Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology and welcome to the new season. I'm really excited to be doing a new series of the podcast and we're kicking off with three episodes that are all about getting more clients into your practice or getting those first few clients, and what it takes in the modern setting to do that, because what I'm hearing a lot from people is that it feels like things have changed and that the industry is starting to change.
I think there's an awful lot of positive change going on in our industry at the moment. I think that people are more interested and positive about mental well being than they ever have been before, and I think that they are far more likely now to invest in looking after themselves in terms of their mental health than they ever have been before.
But there are also some difficulties in the industry at the moment. Not least, the difficulties caused by the wider economic climate, and I'm really aware of that. So in these next three episodes of the podcast, we're going to be talking about what we can do to make sure that we're running our businesses in the most effective and efficient way in this new climate, and that means not spending hours and hours on marketing, but really focusing on the stuff that is going to make a big impact.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
6 Ways to Use Google Trends for Marketing (Hubspot)
New Survey Asks: What Do Patients Want Most in a Doctor? (Everyday Health)
Measuring patient experience in healthcare (Science Direct)
Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School
Rosie on Instagram:
In this episode, we're going to consider why potential clients look to private practice in the first place, and what aspects of the experience of private practice are actually important to them when they reach us, because I'm a firm believer that business and marketing decisions should always be made with a client first mindset. That's actually what marketing means; marketing is actually the practice of putting the client's needs and desires at the forefront of business strategy. It's not about persuading people to buy stuff at all, it's about creating stuff that people naturally want, whether that's to purchase our paid for services, or whether that’s services that they want to use in the public or the third sector.
Now, in order to achieve that, we have to get to know our clients inside out and give them the best possible experience and the most effective path from where they are now to where they want to be. And this episode is going to give us some research based pointers as to where our focus should be going forward.
Unsurprisingly, there isn't much data to tell us about this. However, MIND gives a useful summary on their website, and MIND state it quite clearly; it's because people can't get the service that they want or need in the NHS (in the UK anyway), or they find the waiting time for the NHS service unacceptable, or they want the added confidentiality the private sector can offer, for example, travelling to a location where they're not going to meet people they know or choosing a completely online service.
One thing I'd add into that is often people come to the private sector because they want the efficiency that we can offer. So maybe they're very, very busy, they don't want to change their working pattern, and they want a therapist that can fit in with that. And we know that is just not the way that the NHS works. So understanding these motivations gives us an important clue as to what kind of services will work in the private sector, and what's not going to work in the private sector.
When you're starting out in private practice, it's a really good idea to do some research about what NHS services have long waiting times around you. What are the particular needs in your local community? You can then consider whether your specialism is likely to be in demand where you are. To be honest, I think in most areas, pretty much all specialisms are needed in the private sector at the moment because we're seeing long waiting times, but you will find that there are certain areas which are easier than others.
Google Trends data can actually give you an idea of what services are being searched for near you. I did a Google Trends search for the UK nationally (you can narrow it down further than that) and I noticed that neurodiversity related services, especially diagnostic services for ADHD and autism in children, are getting more interest than any other mental health related keywords on Google in the UK. The growth over the past year for those search terms has been absolutely phenomenal, and search terms relating to children also remain extremely high, which is a trend we've seen developing over the last few years.
So if you aren't sure what services to offer or what your focus should be in your private practice at the moment, and maybe you've got a wide range of experience and you could choose to specialise in a few different areas, I'd really encourage you to look at those local trends.
Look on Google trends relating to those specialist areas and see what is being searched for now, but also get out into your community, talk to other professionals. What are the services that they are needing to refer out to at the moment? Because that will tell you where you're going to find the easiest to target.
One thing that I also noticed when I dived down the Google trends rabbit hole was that ‘autistic child’ was trending with more than 70% more searches for this term, in the past 12 months than in the previous 12 months. So I clicked to explore this a bit further and found that searches for toys for autistic seven year olds, and other age related categories too, like four year olds, five year olds, etc., had increased by over 5000%. So if doing work with autistic children was my specialty, I would be thinking about writing content about toys that are beneficial for autistic children, because that is being searched for, it's something people are really interested in. If I was looking for a ‘more than therapy’ activity, which I wanted to add into my business, then I might be thinking about creating something play based for autistic children that would also have a therapeutic benefit, because we can see there that this is a growing trend that people are interested in this topic and they're getting more interested in it. So that's something that I'd be considering.
If you aren't sure how to use Google Trends, then just Google it! There are a ton of helpful articles. I've linked to one in the show notes from HubSpot, which will give you a steer on how you can start using Google Trends to look at what might be needed and necessary in your area of specialty and in your local area too.
Also do bear in mind that if we know that people are accessing your services because they want confidentiality, or they don't want the NHS waiting list, or they're seeking efficiency around their working patterns, then we also know that they're the kind of people that are likely to really care about and expect good customer service.
This should be a really key priority for all of us, but it often gets forgotten, especially when we're busy and all of our previous experience has been in the public sector where sadly the customer experience is often very far down the list of priorities.
Turning to the recent literature, what do studies tell us potential clients find important when accessing our services? Well, I really wish that I could tell you that there were tons of mental health specific papers from recent years, but actually to find recent, post pandemic offerings about this subject, I've had to dive into the general healthcare space. Thankfully there are a lot of transferable conclusions there and there's actually been quite a bit of research done. Hannawa et al. from 2022 did a study of patient perception of healthcare quality and found that strong communication amongst staff, so amongst staff teams, but also with patients care and carers, and perception of staff motivation, prioritisation of outcomes held to be important by patients, and strong systems and processes,...