Mindset Shift: Marketing Your Private Practice is not a Faux PasI don’t know about you, but when I hear the phrase ‘faux pas,’ I generally think of some high-fashion event in Paris, France that someone mistakenly showed up to in denim jeans. Or someone who yells from the balcony in the middle of a Broadway musical. It might be a faux pas to go careening your shopping cart through the aisles of the grocery store like a Nascar driver, but marketing your private practice, even in the midst of a global pandemic and nationwide recession, is not a faux pas in the slightest. In fact, we would argue the opposite is true. There tends to be a common misconception among the professional mental healthcare community that marketing your private practice can be somewhat tactless and inappropriate. There can often be this grimy feeling that you are capitalizing on people’s vulnerable mental state by posting on social media or funding a Facebook ad encouraging potential clients to reach out. In fact, if not marketed well, this can certainly be the case. "Your private practice needs to be marketed, or else it is not living up to its full potential as a safe haven for individuals seeking help." Steps to Shifting Your MindsetThe first step to defeating this false idea is a shift in mindset: When done well, your private practice actually needs to be marketed, or else it is not living up to its full potential as a safe haven for individuals seeking help. By choosing not to market your practice, you are choosing not to meet the majority of people where they are at. You are choosing not to rise to the occasion and put your practice in an optimal line of sight for people to get help. You are choosing to inhibit yourself and your practice from growing to the potential we know you possess. This doesn’t sound like you. You want to reach as many people in need as you can; you rise to every occasion and then some; you wish to see your practice flourish. Here is something that you and I both know: When someone is in the early stages of recognizing they need therapy, the one thing tending to hold them back is fear. Perhaps they are afraid of the stigma associated with mental health or maybe they are still afraid to admit they need help to themselves. It could even be that they are afraid of engaging in such an intimate relationship with a mental health professional. When you market your practice well by being present in the spaces that this struggling individual is living in fear, you are reaching out an encouraging hand to say, “Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.” When you speak the words that someone didn’t even know they needed to hear, but they find when they stumble across your page while mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, you give them faith that someone out there understands what they are going through. When you run a Facebook ad to reach more people, you might reach that one person that sees that one ad and just needed that one little boost of courage. Don’t you see? Marketing your practice well, yes, is a means to business growth. You are an entrepreneur, after all. But more than anything else, marketing your practice is holding out a lifeline for someone to grasp onto when they feel like they are drowning. By making yourself accessible, you’re already helping them, and they haven’t even come under your care yet! You’re lightening their burden of summoning the courage on their own, and you’re working to establish trust before they even become a client. 4 Quick Tips to Marketing Your Practice Well
"Marketing your practice is your secret weapon to being both a successful entrepreneur and a heck of an entrepreneur." Marketing your practice is not a faux pas; there is nothing shameful or tactless about it when done well. Marketing your practice is stepping into the abyss of negative news and downtrodden Facebook statuses as a voice of positivity and courage. It is shouting into that void for everyone who needs to hear: There is someone out there who can help them. Marketing your practice is your secret weapon to being both a successful entrepreneur and a heck of a therapist.
How about that mindset shift? Life-changing, isn’t it? Maybe wearing denim jeans to a Gucci event wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
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