The Therapy Business Podcast
We know how challenging growing a therapy practice can be, and don’t think it should require an accounting degree just to run your business. If you own a solo or a group practice, we’re here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people.
The Therapy Business Podcast
Digital Ad Strategies with Ross Herosian
Craig and Ross unpack the mysteries of digital advertising for therapy practice owners, breaking down platform differences, budget expectations, and how to measure success.
Visit getmarketingclarity.com to access Ross's $9 marketing clarity program that helps establish foundational marketing strategy before investing in ads.
Our Profit Coaching program is enrolling new practices now.
We specialize in helping therapy practices like yours achieve financial clarity, so you can focus on what you do best—helping your clients and managing your team- while we help handle all the businessy stuff they didn’t teach you in grad school.
To see if your practice might be a good fit, schedule a free consultation at therapybusinesspod.com.
Meet with one of our coaches
*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
My name is Craig and I'm the owner of Daisy Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. Hi, my good buddy ross, welcome back to the greatest therapy, business related podcast there is, with tens and tens of listeners and uh that's all.
Speaker 2:Let's listen this. If it's important to even one of you out there, that's all that matters. That's always how I looked at my podcasting. Uh career, as it were, is if it's valuable to one person, then I'm going to sit here and do it yes, well, we're still waiting for that one.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just kidding. So we? Hey, we are this you know this episode is going to be the one that gets them this is this one no, the reason I always bring you back is because your episodes are always very popular and so so yeah, there's something about you marketing, your pizzazz, your insight.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited to talk to you today about ads, because I think most people can relate that they are terrifying and everyone feels like we should be doing them, myself included. And everyone feels like we should be doing them myself included and yet when it comes down to ponying up the money, I know I've had bad experiences before where I felt like I shelled out cash and nothing happened and it was a waste. I have no, it's almost I have no idea what's going on with them. So I am looking forward to getting some of your insight and clarity on how ads work and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 2:I've been a marketing coach for over 10 years and I've worked with everything from, you know, as a coach small businesses to large, huge entities and enterprise, and before being a coach, you know, joined or worked in the corporate world on the ad side.
Speaker 2:So I've kind of seen it from all different angles and I think the one that's going to be really most useful and what I'm really going to speak to in this episode is, you know, the common struggles and challenges I've seen and heard from solopreneurs, the small business owners, the you know, obviously, in your case, the, the, the, the therapy practice owners, who you know, listen, marketing is not there, it's not their jam, it's not their main thing.
Speaker 2:They're, they're, they're spinning a million different plates and then to to throw the ads plate in is, I think, really, to your point, terrifying because you run into like I don't even know what I don't know. And I think one of the most deceptive things about many of these ad platforms is they are seemingly simple and they're like oh, you just want us to, we can hear it, just use what we recommend. And the most annoying thing about these platforms is, nine times out of 10, the things they recommend are actually just the things that are going to get you to spend more money and, and that's really frustrating when, again, you're someone who I don't know, what I don't know, and the Meta is telling me just to do it this way and and before you know it, it may not actually be the best thing for your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's feel like it's always changing.
Speaker 1:I'm like, uh you know, I'm a musician, as you know, and so for years I've been running ads on facebook. Anytime we have an event, we just, we basically just boost the event. We pay to boost it, uh, to get more eyes on it, and the amount that it takes to get eyes, like I remember pre-covid uh, you know sound like a dinosaur, but I know it's been a while, but it's before that I would spend maybe fifty dollars and I would we get like almost a thousand event responses. It was so easy, so cheap, and now we're spending 200 and we're lucky to get, you know, 300 event responses. So it's just crazy.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really challenging thing to four small businesses and something that that, if you're interested or curious about ads to know, is that ads never get cheaper. They never get cheaper every single year. Just the cost of ads goes up, you know, even if it's fractionally, you know. Know, running ads has never really gets gets cheaper. So I've seen that again. It really hits hard on on huge enterprise, corporate level companies where you're just spending, you know, 1000s and 1000s or millions of dollars. Then it really starts to pile up. But it can be particularly hard also for the small business where it's like listen, I only have it, I really only have X amount and figuring out. That's why it's all the more important to figure out what works, how it's working and why it's working.
Speaker 1:Man.
Speaker 1:I think that's so important and I think for people who are listening, who are we're about to dig into some key elements of ads and what you need to know, and that even involves budgeting ads and how much you can expect to spend.
Speaker 1:I think organic is always a great place to start. So for those who are just like a solo therapist or solo PT out there we got plenty of episodes with Ross on just how to organically market yourself for free ads I feel like really is you have to be ready and able to make an investment into it, because I you could tell me if I'm wrong. But I feel like really is you have to be ready and able to make an investment into it because you could tell me if I'm wrong. But I feel like it takes time to start to see it. So you may have a couple of months where you're paying into ads and you're like the results are not what you would want or what you would hope, but you have to just have the cash to invest in that. Is that right or is that wrong?
Speaker 2:I'm just no, you're right, I'm a big believer, as you know, in that. Is that right or is that wrong? No, you're right, I'm a big believer, as you know, in that you need to have a solid hand on the wheel related to your organic strategy before you jump into ads. I think a lot of companies want to just think ads are necessarily the magic bullet, and it's not that ads aren't effective, it's just that together, organic plus ads, is the best equation, right?
Speaker 2:Organic by itself can be super powerful. Ads by themselves can be super powerful. Having a good handle on your brand, your company identity, your content, your customers, that kind of thing in the organic side will only pay dividends in the ads piece, which is why, again, as you know, I'm just such a big proponent of you know my kind of tentpole main program that I have, which is called the Clarity Program, which helps small businesses really figure out their customers, their content and their company. You have to do those things before you start running ads, especially because, before you know it, facebook, meta, google, any of them they'll gladly take your money and flush it down the toilet.
Speaker 1:They don't care. Yeah, I mean I know they want you to get results. Uh, because then that means you'll give them more money. But at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're invested in that way, but it's, it's. I say that to say you know they're, they're giant corporate billions and billions of dollars flowing through and at the end of the day, yes, they are going to do as much as they can to give you results, because that will keep you coming back. But getting back to like if you don't know what, if you don't understand your results, like again they can't help you. In that way. You have to meet in the middle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they're not there to, and I think you and I had outlined, or you had sent me three really main ones, and so let's talk about what those are and what are the differences between the three, to help give some clarity on, I guess, which direction to go, because that can in itself be overwhelming. Do I go advertise on Facebook, instagram, or where do I go to even get?
Speaker 2:clients 100%, and I'm going to keep this, I think, relatively high level. You know, in the case that there's someone out there that is you know and knows ins and out ads, I don't want to, you know, get the angry nerd comment finger in the ear like, no, well, actually, it's like, guys, I'm going to keep this very high level for those people who are listening who don't, again, they don't know what they don't know. So let's start with really kind of the big three. As far as I see it, that would be of use for your Craig, for the group therapy business owners, right? So the big three are going to be Google, meta and LinkedIn. Now, just to clarify, so you understand, meta is a. Many of these are umbrellas. So, when we talk about Google, google is search and YouTube, um, and, by extension, what's called display, which I'll get to here in a second. Meta is facebook, instagram, um, uh. Why am I? Oh, my god, I'm blanking. Met, um uh. Whatsapp, uh, they have their own display network the vr right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah like anything that is meta, you can run ads in it.
Speaker 1:All right, so somebody's playing like a depressing VR game, then all of a sudden they're really up and it's like hey, you should get, get it together and here's, here's what I mean.
Speaker 2:Conceivably yes, and that's how they want it. That's how they want it. It makes I mean I guess I'd rather get that than some other non-target app. But that's a conversation.
Speaker 1:And then you attend virtual therapy.
Speaker 2:That's right. And then finally, linkedin, which I think people maybe don't always consider. I'm not including X here because, candidly, I'm not an X user. Listen, if you're there, x tends to be the most, the platform that requires the most involvement and I, for even my own personal reason, I'm not an X person, anyways. So Google when we're thinking about Google search, what you're looking at are campaigns that are query based. So what I mean by that is someone is actively searching for a term, a keyword, something related to your business. So they've kind of I always look at Google as they're at least one step into the funnel. Right, they're already searching for something related to your business right, like a therapist near me, or yeah, correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and there's a, I will say, at its highest level. There's a curiosity there, if that makes sense. They may not be ready to purchase right now, but they're at least like trying to either get information, they're trying to to, yeah, sign up. There are various level or stages of, but there there's at least some. Up. There are various level or stages of, but there there's at least some expressed intent there that serves your ads up and again. I'm going to keep this limited just to search now on meta. Meta is behavioral based and and how that works is meta takes signals from your behavior across the meta platforms and, by extension, even across the web. Uh, if you are a um, a meta user, and that uses cookies, I won't get into that.
Speaker 1:But these are little pieces of of yeah delicious, I know what it is a sugar flower there did it's.
Speaker 2:It's, it's not that, but they're equally delicious to marketers. And what cookies are?
Speaker 1:I am the first person ever to make a cookies joke about internet cookies. So let's market.
Speaker 2:I don't. You guys heard it here first. Hold on, let me check the Wikipedia. You're right. Okay, you're right.
Speaker 1:No one has ever made that connection before between web-based cookies and grandma's cookies.
Speaker 2:The most simplest way to explain, because they just kind of sit in the background and they literally track your behavior on the web. And so what meta does is based on the things you click, the things you like, the pages you follow, the things you, if you do searches based on your behavior. It serves up ads, right, right, I could also be based truly on even just your demographic, right, if I'm a? Um, you know, men's deodorant company, um, you know, I can choose to serve up that to men age, so we can use your demographics there.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, linkedin Not exclusively but mostly, can be best used for what I call role-based. So if you're going after oh, I want managers of grocery stores or something like that, so LinkedIn is one of the best, if not the best, platform to actually go after, one of the best, if not the best, platform to actually go after, and it's typically used B2B but to go after people with very specific titles or roles. So I think, just at a really high level, that it should help you understand, like kind of the playing fields of each of these, these platforms. Now, of course, there's some more exceptions, but we're going to keep it super simple this episode, and I think that's what you really need to know about how the three are differentiated.
Speaker 1:Perfect, that makes sense. Yeah, and LinkedIn. I would guess, like you said, it's B2B, but I'm thinking like physical therapists who are maybe advertising more to people who could send them clients. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think through, uh well, I'm thinking, maybe if you're a physical therapist that offers some sort of program for corporations like you know something like that and you wanted to message the uh, the chief HR officers or something like that, or HR managers or benefits people, uh, it could, you could, you could utilize it like that.
Speaker 1:Very true. Yeah, that's a great point. Maybe you offer like seminars or you offer wellness programs. Okay, yeah 100%, but more of those B2Cs probably Google and Meta is going to be your better bet.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking yeah, b2c being business to consumer. If you're aiming for people who are not business owners, correct, all right, great, great, okay. So that's super helpful in knowing the direction to go in, and I feel like you know, probably from my experience with the therapy world, that Google and Meta are probably the more popular ones, and Google tends to be one that I've seen more widely used from therapists, because I think people are they are aware of what a therapist is. They're actively seeking it, whereas kind of what you're talking about, whereas Google's searchable people are looking for it. Meta's more like hey, here, you would like this, you need therapy. So here's a-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a tough one too with therapy, right Like that's somewhere in the psyche you may want to. You may have a better luck converting people who are already actively seeking out therapy than trying to convince someone that they need therapy. I think those of you out there who are listening probably can understand that. So I do see a particular value. Um there, it's like if there's already a search going on, um they're, they've at least making the first, or they've, they're taking the first step to be like I'm interested, I'm at least considering it but meta, I guess.
Speaker 1:uh, one last piece on that too, as I'm thinking through that is, if somebody's been browsing psychology today, then you could serve up ads on meta to them, because you know they've been actively looking for somebody and so, or?
Speaker 2:wellness. You know wellness related topics, I mean I I'm a big believer that therapy is certainly a big component of wellness overall. So I think that's certainly a conceivable angle you could go to.
Speaker 1:Great, love it. All right, let's talk money. That's my favorite conversation. Yeah, it is. It is so, ross, it's talk money. That's my favorite conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1:So, ross, it's all free. No, talk to me about, because this is the next barrier between not only just choosing where to go, but it's how much should I be spending? And I think a lot of times we go intimately and so we don't spend enough. And then we're like see, ads don't work, I just dropped a hundred bucks and nothing happened. So what should we, what are the expectations for that? What should we be expecting to pay? I guess on a minimum, in order to even make it worth our while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's important that people understand there is a floor. Now you can yes, these are accessible to anyone to to put their money into it, but you need to more than ever right now, in the era we are living in, with AI being actually so fully utilized inside of ads platforms too. Really, the way that AI is the most successful and this can be a good or a bad, it's kind of starting to level out but is that it needs a lot of information, and that's true even pre-AI. Like these systems Meta, google, linkedin they need data themselves to kind of refine your ads and show them to the right people. I set the expectation with people who are thinking about ads that they should be prepared to spend a thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2:Okay, now, it may not be that much. You can set controls and things like that, but I think it's really important, particularly when you first start out, that you at least start with that as your floor. It will give you a lot of breathing room, it will give you a lot of data and it will actually help you understand, or help whoever's doing this understand what is properly working and what's not at the right scale, because that's the thing too. To your point. It's like oh, I could spend 25 dollars, but that it's only going to reach like 100 people. Yeah, you know, and it's and and and. The problem there is, you just don't have enough data to actually know if, was that successful, was that good?
Speaker 1:so was that the right? 25 people that saw it. Was it the right?
Speaker 2:you don't know, and particularly now because there's actually so much done behind the scenes by AI to figure out the right audience, you kind of need to feed it. You know good or bad, that's just the way it is. You know like you can bemoan it as much as you want, but that's just the way it is. So, again, I think that the expectation there is to be prepared for for any of these platforms LinkedIn tends to be. Now, it does depend on industry, but LinkedIn tends to be the little more pricey platform. Honestly, and across industries I've seen it tends to be a little bit more expensive. I think if you're someone out there that obviously doesn't is scared or intimidated by doing this yourself and you're looking to hire someone to do it, whether it's like an agency or freelancer or something like that which, fyi, I do manage Google ads for people. I have a very, very, very limited client base, so I am incredibly selective.
Speaker 1:It's white love.
Speaker 2:Listen, step into your power. I don't want to deal with headaches. It doesn't mean I'm not here to help people, but that's just how I roll, I own it, that's how I am.
Speaker 1:But if you're also value in you having not not a whole lot of attention spread across a bunch of different people too. So it's nice I'm going to work with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I'm going to work with you, I want to be able to give you the attention and care that that you need. I'm very mindful of my time and I'm actually even more so mindful of my energy. I only have so much energy. That's it. That's the reality. But you should be prepared to pay a management fee. So a service for the somebody or the agency to run your ads, it's all over.
Speaker 2:I hesitate to give a number there, but it could be anywhere from $200 to $500. Sometimes they take a percentage of your spend. It's really all over the board. But just be prepared that, on top of what you're going to pay for ads, which goes to the platforms, you're going to have to then also pay a management fee if you're going to hire someone to do it. And then I think the other important thing when it relates to spend is spend can vary based on locations, keywords and industry. So it's not a set. You know, if you're someone that operates in different countries or states. I know it may not be relevant here, but certain industries cost more than others. You know insurance costs a lot more than you know. Well then, something else that's not insurance. To be honest with you, like you know like it just costs so much to run ads there because it's so competitive and it's so expensive. So it can vary based on location and key and an industry.
Speaker 1:All right, Well, so I that's good to know. So about 1000 a month on ad spend and then let's just say 500 a month on a manager, which, truthfully, in my opinion, unless you are listening to this and you're already like, oh I already, I'm a pro at this I think you're going to spend way more than that. I'm just trying to figure this out. Yeah, Time, and then money wasted on even the just not making the tweaks at the right time, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:So what I always tell people you and I have worked together long enough that I feel like a narrative that you probably have with many clients of yours is that time is money, and I know I just spoke to it, but like I'm also a believer that that's not the only element. Energy I have different energy levels throughout the day and I'm very aware of that. You know like it's hard for me to do certain tasks at the end of the day versus the beginning of the day, and I feel that, and I know that for solopreneurs, small business owners who are also trying to do their marketing, guess what always ends up sliding down the list and gets the I'm exhausted energy marketing. I know that's how it is and I I get.
Speaker 1:I'm the same, yep, same with me content marketing, everything. I'm like oh I, I'm just. We're just talking. I was busy setting up a new crm the past four weeks and what fell to the wayside? Podcast recordings, youtube episodes, all the content. So, uh, going back to the money piece, before we dig into the last point is I would say, with this, so we're talking a thousand a month plus maybe two to 500 a month for the management fee. I tell people this is an investment.
Speaker 1:So give me a time I would say set aside 3000, three to 5,000. So that gives you three months of trying this out and it's just like any investment, what you put in today, it's going to pay dividends down the road. You're not going to usually see an ROI immediately and then after 90 days, if it's not working, cut it off.
Speaker 2:And if you're not in a place where you can lose 3000 to try this out, then you might not be ready for ads and that's if that's going to hurt your business, then yeah, that's why you're the money guy man, like it's such good advice, because that's the thing it's like. If you're not prepared, if you're not prepared to lose, and even as a as an ads manager I know it's like what it's weird saying, but there is very much a reality to you're gonna have to do some amount of marketing, and advertising is comprised of testing and then analyzing and then optimizing, but all three of those phases need to exist. You can't optimize without experimentation. It's the foundation of it. So you need to be prepared for, yes, looking at this like an investment, just like your stocks. Not all stocks are necessarily going to get you money, but other ones will, and so you hope, at the end of the day, the overall totality of a portfolio is getting you wins and money, and I think you need to look at it the same way with ads.
Speaker 1:Well, that brings us to the third point, which is how do you know that you're getting wins and making money from this? And so, very briefly, cause I don't respect your time, I know that we're running up to the end of our time together. This is info that a manager would be sending you, delivering to you, but if somebody is trying to do this on their own, or even just what you should be expecting from a manager, what kind of tracking measurements? How can we know that these are working? What are we? What should we be looking at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I. So here's the thing no-transcript, whether it's internal or an agency or something like that. I think it's very important that you understand, and your expectation should be that you get a report at least every month. And here's the thing that's really important If you don't understand the report, you need to ask and you need to demand that it is explained to you in a way so you get it. And if the agency or person is unwilling or unable to do that for you, find a new agency, find a new person, because I operate in the way where I don't need my clients to be experts in Google Ads, but I need them to understand, even at the highest level, philosophically, like here's how things are operating and here's what's going well and here's what's going not so well. You know, transparency is incredibly important when it comes to reporting and, again, this is not about you becoming a Google ads expert, but just like those of you out there who are managing multiple parts of your business, and maybe why you've even come to Craig or why you should go to Craig, candidly, is like hey, I know all about being a therapist, but maybe not so much my money, maybe not so much my marketing, maybe not so much my taxes. Right, you hire people in many cases to help you with this or to do this, and if you're taking this on, you need to at least understand the basics. So you need to partner with someone who's going to help you understand that. So I think that that is an expectation you 100% should have. Getting reports when I do them. I do reports and then I actually do a video that explains the report with context, because numbers on a sheet are not enough Oftentimes. You need some context there.
Speaker 2:And I think the other thing, too, that people often get a little confused on is, like you know, this is a little bit next level, but like conversions, so ads will, set up properly, can record what's called quote unquote conversion. So ads will, uh, if set up properly, can record what's called quote unquote conversion. So that's, for example, like when the website registers a sale. Um, and again, a good ads manager like this we'll explain this to you sometime. You know if, particularly if you're running on multiple platforms, google will claim the same sale as Facebook will, right, so the? So usually what you need to do is look at these things as signals of success, right, and say, okay, if my conversions are up. Is my revenue also up? Right, because you can't always connect these things one-to-one and get the perfect, cleanest data. You just can't. But you can connect enough dots to be telling you the right story.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, just like a lot of therapists, have their phone number on their website, so sometimes it's unless they're on their phone and clicking call if somebody's browsing on their computer and then they pick up their phone to call you. It's not going to count that or track that, and so having somebody who can help decipher that data and tell you are you making that money, Are you making money?
Speaker 2:is huge or they may have clicked the ad. You know, bought something on your website and then also called you.
Speaker 2:You know, and it's like so technically, if you have some things set up that would, that may log as two conversions, right, and it's like it's the same person. So there's, there's. This is again where a good manager of the account will help you kind of discern some of this and explain it, because even again, in all my work I've never found a perfect system that I was like oh yeah, this is exactly all the exact same data, that kind of it. Just it's very, it's very challenging, if not impossible to do.
Speaker 1:Well, ross, super, super helpful. You always break things down and very bite-sized, easy to understand ways. So for those who are ready to start advertising and they need a manager, how can they get in contact with you? Because I highly recommend working with Ross. Like I said, he is just the king at not only getting results but also making it something that you can digest and you know where your money's going and what it's turning into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I mentioned it before. I'm a big proponent over people first getting their house and order related to their overall customers, company and content, so I have a program that is 100% online. You can do it yourself. It's called Get Marketing Clarity and it's getmarketingclaritycom. Or my company, which is Tricycle Creative Craig will put links in the description here for both of those. Highly recommend, if you are struggling even just with your organic content, that you sign up for my clarity program. It's $9. That's it Nine bucks. You can do it and then, once you have that done, if you're interested in running ads, then you can chat with me and engage me and see if we're a good fit together. But I will not take on clients for ads until and unless they go through my clarity program, because I just think people need to. I can't operate in the dark and the clarity program provides a good amount of light.
Speaker 1:Yes, and if somebody is not willing to spend $9 to invest in their marketing, then they're probably not ready for ads, correct, I agree, I agree. Awesome, ross, I appreciate your time and insight and, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:No, it's my pleasure and I really hope this was helpful. And again, if anyone has any questions, they can, you know, reach out to me on my website or even contact Craig. He knows how to get ahold of me.
Speaker 1:I do All right. Thanks, Ross. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.
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