How to Make Your Therapy Listing Stand Out from the Crowd
Are you making the most of your listings on Directories? One of the common complaints we hear during our Counselling Business Know How workshops and business supervision sessions is ‘the market is saturated with counsellors where I live’ - how can I stand a chance?
Our response remains the same - it doesn’t matter if there are five or five hundred counsellors if you know how to make yourself stand out from the crowd!
Most counsellors have a misdirected drive in their marketing approach. Their drive is to ‘get their name out there’, with little thought into who the actual clients are they are wanting to attract. Identifying who you are trying to reach should be your first step.
Take your online listings for example (NaturalTherapyForAll.com? BACP? and so-on). Is your heading attractive to a client seeking a counsellor for the issue that they are looking for help with? or does it simply state your name and counselling approach? How many other counsellors are you competing against with that one?
I am a potential client who has just left my GP having suggested some CBT for my depression. I don’t want to wait for an NHS session and have the financial means to see a private counsellor. So, I start to look around on different websites to find someone to help me and I notice one or two online directories ... perfect! But then what? Confusion and panic set in! Psycho-what? Person-centred who? Integrative how? I have no idea what that means and am losing faith. But wait! I scroll down and see a different heading - it reads ’CBT Counselling for Depression’. Bingo. Someone is speaking to ME.
You can change your headings and monitor what works! Perhaps ’Working with Couples in Conflict’ is more likely to bring you the couples you hope to work with? Mix up your content too - a dreary list of things you can work with may be off-putting to someone seeking a particular specialism. Rotate your message - you can have more than one niche, but avoid lumping them all together in one listing.
Remember - trying to attract everyone will bring no-one. If people can see how your service is relevant to them they will pay attention. If they can’t they won’t. It’s really as simple as that!
©Copyright 2012 by Sue Christy, Counselling in Gloucester All Rights Reserved.