Martina McKeough, Author at Hypnotherapy Marketing Expert

Build Your Hypnotherapy Practice with Continued Professional Development

Posted on February 24, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

As you are all aware hypnotherapists who are a member of a reputable professional body sign up for Continued Professional Development. That means in a year you all allocate extra time and resources to to learn more about your craft and to keep up to day with the latest developments in the industry. You might attend workshops, webinars or even spend considerable time reading about ways in which you can assist your clients. This is good news for your clients because it means that you working on new ways in which you can help them rapidly with their problem. But did you know that you can also build your hypnotherapy practice with marketing CPD’s?

In the UK certainly and I am guessing throughout the world marketing courses aimed at hypnotherapy professionals count towards your CPD hours during the year. Most professional bodies are happy to make this part of your allowance because without clients you don’t have a business. In fact without clients to work with how on earth are you ever going to improve your techniques and methods? Yet most hypnotherapists who are starting out spend a vast amount of their CPD allowance on learning the latest techniques for anxiety or regression but forget that they need clients to work with.

The simple fact is that if you are seeing hardly any clients per week you need to stop the other CPD’s and build your hypnotherapy practice with hypnosis marketing courses and books. Yes it is lovely to grow your techniques in other areas but without clients it really is all totally pointless. I know that many people see marketing as a challenge or boring but the reality is without mastering this skills you are dooming your business to failure from the start.

When I run my live marketing courses I am always amazed at the number of people attending who have dabbled in hypnosis for years without actually really building up a client base. They work at it part time and and see the odd client here and there but have never been able to get their business off the ground. In order to really build your hypnotherapy practice there needs to be a change in mindset. Running a business takes dedication and sustained effort and that means no more hobby style hypnosis. It is not good for you or your clients.

We all know that seeing regular clients week in and week out allows you to improve on your skills and helps you get better results with your clients in the long run. Seeing the odd client here and there means that you are not gaining these techniques and that means you are doing your clients any favours. If you really want to see them get great results then you need to see more people.

Men Vs Women in Hypnosis

As I have also touched upon in a previous post there is a significant gender pay gap in the profession between men and women. Women are much more likely to treat their business as a part time job because they are being supported financially by their partners. When there is a safety net it is easy to not work to your full ability. Men however think of themselves as the main bread winner so they know that if they choose hypnosis as a profession they need to make it work otherwise the mortgage does not get paid. It is amazing how fear spurs people into action to get something done.

I do not like making sweeping generalisations and of course some women in the industry have built up amazing careers but a significant number have not and that is who I am aiming my comments at. Staying in your comfort zone will not build a business. Every day we deal with hypnotherapy clients who do exactly this and help them to make positive changes in their life. Yet so many women when it comes down to their own business are unable to make the leap into turning it into a full time job with a great salary. Yes that is the best thing about working as a hypnotherapist. You can choose your hours of work to suit you and earn a great wage as well when you work out how to market yourself well.

Hypnotherapy Marketing and Business Coaching

I left my previous career in Trading and Business Development because I wanted to run my own company my way and build a business from scratch. I achieved this in a really short time period and whilst I was recovering from some serious health problems. My passion is now helping others to understand how great marketing knowledge can propel your business into a money making machine. Although I primarily work with therapists I have also worked with small businesses in my local area to help them stand out from the crowd. The great thing about understanding marketing is that it can be applied to any kind of business that you can think about.

My marketing and mentoring sessions take place over either a six monthly period or a yearly mentoring program depending on what is most suitable for your business. When we begin work together I take time to understand both your business and personal goals so that we can work on a way of helping you achieve them. Each session is then broken down into small steps which will help you build the business that you deserve. Bit by bit you we will be building your hypnotherapy practice into a great profit making machine and best of all it will count towards your yearly CPD requirement. For more details about how we can work together simply use the contact me form of give me a call for more information.

Boost Your Hypnotherapy Marketing – Smell What Sells!

Posted on February 17, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

Ever watched the TV program The Apprentice? The UK version has Alan Sugar at the helm and every year they run one particular task. The candidates are told that they will be working in a market stall, shop or pop up stall and they are given a range of goods which they can sell. They are allowed to pick only a certain number of items to put up for sale and the team which makes the most money wins the task. Alan Sugar always barks the same phrase at them “smell what sells”. In other words make sure you pick the products which you know people are going to buy. Great advice and one which you need to apply to your hypnotherapy marketing.

Every time when I run my marketing classes I can guarantee that one of the therapists in the class will come to me and tell me that they are not getting enough clients and they can’t understand why. They will explain to me how they run their hypnotherapy marketing and in most cases it is instantly obvious to me why nobody is knocking at their door. One person in particular springs to mind who illustrates this point perfectly.

A gentleman came to see me who worked in an affluent area of the country and explained how he wanted to specialise in working with people who cared for their elderly or sick relatives. He wanted to help support them and felt hypnosis was a great way of doing this. His website front page openly discussed this service and he advertised locally to bring people into his clinic the only problem was he wasn’t getting any calls for this or his other services and was scratching a living. Well of course he wasn’t.

1) He was trying to get business off people who have no money and no time. How many people who are not working and are only getting a care allowance can afford to see a hypnotherapist? Even if they did have the money they would not have the time to come and see him.

2) He was ignoring the fact that in the area where he lived there were hundreds of thousands of potential clients who would come to see him but for other services. His clinic location was in an area known for rich affluent women. People who probably would love to lose more weight or get help for anxiety or smoking. He was ignoring the people who were practically begging to come and see him.

Now I am not saying that he couldn’t still try and support the people he was interested in but if he wanted to earn money he needed to adjust his business model fast to prevent him ending up broke.

Who is your Hypnosis Marketing Targeted at?

When you are doing your hypnotherapy marketing you need to consider who is willing to spend money to come in through your doors. Picking people who have not got the cash is going to get you nowhere. But I have seen the error being made time and time again. You need to understand what the bestsellers are going to be in your area and market those services to the people who need them. Wasting time and money advertising to the 1% is not going to help your bank balance.

Consider how you market your hypnotherapy practice because there is nothing more off putting that an advert or website that actually repels clients. Yep I see plenty of these as well. For example a Counsellor who used her website home page to explain how she could help with pet bereavement. Yes of course many people will need help with this but putting it on your front page made no sense. All this did was put off potential clients who wanted help with their marriages or depression. Frankly it made her seem just that little bit flaky and her potential clients moved on elsewhere.

What about another therapist who called her website something that had nothing to do with hypnotherapy at all. When you arrived at the website you had no idea at all of what she was offering. It was incomprehensible to me and I knew what she did for a living so goodness knows what potential web searchers thought. Again she came to see me because she wasn’t getting any business. Not a great shock and one that was really easily rectified.

Oh and don’t get me started on the number of therapists who have god awful pictures of themselves on their websites or bad videos. Photoshop is there for a reason to make you look better. I have seen so many bad pictures of therapists who would frankly frighten a small child. People coming across your website will see your picture and think, no thanks, and head off elsewhere until they see something they like. If you don’t look photogenic then choose a different web design and leave the picture out. Be self aware and understand that looks sell and dreadful ones don’t. Harsh I know but a reality that you need to be aware of.

Remember Alan Sugar made his millions for a reason. He understood the products that people wanted to buy and manufactured them. We can do the same. Research what is likely to bring you in a good income and start advertising for clients who want that service. Smell what sells and you will find that your hypnotherapy marketing becomes significantly easier and you will be considerably wealthier.

Hypnosis Marketing – This One is For the Ladies!

Posted on February 13, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

I love a statistic and particularly when it comes to hypnosis marketing and the business we are in. This post is aimed at all the women out there because I want you to understand how your gender is potentially impacting how much you earn even though as a hypnotherapist you are probably self employed. Currently the gender split in the UK for our industry is that 30% of hypnotherapists are men and the remaining 70% are women. It is a female dominated industry yet when it comes to earnings there is a shocking figure you need to be aware of. Women in the industry earn 40% less than men! These statistics are not made up, they are based on figures from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Yep you heard me. Female hypnotherapists in the UK earn a whopping 40% less than their male counterparts. This isn’t because some faceless corporation is discriminating against you but because you have made it happen. Nobody has told you that you were worth less money, nobody has stopped you from building a great business yet almost every woman in the industry will earn significantly less than male hypnotherapists. If you are a female hypnotherapist then I hope this shocks you because I am hoping it will spur you all into action so that you do something about it.

So why does this situation exist? Well here are some of my theories:

1) Confidence – As a hypnotherapist we should be instilling this into each of our clients at almost every session yet many of the female therapists that I have met are lacking in this quality themselves. They are not sure if they are good enough, they doubt their ability to run a business. They see the odd client here and there but worry about increasing the scale of their business. Many are part timers or have incomes supplemented by their partners. How on earth are we supposed to help our clients to feel confidant when so many of us lack this basic feeling ourselves?

2) Risk Taking – Now I am not talking gambling huge amounts of money on business ventures that could ruin you. I am thinking about the fact that women tend to be more cautious and that means they are worried about investing to get a return. They are less likely to work in business premises, less likely to invest in training and materials and even less likely to spend much on their advertising. No wonder they earn significantly less.

As an example of this I will give you an illustration of where women make the wrong choices. As well as being a marketing and business development expert I am a hypnotherapy supervisor for the GHR. Over the years I have had a number of enquiries from women about using me for their supervision. Now I am not a cheap supervisor but then again the difference between my charges per hour vs another therapist used to be in the region of £20 to £30. Now many of the woman who asked about my services knew that I had the potential to bring them in significant amounts of business and revenue but most chose the cheaper service to save themselves cash in the short term. They were quite prepared to sacrifice their potential earnings so they could save a small amount of money in the short term fully knowing that the supervisor they were seeing would be unable to increase their business. Money they would have earned back with just one new customer in a year. Madness!

3) Business Knowledge and Skills – When was the last time you updated your business skills? I can almost guarantee that most of the female hypnotherapists in this industry have very little basic business and marketing skills to really drive clients their doors. Do you know how to create a simple website? What about your knowledge on SEO, Social Media? If the answer is no to the above then expect to earn less then your male counterparts because I can bet you that a reasonable number of them will be taking an interest in learning these skills.

4) Perceived Worth – Women tend to undervalue themselves. They look at what they think they should be charging and tend to underestimate significantly. Men do the opposite. That difference whether it is £10, £20 or £30 per hour soon adds up. If you have the good fortune to see 20 clients per week charging just £10 less than a male hypnotherapist means that you are earning £200 less per week, £800 less per month and £9600 less per year!

5) Undervaluing Skills and Experience – Many women look at their qualifications and the years of experience they have and underestimate what that knowledge is worth. I often see newly qualified hypnotherapists discount their services as if they were still trainees even though they have the qualifications to work at full price with clients. It is almost as if they are worried that they will be found out if they charge more.

6) Treating Their Business as a Part Time Hobby – Now I totally understand that sometimes a woman would like the choice of working flexibly when they are bringing up children. That is a lifestyle choice and that is not what this comment is aimed at. I am however less sympathetic to women who start a business with no real idea of where to go with it. Have you never heard of a business plan? Building a business takes lots of hours, hard work and dedication. You can’t just dip in and out of it spending time at the gym and having coffee with your mates and then doing an hour or two a day hoping that things will pick up. Women need to take their business seriously and that means understanding that in order to get your business off the ground you need to do some seriously hard work. That means sitting at your desk and working from 9 in the morning until late in the evening even when you haven’t got clients. You need to build strong foundations in order to grow a business and that is done by creating a strong business plan. If you don’t know how to create a great strategy for your business then find someone who will help.

My passion is working with all genders to help them with their hypnosis marketing and business goals. In my world there is no excuse for a self employed female to earn 40% less than the men in their industry. If you feel this is your situation then you need to get help now to turn the tables and earn exactly what you deserve. I offer business mentoring and coaching for therapists from all professions. and all genders. For the male therapists out there I can help many of you to earn more as well. Don’t let the statistics stick, buck the trend and earn a decent salary by getting professional help. The small investment in yourself and your business will be worth it.

Hypnotherapy Marketing – What your Premises Says About You.

Posted on February 12, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

This blog post was inspired by something that actually occurred in one of my sessions with a client. During the assessment stage of first our session my client spent time discussing what she did for a living and explaining her set up at work. The client concerned worked from home with her mother and in our session described a scenario which made me think about hypnotherapy marketing and what your business premises say about you.

For obvious reasons the client and their actual business will remain confidential but the scenario may sound familiar. This client ran a business from her home which required people to come to the house and pick up products. She described how cosy this place was and how her customers knew them so well that they would sit smoking with them around the fire and playing with their dogs. How things were very informal and that they would share each others problems and how many of their customers considered this place a home from home. This client had a romanticised picture of how great her business was and from her explanation she obviously felt her customers loved the set up as well.

Whilst my client was talking a very different picture was appearing in my mind. All I could think of was how unprofessional the set up sounded. I shuddered at the thought of dogs roaming around in the middle of business transactions and worried what the people who were afraid of dogs felt when they entered the house. I thought about the blurring of lines between their professional life and home environment and how sharing problems with your clients is not really the done thing to do. Oh and I worried about the hygiene in the house with the dogs, the clients meeting each other as there was no real appointments system and frankly I was horrified. The picture in my mind was this is amateur hour!

Hypnotherapy Marketing and Your Working Environment

This scenario is a perfect example of how a bad set up can cheapen you and your product. At worst this set up sounded like a bad drug dealing den. Who on earth is going to want to pay good money for your services or products when you are running a business without any professional premises or boundaries? Yes this client was attracting customers but only people who wanted to pay rock bottom prices because they were getting terrible service.

Now although this client was not working in the therapy industry I have experienced similar issues in our industry. I once turned up to a therapists house for a session of EFT and was led to a room which had a filthy carpet covered in fluff and odds and ends. At no point in the session did I think about the therapy I was just willing someone to get a hoover and clean the room. Talk about a distraction.

When you are marketing your hypnosis practice considering how and where you work is of huge importance as that will dictate your prices and the customers that you get. For example here are a number of places that will immediately lower your prices:

A room at a local community centre.
Running a business where there is no parking or transport.
Working in a downmarket area of town.
Having a run down and noisy premises.
Rooms in a cheap hairdressers or nail salon.
Working in a tower block.

Now how about the locations which will boost your prices:

Working in a Spa or Health Farm
Premises in the best end of town.
Working in a doctors surgery.
Working in a holistic health centre.
Having rooms in the centre of the city with private parking.

Having the right location can bring you in increased revenue in most cases without you doing anything at all. That is because a good location suggests that if you can afford to practice there then you must be good. Work in a doctors practice and you are seen as legitimate by association. Work in a holistic health centre and it is possible to work with other therapists for cross referrals.

How Working in a Spa Adds $£££$$$ to Your Bottom Line

A perfect example of how the right location can boost your profits was illustrated by a client who rang me to tackle her sugar addiction. This client had previously seen a therapist in a spa who had guaranteed that he would resolve the problem and charged her a whopping £500 for the session. Now the treatment had not worked and she was looking for someone else to work with. I sat there on the phone with my mouth wide open. £500 for a treatment that did not work and all because it was being offered at a spa. Ridiculous.

Now I am not saying that you immediately start offering bogus treatments as part of your hypnotherapy marketing. What I am saying is that people are prepared to pay lots of money when they are being pampered. Spas attract people with money to spend and who want to try unusual treatments. So creating for example a group weight loss one off session for spa residents would be a great way to earn a very decent wage for a morning or afternoons work.

Harley Street Hypnotherapy

Every country in the world is likely to have a location where people will pay a premium for services. In London that place is Harley Street in Central London. It has supposedly the best doctors, dentists, consultants and of course therapists in the whole of the UK. People who come to see therapists in Central London expect to pay double if not triple the price of elsewhere. Get your marketing right in this location and your self employed income will be significantly more than other hypnotherapists. I have a clinic that I work out of in Harley Street and I can say that the revenue I earn at this location is significantly more than the costs I pay for this room each month.

Working From Home as a Therapist

Now at no stage am I saying that a therapist can’t work from their home. I do that as well on certain days and times of the week but if you are going to then you need to be absolutely clear on your set up.

No animals
Room fit for purpose
Frontage of House looking impeccable
Noise and distraction free.
Everything immaculately clean.
Have a room where people don’t have to traipse through your house.
Professional contracts and boundaries.
No contact with clients at home between sessions.
No toys or washing hanging around.
Toilet for client use smelling and looking great.

These are just some pointers to help you create a professional environment. No matter what my client thought nobody wants to arrive at a house which is looking a mess because it is informal. Informal means cheap and it is a great way of earning little money or getting your clients to never return.

So when you are thinking of hypnotherapy marketing and how you can earn a better living start to consider how you can use your location to increase your revenue. Take the time and effort to find the right clinic or rooms and they will pay for themselves ten fold.

Marketing a Hypnotherapy Practice Without Mentioning your Guru!

Posted on February 8, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

I am always fascinated by other peoples websites and how they use them to sell their products and services and drive customers to their sites. I especially interested in their home pages as that sets the tone for the rest of their website. Now I seek out these websites because I want to see what my competition is doing. If I see them doing something innovative or interesting then I may follow their lead on my own sites. I love to learn from others. What I usually come across however is people making a fundamental mistake of marketing and that is not putting themselves in their customers shoes. Today I will share that mistake with you and show you how marketing a hypnotherapy practice can be done without mentioning your guru!

So what is this mistake? Wasting valuable front page website space writing paragraphs on who they trained with and the lofty institutes which gave them their qualifications. More often that not there will be links to their training schools or gurus and even pictures of them on their front page. Now whilst that is great advertising for your mentors and trainers it is absolutely useless for you.

Firstly marketing a hypnotherapy practice by referring to a person only known in the hypnosis world is totally pointless. In the UK there are really one two hypnotists that anyone knows and they are Paul McKenna and Derren Brown. Everyone else is totally meaningless to your clients and they couldn’t care less. Unless you have trained with someone who is a celebrity therapist really don’t bother wasting your time. Instead spend your time writing about what really counts and that is who you are, where you are and how you can help your clients feel better.

Remember you need to put yourself in your customers shoes and give them what they want. They have no interest in who you trained with just whether you are going to solve their problem. I should add that therapists that write wordy, flowery, incomprehensible and meaningless home pages are equally at fault. Using phrases that nobody understands isn’t really going to help you get the sale. As the saying goes “Keep it simple stupid”!

Secondly every time you put a link on your website you are giving publicity to someone else and that is worth something. Really think about whether you feel that the person you are mentioning deserves this free publicity. Also consider whether by mentioning this training institute or trainer you are giving your potential client the opportunity to leave your site and look at theirs. This means that they will potentially be given access to a database of other practitioners whose websites might look better than yours and you lose the business. When it takes time and effort to get traffic to your website letting your customers look elsewhere is foolhardy to say the least.

When you are marketing a hypnotherapy practice you need to do everything you can to keep that person looking at your site and then contacting you for an appointment and that means keeping your bounce rate low. If you have never heard this term it is used to describe people coming across your website and only quickly viewing one page and then moving on elsewhere. By having links to other organisations on your front page you are giving people an opportunity to head elsewhere immediately. You need to try and keep those visitors on your site for as long as possible and be giving them valuable information not just one the front page but on your other pages as well. The more they hang around the more they are getting to know and trust you which means more sales.

Marketing a hypnotherapy practice on a website is relatively simple when you know how but many people throw a website together without ever giving any real thought to the words and information they are using. The fact is that every single sentence, paragraph and link you place on your site needs to considered carefully. When you understand how to structure a website then it will attract more business. Make fundamental errors and you have lost your customers from the start. Want a website review to help you convert searchers into buyers? Contact me for more details on how to turn your site into a client magnet instead of a dud.

Hypnotherapy Marketing – Don’t Put all Your Eggs in One Basket

Posted on February 6, 2015March 19, 2020 by Martina McKeough

I was inspired to write this post because of discussions that were taking place in a hypnotherapy forum that I am a member of on LinkedIn. Someone had posed a question about the Hypnotherapy Directory and whether it was a worthwhile source of referrals for the money. For those of you not in the UK the directory is a paid directory where you can add details about your hypnotherapy business and it appears relatively highly in the search engine rankings. Now this post is not about the directory itself but some of the answers that I saw in reply to this question. A number of therapists had answered yes that it was a good source of referrals and that many got most if not all of their business from it. This created a big red flag in my mind because if there is one rule of Hypnotherapy Marketing it is not to put all your eggs in one basket.

You see the people who are getting these referrals have not stopped for one minute to think what may happen to their business if things were to change. So lets imagine that Google decides to change its algorithm tomorrow and downgrades all directories so that they no longer appear on the first page of Google. Suddenly all these therapists who have used these referrals as their main source of income are going to find themselves on the breadline as the calls will just suddenly stop. Or perhaps five new therapists move into their local area and start advertising in this directory and suddenly their leads are massively diluted. Again their business tanks in a matter of months.

Using just one source of referrals for your Hypnotherapy Marketing is business suicide because the nature of the world is that things change. Things are constantly evolving which means that what may work for you today but not be so helpful tomorrow. This means that in order to survive you need to diversify and where possible be in charge of your destiny rather than leaving it to others to decide.

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Don’t just take my word for it there are plenty of businesses that have gone under because they have experienced issues with their main source of referrals. There are tales of Ebay businesses who got some negative feedback and suddenly found that they were banned from the site and suddenly their business went bust. Others relied too heavily on Google Adwords and when they broke the rules they found that they were no longer allowed on the site. Oh and of course there are the infamous stories of people ranking well on Google but because they had bad backlinks suddenly found themselves plummeting down the rankings when the search engine changed their algorithm.

In order to be great at hypnotherapy marketing you need to make sure that you have a diversified pot of referral sources. That means that if one area goes bad you only lose a small percentage of your leads. You need to build strong and sturdy foundations and if possible conduct a risk assessment of your business. Now in the world of trading and business development where I used to work we would look at our portfolio of trades and every day someone would be looking at what would happen in the worst case scenario. You need to do the same with your business because that will help to ensure your survival. Think about where you are getting your customers from and what would happen if that source of income suddenly disappeared.

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Marketing a Hypnotherapy Business

Don’t take the lazy way out, you need to become a proactive marketer to really make your business succeed. In order to really take your business to the next level you need to build a business which is pulling in clients from every source available to you. So that means:

Organic Rankings
Paid Advertising
Blogging
Referral Programs
Directories
PR and Media
Networking
Social Media
Friends and Family
Local Events

The list is endless but if you are not doing all or at least half of the above then you are never really going to build a business that gives you the income that you deserve.

I know that as a therapist it can be difficult initially to understand or even take an interest in marketing but sadly the whole structure of a therapy business means that you need to attract people in through your door. With hypnotherapy marketing it is made even more difficult because the people that you are attracting tend to only stay with you for six to eight sessions at the very most. That means that your turnover of customers is huge and that puts more pressure on you to constantly get more people in to your business every day to replace the people who have finished successful therapy. This business model is very different to that of a hairdresser or beauty therapist because in those businesses you will always get a certain percentage of your clients coming back to you time and time again.

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Therapy Marketing & Coronavirus Update

Although I wrote the wrote this post way back in 2015 I thought it was so important to update it in light of Coronavirus and what is doing to therapy marketing. This post is more relevant than ever because although it is five years since I spoke about diversifying your business and marketing therapists have not listened and many chose to niche in one topic. If that is you currently you may be having a big problem. Not so much is you specialise in anxiety and stress but hell if you ware running weight loss sessions or help children in schools they you are seeing the bottom falling out of the market as we speak.

It is always so important to insulate your business by having a number of strings to your bow. This means on one website you may specialise in weight loss but in another it may be OCD. You don’t need thousands of different sites but having two or three in different areas could help you to mitigate your risks. Plus make sure you have a passive income strategy because that can help as well. Start thinking out of the box and create a proper marketing plan. Ask yourself what would I do if things changed with this tomorrow? How would I be able to react quickly to changing marketing conditions? How can I maintain a resilient business model?

If you don’t understand how to market well then you need to invest the time and the money in yourself and your business so that you get to grips with how you can make this happen. That is why I offer a large number of different marketing and mentoring sessions to fellow therapists to help them succeed in business. Don’t allow your hypnotherapy marketing to be a side thought. Make it a priority and when you do watch your client numbers and revenue soar.

Marketing Hypnosis – Who are You Targeting?

Posted on February 1, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

So you are a therapist and you are marketing hypnosis. How exactly do you go about finding people to come to your clinic? Well I will tell you what the average therapist does. They sign up to Yell and a few other directories, distribute leaflets around their area and make a generic website with the minimum number of pages to try and entice clients to call and book. The problem is they are trying to be all things to all people and are scattering their marketing efforts far and wide without ever considering who their target market really is.

Marketing hypnosis through leaflets for example must be one of the greatest examples of futility when they are distributed around your local neighbourhood. You can send out thousands of them but in 99.9% of cases they will never be looked at and thrown in the bin. Why? Because most of the people you are sending the leaflets out to have no interest in seeing a hypnotherapist. It is a classic case of non targeted marketing and it does not work! In order to attract clients you need to work smarter. A generic leaflet won’t cut it but a targeted leaflet handed to the right people might. For example a leaflet about weight loss hypnosis handed out to people before they enter a Weight Watchers class might be nearer the mark. Leaflets about past life regression handed to people attending a mind, body and spirit event could get a greater response and so on.

The same thoughts apply to your website marketing. Is your website trying to be all things to all people. Would it be better if your website targeted a specific group of people so that you are now perceived as an expert in that area rather than the scatter gun approach? I know that if I want help with something I look for someone who is considered an expert in that area. So if I had a problem with stress I would look for someone who specialised in helping with that issue. If I had a choice between a website that dealt purely with that problem and another which mentioned everything under the sun then I would be more likely to pick the one that targeted me.

You see when it comes to marketing hypnosis people want to feel that you know them and you can help them with their exact problem. When they come across your site they want you to have explained exactly why they are feeling the way that they are and how you can fix that issue. Preferably they would also love to see testimonials from people who have experienced exactly the same problem as they have and how they have been helped to overcome the it quickly and easily. A potential client reading this thinks that you know and understand them and will be happy to ring you because you seem like the go to person in that area. A generalist website, leaflet, directory entry or business card simply doesn’t speak to them in the same way.

Whenever you think of marketing hypnosis you have to consider who am I targeting? When you know who you are aiming your services at then you can write copy that speaks to them and them alone. It really is a very simple marketing tactic but one that so many people get wrong. Then when you have the targeted copy consider carefully how you are going to get that to your target audience. Match you audience with the treatments that they are looking for and bingo you get your sale. Think about adjusting your hypnotherapy marketing strategy today to encompass this tactic and watch your conversions increase.

Hypnotherapy Marketing – Work Smarter Not Harder

Posted on January 25, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

When I start working with therapists to help them grow their businesses I usually ask them what they would like to achieve from our sessions and the answer is nearly always the same. They want to have more clients. Now believe it or not getting more clients isn’t actually the difficult bit when you know how. My hypnotherapy marketing is generally very successful and when I first started my business I used to see seven or eight clients a day but frankly working that hard every day isn’t fun. It is also not the best way to build a booming business and I will tell you why.

Lets say that you decide that you would like to work a typical five day week with clients. So you ramp up your hypnotherapy marketing and end up filling each of those days with six clients. Typically that could mean starting work at 9 or 10 in the morning and finishing in the evening at 6 or 7pm (if you left a gap between each client and allocated time for lunch). Do that 5 days a week and you are seeing 30 clients a week. Now whist initially that sounds lovely the reality is very different.

1) You are exhausted – Seeing such a large amount of clients is draining especially when you are doing it week after week. Eventually each client will seem like a chore and you will find that your energy levels are unable to keep up with the constant late working hours.

2) Where does your business go next? – If you follow the more clients is better thought you have very little room to grow your business further. Yes you could take less breaks or see more clients at the weekend but ultimately you will hit a ceiling and that is where your business stagnates.

3) What about Business Development? – When you are spending every waking moment dealing with clients how can you find and develop new income streams to grow your business? The short answer is that you can’t because you are too busy working on those one to one sessions.

4) What about your social life? – Many of your clients will want to see you in the evening which means that you get very little time to socialise when you are working such long hours.

Filling your time with so many clients frankly does not make sense. If you really do want to be great at hypnotherapy marketing and business development you need to find another way. In fact less can be more. I now see less clients per week but earn more income. How? Because I am now focused on growing my business in other ways such as through training, passive income and group work. This is a win win situation for any business. Your clients will be happier because you are not exhausting yourself by seeing too many people in one day. Your profits will also increase because you can earn money when you are asleep or by seeing more people at the same time. Plus there is no longer a ceiling on your potential earning leaving your huge amounts of room to grow your business.

So next time someone promises to help your hypnotherapy marketing by suggesting that you see more clients per week think again. Remember the aim of the game is not to work harder but smarter! For help with your therapy marketing and business development contact me for details on my business coaching packages.

Hypnosis Marketing – Infographics

Posted on January 23, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

Over the past year or so there has been a huge rise in the use of infographics. In other words pictures and words that condense information for the reader. I have seen them used in newspapers, websites, on television and in blogs. Make a great infographic and you could find that your information is being shared across the web and in social media helping your hypnosis marketing to skyrocket.

With some of the packages that are available now there is no need to get a designer to create an infographic for you. In fact just to show you how easy it is I created a very simple infographic on hypnosis marketing this afternoon to demonstrate how easy it can be. It is worth pointing out that whilst I am fine with working a computer I have never created a graphic design in my life.

Think of all the possibilities that are out there for you to demonstrate to your customers in pictorial form how you work with issues. The uses for infographics are endless and at the moment they are hugely popular because they are easy for just about everyone to understand. Consider how you could use one in your hypnosis marketing so that your information is shared.

Marketing Your Hypnotherapy Practice – Domain Names

Posted on January 22, 2015March 20, 2017 by Martina McKeough

Whether you are starting your therapy career or are looking to update and rebrand yourself you need a website. If you need a website you need a name for that website and therefore you need to purchase a domain name. Before you do you need to understand the possibilities that are available to to and how your choices may impact your search engine rankings under different circumstances. This is just a short guide to show you that marketing your hypnotherapy practice can be impacted by something as simple as a name.

Generally when I see the names that therapists have picked for their websites they have either chosen an exact match domain or a domain which contains their name.

Exact Match Domains – An exact match domain is based matching keywords that a potential client would place in a search engine. A typical example would be names such as hypnotherapylondon, hypnotherapistinnewyork or hypnosisscotland. The domains in these instances reflect the locations where the therapists are based and would like to get clients. By choosing keywords that are frequently placed in a search engine there is an increased likelihood of getting found. For example the phrase hypnotherapy London has an average of 1,300 searches per month. With an exact match domain name that is well optimised you have a high chance of getting a large number of customers coming across your site.

Of course marketing your hypnotherapy practice is not that simple because:

1) Many of these exact match domains have already been purchased.

2) Google is placing less emphasis on exact match domains in its algorithm.

A few years ago having an exact match domain almost guaranteed you traffic but now Google is looking for other indicators of a great website so their relevance is reducing. Reducing is not however the same as extinct. Remember having an exact match can still give your website a boost especially when it comes to advertising. Having an exact match domain for example can increase your click through rates especially when it comes to paid advertising. That is because your customers see a name which exactly matches their needs and is therefore more likely to take action and click.

Your Name Domains – Many therapists like to use their name in the domain title. So in my case I could have chosen martinamckeoughhypnosis.co.uk. Having a name domain is great especially if you are building a brand. In other words people will search for you because of your reputation and you will of course appear highly in the rankings for those searches. The problem is that most therapists don’t have a brand. That means that your name is currently meaningless to the people who are searching for hypnotherapy. They get a long list on Google of people who call themselves hypnotherapists and the first thing they do is:

1) Choose the names that appear at the top of the search.

2) Choose domains which most closely match what they are looking for.

3) Choose a name domain.

So in other words you are likely to come third on the hit list of potential therapists who get the business unless you also appear at the top of the page. Remember you need to think from the point of view of your client and not your own personal wishes when it comes to marketing. That said there is no harm in purchasing your own domain name and running two sites providing they both contain original content. The exact match domain can be used when you are starting out and as your reputation grows your name domain will grow in searches as well.

.Com or .Co.uk? – Choosing what to place at the end of your domain name is also important. Should you use a generic .com name or instead choose a country code of where you live or even one of the new domain extensions such as .London? The general rule of thumb is where are you intending to do business. If you are based in a town in the UK and only want to see people in the surrounding area then a .co.uk will do just fine. If however you are looking to sell downloads, online courses or run Skype Sessions then your audience is wider. Then you need to think about a .com. In other words you need to think about your business strategy when making those decisions.

Buying all the domain extensions available for your company could also be important from a branding perspective. Imagine if you built up a hugely successful company under the .co.uk extension which hundreds of people were searching for each day. What if someone else came along and bought the .com extension and then started advertising a very similar product? Suddenly your traffic is diluted by this other company and your sales fall dramatically as they start to get your business. Even if you don’t want to buy every available domain extension buying the country code and the .com should be considered. It is worth noting that many domain extensions such as .biz and .info are not great to use from an SEO perspective. If these are the only domain extensions left then choose another name.

Length of the Name – Don’t get carried away with choosing names for a domain which are too lengthy and wordy. Choosing a name like hypnotherapyinlondonandthesoutheast.co.uk will not be particularly helpful in getting you found in the search engines. In fact Domain Monster has a great guide on domain names. They agree that a short snappy and to the point name will always beat a long one.

Hyphens – It can be tempting when an exact match domain is already taken for your keywords to try and choose the same words but place hyphens inbetween each of the words. An example of this would be http://www.hypnotherapy-in-Edinburgh.co.uk instead of using a domain name where all the words run together. Where possible avoid this behaviour as they can be considered spammy. Read this guide by Moz on their thoughts on domain names.

Choosing a domain name does not need to be a difficult job when you are marketing your hypnotherapy practice but it does require some thought. Thinking about just some of these basics can help to position your business so that customers can find your more easily or are more likely to click on your website rather than others. Get it right and you will reap the rewards especially when your site is then well optimised for SEO.