Every Therapist Needs a Knock-Out Brand
As more and more people choose therapy and teletherapy, two things are happening. First, more people have access to therapy services - amazing!
The second, as a therapist you’ll find your competitors are no longer just the practices across town. Your competition is now opened up globally.
How do you stand out in a sea of competition, when any client can work with nearly any practitioner anywhere? The answer is a knock-out brand.
It’s true. Think about the choices you make when purchasing something as trivial as clothing or furniture. More likely than not, when you’re looking for semi-permanent pieces to your wardrobe and home you survey how a product feels, looks, and fits with your current style. Does it look like “you”? Does it seem like it will help you live your daily life comfortably and fashionably? Will it fit in your home seamlessly?
The brands you’re shopping are on to something - they know you’re asking these questions, even if you’re asking them subconsciously. If a shopper will be so selective about the types of clothes they wear and the furniture they put in their home, just think about the kind of thought processes your potential clients go through as they search for a therapist that feels right to them.
Do I really need a brand as a therapist?
For a client, starting therapy means engaging in a relationship of vulnerability and trust. Sometimes, this is a kind of relationship they’ve never had before. With new waters to navigate come some hesitation and fear.
This is where your brand comes in. Your brand should do a lot of work upfront to help establish a level of connection and trust before your future clients ever sign up for that free consultation. Your brand is what encourages them to click, and keep clicking all the way to you.
Without a great brand, you’ll need to do more grueling work to sell your services, like:
Use your rates, inclusions and services as selling points (and to stay competitive, you’ll need to do more for less and less and less over time).
Spend more on advertising to get your services seen by standing in front of your competitors (but without a great brand, your ads won’t be as effective so you’ll need to pay even more for advertising - double whammy).
Spend more time manually searching for new clients to fill your turnover rate because your clients chose you for your low prices, not because you were the best fit for their needs.
However, with a great brand, you’ll see:
Longer client retention because your brand played matchmaker, drawing in the right clients for your services.
Higher conversion rates. Meaning, more of the right clients are saying, ‘yes,’ and going from prospect to client without your advertising dollars or time spent as a salesman.
More clients are telling more people about you, bringing your practice even more clients who are ready and sold on working with you.
How does a brand even do that, anyway?
This all sounds great, but does it still seem a bit like magic? In a way, it is because your brand literally shapes your clients’ perceptions of you.
It influences how they experience your brand without even getting to know you at all - it’s a visual, emotional, and psychological extension of you that lives on your website and in your brand materials.
A great brand will do three things for you and your therapy practice. First, it will build and encourage brand awareness, which is the foundational piece of any effective marketing strategy. Second, it will build brand loyalty, encouraging new clients to become repeat clients. And lastly, it will build brand affinity, encouraging repeat clients to tell others about you (hello, referrals!).
Brand Awareness
A great, effective brand will build brand awareness. Brand awareness speaks to people’s ability to recognize and recall your brand in a sea of others doing work similar to you (i.e. that “know, like, and trust factor”).
In a nutshell, brand awareness measures how easily your brand is known and felt by your dream clients, even when you aren’t personally interacting with them. And, a great brand encourages them to go from interacting with your brand to interacting with you - it’s the bridge to help them go from prospective client to client!
Brand Loyalty
A great brand is an outward reflection of what your clients and future clients will experience once they are inside your services, working with you. It almost gives them a peek inside your consultation room! If these two experiences match well (and a knock-out brand does just that), then your services will affirm your clients’ impression of you - increasing their trust in you! And with trust comes loyalty.
This is the core of brand loyalty. Brand loyalty happens when clients choose you above your competitors again and again - they don’t need you to continually sell them on your services or convince them to keep coming back. They just do because they trust you that much - you lived up to your brand’s hype.
Brand Affinity
Brand affinity takes brand loyalty to the next level, encouraging your most loyal clients to evangelize on your brand’s behalf. At this level, your brand is drawing in clients on autopilot, building a waitlist for you while you are, well, doing anything else!
Brand affinity happens when your clients realize they share core values with you and your brand. This is why it’s incredibly important for you as a business owner to understand your ‘Why’ and your core values - these are the building blocks for a strong and effective identity-led brand.
How confident are you that your brand is intentionally building awareness, loyalty and affinity in the hearts and minds of your future clients? Let’s make sure your branding and website presence are a strong reflection of you - learn more about the Dawn Approach, a unique, identity-led brand and website design process for service providers, coaches and therapists.
