Tag: Hypnosis marketing

Therapy Marketing Strategies – It’s All About the Data!

Posted on by Martina McKeough

therapy marketing strategiesWell firstly I hope that all of you are keeping well in the middle of the chaos that the pandemic has created. I know that for most of you the disruption to your businesses has probably been huge. People are currently trying to navigate a new normal at the moment and whilst they are figuring out what to do next there has been a period of quiet reflection.  This can be disheartening for many but the thing is with any kind of business you need to be resilient. There is no point in doing nothing instead you need to understand what is working and what isn’t. One way of coming up with new therapy marketing strategies is by looking at the data.

Now I know that many therapists tend to be led by feelings and intuition rather than numbers but I hate to break it to you this is not enough. You need to be crunching the numbers and looking at the data in order to figure out what is working and what isn’t. Your feelings aren’t going to tell you how your customers are finding you. Your feelings aren’t going to tell you what people are looking for but the numbers never lie!

Marketing Therapy Services

At the moment the biggest question you need to consider is whether your current marketing strategies are bringing you in the clients you need. If not then you need to start to look at what is going wrong. If you are seeing clients then the question is how can I do more of the same and get even more sales. So how are you going to do this? Well last week I introduced a number of people on a Facebook live to a Google service that I thought people knew about. Turns out just about every therapist watching had never heard of it so in case you are one of these people let’s start by talking about Google Trends.

49 ways to market your therapy practice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is a relatively simple and easy tool that every therapist can look at to see what is sought after right now and what is tanking. So how do you use it? Well, all you need to do is head over to https://trends.google.com and choose the country that you are selling your services in. Then choose the time period for the data you want and put in a search term that you might be found for.

In this example, I have called up a graph of the search term Anxiety Therapy. If you look at the data you can see there was a huge drop in people searching for this term throughout March and early April but now searches are beginning to rise rapidly up again. This holds with my theory that people needed time to readjust to the shock of going into lockdown but are heading back out to find help as they get used to their new circumstances. Follow your keywords and you are going to find the best times to advertise your services.

therapy marketing strategies google trends

Now let’s look at another search query this time for confidence coaching. Here you can see that the graph has sunk almost as low as it is possible to go. Clearly, this is not a term that people are bothering with at this moment. If this is your niche you need to adapt your messages.

hypnotherapy marketing data

Play around with the tool and see what is helpful to you. The data is going to help you make more intelligent choices going forward.

Therapy Marketing and Google Analytics

Now let’s look at Google analytics. How many of you actually bother to look at your stats on a weekly basis? My guess is that most of you won’t even have bothered to set this up.

Google Analytics is the perfect way to start to come up with some therapy marketing strategies. Why? Because it mines all the data that is coming in from your website to tell you exactly what is popular and what isn’t. Find out how many people are coming to your website each day. How long they hang around for. Where they came from and what has the best referral rate. What are their demographics and so on?

Google Analytics is a goldmine for data and when you look at it carefully it will help you to adjust your marketing messages to do more of what people are looking for. It will also tell you what marketing channels may not be worth looking at or are simply not working well for you. This information can make or break your success rates at marketing if you know what to look at.

Google Webmaster Tools

Now let’s add Google webmaster tools (search console) into the mix. Another great tool for building therapy marketing strategies. This is particularly useful at seeing what Google has indexed you for in its search engine and how high you appear for certain searches in its rankings. So if you are an expert in IBS therapy you can check where each of your pages rank. If you appear at number 200 then you know you have a problem. If you are in the top 5 in your country then well done expect to get visitors to your site. This data allows you to make intelligent decisions for your business and enables you to look at areas you need to work on.

 

Statcounter

This is such a simple tool but one that I use daily in my business. Basically, stick some code on your website and every visitor is logged. I know what country they were in, what pages they visited, how long they stuck around for and even what device they used. By looking at the information on Statcounter I can in most cases tell what someone is ringing me up for even before they have told me. How? Well if they have been staring at my work on my anxiety page for half an hour and I get a call you can almost guarantee it is that person looking for help You can also see who is returning to your pages again and again which can also be helpful.

Other Sources of Marketing Data

When you start to be more considered in your therapy marketing strategies rather than just doing things without thinking you will start to realise that data is everywhere and it doesn’t lie. Start having a look at some of the following:

  • Facebook Insights
  • Pinterest Analytics
  • Instagram Analytics
  • Twitter Stats
  • Home Built Spreadsheets (what are you monitoring?)
  • YouTube Stats
  • Email signups
  • Pay per click analysis

I could go on. Now, of course, you don’t need to look at everything at once otherwise you are going to spread yourself too thinly. Start with your website statistics and your most popular referral source. Concentrate on getting those right before heading to the next popular and so on. When you start to do this regularly you are going to find that your sales are going to rise.

The one thing you shouldn’t do is stick your head in the sand and hope that you can wing it. Intelligent therapy marketing strategies are based on fact, not fiction.

Therapy Marketing Tips

If you subscribe to my YouTube channel you are going to notice that I am putting out more video content. Some of which may never reach my blog. Make sure you follow me to get some of the very latest content. My latest video is on this very topic of data in a live call with one of my former students Steve Norton. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/Gvp6rJ7ZA-4

Also, I have a Facebook page with info and posts that give you some additional insights into the current crisis as well as plenty of therapy marketing tips. Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/therapymarketingexpert/

 

Therapy Marketing Coach

Why do I do therapy marketing coaching? Because my clients need help to market themselves effectively and they can’t do it by themselves. I was talking to one of my success stories this afternoon and I asked him how long did he think it would have taken him to figure out what he needed to do by himself and the answer was never. He had already been working as a therapist for years but never made it because he didn’t know where to look or what to do. He had been going round in circles looking for solutions but it had been pointless.

Therapy marketing coaching fast tracks you to make more successful decisions for your business. It gives you therapy marketing strategies that you haven’t even thought of.  This is why most of my clients are still getting calls even at this time when others are struggling. If you are interested in finding out more about how I help my clients transform their marketing just fill in the form below for a FREE discovery call.

You Might Also Want to Read:

Don’t Set up A Therapy Practice Without Reading This

Therapy Marketing Strategy for 2020

The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on the Market

A Niche Therapy Practice Can Create Problems!

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Niche therapy practiceFive years ago I wrote a post called “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and right at this moment I am sure there are a ton of therapists out there who wish they had taken my advice.  Everyone in the industry has been continually preaching about building a niche therapy practice and being an expert in one particular area but what they aren’t telling you is if the bottom falls out of your market niche your practice and business is in big trouble. Coronavirus is now showing the weaknesses in this business approach. Everyone should have a plan A and plan B and a plan C!

I am a member of a number of therapy forums and during the last few weeks therapists out there are spotting that their businesses which have been working fine for years are suddenly getting no calls. Some have big expenses and outgoings but with no customers they can’t afford to pay them. Many are wondering how they are going to cover even their room rates.  Another therapist said they had got a job in a bar part time to tide them over. I had to break it to them that it is likely that this job will be useless in the next couple of weeks as the government is probably going to shut them down. This is a serious time for everyone not just therapists.

49 ways to market your therapy practice

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Weak Therapy Niches in This Market

A few weeks ago I did a Facebook live with a therapist Steve Norton in the anxiety niche. In the video streams, we talked about what was currently happening with Coronavirus and what people needed to do to try and insulate themselves from the fallout. You can watch the videos here: https://youtu.be/5tjMJsNxWc0 and here https://youtu.be/opNFZv6uOVg: It was obvious to me that anxiety was a great niche therapy practice to be in at the moment because of the turmoil and stress that everyone is experiencing but here are some that are going to suffer over the next few months:

Hypnobirthing – Pregnant women are totally freaking out at the moment at what could happen to their unborn children if they catch the virus. Many are already staying away from hospitals where possible what chance do you have of running these sessions as the virus spreads?

Weight Loss – Summer is typically a time of bikini bodies and holidays. Women especially flock to go on diets to look their best when they are away. This year they are more worried about getting some toilet roll and tins to survive so I expect this niche to suffer in the short term. (Update as lockdowns progressed comfort eating is becoming a big problem so target people who are eating to cheer themselves up).

Fear of Flying Sessions – Flights are getting cancelled every day at the moment. The airline industry is on its knees. Don’t expect a flood of calls about this when normally you would be hearing from nervous flyers all spring and summer.

Exam Hypnosis- With schools about to shut and exams put on hold it is unlikely that anyone will be looking for exam help in the near future.

Children’s Therapy – Parents are particularly worried about their children at the best of times but now that worry is in overdrive. My local town Facebook group is going crazy about the thought of Coronavirus. These people don’t want their children out and about at all never mind heading to see a therapist. My guess is unless they need urgent help these sessions will be deferred until later in the year.

Public Speaking – With firms deciding to increase social distancing and more home working starting the need to speak in public is reducing in the short term. Don’t expect to see a ton of people asking for it at the moment.

These are just some examples of weak niches in the current market and I am sure there are many others. If you are in one of these you need to be urgently thinking about what you can do in the short term to earn money whilst you wait for this to all blow over.

Building a Resilient Therapy Practice

Are you familiar with the term to hedge your bets? As a former trader, this was something that we used to think of daily on the trading floor. It simply means taking two different actions to protect your money. So if one of your trades went bad you knew that the opposing trade would come good. Therapists could learn lots from traders!

Here is the deal you do not absolutely need to go all-in on one niche and one niche only. This is a very bad idea as people are starting to see right now. What you need is to appear the expert in a number of niches. This means potentially having websites in a number of different locations or areas so that you can cover a number of bases. If one area starts to go bad you always have the others to call upon. A niche therapy practice can involve multiple niches!

You also need to have adaptability and you can only do that when you are able to:

  • Set up a therapy website fast that converts clients right now and is adaptable
  • Run pay per click ads such as Adwords or Facebook  that can be adapted in minutes to bring in the customers you need
  • Blog so that you can start to attract more business fast

These things can be learned and I teach them in my online courses. To give you an idea on how this is working for me I am currently building a new website. I blogged about Coronavirus anxiety around a month ago (before most people were really talking about it). That blog is getting me a steady stream of website visitors daily and I have only really started the site in January.  Yes of course you have to know how to blog correctly to do this but once you do you are on a roll. The techniques can be applied to any niche or product.

Passive Income and Your Therapy Practice

Now let’s talk about passive income. How many of you have bothered to create any passive income products for your website? This could make a huge difference to your income. Think about the Hypnobirthing niche which is no doubt suffering or about to crash at any second. Nobody is going to want to come into a hall or practice the techniques but what if you could offer online classes or have built a course on the topic to be sold online. Now you could sell that product worldwide and women who wanted it could be using it right now in the comfort of their own homes.  That product could insulate you from a loss of face to face income and might even surpass your current earnings as you moved from a local to a global business. You have to think bigger sometimes to make money. It isn’t always about a local niche therapy practice.

Creating products and services that can be used online can help grow your business and insulate you from problems like the ones we are currently seeing. If you find that your customers are currently drying up then go all-in on setting some up so when this is all over you will have a better and more stable business.

Finally

Nothing to do with a niche therapy practice but something I felt I had to comment on.

This is the time when professional therapists should be helping people to stay calm. We should be helping the local community and offering our mental health expertise to those who are currently not able to get to see their doctors. Don’t be the therapist that this morning created a Facebook messenger group and included me on it talking about wild conspiracy theories and asking what did I think. I tell you what I thought – that any therapist who is spouting nonsense at a time like this is one that I am immediately unfollowing (which I did). Keep your Facebook and social media pages professional be the voice of reason, not the person looking to create hysteria. Don’t start writing about unproven quackery to cure the illness, don’t sell through scaring people, don’t suggest something you know nothing about. We can get through this but keep your professional hats on.

You Might Also Want to Read:

Insulating Your Therapy Practice From Coronavirus Disruption

Don’t Set up a Therapy Practice Without Reading This

Marketing for Therapists 101 – Passive Income

 

Insulating Your Therapy Business From Coronavirus Disruption

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Therapy business coronavirusWhen it comes to running a therapy practice you never know what is around the corner and this is certainly the case when it comes to the latest news about Coronavirus. If you haven’t realised it yet this virus is likely to create some short term disruption for your therapy business so I thought I would give some pointers as to what you could do to insulate yourself and your income from its impact.  In addition I thought I would discuss some things that you probably haven’t thought about so that you are ready for what may be to come. This post is not designed to make you panic but it has been written to make sure that you are prepared. Every other business in the UK is currently planning for what is to come so you need to as well.

In the UK as I am writing this there are now 35 cases but this is growing day by day. It is only a matter of time before measures are put in place by the government to try and contain the spread. Here is what could happen over the next few weeks and months.

  1. Non-essential work travel is likely to be stopped
  2. Employees may be asked to work from home
  3. Some work will stop completely as people park new ventures until this blows over
  4. People will be more reluctant to visit busy areas
  5. Major tourist attractions are likely to shut (The Louvre has just closed as I am writing this)
  6. More people are likely to be self quarantining
  7. Schools are likely to close and children sent home

 

 49 ways to market your therapy practice

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Coronavirus Is Likely to Hit Your Profits

These are potential problems that I think you may see as a self-employed therapist.

Childcare

If you have children and they are sent home from school you may have problems running your business and looking after the kids. Start to think about what you could do to make sure that you can carry on working (if possible). Look at sharing childcare with friends and family or if you have a partner in a different industry splitting the hours you work so you can both carry on making a living.

Therapy Centres

As people begin to avoid non-essential travel there are likely to be issues with those of you that work in big therapy centres especially in large towns and cities.  Are you tied in to paying for a room that you might not be using? Are you temporarily able to stop using that room and setting up at home instead? Home setups are not always so professional looking (depending on your circumstances) but they cost nothing and don’t have the foot fall of a busy therapy centre which might put some people off. Have some plans in place in case you need to juggle things around. In China only 30% of small businesses were able to stay open during this outbreak how can you ensure that you are one of them.

Online Therapy

This is the absolute perfect time to talk about online therapy sessions.  Nobody has to leave their house to conduct the sessions which means it is highly suitable for what is to come. If your therapy business isn’t geared up for online sessions get this organised right now so that you can stay working.

Contracts

All of you should have written contracts with your clients detailing what you provide and how much it costs. Now is the time to write an extra clause to outline what will happen if sessions are disrupted due to Coronavirus. You need to think about what you should do with all new and existing clients (especially those who have signed up with you for a number of sessions). Make them aware that face to face sessions may need to be changed to online sessions. Get your existing clients ready for this and in your intake forms get their online details.

Therapy Training Providers

If you run therapy training courses or CPD days and have taken money in advance what are you going to do if you are unable to complete the courses because your venues have closed or people are unable to attend? Again try and make arrangements to come up with alternatives such as training online so that people are able to complete their courses even if they aren’t coming to a venue.

 

Diversifying Therapy Income

The economy, in general, is going to be impacted in the short term because of this virus. As an example say you work in the retail sector (which is already suffering) and people stay away from the shops in droves. It is only a matter of time before there are layoffs and redundancies as companies cannot afford to pay staff. Less money in the economy means that therapy will feel less affordable to some or sessions will be parked until the crisis blows over. Diversifying your income is always a good idea to insulate your therapy business from these ups and downs.

Adapting Your Therapy Services

Before I ever worked as a therapy marketer I used to be a trader. I know from my experience world events had a big impact on prices and demand and that is something I can see happening right now. Shares in Ryanair and other airlines are tanking for a good reason. The market expects far fewer people to travel in the near future and that is impacting the valuation of those companies. Now start to apply that to what you are selling in your therapy business. Clearly, you are going to get fewer customers for fear of flying and public speaking. Equally, I would expect an upturn in anxiety and sleep problems.

Insurance

If you do have business interruption insurance now is the time to pull out your policy and check to see whether you are covered for any loss of income related to Coronavirus. Have these discussions now and not later when it may be more difficult to get an answer.

On the Positive Side

It is not all doom and gloom. If you are forced to take some time out over the coming months then this is the perfect time to work on growing a stronger business for the future. Creating passive income products is a great way of doing this so that is more likely to get money coming into your practice even when things are not going to plan. Also setting up your website so that you can attract and adapt to new market situations is important. Do you have a website that can do this? If not learn how with my Make Your Therapy Website Into a Client Magnet course.

Also as a trained therapist, this is the perfect time to advertise your services as a health anxiety expert. Many people with anxiety are going to have mental health issues because of the worries about this virus. This is your time to step in and help those people to feel calmer and more in control while the newspapers write headlines designed to scare everyone to death! This is going to be a thriving therapy business market.

Things will inevitably pass as they always do but the lay of the land may be very different when this scare is over. I can see that this virus will reduce the pool of therapists out there. This is because many will find it difficult dealing with lower or no income over the coming months and are likely to retrain or go back to salaried jobs. As ever in times of economic upheaval the strong and prepared businesses will thrive whilst the weaker will shut up shop. Make sure you are the former!

 

Finally Look After Yourself

As a therapist, your are your income. If you are ill then your therapy business is impacted as well. Make sure that you are firm about not only keeping your clients safe but yourself as well. Be firm with clients and tell them you will not see them if they are showing any signs of a cough or a cold. Make sure that you wipe down therapy couches, door handles and surfaces clients may have touched to prevent the spread. Place hand sanitiser by your door for everyone to use. Don’t shake hands with clients or if you do wash them immediately after.  If your clients use your toilet make sure that you stop using normal towels and instead get them to use disposable hand towels.  Make sure that you clean the toilet after each use. These common-sense approaches that will keep you well and working.

You May Also Want to Read:

Don’t set up a Therapy Practice Without Reading This

The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on The Market

Therapy Marketing Strategy for 2020

 

 

Free Therapy Services Requests – What Should You Do?

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Free Therapy ServicesI felt I had to write about this topic after a sudden influx of requests from companies and PR people asking for free therapy services for their employees or to advertise/promote their products. If you haven’t received one of these emails or phone calls yet this is what you could expect (this is a genuine email!).

Good Afternoon
I wondered if you did info sessions for businesses – presentation on the importance of sleep – useful tips/guidance etc
13 March World Sleep day so looking for something to promote this area around that week.
We are based in XXX city centre.
Thanks

Perfect I thought so I spent the next few days trying to contact the HR lady who had sent the email to discuss her requirements and my costs. In the end, I sent her an email and this is the response I got:

Sorry for the delay in responding. We don’t really have a budget for organisations to come in however in the past businesses have been in to promote their business and then further down the line we have organised more specific training etc if required.

In other words, do some work for me for nothing and you never know we might decide to do something with you in the future but no promises. This was my response:

I am afraid free does not pay my bills or take into account my considerable experience and expertise. Perhaps your company needs to reconsider its approach to asking people to do something for nothing as it is rather insulting.

I do not feel bad about sending this note and neither should you if you were in my position! If you want more polite responses you can always check out this article in Forbes.

 

49 ways to market your therapy practice

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Don’t Work for Companies for Nothing

The companies who have asked me for free therapy services are cheap full stop. They are perfectly able to reconcile earning massive profits with thinking they are doing me a favour by asking me to work for them for nothing. In fact, what they probably haven’t bothered to think about is that it would have actually cost me money to run the session they wanted.

  • I would have taken time out of my work in order to write the presentation they wanted.
  • In this case, I would have had to drive a 30 mile round trip and pay for petrol.
  • As the talk was in the city centre I would have had to find a paid space to park.
  • I would have lost a half day of client income by taking time out to do the talk.

This is the worst deal in the world! No professional occupation is going to get taken seriously when they do work for nothing. Can you imagine what a plumber would say if they had been asked to fit a toilet for the exposure?

Therapists Do the Same

I hate to say it but it isn’t just your clients and corporations who think this way but also therapists. I have had countless messages over the years from therapists who wanted my time to teach them how to set up their business but without any payment. Some of these would be in direct competition with me but still thought it would be ok for me to do all the work and for them to profit. Remember these are not people I have ever met and in many cases even talked to or been in touch with on Facebook. Their requests came out of the blue which is beyond cheeky. Don’t do the same to others and if people do that to you be happy to call them out for their poor behaviour.

Valuing Your Therapy Services and Products

I know from many years of experience that the only way to get success with your clients is by getting them to value what you offer. When they believe that your words are disposable, or not worth the money then why would they bother paying any attention to what you have to say. It doesn’t matter if I am talking about a corporate company or an individual the same applies. You will always get a poorer outcome with clients who haven’t bothered to pay.

In addition, this company would never value me enough to pay me in the future which was the carrot the organisation was trying to dangle in front of me. Once someone has got something for nothing they will expect it in the future. I would never earn anything from them so why bother.

By the way, I am not the only one who is experiencing this. On a hypnotherapy forum, I moderate plenty of other therapists told me of their experiences of this freebie culture. I had to laugh when one of them said they had been approached by Apple to do a free talk. This is one of the most profitable companies in the world.

 

When Should You Think of Doing Free Work

Now, of course, nothing is ever black and white there are some circumstances where you might consider working for nothing.

Fame and Glory

Imagine that tomorrow morning a TV company called you up and wanted you to appear on their segment about Hypnobirthing. Your name, expertise and company details will be broadcast to millions of people across the country. Then this is a prospect worth considering because of the potential for a real peak in client bookings. Plus you now have the chance to place this on your website and pitch yourself as a TV expert. This will earn you money over time.

Charity

If you have a favourite charity that you work with then I can totally understand that you might do some free therapy services. BUT from my experience, some of these clients are less motivated to work with you because they are not paying for their services. Be clear on who you will and won’t work with it you do volunteer so that you get the best outcomes for your clients.

Free Therapy Services for New Experiences

Last year I did free work for a number of radio stations partly for publicity but also because it pushed me out of my comfort zone. Sometimes it is good to be pushed outside your daily limits as it keeps you on your toes and teaches you new skills.

Referrals

If you get together with other health and wellness professionals to do talks and cross-refer products and services it may be worth your while doing the odd free talk. Just make sure that you are not the only one doing all the work whilst the other health professionals sit and do nothing. Cross referrals can be a nice money spinner when you have everything set up and working on autopilot.

 

Therapy Marketing to Make Money

If you market your wellness business correctly you should never have to offer free therapy services. I gave up doing most free work years ago and have never looked back or regretted calling out people who asked me to do something for nothing. Learning how to use paid advertising such as Google Adwords or Facebook can make a big difference. Setting up your website so it is a client magnet will earn you money. Learning to Blog for money will never make leave you broke. All of these things can be learned and my online courses in my shop will teach you how to walk away from these requests knowing that you are never going to need to hustle for business again. What are you waiting for?

You may also want to read:

The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on the Market

How to Write a Good Therapy Blog to Boost your Income

Therapy Marketing Strategies for 2020

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

Posted on by Martina McKeough

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

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

Therapy Marketing Essentials

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

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

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

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

49 ways to market your therapy practice

 

 

 

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Setting up a Therapy Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Website Structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therapy Website Content

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

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

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

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

What is your business strategy when you create content?

How are you going to drive traffic to your website?

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

 

Statistics

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

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

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

Ideal Therapy Clients

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

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

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

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

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

What are Your Costs?

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

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

Will you have a pension?

How are you going to be able to afford holidays?

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

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

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

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

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

Day to Day Therapy Marketing

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

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

What marketing can you do for free?

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

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

 

Social Media & Ads

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

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

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

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

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

Passive Income for Therapists

Do you know what passive income is?

Are you intending to build passive income into your practice?

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

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

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

How will you attract those customers?

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

So Setting up a Therapy Practice is Easy You Think!

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

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

You may also like to read:

How to Write a Good Therapy Blog to Boost Your Income

The Ten Best Hypnotherapy Books on the Market

Therapy Marketing Strategies for 2020

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Marketing for Therapists 101 – Passive Income

Posted on by Martina McKeough

marketing for therapists passive incomeI love to keep my marketing for therapists posts topical and my latest is certainly that. It has been prompted by an illness that I experienced not just once in the past week but twice! It started with a stomach bug a week ago that floored me completely. There was no chance of me actually being able to work with clients. I just about managed to cancel all my clients before spending 24 hours on my sickbed. I rearranged all my clients slotting them into every possible available spare space I had and tried to carry on. That was until exactly one week later the same thing happened again and I was back to square one!

If you are a therapist it is only a matter of time before the same thing happens to you. You may get the flu and need to take a week off work. You might need an operation and need to recuperate for a month or two. You may break your leg and find it impossible to drive to your clinics. The question for you is what happens to your business and income while this is going on? Have you insulated yourself financially from the impact of something like this happening? In my case I was fine because I earned money even when I wasn’t seeing clients but what would happen to your mortgage payments or bills if you got sick?

Passive Income for Therapists

Before you think I am going to recommend self-employed illness insurance that isn’t what I am going to be talking about (although it is certainly worth considering if you are the only breadwinner). Instead, I really want you all to think about building a passive income stream to insulate your business from this kind of ups and downs. Marketing for therapists doesn’t simply mean finding ways to get customers to come and visit you for one to one sessions. It also involves finding ways to build a bigger income by helping clients when you are not around.

Revenue Streams for Therapists

Why is creating different revenue streams so important for your business?  Simply put it insulates from the ebbs and flows of a typical therapy business and allows you to build areas of income that are not just reliant on clients in your local vicinity. Remember as a therapist you can only see so many clients in a day.  Once you have hit your limit (whatever that may be) then your income trajectory comes to a grinding halt.

Plus I never advocate that a therapist kills themselves by seeing so many clients that they are either going to exhaust themselves or get fed up. The whole point of working for yourself was so that you got rid of the all the negative aspects of working for a company. When your job is no longer enjoyable because you are flogging yourself to death to earn as much as you can you may as well go back to the corporate world with sick pay and holidays.

Hypnotherapist Salary

I often see people ask “what does a hypnotherapist earn?” in order to see whether it is a career that might be worth considering. The answer is not straightforward because marketing for therapists makes all the difference especially if it is done smartly! An average hypnotherapist may earn a comfortable wage but a clever hypnotherapist with many passive income streams could be doing extremely well indeed.

I have created a list of twenty things that you can start to think about for your business to elevate your income. If you sign up to my emails I outline what these are so you can start to follow them yourself. You don’t need to do them all at once. Pick on one area, do it well before moving on to the next. Start to create layers and complexity to your business so that you never have to worry about taking time off.

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Advantages of Expanding Your Core Hypnosis Business

The advantages of creating a passive income are huge. Who wouldn’t want a bigger income? Yet there are many more benefits to consider. For example, if can earn more money online then you can spend considerably more time mastering something else or just enjoying your hobbies. Your family and friends will also thank you because instead of spending hours and hours working you now have free time to spend with them. Best of all you can start to pick and choose the clients that you really want to see instead of feeling obligated to see everyone because of the money. There is nothing better than having the financial freedom to call the shots.

Marketing for therapists involves working smarter but never harder! Want help to grow your business? Head on over to our online store where I have courses to help you with everything from getting more from your website to therapy blogging and pay per click advertising.

Update

I wrote this post in November 2019 only three months before the Coronavirus crisis. Talk about timing! My words were highly relevant before this event but following the virus, they make even more sense. If therapists had been working on passive income products they would have had a much easier time during the pandemic that those that didn’t. Remember to make your income diverse and stop relying on one source of revenue.

 

Anxiety Therapy Marketing – Facebook Live Event

Posted on 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.

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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:

  1. Be great at what you do. Solve problems and your clients will spread the word about your methods.
  2. Whilst you are building traction in start to implement a host of therapy marketing strategies to help you build your income.
  3. 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.

Therapy Marketing and Anxiety

How to Write a Good Therapy Blog & Boost Your Income

Posted on by Martina McKeough

good therapy blogAs 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.

Get Hypnotherapy Marketing Strategies

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49 Hypnotherapy Marketing Strategies to Use Today.

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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.

good therapy blog online course

Blogging for Therapists Online Course

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

Posted on by Martina McKeough

google adwords therapy marketingYep 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.

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

Google Adwords Therapy Marketing

 

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

Posted on 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.