Overthinking Your Marketing? Try This Approach. (Episode 37)
If marketing your private practice feels like staring down a giant, tangled to-do list—you’re not alone. In this episode, I walk you through a simple, grounded framework to help you get unstuck and figure out exactly where to focus your marketing energy. Whether you’re brand new or knee-deep in your business and still feeling overwhelmed, this conversation will help you take a deep breath and take your next right step.
We’ll talk through the three stages of your client’s journey—Unaware, Aware, and Sure—and how to reverse-engineer your marketing to support that path. Plus, I’ll share the most effective conversion strategies I see therapists use to consistently attract RightFit, full-fee clients.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why starting with “making people aware” can backfire—and what to focus on first instead
2️⃣ The three client journey stages and how to align your marketing with each one
3️⃣ A decision-making framework to help you prioritize what to work on next without the overwhelm
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Hey, hey, welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 37. I've had some folks join the Get Booked Out Facebook community, which is our free Facebook group. If you guys are not a member, you need to be we will link it in the show notes, but I've had some new ones join us recently. And whenever we have some new folks join, I always ask, what's your biggest marketing challenge right now?
How can we, how can we help you? And I'll point them to, you know, a podcast episode or a training or someone else that I recommend, whatever it might be. And a common theme I've heard in a lot of those clinicians and also in some of the clinicians I've had the pleasure of talking to one-on-one who schedule meetings with me is just kind of this theme of, I know marketing matters.
And I still have no idea what to do. I have no idea where to start, or I'm in the middle of it and it just feels messy. It's not that I don't care, it's not that I'm not willing to try, it's that I don't know what to actually do. And we've talked a lot in the marketing therapy podcast about how action breeds confidence that we don't have to feel confident in order to take action, right?
That that is really where the confidence comes from, it takes courage to do that. But what are you actually supposed to do, right? Marketing feels like this giant tangled to-do list for so many clinicians. There's your website and SEO. What about that and a EOI heard I need to get found on chat, GBT and Psychology today.
What about other directories and then their social media? Do I need to blog? I know I need to network. I hate networking ads. Should I put them on Facebook, Instagram, Google. Like no wonder you are not sure what to do. Right. And I think in today's landscape with AI and endless advice, you can find on any platform ever, and this culture of comparison, whether we like it or not, it's really easy to feel like you're already behind.
Like surely that therapist on Instagram or that one who posted in a Facebook group about having a full practice, they've obviously got something figured out that you don't. But again, this isn't because you don't care. It's not because you're not trying, it's simply 'cause you haven't figured out what's moving the needle.
Where should you be focusing? And I think the thing I wanna point out here is that when everything feels equally urgent, when you consider absolutely everything in your marketing to be equal in urgency. No wonder it's impossible to move forward.
There's no prioritization, right? But when you zoom out and you look at marketing through the lens of your client's journey and what is gonna move the needle first and second and third. Then it becomes so much clearer where your efforts are best spent. And that's what I wanna help you break down today.
So this episode is for the brand new clinician, like the ones that joined our Facebook group most recently, who are getting started and who wanna do it, right? And this is also for those therapists who I know and love dearly who are in the middle of this and still feel a bit overwhelmed. I want to acknowledge that marketing feels big because it is.
But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, and that's what I wanna go through today. Now, if you've been in my world for a while, you've heard me talk about the client journey. There are three phases your clients go through when deciding if you are the therapist for them. So all the way on the left, I want you to imagine first phase unaware.
This phase is where your client knows they have an issue, they know they're ready to consider therapy. But they have no idea who you are. They don't know you from Adam or Eve. They're unaware of you. Then in the middle is the next phase aware. Awesome. They learned about you. They know who you are. That doesn't mean you're the therapist that they wanna work with, but at least they know your name.
And then over on the right is the third phase. Sure. They are sure that you are the therapist they've been looking for. They're ready to work together. They reach out, they get started. So this client journey unaware to aware, to sure is what your marketing ultimately has to cover. Because just because someone knows you exist doesn't mean that they're gonna reach out to you.
And just because you're really good at helping people become sure doesn't mean they know you exist. Right? So it's really, really critical to think about your marketing in the context of this journey. And where in this journey does your marketing need the most help? Now what I've found is that most therapists want to move through these stages in order, which makes sense logically, chronologically.
They wanna start with awareness and then they want to build trust because awareness is what is required to go from unaware to aware. But it is trust. That must help people go from aware to Sure. And so most therapists think Awesome. I'll start on awareness and then I'll get to trust. But marketing that actually works.
It works. Backward. You have to reverse engineer from where you want your client to end up. So if you're sitting here staring down this elephant, that is your marketing. Start from where you want them to end. Start from helping people become sure.
Begin with the end in mind, the full fee RightFit clients who feel sure of you. Who know that you are the therapist they've been looking for, who are ready to get started. So first you have to ask yourself, well, what makes someone sure? What makes someone go from knowing about you to knowing you're the one they want to work with?
Clarity, trust, connection. That's what's critical. So that's why if your website, for instance, is super unclear or your niche feels fuzzy or too generic. Then even if you double your website traffic, it's probably not gonna lead to many more inquiries and they're unlikely to be the right fit.
Lemme say that again. If your website is unclear, your niche is fuzzy or generic, then even if we double your website traffic through ads or networking or you spinning your wheels out there on social media, whatever it might be, it probably isn't gonna lead to many more inquiries and those inquiries aren't likely to be a good fit.
That kind of hurts, right? Because that means that you could be out there pouring so much fuel into your engine and the engine not taking you anywhere. So you have to make sure people can become sure of you before you make more people aware of you. So, like I said here, we wanna begin with the Sure stage.
We wanna consider this as the foundation of your marketing. What helps someone view you as the therapist they wanna work with? Well, when I look around at the most successful therapist I know, I actually just had a one-on-one session with a clinician last week who expects to make over $300,000 this year.
I know other therapists who are fully booked at 3 75 plus a session. Okay? So when I am looking at the most successful by those standards clinicians in our world.
Or when I look at the therapists who are getting regular inquiries, regardless of fee from people who are desperate to work with them, who are a perfect fit, who light them up and make them excited, what do I see? Well, when I look at what's helping their clients become, sure, I see things like a clear niche specific message.
I don't know if you are like me and you hear about niching everywhere you go, granted, this is my profession. You gotta have a niche today. But the way that you niche, the way that you present that niche, the way that niche is communicated is so critical these days. It's why I created our magnetic niche method earlier this year, because I realized therapists deserve a tool to actually figure out how to do this right, because just having a niche isn't enough. It's gotta be clear and it's gotta be communicated the right way. Okay, so that is something that we are seeing helping these clinicians guide people from Aware to Sure.
Copy that builds trust and connection is critical. That phone call where someone says, I read your website and I know you're the therapist for me. Or how so many of our confident copy students will report, they'll get on consultations and clients will actually read the copy back to them. As an indication of how much it resonated with them,
The words you use in your marketing are absolutely critical to how successful you are in your practice and in this market. We need to see that trust and connection built. And guess what? That's not gonna happen with something that you pounded out from chat GBT. Okay, so genuine human, authentic copy that's building trust and connection that's helping people become.
Sure. What about some of those subtle things we've been talking about more recently? The subconscious things where I become aware of you. I land on your website for the first time, and then it's the experience I have with you. It's the design. It's the way I move through your website that actually leads me to become sure of you and to feel like you are trustworthy, like you are worthy of whatever fee it is you're commanding.
We're looking at things like professional and cohesive design when it comes to shore in that category, even things like directory profiles. Now, I cannot wait to get our 2025 data around psych today and the success there, but in our most recent data, which was December of 2024, over 80% of fully booked clinicians have gotten a client from psych today in the last six months.
It's over 75% for fully booked full fee clinicians. So the, well, it doesn't work for private pay. The data doesn't show us that. Now, like I said, we'll see what 2025 says. Maybe that's changed drastically. But we do know a directories don't work the way that they used to. We are no longer in the glory days of changing your profile and getting four clients the next day.
However, we do still see them work. So even your Psych Today profile or your inclusive therapist profile, your mental health match, whatever directory or platform you choose to be on there, even that can lead someone to becoming sure of you because how many other profiles are they looking at? This is not just an awareness tool where they learn your name.
It's a sureness tool, right? It is a trust building tool because it leads them to decide, am I gonna reach out to this therapist or keep scrolling? Everything I've outlined here are conversion strategies. They're the things that turn potential clients into paying ones that lead people to click that button and to schedule that consult, to book that first appointment with you.
If we don't have these things in place, then just like I was saying earlier, we can double your website traffic. We can double your psych today traffic. we can double your Instagram following. We're still not likely to see a meaningful. Increase in RightFit inquiries. I've used this metaphor before, but before you pour more water into the bucket, before you spend more energy and time trying to fill your bucket, can you make sure that the bucket doesn't leak First, I want your website and your marketing to hold water, and that's what we're talking about with these conversion strategies.
After that, and only after that, after you've built that foundation then, then it's time for those awareness strategies. Then it's time for the SEO and the blogging for the networking, for the collaborations, but for the social media, for the directories, for the podcasting, for the speaking, for the Leaving, flyers places, all of those things that comes after, and you get to decide which of those awareness strategies make sense for you.
Is that making sense to you? So if you're sitting here and you've been looking at your marketing wondering, where do I focus? Do we have that conversion foundation in place? Do people know how to become sure of you? Okay, great. Now, do they know about you? So this helps you break down this massive elephant that is your marketing into some smaller bite-size pieces.
It is a reminder here that you don't need to do everything. You just need to take and choose your next bite. So I encourage you to reflect on a couple of questions. One, are people not finding you at all? Do they have no idea you exist? Then you need to focus on awareness strategies. Are people finding you but they're not reaching out?
Then we need to focus on those conversion strategies, those Sure strategies. This helps you diagnose where the breakdown is in your marketing. If you're sitting here as an established clinician and you're saying, Anna, I did spend time on my website, I do feel good about it. Awesome. Then hopefully that foundation is in place and now we need to get people coming in.
That's where your efforts need to be focused, and you're absolutely allowed to dabble and to try a thing here or there. Maybe you like SEO, and then you find out actually social media is where you shine. Perhaps you just wanna go all in on Google ads and not worry about playing the organic game. Maybe you're a natural networker.
Go try on a couple of these for size, but realize that something's gotta happen, right? And that if we have the foundation in place, then it's our job to drive awareness to it. If you're not sure if that foundation is working, then we need to fix that first. Sometimes I will sit down in a discovery call with a client if they're interested in our done for you services, and if they have an existing website, I actually ask them to pull up that website data and we look at, all right, are people getting to the website and not reaching out?
What metrics do we have here? And maybe it'd actually be fun to do a podcast episode similar to this. I'll make a note of that, but I will ask these folks to pull up their website data and we'll look at that together. And we'll decide together, okay, do we have enough data? Ak, do we have enough eyeballs on this website to say, Hmm.
We have a lot of people coming and not enough reaching out. That tells us, you know what the breakdown might actually be in the website because you're doing a good job of sending people to the site, but the site isn't pulling that weight. It's not driving people from potential to paying clients.
Sometimes I'll sit down in those calls and they'll pull up their website data, and we don't have very much data. We don't have very much traffic to the website, and then we're left with the sort of chicken or the egg scenario. Okay. Do we focus on just driving, driving, driving awareness, and then seeing if the website works, or do we use this as an opportunity to make sure the website is as good as it can possibly be?
Now, usually my recommendation is the latter. Whether they work with us or not, it's really important to me that they're not going out there and investing their time, their energy, or their money into pouring water into that leaky bucket, right? I wanna see therapists feel really confident in their bucket.
You know, we refer to that as your client conversion engine, because once you have that, then you have this really steady foundation to stand on and to build on, to test on. If you aren't sure. If your foundation is any good, and then you go out there and again, spend your meaningful, valuable time, energy, or money sending people to something that may or may not work.
We're just perhaps pushing out the fact that you need to come back and optimize that. So that's some of the decision making criteria. But like I mentioned at the top of the episode, I know so many of you're sitting here saying, but Anna, what do I do next? Okay, what do you do next? Do you have the foundation in place?
Are you a hundred percent confident in that foundation? If not, address it. Address the foundation. We talked about those conversion strategies being a clear and niche specific message. We talked about genuine, authentic human copy that's building trust and connection. We talked about professional cohesive design.
We talked about strong directory profiles if you choose to use them. All of these are those conversion strategies. If you're not sure that foundation is solid. Then focus there. Then focus on helping people become aware of you. Remember, we're working backward on that client journey, so from Sure to aware, how do we help people become aware?
That's where you get to decide, and I recommend that you dabble if you are a dabbler in one to two at a time, and make sure that you are testing them for long enough. I'll have therapists go out there and be begin running ads, for instance, for one month and they're not seeing great conversion yet.
A month probably isn't long enough for us to know. Or they'll start on social media and they'll be really, really excited for two weeks and then they burn out. Whatever it is that you choose, choose something that feels sustainable over the long term, because if you're gonna be a business over the long term, then this is a relationship you're going to have to maintain.
So we build our foundation, we help people become aware, and then we diagnose, and then we look at that journey, we wonder, how can I make this even better? Could I help more people become aware of me? Could I be putting more effort in there? Could I be helping people become even more sure of me?
Could I get even clearer on my niche? But this is the decision making criteria for which bite you take. Next, I want to remind you that every therapist you admire. Built their practice, one step, one bite at a time. The difference is hopefully, eventually they learned how to take those bites or steps in the right order, and I'm sure they look back and think, oh, I could have done that differently. And my hope is that your steps can be as linear as possible, that you would know here's what to do first, and then second, and then third, because the paralysis of sitting there staring at this massive elephant and wondering what to do.
Is only keeping you more stuck, so my hope is that now you have a little bit of a framework on how to decide what your next step is gonna be. And remember that whatever step you take, even if it's one that you would backtrack on later steps, build confidence. Action builds confidence.
You do not need to feel confident to start. The confidence will come through that, the clarity will come through that, but that is how you build confidence. That is how you build momentum. Small and focused action. Intentional action is what compounds into very real and tangible results. And I can only say that because I've seen it be true in countless practices
because the fact is you cannot market effectively from overwhelm. It is just not a healthy or sustainable place to be. But you can market effectively from clarity. Not to say that to-do list won't feel big, but knowing what to do first and what to prioritize, that's what can change things. And it all starts by working backward through your client's journey, the client journey, again, unaware, aware. Sure. Where do you start with your marketing? Sure. Aware, unaware.
I recommend that you choose one focused area of your marketing, one focused stage of that journey to work on this month. That could be your niche, your copy, your design, your SEO, your networking efforts. Choose one thing, one part of the journey that aligns with this decision making criteria, and start taking action.
I've been mentioning that our Black Friday sale is coming up later this month, and we are just days out from actually opening up our early bird list. When you join our early bird list, you get a chance at our daily Door Busters, which includes extra savings on top of our already crazy savings every day.
But this is our biggest sale of the year, and I'm really excited about what we're offering on Thursday. So Thanksgiving Day, we are offering the absolute biggest discount we've ever done on. Anything at Walker Strategy Co. And that is 80% off all of our bite sized resources. So Magnetic Niche Method, the therapist, DIY brand kit, the Psych Today Success Pack set up for SEO Success.
All of our mini courses and bite sized resources are 80% off. I think the cheapest ones like $7. You have no reason not to jump in, but they're all designed to help you take one next focused step. And my hope is that through this episode, you know what that next step needs to be for you.
'cause it's gonna look different than your colleague or your friend or your peer. It might be clarifying your niche, maybe it's tightening your copy, in which case you're gonna love our confident copy day, which is on Friday, where you can save some big money on that program.
You need to figure out what your next step is. What phase are you working on? What bite are you taking, and how can that lead to those full fee right fit clients that are out there looking for you right this minute? Choose the area that's gonna move your practice forward. And remember, you don't have to do it all.
Do this one bite at a time. The rest will follow. All right. I hope this one was helpful for you. Like I said, a really helpful. Decision making tree and criteria as you stare down the elephant. That is your marketing. If you're interested in learning more about our Black Friday sale, please do head to walker strategy code.com/bf 25.
You can preview all of our deals and like I mentioned a little bit later this week. Our early bird wait list will open and you'll have a chance to jump in there and qualify for even more savings. Alright, y'all, I appreciate you being here today and I'll see you in next week's episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
The Walker Strategy Co website: walkerstrategyco.com
Magnetic Niche Method: walkerstrategyco.com/mnm
DIY Brand Kit: walkerstrategyco.com/dbk
PsychToday Success Pack: walkerstrategyco.com/ptsp
Confident Copy: walkerstrategyco.com/cc
Black Friday Deals: walkerstrategyco.com/bf25
Join the Get Booked Out Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/getbookedout
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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