The Multi-State Marketing Paradox: Why More Access Doesn't Mean More Clients (Episode 75)
If you're licensed in multiple states—or practicing under PSYPACT—it can feel like you've suddenly unlocked access to an enormous pool of potential clients. But as Anna explains in this episode, the ability to legally serve clients in more locations is not the same thing as having a marketing strategy that attracts them.
In this conversation, Anna breaks down why trying to market yourself everywhere often leads to weaker results, how geography still matters even for virtual practices, and why choosing a clear primary market can make your marketing significantly more effective. You'll walk away with a practical framework for expanding thoughtfully while staying focused on the clients you're best positioned to serve.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why being licensed in multiple states is a credential—not a marketing strategy.
2️⃣ How to choose a primary market that strengthens your visibility, referrals, and SEO.
3️⃣ Why trying to market to too many locations at once can dilute your results.
4️⃣ Practical ways to expand into secondary markets without losing focus or momentum.
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Hey there. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 75. Today we're talking about marketing when you're licensed in multiple states. This is something that obviously had a huge boom post-pandemic, but continues to be something that I see come up a lot in practices, and a question I'm often asked, "Anna, I got licensed in another state," or, "Anna, I'm a PSYPACT provider.
How do I get clients in all of those states?"
And that's a great question and a fair one. You can see clients in 40-plus states, right, if you're a PSYPACT provider, or you can see clients in three states if you're licensed in that many. But does that mean you actually get clients there? How do I get clients in other states? That's the question we're tackling today.
Now, PSYPACT, Counselors Compact, whatever it is, these sound like a marketer's dream, right? All of a sudden, your market has increased in size by 30, 40, 50x. We're talking millions and millions and millions of potential clients. That should mean more clients, right? More reach, more opportunity.
But this is actually something I see a lot of clinicians stumble around. So today's episode is really about why that seemingly unlimited reach can actually end up paralyzing your marketing, and why there is something to be said for staying in your lane, staying close to home, and that kind of thing.
This episode, of course, will apply to anyone licensed in multiple states, whether that's two or, like I said, PSYPACT 43 or however many it is currently. The name of the game, again, these days is specificity. We know right now in this market that marketing is working best when you are clearly speaking to someone. So saying, "I can see clients in 40 states," you, my friend, are communicating a legal credential. You can legally see clients in that many states.
That is not itself a value proposition. It is not a reason someone would choose you, and it doesn't actually mean a lot for your marketing. Sometimes when your potential market is enormous, I often experience this when clients come to us being PSYPACT providers in particular. They have this illusion that if they narrow down into a particular market demographically or geographically, that they're leaving money on the table because, well, I could see clients elsewhere.
But in the same way that a generalist private pay practice is gonna be a lot slower to grow than a niche one, the same is true for your geography. So PSYPACT multi-state marketing, that's about enabling your ability to work, but it does not define your marketing.
It is not itself a marketing strategy. That's really what I want you to walk away from this episode understanding.
So when we look at this and when we're coaching students through this in Confident Copy Live or we're discussing it with them in our done-for-you services, we're going to recommend what we call a primary market or a home base. This is about basing your marketing somewhere. Okay? When we say primary market, we mean a geographic audience that your website and your language and your visibility strategy is ultimately anchored to.
We've been talking a lot about visibility so far this summer, how just because you exist, of course, doesn't mean you're gonna be found, and so a lot of your ongoing marketing is about making sure that people know that you exist. We really suggest that you keep those efforts focused close to home, even if you can see clients across the country. So we're talking your home state. We're talking about the state where you have the deepest roots and relationships and credibility. We're talking about your individual city or metro area leaning in,
and I'm talking regardless of whether or not you are in person or online. Now, in this market, as I shared in last week's episode, I would absolutely recommend having an in-person location, even if it's just a once-a-week sublease, because of the benefits it allows you in terms of marketing. But this episode is useful regardless of if you are online only or hybrid and in person.
Now, a lot of this reasoning, a lot of the strategy behind recommending a target location or a primary market is related to SEO.
And I'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty of SEO here, but it's really important to recognize that even if you never meet a single client in person, even if you are exclusively telehealth forever and ever Amen, geography still matters for your marketing and for your SEO. When someone wants to find a therapist online, they often still append location-specific signals.
One study showed us that forty-three percent of people who want telehealth, who know that they're going to see a provider online, still search with local intent. So that means something like therapist in Florida or, you know, anxiety therapy in Nashville, whatever that might be. They're attaching a location to it almost by instinct, even though they fully intend to see someone virtually.
And Google is reading those signals. Google is looking for signals of your location and also of the searcher's location in order to match those and potentially surface you. So if your website has no clear geographic kind of anchor or home base, if you're really trying to speak to forty states at once, Google doesn't know where to put you, and that's an issue.
So you end up not really showing up strongly anywhere. And then there's the ranking reality here that you cannot rank everywhere simultaneously. It's just not how search works. Spreading yourself across forty states is nearly impossible.
Ranking well in one state is challenging when people are searching with local intent. Ranking well in 40 states when people are searching with local intent is borderline impossible.
And so if your practice is deeply optimized for Tennessee, for instance, that has the language and the pages and all the referral signals, whatever that might be, it's going to surface far more reliably for Tennessee searches than a website that is spread thin across forty states trying to be relevant to all of them.
So even if you're online only, when it comes to SEO, searchers are still using geographic language, and Google is still treating those queries, even if they haven't appended a location geographically. And so it is in your best interest to make sure that your website is still based somewhere. We can't abandon geography completely, and we also can't attempt to be all places at all times and rank well in multiple states. It's really about finding a primary one and then adding on from there.
This is the greatest argument for why you need to make sure that you're focusing somewhere.
The other thing to keep in mind here is that if you were to select your home state or your city or whatever that might be, whether or not you're online or in person, is where you also likely have the richest connections. It's also where you are most likely to be cited in a local magazine or to start forming those connections. And the more authoritative you can appear in a particular area, the stronger that presence is going to be, right? And so if people are most likely going to be referring to you in the city of Nashville, then noting that you are based in Nashville and serving X number of states or clients in whatever other areas is going to reinforce that really, really well. Lean into where you already are. Your ability to be found in your local area because of your connections, because of your SEO, whatever that might be, is going to be stronger than your ability to be found by a client on the other side of the country.
Now, obviously if you have a physical location, even part-time, even that once-a-week sublease like I was talking about, there's your primary market. Done. Done and dusted. If you're online only, that's where things get a little bit trickier. But it's important to think about where you already have the most referral relationships.
That's probably gonna be where you're physically located, but it might be different. I've talked to two clinicians who, you know, were based in California and then moved to another state and continue to base their marketing out of California because of their well-established connections there. You can think about things like where your niche population is going to be concentrated geographically.
We don't need to get too specific here because quite frankly, there is likely a caseload full of clients in any area of the country to fill your niche practice. But if there are areas of the country where people may need your services more, that is worth thinking about. I wouldn't let that take priority over your own relationships, but something to think on.
You can think about places where you have personal credibility, right? Lived experience, maybe where you went to school, cultural knowledge, whatever that may be. And again, I would think about this at a secondary level, but are there areas that have demand and perhaps less competition?
Now in this market, chances are just about everywhere feels saturated to you, but it is possible that there are some pockets of the country where you are well-established and and that don't have as many therapists serving the niche population that you do.
So those are a couple things to think on if you're fully virtual. Chances are it's going to be where you're physically located or where you have previously been. But this is where we see kind of your niche and your geography start to work together. What I'm gonna suggest and kind of caution you against is choosing a market just based on where you think there's less competition.
Because, again, if you don't have an authentic connection to that place, if you don't have any established relationships, it's likely not gonna serve you particularly well. I would rather you base yourself out of the place where you have the deepest roots versus where you think it's strategically more lucrative, if that makes sense.
Now, if you establish a primary market, you can still see clients in other places, so what do you do about those, right? So you have your primary location. You are based in Nashville. You are based wherever you decide on. What about the others? My suggestion here, when boiled down, is essentially wherever you want to get clients, market as if you were physically there.
Be as there in those markets as you would be if you were in your primary one. So this means that we're not just gonna be spraying and praying across 43 states. It means you're gonna be really thoughtful about the secondary or tertiary locations that you choose, and engage thoughtfully, strategically, relationally in those places
Oftentimes that might mean joining the local Facebook groups for clinicians there. That might be reaching out to establish some relationships with other clinicians, either adjacent or same niche as you. Starting to form connections with other providers who in your primary location are already serving as fruitful relationships.
It's going to be very, very relational. Now you can also make some changes as it relates to SEO and your website. You can create individual pages of your website for the different states or metro areas that you're focusing on. You know, making sure that your directory profiles are reflective of those other zip codes. Making sure that anytime someone lands on your website, it notes based in X, but serving clients in, you know, X, Y, and Z. So we absolutely wanna make sure if someone from a tertiary location or from a random state that you are technically licensed in lands here, they know you can serve them, but recognizing that the majority of those folks are likely to be in your primary market.
So if you decide, "You know what? I wanna go after clients in X market," choose that market thoughtfully and then go after that market as if it was your primary one. So it's about being really thoughtful about that expansion. Again, just because you can serve clients in all of these states doesn't mean that they just suddenly know that you exist or going to come flocking.
They're gonna find you because you've engaged in thoughtful marketing around them. Okay?
I wanna highlight here that the sequencing matters. When you are thinking about how to expand and how to market yourself, engage, invest, lean into that primary market first, and then be thoughtful about those secondary and tertiary ones that come after. Primary first, build that up strong. Build a presence there, because trying to build presence in five, 10, 15 states is how you end up with a just watered-down spray and pray approach, and that's what I don't want for you.
The deeper you can go in individual markets, the more successful you are likely to be. Now, everything we're talking about today is running through your website. Like, that is the core home base of your marketing that is communicating to your primary market and your secondary and tertiary ones that you are available to serve them.
It is the asset that is anchoring you where you belong and making sure that when someone lands there, they know if you are able to serve them. We need to make sure that your location is mentioned strategically, thoughtfully, and consistently across your website, homepage, about page, specialty pages.
All of those need to make very, very clear what your primary, secondary, and tertiary markets are. We need to make sure that regardless of where they are located, they are landing here and getting a sense of your niche and determining whether or not you're a good fit for them aside from location.
Okay? This is all based in your website. If you know that your website is not speaking clearly to a primary audience, start there before we even get into primary and secondary and tertiary locations. Okay? You can be super str- super strategic about your location marketing, but if you aren't clear about your audience and your niche first, we're gonna have an issue.
So start there, and then you can start building on these additional strategies
The clinicians who are doing well right now got clear on that first, and then added on things like location and SEO and individual strategies, like what we're talking about here. This is a cherry on top strategy to the foundational client conversion engine that you need built regardless. So please know that.
Of course, we wanna start there. Now, like I said at the top of the episode, PSYPACT, multi-state licenser, it's a genuine advantage. How cool that you are available to serve all of those clients. But it is only going to be useful for you if you use it strategically, not as a headline, not as a value proposition, and not just thinking, "Well, because I can see clients, those clients are going to find me."
You're gonna have to be intentional about who you're going after and where you're going after them in order to bring in clients from other states
So if you're wondering what to do about your multi-state marketing, pick that primary market first. If you're in person, you already know what that is. If you're virtual, consider what that should be given your established relationships and the competition around your niche. Build your website around your ideal client, and then go after those clients in those markets really, really thoughtfully and strategically
Don't let the idea of being licensed in multiple states masquerade as a marketing strategy, okay? It is not itself a marketing strategy, but it does point you in some really cool directions. It does open you up to new opportunities, but only if you do it thoughtfully, okay?
I hope this one was helpful for you. See you in our next episode
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
Done-for-you services: https://walkerstrategyco.com/services
Episode 74: https://walkerstrategyco.com/show-notes/74
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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