How I Filled My Practice Without Traditional Networking or Psychology Today

What are the best referral sources for psychotherapists to have a full practice? Most therapists would say networking, Psychology Today or word of mouth referrals. Those have become the gold standard regardless of your specialty or location. A smaller number of therapists would mention Google Ads, website SEO (search engine optimization), social media, or other types of digital advertising that’s becoming more available to us as modern therapists.

When you read over that list of referral sources, how do you feel? Overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, confused? I personally feel a sense of dread and obligation that I have to engage in practices like networking and advertising that feel inauthentic or misaligned with my quiet temperament.

Building a successful practice as a therapist (whatever that means to you) is not part of the curriculum during our years of training, so most therapists are left in the dark when it comes to how to manage our marketing strategy. Sensitive Therapists often feel even more at a disadvantage as we are more prone to feel overstimulated and overwhelmed when putting ourselves out there. We also have these amazing spidey senses that can pick up on a “salesy” vibe from a mile away and don’t want to bring that energy into our own marketing, which can deter us from marketing altogether!

At the start of each year, I have a routine of looking over my referral tracking spreadsheet from the previous year and identifying my best referral sources. I do this partly out of curiosity, but mostly to see what’s working and bringing in clients. This review process helps me understand where to put my marketing energy and dollars going into the next year.

This year I thought I would share my findings for 2019, none of which include traditional networking, Psychology Today or anything that involves being salesy. As you’ll see, most of my marketing is digital, meaning I can do it in my PJs from home. What does result from word-of-mouth is a result of engaging in authentic relationship building with colleagues or attending HSP events where I just get to enjoy connecting. I hope sharing my process will inspire you to think outside the box when marketing your own practice.

Highest Volume of Referrals

The following are my top four referral sources, listed in order by how many client inquiries I received. Although these four had the highest volume of inquiries, not all converted equally.

• Website = 73% conversion

• Instagram = 35% conversion

• HSPerson.com = 40% conversion

• Colleagues = 50% conversion

Lower Volume, but High Conversion

These four referral sources only had a handful of referrals each, but all converted highly.

• Live HSP Events = 66% conversion

• Current Clients = 100% conversion!

• Guest Blog Posts = 50% conversion

• Podcast Interviews = 50% conversion

For the second year in a row, my website continues to be my highest source of referrals with over 67,000 visitors last year. Honestly, I’m not sure how good that number is, but at the very least I’m getting full-fee clients and growing my email list, so it works for me. This tells me that my website copy is speaking to my ideal client (which I actually hear often during intakes) and that it makes sense to continue to focus energy on keeping my website current. By keeping my website up-to-date, I build strong SEO (search engine optimization) which means Google or other search engines are more likely to show my website in searches. I also build SEO by:

• Making sure every page of my site uses keywords that my ideal client would be looking for and including some of those terms in headlines

• Writing blogs and updating website content periodically

• Including photos on every page with descriptions

• Creating backlinks by linking to my page from social media and guest articles that I write for other sites

Reflection Questions

Now it’s your turn! Looking at your own referral numbers from the past year, it can be helpful to ask yourself the following questions:

• What referral source had the best conversion rate?

• What referral source had the highest volume of client inquiries?

• What referral source had the lowest conversion rate?

• What referral source had the lowest volume of client inquiries?

• Where do high volume and high conversion rate intersect?

• Where do low volume and low conversion rate intersect?

• Which months are the busiest for new client inquiries?

• Which months are the slowest for new client inquiries?

Adjust Your Marketing Plan If Needed

After reviewing your referral sources and answering the questions above, you can gain insight into what’s working to bring in new clients and what is just wasting energy. As Highly Sensitive Therapists who get overstimulated easily, it’s important to use our marketing energy efficiently. Here are a few action items you can take away from your reflections:

• Put your marketing energy and/or dollars into your highest converting/highest volume referral sources. For me, I’ll be writing more this year on my own blog and searching for guest post and podcast opportunities.

• Stop investing energy and/or money into your lowest converting/lowest volume referral source. For instance, I took my listing down from Psychology Today about two years ago because it wasn’t converting for me and unsubscribed from another directory this year.

• Look at your busiest and slowest months. If you notice a pattern from year to year, you can take this into consideration to manage anxiety during slow months and plan vacation time around your busy months.

• If your conversion rate is very high overall, say over 80%, you could consider raising your rates.

• If your conversion rate is very low overall, say under 30%, you could consider reviewing your website copy, intake process, fee structure and/or marketing sources to determine what is getting in the way of booking new clients.

Referral Tracking Resource

If you don’t have a system in place for tracking your referral sources or want a spreadsheet that calculates all the totals and conversion rates for you, you can purchase my referral tracking spreadsheet, tutorial and annual review workbook here. Identifying which referral sources are bringing in the most clients and which to ditch will help you maximize your marketing time and budget while reducing the overwhelm that is so common for Sensitive Therapists.