Marketing Strategies for Therapreneurs to Get More Coaching Clients [Ep 20]

Welcome to the Thriving therapyneur Podcast. The show for ambitious therapists who are ready to unapologetically make more money, scale their impact and build their dream coaching business. I'm Carly Hill, therapist turned coach turned CEO of a seven figure online business. I created the Thriving Therapeutic Podcast because I'm obsessed with helping big hearted therapists outgrow the office and build successful and sustainable online businesses. So if you are wondering how you can continue to make an impact without sacrificing the life you love, welcome Therapreneur. This is exactly the place for you. Think of it like the business school we never had. I am so excited to dive in with you. Let's get started. What's up Therapreneurs? Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you as a therapist turned coach, take your marketing game to the next level. So whether you're just getting started or you're looking to scale, we're going to be covering everything from defining your ideal client, crafting attention grabbing content, to mastering organic marketing. And then we're also going to talk about knowing when and when not to invest in paid advertising. So we're going to cover a lot when it comes to marketing. And maybe this word, marketing. When you even looked at the title of this episode, maybe this is triggering to you. Like I used to tell myself the story that marketing is such a huge mystery. I also used to tell myself the story that I'm not a businesswoman, I'm just a social worker and none of these stories were serving me and my business. And it wasn't until I really reframed my mindset around marketing, because we love a good reframe, because we're therapists, that marketing started to be magical in my business. Like it was maybe four short years ago where I knew nothing about marketing, but I challenged myself and I spent so much time and energy and money learning and investing and understanding this so called mystery of marketing. And I think it can feel like a mystery because it's so nuanced. I mean, think about cooking a gourmet meal. Like anyone can follow a recipe, but the real magic happens in the nuances. It's knowing when to add a pinch of salt, adjusting the heat, deciding when something is done just right. So in marketing it's not just about following a formula, although formulas serve as good baseline and having a structure and having a plan. But you also need to understand how and when to adjust your messaging, you to need, your tone, maybe the platform to fit your audience and your goals. So it's this blend, just like this blend of ingredients when you're cooking, it's this blend of ingredients and intuition. And marketing involves a lot of trial and error. It's constant fine tuning, it's personal touches, it's creating something that deeply resonates with your audience, which is going to be different for everyone. Think of it kind of like, I love good analogies. Think of it kind of like gardening too, because you could plant the same seed in two different gardens, but the outcome depends on what soil you had, how the weather was, how often you were watering the plants. So marketing strategies that work in one situation, they might need tweaking in another. And this depends on your audience, timing, platform. So it's not this one size fits all approach. And that's why I feel like it can feel like such a mystery to us, because what works for one audience or industry may not yield the same results for another. So it really requires us to be resilient, to be able to adapt and have this ongoing nurturing. So we still want to understand the foundations and the basics of marketing because that never really changes. But when you put on your marketing hat, you also need to be able to have a flexible mindset and be able to experiment. The first thing we're going to cover in today's episode is about hyperniching. This is going to be your secret weapon for building this loyal client base and really understanding how your ideal client can help you connect on a deeper level to your business. Next, I'm going to show you the power of attention grabbing hooks. So hook hooks are how we stop the scroll. Like we have three to five seconds to stop the scroll and get somebody's attention these days. So how can you have this power hook on social media to get your audience to stop the scroll and engage with your content? Then we're going to explore this balance between organic marketing and paid advertising. I get this question all of the time, like, when do I turn on paid advertising? Is it really worth it? So I'm going to talk about when you should do it and why it's crucial to nail your organic efforts before throwing any money at ads. I'm also going to explain how you can use Facebook groups to generate leads and build a supportive community around your brand. If you have been following me for any sort of time or dove into my content, you know I am a huge advocate for teaching about Facebook marketing, which I always joke and say, like, this is hilarious to me because I also used to tell myself the story that I hate Facebook and to be honest, I still don't love it. I much prefer Instagram, but we double down on what works and Facebook is still the number one platform. And the group aspect, you don't have this on any other platform. So there is very much an art and a science to running a money making, client getting hub of potential clients, AKA your Facebook group. I could probably have a whole episode on this, but I'm going to briefly talk about Facebook groups. From there, we're going to discuss how building meaningful conversations turns into likes and followers, but how we don't want to focus too much on these vanity metrics. They're not everything. And then we're going to talk about this major trap that I see so many coaches fall into, this shiny object syndrome. So how do we stay focused on what actually works and avoid chasing every single new trend or tool that comes along? Lastly, we're going to dive into the importance of knowing your numbers, tracking key metrics to ensure your marketing is on the right track. So, holy shit, stick with me. We have a lot to cover and by the end of this episode, you're going to walk away with clarity, focus, practical steps to refine your marketing strategy. I hope you have a pen and paper. If you're multitasking, you're listening to me while you're driving. 1. I love that for you. I always listen to podcasts while I'm driving. I feel like I never listen to music anymore. Come back to this at another time when you have a pen and paper because you can probably take so many notes from this episode. P S. I also have a whole entire chapter on marketing inside my Therapreneur book. It's chapter four. So if you don't have that yet, I highly recommend getting it. All right, let's dive in. So what is marketing? What's the actual definition of marketing? Well, it's the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. So we have to promote and sell our products or services. Being great at what we do is not enough, especially if nobody knows about it. Marketing is key. We have to unlock all of the marketing strategies so we can grow our business. And just because we're promoting and we're selling doesn't mean that we're sleazy or we're salesy. It's about helping people see that what we have to offer can help them solve their problem. That's what we're doing. Businesses make money because they solve problems. And just think about this for a second and the money that you have spent recently the money that you have invested recently, what problem did it solve for you? You paid a business because it solved a problem for you. And, and that's exactly what your business does. It solves problems for people. It helps them make a transformation in their life. People are always buying their way out of something, not into something. So yes, marketing is going to take time, money, energy to figure out what's working and what's not working. But we can't be afraid to promote our services. One of the biggest mistakes I see coaches making when they're trying to market is marketing to everyone. It's like fishing in the ocean when your perfect fish is swimming in a pond. It is like marketing yourself as a professional multitasker. You're a generalist, you can't do this. You have to hyperniche. Hypernicing is crucial, especially in high ticket sales. And that's what I specialize in, is helping my clients go from therapist to coach and create a signature high ticket coaching program. You have to hypernish to have a high ticket program. If you are expecting your clients to urgently and eagerly pay you, you have to hyperniche. I can't stress that enough. So you have to share how, identifying your ideal clients habits, their needs, their pain points, how does this help solve their problem? You need to resonate with them on a deep level. You're not here to serve everyone, you're here to serve a specific person. And if you try to be everything to everyone, this sounds kind of mean, but you're going to end up being nothing to no one. So the more specific you are with who you're targeting, the easier it will be for you to market your business. You're going to make it so much easier on yourself. Instead of trying to find like this needle in a haystack, you're going to be able to go to a place where all of your ideal clients are already collected in a hub together, your targeting is going to be so much easier. So if you're telling yourself stories right now about you don't want to alienate anyone and you don't want to hyper niche down and you don't want to just pick one or you don't want to just pick this specific problem, you're going to create more problems for yourself. And remember that your niche doesn't have to be your niche for forever and it will absolutely evolve over time. But if you're starting off from scratch, you don't have an audience yet. I would highly recommend hyper niching down and choosing a very Specific population with a very specific problem who wants to get to a specific outcome. And you don't have to promote yourself everywhere, but you do need to be a walking billboard in the places where your ideal client is is hanging out. And it's going to be a lot easier for you to figure out where they're hanging out when you can hyper niche. And you can target them a lot easier than, like I said, trying to go find a needle in a haystack. So we know the goal of marketing is to reach your target audience. We help them identify is our offer right for them, is it not right for them? And if it is right for them, we invite them to buy our product or service. It's as simple as that. And since I'm on this analogy kick today, I'm going to compare it to dating. This is the analogy I use inside my book, inside chapter four. And I talk about how if you were searching for a partner, you'd likely only hang out in the places where your ideal partner would hang out. And then from there you'd probably do something to get their attention. You'd somehow put yourself in a position where you could get noticed and then after that it would naturally move into rapport building, having a conversation that would hopefully lead to an exchange of information or in dating a date. So think of marketing just like this. You first need to know where your ideal client is hanging out online or offline, which is why hypernicing is so important, because then you can easily target them and then from there you'll be able to get noticed. You'll be able to spark a conversation, you'll be able to have some sort of exchange that's going to move them along in the client journey. So you can eventually invite them to go deeper if your offer is right. And invite them to buy your product or your service. This is how it works. So we have to make it easy for them to say yes to buying from us. You may be asking yourself the question, well, how am I going to get noticed? How am I going to stand out? The coaching space is so saturated. And yes, it's saturated, but it's saturated for a reason. It's because there's a market need. And you're right. The truth is we live in a world that is full of distractions. So if you don't capture somebody's attention in the first three seconds, they're gone. Like, think about how often you're on social media and you're just scrolling. But also think about what gets you to stop the scroll what makes you actually stop and be like, hmm, maybe this is interesting. It's probably a hook. It's probably in that first three to five seconds where it stops you in your track. Whether it's an Instagram caption, it's the first sentence of a blog post. Whatever it is, it needs to be strong. People are bombarded with information. So your goal is to stop the scroll and make them want to know more. How can you convince them to keep reading? When I teach my clients copywriting, I explain the anatomy of what a hook is. So a hook is that first sentence, right? It's that three to five seconds where we have to stop the scroll. And a hook should have three things. The first thing that it should have is calling out to the population. So you'll notice in most of my content, if you were to go scroll on my Instagram, you would see therapists, therapist, therapist, therapist, therapist everywhere. Because that is my population. So I am constantly calling out to my population and all of my hooks to stop the scroll for those that are new to my world and don't know that I'm actually helping therapists at coaching outgrow the office. So attention, population. That's what your hook needs to say. Then it also needs to call out to either the pain or the desire of your ideal client, or maybe both. But at least it needs to call out to one of these. So your population and the pain or desire or both. That's the anatomy of a hook. So sometimes I'll audit my clients work, and I'm always just trying to play devil's advocate, like, of course I know who they help and how they help them, but I'm pretending like I'm their ideal client and I'm scrolling on social media. And if they're not calling out to their population, if they're not calling out to the problems that they're solving, the pain points that their ideal clients have, the desires that their ideal clients have. I'm like, I don't know what type of coach you are. I don't know who you're helping. I don't know what your population is. I don't know what problem you're solving. It took me 10 seconds to get down to the bottom to figure that out. It needs to be in your hook. And this may take quite a bit of testing. You're trying to figure out what lands with your audience, what doesn't, what gets crickets, what do they really like to engage with and comment on. So it's all about testing. And this is why I think that some coaches teach jumping into paid advertising way too soon. I've seen many coaches throw money at ads before they've nailed down their niche, before they've nailed down their messaging, before they really understand how to have powerful hooks, before they've built this solid foundation organically. And that's like putting gas in a car that doesn't have wheels. We can't jump the gun here. And even when we have paid advertising, going organic marketing doesn't stop. So it's a foundational tool that you need to learn how to do in your business. Regardless, it is absolutely critical to focus on organic marketing first. Then we can take what's doing well with organic marketing and we can be really smart about turning paid advertising and putting some dollars behind it because we already know that it resonates with our clients. It's our testing ground. So doing things the quick way isn't always the smartest way. Learn how to do organic marketing first. Once you have proof of concept, then we can start with paid advertising and we start off small. We don't have to dump a bunch of money into paid advertising. Truly, Facebook and Instagram, it won't let you spend more than $50 a day when you have a new ad account anyways. So it's not like you're forking out thousands of dollars. You're starting off small, maybe 10, 15 a day. You're seeing what works, you're seeing what doesn't work. You're doing it the smart way because we already know what kind of works with our organic marketing. That's what we're choosing to put dollars behind. And for the love of God, we are not boosting Instagram posts. Do not boost Instagram posts. I made a post on this on my Instagram not too long ago because I was seeing a lot of people talking about boosting Instagram posts and this is not how we properly do paid advertising. It's going to be a waste of your money. If you're just boosting post, it's going to shoot it out to freebie seekers. Basically, you have no control. If you're going to be running Facebook and Instagram ads, you need to do it from ads manager. The last thing I'll say on paid advertising is when you do decide to run some paid advertising, I do not recommend outsourcing it completely. I ran my ads for years before completely outsourcing them and I'm still hands on. If you outsource them too early, one, it's going to be a major expense in your business. I mean, good ads managers, you're going to pay anywhere from three to $5,000 a month, not even including your ad spend. So usually that doesn't even make sense in your business to completely outsource. But two, you need to know what you're looking at. You need to know to a certain extent before you outsource. So I never really enjoyed running my ads because I didn't like the number piece of it. But I forced myself to learn before I outsourced. It's kind of a love hate relationship with paid advertising because it works. It works really, really well. And it's such a breath of fresh air because you can just get basically clients in your sleep, which is really cool. But ads is all about testing. You can't just set it and forget it. It doesn't work like that. So before you outsource, I recommend consulting with an ads manager. Maybe you're meeting with them once a week. Maybe you're in a coaching program where you have an ads coach. So this is what I do with my clients. I have my ads manager who completely runs all of my ads. She teaches all of my clients and they also get an ads course so they don't have to pay her thousands of dollars a month to run their ads. They're just consulting with her. They're bringing it to the weekly call, they're sharing their screen, and we're talking about what's working, what's not working, what numbers you should be looking at. We have tracking sheets. So you're doing it yourself, you're understanding it yourself, but you're not completely alone and you have guidance. So this is how I would recommend, and this is what I did for years prior to outsourcing my ads. When you do decide to turn them on. All right, let's switch gears and talk about Facebook groups for a second. Because the majority of successful 6, 7, 8 figure earners, they will tell you that Facebook groups are currently the number one sales asset you can use to build trust and authority. And trust building has always been important when it comes to sales, but I would say it's even more important these days with the saturated coaching industry. So regardless of your niche, people are more protective over whom they choose to work with than ever before. So it's a possibility that your potential client could be shopping around for other similar coaches. It's also a possibility that your potential client could be afraid to part with their money again, like given our current times, or maybe they've been burned by an experience they had with a coach. So it's really important for us to understand, understand this skepticism. I always respect it, but to focus constantly on building trust. And that's why I teach and preach about Facebook groups, because it's a trust building hub, It's a money making, client getting group. And there is absolutely an art and a science to creating this group, like setting it up in the first place to what are the features it needs to have? What is the name of your Facebook group? What are the questions that they need to answer to get into the group? And then it comes down to three components. How do you grow your group? How do you get people into your group? How do you get them into your world? How do you nurture your group so that you can build this trust? And then most importantly, how can we monetize this group? That's the last component. Right? So when we think about growing our group, this is so important because when people join your group and they see you as the tribe leader of hundreds and thousands of people who are all in your community for this education, this inspiration around the topic, your exact expertise, like your niche, your word is going to carry so much more weight. You automatically earn more trust. And we know that trust equals conversions. Trust equals conversions. So growing your group is incredibly important. And we really want quality, ideal clients over quantity. It's not just about a whole bunch of new members. And I will say that new members are always the most excited, they're always the most engaged. So it's really important to nurture them while they're new. And it's really important to constantly gain new members to keep this engagement up so your group doesn't quote, unquote, die. So how can you get members into your group, you may be wondering. Well, we were just talking about paid advertising. So there's absolutely one way to get people into your group is running a $10 a day ad where you can just send them straight to your Facebook group so you can run a traffic campaign, not boosting posts. Remember, we're not boosting posts. So you do this inside of ads manager and there's a strategic way that you can set this up. I teach my clients how to do this and we can get new members into our group for $3amember, $5amember, always less than $10amember and they could easily turn into a high ticket client. So we can put some dollars behind it or we can do it organically. So this goes back to the targeting that we were talking about. We need to know where our clients are hanging out so we can post really compelling content in front of them and drive them to our group. So we need to tell them what is in it for them. People are always wondering, well, what's in it for me? Why should I join? What am I going to get out of this? And especially when you're asking for their email address because you're going to do this when they join your group. Well, why should they give you your email? What's in it for them? What are they going to get? Is it worth it? People are skeptical to even give their email. So we need to assign value. This is what I call it, assigning value to what it is that they're going to get. So you can do this. Organic marketing, paid advertising. But regardless, we have to give them a reason to join. Be specific on what they're going to get out of it. You can use your other social media platforms. So if you go look at my Instagram, you'll see that I often talk about the therapist to coach, accelerator, Facebook group. So I'm using my Instagram as a funnel to drive people to my group and then why should they join my group? Well, one reason you should join the group if you're not in it is I have hundreds of free trainings and cheat sheets inside the group. So I have trainings on probably every single topic you can think of when it comes to growing your coaching business. Transitioning from therapist to coach, protecting your license, trainings from attorneys, clarifying your niche, reducing your hours, marketing, writing your story, advancing your mindset so much. And you're gonna get all of that inside the group. So see how I just assigned value to what it is that they're gonna get. That's what you have to do to get your clients to your group. Tell them that you are doing a new free training on X, Y and Z, or you just created a new free guide on X, Y and Z. These are your lead magnets. These are your freebies. These are what is going to call in your ideal client, like a magnet. So once you get them to your group, you have to nurture them. That's the second piece. So new members are not usually ready to buy right off the bat. You need to build rapport with them. You need to have genuine conversations with them. They're going to want to look around, they're going to want to maybe be a silent lurker. They're going to want to look at testimonials. So you have to have conversations with them. You have to point them to the right place where they can see all of Your lead magnets. You need to ask them what they're struggling with. Maybe you can tag them in specific content that will help them with whatever they're specifically struggling with. This is all about building trust, right? And fortune is in the follow up. We have to keep the conversations going. So your goal is to figure out if they are indeed a good fit for your service. They're in the market for your service, they actually want this, they actually need this. And then asking them a series of questions to figure out, well, how serious are they? How soon are they looking to make this change? Are they looking for professional support when it comes to this X, y, Z problem, do they have the funds to invest? So again, there's an art and a science to setting up your group, growing your group, nurturing your group, and then also monetizing your group. So don't just post about anything and everything, making your group a free for all. We have to cut the fluff. Less is more. Quality is much more important than quantity. So don't post so much information that it just gets lost. When we're posting, we're posting with intention and strategy to get a paying client, not just for consistency. So our content, our actual copy, the text of what we're typing in, our call to actions, those need to be very strategic to move them along in the client journey so that you can get a paying client. So we know on what days we post what sort of content. And I teach all of my clients this. So if you don't have a Facebook group, one, go join mine so you can lurk and see how I run it. But two, go start yours. Okay, but try to have at least a very compelling sexy headline. This is a marketing term, sexy headline that calls out to your population and either the problem that you're solving for them, the outcome that you're getting for them. And the more hyper niche you can be, the better. So don't just have a very generic Facebook group name because nobody's going to want to join it. So we've talked about a lot so far. We talked about how marketing is nuanced, why you need a hyper niche, about attention grabbing hooks, organic marketing, paid advertising, Facebook groups, building trust because people are skeptical. And this may lead you to wonder, well, what do I do next? Like how do I, how do I tackle all of this information? And you may go down rabbit holes of learning about marketing. And this is where you can fall into what I call the shiny object syndrome. So you have to learn how to stay focused on what works and avoid Chasing every new trend or tool that comes along. It's definitely a balanced game because we need to stay up with the times of the new platforms that come out in what is working in 2024, 2025. But at the same time, we don't want to jump ship too fast to every single new target advertisement that we get, a new mentor that we get, and opting into all of their freebies and their funnels. And then before you know it, we just spent hours going down all of these shiny object traps when we could have been focusing on the foundational pieces. This is why having a mentor can be so helpful, to help us stay focused, stay in our lane, keep one foot in front of the other, one baby step in front of the other step so we don't get caught up in this nuanced, ambiguous marketing game and we can really, really dial in, stay disciplined and stay focused. Because every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So we kind of have to have this filter. And what is our next strategy? Is it a distraction or, or is it an opportunity? We need to be able to ask ourselves these hard questions. This is also why it's important to know our numbers. Numbers do not lie. Metrics matter so you can improve what you don't measure. So one of the biggest mistakes new coaches make is just flying blind when it comes to their numbers without knowing what's working. And they just try something and they're like, well, it's not working, I'm stuck. And then they get sucked into that shiny object syndrome, thinking that a new tool is going to fix everything. So this is why we have to know our key metrics. Like, how many times did you post, what does it cost you to acquire a new client? What is your close rate? What is your conversion rate? What is your opt in rate? How many people are asking for your freebie? How many people are joining your group? What is the cost it takes if you're running paid advertising to get a new member into your group? These things are going to help us make data driven marketing decisions. So somebody comes to one of my coaching calls inside the Therapist to coach accelerator and they say like, well, I did this and it's not working. I'm like, well, what's the data? And then I ask them a series of questions to help understand the numbers so I can diagnose, well, is it, is this a volume problem? Is this a messaging problem? Is this a targeting problem? This is going to help us make these again, data driven marketing decisions. So Success in marketing, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. You have to stick with it. You have to show up consistently. You have to provide value consistently. I always say 80% value, value, value, value, 20% hard promotion. So you can't be afraid to sell. But you also need to provide a lot of value so you can build trust. So if you're in it for the marathon, you stick with it. You show up consistently, you provide value, you build trust. You're going to win. The more you show up, the more your audience will trust you. And trust is everything in sales. I think I've said that a million times this episode. So start tracking these key metrics. Set aside time each week to review them. And this doesn't have to be fancy tracking. I mean this could legit be a sticky note. Or it could be an Excel spreadsheet. Like you don't have to have a CRM system, a customer relationship management system. You don't have to have that yet. You just need to know the basic numbers. So marketing is a long game. There's no shortcut. There's no shortcut to building trust and growing your audience. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes consistency. Just like building relationships, they need continuous attention, empathy, flexibility. So the depth of the connection you build with your audience will dictate the long term success of your coaching business. I hope you found this episode helpful. We covered a ton today, but like I said, come back to this episode re listen to it again. Take notes. You can always find me on Instagram at Carlyhill Coaching. Or if you're not already in the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook Group, I would highly recommend you hang out there. I have lots of free resources just like this podcast and if you ever want to hear an episode that I haven't yet recorded on a very specific topic, please feel free to reach out. I do take recommendations and taking your thoughts into consideration as I continuously produce content to help you outgrow the office and do so much as a therapist. My love is with you. Until next time, thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Therapy Neuro Podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter and see the freedom to potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook Group where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales and adding coaching ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on and I'll see you around.