Martina McKeough, Author at Hypnotherapy Marketing Expert

Hypnosis Books – The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on The Market

Posted on October 14, 2019November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

hypnosis books - the 10 best hypnotherapy books There are many facets to hypnosis marketing and one of the most important is getting the very best results for your clients. When you get great results time and time again your clients will speak about you to their friends and family and you should start to get a steady stream of referrals into your practice. The problem is that most hypnosis courses are too short to teach you everything you need to do with clients which means continued professional development should be an essential part of your practice. Hypnosis books are a great way of learning from the best so I have compiled a list of the top ten hypnotherapy books you must read. Of course my Hypnotherapy Marketing eBook should be number 11!!! Just note this post may contain affiliate links which means that I get a commission if you choose to purchase through the link. This is at no cost to you.

The 10 Best Hypnotherapy Books on Amazon (in my opinion)

Hypnotherapy – Dave Elman

Dave Elman is one of the greats of hypnosis who taught his hypnosis methods throughout the US to doctors and dentists. His interest in hypnosis was supposedly created when he watched stage hypnosis relieve his father’s pain when he had terminal cancer. Pursuing his interest in the subject he created one of the most famous rapid inductions ever which is still used by hypnotherapists to this day. Despite his huge wealth of knowledge, he left behind this one hypnosis book about his work. This is an essential read for modern-day hypnotherapists.

Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis – Heap & Avarind

The authors of this hypnosis book were the people who set up the clinical hypnosis courses at the University of Sheffield Psychiatry department. As professionals, they have taught dentists, psychiatrists and psychologists how to use hypnosis to help their patients. The book includes details on the history of hypnosis, basic procedures to follow as well as how to use hypnosis for specific conditions or problems.

Trancework – Michael D Yapko

Many people would like to claim that they are one of the greatest modern-day hypnotherapists alive but few really are. Michael Yapko is the real deal and a clinical psychologist and therapist who lives in California. He is many recognised for his work on depression and how it can be treated without the need for medication but also teaches all over the world. In Trancework Michael covers everything from how to conduct general hypnosis to dealing with specific ailments such as pain, anxiety and stress to name but a few. An essential for any professional hypnotherapists bookcase.

Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions & Metaphors – D Corydon Hammond

This hypnosis book is jam-packed and I mean full to the brim of practical suggestions that can be used with your clients. Want help with pain control? Then check out their chapter on chronic pain, emotional pain, migraines and anaesthesia. Or what about help with raising self-esteem, dealing with anxieties and phobias, sleep problems, cancer patients or eating disorders. This book has the lot and means that you will never feel stuck when thinking of ways that you can help your clients.

Trance-Formations – Grinder & Bandler

This is an interesting choice as Grinder and Bandler are actually the founding fathers of NLP. This particular book is really the transcript of one of their seminars where they discuss and use a whole host of techniques to influence how you think, feel and behave. These guys break down how Ericksonian style hypnosis indirect hypnosis can transform lives.

Hypnosis for Inner Conflict Resolution: Introducing Parts Therapy – Roy Hunter

After hypnoanalysis comes parts therapy and Roy Hunter has written the definitive book on how to use this to create positive change with your clients. This book gives you every step you ever need to take in order to conduct a parts therapy session and have a successful outcome. I have only included one book by Mr Hunter in my list but I would actually highly recommend all his books as essential reads. For example, his hypnosis book on regression therapy is also a wonderful read.

The Weight Hypnotherapy and You – Judith E Pearson

The vast majority of hypnosis books are generalistic and only briefly touch on the techniques you would need to use with specific problems. This hypnosis book is one that gives you all the details you need to conduct successful weight loss hypnotherapy sessions with your clients. Judith has a PhD in counselling and also uses NLP and hypnosis is her practice. She knows her stuff and details on how to coach your clients to weight loss success. The book covers everything from motivation to exercise to stress management in relation to emotional eating and is an essential read for those of you want to specialise in weight control.

My Voice Will Go with You: Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson: Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erikson – Erickson & Rosen

Milton H. Erickson is probably one of the most influential hypnotherapists of all time. His way of using hypnosis to create positive change was unique and indirect meaning his subjects were helped with puns, humour or language without even knowing it. This book has collated over 100 of Erickson’s examples of helping others and placed them into a format where a modern-day hypnotherapist can use them in their own practice.

Scripts & Strategies in Hypnotherapy – Roger P Allen

The eternal debate will always be should a hypnotherapist use scripts in their work. Whilst a number of hypnotherapists would disagree with their use they are often an essential way to help a new therapist learn about metaphors, language patterns and suggestions. This particular volume collates a number of useful scripts in one place that can be used as a starting point when working with clients. As ever take the basics and learn to adapt these to your particular client needs for best results.

How to Hypnotise Anyone – Confessions of a Rogue Hypnotist – The Rogue Hypnotist

The Rogue Hypnotist is a mystery in hypnosis circles as nobody quite knows who they are. What I can say is that their hypnosis books are hugely entertaining as well as being informative. Once again I have just mentioned one of their volumes but the Rogue Hypnotist has written extensively on everything from addiction work to anxiety. Get stuck in to their latest releases and find out more about what modern hypnotherapists think.

Interested in any of the amazing titles? Then just click on the title links to purchase a copy of any of the 10 best hypnosis books on Amazon.

*This site is owned and operated by Hypnotherapy Marketing Expert. Hypnotherapy Marketing Expert is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Hypnotherapy Marketing Expert is compensated for referring traffic and business to Amazon.

Anxiety Therapy Marketing – Facebook Live Event

Posted on October 11, 2019October 11, 2019 by Martina McKeough

It seems apt that I started to write this post on World Mental Health day as I want to talk about working with anxiety clients and how to conduct anxiety therapy marketing to attract this group of clients. The statistics clearly show that mental health issues are on the rise each year and more than ever before there are huge groups of people around the globe who need help from therapy professionals. In the UK the NHS is the first port of call for most of these people but with funding cuts and a reliance on prescribing pills as a solution there are a huge range of anxious people out there whose problems still persist. As a hypnotherapist I know that it is possible to make a huge difference to these people but in order to do that you firstly need to know how and then how to attract those clients.

For those of you wondering the size of the market here are some of the statistics from just the UK where I am based:

Prescriptions for anti-depressants and anxiety medication has risen from 31 million in 2006 to 65 million in 2016.
1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem each year.
Only 1 in 8 people with a mental health problem are receiving treatment.
Medication is the number one choice for doctors in the UK.
Mental health funding is dropping year on year in real terms.

These clearly show that our current health systems simply cannot keep up with the sheer volume of people who need help. This is why private healthcare is a booming business and one that you need to be part of.

Marketing for Mental Health Professionals

If any new therapist asked me what could make a difference to their practice I would tell them these three things:

Be great at what you do. Solve problems and your clients will spread the word about your methods.
Whilst you are building traction in start to implement a host of therapy marketing strategies to help you build your income.
Create a passive income stream to insulate your business from seasonality and to increase your earnings.

As a hypnotherapist I know that most hypnotherapy training in the UK is relatively basic. It gives you the bare bones of what you need to do but has very little detail to make sure that you get outstanding results time and time again. This is why there are a ton of CPD courses out there to help us improve our methods and strategies. BUT not all CPD courses are built the same. Some have poor content, are generic and have little new to offer our clients which is why I decided to team up with an anxiety specialist with 20 years experience Steve Norton to deliver a Facebook Live discussing how to get the best possible results for these particular clients.

Do you Have a System?

Steve and I decided to partner on this project because we have similar thoughts on how to get results with clients and that is by having a system or framework to work within. When you have a systematic approach to dealing with anxiety clients you can make sure that you have covered all bases to get the best results. Steve has created a four session protocol to help anxiety clients together with scripts, strategies, and methods to alleviate their worries and fears. With over twenty years experience helping anxiety clients this is the perfect program to use in your practice and we will be sharing some insights on his results and experience in our Facebook Live event on the 30th October 2019 at 7pm UK Time.

Lead Generation for Therapists?

So how did Steve and I first meet? Well around 18 months ago I helped Steve with his anxiety therapy marketing strategies and in a relatively short space of time we doubled his website visits and income! This is because I also have a marketing system that can be used successfully time and time again to bring in new clients. If a therapist follows this therapy marketing strategy then they are going to make more money, fact! It therefore made perfect sense for Steve and I to join forces to create a program that not only shows you how to attract clients in the anxiety niche but also how to help them get great positive results as well.

Facebook Live Event 30th October 2019

Want to join Steve and myself to hear more about anxiety therapy marketing and practical steps you can take with your clients? Simply like my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/therapymarketingexpert/ and write a comment to say you are interested and we will send you an invite to the closed session.

How to Write a Good Therapy Blog & Boost Your Income

Posted on September 29, 2019November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

As a marketing specialist for therapists I have read my fair share of therapy blogs over the years. Usually these are my clients blogs which are attached to their websites and are tacked on as an after thought once the main site content has been created. Writing a good therapy blog is a great way of attracting clients but invariably the same problems appear again and again:

No Updates – The blog gets updated once in a blue moon and the last update was months if not years ago
Too Short – A blog post is thrown up but it is so short it could be mistaken for a post on Twitter
Keywords – The person writing the blog doesn’t understand about keywords so they blog will never be found
Irrelevant – The blog is used as a way of the therapist expressing themselves on a topic nobody cares about
Client Attraction – The blog does not create a way for the therapist to attract clients

How to Get More Therapy Clients

A great way of getting new therapy clients is with regular and consistent blogging. This is because when it is done well your blog will be indexed in the search engines giving you more opportunities to reach the clients who need to see you. Put simply if you have a website with say twenty pages you have limited opportunities for your clients to find you on Google. If you have an additional twenty blog posts you now have doubled your chances of being found in the search engines. Yes, this is a simplistic example but it gives you an idea of what can be achieved. Even better blogging doesn’t have to cost you money like Facebook advertising or Google Adwords.

Also, blog content can be repurposed, spread around the internet and updated. If you do this on a regular basis those twenty blog posts actually can turn into something far bigger generating you clients and sales from multiple sources.

Blogs for Therapists

When done correctly blogs for therapists can be the perfect marketing tool providing they are written correctly and use client attraction methods in their content. Learning how to do this can be simple when you know-how which is why I decided to write a short mini-course on how to use blogging to get more clients. In this course, you are going to be able to look over my shoulder as I create blog posts that are going to help you earn more money consistently. Even better these blogs have evergreen content so that the content will keep on generating leads for you years after they have been written.

Through a series of videos, I will walk you through the elements you need in your blog and how you are going to implement them. These include:

How to choose a blog title that will get you customers or clients
How to research content for your blog
How to create a basic blog structure
How to choose words that are more likely to convert
How to create passive income from your blog
How to dominate the local search engine results through blogging
Where to place your blog to get multiple readers coming to your content
What elements are essential in your blog to make it work harder for you
How to stay in contact with potential customers who are reading your blog even if they aren’t ready to buy

Blogging for Therapists

How to Write a Therapy Blog

If you really want to write a good therapy blog you have to know the essential elements for success. Just writing something and trying to see if it will work is just going to make your life harder and waste a considerable amount of your time. When you understand exactly what you need to include or exclude from your blog you can concentrate on getting clients and sales instead of using your time and energy attempting something that is just never going to work. When you learn the correct blog tools you are going to see that it can make a massive difference to your business. Still don’t believe me?

Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors
If you are a business that blogs you are 13 times more likely to get a positive return on investment
If you blog you are going to get 67% more leads

As you can see these numbers are far from small or marginal these are the kind of figures that can help you to double your income. In fact, if you create a great passive income product your earnings potential goes sky high as you can sell it worldwide time and time again even when you are sleeping. Want even more facts about how blogging can help you? Read this blog on the advantages of regular blogging.

Therapy Blogging Online Course

Want to dive in and start earning that extra income right away by writing a good therapy blog? You can purchase the blog course by following the link below. In addition to the course, you will get an accompanying pdf with the hard copy information plus my blogging checklist that you can print out and follow each time you write a new blog so that you never go wrong.

What I’ve Learned Spending £100,000 on Google Adwords for Therapy Marketing

Posted on March 9, 2019November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

google adwords therapy marketing Yep you read the headline right. Over the past few years I have spent a whopping £100,000 or at today’s exchange rate $131,000 on Google ads. That is one hell of a huge number! Even I was shocked how large the figure was when I looked in my account the other day. But here is the thing, in just about every month that I have advertised I brought in revenue which not only paid for my therapy marketing on Adwords but brought me in a significant extra income as well.

Now hell yes of course I would rather that £100,000 was in my pocket rather than Google’s but with most of the major search engines if you want to get found you often have to pay. Google is now like a greedy manager taking their cut of my profits but the deal isn’t so bad because my I come out winning as well. Depending on the campaign, keywords or location I am advertising I am typically seeing a return of three or four times my ad spend. As a whole, it is estimated that most advertisers using the system correctly will make $2 for every dollar they spend. That is like printing money provided you know what you are doing.

So what have I learned from my years advertising on the platform?

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

I have worked with a large number of therapists over the years who have tried their hand at Google Adwords and got it badly wrong. This is because the system is a totally complicated beast which changes every five minutes. In fact even my account managers at Google have got it wrong at times. When I look at their accounts and the way that they have been set up I want to weep because invariably they are burning their cash. I have seen issues such as:

Local therapists advertising to the wrong area
Therapists not using the right keywords
Usage of bad match types
Ignorance of negative keywords
Incorrect bidding strategies
Ignorance of half the system features
Not understanding the success metrics of their campaigns
General total lack of understanding of how the system works

These are the therapists who will turn around and say to me that Google Adwords doesn’t work for therapy marketing. In fact that isn’t the case it is the therapists who have rushed in set up ads without getting to understand the system first.

Even the Big SEO Agencies Get it Wrong

I’m currently working with a marketing student who turned over their Adwords account to a big SEO agency to run. Surely people with huge expertise in running websites and pay per click advertising would get him some clients? Err nope because the agency may have been great at SEO and PPC but they didn’t understand the therapy market. My client had told them he wanted to specialise in online sessions and was happy to see clients who were based anywhere in the UK. So the ad agency set up a load of keywords and then tumbleweed.

Just one of the myriad of mistakes they made was using the keyword hypnotherapy to advertise. Yes, it may have been partly relevant to my client’s job but here’s the thing people may look for this keyword as follows:

“free hypnotherapy”
“Paul McKenna hypnotherapy”
” hypnotherapy to control girls”
“hypnotherapy definition”

I could go on. Hopefully, you can see the big problem here. None of those keywords is going to earn my client any cash. In addition, there are about 18,000 searches in the UK for this term alone in the UK at an average cost of £2.50 per click. Even on a generous budget per day for advertising you would lose a ton of cash and get no clients which was exactly what happened to my student. This agency did not have specialist knowledge of the therapy niche and this was one of many mistakes they made so naturally, their campaign for my client was a disaster.

You Have to Spend to Accumulate

I know therapists love the idea of Facebook ads because you can have such a small budget per day that it feels very manageable. The only problem is that most therapists don’t understand Facebook ads very well either. They are cheap because the people being shown your ad have no intention to buy at that moment. This means to really make advertising on the platform work you need to build a funnel, remarket and cultivate the clients. With Adwords, the people typing in specific search queries are looking to hire someone now which means the cost of advertising to that person is higher but your chance of getting a sale is bigger.

The trouble is that as well as therapists setting up their ads incorrectly they also start to panic when they have to spend £50 and have had no calls so they close the account down. When you use pay per click advertising especially systems like Adwords you have to think strategically. For example, there is no point in spending £50 on advertising for clients who are only going to come and see you for one session. It is great for big-ticket programs but very difficult to make pay if you are selling something cheaply because the clicks will cost more than the revenue. Plan your campaigns carefully so you don’t fall into this trap.

PPC Advertising on Google Has a Low Bounce Rate

So what do I mean when I talk about bounce rate? Bounce rate is when a visitor comes across your website and visits one single page and immediately decides your site is boring, irrelevant or slow and heads off immediately elsewhere. Having a low bounce rate shows Google that you are attracting the right visitors to your site meaning it should in theory move it up the rankings for certain keywords.

Traffic to a website tends to be classed in five categories:

Social
Paid Search
Organic Search
Direct Traffic
Referral Traffic

The traffic with the lowest bounce rates tends to be a referral or organic views but in my case, my next best traffic is Google Adwords with a relatively low bounce rate. That means people who are seeing my ads are coming on to my website and staying because my campaigns have been set up to show them highly relevant website pages. My worst form of traffic is one from social media. It is relatively obvious why. People on social media are using it to engage with friends and family not to really view my website. So if they do head on over to it from an ad on Facebook or from seeing one of my posts they are less targeted customers. This is another reason why Google Adwords traffic can be superior to Facebook ads.

Diversify and Avoid Using One Marketing Method Alone

As I have mentioned before Adwords, Facebook and SEO are changing every five minutes. One minute you are sitting pretty at the top of Google and the next you are down on page three. Or perhaps you were spending £2 a click and getting customers but suddenly your local competition gets fiercer and now your costs have doubled. Or even worse Google or Facebook have decided that your website isn’t up to scratch and is making outrageous claims and suddenly won’t allow you to advertise at all.

Whatever you do in your marketing you must never rely on one channel too heavily because one day something will change and those leads will disappear. It is essential that you try and build up a therapy marketing strategy that gets clients in from every direction you can.

Facebook
Adwords
SEO and Organic Rankings
YouTube
Instagram
Pinterest
Therapy Directories
Referrals
Joint Ventures
Networking
Email Marketing

Using Google Adwords at the moment is a great way to get in clients in your door but it should not be your only strategy just part of a diversified plan to get revenue in every way possible.

Want to Learn How to Set up a Therapy Marketing Campaign in Google Adwords?

As I’ve mentioned before Adwords is changing all the time and last year the whole platform got a totally new design. So I thought it was time to refresh my online course to reflect these new changes. At the beginning of the year, I filmed a new series of videos to guide you through setting up campaigns that will convert. This video course is designed to:

Get you regular client leads who are looking to buy your services.
Target only clients who are looking for your particular niche expertise.
Help you to get to number one on Google.
Build search campaigns that are localised.
Teach you how to use pay per click advertising to make money.
Allow you advertising flexibility so you can respond to customer need instantly.
How to get clients even when you are starting off in practice.

Until the end of March, you can claim a 20% discount on the course before the course reverts back to its normal price by using the code ppc2019. This is the system that has made me a considerable return on investment over the years and after spending £100,000 on ads I believe I am one of the most qualified hypnotherapists on the platform in the UK. Just click the link below if you want to give this amazing marketing channel a try.

google adwords hypnosis marketing

Happy New Year & Welcome to the Future of Hypnotherapy Marketing

Posted on January 4, 2019January 4, 2019 by Martina McKeough

The Future of Hypnotherapy Marketing Happy New Year!

As we all know the New Year is a time for new beginnings, fresh starts and looking to the future. So I thought I would do exactly that in my first blog of the year by looking at the very latest trends in marketing which are going to be super important in 2019 and beyond.

Remember that in hypnotherapy marketing nothing ever stands still for very long. One minute you are selling your services through the Yellow Pages and the next thing you know the world has moved on everything has moved online. In the space of a few years the world changed and if you don’t keep up your ability to get clients and make money has vanished and you are left behind by your competitors. So what do you need to be looking at in the near future to ensure that you are ahead of the pack instead of playing catch up?

Site Speed and Mobile Optimised Pages

I have been taking about mobile optimised pages for a good few years now but with that you need to also think about site speed. If your website is not loading quickly enough on mobile devices it will lag in the rankings. For Google the issue is really simple. They want to give users the best possible experience and so favour websites that load quickly. Slow loading websites are going to mean that you web visitors will bounce off your site quickly meaning less money and less conversions. To check your site speed head to the following:

Google Page Speed Test and GTmetrix

Video

Yes so you watch YouTube and have created the odd video but are you really aware of the video revolution that is happening out there. It is estimated that this year that up to 80% of all consumer internet traffic will be on video! Just think about that number for a second it is huge! So if you are relying on websites alone you have a problem because you are missing the majority of the potential traffic out there that is going to get you your customers.

Are you aware of what stories are? If not I suggest you head over to Instagram and Facebook and see how some of the masters in the industry are killing it daily on video. Influencers are out there creating snippets of video about their lives, customers and products and people are lapping it up. Generally the stories are only up for 24 hours but thousands of people end up following these people daily and buying what they recommend. How can you jump on the bandwagon and use them to market your hypnotherapy practice?

Voice Search

I have spoken about voice search a few years ago and how it would grow significantly in the years to come and that is exactly what we are currently seeing. How many of you now own an Amazon Echo dot or a Google home mini speaker? When people are looking for help now many don’t bother typing in to their systems what they want, instead they ask their smart speakers. If your website uses the correct words and phrases that help it to be found by voice you are more likely to be the person who is picked by the system. The current estimates are that by 2020 over 50% of internet searches will be done via voice search.

Chatbots and AI

Long gone are the days of 9 to 5 working hours. With access to computers, tablets and mobile phones people want instant answers to their questions 24 hours a day. If you are a therapist working on your own it can be impossible to keep up with the demands for information about your products and services especially when they are sent late at night. I know that my Facebook page gets queries daily from clients often well after I have finished for the evening.

Automated Chatbots and artificial intelligence have started to take over. By programming in answers to some questions it is possible for your potential clients to get the answers they need to their queries without ever talking to a human. Watch out for this trend increasing over the next few years. Embrace it or be prepared to work very long hours!

Dynamic Therapy Marketing

Marketing a therapy practice means you can never sit still and rest on your laurels waiting for your clients to come to you. You have to keep an eye on the future so that you don’t become a dinosaur. Change it happening all the time so keep your eye on the latest trends and research ways in which you can easily incorporate them into your hypnosis practice.

Are You About to Lose 50% of Your Website Customers?

Posted on June 22, 2018November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

I know that the majority of therapists out there pay very little attention to what is going on with search engine optimisation and Google updates. In general hypnotherapists ask someone to create a website for them, they add their content and then forget about it. This strategy isn’t something I would recommend as without tweaking your website regularly you are going to get left behind. In some instances you will be able to get away with it but in July a big change is coming and it is going to impact visitors to your website big time!

SSL Certificates and Google Chrome

If you have never heard about SSL certificates then pay attention as in a months time not having one is going to cause you a whole world of trouble!

An SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer) is basically an additional layer of security on your website. When you have an SSL certificate you have a file which means that sensitive information is encrypted. This means that if a customer puts in their credit card information on your website nobody else can read that information as it moves across the internet. When you have an SSL certificate your web address changes from http:// to https:// to show that your site has the relevant encryption.

Ok, so I know some of you are thinking so what? I don’t sell products on my website. Ah but here comes the problem. Google has been pushing for people to update to secure websites for a long time and they have now decided that July 2018 is the date when enough is enough. From now on if somebody looks at your website on Google Chrome and you don’t have a certificate they are going to get a warning sign to say that your website isn’t secure.

The Power of Google Chrome

Currently, Google Chrome has over a 50% share of the internet browser market. Think about it over 50% of the people who search and find your website find it through Chrome. Now imagine that half of your customers who come across your website see a message saying that your site isn’t secure.

Your customers certainly have no idea about SSL certificates, https or in fact anything related to encryption on the net. They do however know that when they see a big red non-secure message when they come across your website that they quickly backpedal and get rid of your site from their screen as fast as they can. Now you can see the importance of making sure that your site complies over the next month or you are going to wave goodbye to a ton of customers.

What to do Next

As most of you will probably have web developers or designers I suggest that you contact them as soon as possible and get them to help you to address the problem. Yes, it will cost you but not as much as losing a bunch of customers over the next few months. For those of you that understand coding head on over to YouTube where there are a ton of videos showing you how to purchase a certificate and make the required modifications to your website.

Hypnotherapy Marketing eBook 2018 Edition – Time for an Update

Posted on May 20, 2018May 25, 2018 by Martina McKeough

How to Build a Hypnotherapy Business in 2018

If you are marketing a hypnotherapy practice nothing stands still for very long. Something that was appropriate two or three years ago make not work at all when you are trying to attract sales and clients in 2018. When I first wrote my Hypnotherapy Marketing eBook in 2015 it had all the latest up to date information about how to create a thriving practice but in just a few short years what was relevant then is no longer useful just a few short years later. So I have spent the past couple of months refreshing all the information and making the Hypnotherapy Marketing eBook 2018 edition 50% bigger than before.

It is amazing to think how much changed since the first edition of my eBook. Here are just some of the changes that have occurred in just three years.

Instagram is now one of the biggest social media sites in the world. It didn’t even get a mention in my first hypnotherapy marketing eBook!
Meerkat the live broadcasting medium has disappeared.
Facebook Live was introduced to capitalise on our need for instant video.
The Google +1 button has vanished.
Snapchat has become a huge social media channel for millennials.
Google my business has become an essential for local businesses.

When I work with my marketing students I get asked time and time again why they can’t just create a website, put up a Facebook Ad or create a YouTube video and then just forget the marketing they have completed. This is because everything changes and much faster than you think.

I get regular calls from Google Adwords for example every two months updating me on the latest changes to their advertisting platform. If I leave up my original ads without making the necessary updates and changes I suddenly find my ads which were making me money are now getting a lesser click through rate. If I don’t update my website or write some blog posts or get social media shares my website falls down the rankings. Marketing a therapy practice requries you to constantly update your content and strategies otherwise you will get left behind.

What’s Coming Up?

I spoke a few years ago about how Google was starting to prioritise mobile friendly websites in their rankings. Well now they have gone one step further. They are currently introducing their mobile first search engine which means that mobile versions of websites are being prioritised for indexing and ranking over desktop sites. This update is currently rolling out as we speak. For any of you still sticking with an old desktop only website this spells big trouble!

Also the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) in Europe roll out in the UK on Friday the 25th May. How many of you have completed the necessary updates to your websites to make sure you are complaint? Have you updated your privacy policy, contact me forms, lead magnets and the way you control your data? And for those of you that I see on forums in the UK who believe they don’t need to register with the Information Commissioner I can tell you that you are wrong. If you hold data about your customers such as emails, phone numbers or medical information you should have signed up. In fact you should have done it years ago.

How many of you are thinking about how to capitalise on voice search? Believe it or not looking for things by typing words into a search engine is not going to be so popular in a few short years from now. Think about Alexa, Siri and Ok Google and you can start to see that the way we look for information is changing all the time. Writing a website that uses voice search phrases instead of typical paragraphs can make all the difference to your profitability.

Get Help to Make Your Therapy Business Profitable

If you are staring out on your journey as a therapist or are unsure how to get clients in to your hypnotherapy practice the my latest eBook is designed to help you understand the elements that you need to work on to have a successful business. Here are just some of the things I discuss in the latest edition of my marketing eBook.

How to run a marketing budget
Website creation and search engine optimisation
Marketing funnels
Newsletters
Remarketing
Using social media to attract clients.
Online therapy
Free networking strategies
Using paid online ads
Understanding your competition
Getting in the media
Passive income
Group and Corporate Work
Referral networks

With over 150 pages of information you can get informed about the very latest ways to make a difference to your practice. Good luck building your booming business.

How to Successfully Set Up a Hypnotherapy Practice

Posted on February 14, 2018November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

Setting Up Your Hypnotherapy Practice It 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.

Hypnotherapy Marketing for New Hypnotherapists

Posted on August 30, 2017November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

I 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!

Posted on July 6, 2017November 25, 2020 by Martina McKeough

Therapy Marketing Mid Year Review So 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 Marketing Now 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 Profits Now 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 Therapists If 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: Sturminster Newton, Dorset, United Kingdom IP Address: Removed for Privacy Reasons Referring URL: m.facebook.com/ Entry Page: Hypnosis for Anxiety Nottingham – Get Professional Help Today Exit Page: Hypnosis for Anxiety Nottingham – Get Professional Help Today

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.