Given that there are around 250,000 complementary therapists in the UK alone, it's not surprising that they can't all find enough work to keep themselves busy. But the biggest issue most of them face has nothing to do with their skills as a therapist. Most have been well trained, have the interests of their clients at heart and are able to do a brilliant job for them.
The problem is that, when they decided to make the change from a regular job to being an alternative practitioner, they forgot about one thing. They were also leaping from a secure job to the uncertainty of self employment. That is a HUGE change, even if you stay in the same line of work. But when you factor in a change of profession, it's no wonder that this double whammy catches out so many therapists.
Now that you are self employed, it's up to you to get the telephone ringing on a regular basis. To make that phone ring, you may have to spend many weeks promoting yourself and your new practice. The right level of marketing could mean that you spend all your time on it for the first few months and 50% plus for the another three or four months. Many therapists would rather eat nails than spend all their time marketing. They don't like doing it, and they need some cash now to start paying off their college bills.
People don't always feel comfortable coming to your home, so it improves your credibility if you can find a clinic and rent a room by the hour or session. If the clinic offers services which compliment rather than compete with yours, you can cross-refer clients to each other with almost zero marketing cost. Once you have a base, use notice boards in cafes, adverts in shop windows and fliers in any local businesses that will take them.
Then, you can start using the greatest marketing tool of all, the internet. There are lots of low cost packages around where you can use a template design and have control of the content without having to go to a programmer each time. Focus on the benefits that you offer, include some testimonials from early clients and learn about Google adword campaigns to send targeted traffic to your site. Then look at some of the latest ?social marketing' sites such as Youtube and Myspace to spread the word about what you do through viral marketing.
Sound like a lot of work? We haven't talked about your database, direct mail, referral systems, autoresponders or conventional advertising yet. It's all too much for a single article, so to see what lessons I've learned in growing National Nutrition Clinic from a standing start to one of the UK's leading integrated medicine clinics conducting 10,000 patient consultations a year, please follow the link below and sign up for the report.
Please take this first step on the road to success in your practice.
