Chart The Waters

Marketing audits are crucial for the success of your mental or behavioral health clinic in 2024. 

Billions and billions of investment dollars have been poured into the mental health space since the pandemic. And as marketing for these niches becomes more sophisticated and competitive, you need to know:

• what marketing is working
• what marketing needs work
• what marketing to stop altogether

According to Beacon’s 2024 State of Mental Health Marketing Report, 45% of clinics say that their greatest challenge is knowing what marketing works best for them.

To help you get clarity on your clinics’ marketing audit process, we’ve created this complete guide to doing a successful marketing audit.

Want to skip the hassle? Allow Beacon Media + Marketing to conduct your marketing audit today and get your free growth plan.

Only One in Four Clinics Audit Their Marketing Strategies Regularly

In unique data from 173 mental and behavioral health clinics, collected by Beacon in late 2023, it was found that only 27.78% of clinics do monthly marketing audits.

Additionally, 51% are conducting no audits at any point throughout the year.

With the lack of an effective marketing audit, it’s no secret why clinics feel so uncertain about their marketing plan.

Monthly Auditing Is Essential, Here’s Why

Both mental health and marketing are changing rapidly. 

In mental health, there are new advancements like widespread telehealth, the introduction of Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and other upcoming psychedelic-assisted therapies, and an insurance landscape that’s due for an overhaul.

In marketing, the introduction of AI has changed everything, from blogging and SEO to video and social media. 

Because mental health marketing is in such a state of flux, it’s important to track what’s working and what isn’t. The last thing you want to do is invest thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars into marketing that isn’t bringing in new clients.

A Marketing Audit Helps You Save Money

Additionally, auditing your marketing helps you save money. An audit could alert you to ways you’re overspending on ads or pursuing dead-ends with your SEO strategy.

It can also show you if your website is a conversion engine or if it falls flat with site visitors.

Audit Your Marketing Efforts for Competitive Advantage

Lastly, by conducting regular marketing audits, you give your clinic a competitive advantage. By joining the roughly 1 in 4 clinics that conduct monthly marketing audits, you can outpace your competitors that avoid this task.

Now, what does a marketing audit entail for clinics like yours?

What is a MH or BH Clinic Marketing Audit? 

The good news is that every little nook and cranny of digital marketing can be tracked.

Every time someone clicks on an ad, reads a blog, reaches out via email, and more, you get clues to the efficacy of your marketing strategy.

A monthly marketing audit is a deep dive into your clinic’s entire marketing ecosystem. But what exactly does it entail?

A marketing audit systematically reviews all aspects of your marketing strategies, from your website copy and messaging to your SEO, to the nitty-gritty details of your social media analytics.

It provides a comprehensive picture of what’s working, and what isn’t, and most crucially, it lays out clear pathways for optimization. A marketing audit also provides insight into the synergy of your marketing channels.

Here’s what your marketing audit should cover:

• Website Analysis: Is your site easy to navigate? Does it clearly communicate your services and value proposition to your potential clients? Does it put your ideal client front and center?
• Blog Content: Does your content resonate with your target audience? Is it informative, engaging, and does it position your clinic as a thought leader in mental/behavioral health care?
• Social Media: How are your social platforms performing? Are you engaging effectively with your community, and are your posts driving action? How can you improve this aspect of your marketing strategy?
• SEO: Are you maximizing your visibility in search engines? Are you checking all the boxes for your content? Is your site speed enabling or crippling success?
• Paid Advertising: Are your ad dollars being spent wisely? Which campaigns have the highest ROI, and why? What are some ways you might be able to increase the efficacy of your ads?

Conducting a marketing audit allows you to make informed decisions, rather than relying on guesswork.

It identifies wasted resources, uncovers hidden opportunities, and aligns your marketing efforts with your business goals.

If you’re thinking this sounds complex, you’re right—and that’s why many clinics turn to professionals. Contact us today for a free consultation and start building your custom growth plan.

Before Auditing: Define Your Marketing and Business Goals

One last stop before you learn how to do a marketing audit.

As always, it’s important to know where you want to go if you hope to get there.

That’s why I recommend setting SMART goals for your marketing channels. This will not only steer your efforts in the right direction but also provide measurable targets to know when you’re reaching success.

What are SMART Goals? SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This framework provides clear milestones and deadlines.

• Specific: Clearly define what you want to accomplish with each of your marketing efforts. Instead of a broad goal like “increase awareness,” aim for “increase website traffic by 30%.”
• Measurable: Attach numbers or clear indicators to measure progress. For instance, “achieve a 20% increase in new patient inquiries via our Google Ads.”
• Achievable: Set goals that are challenging yet attainable within your current resources and market constraints. For a medium-sized clinic, this could be something like “hire a new psychotherapist within the next 6 months as our demand increases.”
• Relevant: Align your marketing goals with your overall business objectives. If your clinic specializes in helping mothers with postpartum depression, create goals around this. Don’t create goals around helping men with anger, for example.
• Time-bound: Set a definitive timeframe for each goal. Quarterly goals keep your strategies agile, while annual and long-term goals drive broader strategic shifts.

Time-Bound Goals for MH/BH Clinics

Let’s stop on that last note for a second. When setting time-bound goals, what time frames are most helpful?

Quarterly Planning: Set a calendar reminder every 13 weeks to review your quarterly goals. Use the results from your monthly audits, as well as market changes, to adjust course. Being aware of whether or not you’re reaching your goals is the start of meaningful progress.

Examples of quarterly goals:

• Attract 10 new therapy clients via paid ads
• Create 6 new service or specialty pages for your website
• Add 13 new blogs to your website

Yearly Goals: Once per year, review your yearly goals. I recommend setting the date and having an accountability partner, or doing this with your leadership team so you don’t put it off (human nature, am I right?) When reviewing your yearly goals, see how close or far you are from hitting each goal. Prioritize goals for the next year and work to achieve them. Keeping yearly goals in mind will guide your marketing strategy audit.

Examples of yearly goals:

• Hire 2 therapists and 1 part-time psychiatrist
• Move to a bigger space in a centrally-located area
• Speak at 5 conferences
• Host 2 community events
• Go on a company-wide wellness retreat

Long-term Vision: Beyond immediate gains, consider where you want your clinic to be in the next 3, 5, or 10 years. Setting long-term goals helps in building a sustainable growth plan that goes beyond short-term tactics. For example, based on the emerging field of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, consider now if you’d like to plan to offer this service at some point down the line.

Examples of long-term goals:

• Open another physical location, expand to another state
• Partner with local governments on mental health initiatives
• Transition 2-5 therapists to supervisor roles for greater impact
• Develop a specialty program for combat veterans or abused children
• Lower the cost to acquire a client by 25% via increasing operational efficiency

Defining your clinic’s goals before conducting your marketing audit provides a clear lens through which to view your data and results. It allows you to focus your audit on what matters most, ensuring your marketing plan is both effective and efficient.

How to Do a Comprehensive Marketing Audit for Your Clinic

Now it’s time for the brass tacks. In this section, you’ll read about the most common and effective marketing channels for mental and behavioral health clinics.

By the end, you’ll walk away with clear knowledge of what to audit, how to audit, and even which tools you can use. Let’s hop to it.

Ideal Client Persona(s)

While not a marketing channel per se, this is a foundational piece of all of your marketing. Your ideal client persona tells you exactly who you are trying to attract to your clinic.

For example, your ideal client persona could be Eliza, a mother of 3 and an attorney in Atlanta who struggles with depression and low self-worth. Eliza believes she is a burden to others, is not a leader, and is never “enough.” Lastly, Eliza reads articles online about depression and is motivated to improve her relationship with herself and her children.

By going in-depth on who you want to work with, you can create more effective messaging for all of your marketing channels. This leads to a cheaper customer acquisition cost (CAC). That’s why building and honing your ideal client persona is first on your audit.

When auditing your ideal client persona, here are some questions to consider:

1. Do you already have an ideal client persona in your current marketing strategy?
2. Does your clinic cater to multiple types of clients? How many distinct kinds of clients? Having multiple ideal client personas will help fine-tune your marketing and make it much more effective.
3. Has your ideal client changed since you last considered it? If yes, add depth, nuance, and any changes that you may have noticed. Don’t be afraid to start from scratch, as this is the foundation for all of your marketing.

When creating your ideal client persona, gather data and make notes for each of these aspects of your persona:

• Job titles or functions
• Industry
• Single, dating, or married
• Do they have children? If yes, how many?
• Geographic location (often your areas of service)
• Demographic
• Motivations to improve/change
• Objections to starting your service
• What media channels do they frequent
• What they currently do to solve their problems
• Things they may have tried in the past
• Persona quotes/things they would say

Create this document and pull it out every time you create new marketing campaigns and materials.

If you’re unsure of some of the answers, brainstorm with your team about your favorite 3-5 clients and see what they have in common. Then develop a persona that draws from each of these clients.

Don’t skip your client personas! They make every other marketing action you take more effective. And they’ll drive the success of your marketing campaigns going forward.

Website Copy

Website copy is all of the text on your website.

While we’ll handle SEO in an upcoming section, it’s important to call out your website copy here.

What to audit for:

1. Are you speaking to your ideal client persona in your website copy? Avoid speaking to people in general. Instead, write more targeted copy that will connect with the specific readers you hope to work with.
2. Is your copy written in layman’s terms? Often, clients don’t understand or resonate with therapy speak, psychobabble, or jargon that a professional would use. Make sure your copy “clicks” with your reader. If you’re not sure, ask a friend or family member who isn’t versed in the mental/behavioral health space. Do they understand it easily?
3. What’s the reading difficulty? We’re not writing a college textbook on your website. Make sure your website copy is easy to digest by aiming for 7th-grade reading difficulty, using short sentences and paragraphs, and choosing simple words over complex ones. I recommend you use the Hemingway app to ensure your copy is easy for all readers.
4. How much do you say “I” or “we?” If the copy is focused on you, readers won’t feel a connection. It’s much better to stick to the pronoun “you” or to avoid pronouns altogether. Some copywriters even say that you should say “you” ten times more than “I” or “we” to maintain the connection with your audience.
5. You should have at minimum a home page, multiple service/specialty pages (think 10+), about pages for each team member, and a contact page. How does your site measure up? What needs work? Does your experience shine through in your current marketing efforts?
6. Does your website have calls to action? CTA buttons help your reader take the next step, whether that’s reaching out for a free consultation or booking a service via your website. Litter these throughout each page of your website, trying to keep a CTA on screen as often as possible.

Using your ideal client persona to write effective website copy is the strongest foundation for marketing. Once your audit is done, this is the first thing you should work on. Effective, resonant website copy is one of your best marketing assets and only needs to be done once.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You have a website, so it needs to be optimized for SEO. Otherwise, how will new clients find it?

SEO can seem like a big scary monster to some. But it’s important to audit your SEO to gain clarity around what’s working and how best to invest future efforts. Gather data around SEO and see if you’re reaching your marketing goals.

To audit your SEO efforts, you’ll need a few tools, some free and some paid.

1. Google Search Console. This free tool from Google will help you track important metrics from the SERP, such as impressions, clicks, and average position. Monitoring these metrics every month will give you the insights you need to reach the top positions and get site visitors.
2. Google Analytics (GA4). Another free tool from Google, GA4 will help you see what your top pages are, where your traffic is coming from, and provide insights into how users are interacting with your website.
3. Ahrefs or SEMrush. These tools have free and paid versions. They will help you do keyword research, track how many keywords you’re ranking for, and find ways to improve your rankings. These tools are also necessary for building a content plan and seeking high-quality backlinks.
4. GT Metrix. This is a tool with a limited number of free uses. GT Metrix helps you gauge your website’s speed and performance, which are critical aspects of SEO. A slow website will hurt your rankings.

Tracking your SEO performance every month will help you stay on the right track and find new ways to win. Luckily, SEO is an easy channel on which to conduct an internal marketing audit.

More considerations when doing your SEO audit:

• What are the top 20 high-intent keywords you need to target? For example, if you specialize in eating disorders, you want to target the keywords “eating disorder therapist near me” and “eating disorder therapist” + the biggest city your practice in.
• Do you have services/specialty pages for each of your 20 high-intent keywords?
• If pursuing local SEO rankings, do you have relevant “service area” pages? For example, “online therapy Chicago.”
• Do you include other hard-to-rank-for keywords in your team member pages, such as “female therapist near me”?
• How can you improve the internal linking of your website? Linking between pages will improve your ability to show up for local searches, and it improves user experience. Aim to link to every major page of your website from the main navigation, the footer, and your home page.
• Do you have your name, address, and phone (NAP) listed on your website?
• Do you have CTAs on each page of your website to promote conversions?
• Is your website optimized for mobile? Over half of people who use the internet do so from their phones, so this is essential. No website is complete without mobile optimization.

SEO is a behemoth in marketing. Once you start to rank highly, you can be rewarded for years with new clients. Also, it’s a great hedge against the increasing cost of Google Ads. If SEO isn’t part of your current marketing strategy, add it to your marketing plan.

I wouldn’t blame you if auditing your SEO seems like too much to manage. If you’d like help here, contact Beacon Media + Marketing today to improve your audit and get a free growth strategy.

Auditing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

There are half a dozen or so social media platforms that you can use to market your clinic.

Assuming you’ve already chosen your preferred platform(s), here’s how to do a social media marketing audit process:

1. Gather the following information (per social media channel).

• Profile information (name and URL)
• Engagement metrics
• Publishing metrics
• Audience demographics
• Referral traffic
• Channel specific metrics

2. Evaluate platform performance.
   See which platform brings you the most engagement, and ultimately the most conversions of new clients. It’s one thing to get shares, likes, and impressions but no conversions. It’s another to have conversions.
3. Analyze audience engagement.
   Note the types of content that your audience engages with most. Also, note the type of content that falls flat with your audience. This will help you adjust your strategy later.
4. Ensure visual consistency.
   If your social media presence doesn’t have visual consistency, clients will not be able to develop a good connection to your clinic. Ensuring visual consistency is one of the biggest improvements you can make to your social media marketing.
5. Compare your results to what you can see from a similar-sized clinic.
   If you’re underperforming relative to a similar-sized competitor, note this. Jot down a few ideas of why that might be.

If you need help auditing your social media marketing, consider using a trusted tool like HootSuite or Sprout Social.

Once you’ve completed your audit, make notes about ways to improve your marketing strategy. We’ll talk about this more in a later section.

Email Marketing

It’s important to nurture prospects who show an interest in your services. This is where email marketing shines.

Marketing experts say it takes 7 contacts for a new prospect to make a purchase. You may not get to this threshold if you’re not gathering email addresses from people who visit your website.

Here are the most important metrics to track for your email marketing:

1. Clickthrough Rate
2. Open Rate
3. Conversion Rate
4. Bounce Rate
5. List Growth Rate
6. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate
7. Overall ROI
8. Unsubscribe Rate

When auditing, make sure to consider the following questions:

1. Are you writing with your ideal client persona in mind? If not, expect watered-down results.
2. What’s your sending cadence? Once per week, five times per week, or other?
3. Are you A/B testing your emails? What aspects of the emails are you A/B testing?
4. How are you getting new subscribers? 
5. Do you have a free lead magnet to give to new subscribers?

Email marketing has a high ROI of 36x. It’s important to get your email marketing strategy fine-tuned so you’re serving the most clients possible (while not leaving money on the table).

Google and Facebook Ads

Auditing your ad spend and efficacy will help you keep costs low, while still converting enough clients to stay full.

Ads are one of the most popular marketing methods due to their automatability, scalability, and power to convert new clients.

Take each ad channel separately, then audit for these metrics:

Google Ads Metrics

Click-Through Rate (CTR): This measures how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. CTR is a good indicator of how relevant and appealing your ads are to your target audience.

Conversion Rate: This tracks how many clicks on your ad result in a desired action, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase. It helps assess the effectiveness of your ad in driving conversions.

Cost Per Click (CPC): This measures the average cost you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Monitoring CPC helps manage your budget and determine the cost-effectiveness of your campaign.

Quality Score: Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. A higher quality score can lead to lower CPCs and better ad positions.

Impression Share: The percentage of impressions your ads receive compared to the total number they are eligible to receive. Low impression share could indicate bid issues or irrelevant keywords.

Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition (CPA): This metric measures how much it costs to acquire a customer. It’s crucial to understand the ROI of your Google Ads campaigns.

Facebook Ads Metrics

Reach and Frequency: Reach measures the number of unique users who see your ad, while frequency shows how often the same user sees your ad. These metrics help you understand your ad’s exposure and the saturation of your messaging.

Engagement Rate: This includes likes, comments, shares, and other interactions. High engagement rates are often indicative of content that resonates well with your audience.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Like Google Ads, this measures the effectiveness of your ad in compelling users to click through to your website or landing page.

Conversion Rate: Tracks the percentage of people who clicked on your ad and then completed a desired action on your website. This is essential for evaluating the success of your ad in driving meaningful actions.

Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM): CPC and CPM measure the cost-effectiveness of your ads based on clicks and impressions, respectively. These are critical for budget management.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This is the total revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. ROAS is vital for understanding the overall profitability of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Ad Creative Performance: Analyze which types of ad creatives (images, videos, text) perform best. This can inform future creative decisions.

General Best Practices

Segmentation: Look at these metrics segmented by demographics, location, device, and other relevant factors to understand who your ads are most effective with and under what circumstances.

Trends Over Time: Evaluate how these metrics change over time to understand your campaigns’ long-term effectiveness and identify any seasonal fluctuations in performance.

A/B Testing Results: Regularly test different versions of your ads to see which elements work best and refine your approach based on data-driven insights.

By closely monitoring these metrics, you can gain a deep understanding of your ad performance on both Google and Facebook, allowing you to optimize your campaigns for better results and more efficient use of your advertising budget.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

Ranking well for local searches can help your clinic show up in the Google Map pack.

That’s the three or so businesses that pop up for local searches, such as “anxiety therapy near me.”

Here’s how to audit your GBP:

1. Make sure you only have one listing. Having multiple listings can send mixed signals to Google, which will only hurt your ability to be discovered by potential clients. It can take a few days to claim an old listing, so be sure to start this process right away.
2. Ensure your business name, address, phone, and website link are all correct.
3. Note how many reviews you have and their averages.
4. Do you have high-quality photos of both inside and outside your clinic?
5. Is your listing description well-written and does it include local keywords?
6. Have you responded to all reviews, both positive and negative?
7. When was the last time you posted an update? If it’s been more than 3 months, make sure to schedule an update.
8. Have you completed the Q&A section?
9. Do each of your clinicians have their own GBP listing? If not, help them each create one, and link each back to your website. This will expand the number of ways new clients can find your clinic.

By the end of your audit, you should have several ideas on how to strengthen your listing and attract new clients.

The good thing about auditing your GBP is that it’s much simpler than Google Ads or SEO.

Therapist Directories

How are your directory listings performing?

Directories are a good way to get clients without breaking the bank. Sure, they won’t fill your entire caseload, but having a few directory profiles does help fill in some gaps.

The most common directories for therapists include Psychology Today, Therapy Den, Zen Care, Mental Health Match, Best Therapists, and more.

You’re paying for these listings, so it’s important to know if they’re pulling their own weight. Here’s how to run an audit:

1. List out each of your clinician’s directory profiles.
2. Have each clinician send you a screenshot from their dashboard. This is where you can see how many prospects have reached out.
3. No directory at the time of this writing can track how many prospects become clients. To track conversions, you’ll have to closely track all incoming calls to your clinic and each clinician. Which directory did they come from if any?

This is an optional marketing channel to track. As long as you’re getting 1 client who completes 2 to 4 sessions each year, most directory listings are worth the cost. Feel free to ballpark this marketing channel and check in every quarter rather than every month.

Referral Marketing

This is the old-school marketing strategy for therapists and clinics.

You’ll want to track your referral marketing because… well, it’s one of the only free marketing channels you have!

And according to the 2024 State of Mental Health Marketing Report, 31% of respondents rank referral marketing as having the best ROI.

You’ll have to track your referral marketing in a spreadsheet or CRM. Here’s how to audit it:

1. See how many referral partners you have.
2. Check the number of referral clients who reach out from each referral partner.
3. Look for partners and partner clinics that you need to check in with.
4. Brainstorm new referral partners to contact.

Referral marketing is often forgotten, but it works amazingly well if you invest in your relationships.

Just remember to refer weak-fit clients to your partners as well.

What to Do with the Results of Your Audit?

Once you’ve completed your comprehensive marketing audit, it’s critical to translate the data collected into actionable insights. This stage is where strategic decision-making comes into play, helping you refine your marketing efforts to better target your desired audience and achieve your clinic’s goals.

Here’s how to proceed with the results:

Summarize and Make Recommendations

Create a Summary Report

Compile the findings from your audit into a structured report that highlights key insights, successes, and areas for improvement. This report should be clear and concise, providing an overview that is easily understandable for all stakeholders. Even a simple Google Doc with your recommendations, organized by marketing channel, can be enough.

Identify Trends and Patterns

Look for common themes or recurring issues that may have surfaced during the audit. This might involve underperforming marketing channels, standout strategies that are yielding good ROI, or gaps in your marketing tactics. Then consider if you want to double down on a strategy, change it, or pause it for some time.

Make Strategic Recommendations

Based on your findings, suggest actionable changes or enhancements. This might include reallocating your ad budget, realigning your content strategy, or upgrading your tools.

Address Budget and Resource Conflicts

Evaluate Budget Allocation

Assess how your current marketing budget is being spent versus the return it’s generating. Identify any misallocations of funds and suggest adjustments that align spending with the most effective marketing strategies identified in the audit.

Resource Reallocation

Consider whether your resources — such as staff time and technology tools — are being optimized. If certain areas are resource-heavy but yield low returns, it might be time to redistribute these resources to more impactful activities.

Plan for Necessary Investments

Sometimes, gaps identified during an audit might require new investments, such as hiring additional staff, investing in new software, or increasing the budget for high-performing channels. Plan how to integrate these costs into your budget effectively.

Schedule Your Next Marketing Audit

Set a Date for the Next Audit

Marketing is continuously evolving, and regular audits are essential to stay on top of trends and adjust strategies accordingly. Schedule your next audit in advance, making it a recurring event on your calendar. At Beacon, we recommend a monthly audit cycle. Marketing is too important not to track often.

Establish Ongoing Monitoring

Implement systems or routines for monitoring key metrics and marketing performance between audits. This ongoing monitoring will help you catch issues before they become problematic and allow for minor adjustments without waiting for the next full audit.

Encourage Team Feedback

Involve your marketing team and other stakeholders in the review process. Their insights and feedback can provide additional perspectives on what’s working and what isn’t, leading to more comprehensive improvements.

By systematically analyzing the results of your marketing audit, making informed recommendations, and planning for subsequent audits, you can ensure that your marketing strategies remain robust. When it comes to marketing audits, be proactive.

Use Monthly Marketing Audits to Grow Your Clinic

Throughout this guide, we’ve seen why it’s important to make monthly marketing audits for mental and behavioral health clinics.

The landscape of mental health marketing is changing before our eyes. It’s essential to audit your marketing monthly to remain competitive and profitable. Monthly marketing audits provide your clinic with agility, cost-effectiveness, and high ROI.

Importantly, audits allow you to identify what marketing strategies are working, which need refinement, and which should be discontinued. Audits ensure that every marketing dollar spent is an investment toward your clinic’s growth and success.

Key takeaways:

• Define your SMART goals for your marketing efforts before beginning an audit.
• Examine all of your marketing channels—from website and SEO to social media and paid advertising—to gather a holistic view of your clinic’s online presence.
• Audits are worth the effort—they help you save money by reducing inefficiencies, enhancing your understanding of your target audience, and staying ahead of the competition.

As we conclude, remember that the ultimate goal of these audits is to ensure that your marketing efforts are as effective and efficient as possible, aligning closely with your clinic’s mission and business objectives. By making monthly audits a staple in your marketing strategy, you position your clinic to thrive in an increasingly competitive and ever-changing industry.

Need help conducting a marketing audit? Let Beacon Media + Marketing conduct the audit for you and set you up with a free growth plan.