MHM#18 Marketing activities are a team, all working together

When marketing your therapy practice, judging each marketing activity in isolation is common. You might be thinking, "Instagram isn't bringing me any new clients; let's just focus on Google Ads." But the truth is all your marketing activities work together, each playing a role in attracting prospective clients, building trust, and moving that interest into enquiries and appointments. 

Before delving into this further, an understanding of cold and warm audiences is probably helpful.

Cold Audiences: These are people who, as a result of your marketing, are coming across you for the first time. They might have typed "psychotherapist" into Google, and your Practice appeared, making them aware of you and your Practice for the first time. They have no existing knowledge, feelings, or experience with you or your Practice.

Warm Audiences: These people have been "warmed up." Perhaps they've followed you on social media, joined your email list, received your newsletters, or even been a past client. They have an existing relationship with you - even just through watching your videos. You've started building trust with them, making them more familiar with who you are and what you offer.

How Marketing Activities Work Together

Getting in front of a cold audience with Google Ads

Google Ads can be a great way to get more people to your website. If you're not familiar with Google Ads, it's an advertising platform that allows you to pay for your website to appear at the top of the first page of Google based on what people are searching for in Google - "trauma counsellor Sydney" etc.

Google Ads is mostly getting your Practice in front of a cold audience - they're searching Google for a trauma counsellor,  and your Google Ad campaign has enabled them to discover you exist.  We then want them to click on the Google Ad which will take them to your website.....

Your website starts warming them up

As soon as prospective clients land on your website, they should know who you work with, what you help them with, what modalities/approaches you use, and why you're uniquely placed to help them. Your website's job is to quickly tell someone if they're in the right place or not - we want people who aren't your ideal clients to leave and people who are your ideal clients to be encouraged to stick around. Once a prospective client sees that you help people just like them, we want them to visit the About section and learn more about you, read through your services, get an idea of what they can expect from therapy with you, and read your valuable blog articles.

This is an essential part of warming them up - the more time they spend on your website, the more they're getting to know you, and the more trust you're building with them. 

Social media then warms them up further

After looking around your website, if you have your social media icons visible, a prospective client will probably decide to check you out on social media. If you have videos, this helps prospective clients connect with you further. They get a sense of what you're like, whether you'll be a good fit, and can get a sense of what a therapy session might be like with you. 

So, a prospective client may have discovered you via Google Ads, but they then learnt more about you on your website, and then got to connect with you by watching your videos on Instagram.

Your website and social media also warms up referrers

Your website and social media aren't just for warming up potential clients—they also play a role in connecting with prospective referrers. Before replying to an email or deciding to meet with you, referrers will also visit your website and social media to "suss you out." They want to see if you feel like the right fit for them and someone they could potentially feel confident referring clients to.

As you can see from the above, it's hard to view and critique one marketing activity in isolation - they're all working together, supporting each other to connect with your ideal clients and referrers and build trust. Trust is everything - trust results in people booking appointments and referrers referring.

So, the two main takeaways from this article are:

1) Don't be too quick to write off one of your marketing activities - it may be playing an important indirect role in building your Practice.

2) All marketing activities require equal attention, review, and continual improvement. We need all marketing team members to pull their weight and not let their teammates down :)