Digital Marketing for Mental Health Professionals
Digital marketing for mental health professionals is about so much more than promoting a business. It’s about your mission. It’s about healing, supporting and guiding. Marketing gives you a chance to amplify this mission so you can not only reach more people but grow your business.
Beyond that, marketing is a necessary tool for standing out in a very crowded market—an 11.7 billion dollar market, to be exact. Marketing is a chance to share your voice and unique point of view so clients and customers choose you, not your competitors.
The thing is, most mental health professionals wouldn’t call themselves “marketers”—which means they feel lost, frustrated or disappointed with their marketing efforts. In larger organizations, most marketers are wearing multiple hats and struggle to make time or get resources for what needs to be done.
That’s why we created this blog post. Digital marketing for mental health professionals doesn’t have to be complicated, or resource-intensive, but you will only see more success if you get it right.
Keep reading to find out how you can use this tool to amplify your reach and foster genuine connections so you can grow your business.
1. Know Your Audience Inside Out
First things first: who are you talking to? Digital marketing is a conversation. If you don’t know who’s on the other side of that conversation, you’re going to struggle to come up with content that actually resonates—and thus helps your business grow.
To understand your audience, ask yourself a few questions. As you do, be as specific as possible:
Who are your ideal clients? (Age, gender, location, job, etc.)
What specific challenges are they facing?
What do they need you for?
What is their life like with you and what is it like when they DO work with you?
Knowing your audience inside out allows you to tailor your content to address their specific needs. For example, if your target audience is young adults dealing with stress, create content that speaks directly to their experiences, like blog posts on coping mechanisms for college-related stress.
But Also, Know Your Brand
Knowing what your audience wants and needs to hear is one thing. Knowing how you personally want to share that information is just as important. This is especially the case in mental health because this market is so crowded—there are a lot of people doing what you’re doing and saying what you’re saying.
It’s how you say it that makes you stand out. This is where the Dinner Party Exercise can be really helpful. Check out this Instagram post below that walks you through what this is and how to do it.
2. Start Building Your SEO Foundation
SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, refers to setting your website up so it can rank in Google search. This is the foundation for your website, but it takes time to build. Depending on your website and how committed you are, it could take anywhere from 6 months to multiple years to see the results.
Here’s the important thing to remember: Once it gets going, SEO will deliver leads, traffic and revenue for years and years to come. Unlike paid ads, you don’t have to keep spending money to keep it going—you set it up, nurture it with content and other factors, and then watch it deliver for you.
Whether you work with clients within a specific region (for example, you have a local therapy practice) or across the United States or globally, SEO is a critical component of digital marketing for mental health professionals. Let’s look at these two pieces.
Local SEO
The best and most important thing you can do for SEO as a local business is to create a Google Business profile and ask your clients to leave reviews. This will help you to show up in the local pack of businesses when someone searches for “therapist near me” or “therapist [region]” and you are within their region.
Non-Location Specific SEO
There are so many ways to do SEO for a business that’s not location-specific—and this is something we help clients do at Echeveria Organic. We always recommend working with a professional for this because the trick is having a strategy and knowing how to execute it properly. It will take you more time and money to research and learn how to do it (and then sadly, probably not do it very well) than it would be to hire someone to get it right the first time so you can start seeing results.
General SEO for Both
Whether you’re a local business or global, here are some other SEO factors you can consider:
Site speed, both desktop and mobile
Backlinks and press mentions
User experience of website
Technical SEO (HTML, CSS, etc.)
3. Be Consistent With Social Media
Social media is a powerful (free!) tool for connecting with potential clients—but like SEO, it takes time to build a community and see results. That’s why this section isn’t just “get on social media,” but “be consistent with it.” You have to show up (even just 2-3 times each week) to build an engaged audience that can turn into clients.
We remind our clients to reframe the way they think about social media: This isn’t an “advertising” platform, it’s a community platform. While the goal is to grow your business, few people will buy from a stranger. You must show up regularly to build trust, add value, direct people to your website, and help them get to know you or your business.
Here are a few key ways to be successful on social media:
Start with a strategy. Ask yourself: What content does my audience want? What is my mission? What are my goals? This will ground you as you start creating content.
Follow the trends but don’t jump on every one. The goal is to make them your own—if they’re a fit for your brand—to leverage what the Instagram algorithm is prioritizing.
Yes, hashtags still matter and do impact your visibility. Focus on hashtags with 500K or fewer posts and keep them targeted and specific to the content.
Need help creating content for social or need to take it off your plate entirely? Our Germination or Seedling Growth Packages might be a good fit for you.
4. Diversify Your Marketing Portfolio
A great marketing strategy is like a great stock portfolio—diverse and intentional. While social media is important, it’s not the only way to connect with your audience. In fact, your audience is likely very active in other places and would like to hear from you there.
It’s also important to consider where you actually want to be active. If you hate Instagram, you’re not going to be successful because you’re not going to show up consistently. If you love talking and long-form content, a podcast may be a better fit because that highlights your strengths. Plus, your audience is likely listening to podcasts (more than 82 million people listened to podcasts in 2021).
To figure out which digital marketing channels are best for you, consider this diagram I share in all my content marketing workshops below. Where the platforms you and your audience loves overlap is where you should be active:
5. Don’t Forget About Email Marketing
Building an email list allows you to maintain a direct line of communication with your audience. Even better, consumers still want to get emails from brands they love. In fact, the average open rate (percentage of people who receive your email and actually open it) for health and fitness brands is 42.7 percent, according to MailerLite.
This is higher than many industries including e-commerce, home and garden, and marketing and advertising. Non-profit open rates are even higher, at 46.67 percent.
What this tells us is that people are happy enough to receive these emails that they’re opening them. If you’re not emailing your audience, you could be missing out in this key platform for amplifying your reach and building your business.
The key is to build email into your strategy like every other aspect of your marketing. Start with the method for getting people on your list (ex. A free download), then consider how you’ll get people to take that action. Finally, consider the many different types of emails you can send once you do have an email list:
Newsletter with exclusive tips.
Content round-up with your own blog posts or content from other organizations.
Sales email with your offers.
Content-only email with a story or valuable insight.
Testimonial emails.
6. Prioritize Collaborations
It’s no longer enough to just be active on your marketing platforms—especially if you have a small audience. If you want to amplify your impact, you have to integrate collaborations. Why? This allows you to cast a wider net, beyond your current community and circle of clients, friends and supporters.
The good news is, there are many ways to collaborate across all platforms. Aim to do one of these collaborations at least once per quarter, or even once per month.
Instagram: Tag another person or invite them as a collaborator.
Email: Set up an email challenge with other people in your space to leverage their lists.
Events: Host an online “summit” or look for opportunities to join them with other successful people in your industry.
Guest posts: Write a blog post for a website/blog in your space.
You might also consider partnering with influencers in the mental health and wellness space. The key is to identify influencers whose values align with yours and collaborate on content that educates and empowers. This could include joint webinars, guest blog posts, or social media takeovers. The shared audience will benefit from diverse perspectives while also boosting your credibility in the process.
7. Stay Consistent
Consistency is key in digital marketing. I get it—if you feel like your content isn’t reaching many people or you aren’t seeing a lot of leads come in, it can be disappointing. You want to give up or assume you’re doing something wrong.
In content marketing, success takes time. Some of the most successful Instagram influencers have been running their page for 5+ years. They didn’t just start posting and all of a sudden get hundreds of thousands of followers. Here are a few reminders if you want to throw in the towel:
Hold the vision. Commit to your strategy and trust yourself.
Show up, even if you think no one is listening. Someone is, you just don’t know it.
Shift your perspective on what “success” means for you. As someone with a couple hundred followers on Instagram, that might be 4-10 likes per post. Set your OWN benchmark, not the benchmark of someone with a totally different audience and following than you.
Be flexible and willing to play. Try new things. Not having a large audience gives you a change to try, fail and try again—that’s a good thing!
Digital Marketing for Mental Health Professionals: You Can’t Ignore It
To be honest, there’s so much more I could include in this digital marketing for mental health professionals guide, but you have to start somewhere. If you just don’t have the time, resources or interest, but know you want your business to grow—let’s talk. Grab a free connection call or fill out the form below.
