Therapist Marketing Needs Surveys
by Linda C. Puig, president
 We’ve been having conversations with our clients to get crystal clear about their marketing needs and how our newsletters and articles help them address those. The results so far are quite interesting, sometimes confirming what we know and other times surprising us.
Our interviews are continuing, and we will highlight a few case studies in upcoming issues of Momentum. I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of the experiences of those we’ve talked to so far.
 How do your marketing needs/experiences compare?
What attracted you to the idea of using a newsletter to market your practice?
- Wanted something regular to mail to doctors and attorneys so that name would be remembered.
- Don’t like marketing.
- Want to grow business.
- The articles are helpful to clients.
- No business sense or marketing skills.
- Saw a sample and it looked like “something I’d have written myself.”
 What professional benefits have you noticed from using our newsletter service?
- By the second issue, was getting referrals specifically tied to the newsletter.
- Have received referrals from doctors’ offices where newsletters are placed.
- Mailed a newsletter to a case manager who was holding the newsletter while referring a new client.
- “It just makes it really easy to keep my name and face in front of people.”
- Writing is right on target for those who read the newsletter. Someone called after reading the newsletter and said, “It’s exactly what I’m going through.”
What personal benefits have you experienced from using our newsletters?
- Savings. Don’t need a tri-fold brochure anymore.
- Relief. Don’t have to write it.
- Name becomes associated with something valuable.
- No longer need to do so many presentations; has made life easier.
- Huge time-saver.
- Feel personally represented by the newsletter; proud to be associated with it. “The style is like I could have written this.”
- Newsletter helps reach out and reconnect with people from past and present.
A quote I loved: “The newsletter represents my style very nicely. It’s not crystals and New Age, nor is it dry research.”
New Options for Printing?
One of the big realizations coming out of these calls is that we may need to alter the structure of our print newsletter service with regard to reproduction. Currently, we provide a customized master that the client uses to make as many copies as she or he wants. The client is responsible for making local arrangements with copy centers or traditional print houses to reproduce the newsletter. We always thought this was an advantage, allowing clients to control the quantity and other variables of the printing process.
However, our interviews are showing that the cost of reproduction varies hugely—from about 25 cents per copy to as much as 65 cents per copy. So some clients may be paying far more than they need to for their newsletters. In addition, some clients said they spent more time than desired at the beginning figuring out where to do their printing.
To help with both issues, we are exploring opportunities to offer the following options:
- Make printing arrangements with a national copy company that could fill and deliver all our clients’ orders (for those who desire the service).
- Take care of reproduction on our end, according to client quantity orders. Pricing then would be shifted to a quantity-based structure, i.e., $XXX for XXX newsletters.
We will keep you apprised of our efforts.
In the meantime, if you’d like to see for yourself how a newsletter from Claire Communications can help you EASILY market your practice, please visit us at:
www.NewslettersForTherapists.com
www.ArticlesForSale.net
Sneak Previews
Rich Content and Passive Income for Your Website!
As you know, book recommendations are an excellent way to further your clients’ learning. You may include book titles on your website—a great resource for anyone visiting it—and even make it easy for people to purchase online right then and there (usually earning you a commission, usually around 4%).
Imagine what a valuable resource your website would be if your clientele and site visitors could immediately purchase and download an audiobook from your site, and begin listening right away…on their computer, in their car, on the treadmill, cleaning the kitchen, on a plane—wherever! Perhaps it would be a reason to visit your site again and again.
Even better, imagine if you earned 10% of every sale made from the books listed on your site! Look for an email from us later this month showing you how to EASILY do this, when we open our new online downloadable audiobook store, Claire Audiobooks. There will be some special bonuses for the first 20 of you who sign up to sell titles on your website.
New Claire Web Design & Development Services
It’s always been a natural for Claire Communications to offer website development services. Many of you who are wanting newsletters and articles to help build your private practices also need websites.
But to be honest, the set-ups we’ve had—in-house custom web design services or referring to other web designers—never worked the way we wanted it to, and sometimes came back to bite us.
The third time must be a charm! I am very excited about a new joint venture with a hugely talented, solidly grounded, experienced, reliable, professional, and, yes, charming web designer. It’ll be another 6-8 weeks before we’re ready to announce. But if you’re in the market for web design or expect to be in the next year or two, you’ll want to hold onto your hat!
Claire Recommends
Virtual Practice Builder Webinar Mentoring Session
If you want to build your practice using the Internet, Travis Greenlee is a person I’d like you to meet. I’ve worked with Travis before, and I can tell you that this guy’s information is solid gold, as is his heart.
His highly regarded "Virtual Practice Builder" is chock full of cutting-edge practice-building techniques that he spent years creating, specifically for professionals with a private practice. He can show you how to dramatically increase your bottom line, while demystifying what can seem to be such a complex mystery.
His next Virtual Practice Builder course starts March 29. To get a taste of the course and see if it’s for you, listen to a free audio mini-course here: http://tinyurl.com/23m4yo.
 Mission & Vision
I’ve always been uncertain about the specific differences between a mission and a vision—whether business-related or personal. It seemed to me that they were more or less interchangeable or that they swapped meaning, depending on who was doing the defining. Needless to say, I never really defined a personal mission or vision because of all this confusion.
Recently, I attended a workshop that helped me understand mission and vision, and the roles they play in creating our life. It’s really simple, almost a “Duh!” when you hear it. Your mission is your life purpose; it’s what you bring to the world. A mission statement should include what you do (action), for whom, and the value, benefit or end result created. For example: “To guide and assist individuals to identify and live their purpose with passion.”
Your vision is the vehicle through which you live your mission. It’s the outer manifestation of your mission. Using the example above, your vision might include leading workshops or writing a book. You can have two or more visions operating concurrently, or they may go successively.
One benefit of knowing both mission and vision was immediately apparent to me. Because of my background as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I recently was asked to teach a journalism class at my son’s high school. It was really intriguing to me, as I have strong feelings about the role that journalism should be playing in our culture today. But when I sifted it through my newly clarified personal mission statement and vision, it was completely clear that teaching the class was really outside my mission, and it did not move me toward my vision. It was an interesting prospect, yes, but ultimately a distraction from the road I feel most strongly about traveling.
What’s your mission and vision? I’d love to hear from you.
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