Chutzpah Marketing For Mental Health Professionals
Chapter 4. Your most important marketing tool cost 5¢
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Chutzpah Marketing For Mental Health Professionals
The Simple Chutzpah Super Bill
Chutzpah Phone Scripts for Mental Health Professionals
Chutzpah Web Site Marketing for Professionals
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Welcome to the beginning of growing your successful private practice, group practice or agency. Your most important marketing tool is your business card. No, really, I’m not kidding. Let me prove it to you.
If you had $5,000 dollars you could put up a billboard on a busy thoroughfare by your office. Hundreds or even thousands of drivers would pass by it everyday. Over the course of a month you would be able to teach many drivers what you think they should know about your business. For a few moments you would have a captive audience as each driver glanced at your well-designed sign. If traffic backs up your sign gets noticed for minutes or (sadly for the driver) hours.
I want you to think of your business card as your pocket size billboard. To the eye of the reader they are about the same size. I want you to think of what you would like to teach everyone, through your business card, about your practice.
In this chapter we are going to look at how a therapist can use her card to get information into the mind of the public. This information will let potential patients and referrers find your practice. We will also touch on some ethical issues of advertising for metal health professionals.
Philip Copitch, Ph.D.
508 pages. 8.5 x 11 inches.
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Table of Contents
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Chapter 4. Your most important marketing tool cost 5¢
Chutzpah marketing does not waste 85 Avoid a boring professional business card 85 What should I include on my business card or in advertising? 87 Chutzpah business card 87 Building your chutzpah business card 89 Keep the following in mind while you create 94 Chutzpah copy 95 What’s with the initial salad? 96 Should I have a business name? 97 Three major reasons to have a DBA 97 Credibility 97 You’re the boss if your name is on the door 98 You can sell a business name 98 Chutzpah logo 99 What makes a logo a good logo? 100 Business card blanks (regular and grande) – create! 102 Getting your card printed 113 Handing out your chutzpah business cards 114 Shhhh, this is a secret: How to hand out business cards comfortably 115 Different chutzpah business card for each hat you wear 116 Let’s dissect Dr. Phil’s consultation chutzpah business card 118 Let’s dissect Dr. Phil’s therapy chutzpah business card 120 Examples of developing logos and business cards with feelings 124 Want my opinion? 129
Chapter 4. YOUR MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING TOOL COSTS 5¢
Welcome to the beginning of growing your successful private practice, group practice or agency. Your most important marketing tool is your business card. No, really, I’m not kidding. Let me prove it to you.
If you had $5,000 dollars you could put up a billboard on a busy thoroughfare by your office. Hundreds or even thousands of drivers would pass by it everyday. Over the course of a month you would be able to teach many drivers what you think they should know about your business. For a few moments you would have a captive audience as each driver glanced at your well-designed sign. If traffic backs up your sign gets noticed for minutes or (sadly for the driver) hours.
I want you to think of your business card as your pocket size billboard. To the eye of the reader they are about the same size. I want you to think of what you would like to teach everyone, through your business card, about your practice.
In this chapter we are going to look at how a therapist can use her card to get information into the mind of the public. This information will let potential patients and referrers find your practice. We will also touch on some ethical issues of advertising for metal health professionals.
Chutzpah marketing does not waste
A boring, uninformative, therapist centered business card is a waste of time and money. That’s right, even the paltry 5¢ should not be wasted.
We are going to develop your chutzpah business card, but first let’s look at a regular non-chutzpah business card.
Avoid a boring professional business card
If you ask professionals why they have business cards they tend to look at you strangely and answer with one of two statements:
- Because I’m in business.
- So I can conveniently give out my basic information: name, address and phone number.
That is not chutzpah talking!
For most professionals, a business card is just a 2 inch by 3.5 inch piece of card stock with their name, address, and phone number printed on it. Some are more fancy than others with bumpy ink and nicer paper.
They look like:
This is a basic card that makes a few assumptions:
- The reader doesn’t need or want more information.
- The reader has 20/20 vision.
- The reader is already aware of what a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist offers, and more specifically, what you offer.
Some professionals add a logo to brighten up their business card:
This adds a nice focal point, but why? What has Ima Professional taught the reader about her practice?
Let’s look at what is required to go on your business card in California, and what should go on your chutzpah business card. Then we will learn how to develop a chutzpah business card.
What should I include on my business card or in advertising?
This has been covered in detail in Chapter 2. As a quick summation, let’s see how the legal experts at CAMFT answered this in the FAQ section of the CAMFT web site: It is excerpted here for your convenience:
The business card or advertising should not be false, misleading or deceptive; and should either spell out the full title of the license, e.g., “licensed marriage and family therapist,” or one must use the license number, e.g., “MFT 12345.” If the word psychotherapy or psychotherapist is used in the advertising or on the business card, one must spell out the title of the license, e.g., “licensed marriage and family therapist.”
Persons who are prelicensed need to indicate that they are not yet licensed, e.g., “marriage and family therapist registered intern,” and indicate that they are working under supervision, e.g., “supervised by Jane Doe, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist or MFT 12345.”
Chutzpah business card
A chutzpah business card is a fingertip billboard that lets the holder receive your message in three seconds. Ask yourself this question:
If you had only three seconds, what would you want to teach the public about your practice?
Don’t get concerned about the three seconds. That’s a lot of time when it comes to holding someone’s attention. In the first 3 seconds you have to get the reader to want to spend more time learning about your offerings. If your card has relevant information to the reader, your card goes home with them and it becomes a reference card for them.
What goes on your chutzpah business card? Your positioning statements so that potential patients and referrers know you’re the right therapist for the job.
Most of this information is part of your one-paragraph marketing plan.
Your one-paragraph marketing plan (Chapter 3) answered the following questions:
- What benefit do you offer your patient?
- Who is your patient?
- What is the personification of your business in the community?
- How does your patient find you?
Let’s see how Bob’s one-paragraph business plan helps develop his chutzpah business card. (Developed in Chapter 3)
Bob’s one-paragraph business plan:
I help angry men reinvest in their lives and their community. I work with angry men who can afford private therapy. These men want to avoid jail and/or want to reinvest in their family and community. I am a private practice therapist who helps angry men rebuild their lives from the destruction of their own behaviors. Their doctor, their attorney or their victim’s therapist, hand potential patients my well-designed treatment package.
What key thoughts might Bob wish to teach the public about his practice (his positioning)? Focus on the benefit that your reader can obtain:
- Help for angry men
- Avoid jail
- Bringing families back together
- Rebuild your life
- Leave destruction behind
- Works with your attorney
- Private practice (confidential, high end)
- Male therapist
- In community (Community based)
Here is Bob’s first attempt at a chutzpah card. It is much better than a boring-waste-of-5¢ card, but it is only a first attempt:
This is a good start, but it is too confining. A chutzpah marketer doesn’t limit himself to convention. Chutzpah is expansive—it is powerful. We will work on this more later.
End of Excerpt
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