Is It Bad If People Don't Like Your Website? (Episode 90)
What if the goal of your marketing isn't to get everyone to like you?
In this episode, Anna explores what it means to create a magnetic website and marketing strategy—one that doesn't just attract the right-fit clients, but also helps the wrong-fit clients recognize that they're not in the right place. Because effective marketing should act like a magnet: attracting some people while repelling others.
Anna walks through her five-step Magnetic Niche Method and explains how therapists can move from knowing they "should have a niche" to creating marketing that actually filters for the clients they want to work with. If your website is attracting inquiries but they aren't the right fit, this episode will help you get clearer about who you're for, who you're not for, and how to communicate both.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why effective marketing needs to both attract the right-fit clients and "bless and release" the people who aren't a good fit.
2️⃣ How a magnetic niche can help you stop sounding generic and create a clearer filter in your marketing.
3️⃣ The five steps of Anna's Magnetic Niche Method: embracing the magnetic mindset, identifying your red thread, defining your focus areas, profiling your ideal client, and writing your niche statement.
4️⃣ Why knowing who you're intentionally not marketing to is just as important as knowing who you want to attract.
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Hey, hey, welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode nine zero, 90. We're 10 episodes away from 100 episodes of Marketing Therapy. I've said this before, but if you had told me a year and a half ago that I would be podcasting weekly, I would have laughed you right out of the room. This, for some reason, was always something that I saw for other people, but never for myself.
I didn't used to be a big podcast listener, although I have become one over the last three or four years probably. But it just felt so much bigger than something I felt I would be capable of doing, and have found in these last 90 episodes how life-giving it can be, how enjoyable it is to have conversation with you one-sided but also to hear from you that what we're doing here matters and resonates with you.
Someone shared in an email, I, I think it was a week or two ago, to our team. She said, "Thank you for the podcast. Thank you for, what you teach. Thank you for not yelling at me." And I was like, "Oh, sis, you're so welcome." So if, if you're here looking for that, you know, encouragement, but also some legit strategy on what's gonna work in the therapy space right now, then I'm really happy you're here.
So that was a, a off-the-cuff reflection, but 90 feels big 'cause it's close to 100. We'll see what I say in 10 more episodes. But we're talking today about the fact that I want people to not like your marketing. I want people to not like your website. I want people to not like you. Now, not truly not like you, but we're gonna talk today about the idea of being magnetic.
And when you are magnetic, you do two things. You attract, absolutely, and we talk a lot about attraction in marketing, attracting right fit clients, attracting people to your practice, but what else does a magnet do? It repels. Your marketing, to be effective, must both attract and repel.
And I wonder if there are areas that you have avoided the latter or just simply not known to think about it, and why that might actually be diluting what it is that you're doing out there in the world, okay? If someone lands on your website and read it and go, "Oh, man, this is not what I'm looking for," that tells me your copy's probably doing a really good job. That tells me your marketing is probably doing a really good job. I've shared about my pink pants story before, how I bought these pink barrel leg pants, which if you know barrel leg is super in right now.
I bought these pink barrel leg pants before I got pregnant with my third son last year and felt a little bit embarrassed wearing them. They, they were kind of a statement, still are. But my friend, I showed up to her house, and she opened the door, and she said, "Oh, those are so you." And it gave me enough confidence to rock the pants.
But the point of the pink pants story, among other things, is that not everyone is gonna like your pink pants. That's the whole freaking point. Not everyone's gonna like the way that you do therapy. Not everyone's going to be a good fit for you. That's the whole freaking point. In this market, you know this because you know that niching is important.
You know this because you know that there are certain clients you want to be attracting more of and certain that you don't. But a lot of times, that doesn't make its way into what you actually do to grow your practice. And to do that, you need to be really, really aware and okay with the fact that you're going to be calling in some people and pushing away, repelling, or as we say, blessing and releasing those who are not the best fit for you
Often I see clinicians who are under pressure to sound professional, right? To sound effective end up sounding just really safe and generic, you know? I mean, how many times have you seen a safe, supportive space for healing and growth? Such a nice statement. Such a nice statement. Says absolutely nothing, right?
Does nothing to attract or most importantly bless and release there, right? So often what happens here is you know you need to be specific. You know how important it is to niche, but then you don't have the mechanism for it, and so you don't know what to do with it
So that's what this episode is about, the actual method for turning, "I know I shouldn't be for everyone," into marketing that actually isn't, okay? And I'm gonna walk you through the five steps of creating, first and foremost, a magnetic niche, which leads to having magnetic marketing all around. Okay? So I wanna make the argument here that a website, in particular, as the home of your marketing, but all of your marketing in general, has two jobs, not just one.
Everyone knows the first one. That's to attract more inquiries, right? And I absolutely wanna see that happen. But the one that's harder to execute, even when you believe in it, is this idea of blessing and releasing, is that idea of the magnet that repels. So knowing you should niche and then knowing how to market yourself in a way that filters out those wrong fit clients are fundamentally two different skills.
They're related, but it's one thing to know you need one, it's another to actually do it, right? I want you to picture two homepages, okay? So two homepages of therapists. One says, "I help women navigate life's challenges and find peace."
Okay, so if I'm a woman, maybe I'm in the right place. The other one says, "I work with professional badass women in their 30s and 40s whose lives look great on paper but f- don't feel great to actually live." Hmm. All right, I am not a badass woman, in this example, in my 30s and 40s. I'm not in the right place.
Even the way that that is positioned is not right for a certain type of person. We've done that filtering with that second one. Someone passed through that filter and either qualified themselves to be a good fit or self-selected out because of how it was written. Now, you can tell as I read those two statements, you know which one is gonna resonate more.
You know that. You probably just don't know how to write it for yourself. That's what I hear from a lot of you, right? 'Cause no one really sits down and decides to write, "I help women navigate life's challenges and find peace" on purpose. They just don't know what else to do in order to become magnetic, right?
It's what comes out when you're reaching for something really, really specific, but you don't have the language sharp enough to actually do it. You don't actually know how to create that filter in your marketing Now the second one, Badass Women 30s and 40s: Life's Looking Great on Paper That's gonna cause someone to stop scrolling, right?
And it's gonna cause some people to move on 'cause holy cow, that's not me. That isn't relevant to me. But then there's others that are gonna be like, "Holy cow, yes please. More of that." I've said it a million times and I'll say it again, if your website, your marketing, your copy is connecting with everyone, it's not connecting with anyone.
And you don't want it to. You know that. You have clients that you want and clients that you don't.
The goal five years ago in the pandemic times was kind of like maximum connection. Like get them, you know, get in front of them, get them in, get them scheduled. These days, the market has changed, our clients have changed, their choices have changed, the way that they're making decisions has changed.
The goal is no longer maximum connection. Now it is the right connection with the right client, and that means knowing who you're deliberately not writing to is just as important as knowing who you are. Let me say that again. Knowing who you're deliberately not writing to, not marketing to, is just as important as knowing who you are.
So you spend a lot of time thinking about your ideal client and who you wanna be attracting. Have you spent time thinking about who isn't the right fit? And is your marketing doing a good job of telling that person that they're not in the right spot? Kindly, compassionately, right? All the good things.
But quite frankly, they're not in the right spot if they've landed on your site. So this isn't just about attraction, it's attraction and repelling on purpose for the right people. Okay? So let me walk you through our Magnetic Niche Method, which informs magnetic marketing. If you wanna go through this process in a really deep way, we have our Magnetic Niche Method mini course walkerstrategyco.com/mnm, the letters M-N-M, Magnetic Niche Method, to take you through workbooks and trainings with me where I really walk you through this.
But I wanna tell you and show you what it takes to get magnetic and to get really clear about both the attraction and the blessing and releasing. Okay? Remember, this is about getting clear on who you're writing to as well as who you're intentionally not writing to. That is what is going to turn your website and your marketing from, "I know I shouldn't be for everyone" to right fit people actually calling you.
Okay? And this is really born out of the discussions and the observations I've, I've made in recent months with therapists who are telling me, "I'm getting clients, but they're not the right fit." And I say, "Okay, then what about them isn't the right fit?" And then we go looking at how that person might s- be thinking that they are and what could we be changing here, okay?
All of those things flow out of, first and foremost, the Magnetic Niche Method, and we have five steps here. Okay? So first up is embracing the magnetic mindset. You gotta get really comfortable with this idea, right? You can say all day long, "Oh, I know I should have a niche," or, "Oh, I know I'm not the right therapist for everyone."
But if you don't actually believe that, we're in trouble, okay? So we have to start there. You wanna jump straight to the strategy and the niche, I get it. But we've gotta address the fear that if you narrow your focus, you're gonna starve, right, and not be able to put food on the table, whatever that is.
You're gonna worry that fewer people are gonna find you, that your calendar's gonna empty out, whatever that is. We gotta address that fear head-on. We've also gotta get really clear on what you bring to the table and why you're really fantastic at the work that you do. If you're not niching and marketing from a position of deep clarity and confidence in how you show up in the room and why you are exceptional when you're with the right client, we're gonna have a hard time here.
Okay? So first we embrace the magnetic mindset. We get really comfortable with who you're for, what you bring into the room, why you're really excellent at the work that you do, and also spend a little bit of time reflecting on who isn't the right fit so that you have clarity around who that person is and is not.
Okay? We know that you cannot create magnetic marketing from a mindset where you're still trying to appeal to everyone or you can't have one foot in both camps, right? The all things to all people, but maybe I should have a niche, but maybe... No, no, no. We got to address that. So first and foremost, we embrace that magnetic mindset.
Then we look at what we call the red thread, and I would love to do an entire episode on this, so I'll add it to my list. But we've got to understand and identify the red thread. In your practice. This is the connective tissue, for lack of a better term, that runs across all the different types of clients that you love to work with.
Sometimes I will run across a therapist who has just one very specific type of client that they want to work with, and they want a caseload full of them. Amazing. Super easy client to niche. Life is good. Most of you who I talk to enjoy a couple different types of clients. Maybe you really enjoy couples and individuals.
Maybe you really enjoy people coming in with ADHD concerns, but also people that know they have relational trauma. Yes, those might be somewhat related, but when you look at your marketing, you're worried that they feel disconnected, and so you feel this tension of, "Do I have to abandon one, or what does this look like?"
The red thread solves that. So the red thread is about finding a common denominator, a connective tissue, a red thread that ties together the commonalities amongst your different types of ideal clients. And again, in order to know our ideal client, we have to know who we're not for, right? Every single therapist has a red thread, every single one of them.
They just haven't named it yet. They just don't know that approach. But when they find it, that's what liberates them to enjoy variety while keeping a really focused message, while not being all things to all people. This is the base of the filter. If a client meets the red thread criteria, then at their most fundamental, they're in the right place.
They know that when the red thread is put forth. So we gotta figure out what that red thread is. If you don't name this and identify it, then niching feels a lot like guessing, like you're having to pick and choose between your different types of clients, abandon one for the sake of the other. You don't have to do that, not if we have a red thread really, really clear.
Next up, we identify your focus areas. So your focus areas are those more distinct camps that your clients are going to fall into. So if you enjoy the ADHD and the trauma, for instance, or you enjoy couples and people-pleasing, whatever that might be, we gotta figure out what those focus areas are, right? So this is moving from that more general red thread that ties together all of your different types of clients into your specific focus areas.
Now, you probably enjoy a very particular flavor of anxiety. There are anxiety clients that are not the right fit for you. Who are those? Who are the right fit? So looking at the focus areas at that more granular level are what are going to allow you to enjoy that level of variety without being all things to all people, without presenting as a generalist Right?
So not every anxious client, but the anxious mom. Not every trauma client, but big T trauma clients, whatever that might be for you, okay? This is where your niche starts to get a little bit sharper. This is where we're speaking specifically to people that identify with certain areas. Then we get to profiling your ideal client.
So we've embraced the mindset. We know your red thread. We've looked at the focus areas that those clients fall into, and now we get really clear on who your ideal client is. So this is getting to know on a very, very deep level who your client is, both inside and outside of therapy, right?
In order for your marketing to truly, truly resonate with folks, it's not just about why they're in the room. It's what's going on outside of the room that has led them here. So we have to get a deep understanding of what that is. So we're gonna look at who they are demographically. We're gonna look at what their lifestyle and relationships are like.
We're gonna talk about what's bringing them to therapy and what they are saying about their struggles. We're also gonna look at what their goals are for therapy. What are they telling you they actually want to get out of this experience? Is it skills, right? Is it direction? Is it understanding why I keep falling back into this pattern?
So we look at that, and then finally, we look at what they value in the therapy experience, AKA what you bring into the room. So this is about what they appreciate about your style, what they know they want out of therapy, okay? And it's gonna be this criteria that's going to inform everything else that you do in your marketing.
It's also going to help us create the filter. Is this marketing speaking to this person and repelling someone who doesn't meet this criteria? If so, we know it's doing its job. Okay? And then the final piece of the magnetic niche method is going ahead and writing that niche statement. So it's about putting this into language, creating what we call a North Star for your marketing, against which you can bump up anything.
Okay? So the Instagram carousel that you create, the networking referral contact you're considering reaching out to, you know, the, the journal article you're considering contributing to. Whatever that is, you can bump it up against the niche statement, is this relevant to this work and this client?
So your niche statement is your statement about attraction. Your niche statement is someone being able to read it and say, "There's something in this statement for me here. I'm in the right place." And also written in such a way that if someone who was not the right fit could read it and be like, "Nope, that's not for me."
That's when we know that a niche statement is effective, and then it can therefore inform the rest of your marketing, what you write on your website, how you market your practice. We're in the early weeks of our Confident Copy Live cohort, so this is our last one of twenty twenty-six, and one of our students, she's incredible, she's a clinician out of Philly, has been talking about how she doesn't know exactly what her niche is.
She has a ton of experience very, very varied so far in her career, and as she gets into private practice and eventually going cash pay, she isn't positive what she wants to focus on, and it's been really fun workshopping that with her. And so one of the questions I asked her is, "Okay, knowing what you know, what you've shared with me here," we're in the, the Facebook group doing this coaching, "w- who isn't the right fit?
Who do you not want more of?" And that really began to show us that her red thread, her niche, was really grounded in the experience that she offered. Because the people who weren't the right fit for her are coming wanting worksheets, they're wanting skills, they're wanting very, like, CBT structured type therapy, and that's not what she does.
So that gave us a differentiator to start leaning into in, in her marketing. Now we've landed on a niche statement where her right fit client could read that and say, "Yes, absolutely" and someone who is looking for that experience could read it and be like, "I don't want that." Perfect. Then your niche has done its job.
Okay? Another example of this, a Confident Copy live student last year is a group practice owner, and she and her team work specifically with professionals who are burned out in their workplace. So sometimes it's because they've experienced trauma. Sometimes it's because they are being asked to do things that are unethical.
Like it's people that really find themselves at a, at a tough spot in their professional life. And she had a headline, I don't remember exactly what the headline was, but it was a headline. I think it had a swear word in it. It was ver- but it was crystal clear to the right person that they were in the right spot relevant to their experience around work.
And she came onto a coaching call and she said, "I shared my updated website with someone, and I got some feedback that maybe I was being a little bit too bold with it. And what, you know, what do I do with that?" And I asked her, "Well, is the person who gave you that feedback a good fit for your practice?"
And she said, "No." And I said, "Perfect. Then your website has done its job." Your website should be creating that experience for some people. "Wow, this is not right for me. Wow, that is too bold. Wow, that is too woo-woo." Whatever it is, your website should be creating that experience. Remember the pink pants? Your pink pants are not right for everyone.
That's the whole point. Are you marketing in such a way that you are so okay with being the right fit for some and not the right for others, that if people were to give you that feedback, you'd be okay with it? Now, we might need to deal with what that feedback does for you and brings up for you, but at your core, are you okay with not being okay for everyone?
I hope you are, 'cause that unlocks so much potential in your marketing, so much ability to get specific and to also not waste time having conversations with people who aren't the right fit for you. I don't want you to keep getting on consults and wondering if that person is gonna be the best fit. If this person is going to ask you if you do couples work and you don't.
You know? If it's gonna be all about fees and insurance, or if you're just gonna have to start at the beginning of who you are as a therapist and what your approach is and who you work with because your website and your marketing didn't give them any of that information. When done right, your marketing, particularly your website, can do a lot of this heavy lifting for you so that the people who get to the bottom of the filter, if you imagine a coffee filter, the coffee, the rich, delicious coffee that comes out at the bottom, the consults that you have are those right fit clients.
And those who aren't were filtered out, blessed and released to go find the therapist for whom they are the absolute best fit because there absolutely is someone out there for them. It's just not you. Are you okay with that? Are you marketing from that place? If you market from that place, I can guarantee you will see changes in the feedback that you're getting from your clients.
So that's our magnetic niche method. First of all, embracing that magnetic mindset, then identifying your red thread, identifying the focus areas, profiling that ideal client, and then writing that niche statement that is written in such a way that the right fit would say yep, and the wrong fit would say nope.
That's where filtering begins, and when you get that niche piece right, well, everything flows out from there, right? But we gotta know that first. If you wanna go through that process at a deep level, like I mentioned, Magnetic Niche Method, it's a full mini course with videos and workbook with me, walkerstrategyco.com/mnm to grab that.
But if you're wondering what this means for your marketing, if you have a niche, if you have a website, and you're wondering, are you doing this well? Are you reaching people who are more skeptical? Are you resonating with people who have more choices available to them? Jump into our Clear Website, Full Caseload workshop.
That is our free training where I walk through the four mistakes that I'm seeing therapists make that are preventing them from getting those premium fee clients in this really saturated and skeptical market that we're in. I go a lot more in-depth in those mistakes, what's happening, how to know if you're making them, and then what you need to do to change them, and I think you'll find that really, really enlightening when you consider, okay, if I'm the right fit for some and then not right for others, how do I make sure my website is, is communicating that?
How do I know that it's doing it well? How do I know that the right fit clients are gonna read it and resonate with it? You can jump into that, walkerstrategyco.com/cwfc. We'll put that in the show notes as well. 100% free. Like I said, a lot more of an in-depth look at what's happening in websites in particular out there in the marketplace.
But remember, it starts with getting really, really comfortable with being magnetic, both attracting and repelling. Are you okay with that? Have you embraced it? And is your marketing doing that for you? I'm excited to hear what comes up for you on this one. I'll see you in our next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Magnetic Niche Method: https://walkerstrategyco.com/mnm
Clear Website, Full Caseload Workshop: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cwfc
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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