What counts as marketing/advertising/promotion expense?
- Your Website – fixed let’s people know you are legit and when they visit you it’s your opportunity to make a connection with you
- Psychology Today
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Agents, Marketers for hire, campaigns, etc
- Professional photography service for your profile or your website
- Any logo or graphics services you enlist
- Business cards, flyers, pamphlets, etc.
How much to spend on marketing depends on what you are trying to accomplish
- maintain the level of clients you currently have?
- are you trying to gain more clients for yourself (growth) and/or gain more clients for your group practice (growth)?
Just trying to maintain the level of clients you have?
Percentage wise = zero % or no more than 5% would be my target.
Many of the therapists I work with just need to replace outgoing clients. They are spending $0 on marketing costs. They don’t need a website, they don’t spend for ads, and they aren’t listed on PsychologyToday. 100% of incoming clients are referral based, either by current/past clients, peers in the industry, or from complementary professionals like a pediatrician if you specialize in play therapy for example. Make some connections with other therapists or complementary professionals that could refer clients over to you. Try joining a local therapist group on Facebook or some other platform. Those groups are regularly referring potential clients to each other. Alternatively, you could sign up for Psychology Today and have potential clients reach out to you.
Trying to grow your practice?
You either can spend, hustle, or a combination of the two. Let’s start with hustle
When I say hustle, I’m thinking that you are trading your time for money. So it still costs you something, we just won’t be able to capture it with a $ figure or a %. Hustling would involve making connections with other therapists or complementary professionals that could refer clients over to you. Maintain your own website, write articles on your website for your target client, put up flyers at the coffee shop bulletin board, etc. Figure out what works and devote a certain amount of your time to that. If you don’t have the spare money to pay for marketing help, then a DIY approach might be best for you.
If you don’t have the time but you have the money to invest in your marketing, the amount to spend will depend on
