If you are trying to expand your therapy practice then you have to spend time every day marketing your practice and building your business.  We recommend spending at least 1-hour a day doing this. However, if you don’t have the time, expertise, or interest, you should know that there are lots of talented people who can help you out at a very reasonable cost.
 
Expert Advice
Whenever we have a business problem we log on to Clarity.fn for advice. Why? Because Clarity has thousands of business experts who are willing to share advice by phone in as little as 15 minutes.
When you are at a critical juncture in building your business, hiring an expert for advice can really be helpful. Our average cost for really smart consultation with actionable advice has been about $50.
 
Hired Help
If you are looking for help in specific tasks, like writing a newsletter, developing an AdWords campaign, or designing a logo, there are people all over the world ready to lend a hand. We have used Freelancer.com and Upworks.com to hire a wide variety of freelancers, some in the US, and others in Russia, Serbia, and India.  Another one of our favorite places to get creative freelancers is Fiverr.com.  You can buy work for just $5, but obviously most jobs will cost you more. Naturally you will want to do your due diligence and read all the reviews and comments before hiring a freelancer no matter which site you choose.
 
Virtual Assistants  
If you find yourself overwhelmed by small tasks on a regular basis, then consider hiring a virtual assistant. Virtual assistants are just like real life assistants, except they work in their homes instead of your office. There are quite a few sites that offer virtual assistants, but we’ve just tried one, Timeetc.com. We thought the experience was helpful and used the site for about 3 months. Another site we’ve heard about but haven’t tried is TasksEverday .com. They are a very low-cost alternative to getting some extra help, using staff in the Philippines and India.
 
Facebook Groups
Peer advice can also really be helpful in growing your practice, and of course, it’s free. We belong to a number of Facebook groups as we try to continually understand and respond to needs of therapists who wish to grow their practice. The groups we belong to are:
·        The Private Practice Startup
·        Marketing a Private Practice
·        Mental Health Professional Marketing
·        The Blogging Therapists
·        Private Practice Builders
·        Counselors and Therapists Online Marketing
Just search for these groups on Facebook and ask to join.
 
Website Design  
There is only one company that comes to mind when recommending someone to improve your website so that it generates more clients. And that is us, HelpingSites.com. Obviously, we are a little prejudiced in this recommendation, but we’d like you to judge this for yourself. Click here to get our website evaluation checklist Client Generating Machine and get an idea of the many things you can do to improve your website.  And feel free to contact us to get a free consultation and evaluation of your current site. 

For many therapists, there is a desire to offer information that may go beyond the scope of their website or perhaps to provide specific resources*.  These are typically accomplished in the form of a hyperlink.  For the uninitiated, clicking here IS a form of a hyperlink to its definition. 

​Hyperlinks are useful, effective ways to help your website visitors.  Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish different things can be achieved including:

• Quick insight in the form of a hover popup that explains a particular term
• Directing visitors to another part of your website
• A Call to Action that helps convert a visitor to becoming your client
• Bringing visitors to another website

As new customers approach us, those with existing websites often have hyperlinks.  There are a few common hyperlink issues we see including those that:

• ​Do nothing
• Bring them to the same page the visitor is already on
• Have links to an outside page within the same browser tab, which is a big no-no.

Why is that last one an issue?

Think about how hard you’ve worked to bring a visitor to your website.  If you offer a way to go to another website, wouldn’t you still want your site readily available to them? We encourage you to always have outside website links open up in a new browser tab.  Put differently, you never want your website not active.  This way they can easily get back on your site with a simple tab click. And if the outside site is needed again, they can easily jump back to that site by clicking its tab. Hitting back/forward buttons may cause confusion which site they’re or possibly even fail.

*Stay tuned for a discussion of the merits of using resources on your site.​

Signup forms are one of the best ways to help build your practice.  They can serve to accomplish different things depending on your goals.

If you're sending out periodic communications, then using a pop-up style signup form is a popular and effective way to help convert site visitors to recipients of your information. 

Pop-up style forms typically show up shortly after the visitor enters your website.  There are many applications that can be used to create pop-ups on your website: MailMunch and Popup-Builder are example of these. Usually, they can take the contact information and integrate it into to an email marketing system like Constant Contact or MailChimp, which also has a form builder feature that will help create the pop-up.  GoDaddy offers a comprehensive email marketing system that also has pop-up forms. Pricing for these services varies from free to several levels of a paid monthly subscription, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.  It’s been our experience that if you are implementing a robust effort to build your practice, then considering those systems that offer multiple services will tend to be your best value.

Here at HelpingSites, we have created customized pop-up forms for our customers which has saved them the cost of paying for a service.  In fact, we have integrated a fixed button that stays on one side of the page which, when triggered, launches the same signup form as the “on-entry” pop-up.  Each time a new visitor signs up, an email is sent to the therapist with the visitors’ contact information, while automatically adding the new contact to a list that can be viewed, downloaded and integrated with your email system at any time.

Another great use of a signup form is coordinating it with resource downloads*. This will enable you to identify the type of counseling service a particular website visitor may be interested in.  Armed with that information, you can then reach out to them with additional targeted communications which, over time, will expose them to your expertise and help them gain confidence with your services.  It's really a simple process: have the visitor click on the description of the resource which takes them to the signup form; upon completing the form, the download is presented to them.  Let’s have some fun and see this in action… just click here to receive a free download "Understanding Your Signature Strengths" (a useful rating system to help increase clients' happiness)... once done, you'll be able to use it right away with your website visitors.

We love helping therapists build their practice. A key part of that is knowing who is visiting your site and following up with them through regular communications.  This lets them know how your services will help them lead to a more fulfilled life.  So, start using a signup form today.  

And if you know a therapist who can benefit from this information, please click on the forward link below.

*Part of our service includes a free 6 month membership to Between Sessions, the country’s largest collection of downloadable forms and worksheets. This $100+ value  is included free when you sign up  with HelpingSites.com.

​Are you like many therapists and helping professionals who are looking beyond their clinical practices for other ways to help people that can also increase their income?  With your training, knowledge, and skills there are many ways to leverage your professional expertise into creating additional income outside your normal office hours… even while you sleep!

Today we’d like to talk about a way to add value to your practice and your website that is often overlooked: Teaching an online course.

Much like writing a book, teaching an online course adds to your reputation while also providing you a new source of income.  There are many platforms available for you to create an online course - and all of them provide the software to prepare a well-thought out course, as well as the tools to market it.  In general, these sites have a revenue sharing model.  For the purposes of this blog, we’ll reference Udemy which, with over 15 million students, is one of the largest and most popular platforms.

When you create a course with Udemy, you’ll be posting it on their site.  Your share of the revenue will depend on how the student discovers (and subsequently) signs up for your course.  Typically, your share will be 50%.  But you can also post the course on your site and keep 97% of the course tuition.  According to the Udemy website, the average instructor earns $8,000, but like any business, the better you are at marketing your course the more you will earn. Udemy lists hundreds of courses in health and mental health and they are available to people in 180 countries.  You’ll find courses directed to consumers (potential clients) as well as courses intended for other mental health professionals (a great idea if you are already doing supervision).

Your first step would be to take an online course yourself (there as low as $15 dollars) to get an idea of the kind of commitment you need to make. Not surprisingly, Udemy, as well as the other platforms, offers both official and unofficial courses on creating an online course.  You might also want to take a course on origami, digital photography, or making your own pasta.

When you review the course outlines, you’ll see they are divided into lectures typically ranging from 3 to 20 minutes, and there is always at least one lecture you can preview for free. You’ll also notice all the lectures are taught with video that falls into one of two styles: Either an on camera instructor or a slide show with the instructor talking in the background. Depending on the platform, courses include downloads, quizzes, and even certificates of completion.

While there is no question that creating an online course is an investment of time, with diligence you can create one in a week or two.  Compare that with months or even years to write a book.  And once you’ve learned how to create one course, you’ll find that process gets easier and quicker with subsequent ones.

Having value-added content on your website - like an online course - will also help drive traffic to your site, encouraging people to contact you for your clinical services. Your website can be optimized around the title of your course giving it an added boost when people search for your services. You can send out a postcard or brochure about your course, again bringing people to your site.   Your local paper could do an article about your course or it could be included in a local adult education listing.  

Designing a great website is an important part of growing your professional practice.  But the design is just the beginning.  At HelpingSites.com we go beyond the traditional conventions of any website building company you’ve ever heard of or have come across. We don’t just help you build a website, we help you build a business.
  
Sign-up now to get your website and free marketing consultation.

​HelpingSites.com: Helping you... so you can help others. 

It’s wonderful to have a great looking website.  A modern attractive website immediately engages your visitors and helps them understand who you are and how you can help them.  Your website is a reflection of your personality and your professional intent.
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But the design of your website is just the start.  Many therapists forget that a website is first and foremost a marketing tool.
 
The number one function of your website is to attract appropriate clients and have them contact you.  And the single most important aspect of your website is your Call to Action or CTA.  Simply put, this is the place on your website where you invite your visitors to engage with you in a more direct way. 

There are three basic types of CTA’s that helping professionals use, and we’d like to give you some tips about the most effective ways to use them.  Here’s the first and perhaps, most obvious one.

Make your phone number easy to find and the Initial contact with you ‘client friendly’.

1. Your phone number should always be on your header, which means that it will appear on every page. We recommend that you put it in your footer as well. You never want to have your website visitors search for your phone number.
2. Your phone number should be clickable from a mobile device. Since up to 50% of the people visiting your site will be on a mobile device, you’ll want to make sure that your phone number can be dialed with a simple touch.  Make sure that you test your site yourself with your own phone.
3. Think about what happens when your prospective client actually makes the call.  In most cases, professionals have the number on their website going to a generic voice mail.  We suggest you consider speaking more directly to new clients by providing options on your phone system with messages like: “Press 1 if you are a new client and would like to schedule a phone consultation.  Press 2 if you need to change an existing appointment”, etc.  This type of option based voice messages can be done easily with Internet based phone systems like evoice.com or grasshopper.com.   You always want to put yourself in the place of a new client and identify any points in the process of contacting you that might be difficult for them. When constructing a phone message for a new client to hear, make sure you tell them what to do next and what they can expect.  For example, you may want to ask them to leave you information about the best time for a call-back or you may want a make a quick statement about your privacy policy.  Always advise them to call 911 if they are having any kind of emergency. 
4. Don’t just assume that your phone CTA is appropriate. You need to get some feedback.  Ask some friends or colleagues to “role play” going to your website and trying to contact you and listen carefully to what they have to say.

In our next installment, we’ll talk about another powerful Call to Action that has proven to be effective in generating more clients.  You won’t want to miss it.

But don’t put off getting your website in the best shape possible.  Find out how to grow your business!  Click here to contact us which will include an option to schedule a consult to review of your current site.

Therapists love to put evocative images on their websites. But do these images really help you accomplish your goal of attracting new clients? Or do your images actually turn-off your website visitors and make them move on to the next website?
When creating your professional website, think carefully about the images you select,  using the  following tips as a guideline:

Have your images tell your story.
Don’t select images randomly, but rather have them tell your brand story. For example, if your practice focuses on helping people with anxiety, you can show images of people dealing with common anxiety problems, like public speaking, or riding an elevator. Make sure that all your images tell a consistent story.

Use captions with your images.
Captions are read four times more than body copy.  Putting captions on images will help you determine the relevance of your images. In other words, the caption helps tell your story.
Continuing the example of a therapist who treats anxiety disorders, an appropriate image might be a photo of a person speaking at a meeting with the caption: “You can overcome your fear of speaking in as few as 12 therapy sessions."

Don’t break the left margin.
Generally speaking, images should be placed above, below, or on the right of your copy blocks. When your image breaks the left margin of a copy block, it makes it harder for people to read.

Don’t use images just because they are interesting.
Many professionals like to use beautiful scenery or metaphoric images on their site, and many of these images are very eye-catching.  However, people see interesting images on the Internet all of the time, and just using an interesting image will not necessarily create an impact on your website visitor. It is important to remember that the more images you use on your website, the longer the website will take to load, and when you add loading- time by just a second, you can decrease your traffic by as much as 20%.

When using images of people, make sure they are looking in the direction that you want your viewers to look.
Visitors to your website will instinctively look towards the direction that the people in your images are looking.  You can take advantage of this by choosing images that direct your viewer’s eyes to the place you want them to go on a web page. For example, an image of a person looking towards a “Schedule An Appointment” button on your  website will direct the viewer to click that button. 
 
Don’t use obvious stock images.
It’s fine to use stock photos on your website, but you should avoid ones that are obviously models or obviously posed.  Photos of happy attractive people are pleasant to look at, but they won’t really engage your website visitor. Make sure that every image on your website has a reason for being there and engages your potential clients.
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 Would you like to create a professional website that works as hard as you do?  Get your website designed at www.HelpingSites.com by a team marketing experts who specialize in working with helping professionals.  You’ll be shocked at what you get for a low monthly price!