Tag: therapy marketing

In Hypnosis Marketing Image is Everything!

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Hypnosis Marketing ImagesToday I want to talk about image and images and how important these are in our hypnosis marketing. As therapists we like to dig beneath the surface of our clients issues so that we can help them overcome their problems. That means spending time with them getting to know them and working through their problems and worries over a series of sessions building a great therapeutic working alliance. A potential client however generally spends only a few seconds picking your therapy services over your competitors unless you were a referral. They are generally superficial and will see if:

Your Website Looked Nice – Such a weak word “nice” but probably the colours and images appealed.

There were Testimonials – If you have written/video proof of someone else saying you are great then you must be.

You Practice in a Good Area – In London Harley St or the Hale Clinic mean premium prices so that means you must be great. Most towns and cities will have similar chi chi clinics or areas.

Your Photo – It was a great smiling photo and you looked like a super model or were handsome (shallow but true). Alternatively you looked authoratitive and like a therapist so met your clients expectations of what a therapist should look like.

Media – You have appeared in numerous famous publications and you plastered the links on your site. If you are good enough to get in a paper/magazine or appear on the TV then you are THE EXPERT!

Statistics – You quote meaningless statistics at your clients such as unqualified and unprovable success rates. If you resolve 99% of problems then there are going to be fixed in one session!

You Link to a Guru Someone Knows – You were trained by Paul McKenna and there is a picture of both of you on your front page. This means by some form of strange osmosis you are the next best thing to seeing the man himself.

Why do These Hypnotherapy Marketing Tactics Work?

Very simply a potential client who comes across your website randomly has no idea whether you are any good or not. They are looking for really simple and easy ways to identify whether you are the real deal. The generally haven’t got the time or the inclination to research the industry inside out so they are going to pick someone who gives the impression of success. The examples I gave above are just some of the reasons one website would be more likely to stand out against others. Of course not all of the examples are ethical but they are tactics that I see employed by certain hypnosis practices time and time again to pull in customers.

Now there are of course websites that offer a client the absolute opposite impression. As I like to call them anti sales websites. They virtually propel clients to their competitors without even realising it and I come across them all the time. One I came across this morning had two white Lilies that looked like funeral flowers on the front page. Another I saw had an incomprehensible section about metaphors linked to a video about a village. Sorry but these images and videos do nothing to attract clients. Your website should just do these simple things:

  • Client has problem and comes to your website.
  • Your website demonstrates that you work successfully with this problem. Where possible have testimonials related to this problem.
  • You present the potential client with a phone number and email to contact you as easily as possible.

Yes of course your website can become more sophisticated as you master these three basics. Sell courses. collect emails, offer eBooks and so on but get the three basics right if you are looking for client bookings. Appear confident,  show authority and offer insight into your clients problem. Show that you have knowledge, skill and ability to resolve problems and you have a sale. Look quirky, bonkers and write about things that have nothing to do with these basics and your clients are lost. They have no idea why the use of metaphors can be great tool in hypnosis and they don’t care. As the saying goes “Keep it simple stupid”!

The Use of Images in Hypnosis Websites

Hypnosis marketing and image can also be important for SEO and attracting clients attention. Here are some therapy marketing tips to help you with using images on your website.

  1. Firstly make use of images in your blog posts and on each individual page on your website. There is nothing more boring that reading content without something to break it up. Try and make the image relatable to the content.
  2. If you are using an image of yourself make sure you look great. Sadly quirky looking people don’t sell products and services in our niche.
  3. Label your image in the alt tag sections. For those of you who are not aware a typical image may have a name like 123img.jpg. Obviously this name is totally meaningless and in no way relates to the services and products that you are offering. This means that you need to rename the file to something that Google or another search engine can recognise. Change the file to something like Hypnosis in Derby and you will now start to appear in Google image search.
  4. Whatever you do reduce your image sizes. Why? Your page loading time is one element that is used in your website ranking. Whenever you have an image that takes more than a second to load your potential client has given up and gone off to another website. You can edit your images with tools such as Pic Monkey, Plixr and Fotoflexer. To find out more about your page loading speed head on over to Google’s page speed tester.
  5. If you have a website with decorative background swirls and design beware as this can also be classed as an image and it will no doubt slow down your load times. Where possible try and create clean sites with optimised images.
  6. Remember that there are a number of free image sites out there where you may be able to get something that is usable on your website. In some cases the licence may require you to acknowledge the original photographer. I typically use paid websites such as canstockphoto where you can buy a bundle that allows you to download a certain number of images. Beware copying something from the internet which is owned by one of these sites without paying a fee. Expect threatening letters from their lawyers demanding large sums of money.

Get Help to Combat Your Anti Sales Techniques

If you aren’t sure about your website then get a second opinion. Leaving it to chance means that potentially you are leaving thousands of pounds on the table. With the right help you can turn your website and images from a client repellent to a client magnet. Our mentoring and hypnosis marketing services help turn failing businesses into thriving concerns. Believe it or not over 50% of our clients had no customer calls in the six months before they rang for help. Without our expertise those clients would have given up and gone back to their old day jobs (which they generally hated). If this sounds like you then give yourself a fighting chance of success by contacting us via email.

 

5 Essential Tools to Boost Your Hypnotherapy Advertising

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Hypnotherapy Advertising ToolkitI think you will agree that finding great tools to boost your Hypnotherapy Advertising can save you time and money. In the old days it was relatively simple. Pay for an advert in the Yellow Pages and wait for the phone to ring. Now hypnosis marketing is becoming increasingly complex and if you don’t understand the game then you are doomed from the very beginning. Many of my marketing students are stunned at the complexity of modern day client attraction techniques. Left to their own devices most of them would have been out of business in half a year. That is why it is essential to have the business knowledge and tools to help you on the road to success. Here are just some tools that can help you to boost your current marketing efforts.

Google Keyword Planner – Previously called the Google Keyword Tool this has become an essential starting point in finding out keywords that are relevant to your business and niche. Whilst not always 100% accurate the planner can help you to identify words that you can use on your website or blogs to attract people interested in your services. Primarily the planner allows you to enter in a set of keywords into its search system and then it generates a large number of other keywords which may be useful to your business niche.

I know that this tool could be invaluable to most therapists if they bothered to use it. Why? Because it would stop them writing content that nobody wanted to see. There is no point making a great page on your website talking about your expertise in Hypnotherapy for Dementia if there are only ten or less Google searches in the country per month for that term. Logically it is highly unlikely that many of those searches will be near you so concentrate initially on the terms that your clients are looking for and write your content around that.

WordPress – There really is no need now to get expensive websites created in HTML coding when WordPress has become the main platform to create your online site. WordPress has made things simple for you and uses a system that makes it super easy for you to write content that matches what Google wants. It allows you to add pictures and video at the click of a button. Your content can be tagged correctly with a simple click. You can even see if your content meets SEO standards with the wonderful Yoast plugin.

With a simple traffic light system it shows you whether you content needs work with a red light or whether you are green to go. If you are given a signal that your content needs work all you have to do is page down and it tells you exactly what is wrong with what you have written. Oh and there are thousands of plugins you can add to your site to increase your marketing effectiveness. Do you want to regularly retweet content? Well there is a plugin for that. Want to add a a pop up screen to collect email addresses on your site? Yep there is another pop up for that. This is easily one of the best systems for helping you in your therapy practice marketing today.

Google Adwords – Adwords is a complex beast of a system but use it correctly and it is a client attraction machine. Yes it uses pay per click advertising as a means to get paying clients in through your door but that is no bad thing. Think of Adwords as your manager. You pay your manager a percentage of your income and they get you work. Yes of course it would be lovely to get clients without having to pay anything but lets look at the reality of the situation.

If you are an established hypnotherapist who has been in the business for years and has built referral networks, marketed to old clients and has a name for themselves then you probably don’t need to do anything to get work. If however you are new to this game you need to get found. Networking and referrals take time and you have to ask yourself can you afford to wait for months if not years to get to the point where you are earning enough to live on. So you think about creating a website instead and boosting it in the rankings until you high in the organic rankings. Again this takes time and a significant amount of effort. In addition with the new way that Google shows results it is likely that even with organic SEO you may appear relatively low on the first page. Google is not daft it now monopolises search to the point where you are going to find if difficult to earn a living without them.

Fiverr Hypnosis AdvertisingFiverr – This website started out as I will do anything for you for five dollars and now has morphed into the go to site to get things done cheaply. Want new leaflets created for your business? Well you can fiddle around trying to create something badly yourself, hire a local graphic designer or head on over to Fiverr to get this done for the price of a cup of coffee. You can get videos made, websites created,  content written and so much more. Of course not everything is quite as cheap as five dollars anymore. Usually the service providers on this site choose to offer their work in exchange for multiples of the five dollars but it will be still be at a great price. What better way to boost your hypnotherapy advertising cheaply.

Think about it a local graphic designer in the UK, Australia or The States charges in relation to their cost of living in that country. That means a small graphic can cost you a significant amount of money. The sellers on this site are situated all over the world which means they can significantly undercut local offerings. What may cost you £100 in the developed world can be only £4 overseas. Just make sure that you choose the person you are using from their reviews. If a seller has hundreds of positive reviews then you are likely to get great work. Think twice about choosing services from someone with little or no track record.

Google Webmaster Tools – Have you placed your website on this yet? If not you are missing tons of useful information that can help you with your hypnotherapy advertising. This free site allows you to see your website as Google does. Here are just some of the reports and data you can receive from the tools.

Information on the search queries for your website and the click through rate of the people arriving at your website. Clearly this is valuable information showing you how you have been found.

Links to your site – If you have lots of natural links which flow back to your site it boosts your search engine results. The reports here can show you who is linking to you and on what pages.

Keywords – Google provides you with a list of keywords it finds when it is crawling your site. Check to make sure that the words they are finding are the ones that you want to be found for.

Internal Links – Details of the links on your website which link to other pages. Google loves relevant internal linking as it improves your customer experience. Think Wikipedia.

Errors on your site – You may not know it but there may be broken links or problems with your website and Google lets you know where they are.

Understanding How to Use Tools in Your Hypnosis Marketing

These are only a few of the tools that it is possible to use in your hypnosis marketing efforts. However having the tools is not enough if you don’t know how to implement them. Hypnotherapy Advertising is becoming more and more sophisticated and that means you need to have the knowledge in order to stand a chance in beating your competition.

My marketing students found that when they tried to market without any knowledge of these techniques they got almost zero clients in through the door and no income. When they were given the tools to work with and were guided through the marketing maze they suddenly got high search engine positions and a steady stream of new customers. Don’t let a lack of business savvy hold you back from achieving your dream of a hypnosis career find a mentor to guide you through the maze.

 

 

 

 

Citation Building for Therapists – The Complete Guide

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Citation Building for TherapistsMarketing a therapy business well should involve creating a great local presence for your services. One of the best ways of doing this is building citations to your business. So what exactly is a citation? In short it is a mention of your name, address and phone number on another website page. The citation does not have to link back to your website. In some cases you will find that people use the term NAP to refer to this name, address and phone number. Citation building for therapists is a crucial marketing strategy that should not be ignored.

Building a local list of citations is hugely important for a local business as it is a key ranking factor in Google and Bing. Both these search engines use citations in their ranking algorithm and the more you have the more likely you are to rank over your competitors. Most people believe that a citation needs to be built in a directory but they can also be created in forums, blog posts, press releases and social media links. A citation is telling the search engines that your business is genuine and in the local region. The more citations you have from good quality webpages the more trust you build around your business. Location specific citations from local newspapers, your chamber of commerce or local directory links can make a big difference to your website rankings in Google and Bing.

Claiming your Therapy Business Listing

I will supply a list of some of the most best citation sites on the web at the end of this post but once you have found the site what do you do next?

  1. Before most sites allow you to create a listing you may be asked if your business has already been added to their website. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly it prevents duplicate listings of your business and secondly it allows you to check if other businesses are registered at the same address. Many therapists may work out of therapy centres where there are a number of people working so you would expect to see many other businesses registered at your address. If however you have taken over a premises and an old competitor is registered it is worth flagging this to prevent them benefiting from your advertising.
  2. If you don’t have a duplicate business listed you will be asked to fill out details about your company. Obviously the name, address and phone number but in many cases you might also be asked for pictures, website details, social media links, hours of operation, products sold and so on. Fill out as many of the details as you can.
  3. Some websites try and persuade you to pay money in order to get a listing on their website. Where possible simply opt for the free option. The purpose of your adding your details is for the citation alone. In many cases paying to be added to a directory is a pointless exercise unless they appear extremely highly in the search engines for your keyword.
  4. Be aware that some people will add a different email for their citation links than their usual business email. This is because adding your details to these forms of sites tends to generate spam marketing.
  5. After adding your details you will usually be asked to verify a link to finalise the process. Google + Local however sends you a postcard which may not appear until weeks later. Some other websites will ask for your phone number and then call you with a pin number to confirm that you really are at that phone number.
  6. In many cases your listing may appear live after only a few minutes but in some cases the citation websites will have a review process of up to six months! Obviously if you paid them for the listing this would be up and running in a day or so.

Consistency and Citations for Therapy Marketing

One of the most important points to remember when building citations is to keep consistency. That means using exactly the same name, address and phone number on each link that you are building. Even more importantly the ones you choose should be in exactly the same format as your Google + Local page and Website address. Having different phone numbers or variations of your trading name can confuse search engine algorithms and raise red flags. You do not want any doubt to be created around your business listing so make sure that everything is written exactly the same. Moz local is a system that can be used to track your citations online and ensure that you do not have duplicates, listings that are incomplete or have inconsistencies.

Build a Booming Therapy Business with Citations

A great way of finding out what citations to use is by searching for what your competitors are doing. If you are hiding away on page three or four of the search engines then it is worth looking at the citations that your competitors are using in order to trank. Although at the end of this post I have included a great list to start you off there may be many local listings that you may miss without looking to see what your fellow therapists are using. I know that this method helped me to find a number of local newspaper listings that I would never have even known about when I moved into my new location six months ago.

The Top Twenty List of Citations You Need to Use in Your Marketing

  1. 192.com
  2. Yelp.com
  3. Brownbook.net
  4. Facebook.com
  5. Local.Yahoo.com
  6. Thomsonlocal.com
  7. Citylocal.co.uk
  8. Cylex-uk.co.uk
  9. Freeindex.co.uk
  10. Hotfrog.co.uk
  11. Locallife.co.uk
  12. MisterWhat.co.uk
  13. Scoot.co.uk
  14. TouchLocal.com
  15. Yalwa.co.uk
  16. 118.com
  17. directory.thesun.co.uk
  18. directory.independent.co.uk
  19. Approvedbusiness.co.uk
  20. Opendi.co.uk

The list I have given is based around the UK however I know that I have a number of blog readers from the US and in Australia. You can find the best lists for your regions here:

US Citations

Australia Citations

Not Getting Professional Help Is Costing You Money

Obviously citation building for therapists is just one small step in getting your business found online and getting customers in through your door. If you were unaware of its importance and had not begun the process of building your citations you could have potentially lost thousands of pounds in revenue in the past year. Thousands of pounds that you could have reinvested in your business, used to pay for a holiday or simply saved for a rainy day. My therapy marketing coaching sessions help my clients to get ahead of the competition and stop burning money following strategies that are not working for their business. Even better the cost of my business training is easily offset by just a couple of new clients. For more details simply contact for more information.

Therapy Marketing and Voice Search – The Revolution Begins

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Therapy Marketing and Voice SearchThe world of therapy marketing is changing, a revolution is going on right now but you probably haven’t been even noticed or thought about it so let me enlighten you. Last year I published a blog post about Mobilegeddon. The point at which Google decided that non mobile websites would be penalised in the search results in favour of those that were optimised for mobile. I should point out that I know that there are subscribers to this blog who still have not actioned anything following this announcement nearly a year later. That means that not only are they a year behind on their SEO it also means that they are unable to optimise on voice search.

So what exactly is voice search? Simply put it is a new way of getting information from your smart phone or tablet simply by asking questions to get information. That means it is no longer necessary to type something into a search engine to get results. Instead you can ask your question and you will get a reply back from your technology. The big players in this market are “Ok Google” and “Siri” although there are other sytems out there. The figures for this market are huge with over 55% of teenagers using this form of search and approximately 41% of adults. That means that nearly half the people who may want to use your services are no longer typing queries into search engines but are simply speaking into their phones to get the answers they want.

Getting Your Therapy Website found With Voice Search

If you are serious about your therapy marketing that means that you will need to take into account how you can get your information to the people who are looking for your services on voice search. Here are just some examples of how this can be made easier.

Long Tail Keywords

When we look for a product in a search engine we are likely to type in just a short phrase such as “Hypnotherapist in London” or “Confidence Hypnosis in Edinburgh”.  With voice search we tend to use longer phrases or sentances in order to get the information that we want such as “Who is the best weight loss hypnotherapist in Ireland?”.

Using long tail copy in your posts and content is becoming an increasingly popular way to get found in the search engines. This makes perfect sense when as there are some keywords that you are never going to be found for without the long tail version being used. For example the keywords “Hypnotherapy London” will bring up thousands of results. and so an average hypnotherapist is unlikely to ever be able to compete without for those keywords without a long term SEO strategy. However if a therapist where to define the area of London that they worked in it would reduce the level of competition. If they were also to write additional copy in a conversational style they would also be optimising for voice search.

Conversational Phrasing

When people use voice search they talk into Siri or Ok Google as if they were having a conversation. They don’t simply say “Hypnotherapy London”. They will ask “Where can I find a hypnotherapist in London?”. This more natural form of phrasing means that parts of the copy on your websites and blogs should also mimic this style in places where it is appropriate.

Use of FAQ’s in Your Content

Many therapists especially hypnotherapists already use FAQ’s in their content but I can guarantee that most have not thought how to write that section of their website with mobile voice search in mind. Now think of writing that copy again but answering the questions that people would want to know on voice search. Remember the questions asked in voice search tend to be “Why, where, when, how and what?”. The FAQ’s of course do not have to be just placed in your main content but can also be placed on your web pages or on your blogs.

The Devil is in the Detail

If you a therapist who has barely bothered to write a paragraph or two on each page of their website then you are likely to be a loser where this revolution is concerned.  Valuable and informative content in becoming increasingly important. I know that most of the students who come to be for marketing coaching have very rarely bothered to make much of an effort in their initial website attempts. They might have tried to cobble together a website themselves which is misaligned and has three or four pages with little information. When this little effort has been made there is nothing for the search engines or voice search to crawl. That means the Google bot comes along looking for words in that content that gives it clues as to what information that website contains. If the website has no information then the hypnotherapist does not get found. I spend a good portion of the time I have with my clients helping them to understand exactly what hard work they will need to put in to their web design in order to get customers from the internet.

The world of therapy marketing is changing all the time and staying on top of these changes is crucial to prevent your business model from becoming obsolete. Getting a helping hand to create therapy marketing solutions and to implement them can mean the difference between success in your chosen profession or heading back to your old day job. This is why my therapy marketing coaching helps my clients to drive customers to their door.

Three Cliche Hypnosis Marketing Images That are Killing Your Business!

Posted on by Martina McKeough

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

Are you guilty of this?

hypnotherapymarketingexpert.com

 

 

 

Or this?

canstockphoto8817732

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or even this?canstockphoto26164545

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

So What Image Should You Have for Your Hypnosis Website?

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

Meanwhile…

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

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

 

 

 

Building a Hypnotherapy Business by Having a Plan

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Hypnotherapy business planIn the last month I have spent a considerable amount of time creating a hypnotherapy marketing plan that will help my business be ready for January 2016. In other words I have created a systematic and detailed way of getting my business to rank in my local area as well as creating plans for future products to increase my passive income earning potential. Trying to do well at marketing a hypnosis business without having a plan is pointless as the world of website creation, content generation, social media interaction and SEO requires detailed thought and regular input to get real results. Here are just some of the things that you will need to consider if you are to create a successful business.

A website as I have discussed before is a must have for any therapy business starting up now and in order for it to succeed it must be set up correctly. Getting the elements of your website right is key to getting the customers you deserve. What I have noticed is that just about all of my competitors in my local market are failing in this area. These are just some of the big errors that I am seeing when I look at my competitors.

Spelling Mistakes – Nobody is going to trust a hypnotherapist who hasn’t taken the time to proof read their website. I can forgive the odd mistake but a competitor in my local area has huge ones in the headings of his web pages. This is a turn off for many people who arrive at your site.

Keywords – Frankly many of the local hypnotherapists around me haven’t even thought about using them in their copy which is unbelievable. Google and the algorithm it uses needs to see keywords when it crawls your website otherwise it doesn’t have a clue where to bring up your business in its listings. So if you are a hypnotherapist in London you need to write that somewhere on your website. If you have no address in London, no mention of London in your copy or the fact that you are a hypnotherapist then how the hell do you expect to get found?

Minimal Pages – I have said it before and I will say it again. Hypnotherapists in general are lazy when it comes to doing anything marketing related. They can barely be bothered to write four or five pages of copy on their site. Most of my local competitors have a website that has too few pages. Yes it takes effort to write a website and lots of time to do it well but get it right and it can reap rewards. As I mentioned before with keywords these need to be all over your site leading customers directly to you. If you don’t mention that you do confidence coaching or work with depression then you will not get found when a client places a query in a search engine.

Minimal Content – Even those therapists who have placed in a number of web pages tend to write thin content. In other words they can barely summon up the energy to place a picture on the page and a short paragraph. Content is king currently. Write thin content and your website will be penalised and you are wasting your time thinking it will attract business.

Pricing – Oh I could weep for the local therapists and their business pricing. Some of the locals around me are charging as little as £40 a session! I am already the most expensive in the area by miles and guess what clients are still coming to see me. Undervalue your skills and charge too little and you will never earn a great living. From a business perspective I sell a gastric band audio download program for £39.99 on my website which is a form of passive income. I have recorded it once and now I can sell it again and again with little effort at all. Why would I want to see a client for £40 when I can earn that from a passive income product that requires me to do very little? Clearly my local competitors are not thinking like a business.

Hypnotherapy Business Plan

Now of course it is impossible to do everything at once but having a business plan which lays out your markting strategy is vital for the health of your business. I know that I have a great one for mine and it is working. Bit by bit my websites are moving higher up the search engine rankings and getting me not just on the front page of Google but in the number one slot.

As an example in my nearest local town I am number five on Google. So in just over six weeks I have gone from nowhere to beating websites that have been up and running for years. This town has a population of 25,000. I expect to have the number one or two slot by the new year. I am now repeating this formula in all the surrounding towns which means that I should have a population reach of well over a million potential customers.

I am also systematically creating great web pages and content for each of my key niches and building backlinks. This means you will find me on the front page for all kinds of issues related to hypnosis such as fear of flying, weight loss, depression and so on. By January I should have hundreds if not thousands of pages of content out there for people to find me. With the right guidance and work ethic you can do the same and not just earn a great living but dominate the area that you choose to work in. For more details about my hypnotherapy marketing mentoring send me an email via my contact me page.

New Beginnings and More Exposure in The National Press

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Balance Hypnosis Daily MailIf you are wondering why you haven’t had any emails for the past six weeks it is because I have moved house. That has of course created upheaval, mess, tradesman and a never ending list of things to do to get the new house into some sort of liveable condition. Whilst this has been going on of course it also means that I have moved my business as well. This is a bigger issue because the area where I have moved to has no clue about my skills, I have no referrals to boost my income and I have no search engine rankings locally. That means I am having to start all over again putting my in a similar position to a new Hypnotherapist. So the next series of blog posts are going to be about I begin to dominate the local area and rebuild a thriving practice. You can also read my previous blog post on what makes a hypnotherapy business portable.

Balance Hypnosis in The Daily Mail

But before I begin I had one piece of great news this week. A contribution I made to an article on Nail Biting Hypnosis was finally published in The Daily Mail this week. When I say finally I should point out that I actually gave the interview to this journalist nearly two years ago. I would have missed the story completely (most journalists don’t bother to contact you to say when you will appear in the press) if it had not popped up on my husbands news feed on LinkedIn. It is worth noting that just because you are interviewed by a journalist it does not mean that you will instantly get a story in the press and it almost certainly can be parked for a long time before publication.

Now I should point out that having a mention in the National press does not necessarily lead to a stream of nail biting clients ringing for help. If you want that kind of exposure then the story would really need to involve an issue such as weight loss or your face over a major news story.on television. What this story does do is make me more credible for my hypnotherapy marketing. I can now happily add the words as seen in The Daily Mail on my website as well as adding their logo to my front website page and in the media section of the site. That means when people come across my site and have to choose between a therapist with a low grade website and myself they are more likely to pick the hypnotherapist who has appeared in many of the national newspapers and demonstrates expertise.

Hypnotherapy Marketing in a New Area

Anyway back to the real issue which is how to get clients when you are just starting your business or have moved to a new area. Well I always start in one place and that is getting a website up and running. Now because of the house move I actually did something that I don’t do very often and that was hand the setting up of the website to a SEO and website building expert. Big mistake! Why? Because despite this person having all the credentials and knowledge to create a fantastic site to dominate my local area they have not as yet delivered. This is despite the brief having been given to the company concerned back in June! Luckily I have set up a considerable number of my own websites before and at the last minute I have had to create a website myself to get some exposure. This means that I am at least three months behind in my marketing plans which is far from ideal.

I have written previous posts on not putting all your eggs in one basket as well as staying in control of anything you own or produce and I still stand by that. If it were not for my web knowledge I would be feeling stranded right now. This is why I still suggest that any Hypnotherapist who is starting out takes the time to learn how to get a website up and running. No it does not have to be an all singing all dancing website but it does have to do the basics which is tell people where you are and what you do. Having these marketing skills will be a great back up to you if you should ever need them.

Getting Your Hypnotherapy Website Right

Being found in the local search engines is the one major thing that you need to work on when you start up in an area for business. There is no point writing a fantastic website if it makes no use of keywords and nobody knows where to find you. At the moment this is my number one task and I am afraid it takes time. Your content needs to be original, you need plenty of it and then you need to structure your website in such a way that Google wants to place you on its front page (ideally in the top three organic rankings). This takes a methodical approach, knowledge and the ability to write quickly. Currently three weeks after getting my website up and running I have front page rankings for 17 locations in my area and one number one spot. For more competitive locations I am generally appearing on page two of Google despite the fact that my actual location is not in that area. The next month will be spent boosting those rankings to the front page. Note I do not market in one small area and make sure that the radius I cover is at least 30 miles wide.

Do not forget location specific keywords are not the be all and end all of getting business. So if you are a Hypnotherapist in London and trying to rank for the front page of Google you are going to need a couple of years at the very least to get to that spot. That means you need to target long tail keywords instead. That means phrases of three or more words which will help you get found. If you were not aware nearly 50% of searches placed into the Google search engine are brand new and have never been searched for before. Such as “hypnotherapy in London to help migraines” , hypnosis to stop my IBS flare ups” and so on. Concentrate on targeting the long tail and business will eventually start coming your way. I know that apart form my keyword phrases for locations I have 21 top five rankings already for my weight loss keywords in those areas. In some places in fact I dominate the front page. Over the coming months I will use the same tactics to corner other niches that I specialise in.

I expect that my big push into my new location will now happen in the New Year as business for most Hypnotherapists starts to wane in December which is not that far away. I will be also be on holiday that month but I will look forward to sharing with you some of the other tactics I am using to build my face to face hypnotherapy business over the coming blog posts. Remember if you need help structuring website content so that it converts or want help with your hypnotherapy marketing I offer coaching and mentoring programs. The proof of my abilities as you can see is written in black and white in the National Press this week (or colour if you go on to The Daily Mail website).

 

 

Who is The Target Market For Your Therapy Business?

Posted on by Martina McKeough

Therapy MarketingHave you ever stopped and taken the time to consider your therapy marketing and who exactly it is supposed to be targeting? My guess it that the majority of therapists have never given it a second thought. Why? Because they construct a generic website that is all things to all people but don’t take the time to really focus in on what their customers really need and want. Here’s a typical example:

Sharon has just completed her therapy training and decides she wants to set up a practice in Townsville. She works with a local web designer and tells them that she would like a website similar to the ones that she has seen her competitors use. She tells that designer that she is looking to get business in Townsville and asks them to construct website pages detailing all the different forms of therapy she does. Sharon knows that she loves working with people suffering from pet bereavement so makes that a feature on her front page. The rest of the website pages have a brief overview of her services and there is a contact page for potential customers to send her an email. Sharon gets the website placed live online and waits for the phone to ring.

Sound familiar? I would say the vast majority of therapists do something very similar to Sharon and never really think about who their customers are and what they want. Instead they construct a website that they have seen a thousand times before or alternatively they choose to focus on a treatment  that really interests them without ever giving a thought to whether their customers actually want or need it. To really target your therapy marketing it is necessary to put in much more thought into who your customer really is.

Defining your Therapy Business Market

1) Location – One of the biggest mistakes I see therapists making is defining a market location that is too small. In Sharon’s case her marketing revolved around Townsville but that really does not make much sense especially if that area does not have a significant population. The reality is that you need to be targeting the towns and villages around your home location as well. This could also mean the county or the region where you are based. I regularly get clients coming to see me from many miles away so it does not make sense to focus on a small area.

2) Age – How old are the clients who are coming to see you? Are your treatments aimed at children, young professionals,the middle aged or even the elderly? Try and work out who is coming to see you and then create a website and marketing plan that appeals to that niche.

3) Gender – Can you define your market even further and differentiate by gender? If you specialise in fertility therapy or Hypnobirthing then creating a website that also appeals to men is slightly pointless as it is the women who are making the buying decisions in these cases.

4) Income – There is no point in offering £200 per hour treatments or an expensive package of treatments if you know that your local area is filled with low income earners. That said if you are in the middle of Central London or New York then yes you can sell top dollar all singing all dancing therapies at premium prices.

5) Interests – You may have a huge interest in pet bereavement therapy like Sharon but is it the most suitable therapy to highlight on your website front page? This issue by the way is not made up. I worked with a Counsellor who was getting hardly any clients and was scratching a living. She had put this treatment as the highlight on her website. It was obvious that not only did nobody care about this treatment but that it was probably putting them off contacting her for other issues. Think about the real problems that people really want to see you about such as couples counselling or anxiety reduction and concentrate on those. If you do offer other treatments that are more “out” there stick them on your inside pages.

6) Best Sellers – I have mentioned before that in order to be a great therapy marketer you need to “Smell What Sells”. Have a look at your competition and the people who are typically coming to see you and you will find that some of your treatments will be ten times more popular than others. These need to form the core of what you offer as that is what is going to make you a living. Creating a niche is great but not when it is so obscure that nobody is paying to come and see you for it.

7) Where are They? – Once you have a better idea of where your target market is based you can start to market to that location. So if you are selling Hypnobirthing you need to target local midwives and doctors surgeries, playgroups and coffee shops. Get together with local Yoga and Pilates teachers to sell your services and so on. There is no point just sticking an advert in the local paper as it isn’t targeted marketing. You need to focus in as closely as you can to your niche and sell them more services.

8) What do You love? – Even though I don’t advocate choosing obscure treatments to focus on there is no harm in choosing to focus on the other areas that you love to work in. If you get a kick out of helping people to stop smoking then really focus in on making that part of your core business. If you hate working in other areas then leave them off your websites. I know that I don’t get excited about working with children so where possible I try and avoid  that kind of work. Others however will love the little ones. Horses for courses as they say.

9) Vocabulary – I saw a great website today from a Life Coach called “yourkickasslife.com”. The title of the website and the content stood out but remember that this kind of website has its limitations. It has been clearly designed to appeal to women and I would say an age demographic of 30 to 50. Having a website using similar language whilst offering treatment for older customers will simply not appeal in the same way. Choose the tone of your words and phrasing carefully to suit the customers you are trying to appeal to.

10) Keywords – Finally make sure that you use keywords in your copy that will help you get found. In other words think about what your customers would type into the search engines and then use those phrases in your website content. There is no point in wasting words talking about non related content as nobody will find you!

Defining an audience for your therapy marketing and targeting those customers can be easier than you think but it does take a little effort. Get it right and you will reap the rewards but get it wrong and you will be lucky to see a customer coming your way. If you need help with your therapy marketing strategy then getting a professional involved is a great way of making a difference to your bottom line. It can make the difference between success at your new chosen career or failure and heading back to your old day job!

 

 

10 Ways to Increase Your Hypnotherapy Business Revenue

Posted on by Martina McKeough

hypnotherapy businessBelieve it or not it can be very easy to make a difference to your hypnotherapy business revenue with some simple tweaks to the way in which you work. Here are just ten ideas which can help you to improve your earnings that are actionable today.

1) Raise Your Prices – Such a simple thing to do but so many therapists seem to lack confidence in their abilities and what their local market can sustain. In the recession when I started my business I actually raised my prices each year and I found that the demand for my services actually increased. Having cheap session prices sends out a signal to your potential clients that you offer low quality services. Oh and if you live in an affluent area you most certainly should have high prices and never discount. Unbelievably I see many therapists offering bargain basement prices to people in areas with multi million pound houses! If you are one of them stop subsidising your clients Planet Organic habit and raise those hourly rates now.

2) Upsell – Not sure what that means?It means offering a product or service to your client which is more than they originally intended to purchase. So if a client rings you and wants help with sugar addiction and you find that they actually also suffer from anxiety then you can up-sell your services to deal with that problem as well. This will benefit the client as their sugar problem may be fueled by the anxiety. Now instead of seeing your client for one or two sessions you may be seeing them for four to six. Remember this always has to be done ethically so you are not selling your customers services they don’t need.

3) Cross-Sell – If you have other services that you can sell then those can also be offered to your client. For therapists perfect examples of this may be offering your customers audios or apps to assist them in times when they are not in your sessions. Perhaps you have an eBook which has lots of useful tips for a client which they can buy. This advice can be applied to just about any therapist. I know that I recently visited my local Osteopath and I noticed that he sold no products at all in his clinic. Madness! So all his customers who visited him who were told to buy ice packs or surgical tape were heading to the local chemists instead of purchasing these things directly from him. I would have loved the convenience of getting the things I needed then and there especially when I was in pain. The last thing I wanted to do was make another trip somewhere else. Since I pointed out the error of his ways he has gone to a wholesaler and is now starting to sell some of these products. My guess is that he will increase his revenue by 20 to 30% by this simple action.

4) Bundle – I use this tool all the time. Earning more money by bundling products together. A perfect example of this are my hypnosis downloads. I have a number of weight loss audios when sold individually cost around £9.99 each. Now however I have created a full premium weight loss program out of these audios and these retail for £39.99!! You can do the same bundle your sessions or services and watch your profits increase.

5) Get Rid of Bad Customers – 99% of your customers will be great. They will pay on time, be friendly in your sessions and generally cause you no problems at all. Then you will get the one customer who makes your life hell. They are always late for appointments, they continually ask to change their appointment times. They don’t pay on time and want to speak to you on the phone for hours between their sessions. When you make the decision to not deal with these people your life will be so much simpler and it means you are freeing up your time so you can concentrate on other areas of your hypnotherapy business.

6) Take Money up Front – Even better never deal with a bad paying customer ever again and take their session fee up front. I do that with all my customers. Either they pay for individual sessions up front or I take a deposit for multi session products. Never fear this approach. If a customer is reluctant to pay for their sessions up front then you know they are likely to be the very people who wouldn’t turn up for their booked sessions.

7) Invest in the Longer Term – With the profits that you are making in your business you need to invest some of that money into longer term investments. Perhaps some of those profits can be used to creating online training programs, apps, audios or other helpful products that you can sell when you are asleep. This will help you to grow your hypnotherapy business beyond seeing customers and clients one to one.

8) Sell to Multiple People – There are only so many hours in a day which means that if you are seeing one to one clients you will eventually hit a ceiling on your income. Sell to groups of people and you can earn greater revenue if done well. Corporate well-being work is a perfect example of how this kind of work will be much more lucrative than seeing individual clients.

9) Extend Your Market Area – Are you just trying to sell your services to people in your home town? If so think again. People will come and see therapists from miles around so start thinking about advertising your services to your whole county, region or even country!

10) Get Help – Hire a marketing mentor to take your hypnotherapy business to the next level. For a relatively small investment you can transform your business by getting someone to help you transform your business. With the right advice and guidance your business could significantly grow. One of my recent clients has found that her revenue has increased by 30% already and now she has hired two new staff members to help with the workload. My guess is that by the end of year we will have doubled her previous years revenue. Probably the best investment decision she has ever made.

Is Your Hypnotherapy Business Portable?

Posted on by Martina McKeough

hypnotherapy businessYou may have noticed that this latest blog post is slightly later than usual. This is because I am planning to move house and having sold in one area I am frantically trying to find somewhere to buy in another part of the country. Moving house of course is only part of the issue because it also means that I will have to move my business as well. Not just  a few miles away but to an entirely different area where I currently have no customers or clients who will have seen me. Am I worried? Well no because I believe that my business model will work in any area that I relocate to. The question is can you say the same for your business?

Even though you have no intention of leaving your current location and moving cross country at this time you never know what will happen to you in the future. I know that I had no plans five years ago to leave London but circumstances change. It therefore makes common sense to consider all possibilities when you set up your business as to what would happen if you had to move premises, town or even to another country.

Moving Premises

Unless you work from home or in a very small area with limited choice of rented rooms then it is very likely that you will move premises at least once during your therapy career. I know that I have moved premises a number of times in the areas where I have worked. Mainly because I was always looking for the best premises for myself and my clients. I always recommend that wherever you set up your hypnotherapy business you look at a location where you have a choice of premises. This means that if one place closes or becomes unsuitable you always have other locations where you can move without any disruption to your income. Income stability should be a big consideration when planning your business strategy.

When you choose your business location then I would suggest that you make sure that the set up is such that either you are the only hypnotherapist at that location or you have full control of your phone number and advertising. Why? Well let us say that you decide to work at a natural health clinic in your local town or city. You rent the room space, they field your calls and there is some form of joint advertising. In other words they advertise the clinic so you may get some business that way but the onus is on you to bring in the bulk of the customers.

So you begin to optimise your website for that location, link your Google places account to the same premises and generally get calls flooding in to the receptionist at the clinic. Then they decide to hire out another one of their rooms to another hypnotherapist. Now what happens? Well firstly the receptionist no longer knows who brought in the customer. That means that the new hypnotherapist could potentially be getting business because of your hard work. Always keep control of the phone number that you have on your websites. That way you get the calls and you book the people. If the other therapists are not proactive in their advertising they will have empty slots and you will be the busy one.

Moving Location

A loss of income when you move your therapy location is almost impossible to avoid unless your earn substantial amounts of passive income. However this reduction in income can be minimal if you have a great business model.

Websites – When you understand SEO and website design it can be really easy to replicate a winning formula and simply transfer it to another area. Of course organic rankings take time no matter how great you are but in the short term using pay per click will get you customers in through your door.

Understanding what Sells – If you really understand clients problems, know what they need resolved and provide them information on how you can eradicate their issues then you have a winning formula. It does not matter where you are in the Western world as the problems are always going to be the same. People always want to lose weight, there is always anxiety and confidence is always going to be lacking in some people. Show people how you can resolve these and your bank balance will always be positive.

Online – If you haven’t caught on to the online revolution yet then it is time to dip your toe in the water. Conducting therapy online is a great growth area. It means that not matter where you are based or where your clients are. Providing you have reasonable website access you will be able to do therapy sessions. Even better create an online course which does not even require you to be involved and you can earn money whilst you are asleep.

Passive Income – Never rely totally on income from one to one clients. Try and create income streams in other areas as well. That means that there will always be some money entering into your business. Selling audios, video courses, eBooks never rely on location and can be bought by people all over the world. Oh and don’t forget to collect those emails. Google may change and alter its algorithm but if you have a large database of email addresses of people you can sell to then you will never go hungry.

So if you want a great hypnotherapy business spent some time thinking about the what ifs. Remember change is inevitable at some point so you may as well have contingency plans just in case it happens to you.