Marketing during COVID-19
Marketing during COVID-19
COVID-19 has had a huge impact all across the world, and has impacted how we work as Solution Focused Hypnotherapists. As we move forward, now more than ever, it's important to be visible and accessible to ensure you are at the forefront of potential clients' minds. Here are a few ideas that will help you do just that:
Effective and diverse marketing strategies are crucial for building and maintaining a successful practice.
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General suggestions
The marketing work you have put in place up to now will still be relevant. But because of lockdown (and even as we come out of lock down) it may need to be adapted. Have a think about the following:
- Before you do anything, do you have a marketing plan? If you do, does it need to be updated as a result of COVID-19? If you haven't got one, you should have! You can find our simple template to download and complete here: AFSFH Marketing Planning document. This is a great way to focus your thoughts about your business and how you take it forward.
- Does your website need to be updated with Q&As about conducting Online sessions? Even after in-person therapy is permitted again, online work may still be preferable for many people, especially given the potential wider audience! Don't forget to look at our guidelines for working online.
- Do you need to temporarily change your marketing message to incorporate the fact that trauma/OCD/anxiety may have increased?
- Maybe you could have a dedicated page about COVID-19 - it'll certainly be topical! Just be careful to adhere to Advertising Standards as always - see our page on this here.
- Do your marketing messages appeal to potential new audiences as well as your existing ones?
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Review and update your website
For many of us, our website is central to being found so we need to keep it discoverable and to stand out in the current climate. Here are some key things to ask yourself:
1.  Does your website reflect that you specialise or niche in a particular area of support or condition?
2.  If so, is the niche likely to be an area of concern for clients that is prevalent at this moment?
3.  How can you change the message on what you do have to adapt to changing clients’ needs?
4.  How many visitors is your website getting a day?
5.  What are the most popular pages on your website at the moment?
6.  Can your website be found in the search engines?
7.  If not, how can you attract visitors to enquire and book with you?
Whilst having and promoting a specific specialism can be a good thing, consider that some niche areas right now may be more relevant for your clients for example, health anxiety, fear of being out in public, children’s issues, weight problems, relationship issues, poor sleeping etc. So, what changes can you make to adapt and be found?
- Add pages to your website to deal with the problems that potential clients may be looking for right now such as: Stress, Anxiety, Low Mood, PTSD, Sleep and Addictions.
- New pages on an existing website can be featured in search engines and are ranked more favourably once steps to optimise for search have been completed.
- Monitor your website traffic using Google Analytics, it’s free to set up and easy to use. Track your daily visitors and pages visited. If visitors are mostly reading your page on sleep issues for example, then this may indicate an area you need to promote through your other communication channels and content.
- Add some video content to your website - this can help to raise your profile and improve your Google rankings. For further information, take a look at our Making SFH Videos page.
Other updates to your website:
As suggested in the AfSFH COVID-19 guidelines, we recommend that all clients are sent information about what social distancing & hygiene measures they can expect before they come to a session with you in person. As well as sending this out on a client-by-client basis, you might also like to include such information on your website. This will include what steps and measures you have taken as therapist, as well as steps they may be asked to take as a client (e.g. washing their hands upon arrival etc).
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Check your online listings
Spend some time updating your directory listings - do they represent you in the 'now' or when you first graduated? We can all be surprised at how times fly by and when we revisit a listing, realise it was out-of-date a year ago! As well as including updated contact and practice information, update with any new or relevant photos of you and your practice, which may help clients feel more at ease as they can see what to expect when they visit you. Further information about updating your AfSFH profile can be found here: Making the most of your AfSFH profile.
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Free marketing
Now is the time to really tap into free marketing and be visible, many of you are doing this already, but here are some ideas to consider:
- Find local Facebook groups nearby and join. Look carefully at their rules and post according to the admin regulations. For some, this may be daily for others weekly.
- Offer free sessions/group relaxation sessions or live talks on Zoom or Facebook for local people at home (make sure your insurance provider covers you for online working in this way). Alternatively, advertise (for free in Facebook Groups) free taster sessions to people in your area. At the end of that session you can discuss how you can continue working together.
- Give something away for free on your website in return for an email address such as an audio sample, self-help guide or report. Stay in contact with emails and updates because even if they don't book a session today, they may well need your help in the future. (Ensure consent to marketing options is collected when potential clients sign up).
- Run Facebook live sessions from your Facebook page. Design them to help with stress, anxiety and so on.
- Create your own Facebook group to offer support for people in your local area. Add helpful advice and answer questions. Be the expert.
- Write a press release and copy in your local newspaper to gather some publicity. You can find some examples in our Marketing Templates section.
- Many local business networking groups are now holding free meetings online for attendees and visitors. Investigate which are running in your local area and attend.
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Continue to keep in touch with past clients
You may have seen hundreds of clients in the past who achieved amazing results. In accordance with your GDPR/consent policies, you can keep in contact with them to remind them of the support you offer, provide useful content, invite them to your live sessions and offer value. It is so much easier to get a new client who already appreciates your work and may well need to see you again now or refer you onto their friends and family.
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Peer group and Supervisor support
Get in touch with other local therapists in your area or reconnect with people you trained with. Set up a regular online meeting to support each other. Keep the conversation solution-focused and decide on what small step(s) you can take ahead.
In the same way, get some support from your Supervisor - they will be on hand to help you come up with some useful, positive steps forward! Supervision can be a very powerful tool when we feel we have hit a wall with our marketing or our businesses. You can find a full list of AfSFH Supervisors here.
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Collaborations
Now is an ideal time to sit online and brainstorm with like-minded people to get a bank of ideas of what you can do. It doesn't necessarily need to be a fellow hypnotherapist; it could be someone self-employed in another area. There are many other local businesses that we are well positioned to support, for example physical therapies, nutritionists etc. Find these through local networking groups or contact them directly and arrange a one to one chat and find out if there are any opportunities to collaborate now or in the future.
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Get writing!
Some of you will have more time on your hands, others will have less (especially if you're home-tutoring your children). If you do have time though, try creating lots of social media posts and schedule them for the next few weeks/months or longer. Write articles or blogs that you can use in the future when, potentially, you have less time and so they'll already be there ready and waiting to send out. Don't forget, you can submit articles and blogs to the AfSFH (comms@afsfh.com) - once published, these are great to add to your own websites, showing you as an active contributor to the field of hypnotherapy.
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Social Media content
- Make sure your social media posts aren't just 'fluffy' or sharing other people's posts - be unique with your own content. Don't forget to use pictures that are branded with your logo if sharing photos on social media (software such as Canva can be great for this).
- Give valuable information on how the brain works, the negative fear factor, what people can do to help themselves, but also how SFH can help.
- Be topical, talk about COVID! Remember to keep in line with Advertising Standards.
- All the other issues that we worked with prior to lockdown are still there - but probably worse. Remember to keep your original messages going out there.
Tell people how you can help in a direct way:
- I help people sleep better
- I work with clients to help them overcome anxiety
- I have successfully enabled people to
- In these difficult times, anxiety has gone up
When marketing, consider your key messages from a client's perspective:
- How does your message help them?
- Does it provide information they are interested in?
- Why should they care about what you are conveying?
- Does it explain who you are and what you do?
- What problem can you solve for them?
- Why should they choose you as their therapist?
- How can they arrange to have therapy with you?
There are probably an infinite number of questions we could consider from a client's perspective. The important thing is that your website, your social media posts and any marketing you do is a real reflection of YOU and what you do. There are many reasons why clients choose a particular therapist, which may include things such as cost, location, availability etc, but most of all, clients select therapists that they connect with, and much of that connection will be established before you even speak with them on the phone.
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Final thoughts
Remember, marketing and advertising doesn't have to be done all at once! Have a phased campaign that fits with your budget and marketing plan. Remember, one size does not fit all - marketing methods that worked for one person may not yield results for another. Think about what is appropriate for you, your circumstances and the audience you are trying to reach.
There will be a lot of complementary therapists jumping on the marketing bandwagon as we come out of lock down, including hypnotherapists. Timing is very important - some may run out of marketing budget (or energy) before the wider population are ready to invest in things like private therapy or they may initially generate some clients and then stop their marketing activities, which isn't great for medium or longer-term planning for businesses. So, it can be a good idea to evaluate what you do, what you spend and when - a drip feed approach may be more successful that can keep marketing messages going.
Further help
If you require any further information or have any questions about any of the information provided here, please contact our Head of Marketing at: marketing@afsfh.com.
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