Three Cliche Hypnosis Marketing Images That are Killing Your Business!

Ready for a new year of Hypnosis Marketing Blogs? Today’s topic sprung to mind because I am currently working with some hypnotherapists on creating new websites. Following their mentoring sessions I asked them to come up with some images and looks for their new websites. What soon became apparant is that the same images were coming up again and again and they weren’t even that great. The images are what I would class as hypnotherapy website cliches that are actively putting off some clients booking sessions with you. And just to repeat what I have said. Therapists are choosing images that actually repel customers!

Are you guilty of this?

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Or this?

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Or even this?canstockphoto26164545

 

 

 

 

 

So lets start with the butterflies, or tree metaphors or even pebbles in the sand (I was guilty of that one in my very first website). These images are off putting to 50% of your customers – Men! How many men do you know that want to visit a tree hugging, airy fairy hypnotherapist? How many men love a pink website with pretty images and new age themes? The answer is of course almost none. When a man visits a website for a therapy that they don’t really know very much about they want to feel reassured that the person is a professional and can help them solve their anxiety, erectile dysfunction, depression etc… Pink writing and butterflies is going to make them run the other way. Now of course if your hypnosis website has been specifically designed to attract new age women who want past life regression then brilliant if not then get back to the drawing board!

Now on to image two. In this case I have chosen a picture relating to chakras but it could be related to Reiki, Crystal healing or any manner of other alternative therapies that are out there. Time and time again I see hypnotherapists who mix up the therapies that are on their site. Now only do they mention their hypnosis skills but also some of the more esoteric treatments that they offer. Remember most of the general public are suspicious of hypnosis and have to pluck up the courage to pick up the phone. When a potential client comes across a site that looks like it might be “out there” they are likely to look for someone else. This is when your skills or knowledge actively serve as a repellant! Of course if you are a counsellor or psychotherapist add it to your website but if you read auras create another site.

Finally the last image is of the famous hypnotic spiral. I have also seen therapists use pictures of watches swinging on their websites. These images are associated with old school visions of hypnotherapists as svengali’s who control peoples minds. If you are running a stage hypnosis act then perfect but if you are trying to reassure potential customers that you are the real deal then these are not going to work.

So What Image Should You Have for Your Hypnosis Website?

I have read a number of times advice saying that if a Doctor wouldn’t want it on their website they don’t have it. Now of course whilst this advice is mostly sound you can be a little bit more experimental. Some of the most successful hypnotherapists, life coaches and therapists in the industry today keep it simple. Their sites are professional with perhaps a very photo shopped image of themselves on it and banners with links to their media appearances, testimonials or success stories. The colours on their site may pop but are clean and modern. Look at this website by Marie Forleo as a perfect example of how a modern life coach has created a website which potential customers subscribe to in droves. Now of course not everyone has the budget to create something like this straight away but with a little bit of creative work a stock website does not have to look like the person who runs it lives in Glastonbury!

Meanwhile…

Following a very long holiday in December I am continuing to work on building my web prescence in my new local area. After only a few short months I am already starting to move up the Google rankings to dominate certain searches. Want hypnotherapy for bulima or binge eating in my local area? Then I am number one and two in the searches. Fear of Driving? Number one again. Fear of Public Speaking then 6, 7, 8 and 9. Sleep hypnosis? Number two and a video appearing at number five. I could go on. Bit by bit I am dominating the long tail keyword searches in a forty mile radius of my clinic. By creating a website which is well structured for SEO and then creating further content in other areas on the internet as well as building backlinks I am ranking highly in the search engines. If I continue to do this then I will be the dominant website on hypnosis locally. Only one other hypnotherapist in this area is close to achieving these results and they have been working in the area for six years longer than me!

I mention these results not to brag but to show what with a systematic approach to marketing and a reasonable amount of website and SEO knowledge amazing results can be achieved. I show my therapy marketing clients exactly how to achieve results like these and more. This knowledge can turn a failing business into one that is thriving. Don’t let your lack of marketing skills hold you back. Hypnotherapy marketing is not as difficult as you may think when you have someone to help.

 

 

 

10 Issues That Impact Your Website Performance

hypnotherapy website designToday’s post is all about the issues that may be impacting your website performance and ultimately how these can push your website down the rankings super fast. Just because you hired a web developer to create your website does not mean that everything about your website is going to be working perfectly. Many web developers do not understand SEO and that means that their design can impact the way your site performs in the search engines. Then when you start adding content to your site it is very simple for you to make simple errors which could see your site being penalised and your hypnotherapy marketing ruined. Here are some simple things for you to consider when building and designing your site.

1) Mobile Usability – If you have not seen my previous blog post on this subject I suggest you read it to find out why having a mobile responsive website is hugely important. Websites that are not mobile friendly are actively penalised in Google. This is because Google wants to give its search engine users a great experience and if they are landing on a site that does not look good on their tablet or phone then they will click elsewhere. It appears that Bing will also be launching a similar penalty very soon. Paying for an upgrade to a mobile responsive website is now absolutely essential if you are serious about hypnotherapy marketing and building a great business.

2) Duplicate Content – This means that you cannot write content for web page and then copy and paste that content to another page and change a couple of words. It also means that you cannot write something on your website and then copy and paste that information somewhere else on the web such as on a guest blog post or article submission site. When Google is faced with two identical sets of information it does not know which version to trust or which should be placed in the search engine rankings first. Ultimately when faced with this dilemma it makes a simple decision to penalise you and place the content down the rankings.

3) Keyword Stuffing – So you want to appear high in the search engine rankings for the keyword hypnotherapy Birmingham. In order to achieve that goal you write those keywords multiple times on your first page and throughout your other web pages. This makes your posts virtually unreadable and is classed as a black hat technique by Google. As a general rule try and make sure that your keyword is used no more than 2-5% in your content.

4) Speed of Your Website – How fast your website loads is now a ranking factor. Nobody has the time or patience to wait ages while an old website slowly loads. You can read about what Google thinks about website speed in their Google blog.To test how well your website is performing then you can try a speed test on your website. Google PageSpeed Insights allows you to enter in the url of your website and analyses how quickly it responds. Once the analysis is complete it will tell you what changes need to be made to your website in order to improve performance.

5) Guest Blogging – Once upon a time you could quite happily write blogs on other peoples websites and place links within them leading back to your website. Writing a significant number of these could boost your rankings significantly but not anymore. Mat Cutts from Google announced that this form of SEO is now considered as spam and that from now on people doing it could expect to be penalised. You have been warned!

6) Geographic Location of Hosting Account – For those of you who don’t know about hosting there are companies out there who allow your website access to the web by placing your site on their servers for a fee. If you have a web developer they will have signed you up to a hosting account which you generally pay for monthly or yearly. What you may not know is that if your website is a .co.uk and your hosting is in The States you will find that your site is likely to be penalised in the rankings. As a general rule of thumb make sure that your hosting account is based in the country where your website is.

7) Low Quality Pages – So many therapists are guilty of this crime. They place up a web page with a picture and write two sentences about their product and that is it. Your website content needs to be useful and relevant to the people reading it if not Google will penalise you and your competitors will leap ahead of you in the rankings. Get your hypnotherapy marketing right and create quality content for your site instead.

8) Technical Issues – Ever used Google webmaster tools? If not sign up and add your website. It is a great resource and will flag errors appearing in your site. These technical issues may be preventing you from getting a higher ranking in the search engines. Don’t sit in ignorance and these errors will ultimately cost you money.

9) Fancy Web Design – So you hired a web designer to create you an all singing all dancing website. You have a video loading when people login or you have pictures that fade in and out or use flash on your site. Well don’t because the search engines don’t like it. They want a fast responsive website that can be read easily. If you have too much going on it slows down your site and can’t be accessed properly by the Google bots. If it doubt keep your website nice and simple.

10) Optimising Media– It is great sometimes to put images or videos on your website but have they been optimised so that they don’t impact your sites loading time. There is a line to be drawn between putting media on to your site and being penalised because your site takes too long to load.

For more interesting tips and tricks to increase your hypnotherapy marketing success you can buy my hypnotherapy marketing eBook online today. Don’t let marketing ignorance prevent you from building the business and income you deserve.

 

 

 

Are You Ready for April 21st and Mobilegeddon? Upgrade Your Hypnotherapy Website Now.

hypnotherapy websitesIf you were not aware April the 21st this year is incredibly important for Hypnotherapy websites and their owners. On this date Google is going to change its algorithm and penalise sites that are not mobile responsive. This change has been brewing for the last year or so especially in light that well over 50% of searches on its site are now completed on mobile devices. The speed at which search engine views have changed is quite astounding and has probably caught a number of website owners on the hop. Google always looks to give their customers what they want and in order to maintain its position as the number one search engine in the world it is reacting to change incredibly swiftly.

So what does that mean for you. Well if you have updated your hypnotherapy websites recently you should be fine but just in case double check especially if your work was done by a web developer. If you have an old website that has not been touched for a couple of years then you need to move fast. This update is potentially going to be brutal. So if you were happily on the first page of Google gaining business each week you may suddenly find yourself plummeting down the rankings to somewhere you will no longer be found. That means that potentially your business could be ruined overnight.

Think I am exaggerating? Have a look and see what some of the other algorithm changes did to companies particularly the ones that Google made under the code words Panda and Penguin. Many businesses went under or were close to losing all their trade because they were not compliant with what Google wanted. It is no joke going from a business that potentially has calls and interest from clients every day to having nothing at all. Unless you have a business that is referral only you could have big problems.

If you are not sure whether your site makes the grade then there are two ways in which you can check what you have up and running. Firstly there is the Google mobile friendly test. Simply plug in your hypnotherapy websites details and see how your site performs. Alternatively you can go into Google Webmaster tools and use the mobile usability report to see how you perform. If everything is fine sit back and relax however if you have a problem then you have just under a month to get everything resolved in the system. Good luck.

Hypnosis Marketing – Your Website is Crucial!

Hypnosis MarketingHave you ever had a situation where your practice is so busy you don’t have time to even think? Well this morning I had one of the those moments when I literally as physically unable to cope with the sheer number of calls coming in to the my practice. I know my hypnosis marketing works because I was getting call after call of potential clients ringing me up to book or ask questions about my sessions. I had deliberately booked this morning off to deal with admin and paperwork before a busy afternoon and evening with clients and the phone did not stop ringing. It was pandemonium but in a good way because it means that the business that I have created is a success and yours can be as well.

I should point out that I was struggling to cope this morning even though I have hired virtual assistants to answer all my calls. My phone was forwarded to my assistants whilst I rang back potential clients who had tried to call me the evening before. As I was making my call backs I was getting more and more messages from my assistants telling me about new calls coming in. For the next three to four hours I didn’t stop. The result plenty of new bookings and revenue coming into my business for weeks and months to come .  Now this morning did not happen by a fluke or by magic but because I have worked hard at creating a marketing strategy that gets me found by the people who need help.

Marketing takes sustained effort over a period of weeks and months and not just a small effort once in a blue moon. To be really successful at what you do you need to have a strategy and then you need to work systematically through each of the elements in your strategy to bring in new business. Place the elements of your strategy in order of importance and when one area has been worked through start to focus on the next. Keep on adding to your list and never stop marketing because when it comes to marketing there should never be a point where you have nothing to do.

I like to believe that hypnosis marketing should consist of both long and short term goals as well as marketing which can be done in short bursts during quiet points in your day. Bit by bit you are building strong foundations for your business. Create solid foundations and you have a great base for your business which can then be grown without fear of it collapsing around you. The big question is of course where to start?

One of the most important elements of your business foundations is having a great website that can be found. I know that my websites constantly drive traffic and customers to be my door even though many of the people who come across these websites have never met me before. This is because each of my websites has been deliberately designed to reach my targeted market. In other words the people arriving at my website get the information they need quickly and easily about how their problem can be solved. They are told exactly what it may take to get them to their goals so that the only thing they have left to do is pick up the phone.

Having a great website makes all the difference to a business. Make a great one and you will get plenty of calls and orders but get it wrong and you will drive your customers away. Many therapists sadly get it wrong and miss out on great opportunities to sell themselves and their treatments. It is not uncommon when I do website reviews to see fundamental and basic errors which prevent my clients from getting found. Get that wrong and you may as well be invisible.

Once you have the basic foundations of your business set up then it is time to work on the additional elements which will really take your revenue to the next level. For example:

  • Videos
  • Blogging
  • SEO
  • Self Help Programs
  • Referral Programs
  • Product Development
  • Advertising
  • PR
  • Media Work
  • Corporate Clients
  • Group Sessions

Website Reviews

The list is endless as there are so many ways in which you can extend your hypnosis marketing to increase your profits. However without having great foundations you will have a problem from the start. Without the right website structure you will find that when visitors come across your website they will stay for just a second or two and then head off elsewhere. This is why I offer a website review package to help therapists create a great looking site which can bring in business time and time again.

So what is included when I conduct a website review? Well firstly I am happy to review an existing website or talk your through how to create the perfect site from scratch. I may not do any design work but I do work with you to create the perfect framework for you to grow your business. I analyse each existing web page and make recommendations about how those pages can be changed to bring you in more customers. I will tell you if additional pages need to be added or if you need to change your current platform. I generally conduct the review with you over a live Skype or Facetime sesson and then following the session I will send you a report with the recommended changes on it.To get full details of how I can help you with hypnosis marketing or website reviews you can email me via my contact page or alternatively give me a call on 020 8351 2744.