How to Build Your Brand as a Mental Health Professional or a Life Coach

The BRAND is the personality of your business. Yes, you heard it right! Business! Your private practice or your life coaching services is considered a business. You’ve invested not only money but also time, education or certification, and experience. And as a business, you need to build your business’ personality. It will be the basis of your target market’s first impression of your business.

P-E-R-S-O-N-A-L-I-T-Y, from the root word PERSON. You will make a PERSONA for your business for it to become more person-centered, and people can relate to your business. 

BRANDING answers questions, like:

How will you be able to attract potential clients if your private practice or life coaching business does not stand out?

How will your business be known if it has no unique identity?

Ways on Building your Brand

Here are some ways to do it:

1. Identify your niche and/or your target market first.

What is your expertise when it comes to dealing with mental health issues? Is it anxiety, depression, or fears? What change or help can you offer to your clients? What kind of problem can you confidently handle? If you do not focus on a specific niche or problem that you can confidently solve, what kind of problem can you be a go-to person? How can you stand out in a market where there are many mental health professionals like you? If you can find out what your strengths are when it comes to mental health, you will become an expert in certain mental health issues, and you will be the go-to person for people with this mental health concern.

Who do you want to work with? Do you want to work with children, adults, women, men, elderly, professionals, millennials, moms, single, couples, divorced, or heart-broken? Do you have specific kinds of clients that you want to work with? Yes, I know in most cases, we cannot choose what kind of clients we are going to work with. We can even work with anyone as long they need our help. But by identifying who is your ideal client, you will know what kind of content or promotion you will be making to attract more ideal clients and repel non-ideal clients. You will also be consistent with your posts. You will also know where they hang out, so you will be present on the platform that they are using.

In some cases, you may find it hard to choose a niche or an ideal client. It’s okay as a start. But if you want your business to be known, if you want to stand out in a crowd, find either your niche, or your ideal client, or better if both. It may be a trial-and-error at first, but through experience, through working with different kinds of people and problems, you will be able to identify where you are good at and what kind of clients you are comfortable in working with.

2. Do your research.

Since you already know who your ideal client is, you will know where to start your research. Research the struggles and pain points of your prospective client. Know also where they hang out, what do they read, and what they want to learn. Create a client avatar based on these researches so you will have your basis for your content and promotions.

If you are also in this stage where you just started, and you do not have a business name and logo, research and use your knowledge in psychology to know what kind of name and logo would attract your clients more. You can even run a survey from your target market which is better for your private practice or life coaching business.

You can research marketing strategies like running ads or simple organic marketing strategies, like social media posts, and creating blog posts. You can search for additional information about the post that you will be creating, especially if it is a blog post. You can join a Facebook group called Organic Marketing for Mental Health Professionals and read the Units tab to get some ideas on how to market your services without running any ads.

3. Be Present Online

Some of you may think, why would I need to have my website and social media pages if I already have walk-in clients? But where do you think people will check you or your business to know if you are legit? How will they know you and your business? They say that a business is non-existent if it is not present online. So you have to be online to become more visible to your target clients.

Time may also come wherein the clients that you have worked with will stop working with you because you either solved their problems, they can already stand on their own, they move to a different place, they can’t afford your services anymore, or worse, they found somebody else to work with their problems. By being present online, you can reach out to other potential clients outside of your and your clients’ circle.

And with the pandemic, we realized the importance of being present online. Some just started learning how to use Zoom and other video calling and teletherapy platforms and new social media platforms like TikTok.

How to be Present Online:

a. Build a website with a description of you and your services, client testimonials, and better if it has blog posts to give valuable information that can help your potential clients and entice them later on to avail of your services. Your website can also be a landing page so you could convince your potential client to avail your private practice or life coaching services.

b. Be present in social media platforms that they use to give valuable information and convince them to avail of your services. If your target market is teenagers, learn how to use Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, etc; if your target market is mothers, use Facebook page and groups, or Instagram; and many more. Know what social media platforms they use, adapt to these platforms, and reach out to them as if you are speaking with them. You don’t need to be present on all social media platforms. You can use 1-2 platforms where you believe your audience hang out more and where you can stand out more. Add hashtags in your posts and be sure your profile is public so that when your target market uses keywords on social media, they can easily search you using the hashtags that you added.

c. Be present in emails. Some people love reading email newsletters because they seem to be personalized, and subscribers get to know you more you and your business. You can use email marketing platforms such as MailChimp, Convert Kit, Get Response, and more, to send email blasts. It will show like it was personalized for the recipient. You can also schedule email newsletters according to your business needs.

In your website and social media platforms, your brand identities like your brand colors, font style, and logo should be present and consistent so that your audience could easily remember your mental health business.

4. Create your Content

6 Types of Content that you can create to show your brand as a mental health professional:

a. Educational Content

This type of content gives valuable information to your audience. You can create educational content that would help your market, but it should be within your niche or expertise. By doing so, your audience will see you as an expert in your field.

You can create posts such as showing the benefits that they can get if they availed your services and other information that can help with their daily life. You don’t have to give them all information that they would not avail of your services anymore, only give brief information that they may still find useful for them.

You can create educational blog posts, or share other blog posts that resonate with your brand, free resources like guides and tips, and infographics.

b. Entertaining Content

The purpose of this type of content is to build positive relationships with your target market. People want to enjoy and have positive vibes even while browsing through the net. And through entertaining posts, you can connect with them, receive more engagements and social shares, and increase your searchability. One of the best examples of this type of content is memes.

Even though you want to show yourself as being professional, your audience may see you as a less stiff and more personable type of life coach or therapist just by adding entertaining posts to your page. They still want to see you as someone that they can be friends with while still being unbiased.

c. Inspirational Content

This type of content tells more about success and motivational stories. It can be related to your brand, such as testimonials from your clients. You can even create Brand Stories. A Brand Story is a story that elicits specific emotions and shows how you wanted to be remembered by your target audience.

According to Buffer, the best kinds of inspirational posts are the ones in the form of case studies, clients’ testimonials, and stories of failures and challenges of successful people.

(You may also want to read: How to Apply Empathic Marketing in your Content)

d. Conversational Content

This type of content ignites conversation or asks questions so that the readers would engage with you. Aside from making them engage in your post, another purpose of this content is to know your audience well and their struggles, and for market research.

As a mental health professional, you could ask them anything related to mental health or your niche, ask their opinions about a recent event, create a poll, fill in the blanks, or just ask them how are they.

e. Connecting Content

This type of content aims to connect to the readers on a personal level. It shows something personal about you and your business. Posts can either be related to your mental health or life coaching business such as behind the scenes, and showing who your employees are, or more personal things such as a story of your realizations and lessons learned and your opinion about a certain topic.

f. Promotional Content

This type of content is intended to create a desire to take action such as for the audience to avail of your services (or products), or to subscribe to your email newsletter. Unlike the first three types of content, there is a specific action that needs to be done by the reader. It can include the combination of the prior types of content, or just inspirational, and then leading the audience into taking an action.

Now that you know the different types of content, you must be able to talk to your audience as if you are talking directly to a specific person, that’s where the client avatar that you created previously would comes in. Create posts that would resonate mostly with your client avatar so that you would attract a potential client that is near to what you envision with your avatar. If possible, add emotions to your posts. You don’t need to always create original content. You can also replicate content and do the Skyscraper Technique (you can refer to #1 of Tips of Making your Content Viral and Shareable).

You may also want to read Why People Share a Content: Psychology of Viral Content to know which type of content people get hooked on to.

5.      Be Consistent and Engaging

Consistency is always a key to build your brand and reach your audience even without paying ads. You need to always show up so that your audience will remember your brand, and when they always see you, they become more curious about you. By always showing up too, you allow your audience to engage more with you and be more visible to more readers or viewers. We know that social media’s algorithms show more posts that have high engagements. And if you post consistently, you’ll encourage more engagement, and later on, become more visible to a larger audience.

How to do that? Plan your posts and set weekly goals for your content. You can create a weekly live or recorded video, publish weekly blog posts, create polls, or follow the content types listed above. Create a content calendar where you can list down the content you are going to publish and the time and date when you are planning to publish these. You can also check on your page’s analytics when your audience is most likely online and engaging, and what kind of posts do they engage the most. Use this data to plan for your future posts. When you plan your content ahead of time, maybe even months before publishing them, you’ll never run out of posts.

You can also be consistent in showing up by always engaging with them. You want them to see you as someone that they can easily approach. By responding to their comments, messages, and emails, they’ll realize that they can trust you more. The brand that you have built is useless if you weren’t able to connect with them on a personal level.

The consistency of your brand also means that even if it adapts to changes, your business’ personality becomes stable once you change it. You must also build a lasting impression on the market so you can stand out from the crowd.

And now that you already know these, are you ready to build your brand and continue building it? Let me help you to build your brand as a mental health professional or an owner of mental health or a life coaching business. Let me help you in creating blog or social media posts, or email newsletters so that you can focus more on working directly with your clients. Contact me here or email me at ayenluthersj@gmail.com for inquiries.