To grow a business in any industry, sooner or later marketing will be required, because for most companies, organic growth will only take you so far. And marketing is even more important when it comes to small businesses, which are often punching above their weight and competing with larger businesses for the same customers.
Healthcare professionals across the board, from GPs to sports physios to niche specialists to psychologists, can be forgiven for not embracing marketing as wholeheartedly as small businesses in other industries such as retail or professional services. After all, they entered the field of medicine to help people in urgent need, not to sell themselves or to sell products.
However, in this digital day and age there is no argument that marketing can’t play an active role in growing every business, including small businesses in the healthcare industry, such as psychology practices and therapy providers.
So, let’s dig into and uncover the marketing tips and marketing strategies that will help drive business growth for psychologists who own, manage, or work in a small business psychology practice in New Zealand.
Understand your market and target audience
Are there certain types of patients who regularly use your psychology services? For example, young children, adolescents, adults, senior citizens, and so on? If so, that’s where you should target your marketing spend and marketing efforts.
To understand your market you first need to answer two key questions:
- Who’s looking for the services of a psychologist?
- How many of these people are there in your catchment area?
Answering the first question will help you to define who your target audience is, while answering the second question will give you the potential size of your local market.
As you consider marketing strategies for your small business psychology practice, think about the following questions:
- Who do you want to target?
- What is your ideal client’s age group and gender?
- How much do you want the client to pay?
- Where will they be based (locally or online or both)?
- What is the potential market?
- What existing services are already in the area you are planning to cover?
- Is the marketplace crowded?
- Can you offer therapy remotely?
Marketing personas: How well do you know your patients?
As a trained, qualified, and experienced psychologist, you no doubt know each of your patients very well – the specifics of their health challenges, their pain points, and the best ways to help them heal.
But beyond the health and wellbeing specifics, the more you can understand your typical customer from a marketing perspective, the more precisely you can define them. Do so means unlocking insights that will help you to more keenly understand their wants, needs, concerns, and desires regarding their health and wellbeing.
What you are doing here is creating marketing personas for each of your key patient types. Marketing personas are part fiction, part factual representations of
your various typical patient types. Each persona has defined goals, motivations, frustrations, personal profiles, and customer journeys.
The power of personas lies in how they help you to understand how to build meaningful connections with your key customer types. Most importantly, personas enable health professionals and psychology practices to build meaningful connections, empathy, and rapport with patients.
When you’ve built such meaningful connections with your patients, they will very likely only come to you for the health advice and help they’re seeking. So building those connections is critical. For psychologists, it’s as essential as developing your brand or holding psychologist insurance.
Deliver a consistent brand experience
Psychologists might not like thinking of their psychology practice as a brand. But the reality is all businesses, including healthcare businesses such as psychology practices and therapy providers, work with customers. Yes, they are your patients, but they are also your paying customers.
Because of this important fact, psychologists need to consider how they can maintain consistent messaging and branding across their website, social media, and business cards, as well as the actual physical environment of their practice.
Put some time, effort, and thought into how you can create an engaging and alluring brand experience. Don’t undervalue the impact a consistent brand experience and a strong brand profile can have on your business.
Content marketing
Content marketing can be an extremely useful activity for growing a psychology practice, because it delivers two key things. It provides helpful and insightful health knowledge, tips and advice for your target audience, while also helping to establish your psychology practice, and yourself, as an engaging thought leader in the industry.
Content marketing covers all manner of content activities, from blogs, case studies, and thought leadership pieces published on your company website, to press releases, company profiles, video content, infographics, and white papers. You may create the content yourself or outsource it to a marketing agency. Whichever way you source it, content marketing is a great investment for growing your brand.
Public speaking and media opportunities
Opportunities for public speaking can come in many forms. It could be appearing as a guest speaker at a conference, gaining an interview spot on local television, or participating in a panel at a local community event. Such public speaking opportunities can provide great exposure for your psychology practice and help build credibility for both your brand and for you as a leading healthcare professional.
By adopting these marketing strategies and activities, psychologists can raise their profile, better understand and engage with their patients, and grow their business.
Just like all other small business owners, qualified psychologists who operate their own psychology practice in New Zealand can benefit from actively reducing the risks to their business. And a great way to do just that is to invest in psychologist insurance*.
As you work on your marketing plan it may be worth considering business insurance for psychologists to protect your business so you can keep helping your patients without interruption.
*This information is general only and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. It should not be relied upon as advice. As with any insurance, cover will be subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions contained in the policy wording.
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