Therapy is a naturally personal career. We get to know our clients on an individual level and, whether intentionally or not, they get to know us. Therapy is almost like a friendship in that way, and while we may be able to maintain emotional distance, charge fees, and separate the personal from the professional, it can often feel that our role is to be a person that helps another person.
As a result, we often forget that we’re also a business, and like any business, we need to remember that we’re not just a person – we’re a brand.
Why Choose You?
Something many therapists often forget is that the average client has very few ways to discern one therapist from another. Most are not familiar with modalities like CBT or psychodynamic theory, and those that are often have no meaningful way to measure whether one therapist offering CBT is more or less qualified or capable than another.
If I’m a client looking for help with depression, and I see a list of 10 therapists, why should I choose you over the other 9?
You may have an answer – maybe you feel you’re more caring or more intuitive. Maybe you offer better scheduling or you have a broader range of treatment choices. But the potential client knows none of that. All they have is your name, maybe a picture, and possibly a few words they read in a directory or social media profile.
You need to give them something more – something that makes you feel different to them, even if you’re offering the same services or specializing in loosely the same things.
How to Be a Brand
Part of my role here at PsychFusion is to work with you in detail on building your practice and establishing yourself as not only a person, but a business. We’ll discuss in detail all the different techniques that you can use to continue to help people recognize your value and choose you when they are in need of help.
We’ll also go into more details on the blog and on our Facebook page, so be sure and follow those for more as well. But some of the basics include:
- Put Yourself Out There – When possible, put your face, your voice, your goals, and your services anywhere you can so that people start to recognize you in their decision making process. Many therapists find that they get clients not only through their website and directories, but from places like Instagram or Tiktok, from people that had a chance to get to know them as individuals.
- Be Thorough – Any place you are marketing yourself, such as your website or your PsychologyToday profile, make sure that you are thorough. Don’t just say you “treat anxiety.” Most therapists treat anxiety. Go in detail. Talk about different types of anxiety. Show you’re an expert by discussing their experiences/symptoms. Make sure that any place people find you is a place where you are truly selling yourself.
- Figure Out Why You’re Different – What is it that makes you different from other therapists? Take the time to think about it and be as specific as possible. When YOU know why you’re different, you will do a better job explaining why you’re different to others.
- Consider a Specialization – Though there are situations when a specialization can be limiting (we’ll talk about whether a specialty is right for you at our sessions), there are others when it can be the best way to establish yourself as a brand. For example, if your preferred clients are those that are overcoming childhood trauma, then that can be a specialty that helps you stand out from other therapists in a way that is attractive to clients.
Above all, you need to remember that you *are* a brand. It doesn’t matter if you hope to run a small private practice for yourself or you’d like to grow into a larger psychotherapy office, once you decide to start a private practice you are becoming a business, and as a business you have to be able to establish yourself as the place to go for clients, and show them why they should choose you over others.
My name is Audrey Jung. I free therapists from the shackles of traditional community mental health settings so they can embark on their private practice journey with tools, ideas and techniques to launch into profitable and self-sustaining private practices. If you’d like to learn more about building your brand, contact me today and let’s start a conversation.