Spoiler Alert: Your Marketing Needs to Evolve (Episode 006)
Every therapist, no matter how strong their marketing is, will experience slow seasons. The consults drop off. The inbox quiets down. And your brain? It starts to spiral: "Did I mess something up?" "Do I need to change everything?" This episode is here to remind you—those dips aren’t failures. They’re part of the rhythm of running a private practice.
In this timely episode, I walk you through the real reasons your practice might slow down (hint: they’re often not your fault) and how to respond with confidence instead of panic. We’ll explore how to interpret these quieter seasons, what not to do, and how to re-engage with your marketing in a way that’s strategic, not frantic.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ The top four causes of slow seasons—and why they usually aren’t about your marketing, fees, or niche.
2️⃣ The biggest marketing mistakes therapists make during a dry spell (and what to do instead).
3️⃣ How to trust what you’ve already built while making intentional tweaks that actually move the needle.
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Hey, hey, welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode six. Today we're talking about something every single therapist will eventually face, even the ones with amazing websites and great marketing systems and full caseloads, A slow down, a dry spell, a season where the consults stop coming in like they used to, and your brain, it starts doing the thing.
Did I mess something up? Should I lower my fees? Do I need to change my niche, my website, absolutely everything? Do I need to burn it down and work at Starbucks? I can only state these thoughts because I know I've had them myself. When you're in these times, it feels like a problem. It feels quite honestly like failure.
But here's the truth. This is not a glitch in your business. This is part of it. Even with great marketing, slow seasons happen. The question is not, if you'll hit one, the idea that we see out there, oh, just get your marketing perfect and you'll never have a slump again. That's not real. Every single clinician will face this.
So it isn't if it'll happen, it's how you'll respond when you do. So today, I think you'll find this episode very timely. I want to help you reframe what slowdowns actually mean and what to do when they show up. Now, here's what I see happen all the time. A therapist builds a beautiful foundation for their marketing.
They get referrals. Hopefully they launch a website. Things pick up their caseload, starts to fill. Life is good,
and then it slows down. The inquiries get quieter. The inbox is crickets. Fewer inquiries, even fewer consults. People not following up after you send them an email, empty spots that weren't there a few months ago, and their immediate reaction. Something must be wrong with me.
Something must be wrong with my business. I've had so many clients and students reach out in this exact moment, especially the ones who were doing really, really well for a stretch because it is unnerving. I remember one therapist we worked with, we wrote and designed her website. We got it live. She received an influx of clients. I'm talking at least a couple a week for a while.
She was fully booked in the first few months. Then about six months later, I signed onto my email and I had a message from her. She was in a panic. She said, it's dried up. I haven't gotten a referral. In weeks, can we meet something like something must be broken. So we did. We hopped on a call. We looked at the data.
We looked at her website analytics. We looked at what, what was going on. We reviewed her marketing and the actions she was taking. And here's what I told her. Ultimately, nothing here's broken. Everything is as it should be. Ultimately, this is just a dip. She hadn't changed anything about her marketing. Her messaging was still on point.
Her visibility was still very consistent. And sure enough, a month later, I had another email from her. You were right. Things are picking back up. I just needed to ride it out. This is the part that's so hard for therapists and understandably so, because when you're not doing anything differently and your consults slow down, it has to mean something, right?
We make it mean things. It must be your fee. It must be your marketing. It must be your niche. It must be you because the truth is marketing, your practice is very, very personal, right? You are the business, so when it feels like it's not working, it can feel like you are not working, and that's really when the fear creeps in and that old voice starts to say, maybe you're actually not cut out for this.
Maybe this can't work anymore. Maybe things really were too good to be true. But just because the inquiry slowed down doesn't mean you did anything wrong or are doing anything wrong. That's what I really wanna unpack today. To do that, let's talk about what's actually behind a slow season. 'cause there are a couple different things that influence this because while your first instinct might be to blow up your niche or redo your website, or run back to grad school for another certification, drop your fee.
There's a good chance that nothing is actually that wrong. There are plenty of reasons your referrals might dip, and none of them have to do with your personal failure. One of those is seasonality. I mean, we talk about the summer slump, right? The summer holidays. These are the times of year that tend to come with just slower traffic in general.
Not just for therapy practices actually, but for many industries. Clients are traveling, they're distracted. They might be intentionally pausing therapy for whatever reason. This doesn't mean they're not gonna come back. It just means they're in a different rhythm. They're in a different season, and your practice will be too.
Another cause of slowdowns can be those client transitions. Where it's not about fewer inquiries, it's just about more graduations because you're so good at your work. So your current clients are wrapping up, they're making big moves, they might be deciding to discharge, and suddenly you've got a bunch of those open spots all at once.
That can be very, very unnerving because you're glad to see them go because they're doing well. But who's gonna fill those spots? Right? Another common cause, and I know many of us are feeling this recently, are economic or more kind of collective shifts, like more global higher level shifts. Because sometimes, all of the time, quite frankly, there are larger forces at play.
There's the economy, social shifts, global events. Even, natural disasters and things like that. Certainly the flooding in North Carolina impacted so many clinicians over there. The fires we had in California, there are so many forces at play that are 100% out of your control, and these things really affect how people invest in care.
This doesn't stop the need for therapy, but it does usually shift their decision making timelines. No doubt about that. I can actually think of a clinician we served in Colorado who you may remember a number of years ago, a large wildfire came through right around New Year's Eve, I think it was. And she just now, I think we're three or four years removed from that, continues to see folks coming in, seeking out trauma work with her because of that disaster.
So while there was certainly an immediate slowdown, if we're looking at just this individual event due to people being displaced, the need. Was also displaced. It was just later. Okay. So it shifts things. The other, and this is just kind of the catchall cause for slowdowns are just those natural fluctuation cut are just those natural fluctuations.
Sometimes the slowdown is just a slowdown, a dip in the wave, and it doesn't always have to be a dramatic cause. It's would be so nice if referrals were linear. You did this, you got this many, you did this, you got this many up and up and up we go. But it's not, we treat our businesses often, like they should be linear, they should be formulaic, booked out every month.
Same number of inquiries, same number of conversions, very predictable patterns. But you know, as well as I do that, that is just not how human behavior works.
So your slowdown that you're in right now, that you'll face in the future, it could be due to one, two, maybe. All of these factors, and so often therapists return to their marketing as the cause. Well, clearly my marketing wasn't good enough to save me from this slowdown. Here's the reframe. Even really strong marketing doesn't eliminate the ups and downs.
It helps you ride them. Okay? It's not about making you immune to this, but it's about shortening the dip. It's about giving you traction and confidence in the midst of it, but not immunity. And honestly, you wouldn't want it to. I really do think eventually you'd probably get tired of the robotic business that you built.
Business is meant to be responsive. And that really means having to learn to lead yourself through seasons that feel uncertain. This is so much about what you decide to do with this time, because all four of those things we just went through the different causes of slowdowns, you can't control a single one of them.
So what can you do? Let's say you've hit a slow season, you're seeing fewer inquiries. Your calendar has more white space than you'd like. And your brain is screaming, fix it. Fix it. The urge to do something, to do absolutely anything to control. This is real. But so often when I see therapists act from a place of panic, they almost always create more chaos and usually not many more clients.
There's a couple common reactions. I tend to see one of those, I've sort of teased it. They discount their rates. This one happens fast. If fewer people are reaching out, then I must be charging too much. So drop the rate if your rates were aligned before the dip, if you were booking clients at your current rate before this.
The slowdown is not a pricing problem, my friend. This is a season not a signal to undercut your value or to start cutting corners on what you pay yourself. Dropping your fee out of fear only erodes the confidence you've worked so hard to build in yourself and ultimately in your clients as well. The second thing I so often see just blowing up your niche, like dropping a stick of dynamite into your niche into your website, that kind of thing.
This can look like I've been way too specific, or I should start working with more kinds of clients, or I should change who I say I help. I'll see people post in Facebook groups, what niche is getting the most clients right now? That's not the right question to be asking.
This response is not strategy. It is scarcity. If your niche was working before, the answer is not to water it down right now. In fact, vagueness in a slow season usually backfires because you stop being memorable. And you start sounding like everyone else in the time when you most need to be standing out.
The next really common thing I see clinicians do, they start trying everything. We're talking 10 new marketing strategies added to the docket. This is the therapist version of just flailing in the water. You sign up for all the new directories, you start a blog, dust off your Instagram, you've been meaning to come back to.
You start maybe running ads. Boosting your Facebook posts, Googling how to start a group or become a speaker, and then you wonder why none of it sticks. The metaphor, I always come back to around this when someone's drowning, and I don't wanna say you're drowning, but stay with me. When someone's drowning. They don't need to flail. In fact, that's going to hurt more. They need to float and eventually they need to make calm and purposeful strokes to start swimming again. So your job in a slow season is not to panic, it's to pull the right levers. I am not saying you sit around and let this slow down.
Be passive. There are likely things you can do. But what you shouldn't do is start pulling absolutely all of them and doing all of them halfheartedly, and then wonder why you're not getting results. So if you're feeling that internal pressure to do more or try everything, I wanna encourage you to take a breath and ask yourself, is this a focused stroke right now?
Or a frantic splash? If the latter, here's what I want you to do instead. Because when panic creates chaos, cut because panic so often creates chaos both in your marketing but also just in your mind. Whereas strategy, purposeful strokes, that's what creates momentum. And the best thing you can do in a slower season is to get honest, to stay calm, and to start pulling the right levers.
Here's what I want you to do instead. One, I want you to trust what you've already built. If you've been in my world for a while, you have heard me say this, marketing doesn't just stop working overnight and thank goodness, hear me. If it has worked before, there's a very good chance it can work again. You have spent months.
Or even years planting seeds with your marketing, building referral relationships, showing up in your community, getting found on Google, establishing credibility in your niche. Those seeds don't just vanish. They're still there. They're still growing. They're still working behind the scenes. Your job right now is to trust that foundation.
Trust those seeds, trust the work you've already done and build on it with intention.
The next thing I want you to do is I want you to revisit what you currently have out there in your marketing. Ask yourself, is my website still reflecting what I do best? Is my site today profile still aligned with the clients I want to attract? Sometimes small but intentional updates can make a really, really big difference.
I'm talking a clearer headline, a better niche statement, a more confident call to action. Not necessarily starting over, but sharpening, looking at them, improving. Optimizing
the next thing to do. Re-engage the people around you. If you have been in practice for a while, there are people in your world you already know and who already trust you. Colleagues, former clients, past referral partners use this quieter season to reconnect with them. This is not to pitch to them, this is not to hustle and you know, get your name out there in that kind of slimy way.
It's to genuinely check in. It's about making use of this quiet time in a fruitful way. Your work is relationship based and relationships take tending. So what have you been letting wither and how could you return to that? I've seen so many therapists book new consults simply by showing up again in their existing network.
Number four, explore pivots, not full reinventions. Maybe you try out a new awareness strategy. Maybe that's your purposeful stroke. Maybe you decide to invest in a low risk ad campaign. Maybe you put together a couple of blog posts for the next few months. Maybe you reshare older content that performed well in the past, but you haven't thought of in a while.
Maybe you finally start the project you've been putting off. If nothing else, maybe you use this time to refresh your message to get support. So many of our students and clients join our program, sign on with us during their slow seasons, and then they end up coming out the other side of the dip with more clarity, more momentum.
Yeah. Not because they needed to overhaul, but because they needed to optimize. What levers can you pull? What is within your control that you could change, build upon improve? What I want you to see here is that you have more control than it feels like you do right now, and that's really what the fear and anxiety comes from, right?
Is this feeling of not being able to control the inquiries coming in. And while you can't force clients to show up, you can create the conditions that make it easier for the right ones to say yes.
I think one of the most important mindset shifts you can make in times like this is that marketing is not a project. It is a relationship. And just like any relationship, it needs tending and attention and reconnection, especially when things feel quiet. Like I mentioned, that can mean reconnecting with your network, showing up, staying visible, staying top of mind.
It might be nurturing connection with potential clients even if they're not ready to reach out yet, with past clients who you haven't touched base with in a while, the thing to remember is that the action you take now is not about today's consults. It's about tomorrow's. It's about three months from now.
Someone might see your blog post, your website, your profile update today and reach out next month. That's still working. That's still movement, even if you can't see it yet. I remember one therapist, okay an alumni of ours from Confident Copy who told me she re-listened to a training I gave during.
A slow summer about the summer slump, and she said it completely shifted the way she approached those quieter months instead of spiraling. She told me that she got intentional. She reconnected with old contacts, she revisited the curriculum and confident copy to refresh her homepage, and she focused on getting seen in some new ways.
And by the time fall rolled around, she was actually full with better fit clients than previously. That's what staying in relationship with your marketing looks like.
Marketing is not a project. It's not something that is one and done. It is a relationship. So how can you be tending to that relationship? Now, I wanna close this episode by letting you know that what I'm sharing with you here is the same advice I've had to take myself. This isn't just something that I teach, it's something that I have had to walk through and I'm currently walking through in many ways that relationship to my marketing.
For much of the time that I've run Walker Strategy Co since 2019, things have been really consistent, almost eerily. So I did this and got this output. I did this and I got this output. It kind of had that robotic nature I was mentioning earlier. We had really strong foundations. We delivered great work.
We are well known in our industry. The marketing systems we built, they just worked. It was awesome until they didn't, and I'm not talking about a like came to a screeching halt, falling apart way, but I do mean this slow, creeping way. That left me thinking, huh, this feels a little different. And at first, please know, I resisted the living daylights out of it.
I told myself, no way this worked before. We've been successful doing this for years. Why should I have to change anything? I had a sense of entitlement that I reflect back now on and can see very, very clearly. But the voice that said I shouldn't have to evolve was also the same voice that was keeping me stuck there, and I really realized I needed to take my own advice.
So you know what I did? I got back in touch with my business. I stopped kind of phoning it in. I looked at the data. I got my hands dirty. I reengaged with strategy. I started testing, and I'm not talking big, dramatic pivots. If you've been in my world for a while, you probably haven't noticed a whole lot of changes.
These were thoughtful tweaks, clarifications, optimizations, that sharpening I'm talking about, and the results came and are coming. But even more than the results. What's been really cool for me is, the other thing that came back was energy. I have this excitement, momentum, clarity in my business I haven't had in a long time.
I am more connected and engaged and excited about it than I've been in years, and I want that for you too. Whether you are a few years in or just getting started in this process, whether this is your first dip, whether this is your first dip or your fifth, you can weather this not by overhauling, not by chasing or hustling or throwing spaghetti at the wall, but by staying present and letting your marketing evolve with you.
Being open to evolution, being willing. To move away from a sense of entitlement in your marketing. If you take one thing from today's episode, let it be this. Slow seasons are not a sign that you're failing. They're a signal to pause, to get curious, and to evolve. You don't need to burn it all down and work at Starbucks.
You don't need to start over. You just need to stay grounded. And trusting in what you've already done, and then take strategic and thoughtful action from there. This is really ultimately why we don't teach one size fits all marketing at Walker Strategy Co, because sustainable growth doesn't come from chasing the trendy tactics or constantly reinventing yourself or doing the thing that someone just said is actually working for them.
It comes from clarity, from intention, and from that willingness to evolve without spiraling, without panicking. You're not alone here. This is part of the process. It's uncomfortable, but it's part of it, and now you get to decide what you do with it. You're more than capable, you're resourceful, and you're more resilient than you think.
Thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Confident Copy: walkerstrategyco.com/cc
The Walker Strategy Co website: 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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