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Marketing a therapy practice can be hard. Choosing a therapist or other mental health practitioner is a deeply personal decision. Most people wouldn’t consider hiring a therapist or counselor based on an advertisement, a Yellow Pages listing or–God forbid–a cold call.

As a result, healers must understand who their perfect clients are, and then figure out who else works with these clients.

Elizabeth McGuire of EMW Consulting owns a consulting and therapy practice that  matches young people and their families with the therapeutic resources they need. I spoke with Elizabeth recently about marketing to her perfect clients.

How did you get started?

“I began developing this business in grad school, but didn’t consciously realize that’s what I was doing until the first parent called me to ask for help, referred to me by the headmaster of a treatment program I had talked to while gathering information about all the different programs, schools and institutions available to help adolescents in trouble.

“I’ve always been deeply interested in theory. In graduate school, I was fascinated by the idea that a specific problem with a child or in a family could be most successfully addressed with a program that handled the child (and the family’s) specific issues.

“I didn’t think it was enough for people to look up a program on the internet and randomly choose it because they were desperate, or just because the website might look good. I wanted to match families to exactly the right program, even to the right therapist at a particular program.

“A cluster of symptoms and a label don’t help us define the central disturbance that is manifesting itself and affecting the child and the family. When a family comes to me, I spend time getting to the bottom of whatever the therapeutic issue is, so I make sure I send the child to the right place, and also get the right help for the rest of the family.

“I also provide a lot of support for the parents while the child is receiving treatment. A lot of parents don’t understand why kids need to go away in the first place, but in most cases, the child has to go away for 12-24 months because it takes that long to effect real change. Part of my work is helping the parents do their work at the same time the child is doing his.”

How do you find your clients?

“Initially, all my clients came to me via word-of-mouth advertising. As I helped the first few families, they in turn recommended me to other families. Now I have a website, so people can see that I am a legitimate business. I am also listed on the website www.strugglingteens.org.

“I also began creating relationships with social workers and psychologists I really respected, and who were working with kids in outpatient programs and who were highly skilled in testing kids to understand what their issues were. Once the child was tested, these psychologists would refer their families to me.

“I didn’t think about this consciously, but part of my marketing is doing a really good job; the best job I can do for these families. The other part of my marketing is relationships. I am a relationship person, so I don’t necessarily like to go out and meet a lot of people that I won’t have an ongoing connection with. I like to cultivate deeper relationships with a smaller number of people. I keep in touch with the social workers and psychologists who refer families to me, to tell them about the progress their clients are making, and we support each other in the work we do.”

What’s next for you?

“My clients, especially the families who stay behind while their child goes to treatment or to a school, need a lot of support. Just as the kids need to do their work; so do the parents. In fact, if the parents don’t do their work, the child’s progress is slowed. I am training other people to do what I do, and adding other services like ongoing coaching for the parents, so they are supported just as their child is.

“I am an introvert, so I do better with fewer, deeper relationships. In addition to the referrals from former clients, I am also making a point to deepen my relationships with the social workers and psychologists who already refer people to me, and trying to meet a few others.

“I am profoundly passionate about this work, and I think it shows when people talk to me. I think that even though being passionate about (and good at) my work isn’t usually considered to be marketing, I think it’s one of the things that attracts parents to me. They sense I can help them, and they are right.”

What do you think about Elizabeth’s approach to marketing? Post your comments below.

Marketing Lessons from Haiku Bags

Sharon Eisenhauer has been a designer all her life, but had not experienced great success with any of her designs until two important things happened to her simultaneously.

First, she realized that in order to succeed, she had to take classes to understand the business side of business (and no, I didn’t pay her to say that). Second, what she needed to design came to her intuitively—she had just adopted a newborn and she couldn’t find any diaper/baby bags that were creative and unique and fit her requirements.

So she designed and constructed some bags, tested them herself, then took them to a wholesale baby trade show. As her daughter grew and her needs changed, these bags changed into something that was not just for moms, but for any woman. She decided to pitch Title 9 (an athletic clothing catalog for women). They bought everything she could make. She took her designs to REI, and the same thing happened.  Her business was launched.

Her marketing is made up of five consistent activities.

1. Sharon makes sure her bags are well-priced, well-designed, and she stands behind her work. Thus, the cornerstone of her marketing is her reputation for a well-made, well-designed, well-supported product.
2. She created a website so people could find out about her bags and where to buy them.
3. She contracted with independent sales representatives to show her bags to retail clients. She currently contracts with reps who show her designs to retailers across the US.
4. She takes her bags to the Outdoor Retailer trade shows, so other retailers can see them and she can get feedback as well as find new retail outlets.
5. She provides bags at wholesale cost to employees of retailers. Once the floor sales people use her bags, they become enthusiastic advocates of them.
6. And finally, she listens to feedback from end-users (via the retailers’ comments section of their websites and her own website); to her freelance representatives who sell her bags to retailers; and to her own intuition about what’s needed next.

All three of these sources of feedback are telling her that her next line of bags should be eco-friendly (the current ones are vegan-friendly); and she is listening.

Underlying all this marketing is a clear sense of purpose. She understands who her customer is, and also what kind of product she herself wants to make (functional and beautiful; not one or the other).

What’s the moral of this story?

1. Make an excellent product. (I know this seems obvious, but I used to own a business where we provided a sometimes excellent, sometimes not, product. It was challenging to provide consistently excellent work, and we didn’t rise to it. The Kiss of Death for that business.)
2. Make it easy for your people to find you (this task usually falls to your website, at least at first).
3. Get in front of your best prospective customers as often as possible (Sharon does this via trade shows).
4. Find a way to get frequent client feedback and respond to it.
5. Listen to your own intuition. (Or, for people who think that sounds too woo-woo, rephrase this to “Listen to your right brain.”)

I know these things all seem simple, and they are. They just aren’t easy.

How’s Your Marketing Going?

Are you clear about the marketing you’re doing, and whether it’s working or not? You can download a new questionnaire I’ve posted on my website to help you evaluate what you’re doing, and whether or not it’s working (it’s actually out of the book I’m working on now; You Hate to Market, and What to do About it).

In the meantime, if you need a beautiful, functional bag for yourself or as a gift, check out Sharon’s website, REI, or Zappos.

I’ve posted a bunch of new resources on my website. There is a  yellow file folder on the home page at www.claritytobusiness.com that will take you to them.

They are all related to my book: Passion, Plan, Profit, but you don’t have to buy the book to download the files. You’ll miss the explanations and the other work in the book, obviously, but I just want everyone who is keen to start a business to get going, whether they have the money to buy the book or not.

What Are These Resources?

I’ve included an excel template so that you can forecast your sales and expenses for 12 months, whether you sell products, services or bill by the hour. I’ve also included a spreadsheet that will help you figure out your break-even point and another one to help you get real about your cash flow. There is a business plan template from the book, as well as directions to guide you in setting up a group to complete your business plan with other people.

I know everyone is haranguing you about GETTING YOUR BUSINESS OFF TO A GREAT START IN 2010, but the reason that’s happening is because it really is a good time to start.  There’s lots of support. If you’re ready to start a new business, or want to get your current business onto a firm financial footing, download the templates, buy the book, or sign up for the accountability groups I’m leading that begin next week. This is the time.

Setting Prices is Scary

Pricing, especially for people who set the price for the product or service, and deliver the product or perform the service, can be very tricky. It’s easy to confuse the price you need to charge for what you make or do, with your self esteem.

You can combat this two ways:

1. Research what your competition sells their work for

2. Figure out how much value you deliver, and set your price at some fraction of that value.

Research is pretty easy to do: the internet is an unlimited source of pricing information; and even in the unlikely event that you can’t find an exact price for what you do, you can pick up the phone and call someone outside your area and ask what they charge for a similar product or service.

If you do this research, you’ll find that there is a huge range of prices for almost every product or service sold. People who go to the local barber shop and pay $11.00 (plus tip) for a haircut may be flabbergasted (or horrified) to know that you can pay $400 for a man’s haircut (and even higher for a woman’s cut). In my field, you can pay a coach $25 an hour, or $5,000, depending on who you hire.

Why would someone pay $400 for a haircut? Why would someone hire a coach for $5,000 an hour? Because they feel like they receive much more value than the cost they incur. Perhaps the $400 hair cut makes you look a lot better on TV, hiking your ratings and securing your contract for the next five years. Maybe the $5,000 coach showed you how to break through a barrier that had been blocking you forever, enabling you to triple your income.

Farfetched? The $400 haircut and the $5,000 per hour coach both exist. More than one person is willing to pay for these rates for that kind of value.

If you haven’t raised your prices recently, or if you simply want to expand your mind on the subject, read these blog posts.

www.fluentself.com/blog/biggification/the-art-and-science-of-pricing/

www.fluentself.com/blog/biggification/coming-up-with-prices/

http://www.shaboominc.com/blog/ (read the November 20th post called “Does Your Pricing Prevent Customers from Committing?”

Do you need to raise your prices? Are you afraid? What’s next for you?

Tags: Business Numbers, Pricing, Value

Anyone who’s written and published a book (or has even thought about it), knows the terror of wondering, “Will anyone like it? Will anyone buy it? Will anyone use it?”

Perhaps I’ve been hanging out in Northern California too much (the land of the woo woo), but I think I actually had some psychic influence over the fact that it took six rounds and 45 days to get an error-free proof of my book from the printer (a process that should have taken two weeks, max).

I was really afraid for the book to come out. I wanted the people who bought it to use it, and to receive tangible benefit from it. Specifically, I wanted them to earn more money by working through the exercises in the book.

As any reader of the Aesop Fables (or your mother) can tell you—you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. In other words, I can’t guarantee anything. Even if 100,000 people bought the book (which would be very cool), I couldn’t guarantee that one of them would read it, or do the work, or earn more money in their businesses as a result.

I can only provide the water. You have to do the drinking.

I experienced a raft of pain while working in some of my previous businesses, mostly centered around not earning enough money. It was awful. I want to save the rest of the world from experiencing that level of agony. That’s why I was so worried about my book coming out.  What if my book doesn’t save all the other people in the world feeling the same pain about their work?

Coincidentally, my raft of pain happened to be the perfect amount, at the perfect time, to get me to change; to sell my IT business and to go into coaching and writing. If there had been less pain, I might still be talking to people about computer network support.

Pain was (and is) my friend.

And although I hope my book does alleviate a lot of pain for all of you out there who are passionate about your work and your businesses, but aren’t earning enough money, the truth is, you might need to be in the pain you’re in to motivate you to change.

And if you are ready to change, you have to do the drinking. It’s up to you. Not me.

I did my part to provide part of the water for all you thirsty small business owners. The rest is your responsibility.

Here’s my question to you: are you standing at the water, but not drinking? Go to your favorite coffee shop and set aside 15 minutes to look around at your life. Are you in pain about something that has a solution? Has someone or something lead you to the water? Are you standing in it up to your knees, or armpits?

What can you do to go ahead and drink?

Tags: Customers, Fear, Pain, Publishing a Book

The theme for this week’s blog post (I know, it’s already Friday- I had to think a lot about this first), is marketing.

Revolutionary Idea

What if you picked a marketing activity you enjoyed doing?

What might that activity be?

Luckily for us, the Internet has expotentiallyexpanded our marketing choices. You can blog, tweet, have a Facebook fan page for your business, arrange in-person groups via MeetUp, write articles showcasing your knowledge, link with other business contacts on LinkedIn … but where’s an overworked business owner supposed to jam all this activity into our already over-scheduled days?

A Different Way to Think About This Problem

Instead of fretting about which kind of marketing to do, take one step back and come at the question from the opposite direction.

Since marketing in its purest form is nothing more complicated than communication between your business and your clients and prospects, ask yourself: how do your clients want you to talk to them?

Better yet, ask your clients.

Comments I’d love to read:

1. You talked to your clients and here’s what they said.

2. You talked to your clients and here’s what you’re doing as a result.

Tags: Customers, Marketing, Relationships, Social Networking, Success

I sent my email newsletter out last week with an article about telling the truth, especially the hard truths, and got more response to it than I’ve gotten to all my other wonderfully helpful articles about marketing and customers and all the other ones about doing business better. Here’s the text of the article:

“I have a friend with a heart problem (the physical kind). She needs to have a procedure done to fix it, but has not been willing to do it. Like all “procedures,” behind this word is pain, a stay in the hospital, anesthesia, and the (small but always present) risk of death. The risk of death is higher if she doesn’t get the procedure done, but it’s hard to remember that part when you’re not dead right now, and you are contemplating the hospital stay with all its accompanying pain, lack of sleep, and other uncomfortable features.

My friend’s cardiologist has told her for the past year that she needs to have this procedure done. This doctor is kind, gentle, knowledgeable and trustworthy.

Yesterday, I witnessed a different cardiologist tell my friend the same thing. This cardiologist was abrupt, harsh, and when my friend started to argue with him, held up his hand and said, “I don’t want to hear it. My job is to tell you the risks. I don’t take it personally if you don’t take my advice. I just want you to know the facts.”

At first I thought “what a jerk.” But then I started to think about my friend and her heart and what’s best for her. The second cardiologist (the first one too, just not as harshly), had my friend’s welfare and the truth of the situation uppermost in his mind. He might have presented it more kindly, but to him, the information trumped the delivery.

It got me thinking. Where am I mincing words? Am I doing that with any of my clients? Would a truthful conversation with someone, without worrying what they thought of me as I delivered the message, help the person, or the business, immeasurably?

Is there a conversation you need to have? Does one of your clients need to take an action (or even buy something from you) that is in her best interest, but she is resisting? The key to this is having the person’s welfare as your top priority, without being attached to the outcome. Deliver the message, let go of whether the person hears, or heeds it.”

So that’s the article. I got at least ten replies from people who took the advice to heart and had their difficult conversations, every one with unexpectedly good results.

People said things like: “Happens to be just what I needed to hear…”
“Your words inspired me to get in a quiet space and think about the conversation I was going to have that brought me some fear.”
“I did it!”

The moral of the story, at least today, is that even though I do want to provide helpful business information, sometimes the best information for us small business owners is the stuff that addresses the human side, the relationship side of business.

I used to think these subjects were taboo, as if I’m supposed to leave my personality (and all its foibles, shortcomings and quirks) at the door. Judging from the response to my newsletter, I was wrong.

Tags: Fear, Relationships, Success, Truth

I am working on a book: You Hate to Market, and What to Do About It.  I got the idea from my clients, especially the introverted ones (i.e. the ones who recharge their batteries by being alone).  Many of them thought that marketing meant either cold calling or networking; both activities they hate.

This book is based on the idea that the best marketing is the marketing you actually do; and if you know who you are, it’s easier to figure out what that “best” marketing is.

If you want a complete picture of your type (as described by the Myers Briggs type indicator), go here and take the test, or buy the book Please Understand Me.

Here are some preliminary marketing recommendations, based on what type you are:

Introverted, Thinking type:  LinkedIn (a place for you to tell people about your professional credentials, and to link to other people).

How to start:

1. Fill in your profile completely, including a flattering, professional picture (sign up for the free account if you haven’t done that already).

2. Become a visible expert in your field.  Click on the Learning Center, then on Answers, then on Answering Questions.  If there are questions that LinkedIn users are asking that you have expertise in, consider answering these questions.

There are many more features and ways to use LinkedIn; if it captures you and you enjoy doing what I have suggested above, there are many websites (including the LinkedIn site) that will tell you how to use the site to your best advantage.

Introverted Feeling Type:  Blogging

How to start:

1. Read 10 other blogs written  by people in your same business (find them at www.technorati.com)

2. If any of the blogs you read interest you, post your own replies to their blog posts. (Make it more interesting and intelligent than “I like your blog.”

3. Write down ten possible blog post topics.

4. Write 2 or 3 blog posts (just in a word processor to start with), and see how you like writing.

5. Ask yourself if you can handle negative replies to your posts.

6. If you like writing, can handle the occasional negativity, and you don’t have a blog already, go to www.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account.

7. Start blogging.  Set aside an hour a week to do 2 posts.

If you are an Extraverted Thinker: MeetUp (a site where you can post your interest in creating a group where people actually meet face to face).

How to start:

1. Think about the characteristics of the people you would like to meet with in a group.  These might be your perfect clients, or they might be people who also work with your perfect clients.

2. Use the search function in MeetUp to see if a group like that currently exists.  If it does, go visit.

3. If it doesn’t, follow the directions on the MeetUp site to start your own group.

And if you are an Extraverted Feeling type: Facebook.

How to start:

1. Sign up for a (free) account on Facebook and set up a personal Profile.  Be careful what level of personal information you put on your page.  Only the people whom you accept as friends can see this information, but make sure you don’t disclose too much at the beginning.  You can go back and put more information in later.

2. Use the Facebook search to see if any other businesses like yours have Facebook Pages (these are different from Profiles in that they are visible to the whole Internet.)  If there are some businesses similar to yours that have Pages, take notes on what you like and don’t like.

3. Create a Page for your business.  Click on Advertising (at the bottom of your Profile), then click on Create a Page.  It will take you through the setup in five minutes.

4. Put useful information on your Page that your customers care about, then tell them about the existence of your Page by email, by putting the Facebook logo on your website, putting a note in their monthly invoices; and ask them to become Fans.

There are more details to learn about each of these types of marketing.  I will be starting teleclasses in March to help you understand both who you are, and what kinds of marketing will work for you.  In the meantime, if something calls you, look into it.  The best marketing is the marketing that gets done.  CONSISTENTLY.

Tags: Marketing, Social Networking, Success

The end of the writing road (and the beginning of the design and print and market and sell road), has come for my first book.  Thanks to Matt MacEachern of Lidera Consulting, it has a great title: Passion–Plan–Profit: 12 Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business.

The experience of completing a book is different than I expected.  I thought the hard part would be the actual writing.  That part was challenging, but it’s one thing to finish writing a book and something else altogether to take the final two steps to get it published, even if I’m doing it myself and can control every step of the process. The book isn’t actually finished until it’s designed and printed.

I always thought this book was a good idea, but now I’m risking finding out if other people agree.  Yikes.

Tags: Add new tag, Business Plans, Success, writing

1. You can’t legally buy a list of names and emails and send your e-newsletter to the people on it.  Turns out you can’t buy “permission.”  A person has to give her permission specifically to you or your company, in order to email things to her.  Otherwise, it’s SPAM.  And we all know how much we detest SPAM.

2.  There is a website called Ning that will let you set up your own private social network.

More to follow after I figure out how to set up a social network around doing business plans.  I hope I’m not the only person who thinks this is the best idea ever.

Tags: Marketing, Ning, Social Networking