STP 47 | Marketing Your Therapists
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[00:01:12] James Marland: Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is the show where we help you take intentional steps towards sustainable growth. This week I'm joined by, uh, Steve, Lisa, and Dawn with special guest Allison Pigeon. And our topic today is, uh, marketing your therapist in your mental health practice.
[00:01:42] James Marland: Welcome everyone.
[00:01:44] Lisa Mustard: Hi.
[00:01:44] alison-pidgeon--she-her-_1_10-30-2023_140931: Thank
[00:01:45] Alison Pidgeon: you.
[00:01:46] Dawn Gabriel: Hey.
[00:01:48] James Marland: So we're gonna start with our, uh, tool tip or tech section of the show. And, uh, Allison, do you have a tip for marketing your mental health practice?
[00:02:00] Alison Pidgeon: I do. Yeah. So my, um, tip is that if you are. Struggling with either starting a group practice or maybe you have one you're not quite sure how to market,
[00:02:11] Alison Pidgeon: um, the new folks that you have, definitely, um, consult with somebody who's done it before. Um, I've always had a business consultant ever since. Um, I was about a year into my practice, and so I strongly believe that it, that's a big reason for my, um, growth and my success.
[00:02:27] Alison Pidgeon: So, um, yeah. My tip is to find a business consultant. I, um, provide business consulting. Um, so you're welcome to reach out to me, but definitely find somebody who you click with and, um, is, you know, knowledgeable about what your, your goals are. I always look for people who've kind of done, already done what I want to do, um, and, and pick people who are kind of a, a few steps ahead of me.
[00:02:53] James Marland: That's great advice, Allison. Um, I've talked to, uh, Julie Harris from Green Oak. And we talked about expenses and, uh, I, I asked about this consulting thing and she said consulting almost always. The people who would use consulting almost always have better, uh, returns and higher profits. So, uh, your advice definitely strikes true for that. Hey, why, why don't you introduce yourself? Allison, this is the first time you've been on the show. So, uh, who are you? And, uh, you know, what, what's your role in, in private practice in the, the community here?
[00:03:31] Alison Pidgeon: I am Allison Pigeon. I am the CEO and founder of Move Forward Counseling. So I have a group practice in Pennsylvania, so we now have six different offices all across the state. Um, and it started out just with myself in a little tiny office, and now we have about 65 employees. Um, and we've been in business for about eight years.
[00:03:55] Alison Pidgeon: So along the way I've also, um, started other businesses, got involved in real estate investing. I also, um, have worked as a business consultant for many years, so that's me.
[00:04:06] James Marland: Awesome, Well, we're glad that you're here and we reconnected at a conference and, uh, You know, you, you graciously agreed to be on the show, so we're glad that you're here and I know you have a lot to offer for like, growing and, you know, managing all these people. 'cause I'm, I'm sure we'll get into this, but there's stages of, of growth, you know, starting out at the beginning. So let's get into our topic of, uh, marketing your, uh, therapist in your mental health practice. The first question that I wanna hear from the panel, I guess is, what's it like When you're by yourself, what, what is it like marketing by yourself? And then we'll kind of like get into like, what is it, what changes when you get there? So let me, let me just pick on Dawn. Dawn, what's it like, you know, did uh, when you're marketing yourself and what were some of the changes you noticed?
[00:04:59] Dawn Gabriel: Well, I think the first thing when I was marketing myself, man, it was years ago. Um, I didn't really have to, 'cause I was on insurance panels and I was full. Um, I think when I really had to learn about marketing is when I switched to a group practice because. It felt more responsible. Uh, I, I felt more responsible for like, all my team. Um, so I'm trying to think when it was by myself. It was, it was definitely just talking with other therapists and networking and it was more casual, I would say. It wasn't, I didn't really have a business plan. It was just more talking and getting to know people and what I specialized in. Um, yeah, so I, I don't know.
[00:05:44] Dawn Gabriel: I didn't really have a plan when I was Just marketing myself. Sorry. I don't know if
[00:05:48] James Marland: No, that's
[00:05:49] Dawn Gabriel: or not. Yeah.
[00:05:50] James Marland: What can, can others relate to that, Steve or Lisa?
[00:05:54] Lisa Mustard: Um, I am not in private practice, so I don't relate to that, but I can relate to marketing myself and my show and just what I have going on. Um, but it's different. But I can, I think it's interesting because of all the episodes I've done on my show, when I talk to somebody about marketing their practice, it's usually like if you have insurance or you take insurance, it's usually not a problem to fill,
[00:06:15] Lisa Mustard: to fill up your, um, in fact, I think Alison.
[00:06:18] Lisa Mustard: Even talked about that on my show a long time ago, . But, um, when it comes to, when you take, you know, private pay, it's a whole different ball game. Um, so I do know that much about it and I can relate to that being that, you know, I'm having to market what I do on my own and figure out creative ways to get out to the world what it is that I do.
[00:06:37] Lisa Mustard: So, um, yeah, I think, I think this is always such a interesting topic for therapists to . You know, really think about where they are in their practice, where they wanna go, and, you know, making a plan to move forward. So, yeah, but I don't have a practice. , well, I do, I have a life coaching practice, but it's, it's different.
[00:06:56] Lisa Mustard: I'm not, I'm,
[00:06:57] James Marland: It's you. Yeah.
[00:06:58] Lisa Mustard: mean, it's just me and I, and I, I market that differently just because I, I'm not taking on a whole lot of clients. So it's more of like behind the scenes, you know, word of mouth sort of thing.
[00:07:10] James Marland: Uh, Steve, do you have a, uh, you have a group practice, right?
[00:07:13] Steve Bisson: it's a, in, it's,
[00:07:15] James Marland: you
[00:07:15] Steve Bisson: yeah, it's a baby phase. We, we started in July. Uh, me and my business partner, bill ELLs, we've been working on that. But I've been, you know, it's been an interesting change even in the last few months because when I had my private practice and I was marketing myself, getting myself paneled and all that, I didn't have to consult with anyone, just did my own thing. Um, and then, um, if I wanna do one day this, or one day that I can do, it's fine. But when you do group practice, it's, you know, thinking about the team, thinking about your business partner, thinking about, you know, we have a psych, pharmaceutical, uh, nurse practitioner that helps us out. We have a Spanish speaking therapist. Um, do things I can't do, speak Spanish or do meds. So now it's thinking about those processes and how to market those, which makes it a lot different. So for me it's been just the transition of thinking as a team, you know, was able to get our first kind of contract recently, but it was like, you know, all the language was like, oh yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, oh, I mean, no, no, we, we, we So even changing the small stuff and the language of how you do Communication is also kind of a big switch, so I'm definitely in that baby phase of learning all that.
[00:08:31] James Marland: And, and Allison, how long were you a, a, a solo practice before you went to group?
[00:08:37] Alison Pidgeon: About six months.
[00:08:38] James Marland: Okay. What did you always plan on doing? Group I.
[00:08:42] Alison Pidgeon: No
[00:08:43] James Marland: No
[00:08:45] Alison Pidgeon: No. I was the director of an outpatient clinic so that, you know, managing people was familiar to me. And then, um. I was kinda lonely in solo practice. And then I also, um, eventually wanted to work myself out of the chair. So I had to hire people in order to do that. Um, but I, I think, you know, being that we've grown to such a large size, I've been through probably like five or six different iterations of marketing
[00:09:15] James Marland: Okay.
[00:09:16] James Marland: How did it start? Yeah.
[00:09:18] Alison Pidgeon: well, it just, you know, started with myself. So like, I picked a kind of a specialty and, you know. It, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty simple, especially when you're on insurance panels. Um, but I did have a specialty and I gave myself a crash course on how you, you know, market yourself and then the, um, the challenges.
[00:09:38] Alison Pidgeon: Then when you have, I. People doing all sorts of different things. How do you say that in a concise way, right? Like if somebody says, oh, well, like, who does your practice serve? You don't wanna like start running down this laundry list of like, well we do like these 18 things. Um, so in the beginning we were just a small handful of providers.
[00:09:59] Alison Pidgeon: We identified ourselves as, um, specializing in women's issues. Which still encompassed a lot of things, but was still enough of a specialization to set us apart. And then, um, yeah, as we got bigger, then there's just more and more providers. And now there's really very little that we don't do. So we had to start really thinking about like, how do we market ourselves because we outgrew the women's issues, um, specialization and um, We actually like hired a, a branding person to help us like, think through that and look at what we had now and like interviewed the staff and interviewed us and like figured out how to kind of like rebrand ourselves.
[00:10:43] James Marland: Um, interesting. Uh, had you ever gone through a branding process before
[00:10:49] James Marland: like that?
[00:10:49] Alison Pidgeon: no, we had always just like done it ourselves. Um, so yeah, that was definitely a new experience.
[00:10:56] James Marland: Has anyone else ever hired a branding consultant? And what was that experience like? 'cause it sounds like you got, like, just what you said, the, the list of things you could do be, it would be hard to like specialize in those things. So how do you. How do you distinguish yourself from other people if you can't say, uh, we specialize in this, or we do that?
[00:11:20] James Marland: Has anybody else ever done a branding?
[00:11:23] Dawn Gabriel: I haven't done a branding consultant, but I've definitely looked at my brand and looked at that as, um, How to market my values as what my vision was for the group. And I think that's important as the group practice owner to kind of know, um, yeah, who you are, how you're different. And I feel like when you're switching to group practice, um, excuse me, that you do have to kind of look at it.
[00:11:51] Dawn Gabriel: It is harder. Like, how do I market this differently than if I was just individual and how do I market each therapist? And I feel like it's An organic thing that you keep moving. I'm a hundred percent private pay. We have been for eight and a half years now, and so a lot of it was getting well twofold. If I was to pick two things like definitely my SEO on my website and my writing had to be top notch. And, um, so Google could find me. And then our, within that, our service pages had to kind of show what each therapist was doing and how it was different. And with that blogs that would support the service pages. And so I would have my therapist tell me like, their specialty, right? A series of three blogs or, um, So it would kind of put it back to their bio page. Everyone has a bio page on the website. They also have videos on the website. So when someone goes on, they can get the kind of the personality of my team and each therapist and our clients love that they come in saying like, I felt really, I, I could feel the energy on that video, or I really felt like she knows me. Um,
[00:13:01] James Marland: So
[00:13:02] James Marland: each, each therapist has a bio page,
[00:13:06] Dawn Gabriel: A bio page and then a video on it. Well, not all. I still have two. I have to get on. They're newer, so I wait till they're like a month in and then we do a video and it usually scares them, but I make them do it anyway. it's important. And then the other thing is definitely building a name in the community, um, and serving the TA like the community that we are. And so, um. Yeah, just so mainly Google and your website have to be the best. Those are, I just gave a lot of tips, but that's my, that's kind of mine.
[00:13:45] James Marland: Well, that's your marketing
[00:13:46] Dawn Gabriel: Yeah.
[00:13:47] James Marland: Um.
[00:13:48] Dawn Gabriel: Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:50] James Marland: And you also said that you make them write blogs or make them, I don't know, do you twist their arm? Do you pay them for that? Like how do
[00:13:57] Dawn Gabriel: Oh yeah, they're paid. Yeah. So especially if, if a therapist comes to me and they're saying, I'm not full with clients, what can I do? The first thing I do is have them write a series of three blog, like a blog series
[00:14:10] Dawn Gabriel: on what they're seeing. If they see couples,
[00:14:13] Dawn Gabriel: what are they seeing in couples counseling, and we kind of nuance that.
[00:14:17] Dawn Gabriel: So, and we get their voice heard. Um. Or EMDR. We have a brain, we have brain spotting and EMDR. So both treat trauma. What's the difference? Um, and so people can start to get to know them through their blogs, but it is hard. It's like pulling teeth. Luckily with chat, GPT, it's helped a lot.
[00:14:39] Dawn Gabriel: I I teach 'em how to do it quicker.
[00:14:42] James Marland: So, um, what is, what do you guys think is the main difference between promoting yourself and then Chan transitioning to a group? What's the, what would you say is, uh, something different?
[00:14:58] Steve Bisson: I think the complexity is in itself is much different. You know, it's already complex to even define myself sometimes I don't know about you guys, but for me, sometimes it's really hard. And like I do EMDR. I am a licensed mental health counselor. I'm a podcaster. I wrote a book like, who the hell am I? And then you go and then add four more people in that group.
[00:15:20] Steve Bisson: And now I've gotta define a whole group with something that works. You know, we didn't get a branding consultation per se, but we came up with an idea of gambit counseling. Um, you know, if you know about Queen's Gambit and all that and the sacrifices that go with that, but it's because we're all, um, everyone on the team has worked on emergency services, so we took the one unifying idea so that we know we do the short-term work to bring you to maybe long-term work eventually. So that's how we came up with the name. We didn't get a consultation, but it took us for a while because we were like Spanish speaking. A psycho pharmaceutical person, a director of a respite And a guy who's been in private practice for 11 years. Okay. How are we gonna define this group? So we, you know, we, we did a lot of brainstorming.
[00:16:07] Steve Bisson: Me and my partner, bill And that's how we came up with that name. But I think that the complexities is now like people like, well, gambit counseling. I mean, most people in my experience, they're not looking at the name and going, oh my God, I'm never gonna go there. Or, oh, I'm just gonna go there because of the cool name. But it needs to be something catchy and something that will get people's attention. That's what we were trying to do. But again, the complexities of five individuals versus one. Makes it that much more difficult. And that's what my experiences has been. So if I look confused right now, I am. Um, but at the end of the day, I think that we are all a little confused whether we do group practice, individual practice, not have a private practice. I think it's always hard to define ourselves, and I think that would be my takeaway is that it takes a lot of courage to define yourself in order to move forward.
[00:16:56] Dawn Gabriel: Yeah, I would say, I think it goes back to what Allison said, like you, you need to have a plan. You need to have a marketing and business plan, and it's super helpful to have a consultant who's done it before to kind of . Of help keep you accountable and also keep, like, know what works and what doesn't. But it, I definitely had to have a strategy and a plan more than I did when I was solo. Um, and, and it's constantly thinking through like your values and mission statement like Steve was saying, like, who are we?
[00:17:29] James Marland: Yeah, it, it, um. To me as I'm, as I'm processing this, and of course I don't have a, a private practice, instead of just promoting yourself, if you were individual, you're, so, you're promoting a collective values, like what, what do we agree with together that if we're super clear on this, these values are gonna reach out and touch the people in the community that have the same values, which will be attracting them to your practice. So, so, um, promoting yourself is probably different with the costs. Like what, what are some of the differences between the costs of promoting yourself, maybe some of the things you didn't know you were going to have to spend or invest? When you switched over from solo to group, we're talking like time, money, resources, energy, like what are some of those hidden things for people who are thinking about jumping from solo to group that you, you wouldn't expect?
[00:18:42] Steve Bisson: Oh, I think I'm
[00:18:44] James Marland: Alison, what do you got? oh, or
[00:18:46] Steve Bisson: I was just gonna say that making the time for other people in the group practice. Which, you know, okay, so I'll cut down my caseload, but I also now have three or four people that have to, to supervise and guide and support, which is something that, you know, in principle one, one of the ideas that Was that I gonna work less, but to get it going and, and getting moving forward was like, oh my God. Yeah. Like, I gotta check on them, make sure everything's okay. How are their, how, what's their expectations? Where are they going? How are they feeling? It's going so on and so forth. So it became, it was, you know, I've been a supervisor many times before. But it was just that shift of thought process that was very difficult for me because when you're in private practice for a long period of time, I consult with me most of the time. Once in a while, con consult a friend or someone in my, I I rent out the space around here, but ultimately it's going to making sure that you're making time for everyone, which was a big shift for me.
[00:19:47] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah. What we found is that, um, anytime we Open an office in a new area where we're not known, we have to spend more money just to make the community kind of aware that we're there. Um, but in general, we spend about 1% of our budget on marketing. So that's a, and that, you know, sort of stays the same. Even though our rent revenue goes up year to year, it's still 1%
[00:20:18] James Marland: How did you come up with that 1%
[00:20:20] Alison Pidgeon: Just looking back at previous years and what we spent
[00:20:25] Dawn Gabriel: So Allison? Yeah. What would that, what could you say what it goes to?
[00:20:31] Dawn Gabriel: Like
[00:20:31] James Marland: do you break it down on? Yeah.
[00:20:33] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, we, well, now that we're bigger, obviously the budget is bigger. Um, so we spend money like sponsoring community events, like mental health related events. We spend money on SEO, Google Ads, social media ads. Um,
[00:20:54] Alison Pidgeon: yeah, we, we do a lot of different things. We send out, um, faxes to doctor's offices with our availability on them. Um, we, my marketing, we have a full-time marketing person now. She spent like a, a lot of time like building out lists of referral sources all across the state. Um, and we update them on a regular basis about the openings that we have.
[00:21:19] Dawn Gabriel: Which I think it's funny. Um, so we have Steve, who's just starting out as group practice. I'm more middle, and then Allison's like the guru of all I, I, she did not let everyone know like, she's awesome. Allison is like one of the best
[00:21:35] Alison Pidgeon: thank you.
[00:21:36] Dawn Gabriel: so I think it's, and so just even hearing like she has a full-time marketing person, where it starts out with just you at first and then you realize, I can't do all this.
[00:21:47] Dawn Gabriel: I need a strategy. I need it to be bigger. And there is so much work. That's what I would say to your question, James, is that the hidden thing is that It needs to be ongoing and it needs to be consistent and it needs to, uh, the time is definitely different than just marketing yourself. It definitely needs to, it probably is gonna grow into a position for somebody else to do, unless that's your first love
[00:22:16] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, for a long time it was just me
[00:22:20] Alison Pidgeon: sort of coordinating a bunch of freelancers, because that's what we could afford and that, and it worked until we grew to a certain size and then it kind of wasn't what we needed to get to the next level. So
[00:22:33] James Marland: you coordinate it through just meetings or emails or project management boards? Like what was your.
[00:22:38] Alison Pidgeon: yeah, kind of like project management or, um, just once we got somebody started, then they kind of You know, knew what to do. And then they would just, every month they'd just be like, oh, here's your, you know, two blog posts or whatever. So there wasn't a lot, there was just a lot of things that I, 'cause of time I wasn't able to do.
[00:22:58] Alison Pidgeon: Like we do a lot more community events now because we have a full-time marketing person who can go to those things. Um, so I think that's been the big difference, is like, it's been better in, in the sense of like, there's more Face-to-face marketing time. That's not dependent on me.
[00:23:19] James Marland: And the marketing person covers all your offices, right? They,
[00:23:24] James Marland: uh, they're, they're What about how many offices did you have before you hired that position?
[00:23:33] Alison Pidgeon: Um, technically, I guess we had one
[00:23:37] James Marland: One office,
[00:23:39] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah.
[00:23:40] James Marland: Oh, okay.
[00:23:42] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah.
[00:23:44] Dawn Gabriel: I know a lot of people with just one office who hire that position. In fact, I'm gonna be handing it off to my executive assistant later this year, or I mean, in a few months. We're working on a plan.
[00:23:57] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, that's a little misleading because we had so many people working from home,
[00:24:01] Alison Pidgeon: so we
[00:24:01] Alison Pidgeon: had like 40 therapists,
[00:24:05] James Marland: Okay. Um, so so the cost of marketing is like time, energy. We didn't really talk, we talked about money, I guess, a little bit, 1%. Are there any other, um, that you would, you would, uh, definitely do or don't do? Like what would you Definitely, and this is for anybody, but this is kind of turned into the ask Allison, what she would do. Uh, show, but if anybody has questions for Alison, like what, what, uh, what are some do's and don'ts if, if you have, uh, you know, some do's and don'ts, uh, this is for anybody. I
[00:24:54] James Marland: can cut out the silence. It's fine.
[00:24:57] Dawn Gabriel: I don't
[00:24:58] Dawn Gabriel: remem, I don't know if this is a do or don't. I just remember the shift. More in a mindset way. When I started marketing my group practice, I think it, Steve mentioned it, where you, you're used to saying, I, I, I specialize in the, and then learning to talk different and saying, actually, I'm the owner of a group practice counseling center.
[00:25:18] Dawn Gabriel: And I remember I had to go through like a mind shift that I was terrified to say that I had to practice seeing it actually, and now it rolls off my tongue, but I was like, so nervous. It was vulnerable.
[00:25:29] Dawn Gabriel: Um, .So just kind of mind shift is the first step, I would say, for the do and, and really grasping that you are the owner and your role is different.
[00:25:42] Dawn Gabriel: It's not just your, um, and, and even there's an, there's another shift that happens. It's not your practice, it's. The Authentic Connection Counseling Center. It's, it becomes the team and it becomes a group like, it's so, you're not even saying my counseling center, you're saying the counseling center and the team starts taking ownership too.
[00:26:03] Dawn Gabriel: I, I mean, it's I know I'm talking really vague and big, but I feel like there was some shifts that or stages of when I started noticing, and that's how I started marketing differently. And so I, I talk more about my team and my therapists and what the group stands for more than just, um, singular.
[00:26:26] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, I can chime in as well, like specific things. Um, that people ask me questions about. So people will say like, is it really worth it to spend money in SEO? And I say, yes every single time. Um, it is worth it to spend money in SEO like anybody who's, you know, 60 or younger, is probably going to Google to find some something. Um, um, except my dad. My dad I think would still prefer to use a phone book, but, um,
[00:26:57] James Marland: Would he call you and say, Hey, Allison, what do
[00:27:00] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, he calls me and asks me a question. I'm like, dad, just google it.
[00:27:03] Dawn Gabriel: You are the, you're Google to him
[00:27:05] Alison Pidgeon: yeah, yeah. But I'm se he's 75, so I have to give him a pass. Um, so yeah, SEO is definitely worth spending money on a good website is worth spending money on. Um, there's definitely ways to like optimize your website, like. A mistake I see a lot of people make is like they'll put everybody on their team on one page, when really everybody should have their own separate page for SEO reasons, all your services should have their own separate page for SEO reasons, things like that. Um, I think as well, um, you know, really thinking about who's your Who's your target market? And that might be pretty large depending on how many providers you have and what you do. But, um, a lot of times people too will be like, do I have to be on every form of social media? And it's like, well, no. Like who's your, who's your client base?
[00:27:55] Alison Pidgeon: And like, if you don't like teenagers, then like, don't, you don't need to be on TikTok. You know what I mean? Like. It is just sort of these things that I think people get in their minds. Like, oh, I have to be doing all the things all the time, when really, like, you're just gonna spread yourself way too thin. So you have to be kind of strategic about what you choose to do, um, that makes sense for your practice. You know, and also like, it's interesting that different regions in the United States, um, use different things more often than others, like in New York City, like Yelp is a big thing. people find their therapist on Yelp, but like, where I live it, that's not a thing. Um, so like the fact that we're on Yelp doesn't really matter, but in New York City, apparently it's very important. So that's the other thing I ask around other practice owners, like, what do you do? Like, where do your clients come from? What, what works for you? And that you'll figure out like what to focus on.
[00:28:56] James Marland: Great.
[00:29:00] Steve Bisson: No, I know that Lisa
[00:29:01] Steve Bisson: has been doing a lot of SEO stuff, so that's definitely something I want to continue talking about here. So just wanna put that out there, Lisa.
[00:29:10] Lisa Mustard: Forever. Gonna haunt me with the SEO stuff. . right though.
[00:29:16] James Marland: I. I bought the, uh, the program. Daniel talked about this. We're going back like five episodes, but, uh, what was it called? Um, the Neil Patel,
[00:29:25] James Marland: uh, thing. I bought the year, the, um, lifetime membership for like $200 or something. And I haven't done much with it. like I bought the s you know, the do it yourself SEO program, and he sends me emails on how to do it.
[00:29:41] James Marland: And, uh, I have, I've done a little bit, but it's, uh, I haven't done much, but I'm, I'm further along than what I was, uh, five episodes ago. Just, uh, it, it's a grind.
[00:29:53] James Marland: Like there's a lot to do with all the things. Um,
[00:29:57] Steve Bisson: I'll.
[00:29:59] Steve Bisson: I, I just wanna, I wanna just mention something that, you know, Allison mentioned that was important about knowing your regional tendencies. So, you know, like for the Northeast in general, I, I worked in Vermont for about a year. I've been in Massachusetts now for about 25 years. If you're not on Psychology today, might as well not exist. And
[00:30:21] Steve Bisson: really like to this day, I mean the last year my stats. 60% of my ref, like referral lists came from Psychology Today, and I'm fairly well known in the community. I've been around for a long time now. So knowing your regional stuff, I just wanna re reemphasize that because New York is different than the Northeast.
[00:30:40] Steve Bisson: Northeast probably is very different than the Southwest or the South in the Southeast or the Northwest or Alaska or Hawaii or Canada or whatever. Because I even remember having conversations with people in Canada saying that Psychology Today is useless, but for them being
[00:30:57] Steve Bisson: on I can't remember the exact name I'm from, I'm, I'm, it's embarrassing.
[00:31:02] Steve Bisson: I'm from Montreal. So, uh, but there is a specific one that you go there and that's where you're gonna get your referral source. So it's always important to kinda like, explore that. And I wanna just reemphasize what Allison said because it, it was a throwaway in some ways, but I think it's important to really emphasize that one.
[00:31:20] James Marland: Great. Uh, so let's, let's, uh, go into our takeaways of the episode. This has been, um, pretty fascinating with the, the changes between marketing yourself to therapists, uh, to group practice. Um, I'll just go, uh, in reverse order. So on my screen, Dawn, is last. So you're gonna be, first, what's your, uh, what's one thing you want the, uh, audience to take away from this episode?
[00:31:50] Dawn Gabriel: Um, I would say take away that your, you do need to spend money on marketing, and I would say the first thing would be your website and SEO
[00:32:04] Dawn Gabriel: bind.
[00:32:05] James Marland: Is, uh.
[00:32:09] Lisa Mustard: Yes. I think, um, when Don was giving her, so that was the first thing that came to mind was, you are gonna have to spend money. And it, it's probably a good idea to spend money, um, on hiring somebody if you've never done this before. Like, I, you know, someone who's, who has, who can, who's proven, who knows what they're doing, um, who's done it for themselves.
[00:32:30] Lisa Mustard: Somebody like Allison who has, I mean, obviously she knows what she's talking about. Um, I would, I would hire somebody.
[00:32:37] James Marland: Great. And then Alison, one takeaway?
[00:32:42] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, I think, um, a lot of people don't realize that marketing is a lot of trial and error. So like, don't be afraid to try something and just see if it works. And it can be hard to take kind of data on marketing and if it actually converts people into Paying clients. But if you're able to track that data, um, that's also really important because then you'll start to see that there's patterns and what works and what doesn't work, and then obviously you can put more of your money into what is working.
[00:33:14] James Marland: I, I, that makes me have a question.
[00:33:18] James Marland: I know we're at the tool sec or the, the takeaway. What do you, briefly, can you tell me, do you have a system for tracking what works and what doesn't work, and how would, how do you get started with that?
[00:33:29] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, I think we're, we're, we have a system and then we're, we're even now just like continuing to refine it. So obviously you can look at Google Analytics, you can look at your social media, analytics, all of that kind of stuff. But we, um, have started like taking more detailed data on like when people call and we ask them, how did you hear about us? And getting more specifics around that to see like what's working and what
[00:33:54] James Marland: That's probably something everybody could do right now, right?
[00:33:58] James Marland: You know, just one more, one more column on your spreadsheet
[00:34:02] James Marland: or however you do it. Uh, great. Thank you for entertaining that question. Steve what's a takeaway for the audience?
[00:34:09] Steve Bisson: Well, the first thing is consult with Allison. 'cause I mean, she is the guru on this. So let's the fir, let's start off with that. Um, and Allison, I, I had heard from you. I heard of you before and it was great. It's great to meet you. And I wanna mention that too, because I didn't get the say at the beginning. Um,
[00:34:26] Steve Bisson: but I, I also think that when you talked about the branding process, I I think that when you think about all that, the consistency through the messages when you're marketing your, your, your, whatever, it's a private practice or a group practice that branding process to make sure it represents you and represents everyone else. I think it what you're doing is key to moving forward and I think that when you talked about even getting a consultation with a branding per person, it's perfect. I certainly did not have that formal, I had a freelancer that helped me out for sure. But, uh, that branding process is key, I think as a takeaway from today.
[00:35:02] James Marland: Awesome. My takeaway is, I think several, several of you mentioned this. It's like the, the thought process change. You go when you go from solo to group. I think it was a Mike Malowitz book that says you should start asking who, not how. When you're, when you're a solo person, you, you ask, how am I gonna do this?
[00:35:23] James Marland: How am I gonna do this? And when you start going to the group practice, or when you hire employees or even freelancers, you start thinking, well, who is the best person to do this? And that sort of, that mindset shift, Get you out of the, um, the blocking pattern that many of us have. You know, we get in our own way, we become the log jam.
[00:35:44] James Marland: So who, not how Well that was awesome. Thank you for the show. Um, thanks Allison for being our guest. Uh, where can people find you on, uh, you know, on the internet and stuff?
[00:35:57] Alison Pidgeon: Yeah, thank you for having me. Um, so my practice website is move forward pa.com. Um, and then if you're interested in connecting with me about business consulting, you can just email me directly. Um, it's A-P-I-D-G-E-O-N, so it's my first initial last name, A [email protected].
[00:36:17] James Marland: Great. And, uh, you know, uh, Allison's very responsive and awesome. People have been singing her praises, but, uh, we do enjoy, uh, what she brings to the community. So that's, that's the end of the show. Thanks for listening and, uh, watching. If you're on YouTube, uh, there will be a handout for some questions to ask yourself when you're going from Solo to group practice, uh, mark for marketing reasons. That's, that'll be the free handout of the week. Uh, this is James Marlin for Steve, Lisa. And Dawn, uh, thanks for listening to the show where we encourage you to take small steps towards sustainable growth. We'll see you next time.
Once again. Thanks for listening to the show. I think Alison and the other guest hosts, there was wonderful conversation about the differences between marketing yourself in marketing for a group. Or for other people. Uh, remember there will be a download for some of the questions and. Um, tips from the episode.
So you can get that at the podcast show notes page. There'll be a link in the show notes for that. Um, if you're subscribed to the newsletter, you're going to get the download in your newsletter. So you don't have to do anything extra, please like, and share the episode. remember that this show is for education and entertainment purposes only. While we do give advice and share our experiences.
If you need professional help. With legal matters or accounting, please seek a professional in that area. This is James Marland for the scaling therapy practice. Part of the site craft network.
