How to Get Local Therapy Clients

How to Get Local Therapy Clients

The Local Partnership Strategy

I spotted this post in a local Facebook group recently and thought it was a great example of a simple marketing strategy that almost any therapist could adapt.

The therapist was announcing that she was starting to offer appointments in a new town. The post included a photo of her, another of the therapy room, and a little of her own story and why she'd ended up specialising in grief and loss.

I've anonymised and shortened the original because it's the strategy behind it that I really want you to notice.

The original idea

The post started:

[LOCAL TOWN], I'm coming to you this month!

When I was 21, my mum died. And I didn't just lose my mum. I lost our home too.

Suddenly I'd lost my person, my security, the life I'd known and, in many ways, the person I'd been before she died.

That experience is a huge part of why, years later, I became a counsellor specialising in grief, loss and life changes.

And grief isn't only about death. It can come with divorce, relationship breakdown, family changes, illness, losing a home, losing your independence, or losing the future you thought you were going to have.

From this month I'm bringing my practice to [LOCAL TOWN], offering private one-to-one counselling in the town centre.

I now have only a few appointments remaining for [DATE].

• Private 1:1 counselling
• Town centre location, upstairs at a local health food shop
• 60 minutes
• Adults 18+

You don't need to know exactly what's wrong. You don't even need to know whether what you're experiencing “counts” as grief.

We can start with what changed.

If you've been thinking about talking to someone, send me a private message. You can literally just write:

“Hi, I'd like to know about the [LOCAL TOWN] appointments.”

I'll take it from there.

So, what's so clever about it?

There's plenty to like about the post itself. She's used her own story to explain why she does what she does, she's clear about who she helps, she's made it very local and she's made responding incredibly easy.

But that isn't actually the bit that caught my attention.

It's where she's seeing the clients that's the clever bit.

She's arranged to use a room above a local health food shop. Now, I don't know the exact arrangement they've made, but think about what that potentially gives her...

The shop already has an established presence in the town. It has regular customers, local credibility, passing footfall and probably a social media following. It may have an email list or customer database as well. And, crucially, many of the people who use a health food shop are already interested in their health and wellbeing.

So this isn't necessarily just a cheap or convenient way of finding a therapy room. Done properly, a partnership like this could give you an audience, credibility and a venue all in one go.

And that's a brilliant idea you can adapt for yourself.

As we cover in the Media section and 'partnerships',  rather than trying to build an audience from scratch, start looking for local businesses and organisations that already have a relationship with the sort of people you want to help.

A therapist specialising in chronic pain might build relationships with physiotherapists, osteopaths or massage therapists. A grief therapist might look at funeral directors, probate solicitors or community organisations.

If you work more generally with anxiety, stress or overthinking, your potential partners might include yoga and Pilates studios, gyms, complementary health clinics, pharmacies, wellbeing centres or even suitable local employers.

Give them a reason to work with you

You don't necessarily need to limit yourself to 1:1 therapy appointments either. It's a perfectly good offer and a great idea but you could take it a step further and suggest putting on a small evening workshop.  You provide the content and deliver the workshop. They provide the room and promote it to their members.

Now there's something in it for everybody. The venue gets to offer something useful and interesting to its customers/members, their members get a useful session, and you get to stand in front of a group of local people who are a good fit for what you do. More importantly, they get to experience you and your approach.

That's a very different proposition from somebody seeing your name on a directory and wondering whether you're the right therapist for them. And the same idea could be adapted to almost any specialist market.

Making use of the audience

Don't forget the promotional value of this partnership either. When they email their customers or members, post on their social media, display a poster, mention the event to suitable customers or include it in their newsletter you're benefiting from the trust, credibility and relationship they've spent years building. And it doesn't have to stop after one event.

If the first workshop goes well, perhaps you run another one three months later. Maybe they start recommending your 1:1 services when somebody mentions the issues you can help with. Perhaps you write something useful for their newsletter or have your flyers on display in their waiting room or next to the till.

Over time, this can become a very healthy referral relationship.

You can do the same thing online

You don't actually need a physical venue for this strategy to work either.

Whatever your specialism, you can find someone online with an email list or following and offer to run a free Zoom session for their audience. 

They promote it. You deliver it. The people attending get something genuinely useful and, in the process, discover who you are and how you work.

Some might join your mailing list, some might attend another workshop, and some may decide they'd like to work with you individually.

The important point is that you've had access to a group of highly targeted potential clients.

You don't need dozens of these partnerships

Imagine you eventually had five good local partnerships. One business hosts an occasional free workshop for you because of the value it delivers their customers. Another shares your events or therapy details with its mailing list in return for a small commission. Another displays your information/flyer with an offer for a free introductory session by their till. Another two simply send the occasional person your way when relevant.

None of those businesses needs to generate huge numbers of clients. Together, though, they give you several different ways for local people to discover you, and those relationships could continue producing enquiries week after week.

Give it a go

Go onto Google Maps and have a proper look around your local area. Think about the market you've chosen and ask yourself where those people already go, who they already buy from and which businesses or organisations they already trust.

Come up with ten possibilities and ask yourself: “What could I offer their customers that would be genuinely useful to them and make the business look good for offering it?”

That could be a workshop, a short talk, a Q&A, a downloadable guide, an introductory session, a voucher, a reciprocal promotion or something completely different.

Then pick the three that make the most sense and contact them. You don't need all three to say yes. Just one really good local partnership could become a very reliable, hands free, source of clients.

Want more ideas like this?

Brilliant Ideas From The Real World is a regular feature of Fully Booked Therapist, our complete programme for therapists who want a simpler and more reliable way of attracting clients.

Whenever we come across a brilliant example of therapist marketing that's actually being used out there in the real world, we'll include it so that you can adapt the idea for your own practice.

There's a lot more to Fully Booked Therapist, of course, but the aim is very simple:

To help you work out the few things you need to do to attract all the clients you need — and get them working in a quick and easy system. 

You'll get clear about who you want to attract, where those people are most likely to find you, what you need to say so they choose you, and the one, two or three marketing activities that make most sense for your personality.

More details coming very soon about this.