How to Successfully Set Up a Hypnotherapy Practice

Setting Up Your Hypnotherapy PracticeIt has been a good few months since you last head from me for two reasons. Firstly this website got hacked! Nightmare scenario and a real problem when you find out the quality content you have been writing has been updated with adverts for viagra and vapes! What a steep learning curve I have been on attempting to resolve the situation. I will write a blog post on my experiences so that you never have to go through the same. Secondly In the last half of last year I have been concentrating on making some new products and services for the website and curating some new free content to share with you all. In particular a completely free guide to successfully set up a hypnotherapy practice.

As I was looking over some of my posts I realised that many of my marketing emails talked to those of you who have already set up your practices and were actively trading but I had completely neglected to talk to those of you who were just getting ready to make the leap from regular employment to setting up a hypnotherapy practice from scratch. So in the past couple of months I have been busy working away creating a new eBook to show you exactly what you need to do.

What Are The Questions That most Therapists Ask when Setting Up a New Business?

I regularly participate in a number of hypnotherapy forums and I see the same questions from new therapists appearing again and again.

  • Where should I practice from?
  • How much should I charge?
  • How do I make more money?
  • What services should I offer?
  • Why are clients not showing up?

You see going on a hypnotherapy practitioner course is great for teaching you how to help people but in most cases, it doesn’t teach you how to help yourself. When you are a sole trader it soon dawns on a new therapist that they are the person responsible for just about everything. You need to arrange a website, their advertising, their branding, accounting, legal requirements and see clients and that is just for starters. Of course, when you get going it soon becomes obvious that there are going to be some big gaps in your knowledge. Unless you pay someone to mentor you then you have to muddle through on your own or ask questions in forums to see if anyone can give you any advice which might help. This can work but if often means that you miss important stuff or spend ages trying to work it all out before you get it right. Time is of course money when you are running a new therapy business! So I thought I would create a really simple eBook to give the absolute basics that you need to start off in the right way.

Building a Therapy Practice Basics

So what have I included in this eBook to get therapists started? Well I cover everything from:

  • Are you cut out to be a therapist?
  • Planning your practice.
  • How and Where to work.
  • Equipment
  • Insurance
  • Data Protection
  • Regulatory and Tax Structure
  • Domain Names
  • Branding
  • Trademarks
  • Must have Essentials on a Website
  • How to Charge and Package Sessions
  • Cost control
  • Specialising or Generalist work
  • How many clients you need
  • Taking Payments
  • Contracts
  • Getting Those first Customers
  • and much more…

Creating the Right Foundations for your Therapy Business

Setting up a therapy business without putting any thought into how it may work or what you need to legally do is a recipe for disaster. Getting off on the wrong foot and not doing some basic initial work can mean wasted months or even years floundering trying to work out why you aren’t getting any customers or earning enough money to pay the bills. I regularly mentor other therapists in six months programs and I see the same problems coming up again and again. Poorly created websites and marketing campaigns that won’t bring in customers or create conversions. A lack of understanding of the very basics of business. Businesses that have been set up and then never reviewed so that basic mistakes linger for years.  Remember if you have never set up a business before or been self-employed then you are going to need a little help. Even seasoned marketers and internet successes regularly pay for courses to take their businesses to the next level so what makes a therapist any different?

Get the Book Absolutely Free!

My mission in life is to make sure as many therapists as possible get to run a highly successful booming business which is why I am offering the free eBook as a total freebie. Yep, that’s right it won’t cost you a penny! You can get the lowdown on how to set up the right foundations for your hypnotherapy business so that you can start on the road of earning a great income instead of doing what you love. I have personally tried and tested everything that is in the eBook and it certainly worked well for me. Not only did I successfully set up a hypnotherapy practice in Harley Street London I moved location over two years ago and created another thriving practice in the Midlands at the same time as renovating a 9 bedroom house! If I can do it then so can you. To get your free copy of the eBook simply follow the link below and you can gain access to the download.

how to set up your hypnotherapy practice

Hypnotherapy Marketing for New Hypnotherapists

Hypnotherapy Marketing for New HypnothearpistsI felt that I had to write a blog post to cover some basic hypnotherapy marketing for new hypnotherapists following an email I just received from my contact me page. As the email was received from one of my hypnotherapy websites and not  my marketing site I assumed it was from a client and rang them up to ask them what they needed help with. The answer that they gave shocked me! It appears that they were about to finish their hypnotherapy training and wanted to know if I could tell them a clinic that they could practice in locally. Err what the hell? Yep, a person was contacting their local competition and asking if they could help sort out a room for them to use to run their therapy practice from and they wanted this information for nothing!

This call almost rendered me speechless (and that never happens). I mean what hypnotherapy courses are preparing their clients to run a business by not giving them some basic direction as to what to do? But besides that, if a person who is about to start a new career as a self-employed person is incapable of searching for some therapy rooms to practice from what are they going to be like when they try and attract new clients into their business? I can already give you the answer they are going to end up back in their old day job fast. Prompted by this call and some threads I have recently seen on some forums here are some simple marketing basics.

Learn Therapy Marketing Skills

If you don’t know anything about marketing then spend some money and learn the basics. Hypnotherapy is a hard business because you are always marketing to find new clients. Unlike hairdressing where you are likely to have a solid client base that will return again and again with hypnosis, you have hopefully resolved your client’s problem in a few sessions meaning you will need to find new clients faster.  This constant turnover of clients means that you have to be better at marketing than the average small business. No wonder most new hypnotherapists don’t last in business for very long.

To run a business you need to understand how to attract clients, how to run a website, how to use paid advertising, how to network, do accounts, how to budget and so on. If you have always worked as an employee with a salary in a job which didn’t make you think on your feet or have sales targets then you likely to underestimate the effort and skills it takes to get a business off the ground. Someone offering marketing mentoring can help you navigate this making your job just that little bit easier.

Don’t Expect Decent Information For Free

As a business my time is money. Unless I am doing pro bono work for charity expect to pay for my services. I charge for advice, my time with clients, my products and so on. Why? Because my experience is invaluable and that is what you are paying for. It means that when I am seeing a client I help them make positive change faster.  When I work with a marketing client they will see profits sooner and so on. If I need expert help in an area where I am not a specialist I get out my wallet and spend some money. I don’t worry about this expenditure because I know it will help me get more rapid results or earn more money. You should do the same.

Learn How to Fend for Yourself

Running a business means that you have to find solutions for yourself. When I used to work in the corporate world I could call the IT helpdesk and get immediate help to fix my computer or software. If I wanted to some legal advice I would head to see our corporate lawyer. When you are self-employed you simply don’t have that infrastructure around you which means you have to learn to do things for yourself or pay someone else to do them for you.

It is amazing what you can learn when you set your mind to it. I am now proficient at creating websites, recording and selling products, search engine optimisation and much more. Did someone give me that information for free? Nope, it took some hard work and dedication to acquire the skills. So remember hypnotherapy marketing for new hypnotherapists requires effort and time.

Understand Basic Accounting

A regular question I see on hypnosis boards is how much should I charge for my services?  My answer is if you don’t know what to charge then you are not ready to run a business. Being self-employed and turning a profit is all about the numbers. That means understanding some really basic details.

How much do you need to earn as a minimum per month to cover your general outgoings such as mortgage, food and bills?

What are the fixed costs in your business as a monthly number? That means rent, insurance, phone bill, travel costs, professional memberships, tax and so on.

So let’s say you need to cover outgoings of £1000 per month or £12,000 per year.

In addition, you have to cover £300 in costs related to your business meaning total outgoings of £1300 per month.

With some simple maths, you can calculate that you need a minimum of 13 client sessions per month at £100 per session to cover those fixed costs. Alternatively, you can see 26 clients at £50 per session or 6.5 clients at £200 per month and so on.

Now have a look at what your most expensive local competition is charging to at least get a vague idea of the top of the market this will allow you to assess the level you should charge.

This is just simple arithmetic yet so many hypnotherapists don’t think like a business person but pluck a number out of thin air and hope for the best. Do the maths and get the real numbers.

Get Your Website Right

Whatever you do don’t throw together a basic website and hope for the best because it won’t work. Creating a website for a business is an art and it has to be structured correctly otherwise you will have no chance of getting any business. Don’t make a website that you like the look of, make a website that converts browsers into buyers. Also, find a web designer that has experience in search engine optimisation as well as web design. If you don’t do that you will find that the expensive website that you paid a fortune for is likely to be a dud.  This is why I designed an online video course for creating and marketing hypnotherapy websites to help new hypnotherapists.

The Law of Attraction Doesn’t Work

So many people believe that if they simply think about having a successful business the law of attraction will provide them with one. Well, keep on dreaming because it actually takes time and effort to get a business off the ground. Hypnotherapy Marketing for New Hypnotherapists is initially a time-consuming task. You need to add yourself to directories, create a website, write content and blogs and a myriad of other tasks. If you don’t do this you can’t be found and you will be waiting for the phone to ring. Sorry, you just can’t sit there and hope that something will happen. Running your own business can be incredibly rewarding but in the early days, it can also be lots of hard work. Get it right and you can watch the money flow into your bank accounts but get it wrong and you will be broke, depressed and back in your old career before you know it.

Should I Practice from my Home?

There is no reason why you can’t practice from your home to keep the overheads low when you are first starting out but only if you have a really professional set up. On a forum the other day someone talked about running their business from their utility room. Hardly the professional image that you want to give a client. You need a dedicated room in your house with a desk and therapy chair and your certificates proudly framed on the wall. When you are in that room you don’t wear your slippers and comfy home wear but a smart professional outfit. If you don’t have that set up then find a therapy room and pay for it.

Next, if you do pay for a therapy room in a clinic make sure that you are the only hypnotherapist operating from the clinic. In addition, make sure that they are not making or taking your bookings for you and that you haven’t used their number in your advertising. Keep control of your biggest assets which are you and your website. Never pay the clinic a portion of what you earn. Instead, arrange a fixed fee per hour or per time slot and stick with it. Where possible try and have at least two places you practice from as if one has a problem or shuts down you have a base to work from. This is simply common sense.

Should I do Free Consultations?

I generally have a quick chat with a potential client on the phone before I book them. This is to make sure that I believe they are a suitable candidate for hypnosis and that they aren’t shall we say threatening or problematic. Where possible I keep this chat to a maximum of ten minutes after that I charge. Yet time and time again I hear of therapists arranging to meet potential clients first to have a discussion about the therapy. In one case I heard the other day a therapist had spent 3 hours unpaid with a client.  This is a great way to end up broke.

Meeting clients take time and energy where you could be doing something else. You don’t only lose the time you are talking to them but the time around the appointment where you can’t book someone in case they are is a slight overrun. So a one hour chat with a client can take nearly two hours out of your day. In addition, because someone is not committing to paying you they might simply not be bothered to turn up. Meanwhile, intelligent hypnotherapists are getting in paying clients for that time and earning money.

In my old practice area a number of therapists I knew used to run free talks in the evening to try and attract new clients into their practice. For that evening they would be earning no money. I meanwhile usually had a full practice with four or five clients paying me a nice figure for every consultation. Live and learn.

Hopefully, these pointers can help a few of you new starters to make a great living from a fantastic profession. Just remember that hypnotherapy marketing for new hypnotherapists is a skill just like any other and that it can be learned either slowly by working things out for yourself or more quickly by getting therapy marketing help. You are simply the person who chooses how quickly you want to grow and the time and commitment you put into your business.

 

 

 

Time for a Mid Year Therapy Marketing Review!

Therapy Marketing Mid Year ReviewSo we are just over half way through the year which means that this is the perfect time to take stock and have a good look at what is working and what isn’t in your therapy business. Therapy marketing should never be static. You shouldn’t just put something in place and just forget about it. Instead you need to review the numbers and results of the marketing strategies that you are using and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. So here are just some of the questions that you need to be asking yourself if you are going to get the best out of your business.

Hypnotherapy Customers

As a therapist this is the biggie as without any customers you simply don’t have a business. Yet so few therapists actually sit down and drill into their numbers to make business decisions. To really get a handle on your business ask yourself the following?

How many clients are you currently seeing on average per week vs the number of time slots that you have available? So if for example you have a goal of 20/25 clients per week do you find yourself consistently finding problems attracting that number of people or are you over stretched? If you find that you are always seeing less clients than you need exactly how many new clients do you need to be attracting per week to make your business work for you? If you have too many clients exactly how many people per week?

Asking yourself these questions allows you to think strategically. A business with too few clients clearly has a problem especially if that shortfall is significant. It is a great signal to tell you that your current marketing methods are simply not working and that you need to try something different and quickly. Too many clients start to open you up to possibilities in your business. Perhaps you could do more group work to deal with the numbers. Alternatively, if you are so in demand can you hire an associate or put up your rates. Here you have choices meaning you need to really think about where you want to go next.

Where are Your Therapy Clients coming from?

Hypnotherapy MarketingNow drill down even further. Where exactly are your customers coming from? I know exactly where each of my customers comes from and I keep a spreadsheet where I note down which clients found me from each therapy marketing method I use. You need to understand exactly where your leads are hearing about you because this will tell you exactly what marketing methods are working and which are not. Have your clients found you from your website doing an SEO organic search? Did paid online advertising help? Did any arrive because of social media, referrals from friends, posters in a gym, networking and so on?

When you understand exactly where they are coming from you can now get a handle on the success of the marketing methods you are using and their costs. Always look at your return on investment. If you have a website yet nobody is hearing about you from that website then something is going badly wrong. If you are spending £100 per week on an advert in a local paper and over two months you haven’t had a call then it is time to stop the advert and think of something else.

When I used to work in North London I found that a large number of my competitors would spend one or two evenings a week doing talks around the local area to try and attract new clients. These talks would using take a couple of hours out of their precious evenings and were unpaid. Yes, they would get some new clients in because of their marketing but not enough that they still didn’t need to do more talks the following week and then the next. I however used pay per click advertising to reach targeted prospects. In a really short time, I was full every day and every evening and earning a great income. Yes, it cost money to put out the adverts but they paid for themselves over and over again meaning I never need to slog away just to attract clients and I was being paid a significant amount of money by those clients. This is a perfect example of working smarter and not harder.

Equally, at points in my early career, I invested in adverts in Yellow Pages, local directories or magazines. It soon became evident that many of these methods were simply not bringing in the revenue so I never renewed my subscriptions. Never keep on plugging away at something that doesn’t work. Look at the numbers and if they don’t add up then stop wasting your money.

What do your Therapy Business profits look like?

Therapy Marketing ProfitsNow let’s have a look at your income and profit each month. If you have been a therapist for a while you should always look not only at how you are doing currently but how your profits are changing year on year. If you are not seeing an upward trajectory then you may have a problem.

You can also drill down further and find out which type of customer is more lucrative for your business. I will state the obvious. You will earn more money from clients who are enrolled in a program than seeing clients for one-off sessions.  Spending advertising dollars trying to get customers in for nail-biting for example makes no sense. You are likely to see them for one or two sessions and that is it. Attract a customer who would like to enrol on a six-session stress management and mindfulness course is a different matter. Creating packages of products where ethically you can do so makes much more sense for your business and will bring greater returns.

If you have not heard about High Ticket Selling then it is worth noting that it is becoming a bigger thing in marketing circles. Basically, the concept is simple. Increasingly if you want to attract new customers or clients you are likely to need to spend money. If you attract the wrong kind of customers or don’t get enough of them you will never earn a great living and be living hand to mouth. High Ticket Selling is where you spend a significant amount of money on very targeted advertising but you attract customers willing to spend big to get your expertise to solve a problem. In the coaching sector where this concept is increasingly popular, it is not unusual for coaches using this system to charge $3000 upwards for one of their programs. Yes, they will have spent $300 on getting that client but they are still hugely in profit and they only need to attract a handful of clients to be making an exceptional income. Even if you don’t have the confidence yet to do this you can examine your profit per customer and see where you can find ways to increase that margin.

What is your Web and Social Media Presence?

Social Media Marketing for TherapistsIf you don’t have a web presence or an amazing social media following then give up and go home. This is where the majority of new customers are coming from. People are on their mobile phones all day surfing the web or checking on their Facebook pages so you need to go where your customers are.  Some simple questions to ask yourself about your website:

  • How many people per day are visiting your website?
  • What are the popular pages that you are being found for?
  • Where is the position of your website in relation to that of your competitors?

I know exactly what each person who comes to my website does and how long they have been on it for. I know what pages they are looking at and how long for. I know their location and even the device they are using when they find me. Here is an example of just some of the statistics I got from one of the visitors to my website this morning as they browsed for nearly twelve minutes.

 

4
Exit Time:
6 Jul 2017 10:17:36
Visit Length:
11 mins 57 secs
Resolution:
320×534
System:

Chrome for Android/Android

Samsung Galaxy Core Prime 4G
Total Visits:
1
Location:
United Kingdom FlagSturminster Newton, Dorset, United Kingdom
IP Address:
Removed for Privacy Reasons  
Referring URL:
Entry Page:
Exit Page:

I also know the position of my website in Google not just in the location I am marketing in but also for every keyword that I am trying to attract customers for. Do you? This kind of information gives you valuable therapy marketing insights and enables you to take action in areas where you are weak.

Finally

What are your goals for the future of your business? If you just want to see clients then fair enough all you might care about is filling your weekly slots and that is it but for other therapists, business expansion is really important. So that means you need to think about how you could create passive or alternative income streams for your business. As an example teaching your form of therapy to others,  creating online courses for customers, selling audios, or marketing yourself to corporates. Setting out future goals and creating plans to allow for this is important and stop you from being reliant on just one income source.

In addition are there any courses or skills that you need to acquire to help you and your business? I sell marketing solutions but I still go on courses by other marketers to continually improve my knowledge. I also have a few CPD courses that I am eyeing up that will hopefully enable me to up my success rate even more with clients. Whatever you decide to do make sure that your review covers future endeavours rather than just examing your current ones.

Taking a day or so out of your busy therapy business is so important as it can enable you to make significant improvements to the way that you work. Streamlining your business and getting rid of deadwood can help you to reap rewards well into the future leaving you with a robust, viable and very profitable therapy practice.

 

Therapy Marketing and Retargeting Plus a Great Case Study

Therapy Marketing and RetargetingWell we are almost half the way through the year already. Time flies when you run your own business and we it won’t be long before the holiday slowdown so I thought I would talk about some techniques to get some customers in through your door before everyone takes a vacation. Today I wanted to write a post about therapy marketing and retargeting. Plus I have a great case study that I wanted to share with you from one of the therapists who used my Google Adwords course to attract new clients in Sydney Australia.

So What is Retargeting?

If you are not using retargeting in your advertising then you are missing a trick. This is such a simple concept yet so many therapists have not even thought about applying the principles to their marketing efforts.

Very simply retargeting means marketing to clients who have already shown an interest in your products or services on your website. Although we can of course retarget to people who may have sent us emails in the past or used us to help them before the term retargeting typically is linked with website visits.

You have probably seen this in action before but have never really thought too much about it so let me explain. Have you ever visited a website before and looked at certain products debating on whether to make a purchase and then found that when you left that website you suddenly saw adverts for the exact product you were looking at? If you use the internet then this is probably happening to you daily. As an example yesterday I was on a website printing off information about getting a new house sign made. Five minutes later on Instagram, an advert was served to me with the exact same sign enticing me to make a purchase.

Therapy marketing and retargeting can do the same for you but only if you set it up correctly otherwise you could be wasting your money.

How The System Works

When a person heads on to your website a portion of JavaScript “Cookie” is placed into the person’s browser. As they continue to surf on other sites this “Cookie” notifies retargeting platforms to serve up ads based on your browsing history.  So if a person comes across my website and spends time looking at my Stop Smoking page I can have ads set up to remind that person of my service. I can then follow them around the web until they eventually pick up the phone to book with me.

Although this is the simple version it is a little more complex to set up to get right but immediately you can see the potential. Remember only a small portion of your visitors will convert into purchasers on their first visit. Retargeting means that you up your chances of success of eventually getting that sale.

The Pitfalls for Therapists Remarketing

Firstly getting retargeting approved on Google Adwords is incredibly difficult because of the sensitive area that we work in. In fact, I bypass that platform for this particular purpose. I can totally see their point as well. Imagine you are browsing a web page about erectile dysfunction and immediately I start serving ads up to the person about my therapy to help solve the problem. Now imagine that this person lives with their family and another member uses the same computer and sees the ads. This means they immediately know something about a family member that should have remained very private.

Facebook however does not have such stringent rules and retargeting therapy is possible providing you serve ads in the correct way. If you purchase my Facebook Ads Course I show you how to use this lucrative form of advertising to get more sales and leads.

There are other problems with remarketing as well. Go back to the example I gave you earlier on about heading to a website offering house signs.  In this instance, I had already purchased the sign a month or so earlier. I was actually revisiting the site to print off the details for one of the builders because he wanted something similar on his house. The company that had served me the advert had actually already made the sale but were still spending money showing ads to me which were now unnecessary.

In addition how many times have you gone to a website and browsed a product to find it is exactly the thing you didn’t want. Now imagine the horrible product following you around the internet day in day out. If anything you are now put off ever visiting that website again as it has a negative impact on you.

The key to remarketing is striking the right balance between serving up ads that directly speak to a person but doing it for just the right amount of time so that it does not become stale.

Retargeting and Shopping Carts

Another useful area where remarketing can be used is when someone heads to your online shop and abandons the cart without finalising the purchase. Statistics show that around 68% of people never finish a purchase on a site which is a huge amount of money being left on the table. Reminding those people of your product can significantly reduce that figure. A perfect example of how therapy marketing and retargeting could make you lots more money especially if you are selling big-ticket items.

General Remarketing

As I said earlier even if you consider it too difficult to set up a remarketing campaign you can retarget customers using a simple email. Where possible you should be collecting emails of visitors to your website as well as people who use your services. If you send them offers, information on new services and general interesting updates you can get additional business. This is a no brainer! Remember it is hard enough to attract customers who spend with you in the first place. Once you have those customers nurture them and provide them with extras that make them want to buy from you again and again.

A Case Study

google adwords hypnosis marketingFinally, I just wanted to share with you a quick case study from a hypnotherapist in Sydney who just finished my Google Adwords for Therapists Online Course. This therapist is a newcomer to hypnotherapy and had just started a therapy business in a highly competitive city. He knew that just waiting for SEO to help him get some business was going to be a long process so he decided to buy my course on paid advertising to see if it could help him get some clients. He was happy to give his permission for the following statistics to be shown to you all.

On his very first attempt at creating ads his results were as follows:

Total Ad Spend – $914.09 (including GST which is 10%).
 
Total Revenue – $2740
Lifetime Customer Value – $342.5 (based on my first 8 clients – I suspect this will go up over time).
% spend on advertising – 33.3%
As you can see the numbers speak for themselves. In a really short space of time, he had attracted 8 new clients and earned back significantly more than he had spent in advertising. He believed that with tweaking he could lower the percentage he spent on advertising. I believe that not only could he substantially lower that figure he could also have significantly increased his revenue by selling programs rather than individual sessions. This is the power of pay per click advertising done correctly.
Just as an interesting aside this means that this therapist made back over twenty times the cost of my course on his first attempt. Not a bad investment especially when similar or even better results can be repeated time and time again.
Of course, not everyone gets this right first time and without guidance, I have seen people make some horrible errors and lose lots of money because they did not understand what they were doing. Those same people believed that Adwords was simply not worth the money when in fact it was them who had the problem rather than the system. Be careful dabbling in something you don’t understand!
Until the next time

9 Great Sources of Traffic for Hypnosis Marketing

Website Traffic Hypnotherapy MarketingToday I am going to talk about traffic and hypnosis marketing and some of the amazing sources out there that can help you to advertise your products and services. So firstly what do I mean by traffic? I am talking about directing potential customers to your business online rather than to a bricks and mortar location. Without online traffic it is highly unlikely that a hypnotherapy business would survive in 2017 which means a huge part of your marketing plan needs to factor in getting more people to hear about your business. Now even though attracting traffic sounds difficult it is actually incredibly easy especially if you pay for it however the trick is understanding how well the traffic you attract to your website actually converts otherwise you will be wasting a load of time and money and ending up with no new sales.

It is important to also differentiate between cold and warm traffic. When traffic is warm it means that the visitors to your website have already engaged with your business or actively sought you out. An example of warm traffic might be a client that you have seen in the past who actively goes back to your website a year or two later with the thought that they may use your services again. Cold traffic involves people turning up at your website and blog who haven’t actively thought about hiring you or buying your products. Your job is to convince those people to use your services or buy your products.

Here are just some of the places where you can go to create both warm and cold traffic in order to boost your hypnosis marketing business.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is the mother of all traffic generators and with over 6 Billion people using its search engine every day you have the perfect source of traffic. Even better the people that click on your ads are highly targeted individuals and if you set it up correctly they are also motivated to spend money.  Google is literally handing these potential customers to you on a plate providing you pay them a finders fee.

Sounds wonderful but of course, it also has huge pitfalls. Set up Adwords incorrectly and you may as well be burning your money. The thing with Adwords is that it is a relatively complex site which means it can be very easy to make a costly mistake. A former therapy clinic owner I knew threw away thousands of pounds on the site because her SEO guy set up her account incorrectly. Instead of attracting people to her complementary health clinic who wanted therapeutic massages, she managed to attract every sleazy man in the area looking for something a more intimate form of massage. Ouch!

If you are a newbie at Adwords and don’t want to get burned check out our online course which will show you how to set up your account without the common pitfalls.

Google Adwords for Therapists

 

 

Hypnosis Google Adwords Online Course

 

 

 

Bing 

In the UK most people still use Google but over the past few years Bing has been increasing its market share and now makes up 20% of the UK market. This means that when you are creating content or using ads this search engine needs to be considered. Also because the competition for ad space is still low on this particular search engine the cost for clicks is still relatively cheap which means it is worth considering in some niches as your return on investment will be significantly more.

Facebook

Now once upon a time creating a fan page and adding useful articles and videos on Facebook was a great way of reaching lots of new potential customers. That was until Facebook started to reduce the reach. So what is reach? It simply means the number of people who would see the content in your posts. Once upon a time around 16% of the audience who liked your fan page would see your posts that has now dropped to around 2% unless of course, you pay.

Facebook Ads are becoming increasingly popular because of the sheer number of people that you can reach on the site if you are spending the cash however it is worth noting that if you are not targeting real fans of your page then the traffic is cold. That simply means that you have to find a way of turning the people who come across your content into believers who are willing to spend on your services.

Pinterest

Yes, you may associate the site with pins of interior decor or recipes but it is also used to drum up traffic for many businesses. Add captivating pictures that link back to your website content or blog posts and some people will click through to see what you have to say. If they like what they see and hear then you are going to have a sale or a new customer. Of course, Pinterest has also got into the habit of getting people to pay for promoted pins.

Email

Some of the old fashioned methods are the best. Every hypnotherapist should be capturing the emails of visitors to their website or their clinics. Just remember that the people who come to see you need to have agreed to sign up to your mailing list. Once you have that email you can start to market to those customers and sell them solutions to their problem.

The great thing about email is that nobody can take your list away from you. Yes, some people will always unsubscribe from your content but in general, if you are sending out useful information it can only continue to grow. Yet your Google ranking can change in a heartbeat depending on the latest updates tanking your traffic as quickly as you built it. The money, as they say, is in the list!

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is another way to get found and to attract visitors to your website. If you are a hypnotherapist without a website then you have a problem as that is where most people go to get information. The problem is that SEO takes time and you have to know what you are doing in order to get your content found in the search engines.

Even if you do get your SEO right and get that coveted number one Google slot for your particular keyword you still have a problem, the pesky ads. In high traffic areas, there are likely to be four other people paying to advertise above your listing which means that you are half way down the page even before you have begun. SEO can be great but the consensus appears to be that it won’t be long before the first page of Google is almost completely dominated by ads.

To set up your website correctly for SEO my Turn Your Therapy Website into a Client Magnet Can Help.

Marketing a Therapy Website Online Course

 

 

Hypnosis Google Adwords Online Course

 

 

 

YouTube

YouTube is one of the most popular channels in the world with people. People love to view the free content on the site and they love to solve their problems by searching for video solutions. I know I have used it to solve IT problems, help with DIY and of course for fun. In the case of hypnosis marketing, it is the perfect place to upload videos either about your business or to demonstrate how you can solve other peoples problems. If you aren’t using the site then you are missing a trick.

Directories

In the UK one of the largest directories is the Hypnotherapy Directory which is a traffic source and can help to bring in referrals. This is a niche directory as well which means that the people who are searching on it are actively looking to get help for their particular problems. There are of course thousands of other directories both free and unpaid which you can place your details on to get customers in through your doors. Be cautious where you spend your hard-earned cash and never pay for a directory or a listing in a publication when you are cold-called.

Instagram

People love actually seeing things which is why sites such as Instagram and Pinterest have taken off in the last few years. Now with this site, there is no point in just putting up picture after picture of your therapy practice or logo because people will unfollow straight away. For example, there is a gym near me that just puts up post after post of boring pictures of their equipment and classes. Yawn! Make sure that you are putting up interesting content about other events and places you have been and then every now and again drop a picture of one of your success stories or promotions.  That way your followers won’t get bored and will be actually engaged by what you have to say.

Getting traffic doesn’t have to be hard but the key for hypnosis marketing is to make sure that it is diverse. I have talked before about not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you are getting all your traffic from one source then you need to start to find other alternatives fast. Having a number of great places where you can attract new customers is the key to propelling your business to success.

Oh and finally I have decided that my hypnotherapy marketing mentoring rates are going to increase from June of this year. This is simply because the time and effort it takes to mentor one person is significant vs the revenue I make from my online work.  So if you are looking to work with me on a one to one basis I suggest you book in now as my fees are going to double from the middle of this year.

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

 

 

 

49 Hypnosis Marketing Strategies You Can Implement Today

Hypnosis Marketing StrategiesFirstly welcome to the last blog post of the year. I hope you have all had a lucrative 2019 and are now getting ready to multiply those practice profits in the New Year. December is the perfect time of the year to be planning your hypnosis marketing strategies for 2020. As your clients thoughts turn to overeating, drinking and being merry  you are likely to have a couple of quiet weeks where you  plot and plan that income boost that always appears in the New Year.

Now as many therapists are aware in order to be a wealthy therapist you need to be killing it when it comes to your competition. That means you need to work smarter and harder than your competitors whether they are based internationally or locally. Here are 49 Hypnosis marketing strategies that you can start to work on today to boost your income and build that amazing business of yours. There is no need to work on everything at once as it just is not possible but pick a few from the list and make a start on marketing your products and services.

In order to help you we have a number of additional tools which can help you to build your business faster. An Online Hypnotherapy Marketing Ebook with more details on some of these strategies. Our Turn your Website into a Client Magnet that shows you just what you need to do to attract paying customers into your practice. I also have a new course on Google Adwords which I will be releasing in the New Year to help you get to Number One on Google and slay your competitors.

So until 2017 I wish you all a fantastic Xmas and New Year.

Get Our Free eBook
Subscribe to Our Newsletters, Promotions and Product Info and Get your Free eBook. How to Set You Your Hypnotherapy Practice The Easy Way!
We respect your privacy.

49 Hypnosis Marketing Strategies to Start Using Today

  1. Create Gift Vouchers – What can you get the person who has everything? Why a hypnosis gift voucher. It can be for relaxation sessions, law of attraction work or even just to target the curious. Market them on your website, create a beautiful online voucher and you are ready to go.
  2. Target Your Doctors Surgery – Talk to the practice managers, leave leaflets in the surgery or offer specific services to each GP. This is the perfect target market for anxiety clients.
  3. Head to the Gym – No not to work out but to put up your leaflets. Get there before January and help all those clients who want to lose weight as part of their New Year resolutions.
  4. Free Noticeboards – Stick those leaflets up anywhere you see a free noticeboard. Bus stops, coffee shops, supermarkets and so on. Even better if the leaflet is somewhere where people have to queue!
  5. Set up an Account on Pinterest – Get pinning those inspirational images that make your business seem irresistible.
  6. Driving Schools – Where there is a nervous driver there is a hypnotherapist who can help. Contact those instructors and offer to help.
  7. Corporate – Find the movers and shakers in companies local to you and start to offer them your services. Create promotion packs to sell stress management,  stop smoking or sales performance sessions.
  8. Video – Start creating videos and marketing them on YouTube or any of the other video sharing sites. Show proof of your skills, clients beaming with happiness as their problems fade away and watch the hits on your website increase.
  9. Awareness Days – Find out the awareness days for 2017 and create special promotions around them. Such as depression awareness, Stoptober and Dry January.
  10. Team Up – Find some local massage therapists, personal trainers, physios and team up with them to create a package of services or to cross refer.
  11. Hand Out Leaflets – Outside stations, busy fairs or events or even in a shopping centre promoting your services. Just make sure you get permission from the relevant authorities first.
  12. Create an Online Course – Although you will always need the personal touch with some clients others will respond with some simple self help online. Give them the tools to empower them and they will thrive.
  13. Get a Website Review -Find someone who really knows about hypnosis marketing strategies and get them to review your website. With some simple changes it is often possible to double, triple or quadruple your revenue by rectifying your copy and website structure. My online course How to Turn Your Website Into a Client Magnet enables you to review your website yourself and make changes so that you can multiply your income.
  14. Contact Those Dentists – Nervous dental patients or clients with bruxism as perfect candidates for some hypnosis to alleviate stress and anxiety.
  15. Create and Instagram Account – Advertise your business, like others and generally get involved in your community.
  16. Yoga Classes – Hypnobirthing and Yoga Classes go hand in hand. Offer taster sessions with the local yoga teacher at the end of a class and start attracting new clients.
  17. Start a Blog – Blogging is a great supplement to your website and if done well can go viral or create a community of followers in your niches.
  18. Design a Logo – Create an identity for your business and use it on your website, marketing materials and emails to stand out from the crowd.
  19. Get on Facebook – Get involved locally or in a group important for your niche. Heah even better start a group of your own and control the content!
  20. Market Research – Find out what your customers really want. Get out on the street or go online and ask questions to find out what is selling then tailor your products and services to meet demand.
  21. Get Testimonials – Put them on your websites, on videos and in your marketing materials. People love proof that hypnosis works!
  22. Record some Self Help Audios – Start recording self hypnosis audios and market them online and to your clients. Just make sure that they are the very best quality you can make.
  23. Upsell your Products and Services – Package your sessions to that you are selling programs. Upsell email support or your self help audios to bring in extra revenue. Even buy wholesale products and have them in your therapy room for your customers to purchase.
  24. Find your USP – Your Unique Selling Point is what makes you different to your competition. Work out what it is and start to use it in your hypnosis marketing strategies.
  25. Build a Therapy Centre – Rent a premises and start selling the other rooms to therapists for a fee. The other therapists will cover your room costs and you should profit on top!
  26. Use Paid Advertising – Google Adwords and Facebook advertising when done well gets you in front of your target audience. Use it wisely and see customer numbers jumping. I have created an online course to help you master Google Adwords for Therapists  and another for Facebook Advertising.
  27. Connect With Other Therapists – Counsellors, CBT therapists and psychotherapists are perfect people to network with and create cross referrals.
  28. Start a Podcast – Offer people tips and strategies for self help on a regular podcast and build a network of followers.
  29. Citations – Build citations in local directories and link them back to your website. Just make sure they are relevant or local.
  30. Networking – Join some local networking groups and connect with others. Spend very little initially until you find the ones that work for you.
  31. SEO – Learn about Search Engine Optimisation and start to put your knowledge into practice. Good SEO can boost your organic rankings and get you found in Google and Bing.
  32. Forums – Get involved in niche forums and offer your advice. Put your links in your profile and wait to be contacted.
  33. Get out on the Street – Why not demo your hypnosis skills in front of the general public. Amaze those passers by and wait for the stream of people who want to book an appointment with you.
  34. Wedding Planners or Dressmakers – Who doesn’t know a bride who didn’t want to lose weight for the big day? Create a weight loss package and market it to bridge and even the bridegroom.
  35. Health Food Stores – Get to know the owners. Put up leaflets and offer taster sessions and talks.
  36. Email Lists – Start collecting emails from your customers and potential clients and remarket to them.
  37. Local Newletters – Find out who runs your local newsletter and either write an article or take out a small regular advert.
  38. Press Releases – Got a new product or amazing service that you need the world to know about. Create a press release and advertise just what you can do.
  39. Twitter – Get on Twitter and engage in the community or with people in your specialist niches.
  40. Create a Workshop– Start by creating a workshop or a mini course for people to attend. Seeing twenty people at once will always be more lucrative that seeing one person at a time.
  41. Get on the Radio – Ok so you may have a problem getting on the National stations but there are hundreds of local and community stations that would love your input.
  42. Create an ebook and Sell it – Have a great solution to a problem? Then get writing and marketing your ebook. Self publishing on Kindle makes it easy for you to be a published author. My eBook on Hypnotherapy Marketing goes into considerable detail on how to market your business effectively.
  43. Broadcast Live – Periscope, Meerkat and even Facebook allow you to broadcast live and post directly online. Create a session with the wow factor and put it out there for the world to see.
  44. Snapchat – Learn how to use Snapchat and build a following.
  45. Volunteer – Get a gig volunteering at your local hospital using your hypnosis skills. Once you have people convinced of its effectiveness you can market your sessions to those who can afford to pay.
  46. Local Help Groups – Get involved with local help groups and offer taster sessions or talks.
  47. Google+ – Get on Google + and Google My Business to appear on those maps!
  48. Create a Membership Website – Offer clients continual value so that they sign up for your services month after month or year after year.
  49. Local Newspapers – Get in touch with your local newspaper journalists and offer them a story. How you cured a local person of a fear of Santa Claus. How you created stress reduction sessions for families who were worried about Brexit. Make it topical and local.

Enjoy putting in place those hypnosis marketing strategies hopefully they should keep you busy until my next post in the New Year!

How Pandas, Penguins and Possums Are Impacting your Hypnosis Marketing!

hypnosis marketing google pandaOk you probably think that I have lost the plot by talking about animals and marketing but I can assure you that these creatures are highly important to your hypnosis marketing and to Google. So what the hell am I on about? Lets start from the top. When you enter a search query into the Google search bar to ask to get information the results that get returned to you are based around a sophisticated algorithm. Just some of the factors that determine which websites you get to see include:

  • Mobile Friendliness
  • Location and Proximity to you
  • Backlinks
  • Synonyms
  • Site and page quality
  • Web history
  • Keywords
  • Content
  • SSL Certificates  and on and on the list goes.

In fact there are around 200 different ways in which google decides what they want to show you not including the information they show you in their ads. Having a basic understanding of the algorithm is essential as without this knowledge it can be hard to create a website that gets found. Most therapists just create a website they like the look of with a web designer but this is a perfect way to disappear and never be found by the general public. My online course How to Turn Your Therapy Website Into a Client Magnet gives you many of the basics so that you can start to optimise your website to get found.

The Google Zoo

So what has this got to do with animals? Well Google has a mission to give searchers the most useful information they can and that means that they are always tweaking and adjusting search results so that their users get the best experience. They also work on ways to close loopholes that allow spammy or low quality websites into the search results. In recent times these updates have been given code names and you guessed it Panda, Penguin and Possum are the names given to some of the major changes that have happened in the past few years.

Having a basic understanding of these changes is essential because if your website is on the wrong side of the changes then your business could vanish overnight from the search engines. A perfect example of this was the company Interflora in 2013 who paid for newspaper advertorials to link to their company so they could get a boost in the search engines. Google found out and the next thing Interflora disappeared from the search results. Imagine how many millions they lost whilst they frantically tried to recover their website.

Just as with Interflora the same things are happening to your websites and in many cases you are probably unaware that your hypnosis marketing efforts are being destroyed because of things you or your website developer has done to your site. So here are some of the basics that you need to consider before creating content or links to your website.

Panda

The Panda updates revolve around demoting websites which are of poor quality. This could mean websites that contain lots of spam or sites that simply have very little unique information to offer. It also penalises websites that contain duplicate content. That means if you have two websites you cannot repeat any of the information from one and place it on another.

Penguin

The Penguin updates tend to concern themselves with links created by spammers to give their websites a boost. Now if you have outsourced your SEO work to someone else how do you know what they are doing is actually helping or hindering your website. I have come across many companies who have paid for SEO services and the person doing the work has built a lot of rubbish links to their sites that could get them penalised. Also never be tempted to buy backlinks from one of the companies that I regularly see advertising on the web. This is a perfect way to destroy your website.

Possum

Possum is an update which has happened in only the last month and impacted how local search results were shown. Previously a business really needed a central location in a town or city for it to appear highly in Google maps or the organic search results. Since Possum you can rank for an area if you are outside the town centre provided your website shows that you are offering services to people in that location. This update is ongoing as we speak so the full impact is still not known.

It is worth noting that many of these code word updates have a number of revisions. Which means you will see a Panda 1, 2, 3 and 4 as Google becomes more sophisticated. There are also other codewords including Hummingbird which is the code word for the Google algorithm itself and Pigeon for local SEO results.

Keep Yourself Informed

Having a basic understanding of search engine optimisation and how Google decides to show your website is vital if you have a website. Without this knowledge you could find your business impacted overnight simply because you got some of the basics wrong. Whilst you may not be an Interflora it could be enough to significantly harm your income.

Oh and for those of you who still have not got a Mobile website I suggest you do so asap. Rumours are that at some point in the near future Google may simply stop showing non mobile friendly websites in the search results at all. Over 50% of searches are currently done on mobile devices so it is obvious why they are thinking of making this change. Don’t bury your head in the sand, ignore hypnosis marketing and hope the problem will go away. My online course has information on where to create a new website for under $200 which is a small price to pay to avoid vanishing from your potential customers.

 

 

9 Shocking Habits Therapists that Need to Stop Now!!!

canstockphoto40369607Just in time for Halloween my fright night horrors that I come across when dealing with therapists and their websites.

For many years the general public have considered hypnotherapy to be a non serious profession. Yeah it is ok to use on TV when you are making fun of people but as a serious therapy the vast majority would rather get their teeth pulled out at the dentist than see a hypnotherapist to resolve their problems. Some of us are slowly trying reverse this perception by upping standards in the courses and education as well as by educating people in the media, online or even face to face. BUT there are a small number of hypnotherapists who just don’t get it and are jumping on the hypnotherapy bandwagon and trying to do things on the cheap and it still shocks me that the modern profession has training schools that send their students out to meet the general public with this attitude. Here are just some of the unbelievable things I have encountered lately whilst working with therapy marketing students.

Professionalism – I won’t name and shame but I recently booked in a newly qualified hypnotherapist for a series of marketing sessions. This was to take place via Facetime or Skype. On the morning of the session I started the session to see that they were sat ready to start the session in their car! If that wasn’t bad enough the car was located in a fast food outlets car park. What the hell!!

How on earth am I or for that matter the general public going to take a therapist seriously who thinks it is ok to conduct coaching sessions in the car park of a fast food chain? What message does that send to me? It says I can’t be bothered taking time out of my day to work on my business seriously and I am cramming you in before doing something else. If you truly serious about your profession then sessions need to be conducted in a space that is suitable for the person you are going to meet. No therapy, marketing, coaching or business meeting is suitable for discussions in a car. This goes for your clients as well. Unbelievable as this may sound one of my clients also wanted to conduct a Skype session from her car as well. It is time for this madness to stop.

Courses – Time and time again I hear on from my students that they chose a course because it was cheap. Another student of mine when questioned on their qualifications was not able to tell me if they could even get into a reputable UK professional body. They had no clue because they had gone on a churn and burn course online. No medical doctor looks for the cheapest course they can find. They look at the best possible medical schools they can get into for the best possible training as they are saving lives. In a way we are also doing the same. If we can get someone to lose weight, stop smoking, tolerate chemo or stop an addiction we can do the same. So why oh why does our industry attract people who think they have the ability to do this after a few online lessons and a tiny fee? Research your courses, talk to the professional bodies and then pick the absolute best there is!

Websites – One of my personal hatreds is seeing a website that has been thrown up by a therapist in the hope that it will do. No it won’t do as it looks awful and your clients will think the same. If your pictures are out of proportion, if you have big gaps in your template, if your fonts vary significantly or you have areas where links are broken then they need to be fixed now. Who wants to look at a website that is a mess? A website does not have to cost the earth if you know what you are doing. If you don’t then get help. My Turn Your  Therapy Website into a Client Magnet online course shows you exactly what you need on your website in order for it to be a success. This is essential information and most hypnotherapists don’t know this important information.

Another of my students started our sessions together and showed me a website that a developer had created for them for hundreds of pounds. The website consisted of one page! Talk about throwing your money down the drain. To top it all the website was on a developers system so it can’t be altered easily. In this case the website was scrapped and we will have to start again. If you don’t want to make these costly mistakes get help before you start.

Spelling and Grammar – Whilst we are on the topics of websites how many of you have really proof read your sites? You can get away with the odd typo of course but every now and again I come across a website that is littered with problems. I saw one of the worst possible yesterday where nearly every sentence had an issue. What would a potential client do if they came across the same? Well I can tell you that my first instinct would be that if a hypnotherapist can’t do basic spelling then I don’t want to see them. How could they possibly solve my problem if they couldn’t even get some basics right? Get an educated proof reader to look through your work and run everything through a spell checker online. It won’t catch everything but it will certainly iron out most of the problems.

Dress – Appearance is everything in this profession as if we are dressed right then we will inspire confidence in our clients. Now that does not mean a formal suit in every case (even though in certain clinics or locations this would be expected) but certainly smart clothing. Yet many therapists dress inappropriately. Flip flops, jeans, dirty or scruffy clothes, slippers and so on. If this is you it is time to smarten up now. Just because you are self employed does not mean you can get away with this.

Location – Many years ago I went for a therapy session at a woman’s house in North London. When I was there I couldn’t pay any attention to what she was saying because I was staring at her carpet which needed a hoover badly. I never returned for another session. I have left clinics because of problems with toilets, moths, cats and general cleanliness. Luckily I am now in the position to have my own clinic attached to my home which is spotlessly clean, spacious and quiet. You need to make sure that you have the same. If you work from home then the space has to be absolutely appropriate for the therapy to take place. So no animals, dirty washing, interruptions or general mess. If you can’t provide this in your home then find a suitable professionally run clinic and believe me they are not always easy to find.

Copyright Issues and Plagarism – I have just finished off a conversation with a potential marketing client who was looking for help to grown their hypnotherapy business in the UK. As with all these calls the first thing I do is check if the person has a website and then I went to have a look. Imagine my shock when I saw that their logo was also identical to mine, same keyword and similar colour and style.  Now I didn’t get angry at the person on the phone. They were naive sure but they had not thought to check if the work they had been given was really original. In fact I have experienced this before when a website designer had copied the wording on every single page of my website (yeah I caught him as well)! Be aware that you can’t go stealing other peoples names, content or designs otherwise you will be getting legal letters before you know it.

Lying – If you are creating a website only put in your real experience and qualifications. I have just come across another student who claimed they were a master practitioner, one of the elite in the profession and so on. This person had not seen one client. Lying about your qualifications and experience is a good way to end up in court when your clients find out that you haven’t a clue! Google in the UK certainly is coming down heavily on holistic therapists at the moment and is banning websites from paid advertising that don’t have significant disclaimers on every page where they make a claim. The Advertising Standards Agency is also waiting to pounce on those who are misleading the general public and making outrageous claims. There are ways to write content without admitting you are a novice and without lying about your experience. Use them and stay on the right side of the law.

Giving up the Day Job Without Real Consideration – A marketing client just spoke to me about how they had sunk £2000 into their website and still were not appearing in the search engines. They admitted they were not particularly literate with computers and were no sales person and the money was running out. What were they going to do? The simple answer was pay someone to teach you or go back to work. So yeah hypnosis, reiki, counselling is your passion but if you have no business skills then do not be naive. You have to get clients through the door and throwing money at an expensive website is not going to help! Many of my students can be up and running by spending less than a couple of hundred pounds at most. Talk about throwing money down the drain. Spend your money wisely on someone who can actually help rather than second guessing how you are going to make a living in this industry.

Stop your website and business featuring in my tales or horror next Halloween and get professional help to get things right. Simply contact me to get more information on how you can build an awesome business that attracts customers the right way.

Back to School – Website Marketing for Therapists

Therapy marketing WebsitesIf you are in the UK you will know that today is the first day back at school after the long summer holidays. This does not just apply to children but to adults as well so I thought this would be the perfect time to launch my first online course for therapists. One of the biggest issues that I see time and time again is therapists making fundamental mistakes with their website design and content. This is a huge issue as your website is now usually the number one marketing tool for your business. Get it right and you have great foundations on which to build your empire but get it wrong and you may as well go back to your old day job. So I have created a course called “Turn Your Therapy Website Into a Client Magnet” that is especially designed for website marketing for therapists.

Before I explain a little bit more about the course I want to firstly thank those therapists who took the time out to send me their websites so that I could use them in the video content. I had a great response and it would have been great to use them all but in the end I settled on two websites in particular one from the US and another from Australia. I will be sending a short thank you note to the other hypnotherapy business owners over the next couple of days to give them some advice on what they can do to boost their website and business.

Common Therapy Website Problems

Firstly I thought I should mention that of all the websites that were sent over to me there were a number of common problems that appeared time and time again.

  • The therapist has decided to create their own website and has done it badly! This was generally due to a lack of website design skills and saving money. So here is my opinion. If you can’t be bothered to spend money creating a website or going to classes to learn how then don’t bother at all. I know this sounds harsh but the reality is that if your website stinks then it makes your business look bad and won’t make you any money. I am not sure what it is about therapy that makes people think it is ok to do this but it is a huge problem.  You have to invest in your success. If you own a shop you get the best premises, signage and stock. If you are a plumber you need a reliable van, tools and website. These things cost money!!! Setting up a therapy business is relatively cheap in comparison to many other businesses so save up and do it right.
  • Therapists do not bother to put their location on the first page of their website or in some cases on it at all. Now I am not sure if they think that their clients and Google are mind readers but without this information nobody knows where you are. This is basic stuff! People are on your website in most cases for a period of seconds. If they can’t see that you are near them then they are off elsewhere like a shot. The same applies to the Google bots that search your website for clues as to where to place you in the rankings. If a client enters in a search “Hypnosis in Adelaide” then the bot has search your website for that keyword and will show all the listings which have that term in the page. If your website does not say where you are then your website is consigned to an internet black hole! Start to think like the people searching for your website and what you might need to add to your website to help them find you.

Therapy Website Marketing Online Course

Website marketing for therapists is so crucial to your business success that I have created an online course which contains over two hours of video lessons plus information sheets to help you create the perfect platform for your business. I believe that the information contained in the course can make a huge difference to a therapy business and its ability to get found in the Search Engines as well as assisting you to create a platform for making passive income.

I am not a website designer (even though I have made my own websites) but that does not matter. Why? Because most website builders are great at creating a website but have no idea about search engine optimisation of the elements that you need to have to make a success of a therapy business. That means that even when you spend thousands of pounds getting an expert in to create your site it still does not create a great return for you. I show you how you can get a website built for under $200 and the content it needs to contain to act as that client magnet. I know what I am doing. As of this morning I was number 1 on Google in the US for Hypnotherapy Marketing,  number 1 in the UK  and number 2 in Australia. Not bad for a website that I update once or twice a month! If I can do this worldwide what can I do for you in your local town or province?

Build a Hypnotherapy Website That Gets Customers

Follow the tips and strategies that are contained in my online course and you will be guided through each of the important elements that your website must have.  These are the exact methods I used to create three successful practices in the UK plus they catapulted this website to one of the leading websites in the world for hypnotherapy marketing. So what are you waiting for?  The link for the course can be found below. I hope you all find it useful and informative and I would love to hear what course you would like me to create next to help with your marketing.

Marketing a Therapy Website Online Course

Turn Your Therapy Website into a Client Magnet Turn Your Therapy Website into a Client Magnet Online Course