The Private Practice Success Podcast

72. Where to Find NEW Clients...?

• Gerda Muller • Episode 72

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In Episode 72, Gerda answers a question that’s on the mind of so many practice owners right now, especially with the cost-of-living pressures affecting client demand and this question is:

Where do I Find NEW Clients…? (Yes, NEW in capital letters.)

This episode was sparked by a brilliant question from a group practice owner inside Gerda’s Facebook community who asked... 

“How do companies currently advertise their services, and where do families actually find you?”

Needless to say, if you’ve got open spots in your diary right now or you’re trying to prevent the next quiet patch, then this episode is for you.

In this Episode, you will learn:

  • A simple way to understand marketing and how it all fits together.
  • What the “FIND” stage of the Allied Health Client Attraction Process involves.
  • Why guessing where clients come from can hurt your marketing.
  • Easy ways to track where new clients are actually coming from.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Practice owners with available diary spots who need more enquiries.
  • Group practice owners investing in marketing who want clearer ROI.
  • Owners who want a more consistent, repeatable way to attract clients, without the “post and pray” approach.

If you want to find new clients in a way that’s strategic, measurable, and aligned with your niche, then this episode will help you build the system and start making marketing decisions with confidence. And, when you do this, you build a practice you can't stop smiling about 😍

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Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

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 72. 

Today we are answering a really important question, and that is Where to Find NEW Clients...? NEW in Capital Letters. Now this episode title is in response to a really great question that a group practice owner recently asked within my Facebook group.  This was a speech pathology practice owner, and this is the question she asked.  She said: Question for market research: How do companies currently advertise their services? And if you take data, where do families tend to find you? What a great question. As a group practice owner, and even as a solo practice owner, if you currently have open spots within your diary, you should be asking this question, so much so that I'm choosing to answer it here on the podcast. Yes, I did respond in the Facebook group, but the thing is, I'm probably going to spend at least the next 20 minutes talking to you about it, probably way more. I don't think I've ever done a podcast episode for less than 20 minutes. And this is the thing about asking questions in Facebook groups, I encourage people to ask it in there, right? I wouldn't have a Facebook group if I didn't want people to ask these questions. 

By the way, if you're not in my Facebook group, if you go into Facebook and you search ‘Private Practice Success for Allied Health Practice Owners’, you will find the group.   Now you must be an existing practice owner in order for me to let you in. It is not for practice managers, it's not for admin staff, it's not for clinicians - it is only for practice owners. It's got a very specific purpose. There are more than enough other groups for everybody else. So I wanted this to be a really focused group, because I know that you are busy, and you are probably in a hundred other Facebook groups and you know, I'm not kidding, right? So, I want people to know that when they come into this group, they're coming for a specific purpose. That's why it is so niched. But even when you ask a question like this in a Facebook group, there's only so much that we can share in writing, and it's really hard to explain context, to really position things properly in a way that's going to help you in the long term. And that is my job as a business consultant, coach and mentor to allied health practice owners. I want you to see the entire picture, instead of just giving you this one little piece of the puzzle. 

I need you to understand the whole puzzle picture that you're working towards. And ultimately, if you want to build a long-term, successful, sustainable, impactful allied health business, you need each and every little piece. It is why I, quite some years ago now, five years ago, I would say I moved away from offering short and sharp little workshops and training type of mentoring, and went no, I'm actually doing practice owners a disservice by only going: oh, let's do a little training on marketing, let's do a little training on wait list management, let's do a little training on conversion conversations at the front desk, let's do a little training on cash flow forecasting - because that's not really being helpful in the way that makes sense to me, because I know you need all of those things.  Running a business doesn't rely on just one thing. You need all of it, and you need to know how to put it all together to build this amazing puzzle that is going to be your business. 

And that is when I started the Private Practice Success Academy.  I think it was actually in 2020 that I started it. So yeah, it's almost more than five years now where I just went.. Okay, I want to create this container that gives people everything they need, not all at the same time, but whenever they need something, they will know exactly where to find it. It's there and they will know how to connect the dots. Because you might have all the dots, but if you don't know how to connect it, that also doesn't make sense. So that's why I wanted to take the time today to really speak to this question this amazing practice owner has, because I know that currently a lot of people are struggling to fill their diaries. You just need to look at the state of the world, and the cost-of-living crisis. Our clients are thinking twice before they spend money, as they should. As I'm sure you are doing as a responsible parent, as a responsible wife, husband, partner, adult. We need to be mindful of what is happening in the world. So this means that as a practice owner, we really need to know the answer to this question, which I'm really grateful that this person asked. So we are going to answer that together today. 

Understanding Marketing 

This practice owner's question in a nutshell was. Where do I find NEW clients? Now, if you are listening to this podcast episode and you think, what's the answer to this? I'm guessing you're going to go, oh, you need to do marketing, and you would be right. Marketing is the answer to finding new clients. So this is me giving you the complete picture, as much as I can in this format. If you think about marketing, let's start with Big Picture. Marketing is an overarching umbrella that can include a range of strategies, and within every strategy you can find a range of tactics. So we are starting marketing at the top. Then underneath marketing, some of those very broad strategies are, for example: promotion, advertising, publicity, public relations. Okay, so four broad ways of doing marketing. I'm not touching on branding today. So those are the four. This person's question specifically used the word advertising. She said: How do companies currently advertise their services? Okay. So just keep all of that in mind. It's important when you think about marketing to know that it involves those four broad areas. And this person is asking about advertising and I think she's using the right word, advertising for NEW clients. Remember I said NEW in capital letters, because we are doing new.

The Client Attraction Process 

Next thing I want to also highlight in more broader terms, when you think as a business owner, that irrespective of the type of business that you have, allied health or any other type of industry, if you are a service business and or product business for that manner - but let's talk service businesses in this instance - you would have a client attraction process in terms of how do we attract NEW in capital letters new clients to use our services. Now in my Private Practice Success Academy Mastermind, I teach my clients The Client Flow Flywheel - that is an allied health specific client attraction process. 

What we're going to talk about today is the F in the Flow, so FLOW, each of those represents a step within the Client Flow Flywheel. So F is Find. Where do I advertise to FIND new clients? Again, like I said at the start, this person's asking a really good question. So this is all about finding new clients. And as I said, if you've got spots in your diary, you need to be doing this, right this minute. If you don't have any spots in your diary, that is not any reason to rest on your laurels, because we know why there's ebbs and flows in your clients, because there's ebbs and flows in your marketing. Because there's ebbs and flows in the activities you engage in within the F, the FIND step of your Client Flow Flywheel. And Find is all about reaching new people, which means that you need to create visibility of your business, of your service, of the problems that you solve in front of the people that need your service. And this specific person asked about advertising. How do you do that, to find new clients? 

Survey your Current Clients via Email 

When I responded to this question in the Facebook group, my response was, ‘Hey, have you surveyed your own clients? And then in brackets, assuming you want more of the same clients.’ Now obviously some of you might be going there, Oh, shit, with all the NDIS changes I probably need to find new clients, but it's not the same as what I currently have. Again, different conversation, I want to really delve into this specific question because generally when you're doing bread and butter, private practice work, particularly for me as a psychology practice owner, you know, we want to find more of the clients that we are already serving, because we know we are really good at that, and that's the clients that fit our niche. It's the client that fits our vision and the mission for why it is that we do, that we do within our practice and my business, and if also your business. So I want to encourage you to reflect on that question. Have you been surveying your own clients to determine where they come from? Yes or no? 

If you haven't asked that question, nothing stops you from today, or tomorrow, from doing a survey. You should have an email list of all your current clients. It should be on your diary software, whether that is Zanda, Halaxy, Splose, whatever it is that you are using, you should be able to go into that software. I know we do that at Zanda, that we used previously used Power Diary, we can go in and we will email all our clients from Zanda directly. It's really great. You can tell the system exactly who you want to email. If I were you and I've not been asking that question, I would be sending a nice little email positioning it really lovely. But the gist of the question would be, ‘Hey, can you just take one minute to tick on this link and tell us how you heard about us the first time you were referred? The first time you heard about our business? In my case, it would be The Psych Professionals. How did you hear about us? And I know you might need to really think about it. But I would really appreciate your input because we are here to help more people in better, more effective ways. We know how important mental health is. So that's the positioning part, right? You need to tell clients, like, why should they do this little survey for you? People are busy, okay? And even though you're an amazing business, your clinicians are great and you're helping them and them, or their kids are doing really well. It's like, why should I do this for you, when I'm really busy? You need to tell people, you need to onboard them with your mission. This is how you actually build long-term relationships with clients. But I don't want to digress on that because that's again, a whole different topic of discussion. 

So your positioning needs to be really good. And I'm not saying write a novel. It needs to be short, sharp, and sweet, because if it's too long, again people aren't going to read it. It's like, who's got time for that? If I see a short email, I will actually read it. If I see something that's too long, I don't. And when I think about that, I go mental note Gerda when you email people on your list for private practice success, you should write shorter emails. But I know sometimes it's hard, but even I am a work in progress in how I do business. So write an email to your clients and ask them the question and see what comes back. That's the first thing I would recommend you do, because that is your current clients. If you don't want more of your current clients, then don't waste your time. Then you need to start finding new clients in different places. Again, different podcast episode. Definitely do that. 

Survey Clients at Intake 

The second thing I would do is I would make sure that whenever you book in any new clients going forward, as of tomorrow, that part of your intake process includes the question, ‘Hey, how did you first hear about us?’ You need to ask that question, and then you need to record that data so you can once again, I'm assuming, because we can do it in Zanda, you can actually have a referral source checklist in your software that you can just tick. So the person answering the phone calls your receptionist, they can tick ah, GP, ah, Google, ah, Facebook, ah, Instagram - wherever they heard about you. So that you can then have a running record of where each and every client has come from. It's actually incredibly interesting. But before I tell you what's interesting about it, I just want to drill down on the question, because whenever we generate data, we want to generate data that is as accurate as possible. 

Data Accuracy 

Now, what I will tell you, if you've done and studied stats at university, geez, we did so many stats and I never used it as a psychologist. But if you've ever done stats, you would know that your job is to make sure that all the information, the data is as accurate as possible, is as reliable as possible, so that the result is as reliable and valid as possible, right. But the thing I've come to learn is that nothing is ever 100%. But we still need to attempt to make sure that whatever data we gather is as accurate as possible. And just because there's this little perfectionistic part of your brain that goes well, there could be a 0.01% chance that this is not actually where they first heard about me - doesn't matter, let that go. You are going to ask the right question. You are going to say, ‘Hey, how did you first hear about us?’ If the client says, oh, my GP gave me a referral, we know that maybe that's not how they heard about you for the first time. And this is where great training of your front desk team comes into play, because when they are having that, what is essentially a conversion conversation, answering a call, booking in a client so that they have a confirmed appointment in the diary.  It needs to be a conversation. 

It shouldn't be, I'm just running through this list of questions that I need to ask because I've got so much shit to do and I just want to get through it. No, they need to take their time and have a conversation. And when you're doing it in a great conversation, then reception will be able to go, ah, that's really great the doctor gave you a referral. So, the doctor specifically recommended us, or did she actually ask to be referred to us because she heard from us elsewhere? Because sometimes we need to help clients to go back and actually, access that information where they might go, ‘Yeah, I actually had no idea and you know, it just came up in conversation and the Doctor actually said, these guys are really good and they can help. Or the person might go, you know what actually now that you, now that you mention it, I was speaking to another parent at school pickup, they're having the same issue with their child, and they told me about you and they've been bringing their child to see one of your psychologists, so when I went in to see my GP, I actually asked them to refer me to you.’ Okay, so that's not a GP referral in that where the client comes from? Yes, they've got a GP referral, but it's not a result of us going and marketing to the GPs, that they became a client.  That person became a client as a result of great word of mouth, okay.  Because we want to connect the dots, right? We spoke about connecting the dots earlier on and the more accurate the data, because we've taken the time to really ask and make sure where this client came from initially - although it's never going to be a hundred percent - that's going to help us connect the dots. So that when we now start to make marketing decisions, we can look at that data.

At my practice, we do a marketing and branding action plan every year in February, and we actually do it when I facilitate this training with my Private Practice Success Academy Mastermind. So my practice attends with The Academy, and then what we do is we compile a marketing and branding action plan for the whole year -  that is not set and forget. What we will do is, at the very least, every quarter, we will run a report in Zanda that tells us where our clients come from. There's been times where we would do it on a month-to-month basis. So if you are struggling to find new clients, that's an indication that you should be running that report on a month-to-month basis. You want to consistently look at that data.  

If your marketing is running really well, you're very consistent with it, you're getting the results that you need, your diaries are generally full, that's when you can go bimonthly, and after that you can go quarterly. I wouldn't do it less than quarterly. Because then it's too long of a period for you to make tweaks as required in your marketing and branding action plan. But you should be running that report. Particularly if you are investing a lot of money into your marketing, such as if you are paying for Google AdWords, you want to know that. You want to know what your return is? Yes, your Google AdWords agency, if you do that externally, which I actually recommend, they will be giving you reports. And yes, we trust their reports, but I also want to look at my own data. Does my own data actually correlate with that? If not, I want to ask some questions about it, because maybe they aren't doing their report correctly, even though they're the expert. Maybe we aren't doing it correctly. Let's fix this. It's all about doing things better and more efficiently. It's not always doing something new. It's like, how do we drill down? Let's drill down another level. Let's make this data just a tad bit more accurate. Because if we can do that, we are going to be a tad bit more laser focused in achieving our marketing outcomes that we want, which ultimately is getting people the help that they need, and deserve to have. 

That's what marketing is all about - it's helping people. Marketing allows me to do and fulfill the purpose for being a psychologist. That's what it is. That's why I love marketing. That's why I love marketing for my practice. It's why I love marketing for Private Practice Success Australia, because it means that I can help people build better businesses. And when I help a practice owner build a better, a more efficient business, you know what happens? I have a ripple effect. I'm helping that practice owner help their clinical team help more people and impact their community, local community, or national community if they're telehealth, in a really impactful manner. And that makes me feel like I'm doing something really worthwhile. 

So we always want to work on doing things more effectively. And as I was saying, you want to run that report and going okay - if I am particularly, as I said, spending money on Google Ads or spending money on Facebook ads or any other paid marketing efforts, given that this practice owner used the word advertise, which generally means you are paying money - if you are putting your practice on the back of a bus and you've paid X amount of dollars for it, or you've decided to put your practice on a huge billboard. Yes, you can do that if you want to. You need to ask yourself; how do I track return on investment? You need to ask that question - and is it worth it? Should I do this again? And you can only know that if you have been tracking where your clients come from. How many of my clients said that I was driving down Main Street and I saw this humongous billboard, and I went, that's a sign. That's a sign that I need to go and book in with this person. That's a sign that they're the right person to help me. Whatever it is that the client says, you need to ask those questions. 

In Summary 

The question was: How do companies currently advertise their services? And if you take data, where do families tend to find you? In other words, where to find NEW clients? 

Step one: Ask the question - Where do my current clients find me? So where's the current clients coming from? 

Step two: Have a set system in place to ask, answer and track that data. And remember we spoke about two ways to do that. One, if you've not been doing Step two, do a survey via email tomorrow and ask them, and record their data. And then secondly, make it part of your standard intake process, use your diary software because I'm guessing most of them would have this feature. Train your admin team how to have those conversations, and make this a set system to record this data each and every time a new client is booked. 

Step three: Review this data at least quarterly. If you are struggling to fill the diaries, you need to do it on a monthly basis. If your diary is full on a consistent basis, quarterly is fine. 

Step four: Assign marketing and advertising dollars and efforts to where most of your clients are already coming from - that is assuming that you want more of them. Because you want to invest your money, your time, your effort, where you're getting the best return on investment. And that's going to be slightly different for each of us, given our niche area, given the demographic of clients that we are working with. 

Alrighty, I hope that was helpful. If it was, can I please ask that you challenge yourself to share this podcast with at least one other practice owner? Like I said earlier, what motivates me is helping practice owners help their clinicians help more clients - that's my ripple effect, and I would be so grateful for you to help me with that. 

Thank you so very 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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