90 Day Marketing Plan for Starting a Private Practice

Written By Jessica Mooney

Focus on Building Relationships to Find Clients

As a therapist, you want to be able to provide the best possible care for your clients because as a person you enjoy helping people. Many therapists struggle to promote their business because they only know the clinical work and haven’t been trained to market their business. But without marketing, it's nearly impossible for a therapist to grow a practice and make enough money to sustain a business. Marketing can help therapy in two main ways: one way is by showing a prospective client why they should trust you with their emotional well-being, and the second is by helping you understand what kind of client would most benefit from working with you.

Define How You Are Making an Impact

Part of marketing is explaining how you are making a difference.

That’s why it’s important to think about creating a vision and mission statement.  A vision statement helps you see what kind of impact you want to have on the world. This statement should be no more than 1-2 sentences. While a mission statement helps you understand how you can make that vision happen. This can be a short paragraph explaining what you offer.

A good way to start is by asking yourself these three questions:

  • What do you hope to achieve long term? (Vision)

  • How will you get to your goal? (Mission)

  • How will clients feel when interacting with your business? (Brand)

These three questions are some of the most important parts to your marketing. Take some time and really define who you want to be.  You’ll have an easier time creating marketing materials and answering questions when you start promoting.

Define Your Ideal Therapy Client

Most people go into therapy to feel better about themselves, their relationships and/or their life situations. In order for the relationship between therapist and client to work well, there needs to be a sense of trust and vulnerability when a client enters a therapeutic space. 

Defining your ideal client helps you understand who they are. That way you can create empathetic content and marketing materials that reflect a solution to their problems. This makes them feel more comfortable to come onboard as a patient.

So let’s dig in and define your ideal client.

  • Describe your client’s demographic. 

  • Describe their personality.

  • What are they seeking help for? 

  • What are their goals?

  • How are they feeling?

  • How would they describe themselves currently?

  • What is preventing them from starting therapy?

  • What should they expect?

  • What are the possible results from working with you?

  • How will they feel during therapy?

  • How will they feel afterwards?

  • What is your client’s first step in starting the therapy process? 

If you’d like some help, I offer a “Define Your Client Strategy” which is a 90 minute coaching session to define your target client based on your most profitable services and create content pillars for your messaging.

What Marketing Tools Do I Need to Promote my Private Practice?

There are many different tools you can use to promote your practice, but it's important that you choose ones that attract clients at the proper stage of their buying cycle. Otherwise, marketing and sales can kinda feel…well…yucky. Let’s reframe marketing as a way of helping people get information and make informed decisions.

Customer Buying Cycle & Tools

Awareness

This is where people learn about a product or service for the first time. If the universe aligns, they already know their challenge and are actively searching for an answer. But that’s super unlikely. Good “awareness” marketing helps people be problem aware so they can start searching for a solution. Your goal is about creating an interest or better yet a conversation about a “pain” topic and how you can help. Be in service to others and this will naturally lead them to you.

Here are some awareness tools I’d recommend:  

  • Write an article or a press release for your local news station

  • Create a presentation or an event where your ideal client hangout

  • Create a TikTok, YouTube or a Podcast on the pain topic  

  • Social Media Ads

  • Network or send an email to local agencies to see if they need extra support dealing with this challenge

Consideration

Once people become aware of something new - like how therapy could improve their life - they begin looking into what are their next steps to a solution.

At this stage, people are researching their options and depending on your ideal client they will need one or more of the following: 

  • Empathy: A feeling of being understood. That you will understand their pain and how to help. Explaining how this process will affect their emotions, actions, or loved ones. They need to connect with you as a person.

  • Data: They need proof that this will work. They love testimonials. They want to see numbers. Data driven people love scientific research.

  • Process: They want to know the steps, goals and timelines. They want to understand how you do therapy. These people are very organized.

  • The Big Idea: They are excited by your solutions. They want to see the results. They want to understand how you are different.  

Most people start their search online or ask people they trust. Here are some ways you can help them with their research while they are considering your business:

  • Create a Google Business Profile

  • Website or Social Media Account that talks about the problem and solutions

  • A profile on a trusted therapist directory 

  • A “Leave Behind” like a Brochure, Postcard or Flyer

Decision

Finally after doing research and making a decision based upon their personal preferences they will test the waters. This stage feels a lot like dating and they want to see compatibility before making a commitment. Your goal is to gain their contact information through a marketing funnel. This is an offer that provides so much value that they are willing to give you their email or phone number. In the marketing funnel, you need to create a call-to-action to help people buy a product or service you offer. If you have built enough trust you should see a purchase or an appointment!

Some example of marketing funnels: 

  • Digital Download

  • Quiz

  • Webinar

  • E- Newsletter

  • Starting Offer

Build a 90 Day Plan for Marketing Your Business

Congratulations! You have defined your impact, know your ideal client and picked some marketing tools that will promote your business. However, a goal without a plan is only a dream. So, let’s break down some tasks and create a customized plan with dates: 

Planning Phase (Day 1-30) 

Week 1: Define how you will make an impact.

Week 2: Research and define your ideal client, the challenge, and the solutions.

Week 3: Brainstorm where your ideal client works, plays, or finds information. Research networking & promotional opportunities in those locations. 

Week 4: Pick a tool from each “customer buying cycle” section plus a website or social media or directory profile. Create a schedule and a budget.

Tool Development (Day 30-60)

Week 5-7: Create a website or social media profile or therapy directory profile.

Most people start their research online. You’ll need a website or social media page to help clients find you through search engines.  If you’ve done the ideal client exercise, your messaging should naturally create keywords for search engines to find you. However, proper website building has a lot of functional components and you might want a professional helping you build a website - like MarketingTherapy.ca 🙂.

Week 7-8: Create a “leave behind” marketing material.

The “consideration” or research phase is the most important so you want something that helps answer their questions even if you aren’t available. You can quickly build a brochure or postcard using a free-to-use online graphic design tool like Canva. This site has a TON of free templates. But I would HIGHLY recommend trying Canva PRO 30 day trial to have access to everything which includes templates, photos, graphics, text, video and so much more.

Building Relationships (Day 60-90)

Week 9-10: Create a marketing funnel.

Creating a digital workbook or a newsletter is a great way to build trust and collect contact information. Or if you are strapped for time, create a “starting offer” to help people sample your services.

Week 11: Create an awareness tool. 

Remember people need to be problem aware before they find a solution. Create content that helps build awareness and share that with groups that connect with your ideal client. My favorite way to build awareness is using local news channels (press releases or articles) that highlight the problem and shows you as one of the solutions. 

Week 12: Start networking & promoting!

If you haven’t started, launch everything! Go to your client research and start connecting with people and showing how you can help. 

Final Thoughts

I believe that the strongest marketing is about building relationships by providing help to others.

Now that you have a plan, it's time to start marketing. Start small and take action!

If you need any help with strategy or building tools you can always set up a free 30 minute discovery call to see if we are a good fit. Or if you like to pick my brain on another marketing topic feel free to send me a question here. These questions help develop my content and if your question is chosen I’ll send you an email with an update 🙂   

You can do this! I believe in you.

Jessica Mooney