Marketing a Counseling Practice: Don’t Censor Your Fans!
Anthony Centore
[Readers, don’t forget to leave your comments below—I reply to every comment or question!]
It’s hard to get people to talk about your business…if you’re a restaurant. If you’re a counselor, you’re really fighting an uphill battle, as clients need to overcome the social stigma of being in counseling in order to tell others about your service.
Therefore, to recruit a “raving fan” (that is, someone who passionately tells others about your service), you have to make a big positive impression. You have to exceed your clients’ expectations, provide outstanding service and care, and offer a “remarkable” experience that they can’t help but to tell their friends about.
Once you accomplish this, and you have clients who are talking about you, or writing blogs about you, or posting reviews about you, or maybe even singing songs about you (who knows?), there is something very important that you need to do.
Ready?
This is what you need to do:
Stay Out Of Their Way!
It took a lot of fuel to get that car moving…don’t hit the breaks!
The only reason you should intervene is to help, encourage, reward, thank, or incentivize your fans to continue talking about (thereby promoting) your counseling service.
It should be Common Sense Not to Hush your Cheerleaders, but…
Businesses make mistakes all the time as they try to manage their fans, and control the way that their fans share their brand. For sure, your customers won’t market your counseling practice the way you market your counseling practice. They will do it their way — in chat rooms, on a blog, in unscrupulous terms to their friends.
They might quote you without permission.
They might copy text from your brochure.
They might copy and paste your logo.
They might take a picture of your office, and tag it on Facebook.
A client could mention that you wore an ugly sweater on Wednesday (my clients have told others that I wear brightly colored socks. Not exactly what my marketing message is, but I’ll take it! And I feel fortunate that my clients are talking about my practice).
Learn to love your clients’ creative and unorthodox methods of spreading the word about your service. Learn to get comfortable being reviewed: even if reviews are mixed. Even some of the reviews are negative (and some will be).
A Real Life Example of What Not To Do
I had been promoting a company (let’s call them “Company X”) in my writing, speaking, and consulting for a couple of years. Recently, I copied an email they had sent me about an upcoming sale, and posted it online to share with my readers in hopes of sending Company X more customers,
Sounds good, right? Not to the marketing department at Company X. 24 hours after posting the email, a company representative contacted me to request that I remove the post. Here’s the email I received:
***
Hi Anthony!
I hope this email finds you well. I was doing some
searching on the internet and noticed you posted up our entire Black
Friday email on your wordpress blog www.startacounselingpractice.com
This was a special offer sent out only to our previous customers, and
not intended to be posted up for the public to see. I would appreciate
it if you removed the coupon code and email entirely. Thanks so much
and please let me know if you have any other questions.
[Name Removed]
Director
__________________________
[Company Name Removed]
***
This is a polite email, for sure, but it’s the opposite message you want to send to anyone trying to send you business. If Company X was smart about getting the word out about their product, the staff would have sent me more offers to promote. Instead, they couldn’t handle that my promotion approach was different from theirs! How unfortunate! Don’t make this mistake with your clients.
More Articles on Marketing a Counseling Practice
I’m going to be writing on this topic more, but for now, let me recommend a few books that could help you market your small businesses / counseling practice:
“What Would Google Do,” by Jeff Jarvis
“Raving Fans,” by Ken Blanchard
“The Gift Economy,” By Gary Vanerchuck (Coming soon. I normally would never recommend a book I haven’t read, but this author writes good stuff)
“The Referral Generator,” John Jantsch
Thanks for reading!
Anthony Centore is a counselor, and helps other counselors build successful practices. For more information on private practice and insurance panels go to http://thriveworks.com .
Anthony,
I always enjoy the articles you write. I believe its important to remember that a practice is a business, and without sound business practices a “counseling practice” will not thrive…no matter how skilled I may be as a counselor. This is an area were many counselors need help, at least from what my limited experience has seen. While I have a year left of school, and have no idea what doors are going to open for me career wise. I want to thank you for stimulating my mind in creative directions in how and what I want my counseling career or business to look like, very exciting!
Sincerely,
Ryan Cheney
Ryan,
Thanks for your comment! It’s great to know that someone is out there reading my articles
Ryan, if ever I can be of help to you, in terms of helping you brainstorm or strategize your next steps, please let me know–this is a free offer, btw 
I wont post my contact information here, but if you search me online you can easily find 10 ways to reach me.
Good luck and godspeed completing your program!
Warmly,
Anthony
I found you very informative and inspirational.
Thank you for your dedication to this type of work.
Welcome any feedback you can give me while Im
just starting to develop my program.
Lydia
I just found your articles and have found a wealth of information as I will soon open a solo practice. I do have a question I am hoping you can answer although it might be different from state to state. I have been working as a contract counselor for a small private counseling center for a few years. Since my clients are mine and specifically requested me (they are not a result of the center I have been working in) do my cllents files belong to me and can I take them with me when I establish my own practice?
Thanks!
Dead Lydia,
Thanks for reading, and for your feedback! If you’d like to tell more about your program, I would be happy to try and give you some more information! ☺
Dear Tricia,
The correct answer to this question likely depends on your work contract with the practice. At many practices, the case files belong to the practice, and any client seen at the practice is technically a client of the practice (even if the client likes and has built rapport with the counselor). It is temping, when a counselor decides to strike out on his or her own, to take clients and clinical files, but there are often legal and ethical issues to consider. Again, this often comes down to the contract / work agreement that was originally made between the counselor and the practice. I hope this helps!
Hi Anthony,
I am confused about how to promote a counseling practice effectively and the “rules” or ethics that state that we shouldn’t use client testimonials? Is this true or am I really confused… ?
-Susan
I’m struggling a little with the testimonial thing too. I created a book for my waiting room asking clients to fill out a review of my services so that new clients waiting there for their first appointment could read other’s experiences. It’s totally voluntary and they initial the bottom giving me their permission.
After doing this, I realized my profession’s Code of Ethics states, “Social workers should not engage in solicitation of testimonial endorsements (including solicitation of consent to use a client’s prior statement as a testimonial endorsement) from current clients or from other people who, because of their particular circumstances, are vulnerable to undue influence.”
Now, I’m a little frustrated. I think testimonials are extremely important. Any suggestions or ideas?
Thanks.
This is an interesting topic. Texas LPC Board rules indicate that “Information used by a licensee in any advertisement or announcement shall not contain information which is false, inaccurate, misleading, incomplete, out of context, deceptive or not readily verifiable.” This is ethical, but it does not state anything about supressing testimonials. I wanted to share that I have a client who wanted to do a notice on Facebook or Twitter to create a location and post when she had arrived at my office. I encouraged her to think about how she felt about her confidentiality. She said that she has nothing to be ashamed of for going to therapy, and that she wanted to reduce the stigma as well as encourage her friends to pursue their own healthy habits. I love it!
I do believe that we should promote our important work. Think about the power of pharmaceutical companies whose marketing campaigns address treating depression and anxiety compared to how counselors/therapists are suppressed or shy about disclosing the value of the work we do. Research shows that CBT is an equivalent to taking an anti-depressant, and in many cases CBT is superior to medication alone. Even though this research is valid the majority of Americans go to their doctor when they are feeling down, depressed, or anxious. Most doctors prescribe medications rather than referrals to counselors or therapists. Most psychiatrist’s offices have 2 month waiting periods, but counselors/therapist have difficulty filling their practices. What is wrong with this picture? There is a serious need for education in the form of promotion of the profession and if licensing boards are against promoting the profession then they are living in the dark ages. Thank you for this opportunity to express my concern about how much there is a need for mental health reform, which starts with us, the providers.
Though your ideas are sound, your grammar is not. I noted a typo in a previous article of yours, indicating poor proofreading, but the spelling error (breaks not brakes) in the following sentence is far more egregious:
“It took a lot of fuel to get that car moving…don’t hit the breaks!”
More than a few additional grammatical errors appear in the rest of the piece. Such errors undermine your professionalism and credibility. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it may be valuable to edit your articles more carefully.
Thank you.