Marketing 101 for Psychologists
Marketing and Business weren’t taught in your Ph.D. or Psy.D. program, agreed?
Doctoral level psychology programs have honed your skills to be lean, mean, therapy-providing machines. Except for the mean part, psychologists are really nice people.
We’re going to share some of the easy things you can do to connect your amazing talents with the patients that so desperately need them. Some of these are going to be common sense, some of them are going to fly in the face of what you’ve been told in school.
- You are your own business
Whether you are in private practice, group practice or work for a larger organization your unique skills are what set you apart from your colleagues and are what allow you to differentiate yourself. You are your brand. You are your own hero.
Be comfortable with the idea of self-promotion. This is a hard one, but understand that you may be the most talented clinician in the world, and if no one knows about you, then it will be impossible for patients to find you.
This brings us to the second lesson for today…
- You need to be on social media
Yeah, scary.
“What if a patient finds me online?”
Well, what if they can’t? Refer back to lesson #1. In a session, you have a distinct demarcation between your professional self and your personal self. Social media works the same way.
You probably already have a social media account(s) under a pseudonym so you can be unsearchable by patients, but still connect with your friends and family. Having a business account works in the other direction.
Let’s look at how this works on Facebook:
Step 1: Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create
Here, you’re presented with two options: “Business or Brand” or “Community or Public Figure”
If you have a brick and mortar practice and want to share your address, hours, phone number, etc. pick “Business or Brand”.
If you’re everyone else, pick “Community or Public Figure”. This includes those of you working via telehealth. Providers already on Session Sync can link directly from their Public Figure page to their landing page so new patients can easily find and book with them.
Step 2: Add your photo
Some things to note, yes, it should be a picture of you. Next, since Facebook only allows a small photo that gets cropped to a circle, have the picture be from the shoulders up, with a neutral background, natural light and SMILE!
BONUS Step 3: Consistency is Key!
In the same way that you recall famous brands and know immediately how they look, do your best to keep your social media profiles consistent. Use the same photo and when possible, use the same username or vanity URL between sites.
For example, if your Session Sync customized URL (web address) is www.sessionsync.com/carljung select the same name when possible, or as close to it for all of your accounts.
As you can see below, we practice what we preach. Follow us on these social media links for the latest updates:
Keep an eye out for Marketing 102 for Psychologists on our blog soon.
In the meantime, create your Psychologist profile and claim your personalized URL here by going to https://sessionsync.com/sign-up/psychologist