Therapy of any kind can be a scary prospect for your potential clients. They may be worried by the unfamiliar, by scary sounding terms such as schemas and cognitive dissonance. They may be put off because they don’t know whether something will hurt them physically, such as acupuncture and chiropractic, or whether hypnotherapy really can make them cluck like a chicken and do things they wouldn’t normally do.
While you may be at ease with the terms you use every day, your prospective clients may not be, and one way to overcome this problem is through use of strategic and helpful content to reassure and draw clients in.
Make a plan, depending on who your ideal client is, and think about the kind of questions they might have. When you take on a new client, listen to the questions they have and use those questions to make content to help people who may be thinking about therapy. Perhaps even survey your existing clients and ask them what they wish they’d known before they started therapy.
Ideas for content
1. Glossary
In certain therapy practices, like psychotherapy or counselling, there are some complicated terms which are unavoidable. While you will, obviously, talk to your clients in a way that doesn’t require them to use a dictionary or take a degree, having a simple glossary on your site to explain some of the terms in plain English, with perhaps a touch of humour, if appropriate, can really help your potential clients to feel more comfortable.
2. FAQ
Answering basic questions, such as ‘will it hurt?’ or ‘how does a therapy session work?’, is another great way to reassure prospects and put their mind at ease.
3. Blog
Your blog is a perfect place to share things like ‘a day in the life of a chiropractor’ or ‘what really happens in a hypnotherapy session?’
Use the survey results and the questions you came up with to shape what you might write about, and reflect the language used in the questions back in your answers to help your prospects relate to you.
Consider making videos or having a podcast occasionally to break up the written content and show off your personality. Let people get to know you through your blog and you’ll get through the ‘know’ and ‘like’ stages of marketing to the ‘trust’ stage in no time.
