Mental health professionals are some of the most unsung heroes in our modern medical system. Speaking from my own experience with depression and for many who live with mental illness, having access to quality mental health care can literally be the difference between life and death.
After a decade of digital marketing, I’ve never really seen an industry as screwed up logistically as mental health services. From top of mind, I cannot think of another space with such a huge supply of providers and a huge supply of potential clients, but very few productive connections are actually being made overall.
I feel like what I can do to help this situation is to leverage my experience conducting marketing campaigns for nearly a dozen mental health practices and share with you five mistakes I see therapists make most often when advertising online. I am hoping you will be able to avoid these mistakes, shorten your learning curve, and leave money in your pocket.
5 Mistakes Therapists Make When Advertising Online
Mistake #1: Not Using Landing Pages
When people are finally making the commitment to seek help, making them dig through information to find what they’re looking for could be enough time to let them form cold feet. A great way to address this is to using landing pages. Landing pages are specifically designed to give the best first impression possible when somebody clicks on an ad. So for example, if someone searches on Google for “help with depression,” you have a much higher chance of capturing this client if you serve them an ad that takes them to a page that specifically addresses how you will help them with their depression, instead of just depositing them on the homepage and leaving them to seek out that info on their own.
Mistake #2: Not Thinking Through Their Keywords
When setting up a Google Ads campaign, the platform will always suggest broad match keywords to start out with. Broad match keywords serve ads for not only what you typed in, but for anything else it thinks your keyword could be related to. For example, if you use just the word “therapy” as a broad match keyword, your ad will also show to people searching for: massage therapy, physical therapy, art therapy, and so on. Speaking from experience, it can be pretty demoralizing to go through all of your campaign setup, only to return a few hours later to see that you spent $20 showing ads to people searching for “horse physical therapy”. Research phrase and exact match keywords and get comfortable with using them. Also, don’t skimp on the negative keywords.
Mistake #3: Having Incomplete Website Information
When building your website, make sure you try to include as much information as humanly possible to avoid people Googling for specifics, because inevitably, folks will do this and then click on your ad actually costing you money for your omission. A few things that I would consider beyond the usual business info: what is your cash price? What insurance do take? Do you take Medicaid? What type(s) of therapy do you practice? Once you’ve answered these questions on your website, make sure you’re making use of negative keywords on the advertising side. So if you only accept Insurance Company A, block the name of Insurance Company B, C, and D. If you don’t accept Medicaid, use a negative phrase keyword for Medicaid, so you won’t show up in any searches that include that word.
Mistake #4: Specializing A Little Too Much
Many therapists have their preferred clientele, but it could take a while to work towards that while taking all comers to keep the rent paid and the lights on. One of the many golden rules of marketing is that the smaller your audience is, the more difficult it will be to reach them. If you begin marketing and only focus on the very narrow niche you want to reach, you could be waiting a long time for that phone to ring. I suggest finding a middle ground between all comers and your exact niche, and then selecting the clients yourself instead of letting the marketing platform do it for you. For example, if you really want to work with African American veterans with PTSD aged 25-44, it may be be a good idea to only start by targeting just veterans, or just African American veterans, and then conducting short phone interviews before your first session to weed out certain potential clients. Not only will this help you filter though potential clients better, it will also provide a list of people to reach back out to if business is slow.
Mistake #5: Not Following Through With Ad Campaigns
I wish I could shout this from the rooftops for all business owners to hear: “ad campaigns need regular attention and maintenance”. There is no such thing as a “set it and forget it” ad campaign. Online marketing platforms work on an auction-based bidding system and just like the regular market, these systems are subject to change constantly. It could be Google tweaking their algorithm, it could be a new platform rule, it could be a new law or regulation. If you start an ad campaign and ignore it for a few weeks, the odds are incredibly strong that you’ve just paid for a bunch of junk traffic. Make sure you are frequently checking and refining your ad campaigns to ensure you’re targeting the right people for the right price.
I sincerely hope this article helps with your marketing efforts! Of course I would be remiss to not mention that I am available to help you with your practice’s marketing needs. Just fill out the form below and I’ll get back to you personally. Thanks! - Corey
