My Predictions for Therapist Marketing in 2026 (Episode 48)
In this conversation, I’m sharing my predictions for marketing therapy practices in 2026, grounded in data from our most recent State of the Industry survey and insights from working with thousands of clinicians across the country. This is not a hype-filled “do more” episode. It’s a clear-eyed look at what’s actually changing, what still works, and where therapists need to focus if they want sustainable growth this year.
My core belief for 2026 is simple: this won’t be the year of more marketing—it will be the year of clearer marketing. We’re moving out of urgency-driven decision making and into a preference-driven market, where clarity, confidence, and trust matter more than ever.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why decision friction—not lack of demand—is the real bottleneck in therapy marketing right now
2️⃣ How your website is now doing the work urgency used to do—and why weak websites are being exposed
3️⃣ What AI will (and won’t) fix in 2026—and why point of view is becoming the biggest differentiator
4️⃣ Why the money conversation isn’t about clients paying for therapy, but clinicians trusting their marketing
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Hey y'all. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 48. Today I'm sharing my predictions for 2026. By now we've served over 5,000 therapists in our paid programs and services, and we just wrapped up another state of the industry survey last month, which I mentioned in some of these episodes.
I fortunately have a lot of exposure to a lot of different therapy practices. I get to talk with clinicians on a weekly basis, and not just that, but I have insight into some larger trends. Right. I can't guide you on things like copy or SEO or websites or marketing if I don't know what's actually working.
So I sit in a really cool position, having exposure to a wide range of practices, and also insight into some larger trends that I get to boil down in, ultimately serve up to you. So that's what this episode is all about. Every year around this time, therapists are asking what's gonna work this year?
What's gonna work now? What's changed? And you know, this year, I think that question feels heavier than ever for some, because many clinicians are noticing that their effort isn't translating in the way maybe it used to. So it's a big question right now. What's gonna work this year? This episode is meant to be encouraging and also very reality focused. I'm not going to blow smoke up your skirt. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. And also I see so much potential for clinicians who are willing to do things well and to do the right things consistently. So I hope that you walk away from this episode encouraged and perhaps.
With some important reframes and reorientations in mind that are gonna get you moving in the direction that's ultimately gonna get you where you want to go in 2026. Now here's my thesis. If I had to boil down what I think is gonna happen this year, I don't think 2026 is the year of more marketing. I think it is the year of clearer marketing.
I have been saying for a while, I would say the last two years, that I am seeing the gap between successful clinicians and struggling ones widen, and I think we are going to see that gap exposed in a new way in 2026. Now, if you are currently identifying with the term struggling, that could feel really, really defeating.
But the fact is you can be very, very successful. I believe that for you, if you're focusing in the right ways.
We're gonna see that gap Widen and I know which side of that gap I wanna see you sitting on. Okay. Now let's get clear about the environment you're actually building in right now, because it's not the same as last year. It's certainly not the same as 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago Now, from our SOI survey, our state of the industry survey, one of the biggest things we saw is that the majority of therapists who have been in practice for longer than a year,
so 2025 was not to their first year in practice reported that it felt harder to get clients in 2025 than it did in previous years. So most clinicians felt that it was higher. Now this isn't because demand has vanished. You see everywhere that there is a mental health crisis going on. We know that there are still clients out there, but you know what it is because of urgency has cooled.
Okay? I've talked to some of our confident copy students about this at length, but we are firmly in post pandemic times. I've said this recently on the podcast. What happened? The way that you can market in the COVID times and in the immediately post COVID times is very different than the way you can market now.
Urgency has cooled. Clients are not coming. Hungry, hungry, hungry for therapy . In COVID, we saw very high urgency. We saw people making faster decisions. There was less comparison. And so while, yes, there was an absolute flooding of the market, as clinicians went online to serve the needs of their clients, the demand was meeting that need.
Now we're seeing slower decisions. We're seeing more thoughtful evaluation, people taking more time. And more fee sensitivity before the trust is built. These are all things that could be interpreted negatively. I want you to take them neutrally. Okay. Clients are making slower decisions.
They're evaluating more often, and they might have some more fee sensitivity. That is neither good nor bad. That is just good information. Okay, but what's important to notice here, the 2026 environment that you're sitting in right now is not a desperation driven market anymore. Even if there is a mental health crisis and a great need for the work that you do.
We are in a preference driven market. Let me say that again. We are not in a desperation driven market anymore. We are in a preference driven one. The data shows us that clients are still seeking therapy in droves, but they are more careful now about who they choose. So how do you become the one they're gonna choose?
Right? So in this episode, I wanna share five different. Predictions statements, observations about what I see happening in 2026 when it comes to marketing your therapy practice. Okay. The first one is that the real bottleneck in your marketing is decision friction, not demand.
So this is building on what I was just sharing. Like I said, therapists are saying that it's harder to get clients, and yet the average conversion rate actually increased year over year. So that means that the rate at which clinicians are booking clients that reach out to them actually got better in 2025.
So they're saying it's harder to get the clients, but when they get them, they're converting them better. The TLDR of that is when the right clients inquire. They're more likely to book. That's a cool thing that's encouraging. This tells us something very, very critical. The problem, quote unquote, in your marketing, is not convincing people to say yes.
It's getting them to reach out in the first place because the data is showing us that if they reach out and they're a good fit, they're probably gonna book with you.
If we can cut out decision friction, making it easier for people to reach out, that means that you're gonna result in fewer low intent inquiry, so people that are wishy-washy and unsure. You are gonna get more cautious, but higher intent prospects. I don't mean to say that every single person that gets on the phone with you is gonna be automatically sold on you, because another trend that we see is that people are quote unquote shopping around for therapists more than they ever did.
But if you're getting on consults with people, the data is showing us that despite them likely speaking to or researching other therapists, if your marketing is doing its job, they're very likely to book with you more likely than ever, in fact. And it also tells us that if we can reduce that decision, friction in your marketing, then you can be supporting decision making before people contact you.
That's those consults you get on where they say, I already know you're the therapist I wanna work with. How can we be supporting decision making before you even talk to them? That is also going to lead to more conversions and more clients. So right now your marketing isn't necessarily about generating more interest, but it's about removing friction from the decision to actually reach out.
Now, you cannot get people reaching out if they don't know you exist. That's that fueling of the engine we've been talking about a lot recently. But if your engine is consistently and regularly and easily leading people into action. Versus causing them to pause and become unsure, then we're gonna see better results.
So friction that I see often when I am reviewing an application. For instance, someone applies to work with us on our website, and I look at their site, I look at where they're at in their practice and I make some recommendations based on what I'm seeing.
Where am I seeing that decision? Friction show up. Uber vague positioning, trying to be all things to all people. Overly clinical language that is leading people to feel completely removed from the warmth and the human behind that work. Websites that are not clearly sharing or stating a niche and articulating some point of view that could be truly written by any other therapist.
These are the kinds of things that I'm seeing lead to that decision, friction, because if you're not showing me why you're the therapist for me, how am I supposed to know? If we can reduce that, if we can be so sticky and specific that they know or they don't know, that you are either attracting or blessing and releasing.
Every time someone comes to your website, the results follow. So that's that first point of view here is that the real bottleneck in marketing is not going to be about demand. It's going to be about decision friction. Because you're out there doing the thing, people know that you exist. How easy are we making it for them to realize you are the therapist they've been looking for.
Alright. My second observation or prediction is that websites will now do the work that urgency used to. So I was just sharing earlier about how COVI was driven by urgency. We were all sitting at home. We were struggling with our kids. We were struggling with our partners.
Our mental health was rearing its ugly head, for lack of a better term. Right. We knew we needed help. There was urgency. Without that urgency then what is driving? People to decide whether or not they actually pay 1 50, 200, $300 a session. In our SOI survey, we asked people how good they felt like they were doing at their marketing.
They rated how confident they felt in their marketing and you know what separated the two groups? it wasn't niche clarity, interestingly enough. So when we associated people who felt good about their marketing and whether or not they had a clear niche and people who didn't feel good about their marketing and whether or not they had their a clear niche, guess what?
They both had clear niches, so wasn't niche. You know what the real difference was in the data, whether or not their website was producing clients. That was the biggest differentiator between those two groups. This is telling me something huge. It's not that therapists don't know who they help these days.
Clinicians are doing a better and better job than they ever have of understanding and speaking to an ideal client, but it's that their websites aren't communicating that clarity on their behalf so they can know, but if their websites aren't doing it for them. That's what was actually separating whether or not they felt like their marketing was working.
Isn't that fascinating? The urgency of people needing a therapist. Now, it compensated for weak websites and weak marketing in 2026. Guess what? The website has to earn trust. Your weak website will be exposed. Your weak marketing will be exposed. The goal of your marketing and of your website, which is the center of your marketing, right?
That client conversion engine, it actually has some emotional and cognitive labor to do for you. It is not just a business card. If it's doing that labor for you, again, the data shows us you're gonna feel a lot better about your marketing and you're gonna be over twice as likely to have a full caseload.
I've talked in the past about the idea of point A versus point Z marketing. I actually was just speaking with our confident copy students about this last week. What I mean by this, if you haven't caught some of those episodes, is often you, as the clinician know there's an issue that your client doesn't yet.
So you love working with relational trauma or complex trauma, and so naturally you wanna talk about that in your marketing. Well Sally, the client who's looking for a therapist like you, has no idea. She has relational trauma. She just thinks she's anxious or she's people pleasing too much, or she keeps picking the wrong partner.
That's point a. Point Z is where you're gonna get 'em. That's the complex trauma that, oh my goodness. Okay. My childhood wasn't as good as I thought it was. But point A where Sally finds herself today, that is where your marketing has to focus.
So websites that are speaking from point Z that are leading with your clinical insight rather than the deeply felt experience of your clients. We're increasing that friction. Clients aren't feeling seen quickly enough. Oh, I don't have trauma. That's not for me. I don't identify with this.
And like I said, if we can reduce friction, we're gonna see results. So in 2026, your website isn't supporting your marketing. It is your marketing. It is the actual benchmark. The data is showing us that. So where there used to be urgency, now there's a demand for clarity and your website is the leading force in whether or not your marketing presents with that clarity or doesn't.
Alright, my third observation, ai, how can we talk about 2026 and not talk about ai? Right? AI is gonna raise the floor. Okay. The bar has been raised by robots and learning language models . It's also going to expose who has no point of view. Now, many, many therapists report in our SOI and elsewhere that they're trying AI for content.
They're leaning on chat GPT to write things to ideate, but they also have indicated that they feel really unsure if it's helping or if it's hurting. They're using it and they think what they're getting is good, but is it actually doing what they need it to? At the same time, because of AI and everything else going on in the market, marketing feels noisier than ever.
Standing out feels harder. It seems like there is a therapist on every corner and a therapist who shares your niche on every corner. You might even feel like you're competing with AI because your clients are going to that rather than sometimes sitting down with another human. Now, I firmly believe that AI is not going to replace good therapists for the right clients anytime soon, and we could debate that in an entire other episode.
But if we can agree for now at least that AI isn't replacing therapists, then what is it doing? It's amplifying your point of view or your lack of one. It's exposing generic marketing. If websites aren't converting. Now, if you're sitting here and you're frustrated because you have a website and it's not doing what you think it should be, AI generated content ain't gonna fix that.
It's actually probably just gonna amplify the issue. AI is gonna be part of that elimination of the middle that I was just talking about. You're either going to be successful or you're gonna struggle, and AI is going to make that gap even wider.
If all you do is lean on ai, you're not gonna have bad marketing, but you're not gonna have excellent marketing either. You're gonna have forgettable, safe, templated, robotic marketing. And in this market where clients are more discerning and more skeptical than they have ever been. That's one of the worst things that you can do.
AI can accelerate clarity you already have, but it cannot create it for you. Therapists without a point of view, without a deep knowledge of who they are, what they bring to the table, the clients with whom they do their very best work, they will feel this the most in 2026. Again, not bad marketing.
Not excellent marketing either, and the gap between bad and excellent is about to get wider. Again, it's not to say that AI cannot be used, but AI cannot generate the clarity that you yourself must bring to it if it's going to be useful to you. It's one of the reasons we developed Cali and the new niche coach that we are releasing next week during Confident Copy.
And the new niche coach that we are releasing next week for Confident Copy, because just going to chat GBT and asking for help with your niche or your website copy, that's when you're gonna get the safe, templated, robotic stuff. But when you are being prompted to think for yourself, when you are being prompted to bring your own point of view, when you are being prompted to actually bring your own self to the ai, then the AI can make it better. There is absolutely room for it, but it cannot be a substitute for the things that you as the human, as the clinician, and only you can do.
So again, AI is gonna raise the floor again. No one's gonna have bad marketing anymore. Because we can get decent marketing from ai, but if all you leverage is ai, you're gonna lose out on the opportunity to be excellent because there are things AI can do and there are things that cannot. And in a market and an industry where your clients are desperately looking for true human connection and are more discerning when they aren't getting that than they have ever been, if all you do is serve up robotic connection, they're gonna sniff that out really, really fast.
So this is about exposing a lack of point of view and a lack of clarity. Something only you can provide.
All right. Next up, let's talk about money. My next observation is that the money story of 2026 is about clinician confidence and predictability. Not whether people are gonna pay for therapy. That's been the narrative for a long time, and you'll see it in Facebook groups. Whatever echo chambers you might hang out in.
No one's paying for therapy right now. No one will pay that. It's impossible to be successful. The data doesn't show us that.
The fact is people are paying for therapy. They absolutely are. I have countless examples of it in just about every market, every part of the country, any niche, you can be a full fee clinician. So the idea that people aren't paying for therapy, I believe is fundamentally untrue. What's actually happening is, like I said, it's about clinician confidence and predictability.
When people talk about money getting harder in therapy right now, it's easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. What I mean by that is assuming that clients suddenly aren't paying for therapy, that full fee care is becoming unrealistic, that insurance is the only viable path forward. Like I said, that's not actually what I'm seeing and it's not what our data shows.
Clients who pay full fee do so because they have a deeply felt need. They are resourced, and they are motivated enough to find support. Those three things must be true. So they're not casually browsing for a therapist. Hmm. Maybe I'll talk to a therapist this week. They're not necessarily price shopping.
They might be thoughtfully considering fees, but they're unlikely to be making decisions based on fees. They're also not paying because they're certain, because therapy doesn't offer certainty. But they're paying because they know they need help. They've recognized that in themselves.
That hasn't changed going into 2026. Okay. Now, when we looked at the SOI, we saw that fewer clinicians reported being fully full fee year over year. So that decreased just slightly 24 to 25 with fewer clinicians being full fee. Therefore, more clinicians reported taking insurance. But what was shocking is that the number of clinicians who plan to depa has almost doubled between 24 and 25.
A large percentage of currently insurance-based clinicians want to move away from it, but their confidence in doing that is very, very low. So again, when we ask them to rate, how confident do you feel in building a full fee practice, that confidence is low. This combination matters. There's desire, but a lack of confidence.
It's not a values issue. It's not even a belief in their work issue, but it's a confidence and predictability issue. Being full fee is not just a pricing choice, right? It's a business decision, and it's a business decision that you can only make if you actually trust in the system that you're building and the ability to be successful.
Trusting that inquiries are gonna keep coming. Trusting that the right people are gonna find you trusting that gaps or slowdowns aren't gonna derail your income. Like I said, clinicians aren't staying on insurance or choosing to take it because they think their work is less valuable. Absolutely not, and it isn't less valuable.
But when we look at those that are wishing to depa, they often are staying on insurance because it's allowing them a level of predictability when their marketing feels inconsistent, because traditionally getting clients through insurance has been quote unquote easier than full fee.
Now, let's go back to that kind of broader context. I was talking about the environment in which your marketing is working. Right now decisions are slower. Marketing feels noisier. Inquiries can sometimes feel feast or famine. So in an environment like that, it makes complete sense that clinicians are becoming more risk aware, more uncertain.
For many insurance has been a way to smooth the volatility of their practice. Now, my prediction for 2026 is that the clinicians who successfully go full fee or stay full fee will be the ones who build marketing they can trust. I know based on the data that more people than ever more of you sitting here listening right now want to depa and get off insurance than ever before.
And I believe that those who do that will do that because they can trust their marketing. That means trust in marketing, that is producing consistent and qualified inquiries. 'cause again, we know those conversion rates are up. We know if they reach out, they're likely to become clients. But you likely are looking for some level of certainty, just like your own clients, that what you're doing is actually gonna work.
So to be successful in 2026 as a full fee clinician doesn't necessarily mean you need to have the highest rate in the room. But it does mean that you're gonna have to be able to trust your marketing enough to absorb some of that risk.
The real question in 2026, if you find yourself in that camp of wanting to depa or currently being full fee, is whether you trust your marketing engine. If you do, chances are you'd rate that confidence pretty high, and the results are gonna follow it.
That's what it's coming down to.
All right. My final prediction or observation for you is that the boring things, they're still gonna work in 2026 as long as you do 'em. Well, the boring things are still going to work. When we looked in our state of the industry survey at the top client sources that are being reported, guess what?
They are networking with other therapists, SEO. Directories. Those are the top three.
Some of the runners up for effective channels, Google ads, networking with other complimentary professionals. Therapist, Facebook groups like these are not the sexy, flashy channels. They're not the brand new things. They're just the consistent high intent channels that people are using. What do I mean by that?
Your marketing is most likely to work when it meets someone at their level of highest interest and motivation. You are not reaching your client at their level of highest interest and motivation on TikTok. Does that mean tick TikTok can't work? No. But you are more likely to reach someone at their highest level of intent and motivation on Google or on Psychology today, or when they have asked another therapist for a referral.
That's what I mean here. The boring stuff, it's still gonna work. You do not need to reinvent the wheel to be successful. In fact, the most successful clinicians right now are doing these things.
When we look at the full fee fully booked therapist that we surveyed the cream of the crop, as one might say, 93% of them have gotten a client in the last six months networking with another therapist. 80% of them, 80% of fully booked full fee. Clinicians have gotten a client from Psych today. 82% of them have gotten a client from therapist.
Facebook groups. 77% have gotten a client from SEO. If you want to be successful right now, you don't have to go out and do the shiny object thing, the flashy, sexy. New stuff. You can just do the things that have always worked and you can do 'em really, really well. The fundamentals, they don't stop working.
Maybe one day they will, but now is not that time. However, the tolerance for doing them poorly, that's what's running out. So networking only works when you know. What it is that you do and how to get in front of those people. I've talked recently the fact that successful networking is about being one, memorable, so you actually come to mind.
And two, easy to talk about. If you fumble over the work that you do well and who you serve best, that person you're talking to is gonna fumble to. So how can you be memorable? How can you be easy to talk about? SEO works? When it actually speaks to lived experience, we are past the time of SEO requiring that you
be super robotic and learn all of this technical information. It is mostly about you displaying your authority and speaking to the deeply felt needs of your clients directories. Work when you're being specific, when you jumping off the page, when you are being seen, you're not gonna be seen all the time.
Are you gonna fill your caseload there? Probably not. But they're still working and they also work when the website that person goes to, 'cause they're almost certainly going to visit your website, confirms the trust they started to build in your Psychology Today profile instead of eroding it. You just gotta do the simple things well, you've gotta do them consistently.
You've gotta do them with excellence, and the results pay off. I told you at the top of the episode that I don't think that 2026 is going to be the year of more marketing, but of better marketing, of clearer marketing. And this observation and prediction really confirms that you don't necessarily need more platforms.
But you need a stronger execution where you already are. How can you be doing your current marketing better? How can you be leaning in harder? How can you become more consistent? How can you articulate a clearer point of view? It's about sharpening, right? Again, not recreating the wheel, but optimizing, improving, polishing, sharpening.
That's what's going to lead folks to be able to stand out, not necessarily because they did something brand new, but because they did the things that actually work really, really well.
So those are my thoughts. The first observation that the real bottleneck in marketing in 2026 is not going to be demand. But decision friction. So if you're gonna be successful, it's about reducing that friction and the results will follow. The second one is that websites are going to do the work that urgency used to because of where we find ourself in the market.
Number three, AI is raising the floor, but it's also exposing those who have no point of view. The gap between successful and struggling. AI will expose among other things. The fourth one, the money story of 2026 is about clinician confidence and predictability, not about whether or not people are gonna pay for therapy.
If you can trust your marketing engine, you can be successful as a full fee therapist.
And finally, the boring things, they're still gonna work in 2026 when you do them well. I believe that with my whole entire heart. I want you to know that I can say with great confidence that being a full fee clinician is still possible. Converting right fit clients you love to work with is still possible.
The demand still exists. People are out there right now looking for a therapist like you, but specificity, excellence, clarity, those are the multipliers. Those are the differentiators right now. This is not going to be a year to wait and see what happens. This is going to be the year to take your marketing bull by the horns to decide what you're committing to, and then to do that very, very well.
Like I said, as much as I want to be encouraging in this episode, I also wanna be really real with you. I wanna give you data backed information, not just running on vibes, and I hope you're walking away with some of that right now. Everything I've shared today, the website gap, the clarity gap, the confidence gap, these are the things that we work on inside of Confident Copy.
It's why I believe in the power of Confident Copy more than I ever have in the four and a half years that I have run this program. It's for therapists who want their website to actually convert to do that emotional and cognitive labor that I was mentioning earlier.
It's for therapists who want confidence charging full fees, commanding the fee that. You are worth, and that allows you to enjoy not just the work you do, but the life outside of it. It's for therapists who are ready to stop guessing, to give you a plan, and to give you focus in the areas that are going to give you the most bang for your marketing energy buck.
It's about creating that engine and that foundation upon which you can build in whatever way makes sense for you with intention. So many students come into confident copy identifying with that. Well, I've just been throwing spaghetti at the wall, or I just got off a conversation with a clinician who said she wanted to feel more in control of her business.
She wanted to feel in control of when she got clients and when she didn't. And a lot of factors go into that, but it starts with having an engine you can trust knowing that that part of your marketing is doing its job so that whatever else you choose to do to get clients. You know, is pouring into and directing back to something that's actually going to pull its weight.
Now you've been hearing me chat about the reopening of Confident Copy. We do this twice per year, A big discount, extra bonuses. This is also the last chance you're gonna have at Confident Copy with live support until later this year. So. After the reopening, which begins next week. If you are interested in live support, you will need to wait until likely August to enroll in that.
Now, you'll still be able to enroll in the curriculum between now and then, and I'll be sharing details about that. But if you're someone who knows that they would like that experience as they go through this transformational process, this will be the time to join. So doors are opening a week from Thursday.
As you are hearing this, the 22nd of January, they're opening early to our wait list members. By joining the wait list, not only do you get that early access, you also snag an extra a hundred dollars off on top of the $500 off that we're offering everyone. So if you're someone who's sitting here realizing.
I want this for my practice. I want to feel in control and like I can trust my marketing foundation. Jump over to the wait list. There's no obligation. No one's gonna bother you if you decide not to join, but I encourage you to take that action, step walker strategy code.com/waitlist so you don't miss that early access and that extra discount.
I want to see you experience 2026 from a grounded, safe, trusting place. I want you to be able to sit back and trust your business. Now, I don't mean sit back and not do anything, but I want you to be able to rest in what it is that you're building. If Confident Copy can help you get there, amazing. I'd love to support you.
Maybe you need confident copy to get there, maybe you don't. Either way. My hope is that 2026 is the year that you build for yourself something you can rest in.
I think 2026 is gonna be incredible. I think it's gonna have its challenges just like any year. But I am so excited about what's to come and I hope you're feeling the same way. The market is changing, but we can change with it, and only good things are ahead. Thanks for joining me today. I'll see you in the next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Join the Confident Copy waitlist for early access and additional savings:
https://walkerstrategyco.com/waitlistLearn more about Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/confident-copy
The Walker Strategy Co website:
https://walkerstrategyco.com
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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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