How to Stand Out from the Competition with a Strong Marketing Message – Avivit Fisher

By Avivit Fisher
Founder of REdD Strategy

Importance of a Strong Message in Marketing

If you’re looking to grow and attract best-fit clients to your practice, having a strong
marketing message will ensure your marketing success. Having a message that
connects with your audience, empathizes with their life experiences will not only help
you convert clients but will help you stand out from other therapists, essentially your
competition.

Today’s mental health landscape offers many options for people in search of providers.
Online platforms like Psychology Today, Zencare, Therapy Den, etc. allow people to
browse among thousands of therapists listed. And if you want to stand out, you must
find a way to differentiate yourself from other therapists.

In this article you will learn how your core marketing message will help you stand out
and lay the foundation for the perception of your brand as a therapist. A strong, well-crafted message can make the difference between a client choosing your practice
over another provider.

What is Your Marketing Message?

At it’s core, your marketing message is a clear statement that communicates who you
work with, how you help your clients and why you’re the best fit for your “ideal client”.
First and foremost, you must be clear about these things yourself. That requires a clear
definition of your “ideal client” and why they’d want to work with you specifically.

Unless you’re clear about these things first, crafting a compelling message will be
a difficult chore. Many therapists struggling to attract the right client to their practice
because they rely on murky messaging and a weak brand.

Crafting a marketing message is an important exercise that requires time and thought
but it’s an important exercise to go through. This will become your basis for all your
future marketing communication like your tagline, website content, online profiles,
social media and so on. Having a marketing message will ensure that your
communication is cohesive and easily understood by non-therapists and future clients.

Identifying Your Target Audience

As I mentioned above, the foundation of a powerful message lies in a deep
understanding of your “ideal client”, in other words your target audience. To craft a
truly empathetic connecting message we need to ask ourselves the following
questions:

• Who do you enjoy working with?
• And ultimately, could this “ideal client” afford your fees?
• What kind of clients experience the based outcomes from working with you?
• What are they struggling with that they can’t overcome on their own?
• What are they looking for?
• What prevents them from seeking therapy?
• What would urge them to look for help?

It’s only once you think through the answers to these questions, you can start putting
together a profile for your audience.

Another important element of understanding your target market is understanding their
lifestyles. This will help you identify how you can meet them where they spend time.

For example, let’s imagine that your target audience is young mothers who stay at
home and take care of their children. In this case we can assume what kind of lifestyle
they would lead, where they spend their time. This can help you identify potential
locations and referral partnerships.

Knowing that will help you cater your message to prospective referral partners as well.
It will also help you use the language your ideal clients use when they start looking for
help.

If you struggle to define your “ideal client”, use this worksheet to help you put
together a profile for this type of person.

Elements of a Strong Marketing Message

Apart from understanding your target audience, your message needs to communicate
a clear value to its recipients.

Just like a sturdy building, a strong message has building blocks elements that will
allow it to stay relevant and not crumble over time. First and foremost in needs to
communicate the unique value your clients experience while working with you.

Defining this value is the main element of your message. Your value may look obvious
to you as a provider, after all you provide therapy services. But a good message goes
beyond this, it allows you to showcase your services in a unique way, different from
anyone else. This is called a “Unique Value Proposition”.

Your Unique Value proposition is the core of your message, it shows what sets you
apart.

For example: Let’s imagine that you work with couples dealing with infidelity. That’s a
specific target audience and describing your services as “marriage counseling” may
not be viewed as valuable enough.

But what if you added your unique experience and specialization to that value? Maybe
you offer an environment in which tense issues related to infidelity can be discussed
safely. This is a point of a differentiation and a clear value that you can communicate in
your Unique Value Proposition statement.

Techniques to Differentiate Your Message

So now that we know who you’re talking to and are clear about the value you can offer
to your audience, let’s discuss how you can use your core message. Contrary to what
you may think, a core message doesn’t need to be slapped on all your marketing
materials like your website, brochure or social profiles.

It’s a foundational message for all of your communication and you don’t have to share it
publicly. However, it can help you create a tagline for your website or develop your
online content. There are many techniques for using your marketing message and I
want to touch upon three main ones.

Storytelling. People love telling and hearing stories. Throughout human history, stories
connected, entertained and inspired people of different cultures. Telling stories in the
context of marketing can be very powerful as well. But it can also be distracting if the
stories you tell are not relevant to your target audience. Crafting stories that are based
on your core marketing message will help them resonate with your potential clients and
grab people’s attention.

Addressing Pin Points. Your clients choose to work with you because they experience
pain that they can’t overcome on their own. In marketing, we call the aching need that
a customer experiences “pain points”. Your marketing message should be crafted with
a clear understanding of the particular pain points that your “ideal client” is
experiencing. When you empathize with your potential client’s pain points within your
marketing communication, you make them feel seen and understood.

Leveraging Social Proof. Social proof comes from testimonials, reviews, referrals and
other endorsements of your services. It can also positively affect your practice if you
know how to use this technique well. Once you know what your Unique Value

Proposition and what your marketing message are, you can clearly communicate it to
your referral partners like other providers and business owners.

For example: If you tell another therapist why you’re the best clinician for couples
struggling with infidelity, your potential to generate more referrals may significantly
increase.

Creating Compelling Content to Support Your Message

The last part I’d like to touch on when it comes to creating a strong message that helps
you stand out from the crowd, is how to build upon it. It’s true that you can incorporate
it into your website content and optimize your profiles on social media and online
directories. But that’s not all.

You can use your marketing message to develop a Content Strategy for your blog,
social media activity, videos, etc. Knowing your target audience’s unique pains, needs
and aspirations opens a door into many topics for conversation. These topics can be
developed into your blog articles for SEO, your social media posts aimed to raise
awareness and expand your reach, and email marketing that urges your potential
clients to schedule a consultation with you.

Lastly, marketing your private practice is not just a string of disjointed activities to
attract clients. Instead, it’s a cohesive system that intentionally funnels people into your
practice based on a core marketing message.

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