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Therapist films video of herself to market counseling services.

How to Market Counseling Services: Creating Meaningful Connections With Potential Clients

As a therapist, you’re used to connecting with people and establishing relationships that allow your clients to heal, grow, and enjoy a more fulfilling life. However, your ability to help more people and build trust from the get-go hinges on you how you market your counseling services. 

With a solid mental health marketing strategy, you can connect with potential clients on a deeper level and guide them toward taking the first step in improving their mental health. While having a well-designed website and putting out content regularly are essential for getting in front of people who need your services, your marketing efforts won’t get you anywhere if your brand and content doesn’t resonate with people. 

Receiving counseling can be a deeply personal journey requiring someone you trust to guide you. So, what you put online needs to reflect that you’re the right choice for them. 

So how should you market your counseling services? At Beacon Media + Marketing, we believe the key is making a deep connection with people online. That’s why we dig deep in getting to know the mental health practices we work with, the clients they work with, and the impact they have on their communities.

Are you not sure how to create your marketing strategy? Learn how Beacon Media + Marketing helps mental health practices.

 Why Should You Market Your Counseling Service?

Marketing your mental health or behavioral practice can be one of the most impactful things you do. When done correctly, you’ll be able to bring in clients that need help. You’ll notice an increase in clientele that match your criteria for an ideal client after your mental health marketing plan has been implemented. 

It’s great for you since you’ll be gaining more clients for your mental health practice, clinic, or facility. However, it can be life-altering for someone looking for mental health services. If you’re a good fit for them, the counseling service will be invaluable to them. 

The point of marketing your service is to gain better brand awareness and show people in your area that you’re a service that can help them. It’s a way to connect yourself with potential clients while getting to them before your competition does. Marketing your counseling service is a beneficial two-way street.

How to Market and Connect With Potential Clients

How to Market and Connect with Potential Clients infographic

Marketing your services typically means that you’re working on the way to gain brand awareness. And while this is helpful, you need to connect with your potential clients so they feel compelled to seek your services. 

While you can ensure that your website is great and accompanied by quality content, this isn’t the only factor that people need. People looking for mental health treatment for themselves or their loved ones typically spend much time researching the best solutions, which means that you’re competing with every other provider in your location or online. 

In other words, it makes it crucial to stand out amongst the rest of the mental health practices in your area. And how do you do that? Creating a personalized marketing strategy that reflects who you are and why you do what you do. 

This includes putting yourself online to show your potential client what your personality is like and how you can help them. By representing yourself well, you make it easy for clients to learn the education level, niches and specialties, and modalities of your clinicians.  

So how can you integrate that into your counseling service marketing strategy? The following are a few elements that you should consider when creating your digital content on how to market counseling services. 

1. Empathize With Potential Clients

Including empathy in your marketing strategy is crucial. Since you’re providing help for someone who may have been emotionally hurt or is hurting, you need to show that you care for them. You and your current clients may know that you deeply care about helping, but that also needs to be conveyed online. 

Consider what your potential client feels like in their mental health journey and create content tailored to that person. Aiming at your target audience is important for all platforms, especially in your blogging and social media content. These two areas are how people find out who you are, what you know, and how you can help them. Ensure that you’re showing your empathetic side. 

The first step in effectively empathizing with potential clients is having a clear idea of who your ideal client is. Narrowing down your target audience allows you to focus marketing to the clients who you love to work with and that benefit the most from your services. This includes asking yourself questions like: 

  1. What is the purpose of your clinic? What specific problems, approaches, or solutions are you and your therapy team the most passionate about? 
  2. What is your clinics’ area of expertise? What certifications, publications, etc. make you stand out from competitors? 
  3. What is your service area and how do you plan to deliver therapy? Will you only see patients in office, or will you take teletherapy clients as well? 
  4. What is the persona of your ideal client? What is their family situation, their gender, age, race, economic status, education level, and personality traits? 

Once you’ve developed a clear persona for your target audience, you can better understand who is at the other end of your marketing efforts: a real person with a unique background and specific needs. 

It’s important to note that you might have more than one type of client you’d like to reach. For example, our client Ellie Mental Health is a large franchise that provides for a wide range of people. To best capture the multiple personas we’d be working with, Beacon’s marketing team put together a fun visual representation we could refer to. 

Therapy Client Persona Designs by Beacon Media + Marketing for Ellie Mental Health

2. Focus on Your Client’s Problem

Instead of telling someone how your services are excellent, take a personable approach. Yes, you can still say that you provide amazing services, but how do you do so? Instead of creating content that boasts about your services, lay out the problems you can solve for your clients. 

In other words, what is your specialty of care? Creating educational content that shows your depth of knowledge can help someone feel more comfortable handing over their trust to you. Showing your clients your ability to solve their problems balances the personable and business side of marketing your behavioral health services. 

3. Connect on Similar Values

Screenshot of Dana Group Associates Behavioral Health Services website

Connecting with your clients can happen through your branding and core messaging. When you show what your practice, clinic, or facility values are, it’s more likely that you’ll draw someone in with similar values. It’s a way to feel connected on a deeper level so your clients feel like they can open up to you have behavioral health problems they’re dealing with. 

For example, Ellie Mental Health values diversity and inclusion. They want to show that therapy services are for all. Reflecting this value in their branding and content allows people who have similar values to feel comfortable and connected to their brand. 

Do you need help discovering your brand? Learn how Beacon Media + Marketing can help you!

4. Promote Personalization

Everyone is different, so the clients you treat are that way. Even if they share similar behavioral health challenges, they may have the same treatment method or necessity of care. Your content should emphasize how every client is treated as a unique and valued human being. 

Showing your ability to adapt to a person’s situation provides a welcoming feel for someone that may be struggling to seek help. You’re not just looking for another patient to walk through your door. Rather you’re excited to learn more about that person and how you can potentially help them. 

5. Respond to Reviews

Reviews about your practice, clinic, or facility are typically left online. People find value in peer experiences and may be turned away by the sight of bad reviews. Whether it’s a positive or negative review, you should respond to it diplomatically. 

When it’s positive, ensure that you’re thanking them for taking the time to receive care from your services and leaving a review. If you’re faced with negative reviews, you can take this time to: 

  1. Potentially take the criticism and learn how to improve. 
  2. Be empathic towards their experience. 
  3. Offer a solution to their problem and show you’re willing to listen. 

6. Stay Active on Social Media

Social media has evolved over the last several years from personal to branding. Most businesses have taken to utilizing social media to gain more customers. You can do something similar with your counseling service social media accounts. 

Each platform has a built-in audience that works well for specific content. If you have a good social media presence, it will allow people to see posts from educational to personal. It’s a way for potential clients to get to know you deeper when you’re responding to comments, adding community events, joining webinars, and more. 

7. Be Transparent

Screenshot of Jill Gulotta Nutrition website showing how their programs work.

To some, marketing may seem like a way to present only the best parts of your brand. And while this may work for businesses, it may not bode well with behavioral health clients. They want to trust you without having to worry about you deceiving them on how your services could help. 

Be transparent about your process, values, purpose, and mission. If you don’t accept insurance, make this clear and explain why. It can be easy to lose trust, so provide your potential clients with all of the information they need to know from the beginning. 

8. Build the Relationship

Screenshot of Holistic Couple and Family Therapy's Instagram post

People value human connection. And when they are opening up to someone about problems they’re facing, this connection becomes even more crucial. 

Once you get a lead, go the extra mile to make a connection and treat them with respect. Ensure that you don’t prioritize your potential clients over current ones and vice versa. Each person you’re treating needs to know that you value them coming to you for help. 

Why Should You Get Help From a Marketing Agency?

Marketing takes much time and effort. It’s important that you focus on it as much as treating your clients. When you’re not effectively marketing, you lose potential clients and aren’t allowing yourself to be the best version of your practice, clinic, or facility. 

When you choose to get help from an agency, you’re allowing yourself to focus on your clients and the help that they need. You may also find it difficult to understand the marketing landscape compared to treating behavioral health patients. 

Entrusting Beacon Media + Marketing with your counseling services allows us to show the world who you are. We can help you market better through many services such as social media, paid ads, SEO optimization, blogging, website development and design, branding, graphic design, photography, and video. 

If you’re struggling with establishing your behavioral health brand, we can work with you to see who you are. This ensures that your brand is consistent across your content, and people get a clear idea of who you are. We want to help you discover the full potential of your practice. 

Are you ready to take the next step on your marketing journey? Get your free consultation!

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