Marketing: Developing your Strategy

by Kellen Von Houser, M.A.

Now that you understand how important marketing is to building a thriving private practice, and you have addressed any barriers you may have had to marketing your private practice it is important to develop your own personal strategy to marketing. Several questions are provided with each section in order to stimulate, clarify, and solidify your beliefs and goals for your practice. Being very clear about where you want to go makes it a lot easier to develop a plan to get there.

Treatment Philosophy

It is important to be very clear about your treatment philosophy. The following are some questions to ask, and to answer, in order to clarify your views to yourself, and to others. It is important to be able to articulate your thoughts in a way that others can understand. If you are not clear about what you are doing, and why, how can you expect others to appreciate the true value of the services you provide?

  1. What is your treatment philosophy?
  2. How do you think therapy works?
  3. What is required to make it successful?
  4. What is the value of effective therapy?
    1. What is the value to clients?
    2. What is the value to other professionals?
    3. What is the value to the community?

Desired Population

It is also important to identify the population with whom you wish to work. Seeking referrals and trying to reach all clients is back-breaking (and budget-breaking) work. Narrow it down to the clients you really want to work with and focus your efforts on reaching them. This will greatly improve your chances of success.

  1. What population(s) do you wish to serve?
  2. What services do you plan to provide?
  3. What techniques do you want to utilize?
  4. What specific areas do you wish to specialize in?
  5. What is(are) your area(s) of expertise?
  6. What skills or experience are you lacking?

Your areas of experience may be different from the areas in which you wish to specialize if you haven’t been doing the work you truly want to do. If so, your first strategy would be to gain experience in the areas in which you wish to specialize. This is also a good time to identify techniques you need to develop or services you need to learn to provide in order to get your private practice where you want it to be.

Networking

Identifying individuals with whom you can initiate contact and establish a referral network is crucial for a successful private practice. Remember to stay with the population you have determined you wish to serve. However, do not limit yourself to the therapeutic community when thinking of people with whom to network Be open to establishing a professional relationship with professionals in all fields which might be relevant to the population you wish to serve.

  1. Who else works with this population who might benefit from your services?
  2. Who else works with this population who might be able to refer clients for your services?

Establishing Fees

Once you have established the population with whom you wish to work and the value of the services you provide, it is important to set a fair fee for your services.

  1. What is the monetary value of your work?
  2. How much do other successful clinicians charge for comparable services?
  3. How do the services you provide compare to the services of other professionals providing the same services?
  4. What is the availability of these services in your community?

The topic of setting fees has traditionally been difficult for therapists. A more extensive discussion of the topic is covered in my article, “Marketing: Setting Fees in Private Practice”.

Having addressed these questions and developed an articulate description of the needs to be met by the services you provide you are now ready to look at some of the methods for marketing those services in the next section, “Marketing: Methods of Marketing your Private Practice”.

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