practice like yours.
BONUS Tool
Growing your business requires you to be mindful of your expenses. After all, it won't help you work long hours and invest in marketing if your expenses are not easily tracked. I put all of my expenses on my credit card and track them at the end of each month. I don't use my personal credit card for my business because it becomes much harder to separate business and personal expenses.
Taking the time to choose the right credit card for your business is important. You may opt for one that offers you travel miles or maybe for one that gives you a good percentage in cash back.
I spent a lot of time researching the right credit card for my business, and I settled on Spark Business from Capital One. It offers you a hefty 2% in cash back and an opportunity to earn up to $1,000 in the first 6 months. Not bad, right? So far, I applied the cash back to my balance several times and have used the rewards it offers as well.
Conclusion
In this article, I tried to cover the tools that work well with whatever marketing strategy you choose for your practice. These are versatile and convenient without a big learning curve.
If there're specific tools that you would like to learn more about, leave me a comment or book a free discovery call with me to chat about marketing your private practice.
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