Seven Strategies to Gain More Clients for Your Practice

When you are part of a small or growing mental health practice, finding new patients can be a challenge. You'll need to learn how to grow a client base and market yourself as a therapist — but it's often easier said than done.

Luckily, we're here to help. In this guide, we'll point you in the right direction with several tips on how to get counseling clients through your doors.

Table of Contents

• Seven Marketing Strategies for Therapists
• Using Social Media to Attract Clients
• Keeping the Clients You Earn
• The EHR That Works for You

Seven Marketing Strategies for Therapists

Marketing may not be a familiar concept for many behavioral health professionals, but in today's highly competitive landscape, it's an essential skill to learn. The following are simple yet effective marketing strategies you can use to promote your practice and build your clientele:

1. Create a Patient Persona

Part of successful marketing is reaching the right patients at the right time, meaning you need to have a clear idea of who the ideal patients are. A patient persona is a fictional individual that serves as a representation of a particular group of patients that share certain characteristics. To create a patient persona, you need to identify:

• Treatment goals
• Demographics
• Hobbies and interests
• Challenges and pain points

If you are a child psychologist, for example, one of your patient personas could be a 10-year-old boy with PTSD who loves online gaming and struggles with possible ADHD. By looking through this lens before preparing marketing materials, you can create and distribute content that speaks to the parents of such a patient.

2. Identify Patient Needs and Expectations

What is it your prospective patients are looking for when they interact with your marketing materials? Perform an evaluation of your client-facing materials, such as your website or the resources you provide in-office, considering the patient personas you want to attract.

You may find that patients are frustrated with an out-of-date or unresponsive website. Maybe they want to know more about you and your experience but can't find this info when they look for it. Perhaps they clicked on an ad to learn more about a specific condition, only to find there are no corresponding blog posts on the site. Be on the lookout for anything that can expand the value you provide to your prospective patients.

3. Be Responsive

Altering your services or behavior based on feedback can bring welcome changes that help grow your client base. Consider creating a feedback form to give current patients and ask them what you can do better. You may uncover new services you can start providing or processes you can improve to create a better patient experience.

Read the reviews clients leave on sites like Google to see if any of them have legitimate complaints or suggestions that can be applied to your practice. Being willing to improve your services based on feedback is a great way to get counseling clients through word of mouth.

4. Create a Referral Network

To increase the number of patient referrals you get, you first need to create a network. While you're in competition with other mental and behavioral health providers in your area, there's no reason competition can't be friendly. Networking with clinicians in other specialties increases the chances that other professionals will send clients your way when they're a good fit for you.

Physicians can be another valuable source of counseling referrals. Many doctors have patients complete routine screenings for depression and anxiety, and if they know you are looking for therapy clients, they may include you in their referral network.

Having a quality EHR with significant interoperability features can increase your chances of garnering referrals from physicians, as it will be simpler to request and transmit their charts once you begin providing care.

5. Train Your Team Properly

Your care team, including any administrative staff, needs to be as competent and efficient as possible when it comes to operating your EHR. Because the EHR is your main method of recording clinical information about patients, it's imperative that all staff are familiar with the charting features available. Taking accurate notes on intake appointments and having them available online tells prospective patients that your practice is committed to accuracy.

Training your staff on your EHR is also essential for maximizing efficiency. When clinicians are well-versed in efficient charting, they can spend more face-to-face time with patients. Administrative staff who can confidently navigate the EHR make scheduling and billing simple before and after appointments.

6. Take Notes From Your Competition

You don't have to come up with all your ideas from scratch. There are plenty of marketing strategies that therapists can use. Spend some time reading through your competitors' reviews to find examples of why patients chose them and what they do well to retain those patients.

Be sure to visit competitor websites and see how they use social media to interact with the public. Does one competitor get thousands of views on their weekly vlog? Watch for a while and find out why. Is another competitor using banner ads to advertise? Look into whether that form of advertising is right for your practice.

With a little research, you're bound to uncover some strategies you haven't yet tried to get counseling clients. Some of the methods used by larger organizations will be financially inaccessible to smaller or single-provider practices, but you can still take note of the overall approaches and see how you can transfer them to your own efforts.

7. Use Digital Tools

Today, it's not enough to simply operate a website. To grow your client base, you need to take advantage of multiple digital tools that show your dedication to learning new systems that improve patient care. Some tools you should consider include:

• Patient portal: This technology allows for electronic intake, eliminating the hassle of paper, faxing and scanning. Patients can also view important documents and manage their appointments, giving them greater power over their treatment.
• Messaging: Consider methods other than phone calls to schedule appointments and deliver important reminders. Utilize email and even text messaging to expand your patients' options for communication.
• Teletherapy: Providing care remotely can attract a whole new group of patients, including clients in other states. Providing teletherapy is a draw for people with conditions like anxiety or agoraphobia, or people who lack transportation or have another reason why in-person therapy is not an option.
• Social media: Poke around on social media, and you'll find that every successful business and brand has a presence on at least one platform.

Taking advantage of digital practice tools can make you stand out among your competitors by promising new patients a more convenient and individualized experience.