The Private Practice Success Podcast

66. Credibility VS Authority: The Missing Link in your Marketing

• Gerda Muller • Episode 66

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In Episode 66, Gerda gets straight to the heart of why so many practice owners struggle to fill their books, even when they feel like they are “doing all the right marketing things”.

Unfortunately, many practice owners don’t even realise that there is a missing link in their marketing strategy. Cue… Credibility Marketing VS Authority Marketing.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why being qualified, experienced, and trustworthy isn’t enough to create demand (and why your phone still isn’t ringing), then this episode is for you. 

In this Episode, you will learn (among others):

  • The critical difference between Credibility and Authority, and why they both matter.
  • Practical ways to communicate Authority (without breaching AHPRA guidelines).
  • The common barriers that keep practice owners stuck in “I help everyone” mode, and how to overcome them.
  • Why your marketing might be working hard, but not nearly smart enough, and how to fix this.

Special Download Link: 

Find the AHPRA Guidelines for Advertising a Regulated Health Service HERE. 

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Practice owners who are tired of scattered diaries and want to become the obvious choice in their field.
  • Anyone ready to move from “just credible” to “in demand”, and build a practice that stands out for all the right reasons.
  • Allied health professionals looking for ethical, strategic ways to boost client flow and referrer loyalty.

Tune in for a practical, mindset-shifting conversation that will help you create the right combination of Credibility and Authority in your marketing, so you can build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 🙂

Want more info on The Ultimate Admin Training Course?

Email Gerda at gerdam@private-practice-success.com and she’ll send you all the details. 

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

Well, hello there amazing private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 66. 

The title of today is Credibility VS Authority: The Missing Link in your Marketing. Now, if you are currently struggling to fill your books, then this is the episode for you. In fact, I've done lots of episodes of marketing, but I feel like this is a part that a lot of people either just neglect or totally skip over. But I want to give you some context for how I got to this topic, and why I felt that this is important enough for me to actually share it with you here on the podcast publicly.

So, over the last two months, within my Private Practice Success Academy, which is my mastermind for allied health practice owners, we've had a marketing focus, and the themes of our skill sessions, learnings, and a lot of the discussions have been on marketing. In February, I ran a skills session for my members called the Marketing and Branding Action Plan. What we did is we sat together for 90 minutes and we planned out their marketing and branding for the next 12 months. So starting in March, 2026, all the way through to February, 2027, so that they can just focus on implementation and execution from there. So all that decision making has been done, and they can just show up. And when I say they, generally, that is them as the practice owner, but also their team that helps them to execute those functions. 

Then last week was the final piece in this marketing puzzle, for lack of a better word, because you need to get it right. So last week what I did is I took my members through another 90-minute training that was called The Client Flow Flywheel. This was like a blueprint for them to go, okay, we've done our marketing and branding action plan, now we're going to take this blueprint and we are going to put it over what we've planned out, and we are going to make sure that we are not missing anything - that we have ensured, we have addressed all four steps of The Client Flow Flywheel. 

I speak to people all the time and they will tell me, ‘Gerda, I'm doing marketing, but the referrals just aren't there.’ Or ‘I'm doing all this marketing, and still the clinicians don't have full diaries.’ Or ‘I'm doing this marketing, and the phone's just not ringing, and we're not getting all the enquiries anymore, and I don't understand it.’ So people think they're doing the right things, but you can do all the step one strategies and activities of The Client Flow Flywheel, if you don’t do step two, three, and four, you are going to be in that position. And you might be telling me, ‘I'm doing all these marketing things,’ but all these marketing things are within step one. Or you might do a little bit of each, but you're not doing all four and in sequence, because this is a client attraction process, and a lot of times in a process things need to happen in a sequence.  Now, some processes don’t mind, it can be like here then everywhere. 

When it comes to this specific process, there is a sequence to it. And I think what is also very demotivating for practice owners is, especially when it comes to marketing, they look at it and they have a funnel perspective. If you think about a funnel in the traditional as well as online marketing space, it's this big open funnel at the top and you want to throw as many enquiries, leads, referrals, people in there, and then you hope that they're going to move through your funnel and finally land in your diary. But that means that the tap at the top needs to be turned on the whole time, because you need more clients coming in, right? Whereas if you start to implement a process that's not a funnel, but instead, it's a flywheel - that yes, in the start you need to do things for the wheel to start turning - but once it starts and you've got that momentum and you're doing all four of these steps, right, you are not missing one or trying to just do one, three, and four and totally skipping over step two. If you do all of it in that sequence, you know what starts to happen? It just keeps moving. The flywheel has momentum. 

Another interesting thing that starts to happen is this flywheel starts to feed itself. You know what's beautiful about that? It becomes sustainable - and that is what I want for practice owners. That is what I want for my members. It's what we do at my practice, and I refer to this as our demand engine. It is an engine in your business, and this engine is running all the time, particularly if you aren't working with a demographic or presentation where people just stay for many years. A lot of people in the NDIS space - depending on the work that they do - their clients stay longer, particularly if they're working with young people. But if you're doing bread and butter work in psychology, you do need new clients coming in. Even if you work in the space of trauma, yes, maybe those clients will stick around longer, but as a general rule, there's going to be a flow of clients coming in and out of your business, so you want to make this process as easy as possible. 

So that's what I did last week with The Academy. We looked at The Client Flow Flywheel, what it involves, what those steps are, and how we ensure that we get that done. I also gave them a The Client Flow Assessment, for them to actually score how well they're doing on each of the four aspects by giving them a list of things that they need to do that's really of primary importance within each step, which therefore allowed them to go, ‘Ah, there's the gaps. Talking about gaps, it makes me think of when people recruit, so people would often go, ‘Gerda, I've got my ad out, I'm doing all the things that I think I should be doing. I'm recruiting, but I'm not getting good applicants. I don't have a lot of choice, or particularly in the psychology world, I don't have fully registered psychologists applying, it's only provisional psychologists’ - and we love our provisional psychs, but there are also limitations in terms of some of the work they can do and things like that - but it's because there's gaps in the process. 

So if you are currently struggling to recruit - and particularly back to marketing - if you're struggling to fill the books and it feels like I'm doing all the things. It might just be that there's a gap. Because unfortunately you just don't know what you don't know. Which is why as the practice owner, you need to make it your job to know that is your job to know, What am I missing? Because unless you do it, you are paying money towards the school of not knowing, or as Dave Ramsey likes to call it, you are paying stupid tax. I know that might be a bit much in your face, but yeah, I've paid a lot of stupid tax over the years, and I'm the first to admit I've made a lot of mistakes. It's why I started Private Practice Success Australia. I just went, ‘I'm not going to keep quiet about it. I'm going to tell people what I've learned through blood, sweat, and tears, because it should not have to be this hard to live your purpose, to start a practice and to help more people in better, more effective ways. Let's make it easy so that we can spread that ripple effect.’

So it's really important for you to know what the gaps are. Because what a lot of people also do is go, ‘Oh, I need to do something new.’ No, this is the process. Let's really go, What's missing here? What's the one little missing piece?’ Well, one little thing can make a big difference to what you're doing and for a lot of people they might even have all four steps, but the process hasn't been optimised. So it's really about going, ‘What is that stuff that is really essential, and let's do this as well as we can.’  

Coming back to our topic of today, this is one tiny little part of one of the four steps. In actual fact, it's part of step two and it's one of those essential elements that I find a lot of practice owners miss, particularly my psychology group practice owners. And because I'm a psychologist and I do think, (I suspect that the majority of people following me are probably psychology practice owners), I thought I really want to highlight this particular piece to all of you today. Now, obviously this does apply across all types and disciplines within allied health, so let's talk about Credibility VS Authority: The Missing Link in your Marketing.

The Know, Like & Trust Factor

Now, if you've been in business for more than freaking five minutes, you've probably heard the phrase: People need to …..?  Complete that in your mind for me. People need to what? Something, something and something. People need to know, like, and trust you. Now obviously the know and like and trust, that can't happen if you are not visible. But I'm going to really be strict with myself and stick to credibility and authority, which means we are not going to talk about the know and like right now, we're going to talk about the trust part, because trust is really important.  I often think that for us as allied health professionals, it's actually the easy part, because we consider ourselves trustworthy, right? We've done all the studies, we've got the qualifications, all the things, we take our work so seriously. So obviously people need to trust me, and we generally tend to avoid the know and like the visibility aspects of it. 

We are generally really good at the trust bit. When we are writing our websites or even our bios for ourselves or our team, you're probably leading with your qualifications, with your registrations, with your years of experience, you are using evidence-based language in your website, copy and content. I'm not saying you shouldn't have these things, I'm saying you should because this is part of building trust. I might not say that it should be the first thing in your bio, but it should most certainly be there, because all of this matters. But sharing this information does not create demand. All it does is it shows that you are credible. Yeah, that person's got a master's degree, they’re a member of the Australian Psychological Society, they've got 10 years’ experience within this field - that is credibility. 

But that does not equal a fully booked diary, because you are still competing with others in this space. I would say that 99% of allied health professionals are credible because this is the easy part for us - sharing how hard we've worked and how much we learned to get here. Which then leads us needing to compete on things such as: location, availability. Do you do after school appointments? Do you do evening appointments? Do you work on Saturdays?  Competing on funding streams and Medicare rebates, instead of actually being chosen for your expertise.  And that brings us to that missing link, and that is the authority part. 

I don't know about you, but some of us, I suspect, might have some negative connotation with the word ‘authority’ based on our own life experiences, our past, how we've grown up, all that type of stuff. So I want to bring that to the fore, and I want you to bring that into awareness. So if you already felt a bit of a tingle and an uncomfortableness in your chest and in your head, or even in your tummy when I use the word authority - just acknowledge that - because all of these things might be holding you back from actually doing the work that you are here to do, which is your purpose work, which is helping people, and I want you to be able to do that, and you can only do that when you've got clients. Your team can only do it when they've got clients. So I want to take you through the crux of the difference between credibility and authority, in order to make sure that you address both of these things within your marketing.

Credibility: You are Safe Here

Let's start by looking at credibility. When your marketing communicates credibility, what it is doing is answering a question that potential clients have in their minds. And your credibility answers that question to what is their question that they have in their heads, whether that's consciously or unconsciously as they are scrolling, searching and looking for potential providers. It is, can I trust you to do this? Are you a trustworthy practitioner? Are you a trustworthy business? And like I said, in allied health, this is familiar territory for us. It's easy to talk about my qualifications, it makes me feel good and more confident that I've done all these trainings, and I've done maybe research even in things, and I've got this experience and I've worked here and there and everywhere previously - that makes me feel confident in the fact that I can help that person. And for clients looking at it, Does this person have qualifications? Tick. Do they have their registrations? Tick.  All of those things communicate that you are safe working with this person, or working with this business - and this is important. 

You can't not do it because without credibility, nobody's going to book anyway. And without credibility, people aren't going to refer to you. Without credibility, your team's not going to feel confident selling your services. And when I see the team selling your services, let's look at that in terms of your admin team answering the phone. If your reception team isn't confident about the qualifications, registrations, experience, and how a clinician works, do you think that they can communicate credibility over the phone? No, they can't. And you know what? Clients will sniff that out a mile away. They are not stupid. So that's just on a little side note.  So when you do credibility marketing well, it reduces the perceived risk of saying yes and working with you or your business. 

Let's imagine you are a parent, and you're feeling a bit anxious because you're looking for help and support for your child, because your child might be struggling at school, it's March now and kids have settled into school. My child, I know they're probably halfway through term one already, the time just flies. But maybe your child's struggling, and you want to get some support for them, and you want to choose really well, you want to get the right person to help them. So what do you look for? You want to have a registered psychologist? Okay, look on the website. Tick. Do they work with children? Yes. Tick. Do they use evidence-based approaches? Yes. Tick. I know some of you might be thinking - our clients don't know what evidence-based approaches are. They actually do. Our clients these days are way more informed than they used to be 5, 10 years ago, and yes I've been doing this since 2007. They're looking for evidence-based, they're looking for trauma informed. So you need to make sure that your marketing copy is communicating that. That is credibility. If that's not present, they'll just click away and go look elsewhere.

But the problem is this: every other practice in your local area, and even online if you're doing telehealth - are also credible. I'm sure there's exceptions to the rule, but most people's psychologists are registered, whether they're fully registered or provisionally registered. They're registered. They’ve got their Working With Children's check. They've got all their credibility information in their bios. So it's like, okay, but why should I book in with you? So although credibility is incredibly important to communicate that yes, it's safe to work with you - in and by itself - it doesn't create demand it just gets you onto the shortlist. Okay, yeah, but I'm not fully convinced. Let's check somebody else out. 

And like I said earlier, then people start to make decisions based on location, availability, price, all of that type of stuff, because there's that missing link. Because a lot of time the marketing group practices would put out there would sound like: We provide evidence-based therapy for children, adolescents, and adults for a wide range of presentations - and that is probably a hundred percent true, that is a hundred percent credible.  But it is not a compelling reason for me to book my child in with your practice. It doesn't create preference to work with you or your practice or your clinicians. It does not move me as a potential client from thinking I need a psychologist, to > I need this psychologist. I hope this is landing because this is incredibly important. So credibility alone does not make you in demand. And unfortunately, this is often the thing that allied health professionals are really good at is credibility and we want to stay good at it, but there's this missing link and it's called authority.

Authority:  This is What we Do & We Do it Exceptionally Well

Just like credibility has a job to do by answering a question in the client's mind, similarly, authority has a job to do. So once we've answered the credibility question, which was: Can I trust you to do this? The next question that we need to answer, and this is the job of authority marketing, is: Are you the right person for me, or my child? Authority is not about, are you qualified, we've already answered that as part of the credibility piece. Authority is about being known for something. Now that could look like really positioning yourself as having a special interest area, so really owning a niche area within the market. This is also when you are able to really speak with confidence and conviction about a specific area, topic area. It is when you actually engage in public communication about this topic, about this niche area that you or your business works in. It could even mean that you have a really defined methodology for how you work at your practice, and you share that. I'm not saying you're sharing your ip, but you're sharing that this is how we do things, and we do it differently.  

The job of authority is to say: This is what we do, and we do it exceptionally well. Now if you are a health professional regulated and registered under APRHA like I am as a psychologist, you will know that there are a lot of strict, very specific and detailed do's and don'ts about advertising your service, So this is this flag for you that if you've not done so recently to go and revisit those rules and regulations. What I will do is in this show notes, I will share with you the link To download a really comprehensive handout from APRHA directly around what he can and can't do. So for example, off the top of my head, you can't say that you are better than somebody else. You can't say we are the best at what we do. So you can't use that vernacular, okay. But if you do authority marketing well, you will still be positioning yourself as: This is what we do, and we do it exceptionally well. 

The job of your authority marketing is to communicate that into the minds and into the hearts of clients looking for help, looking to solve their pain. But obviously you need to communicate it in a compliant manner. So it really is a skill, learning how to do authority marketing, and I've shared with you quite a number of ways in terms of niching yourself, that defined methodology, all of that type of information that you can share with people, and by actually going, I'm going to be the one that's happy to share how I do things, and not be scared and cagey and competitive about it. Because if I actually share that and I'm open and transparent, that sharing will be positioning the work that we do within that authority space, while still being compliant with all the APHRA rules and regulations. Alrighty, so definitely it's your job as a practice owner to know those guidelines, like the back of your hand. Ultimately, at its core, authority is that conviction, in knowing that this is what we do. So where credibility communicated competency and safety, authority takes it one step further by now creating preference.  So you are moving now from - I need a psychologist to: I need this psychologist. That is what authority creates. When you put credibility and authority together, that's when a beautiful thing happens in that it creates demand for your services. 

If we look at an example again: Let's say you are again a parent, and you're searching for support for your teenager that's struggling with anxiety, and you come across maybe two practices in the same location. Practice A’s website says: We support adolescents with a range of mental health concerns. Practice B says: We are the go-to practice for high performing teens with anxiety, who are silently struggling under academic pressure. I know where I'm taking my teenager, and I do have a teenager who just turned 15 last week. I’m most certainly going to practice B. Both of those practices are credible, but only one of them has authority. Who do you think is going to get the booking? In other words, the credibility piece helps people feel safe to step in, and authority then pulls them towards your practice or even towards you if you're a solo practitioner, and this is what creates that demand. This is where you go from scattered diaries, to in demand on a consistent basis because authority helps the client to say, ‘Yes.’ Which means that if you have credibility and authority, conversion at the front desk becomes easier. Your referrers will be more loyal because this applies to them as well, because you are no longer A provider, you are now THE provider for this specific niche area for this specific presentation.

Barriers to Creating Authority

Now that you hopefully have a better understanding of credibility versus authority, I just want to flag one, two to three things that I think contribute to practice owners and clinicians avoiding stepping into that authority space when it comes to their marketing and their branding. 

The first thing is: We help everyone, sentiment - and I get that. You know, I get being in private practice, even at my practice, I can almost say we help everyone. It's very rare that we can't help somebody, because we've got a team with a lot of experience, a variety and diversity of interest, so between the whole team, we can probably find somebody that can help each and every client that comes our way, but that is not the way that I'm going to market my practice. Because if I say we help everyone, we are a one stop shop for people with mental health difficulties, it just means that you might be credible, but you don't have authority, because nobody sees themselves clearly in the marketing that you are putting out there. 

I don't want to go to a one stop shop. I want to go to somebody that, you know, is really experienced. And I'm going to use the word that ‘specialises’ in inverted commas, because as a client, in my mind, that's what I'm looking for. As a client, I want somebody that specialises in a particular area. But if you are a health professional registered under APRHA, you are not allowed to say that you specialise in something. So make sure as always, like I said earlier, you have to check the regulations.

So to be clear, I'm not saying you should say you specialise, you should not say that at all. What I am saying is that you can communicate that, without using the word specialise. You can communicate what it is that you do. For example, you can say: This is our special interest area. You can go: This is our niche area of work, this is what we do. So there's ways that you can still communicate that level of positioning. But if you just go, we help everyone, you can do that, but you need to know that that's going to mean that you're going to have to be competitive on location, availability, and price. And I don't know, I don't want to compete on those variables, I would prefer to avoid it, particularly price. I don't want to be in a race to the bottom of the barrel when it comes to price, because that's not good for anyone. So why do it? Please don't.

The second thing that I want to flag is the fear of niching. So I've just spoken about people going: We help everyone. I have noticed over the years that people are really scared to niche down, and that fear is generally motivated by a fear of: What if we lose referrals? What if my website and my social media says that we help people with anxiety, then people with depression's not going to come anymore. Or people with grief and loss is not going to come because we've said we work with anxiety. But in reality, that is not what it is communicating, and I know that for a fact. Like I've just told you that at my practice, we can help 9.9 out of 10 clients that get referred our way, because our team is widely experienced and skilled. But I don't market my practices like that. I market it as a childhood adolescent practice, and I market one as a trauma practice. Those are our two niche areas, it doesn't mean we don't get non-trauma referrals. We get non-trauma clients all of the time. So out of experience, I can tell you that it is not the case. And over the years at my childhood adolescent practice, I've employed employees and contractors at that specific location to only work with adults. They were adult psychologists, at what was marketed as a child and a lesson practice.  So I can tell you the proof is in the pudding, I've gone through it. I know for certain that this is the case. But it means that if you have that niche, that your authority builds and builds and builds. So I can tell you it will pay off. 

Then the third thing that I wanted to flag was clinician identity. If you are a practice owner, I think 9 out of 10 times in private practice, a practice owner is first and foremost an allied health professional - and you were a clinician, first and foremost. Yes, I know there might be, you know, some corporate organisations, but I think that's more like NGOs and really corporate type places, which I'm sure exists, but you know, general allied health private practice, we were clinicians for us before we became practice owners. We are trained to be balanced, to be neutral. A lot of clinicians will have a very eclectic approach to how they treat and support and counsel their clients. But here comes authority. And authority marketing requires you to have an actual freaking point of view. A point of view that you can stand by, that you're going to talk about. Maybe a framework of how you do it. Remember I mentioned having a clear methodology for how you work, for example. So a way of doing things and being proud to talk about it.

Being confident that this can make a difference, that's what authority requires, and sometimes that can feel foreign compared to how we were trained back in university when we were told to be neutral and you know, middle of the road and all of that type of stuff. So it's really important to acknowledge that this stuff might be happening for you internally and that it can feel uncomfortable. But if you can slowly but surely step into that space, that is what will help your practice to become more and more in demand, to become the provider. This professional. This is the person that you need to go and see.

In Conclusion

So in conclusion then, you need credibility plus authority, because together those two things will create demand. If you can combine both of them, that's when your marketing truly starts to work in your favour. You are not going to feel like I'm doing all these outputs, but I'm getting very little in return, and I know how that feels, been there, done that. I don't want that for you. If you can do credibility and authority, not only will it be from clients, but also your referrals from third party referrers will also become consistent. And an interesting thing starts to happen when you create a demand engine, you become the obvious choice, the trusted leader in your location, in your demographic you work with in your field. The go-to practice, the go-to space that everybody recommends through word of mouth. And this is when your Client Flow Flywheel gains real momentum. 

Once it starts turning, it keeps turning.  And that allows you to finally move away from that traditional marketing funnel, which requires constant work towards having that self-sustaining flywheel of new clients coming into your ecosystem within your practice. So if right now your marketing isn't converting in the way that you are expecting it to, please stop asking yourself: How do I get more visibility? Yes, visibility is important, but I can almost bet you that it's not what's causing your problem. Instead, ask yourself: Where am I only communicating credibility, and not stepping into authority? Because yes, your qualifications, your memberships, your experience makes you a safe person - generally okay. But your positioning is what makes you sought after, in demand. Credibility plus authority leads to demand. And the practices that become in demand, are the ones that stop trying to be everything to everyone, and start to become known for something really specific.

So, if you would like my help in installing a Client Flow Flywheel within your practice, you know where to find me, please reach out. As I said, there's quite a lot that goes into it, but when you know what to do, we can fast track that for you. So go into the show notes, there is a link to a short triage form. It's a couple of questions completed and I will personally get back to you.  

Thank you so much for tuning in, and as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about. 😊

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Gerda Muller

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