As therapists, practitioners and coaches we’ve all had clients that were a pleasure to work with, turned up on time, paid their fee’s, followed our advice, referred us to others and in general, made our work and lives more pleasurable and profitable. And we’ve also probably had the opposite of this too.
So assuming that you want more of your ideal clients, what can you do to attract them?
Well, there are loads of things which is why having an overall strategy can so important to your therapy business however, because in the last blog I wrote about therapy fees, let me use that as an example.
You can read, Therapy Fees: Should You Hide them? here by clicking this link.
Now it might seem like a bit of a jump from advertising your prices to targeting specific customers, however it isn’t really because one of the main purposes of targeting your ideal customers is so you don’t waste your time, money and efforts attracting just anybody.
Here’s an example for you:
If you attract 10 potential clients to your website who think £50 is expensive for an hour of your time and yet you charge £100, if they can’t find your fees on your website and have to contact you, you’ll have to spend valuable time trying to convince them that you’re worth the fee. Now because what they think you’re worth and what you charge is double, the chances of them booking with you are slim. You might get one or two of them but for all the effort you took to chat to all 10, will it be worth it?
E.G. If you take 15 minutes communicating with each of the 10 people it’s going to take 150 minutes of your time.
If you manage to talk one person into booking a 60 minute session with you, that’s another 60 minutes, which in total is 210 minutes of your time working.
But because the only money you receive back is your fee of £100, you have effectively just taken less than a third of your normal price:
Rather than £100 for 60 minutes work, you’ve taken £100 for 210 minutes of work, nearly three times more effort for the same money. Is that what you wanted?
But what if we turn this on its head and use an example where the therapist uses their website to target their ideal clients and promotes their fees on their website.
This time the therapist proudly states that a 60 minute session is £100.
Firstly, all the clients that think £50 is too expensive don’t even bother contacting them.
Result!
The therapist will already be saving their time and be able to put their efforts to better use.
But those who think £100 is reasonable or even a bargain are likely to contact you, even if it’s at a lower volume. So this time only good leads are coming to you which makes the chances of you converting them into customers much higher. So, if only one person books with you this time, (although it’s likely to be more) you’ll earn what you’re worth, £100 for 60 minutes work which was just what you wanted. (Give or take a few minutes to book them in.)
And there’s more…
Because more quality leads will be coming to your business something else will change; the quality leads will be more likely to book several sessions rather than just one offs and will probably be more invested into you and what you do. As well as helping the effectiveness of your treatments these clients are more likely to refer you to others, write testimonials and request to be friends with you on Face Book. In effect, you may have a client for life and all because you added your fees on your website! (Targeted your ideal client!)
Now in reality you might need to do a little more than just add your fees to your website to target customers like this but this would certainly be a good start. We tend to include a number of strategies into our web builds however, right now, adding your fees is probably one of the easiest things you can do and it shouldn’t cost you much (if anything) to do either. Just get in touch with your web designer, tell them that you want to test a new pricing page and see how it works for you.
Of course you’ll need to work out how much to charge so if you want to know more about that, sign up to the blog because I’ll be talking about that next time and if you’re serious about building a healthy therapy business, look out for our 2-day training event which is coming soon. Subscribers to the blog can get in first.
Until next time,
Keep well.