How to Avoid the Summer Referral Lull

Top tips

Recently, I shared this post on content creation, which is a huge part of a therapist’s marketing efforts; with the idea generator, you’ll never be stuck for topics to write about.

The 10-Minute Content Creation Challenge

When summer (finally) rolls around, many of us will want to spend less time working on our business. Perhaps you’re juggling school holidays, keen to spend more time outside, or maybe you want to take a well-deserved break. Whatever your motivation, you might be worrying about the potential impact on your private practice. If you’re already struggling to make time for marketing, how will you fit it in over the next few months?

In this article, I’m sharing tips and advice to help you prioritise marketing activities all year round, so you can be consistent and build a sustainable business. 

What is Marketing?

Marketing refers to the activities you undertake to promote and sell your services to potential clients. It encompasses everything from market research and advertising to public relations, social media and content creation, all of which are aimed at building brand awareness, generating enquiries, and driving sales. Marketing is not something you can do once. If you want your private practice to succeed, you have to keep showing up.

In his book, ‘The One-Page Marketing Plan’, Alan Dib (2016) provides this straightforward explanation of what marketing is:

‘If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Showground on Saturday’, that's advertising. 

If you put that sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's called promotion.

If the elephant walks through the Mayor's flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that's publicity. If you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. 

If the town citizens go to the circus and you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, you answer all their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales, and if you plan the whole thing that's marketing.’  

It's as simple as that! Marketing is the strategy you create to promote your private practice so potential clients can get to know who you are, like what you do and trust you enough to want to have therapy with you. 

Here are some of the marketing activities I engage in:

·       I regularly create free content on Substack 

·       I share at least one blog post a month on my website

·       I post regularly on Instagram

·       I host a podcast

·       I frequently appear as a guest on other relevant podcasts

Consistency Is Key

‘Businesses that prioritise consistent marketing efforts are 60% more likely to see positive ROI than those that do not.’ - HubSpot, 2021

Being consistent is key to successful marketing because it builds trust, reinforces your brand identity, and increases recognition. When people are choosing a therapist, they are choosing someone they can feel safe with. It needs to be someone they can trust with their inner struggles. There’s still a lot of stigma associated with the need for mental health care. As well as overcoming this, people must decide how they’re going to address this need. It’s your job to clearly communicate the service you provide so people can make an informed choice about how they’ll meet their mental health care needs. Effective marketing also allows people who are not a good fit for you to move on to another service.

To sustain your private practice, you need to reach new people all the time. Potential clients also need to see the same message repeatedly in order for it to sink in. Marketing experts suggest people need to see your brand at least seven times before they’ll invest. However, this ‘rule of seven’ was originally developed in the 1930s. Given how much information we now consume, I suspect this number has risen in the digital age.  

On top of this, it can take up to three months for your marketing efforts to show results. I've learned this the hard way! When you’re busy working IN your business, it’s easy to neglect working ON your business. But when marketing slips because your busy seeing clients, referrals dry up, and the business suffers. After experiencing this several times, I've realised the importance of consistent marketing. Heres a post I wrote last summer when I hit a lull in referrals after not taking my own advice !

When Referrals Go Quiet: My Strategy to Revive Them

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