How to Get Private Pay Clients
How to Get Private Pay Clients
When you decide to open a private pay therapy practice and not accept insurance, you’re going to have to do more to stand out. You’re going to have to show your ideal client that your value is more than your price. So how do you do that?
Determine Who Your Ideal Client Is:
This is important because potential clients want to know you’re an expert in being able to help them with their problems. If you just have a long list of things you can help with, your ideal client might not feel as confident that you can help them. If you can instead hone into 1 to 3 specialities, especially if they overlap, then potential clients feel much more confident you’ll be an expert at helping them.
Once you have your niche determined, then it’s a lot easier to know how to find your ideal client. You can then start determining what keywords they will be searching for online, and use those words in your marketing to help them find you.
Create a Website that Speaks to Your Ideal Client:
A website will likely be one of the main ways your clients will find you, especially if you only accept private pay. This means it’s crucial to have a solid website that speaks to your ideal client because it helps give them a good picture of how you can help them. Having a solid homepage is the most important, because most people only go to the homepage and don’t go to any of the other pages. You can check out your website analytics to see how often people actually go to the other pages. You only have a few seconds to make a first impression, and you want it to be a good one.
So what should you include on your website? You want to make it very clear to your clients what you do and how you can help them, right from the start. You want to use words your clients will be searching for and not just complicated therapy words they may not know. It’s important to temporarily take off your “therapist brain” and put your “client brain” on instead. For instance instead of saying “I use DBT to help my clients with emotional regulation and distress tolerance.” You might say “If you’re struggling with overwhelming emotions, we’ll talk about ways to cope and make your emotions feel more manageable.”
Market Yourself so that Your Ideal Client Can Actually Find You:
You could have the greatest website in the world, but if nobody can find you then it doesn’t matter. So how do you get your clients to find you? Maximizing your website so that it shows on Google. This includes using keywords on your website such as words clients will search for, making sure your location such as the city or state you work with is on your website, and having solid services pages on your website for what your ideal clients will be searching for. This will all help with SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization. Which is basically just a fancy way of saying getting to the top of google. You can either learn how to do this yourself, or hire someone for SEO help.
Using Google my business is another huge way your clients will find you. Add a good descriptor statement of what your clients will be searching for, add pictures of you and your office, and you can reach out to colleagues for reviews. Since as therapists we typically can’t ethically ask our clients to leave us reviews, you typically can reach out to colleagues and ask them to leave you a review instead.
Get on some therapist directories, and use the same tools as you did on your website to really speak to your ideal client.
Use Google Ads:
Google ads can often be worth it for a private pay therapist because you’re charging more per session and most clients meet at least 8-12 times, so it typically easily pays off. Many people will use the free Google ads credit and get no clients from it and then feel like it’s not worth it. So it’s important that you’re putting the right types of words your clients are actually searching for, and then removing words clients are searching for that aren’t actually the things you treat. It can be really useful to pay for a company to help you with this so you actually get a return on your investment.
Use these tips to get more private pay clients at your practice! For a more in depth and personalized help click here to work with me.
