4 Reasons Your Marketing Isn’t Working

Tell me, as a therapist do you still love what you do as much as when you first came into the field? Do you wake up with as much passion and excitement to go to work as you did five years ago? Yes, you may have felt not prepared once you were in the field; you believed people expected you to know everything and you were worried that people would judge you for not understanding them because you were so young. But, that aside, you were super excited about getting your degree and finally being able to help people through some of their darkest times.

So, do you still love it as much as back then? Or are you drained at the end of the day? Are you starting to feel resentful? Are you more reactive (or much less reactive) and more cynical than you used to be?

At work there is just too much to do. They expect way more out of you than is humanly possible. How can anyone see 30 people per week on top of all the meetings, phone calls, and other work related tasks? That’s it! You’re burnt out. You go home and…

Life has moved on from when you first got into the field. You’re married and have children now. Of course that’s what’s draining you. It’s hard to keep up with an impossible job plus everything you have to do at home.

Or maybe you’re not married or don’t have kids, but you own your own house. Home ownership is a crap ton of work. In the evenings and on the weekends you’re doing chores and taking care of things around the house. Of course you don’t have energy for that after the work week you’ve had. Yep, definitely burnt out.

Then it began…swirling around in your head. Maybe I can open a private practice. Maybe I can be in charge of who I see, how many people I see, and what hours I work. Maybe I don’t have to live feeling burnt out all the time.

You have a renewed sense of excitement again. You open your private practice and realize just how much work it really is. Opening a private practice is hard. There is a lot more to think about and a lot to do than you originally realized.

Then you start to wonder if maybe you’re not cut out for being an entrepreneur and business owner. You get new swirling thoughts about not knowing enough about how to open and run a business and start to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. Now you’re seriously burnt out. Work is just as draining, everything at home is just as stressful, and now trying to build this business is taking more energy than you have.

It is hard to stay motivated when thoughts that “I can’t” keep swirling around.

You are not a failure and you can build the business and life you’re looking forward to. You went to school to become a therapist, you did not go to business school. You may not have had entrepreneurs in your family. You may not have had opportunities to learn how to run a business other than possibly a lemonade stand as a kid. How much marketing did you do with that?

If you’ve been working on building your business for awhile and you’re not getting any traction yet here are some possible reasons why:

1. Your marketing message is not getting to the right people.

2. Your marketing message isn’t resonating with them.

3. You aren’t visible enough that people know you exist

4. The words you’re using in your marketing efforts are not being searched for

Tweak one thing about your marketing efforts and see what that does. If you’re still not getting traction, stop that and try something else. Still no traction? With the second tweak still in play, add the first one back in again. Keep at that until you get traction.

Or until it’s time to hire a coach. A business coach can help you uncover what isn’t working while also helping you with your mindset, really setting yourself up for success.

Hiring a coach can also help you not lose enthusiasm along your journey as you’ll have someone cheering you on.

You are worth every penny you spend on yourself, especially those spent in building your business. You’re good at what you do!

I completely understand the frustration. I never thought I’d be a therapist. I went to school to get my MSW, knowing I was going to work in child protective services (DCF). I worked my butt off and this was my first job out of graduate school. I lasted 8 months. Oy.

I moved around a few times until I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. This was actually pretty enjoyable for me. It was constant moving but people came and went so even if I didn’t like working with someone, they weren’t there long. But the hospital I worked for ended up getting bought out by a bigger corporation and the changes that followed started to make me more resentful and unhappy being there.

I opened my private practice in the evenings. Long story short, I loved it and built my dream practice. Over the years I talked to countless therapists who wanted to open practices but weren’t sure where to begin or were just too nervous to do it either because they were already so tired or because of other limiting beliefs like “I am not a business owner”.

So, true to who I am, I decided open a coaching business helping therapists feeling burnt out open their own private practice, helping them through the unknowns and fears as they were also dealing with burnout.

This was much harder than I thought. It took years to get this business off the ground. It seemed like such a great idea. Informally I helped so many therapists do just this, so why couldn’t I build a business around it? Why wasn’t I getting traction? I spent tons of money on this business, trying to figure out what my issue was. One thing about me is I am super persistent.

My marketing technique was a huge barrier. I was so used to people coming to me; I didn’t have to search them out. People knew they needed help with anxiety and trauma and started looking for a therapist. Don’t get me wrong, I did get myself in front of my desired niche in person, but not as much as just putting myself on directories and having a good website. As I continued to grow, and my name got out there more, my niche market started coming to me as well.

What I realized is therapists aren’t necessarily looking for a coach to help them open a practice. Maybe they’re not quite ready in their head to open a practice, maybe they don’t believe it is possible, maybe it just hasn’t occurred to them. Whatever the reason, I have to go to them; not wait for them to come to me.

My marketing message was not getting to the right people because I wasn’t doing it right. I was waiting for them to come to me. Plus, online, SEO is huge. Therapists are looking to figure out how to start a private practice. I wasn’t using the right SEO and thus the words I was using in my marketing wasn’t getting to the people looking for what I offer.

Being a therapist in private practice and being a coach helping therapists open their private practice are two completely different types of businesses and need to be treated as such.

It is amazing what one can learn with a bit of analyzation and self reflection.

Schedule your clarity call with me to learn how to start making marketing your business habitual or overcome the anxiety and imposter syndrome keeping you back from having a more successful business! If you still need to a bit more time, take a look around my site.