The Higher Your Fee, the Harder Your Website Has to Work (Episode 67)
If you’ve recently raised your fees—or you’re thinking about it—this episode is essential.
Because here’s the reality: when your fee goes up, your website has to work harder.
Not because your clients are “pickier”… but because they’re human. And when we make higher investment decisions, we naturally slow down, look closer, and seek more certainty.
In this episode, Anna breaks down what that actually means for your website—and why a “good enough” site may no longer be enough to support the level you’re stepping into.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why higher fees require higher levels of trust—and how your website either builds or diminishes that trust
2️⃣ What happens in the first five seconds on your website (and why it matters more than you think)
3️⃣ The difference between generic copy and “sticky” messaging that makes clients feel deeply understood
4️⃣ How to ensure your website reflects the current level of your work—not an outdated version of your practice
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Hey there. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 67. Today we're talking about something very, very human and how it applies to your therapy website in particular, and your therapy clients, especially as you raise your fees. Now, a lot of therapists will raise their fee and then inquiries will slow down.
There's a lot of reasons for that. People that are up for paying. 200 versus 100 or 300 versus one 50, right? 400 plus a session. There are often fewer of them. So seeing a slowdown in inquiries is not necessarily a sign that anything is wrong. However, sometimes the fee, the increase isn't the issue, but the way that you are putting yourself out there is because here's something that a lot of therapists often don't realize when they make this decision, is that the higher your fee.
The more trust your website has to cultivate the bar that your website has to clear as your fee increases, raises with it. The higher the fee, the more trust your website has to cultivate. You would not expect a lemon, right? A card that has a whole ton of issues and is barely driving to drive like a Porsche, right?
And you cannot expect a low trust. Low caliber website to convert premium fee clients simply because your rate went up. That's what we're getting into today. Now, as I mentioned, this is not unique to therapy. I'm not talking about the quality of premium fee clients versus other clients. Like, that's not the issue here.
This is what we do when we make decisions about our money. Think about any high investment decision you've made. If you are deciding to book a $500 a night hotel for a staycation with your partner versus a $90 Airbnb because you had to run back to help a family member in your hometown, that experience is gonna look a lot different.
And if you are booking that $500 a night hotel, you are gonna read reviews, you're gonna study photos, you're gonna scrutinize the cancellation policies. Your decision making criteria is gonna be a whole lot different if you need an attorney. To help you with your practice or another issue in your life, hiring a $400 an hour one versus a hundred dollars an hour one, you are gonna be doing your research, right?
You're gonna be looking for signals that that person is worth it. But you're also gonna know that if you decide to. Hire that $400 an hour attorney that it's probably 'cause they're very good at their job. This is what this comes down to. When something costs more, we naturally slow down, we look harder, and we seek out more certainty before we commit. That is not a therapy thing.
That is a human thing. That is what we do with our money, and it means that as your fee grows, as it well should the bar for your website grows too. Premium fee clients are not pickier in a bad way. This isn't about vanity. They're just doing what any of us do. When the stakes are higher, they're not simply coming to your website and learning about you wondering, Hmm, can this therapist help me?
They're wondering why this therapist at this price. The higher the investment, the less your website can afford to feel uncertain. That's what we're talking about here today. Now, it's really important to acknowledge that your website does not operate in a vacuum. It is not make beautiful website, get premium fee clients.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. However that website lives inside of a larger system. That system is what we call the client conversion engine, right?
It's the thing that turns strangers first into inquiries and then inquiries into clients. So there's three parts of that client conversion engine if you're new around here. The first is confident identity. That is knowing what you do, who you serve, what sets you apart. There's confident presence, which is how you put yourself out there and how you are received, and then there's confident connection, how you're actually making sure people know you exist.
If one of the elements in your engine is weak, then the whole thing is gonna struggle to run. So today we're talking about that confident presence piece because that is where your website lives and that's where this trust gap starts to show up most visibly when you increase your fees. Now, why is trust so critical? I've talked about this a lot recently. We have a episode on the trust recession, which I'll link in the show notes, but the fact is that trust is at an all time low, and therefore your marketing's job is above all to cultivate it.
People need to feel like they trust you in order to take the next step with you. And we have to be really careful about where trust is being either supported or diminished. And often we end up unintentionally diminishing trust because we're focused in other areas. We're focused so much on getting people to the website that we're failing to look at if the website itself is doing the work of growing that trust or taking away from it.
Now when you land on a website, trust building starts before anyone reads a single word. Okay? This is where design is leading the subconscious to make a decision. Studies show us that people. Take less than a second to make a split second judgment about a brand and the halo effect, which is a proven psychological concept, tells us that if it is not a good first impression, then that plays into how this person perceives the brand moving forward.
They say that you only have one first impression, and that is true. The halo effect tells us that if someone lands on your website and immediately has a feeling that introduces doubt, uncertainty, unprofessional that the rest of your marketing is on an uphill battle in order to earn that trust back. On the flip side, if they land and have an immediately positive response to your website, then they have a halo effect. They are looking at your brand through rose colored glasses in every future interaction.
That's why this first impression is so important. So that's that split second and subliminal reaction to how a site looks and feels. You know, when you've landed on a website that feels premium. I'm not talking about therapy, I just mean in general.
I have team members in multiple different states, and so anytime we hire someone in a new state, we have to initiate tax setup in that state. And those websites, you know what I'm talking about?
You pay your taxes, you land on them, and they are archaic. They are terrible and so outdated and you know the minute you've landed on one, that this is gonna be a not fun experience. Right. You know what I'm talking about on the flip side, if you land on a website for a really premium, high-end brand of a product that you're looking at, you know, or maybe a spa that you're interested in or a another service provider, you know, when you're landing on something that is going to offer an experience that is far more positive than that tax setup one, right.
You've experienced this too, and so do your clients. I think therapists expect that what clients are going to believe or assume about them is different than what they would believe or assume about other websites they land on.
But the fact is these are judgments we make regardless of the service or product that we're seeking out. Okay? From there, from that initial subliminal reaction, that is driven primarily by design, then the next test happens in the first five seconds, and that is your client knowing, am I in the right place?
Is this for me? Is there something specific to me here? Or could this be any therapist for literally any client? Is there something calling out to me? You know the name of the game right now. Specificity. If your client cannot get a taste of that without even scrolling, they have the subliminal split.
Second design thought about whether or not you are trustworthy and the halo effect that follows. And then we have them reading the copy for the first time. Is there something for me here? That's what's happening in less than five seconds. And this is where the copy has to start to do its job and do that heavy lifting.
No surprise here, but the difference between copy that's gonna go ahead and build trust and copy that doesn't is going to come down to how specific you are. How many websites have you landed on that, say, does this sound familiar? And then it's a list of six bullets about feeling overwhelmed and anxious, or relationships are struggling or.
Your child is acting out, right? So, so, so generic, so, so, so applicable to literally almost anyone seeking out therapy, right? What instead? Builds trust right now is painting a visceral word picture. We call this stickiness in confident copy. But using your copy to paint the word picture of laying awake at 2:00 AM replaying that conversation with your boss and questioning absolutely everything that is what helps someone feel seen whether or not they actually were awake at 2:00 AM.
When you paint a visceral word picture, it displays a deeper level of understanding of that particular client than a bullet about feeling overwhelmed and anxious or second guessing conversations. Is about creating something visceral and specific in your client. Now, when you're raising your fees, there's also a page that I often recommend adding to your website, we actually developed a template specific to this that was recently added to our Confident copy bonus fault, but that is your fee page. There is a delicate dance to communicating your fees on your website. Now your fees belong on your website and we can do an entire podcast episode on that, so I will die on that hill.
Assuming that we agree on that and that your fee is going to be represented, we wanna be thoughtful about how it's represented. You are allowed to charge what makes sense for you for your session fees. Absolutely. This isn't about that. What this is about is not apologizing, but instead positioning your fees as the investment that they are.
Giving people the context and often the education that they don't have to understand what it means to pay out of pocket, what it means to not use insurance. There's a delicate balance and dance to strike here, and so I think this is another spot that as your fee increases, your website also needs to kind of meet that higher standard is in relation to how you're communicating those fees, offering just enough education, offering just enough context that your client is going to understand and ultimately come to agreement.
About why this fee is what it is and be okay moving forward with it. Now, sometimes I see clinicians very, very, very well intentioned attempt to build trust on their website, but they end up shooting themselves in the foot, and that is when they overemphasize the pain that your client is in. I've landed on websites before, and the homepage is a mile long, which I'm not afraid of.
Long copy. If you've been around for a while, you know that, but the page is a mile long and you know what most of it is? It is just belaboring the pain that this client is in. There is a really fine line between acknowledging what brings someone to therapy, saying, Hey, I see the fact that you're laying awake at 2:00 AM and absolutely piling on how miserable they already are.
And so I've landed before on these websites where I just scroll and scroll and scroll, and there are some specific examples, but the story is a literal novel of how terrible things are right now, a premium fee client. We've talked recently about the premium fee mindset, and we can link that in the show notes as well.
But we've talked about how a premium fee client knows they are ready for therapy. They don't need to be convinced, they don't need to be reminded. They want to see evidence that you understand them, but this isn't a question of whether or not they're going to seek out therapy. And when you overemphasize pain points, you end up speaking to someone who needs that level of convincing, which we know your ideal client does not. And so the site can become very, very hard to connect with and so, like I said, that's a very well-intentioned way of displaying your level of understanding. But we need to be really mindful about how much of that we're doing and how much we should be balancing that with where your client actually wants to go.
Casting the vision, as we say on your website of what is possible. Okay. So that's one of those mistakes I often see when it comes to trust building. Now I talk to so many clinicians who say my website for a long time was good enough. It's been good enough for a long time, but I'm noticing a shift that is a huge theme in the conversations I've been having with therapists recently.
And the fact is that like a simple, straightforward website, it can work at certain stages. And something is always better than nothing for sure, but there's a ceiling to that. There's a ceiling. As you choose to break into higher fee structures, at a certain point, good enough is gonna stop being good enough.
And so having a website that is generic or dated or unclear could potentially end up undermining the very fee you're trying to charge and the very fee you are worthy of and capable of calling in. But we know that in a saturated market where clients have 7, 9, 10 tabs open, a weak website doesn't just fail to impress, but it can actually create doubt.
And as we've talked about recently, doubt is expensive at lower fees. People may overlook a mediocre website, but at higher fees, they usually won't. And those stakes are rising along with your fees.
Now the most common version of this that I see and that I talk to when I sit down with y'all in, you know, discovery sessions and things like that, is the therapist who's decided to depa. So for a long time, your website worked well enough, but you're ready to drop insurance, you're ready to get focused, and your website hasn't yet made the transition.
That's the most common one. So your website was working well enough when referrals were flowing, when insurance was filling the caseload a bit more easily, but now you're asking your website to do a different job for you and therefore the website has to change. There's also the therapist whose fees have just simply outpaced their site over time.
I just sat down with a therapist yesterday who. In her pre-call inquiry basically said, I know I do really, really, really great therapy work, and I'd like to be paid accordingly. Amen, sister. Absolutely. But when you visit her site, it feels incredibly dated. There is not a premium experience being communicated here.
I don't have a deep sense of her niche. I would really have to dig around to see myself in that website to find those signals of specificity and authority. So it's not that the website itself was bad, but it was in no way communicating that high caliber clinician. She knew she was. And as she had grown in her abilities as a clinician, her website hadn't grown with her, right?
And so her fees, which she had just recently raised, had outpaced the website experience. And she was realizing disconnect was starting to cost her. So while the practice had grown and the work had deepened, the rate had climbed. The website was still belonging to an earlier version of herself.
And then finally, there's the referral scenario that I'll hear about sometimes, and that is where someone is very, very well known in a specific niche. Like you get calls for this thing whether you like it or not, you're actively getting clients through word of mouth. But you're also concerned that if a potential client was doing some research and wasn't just calling you directly off the back of a referral.
Maybe they're weighing you against someone else, that the website is likely to raise some doubts or some questions to potentially undermine that decision to reach out. Rather than support it. Do you fall into any of those camps? Are you someone who knows your website needs to step it up a notch?
Are you a clinician who has stepped into kind of a higher version of yourself and your practice, but your website isn't communicating it? Or are you quite frankly doing really well and really well known in your niche? And if all clients ever had to do was call you, you'd be good. But if they're visiting your website,
maybe you're not, if you fall into any of those camps, that's why I created this episode is to get you thinking about how much harder your website may need to work considering where you find yourself today. Considering what we know about how clients are making decisions. I heard recently from one of our done for you clients, we both wrote and designed her website.
She specializes among other things in working with women going through divorce and relationship challenges. And so she was meeting with a kind of high-end divorce mediator, which is a hello, a great networking conversation. And the mediator noted early on in her conversation, this was their first meeting, how impressed she was by the website, how it spoke directly to a woman who needed to feel empowered in this process, which is exactly who this client was going after.
That is the sign of a website doing its job. This clinician charges premium fees. She stands behind them. And her website is backing her up, and this mediator called that out, which was really cool. Another one that I've heard from recently, a clinician specializes in faith-based work and she heard from clients how grateful they were that she was explicit about that worldview on her site because that is what they were connecting to.
And because the website was clear and elevated in that regard, they were far more inclined to reach out to her. They found her because of it, and then they trusted her before they ever got on the call. Those are signs of a website doing its job, right. The common thread here is that your website should be working so well that it is doing the filtering for you.
It is doing the trust building. It is doing the relationship initiating before you ever get on a call with someone. And the higher your fees, the harder your website needs to work in order to make those things possible.
Now, a lot of therapists feel after they raise their fees or when they're in a new season of practice that they just gotta go out there and they gotta focus on visibility. And you know what? Good on you. You need to have that expectation. Visibility is critical. Like I said, your website does not operate in a vacuum.
It's not just make pretty website, get premium fee clients. But focusing only on visibility, focusing only on traffic, if not followed up by trust. Once people land on your site and learn about you, then that just leads to more people leaving.
It's that pouring water into a leaky bucket situation that I've talked about so often. We might catch some water, we might, but we're gonna lose a lot more of it. So if you're going to be out there and investing in relationship building and investing your time, or your money or your energy and other marketing strategies, whether that is SEO or Google Ads, whatever it may be, please make sure that you are leading to a website that you know is backing you up and not diminishing the trust that is required for someone to decide, absolutely, this therapist is worth the 2 50, 300, $400 a session that they charge.
Promise me you will do that. Okay. It can be easy to assume that you need more visibility, and sometimes that is the issue. Only if you are sure, first and foremost, that the website at its foundation, at the foundation of your marketing is doing what it needs to do. I.
So I hope I've gotten your gears turning, no pun intended, on the whole engine metaphor with this episode, that in this market, when trust is at an all time low, when it is your most valuable currency that you can be generating in your relationship with clients, your website's job. Is to cultivate that, and the higher your fees, the more trust required and the more trust required, the harder your website needs to work.
Now we have lots of ways we help you with that. I've mentioned our done for you services. In this episode, our done for you services are currently on wait list. As I prepare for maternity leave, they will be opening up again. When I return, and we'll be booking projects for the summer and fall. You can get details for that walkerstrategyco.com/services.
We're also as this episode drops in the middle of our seventh birthday sale, and that birthday sale includes all of our resources for creating a website yourself. That rises to the occasion and we have so many incredible success stories from clients who have used our Confident Copy program, our website templates to create websites that are calling in clients and that they put together on their own.
And there's nothing quite like pushing Launch on a site. You created start to finish. So if you are someone who is interested in taking advantage of those resources, like I said, confident copy our templates. We have our ultimate DIY bundle that includes our DIY brand kit.
Now's the time. You can get all the details there. Walker strategy code.com/bs 26. Those deals are live through Thursday of this week. We're also giving away a free gift with all purchases made during our birthday sale, which is our Get Found Coach.
A new marketing AI tool that I generated. It was my pre maternity leave project. We've never offered something like this before and it is the powerful next step after you launch your website. I've gotten so many questions. Hey Anna, my website's live now. What do I do? This Get Found Coach is gonna give you tailored.
Recommendations based on your location and your niche, your bandwidth, your time, your energy, your money on what you should be doing in the weeks and months following your website launch. So that's a free gift we're offering this week. Now, no matter what, if your fee has grown or you want it to, then the question worth asking yourself today is, has your website kept up?
And if not, what does it need to do to start rising to the occasion? That's what I'm gonna leave you with today, I hope. Like I said, I got your gears turning and I'll see you in our next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Birthday Sale: https://walkerstrategyco.com/bs26
Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
Squarespace Templates: https://walkerstrategyco.com/templates
DIY Brand Kit (DBK): https://walkerstrategyco.com/dbk
Done-for-you Services: https://walkerstrategyco.com/services
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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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