Don’t Set Up a Therapy Practice Without Reading This!

set up a therapy businessI felt I had to write this post because of the sheer volume of new therapists out there who are currently setting up their practices who have zero clue about business. In particular the hypnotherapy industry that I am part has a ton of training schools churning out would-be therapists. These therapists are ready and prepared to see clients but a good percentage have not thought through what happens next which is how to set up a therapy practice and make money. This is naive at best and completely insane in reality. Do not set up a therapy practice without reading this first!

It is not the job of the therapy courses to teach business and marketing (even though some touch on the subject). Why should they? It is the therapists responsibility to set themselves up for success by investing some time, energy and money into learning what happens next. Yet time and time again I come across therapists who forget this essential part of the process. They think they can create a website (or get someone else to do it for them) and their phone will be ringing off the hook – it won’t!

Therapy Marketing Essentials

So I thought I would write this post and detail some of the things you will have to know if you are running your own business particularly with regard to marketing. If you don’t know or understand what these are then you need to take a course, get a mentor, do some detailed research or alternatively have plenty of money behind you to pay for someone else to do you work for you.

Just remember that when you pay someone else to do stuff for you they don’t always understand your niche, charge for every change and some disappear completely. Also, these people are often only as good as the instructions you give them. So if you tell them you want purple unicorns on your website that is what they will give you. Most therapists have little idea on what converts browsers into buyers on a website so from a business perspective you are likely to make some expensive mistakes.

Understanding why you need things structured in a certain way is hugely important otherwise you are going to end up wasting a ton of time, energy and money.  In fact, you may not even realise you have made a big mistake until months or even years later. Being a sole trader at the start of your self-employment means being a bit of a jack of all trades and that is especially so when you set up a therapy practice.

So what potentially would you need to know to make money?

therapy marketing book

 

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Setting up a Therapy Website

Before you set up your website you need to choose a name for your business and buy a domain name. This domain name can be a .com or related to your country such as a .co.uk or even be a .org or .online and so on. Do you know what domain is best for your business model?

Next, you will need hosting in order to get your website onto the internet. Do you know what to buy and why? Does your web host offer backups? Do they have good uptime? Are they suitable for the size of your business?

Once you have your hosting your domain has to be linked to it. If the host and the domain name provider are different you will have to change the nameservers. Do you know how to do this?

Once the host and website are linked do you know how to set up a WordPress site in the control panel? If you aren’t using WordPress why not?

Once you have the WordPress dashboard can you upload and choose a theme for your site? Do you understand the implications for your business when you choose a specific theme? Does it have the functionality you need?

If you can’t do this can you afford a web developer to do this for you? Alternatively, if you buy a website template from a therapy marketing website provider are you happy paying money month after month? Does the website they build you allow you to change things easily, add plugins or grow with your business? Do they charge for every change they make? Can you afford this?

Are you aware that Google does not trust new websites and older ones are more likely to get more traffic? It can take months to get any organic traffic and more than a year or more to build it to something that will earn you money. Have you got plans to earn money whilst you are waiting?

20 Passive Income Ideas for Therapists

 

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Website Structure

Now you have the bare bones of a website do you know how to use WordPress? If not learn because you will need to know how to add content, change menus, upload pictures, host videos and so on.

Do you know the essential elements you need to add to your menu? Don’t copy everyone else because I can guarantee you that most of them are missing a trick.

Do you know what HTML is and when you might need to use it in your site?

Are you able to add sections to your site? Can you add new pages, buttons, change menus, add email capture forms and links?

Do you know what plugins are? What essential plugins will you need?

How are you keeping your website secure from hackers? What happens if your site does get hacked?

Therapy Website Content

Do you know what SEO /Search Engine Optimisation is? Do you know how to write content that will enable you to be found in the search engines?

Do you understand how to optimise your images and videos to be found across the internet?

Do you know how to create products to sell on your website? Are you able to set up a shop?

Do you understand VAT Moss? Do you understand what will happen after Brexit?

What is your business strategy when you create content?

How are you going to drive traffic to your website?

Are you able to create good quality graphics? If not what will you do? Pay someone or learn how to use software to create them for you?

hypnotherapy marketing calendar

 

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Statistics

How are you going to monitor who is visiting your website? What metrics do you need to pay attention to? What actions will you need to take after viewing those metrics?

What systems are you going to use to view your metrics? How are you going to add them to your website?

How often should you be looking at these metrics? What can you do if you see little traffic?

Ideal Therapy Clients

Who is your ideal client? How are you going to attract them? How will you make money from that client? How are you going to solve their problem?

How are you going to take money from them and what will your charge (hint it is not calculated by copying others)?

How can you ensure you don’t get cancellations or no shows?

What contractual arrangements do you have with that client? Do they meet the current regulations and laws in your country?

Where are you going to see them? How much will that cost you?

What are Your Costs?

Have you got a handle on all the costs in your business? Have those costs been factored into the price you are going to charge your client?

What are you going to do in quiet periods? Can you still cover your costs?

Will you have a pension?

How are you going to be able to afford holidays?

Are you able to cover all your outgoings as you set up your business?

How much money do you need to set aside for tax? How do your earnings look once you have taken out the tax and other associated costs? Will you be able to afford to live?

What system are you going to use to log all your incomings and outgoings?

Do you understand what costs can be offset against your tax bill?

Do you know how to do a self-assessment tax form? If not can you afford to hire an accountant?

Day to Day Therapy Marketing

What strategies are you going to use day to day to get clients into your business?

How much money are you prepared to allocate to your marketing efforts?

What marketing can you do for free?

What paid strategies are you prepared to try? Do you know what paid marketing works and which is a waste of money?

Do you know what backlinks are? Do you know how to use them?

49 ways to market your therapy practice

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Social Media & Ads

Do you know how to set up business accounts on social media? Do you know how to engage people so that they become interested in your products and services?

What social media platforms are you going to concentrate on and why?

Are you going to use paid advertising? If so what courses and knowledge do you have before you post ads? – Remember most therapists waste hundreds of pounds or more because they don’t know what they are doing and dabble!

How much are you prepared to pay each week in paid advertising? How can you review the metrics on this advertising?

How much time and effort are you willing to spend tweaking your advertising? How will this work if you are seeing clients?

Passive Income for Therapists

Do you know what passive income is?

Are you intending to build passive income into your practice?

What products and services are you going to create to build this passive income? How are you going to sell these?

What platforms and software would you need to use to build these passive income products? How are these going to get to your customer automatically? How are you going to get paid for these?

How are your potential customers going to know your products and services exist?

How will you attract those customers?

Do you know what a funnel is? Do you know how to create one to sell your products and services?

So Setting up a Therapy Practice is Easy You Think!

This post is not intended to overwhelm you but to show you that setting up as a self-employed business is not as easy as those hypnotherapy training courses would have you believe. Running your own business takes significant time and effort and this post shows you some of the elements you are going to have to master if you want to earn a real living from the profession. Now ask yourself is it as easy as you think? Can you figure out this detail yourself? If so how long do you think it will take you and how much are you likely to earn whilst you are trying to work this out?

If you want help to set up a therapy practice I have a ton of free resources for you to download as well as products in my online store to help. For therapy, marketing mentoring just fill out the contact form and I will get back to you.

You may also like to read:

How to Write a Good Therapy Blog to Boost Your Income

The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on the Market

Therapy Marketing Strategies for 2020

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Why You Must Use Calls to Action in Your Therapy Marketing

CI hope you are all having a profitable New Year and are getting a flood of calls and sales into your business in one of the busiest months for therapists. We have had a very busy month not only fielding new client enquiries but also creating a new look for this website. This was prompted not only to freshen up the site which frankly every therapy practice should do every two or three years but also because of the latest Google Algorithm change penalising pop ups on mobile devices. As of the 10th January pop ups on mobile devices are now actively discouraged so if you have any on your website take them down now and find another way to connect with your clients. We hope you like the new look. Now on to the main blog topic for today calls to action in your therapy marketing.

What is a Call to Action?

If you have never heard the term before it simply means that an image, text, video or email capture has been placed on your blog or website telling your customers to do something. One of the biggest mistakes therapists make on their websites is that they don’t instruct their readers exactly what to do. They will create a page of copy but at not stage will they instruct their potential customers what they need to do after they have read it. It isn’t enough to just have a mobile number at the top of your website page or a contact me page you need to force clients to take an action.

Very simple calls to action may be:

  • Email us Today
  • Book Now
  • Download
  • Subscribe Now and Get our Free eBook
  • Register for our new course
  • Follow us on Facebook

Of course many marketers are now getting increasingly clever in getting readers to take action. When you get creative and start to create compelling copy it is possible to come up with more sophisticated ways to get the attention of potential customers. Wordstream have some great examples in this blog post and you can find plenty of other examples in Google search that you can adapt as calls to action in your therapy marketing.

What to Include in Your Copy

There are certain elements that should be included in your copy so make sure that when you are creating some calls to action you include these elements.

Immediate Response – The design of a call to action is to get your potential clients to do something immediately. So that doesn’t mean next week, year or month but at that very moment. If you can make the offer compelling and visible enough the person reading your post should want to sign up or call you immediately.

Design – There is no point in designing something that blends into the background of your website. You need to find something that is visible and that stands out so your offer is immediately visible.

No Risk – People are now wise to many marketing techniques which means that you have to make your offer have little or no risk. Free consultations as part of your call to action might be a way of doing this. No obligation confidential telephone assessment. It means that potential customers can call you without worrying initially about spending money. This way of attracting people is used all the time in big business. How many people do you know who signed up to the free months trial for Netflix and are still paying for the service a year or so later?

Limit Your Offer – Adding a limited time frame for your customers also means that some of your customers will act now rather than waiting for later. I never like to see discounts offered on websites as it cheapens your brand. Instead try and create additional value as part of your limited offer.

What is the Benefit – Make sure that the person being shown the call to action actually understands what they are getting if they take action. Are they getting an eBook, free video lessons, a download or a telephone call? You need to spoon feed the information to potential clients rather than making it difficult for them to know exactly what you are offering.

Location – There is no point tucking your call to action at the very bottom of a web page that many people may never read. Make sure that your call to action is placed somewhere that it can be seen preferably above the fold in your website.

What’s on your Therapy Website?

Now go back on to your therapy website and see where you can add some calls to action in your therapy marketing to increase potential conversions. Remember that every person who comes to your website is a potential customer and if you can compel a few more of them to make contact with you then over the course of a year you are likely to find that you have significantly increased the number of people either buying your products or booking sessions. As I have said before if you have a website that can’t be easily changed bin it now and get one created where you can alter the copy. Too many therapists rely on webmasters to look after every single change on a site and this means it is costly and time consuming to create alterations. This leads to inaction and in the end the therapist does nothing missing out on huge potential income.

Google Adwords

Finally just a mention that my Google Adwords course is rising in price on the 1st Feb from £29.95 to £49.99. If you are not using Adwords yet then you are potentially missing out on a large number of potential customers. To give you an idea of its power my ads in just one location alone were placed in front of 7,500 people in January.  Not only did a large number of people see my ads all of those people were actively looking for therapy services so they are highly targeted customers. Of course a significant portion of those people also then clicked on my website and took action. Very few therapists would be able to get that kind of performance on their own which shows you how important Adwords is as a part of your marketing strategy. Are you missing out on this great traffic source.

hypnotherapy google adwordsHypnosis Google Adwords Online Course