Marketing for Therapists – The 80/20 Rule

Never heard of the 80/20 rule? Well it is a simple observation that can change the way in which you run your therapy business. This rule otherwise know as the Pareto principle was first thought of by Joseph Juran and named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who noted that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population. In other words most of the results for any situation are determined by a small number of causes. The same principle will apply to your work and practice and when you understand the areas this impacts you can dramatically alter them in your favour.

80/20 Therapy Marketing

Lets look at some of the areas where this rule can be used.

80% of your income for example is likely to come from 20% of your clients. Why? Well some of your clients come for one off sessions whilst others may see you for many more. Clearly having clients who stick around longer creates a stable income and additional return on your investment for advertising and marketing. Now of course that does not mean stringing out clients therapy for longer than you should. It simply means recognise the value to your therapy business of those clients and seek to find more of the same.

20% of your blog articles will be read more than the other 80%. This can be due to a combination of factors. Perhaps you got a great mix of keywords which helped you get found in the search engines. Or maybe your blog hit a nerve or coincided with the hot topic of the year leading to lots of social shares. Once you identify the subjects that people want to read you can go and create more of the same. Marketing for therapists is simple when you know how.

20% of your business time is probably doing something that you don’t really love to do. Tinkering with ad campaigns, filling out spreadsheets on your finances and creating invoices, graphic design and so on. In this case you need to start to find people who can take over the things you dislike so that you can focus on the good stuff. Yes it could cost you money but the world is global now. It is possible to get virtual assistants in India or graphic designers in Thailand for a fraction of the price that you would pay in the UK.

Your task for your business is understanding the ratios at work in your business so that you can maximise your performance and income. Find the areas that generate the most income for you and drop the remainder which only produce minimal revenue. If you have great skills in certain areas then focus your time working on those and then hire others to work on the areas where you need more help. If you have certain clients that make you feel sapped of energy and depressed then refer them on to other therapists who would love to work with them and focus on the clients who make you feel happy and rewarded.

How This Marketing Tip Impacted the Way I Work

When I discovered the 80/20 rule it transformed my hypnotherapy marketing. Just some of the ways I have embraced the rule are:

Now I work only three days a week with clients and focus my other time on building up other aspects of my business such as passive income. Yes it is entirely possible to work five or six days a week with clients seeing 7 to 8 clients a day but it was making me burnt out. Working with so many clients left me feeling tired and lacking energy and that does not make for great therapy sessions. Taking a step back has allowed me to really focus on the clients that I have whilst actually helping me to make more money. You see if you work all the time you never get time to develop areas of passive income which allows you to earn money whilst you are asleep. Now I actually make more money by working with less clients.

As I have probably mentioned before I am in the process of moving house to a new area and that means moving my business with me. Now I could spend hours building websites, doing SEO and generally optimising my business for this new area but I simply haven’t got the time. I have however hired someone who is doing all that work for me. It means that I now have the time to focus on the house move and everything will be ready for me when I move house.

When I first started working at this business I would spend hours trying to work out how to do certain tasks. Trying to design graphics, record audios online, design newsletter templates and so on. The result was often that I would be tearing my hair out as the hours ticked away and I made little progress. Not anymore! I recognise my weaknesses and hire others to do it for me. I have had graphics done for the price of a cup of coffee. People creating websites for me for less than £50 and the best thing of all is that they looked great. I would have probably laboured for hours to get something half as good and here was everything I wanted presented to me in no time at all.

Most of my business now comes from clients who will see me for programs of sessions rather than one of visits. This means that I have culled many areas which I felt were not great for my revenue. Think about the time, effort and money it takes to attract a client into your business. When you add up the numbers it is significant. So seeing that client for just one session means that you are hardly making a profit at all. Yes you can write blog posts about nail biting and spend money advertising that service but it is not going to make you rich. I now focus on the customers who need the time and support to see me for multiple sessions.

Make the 80/20 rule work for your therapy marketing and business and you will see your yearly income rise significantly. You can even apply it to your day to day life as well to make a difference. Remember follow your passions, play to your strengths and you will have a great life and a booming business.