Raise Your Hand if You Don't Have a Marketing Plan

Yep, that's what I thought. Most counselors, coaches, and solo-NDs don't.

When I ask my clients what their marketing plan is, I often hear answers like this: I'm looking into graphic designers, thinking about branding and planning to get a website soon. Or, I was thinking about taking brochures to doctor's offices. Or, I don't know, what do you think.

Well, what I think is that the idea of writing out a plan is intimidating to a lot of self-employed sole proprietors. We aren't really sure what's supposed to be in a plan, don't know the right way to make a plan, or the process is just too overwhelming.

The idea of a marketing plan triggers distaste for self-promotion, fear of being too visible in the public eye, insecurities about being on our own as business people, and sets off those feelings of being a fraud. Besides, if we'd wanted to do all these businessy things, we wouldn't have gone into the healing arts, right?

Some rugged individualists resist planning because we think it will pin us down, fence us in, inhibit our range of movement. Usually, these are the types who jump from one idea to another, without building a solid foundation or a clear, coherent, compelling message. (I've been guilty of that, so I can talk. LOL)

There are many benefits to having a marketing plan. It prevents going into panic when clients drop off and new intakes have dried up. It ensures you are connecting with the right prospective clients in ways they are likely to respond to. It keeps you from spending money foolishly on unnecessary advertising ploys pushed by unscrupulous hucksters.

So let me ask you this -- how healthy is your business right now? Is it thriving the way you want? Do you have a waiting list of clients, clamoring to get an appointment this month? Can you confidently project what your client load will be a year from now? No?

In other words, how's it working for ya to take the haphazard approach to marketing? I'd bet it's maybe giving you sporadic returns on investment, but not paving the road to sustainable success.

Starting to feel the need to get your marketing plan together? I'm here to help.

Are You Making These 7 Marketing Mistakes Right Now?

1. Waiting until your client load has dropped by 25-50% before you take action?

2. Depending solely on referral sources / insurance panels, or word of mouth to fill your practice?

3. Using cancelled appointment times for everything except marketing?

4. Thinking a website or traditional networking is all the marketing you need to do?

5. Not revising your website to be high touch and client-centered?

6. Not thinking NOW from a prospective client's point of view about the problems they'll be facing come October through January?

7. Wanting to believe you can succeed by doing less than building a systematic marketing system and tending to it on a daily basis?

If you're making any of these mistakes, what are you going to do about it?

What 3 things can you do differently to turn your practice around?

Making the commitment to your business -- as if it were a child whose life you were responsible for, rather than a game to be played when it kills time -- is essential for all solopreneurs in the healing arts who want a thriving practice. What commitments are you holding yourself accountable for today?

Magical Thinking in Marketing

In counseling, we often deal with clients who have what we call magical thinking -- the tendency to base decisions and life on irrational ideas and cognitive distortions of reality.

Interestingly, as self-employed business owners, many clinically competent counselors, coaches, and naturopathic doctors engage in magical thinking when it comes to marketing. I thought it might be instructive to see this laid out in comparison to several of the types of cognitive distortions we more easily identify in our clinical patients.

All or Nothing Thinking -- Have you convinced yourself that all you need to do is have a website that lists the benefits of your services and your contact info, or put an ad in a newspaper or phone book, or a profile on a locator service, or get one time advice, and when that doesn't bring in enough clients to fill your practice, you do nothing else?

Marketing is like housekeeping. It's never finished. There's always something more that can be learned and done. It has to be part of your daily business-keeping routine.

Magnifying and Minimizing -- Are you magnifying the expense of getting your marketing foundation in place and minimizing the long term payoff in doing so? Are you over-relying on scattered piecemeal activities and under-utilizing a structured marketing plan?

Solopreneurs in the healing arts tend to sabotage themselves with a pay-as-you-go mentality, rather than having a mindset of investing in what creates life energy for their business and for the future. Many marketing tasks cost little more than time and self-discipline. The secret is in knowing where and when to put your resources for easiest maximum benefit.

Shoulding on Yourself -- Do you tell yourself you should be networking, seeking referral sources, blogging, speaking, etc, when that goes against your innate personality and skills? Do shoulds form the basis of your marketing expectations: for example, you should be getting clients because your website presents your credentials and the benefits of your work?

Assumptions and pre-judgment really get in the way of successful practice building, especially when you don't evaluate their validity or get input from experienced advisers. Marketing is a heuristic game. It requires you to be self-observing, self-evaluating, and self-correcting without getting stuck in shoulds.

Jumping to Conclusions -- Do you construct your own roadblocks by assuming what your colleagues will think of you if you market this way versus that? Have you concluded that niche marketing will limit your client base without actually trying it?

Personal insecurities and an unconsciously defensive attempt to escape them are at the root of this form of magical thinking in business.

A client attraction coaching program on the best marketing activities for your personality, along with work on your confidence level, can alleviate these destructive forms of magical thinking.

Do You Have to Sell Yourself to Succeed?

A lot of advice for coaches, counselors, and naturopathic doctors revolves around collecting lots of business cards, telling everyone you know you're in practice, and asking for their referrals.

Once you've done that, this extroverted approach says, you have to follow up with everyone and tell them again.

Pardon me, but UGH!

For those with a more introverted personality who might rather eat worms than promote themselves in such outgoing ways, I'd like to offer another set of activities that work especially well for us.

1. Develop a client-centered website with lots of helpful tips for the problems your niche market struggles with. Make sure the site is 80% about them, and only 20% about you. Have a way for people to pre-pay for an appointment or package on your website.

2. Develop a signature presentation topic, in multiple lengths and formats that offers a solution to your niche market's biggest, most desperate problem, and demonstrate your skills as part of the presentation. Approach potential allied professionals and networking/ professional groups who are your niche or who worked with those who are, and offer to be the speaker at one of their meetings.

3. Find an online forum where your niche market turns to when they seek help, and become an active helper. Become their go-to person on your specialty topic.

4. Start a meetup group, host a coaching tele-group, or offer your services to meet a need in an already formed group.

5. Blog daily, or nearly, on topics and powerful questions you'd ask ideal clients in person.

6. Learn to interact with your niche using Facebook and Twitter.

7. Write an emotionally compelling marketing message about your client, not about you, and not about explaining coaching.

8. Don't give away free services, but do give well timed and well placed perspective shifting questions freely -- these are the best intro to your work and the most intriguing taste of your value, while also providing something of immediate value to prospective clients. It leaves people wanting more, and feeling just fine with paying you.