In this webinar replay, Cory Miller shares the most effective tips for utilizing your website to grow your practice in 2021. He has been building websites since 1999 and built a multi-million dollar software business helping web designers over 11 years.
Transcript
Speaker: Cory Miller
All right. Welcome back to another allcounselors.com webinar. I’m excited to talk about this today. This subject about how counselors therapists, commissions, mental health professionals can improve. Your website is to do more for you and your practice. I’m going to give you five ways and including a bonus tip at first.
[00:00:21]Tell you a little bit about who I am and why I’m qualified to talk about this. My name is Cory Miller. I’m the founder of all counselors.com and have a huge passion for mental health. I am not a clinician, so you’re the clinician. But part of my mission in life is to help you connect with the people that are hurting.
[00:00:38] And and to do that better, we talked about one of the things I spent most of my entrepreneurial career doing, which is digital marketing. I had a software business. Started in 2008 grew to a multi-million dollar business and it was acquired in 2018. And in 2019, I left my company that actually built software for web designers to start our counselors.
[00:01:01] And I’ve got a couple of other projects, but this is one of my big focuses. This is life, and I’m also married to a budding therapist. She, a wife, Lindsey just graduated from the university of Oklahoma and really needs to get her exam date on the counselor very soon. But she’s going to be working professionally in the industry.
[00:01:20] I’m here to help people like you and her get found. Grow your practice prosper because I believe you’re doing such good work in the world and I want you to do well, too. So yeah, as we get started just a question who all already has a website, and if you could put that post those in the chat right below the video here, I just want to know, do you have an existing site?
[00:01:43] If you want put a link in there to your chat. And if we have time at the end, I’ll go and look and give you insights and tips for how to make your website better. Okay. So first I like to dial in as much practical things that you can do right now to make your website better, to get more clients. To have the life that you want to leave lead.
[00:02:07]Thanks, Brent. I’ll go check that out in a second. So the first way you can use a website is it needs to be prime and center stage for all your marketing efforts to oftentimes I think. And I know this you all are. You’ve went through so much schooling, so many supervision hours to having to do continuing education and credits you know, as well as juggle a business.
[00:02:30] And oftentimes the website is the last thing on your mind, but, you know, it’s, you feel like it’s a necessity and obviously why you’re here today. But the website. And I built an e-commerce, it was software business, but e-commerce business. We did, we had an office, but we didn’t have a phone number.
[00:02:47] I always bragged about that. We didn’t actually have a number. Everyone had to use our website. We were dependent if the website went down or if it wasn’t right, we didn’t make cells. And so I have lived this, but I’ll tell you for your practice, for those of you that are in private practice or have a group practice or wanting to start your practice.
[00:03:04] Make your website. If you hear anything today, it’s make your website, the hub for everything you do first and foremost, it needs to be a marketing tool for you, a marketing asset for cheap, for you to help you get new clients in the door to serve them, to help them with their lives. And to. Make money to sustain your life and all of that.
[00:03:24] So everything you do needs to point back to it too often, I talked to counselors and clinicians who think, well, I’ve got a website it’s called my psychology today listing. That’s great, but that’s an outpost. That’s not something you own. Just like a Facebook page. That’s great to have, but it should point back to the center of your universe for your practice in terms of marketing, which is your website, meaning a domain name you own that has some information about you and your work in the world.
[00:03:52] Everything needs to come back to the website too often. We get that skewed and I know it’s tempting to think about social and, Oh, has this great clinician has a hundreds of thousands of people on Instagram, but. At the end of the day, Instagram can change their algorithms, Facebook, whatever else, psychology to could, they could switch whatever they’re wanting to do.
[00:04:13] And you want something that you own versus renting. You’re renting over there and it’s a no cost for some of the social profiles. But. Your website is something you can control. And I want you to have max flexibility with that too, but all those things should help you pull people into your stratosphere, but they should point back to your website where you control it and you can do all the things I’m gonna talk to you about today.
[00:04:37] Okay. So, thanks here and I’ll get back I’ll get back to your question in just a minute. Okay. So first is this it’s just a philosophy is website is your hub okay for building your practice and most all of the things we’re talking about today are cheap or easy, free ways. You can get new clients into your practice.
[00:04:57] But the second that I talked to you and I’ve reviewed a bunch dozens of word PR of a therapist and clinic clinical websites. And the first is, and I know this is, could feel weird to you as a therapist, but your ideal client to think through. And if you’ve been in practice for a number of years, think through, look back and go who do I typically.
[00:05:19] Has drawn to my practice or who do I love like serving every single day. And then think through the modalities. Now we know them as modalities. Our clients don’t necessarily think of them as modalities, but they’re ways to work with our clients and think about those things that you use on a regular basis too, for a second.
[00:05:39] And the types of treatment. Options and modalities use that you tend to kind of come to more often, like cognitive behavioral therapy, for instance all the EMDR, whatever those things are, just look at your practice kind of glance back in your mind, anecdotally and go, okay. I tip. Typically serve senior adults.
[00:05:59] I’ve talked to a clinician. He actually works with senior adults who are home-bound. So that’s great. That’s an ideal type client of someone we can get a frame of mind of who typically is attracted. To our practice and we’re attracted to them to serve them and support them. The modalities are key for just a minute, because I want you to think about that.
[00:06:20] You might have a Medallia, you tend to use all the time, CBT, whatever it is out there. And what I want you to think about is the common themes, because we’re going to translate that. To our website, because those, the people that are most attracted to your practice are the ones you want to, when they see your side to go, this person, this clinician is speaking to me.
[00:06:42] This person can help me. Okay. That’s why we start with the ideal client. So that’s number two, getting you thinking about the ideal client. If you have some thoughts already put those into the chat so we can come back to those because I want to use some of the live examples that you might have. So right now, Brent, Carrie, Aaron, as you think you’ve already posted in the chat, what sticks out to you?
[00:07:06] And you might say, Hey, Corey I want to serve all people. Cool. That’s good. I like, I’m so happy for that. But there probably is a type of person, demographics, whatever it is that typically is drawn to. What if you say. Anxiety. I love to help people, the anxiety clients come in and I can really work through that with them and I make, and they see great results afterward.
[00:07:29] Afterwards. Think of those things. Put that down there. Thank you, Melanie. Okay. So Melanie trauma, EMDR, chronic pain somatic work. Okay. So that’s around trauma deep hurt. I’m curious, not only do you work with a lot of those who are suffering from substance abuse or other addictions, it’s it. Oh, okay.
[00:07:48] Okay. Okay. So with these modalities, you said no. Who does somebody stick out to? You? Like a type of person that is attracted to your practice and Carrie, thanks for this. Okay. So Carrie’s got three ones, college students, couples infidelity. Okay. Let’s start with couples in infidelity for a second. So I’m going to guess you might be LMF T or have some focus with maybe couples.
[00:08:09] I don’t know. Our presupposes on you there. Couple, some infidelity. Let’s say you go, okay. I do talk to her a lot and that’s what I help. Now. You want to be careful how you message that, but just knowing those things you said to call students to I’m going to guess couples are able to pay. A little bit more.
[00:08:26] I don’t know where the college students factoring in. If you’re working, if you happen to be by a university or something, but if we stick with couples for a second, that’s great. Now we can talk about these or, you know, I work with all ranges, diverse people, but I really help couples and. College to, you know, those could be buckets on your website that you talk about those particular groups on your website.
[00:08:51] So this is great stuff. You’re talking, you’re giving me good information and appreciate that because I want to help you message better reach those prospective clients for your business. But anyway, back to you, Melanie, for a second, we’re going to talk in a second about. Modalities and how to translate like EMDR and somatic work, what those things mean so that when somebody is suffering from something that these modalities help, you can give them the easy translation or the easier translation for what that really does.
[00:09:19] Okay. So that’s great. Let’s keep this in mind that our ideal client and some of the modalities we typically use or tend to use more than others. Okay. The next is the third is the key. These are the key areas of your site. Every therapist, website needs to have these. Key pages and it, but it can be in a one page, just a one page website, but here are the key stages that you need to have.
[00:09:47] And we’re going to shift perspective in a second. We’re going to think of like client, not like a clinician, but I want to set the stage with these key pages on your homepage, that when they hit the page, you’re going to get an, a meshed. If you’re building your own site and your own, you know, head like I do, sometimes she needed to think about what if my mom who had.
[00:10:07]We don’t treat our failure and everything, but what if my mom came to a website, what would she want to know? Or my son or somebody, a friend. And they go to the site. They want to know, think about what they want to know, who is the person that can help me. Right. Where I know in the United States in particular you have re state licensing, and sometimes you have reciprocity between States, but typically when I say where you work, it’s probably in a city, right?
[00:10:36]That you draw the most of your pay, your clients. So for instance, in Oklahoma city, I might say if you’re based in Oklahoma city, I go, well, there’s suburbs, there’s Mustang, Yukon, admin, Norman even Shawnee out here. Okay. Which one do you typically serve? Even more? That’s going to be a key, not necessarily for a prospective client, but those searching.
[00:10:56] I’ll talk about Google in a second. That type in. Therapist and to Google, we want them to find you, and if they’re in living in those areas easily, and then how you help, that’s where the modalities come into. You know, it’s not just saying CBT. EMDR it’s saying I help people through. And that’s where you answer the layman’s term.
[00:11:18]So your about page is where, so we talked about home page. Now it’s about page, about pages, where you talk about you, your passion, your calling for what you do in the world, your education, if you have books or other achievements, the about pages where you say. I’m an authority in this field. And this is also a way to show that you’re human.
[00:11:40] So a picture on your site throughout your site. Wow. I remember reviewing a clinic clinician set, and I said I had to really dig to find a photo of you. Now I get, there may be reasons that you do not want to put your photo front and center. But to me, when I’m talking to a counselor, I want to see who the person is.
[00:11:58] And I want to know there’s a human. Beyond the text. Okay. So that’s primarily your about page, but I would say you want to have your pitch picture of you, your office. If you’re in a group practice prominent on your site, so they know there’s humans on the other side of this services is where you talk about the modalities and treatment options that you offer.
[00:12:19] FAQ’s we’re going to talk about this in a second. This is where you put all those common questions you get asked over and over. Do I take insurance? Do I work with. You know, whatever specialty particular, mental health issue content and directions, we want to make it easy for people to contact you and find you.
[00:12:36] I realize we’re talking in the era in a pandemic and COVID right now, but I’ll tell you why having an office. Is really important right now in just a second. And it has more to do with marketing than should I have an officer not ongoing, I’ve heard, I’ve talked to clinicians who are considering giving up their lease.
[00:12:53] That’s your decision to make before you do it? I want to tell you one thing about that contact is just simply. It could have things like your hours of operation when you take clients if you are seeing clients in person where you park, how you get into the building all the things you could think of, but typically directions to directions.
[00:13:12] I’m going to come back again. It’s going to, this is a marketing thing that talks to Google that we’re going to come back and talk about this and why that is important, not just to make it easy for the client, but also to talk to Google. And then another, a basic website is client resources. Invariably, you’re going to have intake forms things that you exercises things that you might say it’s on my website.
[00:13:33] I’ll send you a link after the session to this. That’s another area we can put those type of client resources. So that is the basic key areas of the site. And that’s number three. The next is extremely important. I know you have been through hours and years of training, and then you have ongoing train to partake to make sure your craft is always you’re on the cutting edge of science and good practice.
[00:14:00] You’re talking about ethics and things like that. But too often you have all these advanced degrees, but we end up talking in jargon. This is not just clinicians. This is every industry on the face of the earth. We tend to talk about jargon, even me with digital marketing things. Sometimes I go SEO.
[00:14:15] And depending on who I’m talking to, they might not know what it is. There’s a lot of just using industry jargon. I see this most with that modalities. That w that, you know, those backwards and forwards, even trained in them, certified in them have ongoing training with those, but your clients don’t. And every time you think to put a particular amount modality or treatment option, I want you to go, what is the.
[00:14:42] What is this really do. Why do I use this and give a little bit of a definition? You might have clients that have been in therapy for years. Know what EMDR is. And I’m just using these because they’re on my brain right now, but CBT or whatever it is, and DBT, and they may understand that. But most people, particularly new clients.
[00:15:03] Don’t assume they understand that they haven’t been through years of training. Like you have do it every single day, like you do. And so cut out the jargon. Now, if you say cognitive behavioral therapy, Prince CS, CBT, put an explainer text somewhere in there to says, aye. Tend to use this in therapy sessions often because, and put your reason and like you would explain it to your mom or dad or your kids or whoever else.
[00:15:32]What, give me cut off the jargon and give me the simple explainer for what, how this would benefit. Why I would want to come to someone with that practices and uses EMDR or somatic therapy. We too often, and this is not just clinicians. Just assume that everybody knows that’s one way to cut down the barrier, because if you think about it, one of the reasons why I’m doing this work is I want to end help end and obliterate the stigma of mental health forever.
[00:15:59] I want to be a part of that contribution in the world. So clients have fears, they’re already wrestling with things that we’re struggling with. And by the way, I see a counselor about every two weeks and have for six years. So I love the work that you do in the world, but make sure you kind of make that simple.
[00:16:16] And I want to lower it when we talk about all these fears and the stigma or whatever might be. Hampering them from sending an email to you or making a phone call to you and booking that first session or the next session we want to, with our website, lower that bar and the friction as low as possible to make it easy to say, this person can help me and get connected to you in the healing that you can offer.
[00:16:40] So make it easy for someone to become a client. That’s like, if you are in a three-story. Building and you’re on the third floor and suite a and sometimes people take a left and not a right that you have that information on your website that you’re given it’s new prospective clients. And it can be pointed back to your website.
[00:16:58] That’s your hub. Your marketing and your information hub to help people lower the barrier to working with you. Okay. So here’s the key one. Think like a client on a condition for marketing purposes on your website is what are the most common questions you get? You know, one is you take insurance.
[00:17:15]Two is how much you know, those typical things, do you help me? You know, whatever me, whoever me is how do you work? Whatever those common questions that you get, that you know, in your head, you’ve got three that just popped in your head. I bet you write those down in your notepad, like God or your digital notepad.
[00:17:32] Write those down. Those need to be prominent on your website because we’re trying to lower the bar for someone to become a client. How do they book? So think like a client, just like you, when you’re going to a new store restaurant or you’re on vacation, the questions you might ask that your clients, your prospective clients have the same questions, lower the buyer, but making it so easy.
[00:17:56] What fears of what they have. I picked up lunch for my wife and I today. Well, With the curbside thing, I would just give it a slight example. I sometimes never know where to park. I never know. Should I do I need to go in, do I have, you know, even though they might say it’s curbside, I always have those questions.
[00:18:13] How do I let them know? Are they looking for me? All those things. If I’m that person, if I’m that restaurant in your case, the clinician, I would want those prominent on my website, take away and lower all those bars. So they have an amazing experience. One becoming a client of yours. And then second, this is your job doing the work.
[00:18:32] So, how do they book a consultation? How do you work? How does therapy work? You know, whatever you want to say. And if you say Phil, you know, like you got to use those terms, talk there or whatever, just given say the term and say, which means this, so, okay. That is number four now. Kay. This is the biggie.
[00:18:54] So we’ve talked about just using websites for marketing, lowering the bar, talking about your ideal client, where they see your site and they go, this person can help me. This person is serving who I am with the issues and struggles that I have. I want to hit the easy button, hit the contact form at the email, at the phone number and contact them for this.
[00:19:15] But this one, now we get into geek land, which is my land. Okay. Optimize for Google. So if you’ve ever on your phone like me three times a week, probably I go, I need a plumber typing plumber into giggle. Okay. Google is a source of free traffic. Right now of the best or the hottest or the most ready buyers of any product can service.
[00:19:41] If you’re typing something into Google red dress I was trying to look for a video screen earlier today, and a video screen that, you know, changed pictures. You put on your desk and stuff I’m in, I’m ready to buy. If you think about that, think about all those things you look type in plumber into Google.
[00:19:58] You probably your water heater broke, you know, or you have a mess coming in the kitchen or the, whatever the same said if someone types in and there’s probably likely in your area. I think Erin said he was in Boulder tapping in therapist, typing in whatever. On the other side, they’re looking at, you know, back to your ideal client, they’re looking for you.
[00:20:20] Those are the buyers we want to prospective clients. Excuse me. We want to capture. To your website and how we do that as called the biggest thing for clinicians. Solar protection practitioners in particular and also group practices is a concept called local SEO search. SEO stands for search engine optimization.
[00:20:41] We want your website to be talking to giggle and sharing key data. When someone is looking for therapists, Google knows they’re sitting in, I’m sitting in Oklahoma city. Okay. We want that linked up to your website. And another thing I’m going to talk to you about in just a second called Google, my business.
[00:21:00] Now talk to you about, if you have an office now Google my business. You need to have a Google, my business profile and all counselors. We can do both Google my business for you and your website by the way. But I want to tell you the benefits it’s when you type in plumber or therapist, if you do it right now, go do it right now on your phone or in your browser.
[00:21:20] Type in therapists and see who see what pulls up in the map pack. You know, that the display somewhere along there, depending on where you’re at the, be a map pack and just have these three clinicians, like I’ve done that earlier today. There’ll be, I think there’s three clinicians within a reasonable radius of me.
[00:21:37] We want you to be found there because likely the closest people to you in proximity are the people that historically before COVID for sure were the ones. That were most ready to become a client because they’re looking for you therapists. We want you to be found there. Two parts. This one is getting found in the map is called Google my business.
[00:22:01] We have a service that does all that for you. But you can create a free account. If you actually Google, this is gonna be funny. Google my business. You’ll come on the page. You can sign up for free trial or not a free trial. It’s a free account to do all this. All you have to do is verify your address.
[00:22:16] Typically Google will you’ll tap in your address. One 21, Northwest, whatever. Okay. Then Google will send you a postcard by mail to verify your address and that’s it to get the account. Now you want that profile to be optimized. And this is where local searches democratization. It’s just basically means people in your local area are searching for the services.
[00:22:37] So people like. He in there, plumbers, electricians dog walkers therapists, counselors, all that, anybody that you go to is serving a local geographic region, which is typically most counselors and clinicians. I want you to be found on Google my business, and I want your site to reflect the same. This is where, when we talk back about ideal client, when I said, where, what areas are you serving?
[00:23:02] I want to say, like, for instance, if I am actually in Oklahoma City, I might say I’m in North Oklahoma city. I might say I pull from Edmond, which is the North suburb. If I’m an admin, I want to start with Edmund, Oklahoma, and then start to look at local communities. Now I talked to a therapist in Brooklyn.
[00:23:19] I said, I don’t know your region, but there’s likely. Neighborhoods and geographic ways that people search for those particular things. Primarily you want city, but you also want to take into account the nuances, you know, do people in Oklahoma City call it Northwest Oklahoma city or are you more in one of the suburbs?
[00:23:40] And we want that listed both on your Google, my profile give you my business and your website because they are like Batman and Robin, they work together. One, two punch. Okay now next, and please ask some questions on a Brent. You’ve got one and I’m going to come back to it. Okay. Trisha, I’ll come back to Google my business.
[00:24:02] You bet. I’ll give you a link in just one second and I’ll actually show it to you. This is my kind of bonus point, but your website needs to look great on mobile. So you build your website or you have somebody do it, and that’s what we do at all. Counselors. We want to take off the tech from you. So you do therapy.
[00:24:19] We want to get you that flow of new customers, seeing your website, seeing you on Google my business. So you booked new appointments with people that are hurting out there, but this point is make sure website also looks good on mobile. There are a number of people that will just have a mobile phone and maybe even just an Android, right.
[00:24:38] Found like, and you want your website? It’s called responsive web design to look good. On all devices that they could be searching for. And I put here, click the phone number. So when you go to a site and you’ve ever seen the phone, you just click it and it just pops up. Do you want to call it? That’s what you want.
[00:24:55] You want them to have, see again, we’re lowering the bar, lessening the friction to push, call, leave a message. If you’re in the session and then you get back to them and book a session with them, make sure it’s good on mobile. Your website. Okay, so now we’ve got another 30 minutes. We can answer your questions and all that, but I want you to know all counselors.com.
[00:25:15] We’re here for you. We’re getting ready to roll out our beta website packages, if you want to if you want us to help you with your websites, I’ve given you enough where you can do it yourself, but you say, Corey, I want to do therapy that you do the marketing. We’d love to help [email protected].
[00:25:29] If you go to the contact [email protected], you can book a free discovery session. We can talk about strategy and help you kind of put these pieces together. We can go through the ideal client exercise. We can start to help you what we do on our website packages that we’re going to roll out in the next two weeks.
[00:25:46] Do it for you. There’s no go in, build it together and have to worry about all the build it. I mean, build it yourself has to worry about tech and marketing. We’re going to take all that off of you. And so hit us up and we’ll be sharing that in our newsletter. Very sane to roll that out. But if you’d like to be one of the first to be a part of that program, we’d love to have you at all.
[00:26:05] counselors.com. Okay, so I’m going to stop the recording so we can start getting to your questions, but let me just review real quick. Your website is your hub. It should be the center of the universe, the sun and everything. You do, social psychology today, whatever listings you have out there should point back to your website your emails, your business cards, everything.
[00:26:30] Think about this. Another reason to have market your website as your hub is w how do people, other colleagues refer to you? I probably give you the website or a phone number, but we want them together. Website that has everything, how we work, all the questions, lower the bar, get someone just to call and book that I’m ready to book that appointment.
[00:26:47] You, we are connect. We, you connect with what I’m suffering from struggling with, and I need you to help me. So I’ve decided is your hub think about the themes of your ideal client? Just look back in your practice and at really go, okay, this particular demographic is more attracted to my practice. This is who I also like to work with.
[00:27:07] These are the types of things I like to work with them to help them heal. And those that clinics is so key because it needs to be infused on your website and everything you do. How you talk about your practice. I gave you the key areas of your website and about page a services, page, a FAQ page, contact page, client recess page.
[00:27:26] Those are basic stuff for a client clinician website. Think like a client, not a clinician, meaning let’s just cut out the jargon. Try to answer all the questions you can for your prospective clients. So it lowers that bar optimized for Google. So you can Google. Google my business right here. Someone asked Tricia Google my business.
[00:27:46] That’s how you get found in the map. Pap, you can set up an account where we can do it for you. And your website needs to reflect those things, which is who you are, where you serve, the reason we talked about and that you’re a licensed. Certified trainer, whatever licensed therapist or whatever people are looking for in Google for you.
[00:28:04] And I gave you a bonus. One is make sure your website looks good on mobile, on all devices. All right. That’s my presentation. And I’m going to get to questions right now.
