Where Making Money and Making a Difference Come Together

Many therapists and helping professionals are introverts. We do best in small groups of people, prefer one-on-one interactions to big, noisy groups, and we enjoy quiet. Even those of us who are social, probably need some quiet time to recharge our batteries and refresh ourselves.

Introverted traits are part of what make us good therapists. We are comfortable with others’ feelings and pain, we can tolerate silence and are gentle when we speak. However, this personality style can feel at odds with the need to market and promote our services. In fact just the idea of drawing attention to ourselves can be enough to send us behind our closed office door and wait for the phone to ring.

Fortunately there is hope for those of you on the verge of a panic attack. Here is a quick step-by step guide to help the introverts in our midst market like pros.

Step 1: Make a choice. So much of successful marketing revolves around your mindset. If you accept you must market to build a successful practice,the idea won’t overwhelm you as much. However, if you feel that marketing is a “necessary evil,” and are resistant to the business realities that drive the need to market, you will always be stuck. You need to make the choice: Build a practice with marketing, or work for someone else and avoid the whole business side of practice. Either choice is fine. Sitting on the fence just prolongs the agony.

Step 2: Begin with online marketing. Online marketing is an introverts best friend.  Now we can sit at home all by ourselves and put together a fabulous online presence that does much of the marketing work for us.  Yes, it is work (anything that grows your business requires work), but you don’t need to go to awkward networking events or give speeches. Online marketing–yay.

Step 3:  Get a blog.  Ah, the amazing power of the blog.  Your blog will become the “hub” of your marketing. All your marketing materials will go on the blog and all of your marketing efforts will be to drive eyeballs to your blog.  I recommend a Wordpress.org blog. You need some technical knowledge to set it up (or at least some time to read about how to set it up. The actual steps aren’t hard), or you can pay someone to design and set it up for you.

Why not a website?  A stand alone website does not have the flexibility of a blog.  And a blog IS a website! You can have static pages, in addition to a page of blog posts. Don’t invest any money in a website that is not on a blog platform. It won’t be powerful enough for your marketing needs.

Step 4: Put content on the blog.  Here is a list of what you need.

• Home page that briefly explains your services
• An “About” page where you talk a bit about who you are and how you help people
• A “Services” page where you talk about your services
• An “About My Clients” page where you outline the types of clients you work with
• A “How I Work” page where you state how you work with clients and what they can expect when they call your office for an initial consult
• A “Contact” page that includes all the ways potential clients can contact you. I recommend a phone number, an email address and a contact form on the page itself.
• A blog page that you consistently update with new information relevant to your practice specialty

Step 5:  Get business cards and letterhead with your contact information and blog URL prominently displayed.

Step 6:  Write letters of introduction to prospective referral sources in your community. Follow up with a phone call with your goal being to ask “How can I help your clients?” [I know this can be a tad intimidating for we introverts, but, trust me, most doctors, lawyers and other professionals will be thrilled to hear from you!]

Step 7:  Write a new blog post once a week. This can be a list (see this example here!), or a summary of a recent research finding in your area of expertise, helpful hints, or book recommendations.  Content rich blog posts drive traffic to your site.

Step 8:  Consider investing in Google Adwords that can be linked by location. So if someone Google’s “Therapist Spokane Washington” (or wherever your office is located) your ad pops up.

Step 9: Learn how to use Twitter. It’s not hard.  I’ll blog more about Twitter in the near future.  Twitter rocks because it allows you to targeted drive traffic to your blog for free and with minimal effort.

With the exception of step 6, ALL of the marketing advice I just gave you can be done from the comfort of your home or office! The key is to invest your time and resources into really leveraging your online marketing. Yes, you will need to meet new people, get out of the office now and then, but with a powerful online presence you will get a much bigger return on your marketing efforts.

Why is being online so powerful?  Many people search for health care information at night (often very late at night).  It might be the only quiet time they have during the day, or they realize that they are in need of help in their “darkest hours.” If you are not online, they won’t find you, even if you are 2 blocks down the street from their home!

Introverts, now is the easiest time for us to market our services.  What did people do before the internet?

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