The Pre-Summer Slump Playbook [Part 1]: Your Game Plan (Episode 69)
If you’ve been in private practice for any length of time, you’ve probably heard about the “summer slump.”
For some therapists, it’s very real. For others, not so much. But either way, this season tends to bring a shift—and if you’re not prepared for it, it can feel unsettling fast.
In this first part of a two-part series, Anna walks you through how to approach slower seasons with clarity instead of panic—and most importantly, what you can actually do to stay in control of your practice.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why focusing on conversion before visibility is key during slower seasons
2️⃣ How to evaluate your time, energy, and budget to choose the right marketing strategies
3️⃣ The four types of networking relationships that can lead to meaningful referrals
4️⃣ How to approach seasonal slowdowns without panic or overworking
-
Hey, hey. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 69 today kicks off a little mini two-part series where we're talking about preparing for the summer slump. Now the summer slump is catchy. First of all, I love some alliteration. And a fairly real and recurring phenomenon. It is not universal.
You'll hear from people I've never experienced a summer slump or the summer is my busiest season, and for that I am so grateful. I think that's fantastic. But we do know culturally. In this industry that there tends to be a slowdown in the summer, and I think it's common enough that it's worth talking about. And you know what? Even if you don't have a summer slump, what we're gonna talk about is still gonna be helpful for you. But the fact is that when things slow down, especially if you are in the first couple years of your practice, if it's your first summer or your second, it can be incredibly anxiety inducing.
And one of the first things I'm gonna suggest, I mean these next. Two episodes are going to be very tactical and strategy forward, and you're gonna leave with things to do. But I just wanna remind you, hey, there are ups and downs, there are ebbs and flows. This is normal. Seasonality is okay. It doesn't necessarily indicate something is wrong.
Okay? So in case you need that reminder now, or to come back to in June or July, remember that, but. It's normal. It's normal to have the thoughts. What if the clients never bounce back? Right? What if I lose whatever momentum I have felt leading up to this year? And here we are in a time of economic uncertainty and lots of changes in our world and in our industry.
And so those fears and those thoughts are even more understandable. But we know that the antidote to fear isn't hair on fire panicking. We know it's not burning it all down and working at Costco. We know it's figuring out what to do, right? It's about getting our heads clear. It's about being honest with ourselves.
It's about getting our mind right, and then it's about taking action accordingly. And so that's what these two episodes are gonna be about. This one is where I wanna look at what levers are available to you because you know what? There are things you can do. And that's the best feeling when you're in the middle of a season that feels uncertain.
When things slow down, there are things you can do. This is not out of your control. You can remain in the driver's seat of your practice if you know what to do. And so today is about looking at what levers are available to you to pull during the summer slump, or any slowdown, quite frankly. And then next week's episode is gonna be more about auditing where you're at and helping you determine where you need to be.
Focusing your energy. So there are really two things you need to be looking at as we get started with this episode. In order to quote unquote get ahead of the summer slump or at least get your mind right and one of them, quite frankly, therapists get backwards a lot. So we're gonna make sure we're clear on that. And then like I said, we're gonna get into looking at what all of these levers actually are.
Now, before we get into this, I want to remind you that maybe a slowdown is permission to slow down. A slower season is not always a problem to solve, okay? Now you need to maintain your income. You need to make sure that your caseload is at a reliable level. I get all of those things, but sometimes.
Sometimes it's just a chance to slow down. Sometimes it's just a chance to rest. And so depending on where you find yourself in your practice, I want to remind you that an open slot on your calendar might actually be a gift to you. It could be a gift to invest in your marketing. It could just be a gift to rest.
And so remember that rest and reflection and continuing education. All of these things are productive. They feed your practice, they feed your long-term sustainability. They feed your wellness as a clinician. So if rest is the right lever for you this summer, that's a plan too.
Okay? Name it and claim it. Now, it's not always a problem to solve, okay? So just remember that and maybe you're in a place where you need to maintain or build income. Cool. There's a framework. We're gonna talk about that, but maybe, maybe it is just an invitation to slow down to enjoy that. Knowing that it'll pick back up again.
It always does. Right? So with that caveat, now let's get into the two things you need to be looking at and the order of them. Okay. So when things slow down in, in a clinician's practice, whether it's in the summer or another season, most therapists jump straight to visibility. And you know what? I'm glad for that.
I'm glad that therapists are thinking about, okay, how do I get my name out there more? What do I need to be doing? What more can I be doing? Like there are lots of healthy things about that thought, but. They often think, well, now I need more content, or Now I need more outreach, or more presence, or more whatever.
And like I said, that instinct isn't wrong, but it's the second thing that you need to be looking at, not the first. Okay. So the two levers here, when we're thinking about what to do during a slow season, what to do to improve your marketing, our conversion, and then traffic in that order.
We have to be able to convert if we can meaningfully send traffic. So conversion has to come first when inquiries slow down because they will at some point. You have to be able to make the most of every single one. Okay, so for the purposes of this example, let's just think about visitors to your website.
If due to the summer season, there's going to be less traffic to your website. Because people are on vacation, they have priorities elsewhere. Their attention is just not on therapy. I want you to be able to capitalize as much as possible on the traffic you are getting. If you can't do that, if it requires massive numbers in order for you to even get a handful of inquiries, then we are missing out on that conversion piece.
More traffic just means more people leaving. My stomach turns at the thought of that for you. Okay. So conversion matters first so that whoever does come to your website, and that is not to say of course, that every single person landing on your website is an ideal fit client. No way, Jose, but. I want you to be able to capitalize on whoever is on your website confidently to know, okay, if my traffic slows down, my website is still set up to do what it needs to do.
That's why conversion matters so much. Then traffic comes, okay? Once you know that that conversion engine, as we call it, is solid, then you focus on getting more people to it, then you know, okay, I have an engine that if I fuel it with my traffic, it will turn. It's so critical that you think about it in this order because I see therapists get it backwards all the time, and it's one of the most common and frustrating mistakes they make because they put in all of this effort into social media or networking with very little return because the engine isn't turning, they're not really going anywhere.
You've heard me talk before about the metaphor of a leaky bucket. If you do not have the conversion piece in place, if you do not have a solid client conversion engine, then. You going out there and spinning your wheels, networking, posting on social media, blogging,
even printing business cards, is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. So you're spending all of this energy. Pouring the water, finding the water, pouring it, and then the bucket, your website can't even hold it. That's what we're trying to fix here. So, like I said, in the next episode of this little mini series, we're gonna talk about how to diagnose that, is this a traffic issue? But just first and foremost, remember conversion first, traffic second, conversion first, traffic second. If conversion is not solid. Then more traffic is just gonna hurt because you're gonna work really, really hard for it and then not see the return you need.
Okay? So just remember that now as we think about the summer ahead, or any slower season before you pick a strategy, just because someone mentioned it in a Facebook group or you saw it on Instagram, or this colleague you know is doing it before you do that. It's really important that you get honest about three things, okay?
Get honest about the time you have available. Get honest about the energy you have to dedicate and get honest about the budget that's available to you. These are separate things, and you might have time, but be depleted energy wise or have no budget. That's gonna change which marketing strategy makes sense for you.
Okay? So just because that. $10,000 Mastermind program teaches you how to do Google Ads. Doesn't mean Google Ads is a good fit for you if you have no budget or no time to implement. Do you see what I mean? Just because someone says to do something does not mean it's gonna match your bandwidth, your time, your energy, your budget.
So we have to know what we're working with in order to make meaningful decisions about the levers available to you. Okay, so time, how many hours per week can you realistically. Give realistically, sustainably, consistently over time. Now, summer might shift that profile for you.
Maybe you have less time because your kids are home from school. This was my first year with having a child in school, and so I'm about to have a summer break with a child in a way I never have. I'll fortunately still have some childcare and that kind of thing, but I can empathize with parents in a way I never have because my kid is about to be home.
That takes up your time, right? So maybe your time is less in the summer. Maybe when you're honest about it, your time is more because you might have an open client slot or two. So remember, the season that you're in, might impact your bandwidth.
But like I said, that first one is time. Then energy. What kind of tasks can you actually sustain? What can you actually do consistently? You're gonna hear me use that word consistently a lot. These next two episodes, I'm talking about creating content, right? That could be on social media, that could be blogging, relationship building.
How much energy do you have to be put in a Zoom coffee chat on a calendar, or reaching out to someone in your local area? The behind the scenes setup of some of these marketing strategies. Again, if we use Google Ads as an example. So yeah, you need to have some budget available to pay for the ads and likely to pay someone to run those ads and or the time and energy to learn how to do that well yourself.
So that's the cost here. We need to be keeping all three of these things in mind. And then of course, budget, just straight up. Is money an option? This season, or we need some low zero cost things, right? So get honest about this and then let that drive your decision making about what you do next about these levers that we're gonna talk about, these levers that you pull.
This is not about, again, what sounds impressive or what's flashy, or what your friend did. It's what actually makes sense for you. 'cause that focus, that ability to do it well over time. Matters way more than the effectiveness of the strategy, the popularity of the strategy, whether or not your friends are doing it.
Okay, so let's now get into our levers, and you might roll your eyes at me, but the first one we gotta do, we have to talk about networking here. We just cannot talk about being effective in this industry, in this market, especially in the private pay space. If we're not talking about networking , it's why it has just been a through line of so much of what we've been talking about here on marketing therapy in the last six months or so. Networking is, hello, a non-negotiable, regardless of your bandwidth, and I don't have a lot of time. I don't have a lot of energy. Okay. Then what you do have we need to put towards networking first?
Fortunately, it's pretty low budget usually. However, the format of your networking that is yours, you get to pick. You've heard me say that before. We have an entire episode on networking as an introvert. That we will link in the show notes, but you gotta market how you market is up to you.
Most therapists think of marketing as one thing. I don't know what comes to mind for you that might be. Cold calling a doctor's office that might be sending a weird Instagram DM to a therapist, like, I don't know what it looks like for you, but many therapists have this like one idea about what networking is for us.
It can look so many different ways, and we really think about it in four different categories. With most people, kind of tapping into only one or two and leaving some opportunity on the table. So this is worth thinking about our, the four categories of networking. These four networking levers you can consider pulling in this upcoming season.
So the first is same niche therapist. So that might be someone who is in the same niche as you, but has a different modality or perhaps is at capacity has a different fee structure.
This can sometimes be misconstrued as competition but they really are very, very natural referral partners because the fit is obvious. Maybe someone sees a different age range or prefers to work a different way. Even availability can be a factor here. Like this is just a really, really direct referral opportunity that does not have to look like you trying to poach clients.
Same for adjacent niche therapists. If you recently caught our interview here on the podcast with Taylor Williams, she talked about how powerful adjacent niche therapists have been for her in filling her full fee caseload.
There has long sort of been this underlying connotation that maybe you're trying to poach someone's clients, but actually there's a lot of value in connecting with people who see your client, but maybe not directly. So they see couples, you see individuals, they see moms. You see children. So related, but very low competition with high alignment.
Adjacent niche therapists are hugely untapped for many clinicians. The next step are complimentary professionals. So this is where we group anyone that isn't a therapist, that also sees your client professionally. So this could be a ob, a lactation consultant.
This could be a school counselor, a pediatrician. These are kind of the stereotypical traditional networking contacts, private schools I've heard of. Great. A success that folks have had, especially as we get to the end of the summer and into the school season. But anyway, complimentary professionals. Who else sees your ideal client professionally that you could speak to?
And then finally, this one I see hugely untapped, and that is the other full fee wellness kind of ecosystem out there. So these are providers whose clients are already saying yes to investing in themselves. I've talked about this recently, but this could be something like a functional medicine doctor, a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a yoga instructor, a dietician, a massage therapist.
Who else is seeing clients who value their wellness, who are likely paying out of pocket, and who could be a really, really natural referral source and who probably has never networked with another therapist before, right? It's not like an OB that probably has a laundry list of potential therapists they could refer to, but instead, maybe they've never talked to a therapist about their ability to cross refer.
So that full fee wellness ecosystem is another group that I see a lot of clinicians potentially missing out on that you could consider leaning into. Summer is a fantastic time to be building these relationships. Other therapists might be slow, they might be open to connection.
I just met a therapist at church last week actually. She mentioned that she was a clinician, so I was of course curious in asking her about her practice and she mentioned that she's in person a few times a week, mostly just to be in community because it can be so isolating sometimes. Solo practice can be incredibly isolating.
So if nothing else, go make some connections to get out of your own head. Right? To be in community with other clinicians and open up space for genuine connection and potential symbiotic relationships with other professionals, whether those are therapists or otherwise. And remember, networking is a volume game.
You're gonna reach out to people you never hear from. You're gonna reach out to people you don't click with. That's okay. We're looking for a handful of really meaningful relationships that you can foster and cultivate over time. So we gotta talk about networking. Like I said, if all you've got is a little time and a little energy, I'm going to suggest you invest it here before the other levers we're gonna talk about.
Okay?
Next up directories. We did a recent podcast episode that we will also link in the show notes about psych today. Yes, you should still be on psych today for reasons maybe you aren't aware of. Directories are still meaningful. In addition to PsychToday , we see clinicians experiencing most of their success right now on very niche specific ones.
I worked with a clinician a handful of weeks ago who works with food allergy moms. There's actually a directory for food allergy counselors out there. Amazing. Faith-based directories, niche specific, direct. Modality specific directories demographic specific directories. So while there are some other general ones, you know, we know of good therapy and therapy den mental health match, which are worth a shot.
In addition to psych today, we suggest considering any niche specific directories you could be investing in, but making sure those are pulling their weight. As I talked about in that psych today, episodes directories are one of the only things you can almost set and forget.
Like optimize it, do it. Well, maybe drop in and change a comma to a period now and then. But like this is one of the only available strategies to you that are essentially on autopilot. So making sure that you are making use of those in a meaningful way. We also know that these days your directory profiles are enhancing your AI authority.
And so even if you're not getting direct referrals through them, chances are for a low fee, they're still doing something for you. So make sure that you're making use of that. It's just some really low hanging fruit marketing wise that you could absolutely use a few hours this summer to make sure are whipped into shape if they're not already.
Alright, let's talk about the other levers available to you. And this is where I recommend really thinking about your bandwidth, thinking about your time, your energy, your money, because like I said, Google Ads very different than Instagram, where you're gonna have to be creating a lot.
I'm gonna walk through a handful of the most popular strategies that I'm seeing out there right now. Please know the suggestion here is not that these are all for you or that you dabble in all of them. But instead that you pick one to two that match your honest bandwidth, right? Your ability to do this over time, not your aspirational bandwidth, not the clinician you hope to be, but instead the clinician you are right now.
Okay? Be honest with yourself here. So first and foremost, S-E-O-S-E-O is still a very meaningful, viable strategy. It is a long term play. So this is a strategy for therapists who are interested in playing a long game, who don't necessarily need clients tomorrow, but want to set up kind of a larger infrastructure for their marketing.
This is gonna take moderate time and energy at the very least, and it's going to include things like creating content, blog posts. Location pages, additional specialty or method pages and then some additional strategies when it comes to AI optimization, Google business profile that you can also be leveraging. So results here are going to be slow. We are talking months, not weeks here, but they do compound.
And every action that you take in this ecosystem of SEO and ai. Can absolutely build upon one another.
I have to mention here in this SEO section that Google business profile matters more now than it absolutely ever has. I mean, Google business profile matters more now than it did in February, like. It matters. If you are an in-person clinician and you do not have a well optimized Google business profile, go do that right now.
Please don't wait till the summer, go do that. But that is factoring into SEO and AI right now in ways we honestly didn't even really expect. If you are online only, you may not be able to leverage Google Business profile. I don't know that that necessarily means you need to go out and get a physical address in an office just for this reason.
But do recognize that if you are in person, the potential for this strategy and the power it has when it comes to your findability is greater than ever. So please make sure, especially if this is a strategy you decide to really lean into that you are maximizing that. In particular, now, as you can tell, SE o's not gonna be a good fit if time and energy are limited unless you have budget to just go hire someone for this.
It's gonna require consistency, it's going to require patience, but it does have the power to compound in big ways. Okay, next up, Instagram, it's a really common one. I see people asking regularly. Someone actually asked in our Get Booked Out community, just in the last week or so. Like, are you getting clients on Instagram?
How do you do this? That sort of thing. So Instagram can absolutely work with the right strategy. It's very much about building visibility and community through regular content. Okay, so that's reels. That could be static posts, carousels, education stories, whatever that might be.
And it requires showing up regularly, consistently, daily, weekly, overtime. One of the challenges of Instagram is that you are marketing to the entire world and you can only see clients in a very small part of that world, right? And so that is one kind of limitation here, that as your audience grows, your ability to serve them is only gonna grow as much as people that are in your area of licensure.
I have heard of some clinicians experiencing great success using Instagram as more of a networking tool than a direct client contact tool. And so you may find that that, especially if you're early on in your Instagram days that you're. Mostly only connecting with other therapists. That might still be a viable option for you.
We talked about how important networking is, but Instagram is gonna be for the therapist whose ideal client. Definitely skews a little younger. Right. If we're looking at teens, twenties, thirties, Instagram is gonna be really key. And who are comfortable showing up consistently, probably with their face to the camera.
If that sounds absolutely cringe-worthy to you, then don't do it. That's totally fine. But this is going to require probably the most ongoing energy than any strategy in this list, at least on a daily and weekly basis. So I recommend not starting Instagram or at least banking on it if you can't sustain it.
Because an abandoned account is gonna work against you more than it's gonna work for you. So make sure this is something you really feel comfortable investing in, and maybe that means you're not posting daily, but it does mean that you need to be committing to regular content. On a fairly regular basis, not gonna be a great fit if both your time and your energy are limited because you yourself are required for this.
All right, next up is LinkedIn. This is one of those strategies that I think is available to clinicians. I have never seen someone productize essentially a, a LinkedIn strategy. I've not seen someone really put together, here's what's working well, here's what to do on LinkedIn.
And full disclosure, it's not my zone of genius. I log into LinkedIn like every six months. But I do think it's viable, and I have heard from clinicians that it has been, especially for professional networking with other clinicians and also networking with professionals. So if you are a clinician who is perhaps a second career therapist or someone who really specializes in executives, professionals, entrepreneurs, then maybe that is a meaningful place to be.
Now, if you've been on LinkedIn recently, you need to know that it is essentially a content creation platform as well, so you need to be prepared similarly to how you would be on Instagram, but in a bit of a different format to be sharing your thoughts on a regular basis. Essentially thought leadership.
So LinkedIn can be an interesting strategy to consider for therapists who are wanting those referrals that are in the professional setting or referral partners, right? EAPs, hr. Executive coaching, corporate wellness, like those are some interesting things that I think are kind of untapped in the LinkedIn space because this is sort of newer ground for therapists.
You need to be open to experimenting and getting a little bit creative. But I do think it can be powerful. It will definitely be a lower time investment than Instagram, but like I said, it takes a different format and it's reaching a different audience. Alright, next up, local marketing. And this is adjacent to networking because local marketing usually means forming relationships with people in your area. But essentially local marketing is anything that is requiring you to show up in your physical community.
In the age of ai, y'all, we are all just looking for more connection with other humans and for that reason, I think that we're gonna see local marketing be more powerful than it used to be because we all just, you know, post pandemic ai, just give me people, just gimme community, right?
So local marketing is anywhere that you're showing up in that regard. So that's as simple as a flyer and a coffee shop all the way up to hosting a event or a free workshop or whatever that might be. So this is great for those clinicians who are in person or who are just really interested in forming connection in their local community.
Very relationship oriented therapists are gonna enjoy this, who enjoy that organic community building, who are interested in sharing their knowledge and fun new ways. It's gonna be a slower burn, most likely than digital strategies, although I've heard of people putting on a workshop and then like one event being able to point back to it for years as far as referrals that came from it.
So I guess a more accurate way to put that is it can be hit or miss in that you might do an event or engage in something where you never see a direct client who knows if it did something. 'cause it very well may have. Or you might do something where you hear from two clients and then they refer someone else, and then three years later you still hear from someone who references back to it, you know?
So.
It is a little bit less formulaic than some of the other strategies out there, so it's good if you have kind of moderate time and energy. Very little budget is required here for this one. And then finally, Google Ads. I mentioned that at the top of the episode, but essentially Google Ads are you paying to appear at the top of Google results.
So before we get into all of the organic results, you see paid ads. So they're putting you at the top when someone is searching for something relevant to your services. Now it is in Google's best interest to make Google Ads seem simple. Oh, just sign up here, click these buttons, put in your practice info, and off you go.
Google ads have a lot of nuance to them. That is not to say you can't learn to do them yourself, but it is to say that if you're not doing it correctly, this might just be a money pit for you. So I share that because I do recommend that most therapists work with another professional, ideally, someone who specializes in the therapy space in particular to run their Google ads, which does indicate additional budget or that are serious about learning it themselves. Do not just dive into this strategy willy-nilly. Okay, I just don't wanna see you flush money down the toilet. That said, once it's set.
Google ads can be really, really powerful. So there is some immediacy to this strategy, right? When it's set up and optimized that other strategies, SEO, for instance, are not gonna offer, right? That's the long term strategy. So Google ads are really powerful in that regard, but there's a payoff literally in terms of what you're able to put in financially.
So this is great because it can generate inquiries quickly, but it does need that proper management. It needs optimization, it needs monitoring. It's not just a straight up DIY strategy, so keep that in mind and then of course, just skip that one entirely. If budget isn't there right now, maybe it's something you can pursue down the road.
So those are some of the most popular strategies that you can be considering right now. Again, in addition to networking and directories, if those are available to you. This episode was all about looking at the levers available to you. It was all about identifying, okay, if things slow down, when things slow down, what can I do? How can I remain in the driver's seat of my business? How can I take action that is in alignment with the time, energy, and budget that I have so I can maintain or build momentum even in the summer season. Next episode is gonna be about you figuring out is this a conversion issue, is this a traffic or visibility issue? And what do I do next? Okay, so now that you know the levers, we can talk about how do I identify what's actually happening in your practice?
Alright, I hope this one was helpful for you. I'll see you in part two of our series.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Episode 56: Networking As An Introvert: How to Do It…And Do It Well
https://walkerstrategyco.com/show-notes/56Episode 64: Referrals Dried Up. She Niched Down. Here's What Happened: Taylor's Story
https://walkerstrategyco.com/show-notes/64Episode 61: Is PsychToday Still Worth It in 2026?: My Honest Take
https://walkerstrategyco.com/show-notes/61
Connect + Subscribe
Enjoying the podcast? Subscribe so you never miss an episode—and feel free to share it with a fellow therapist who’s building their private practice.
Explore more marketing support for therapists: The Walker Strategy Co website
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.
Rate & Review
If you’re enjoying Marketing Therapy, please consider leaving us a rating or review. This helps more therapists find the podcast (& avoid the marketing spiral).
