Marketing of Psychological Services

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BuckeyeLove

Forensic Psychologist
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Hi All,
I was wondering what any of your thoughts were on the nature of marketing in our field. Based on a small sample of professors and past supervisors I’ve worked with, they have generally been of the consensus that psychologists don’t do an adequate job of marketing their services. I believe I’ve seen this sentiment expressed a few times in related threads on here as well. However, I’ve also seen (albeit on a surface level) an attitude from some professionals in the field (again small n) against marketing, and they often seem to make the assumptive leap that marketing one’s services equates to us being no different than, for lack of a better term, a used car salesperson (Nothing against people that sell used cars). It also seems that psychologists (at least one’s that are trained competently) are consistently afraid of stepping outside their area of competence, and that by marketing one’s services, there is a greater potential or capacity for this to take place. Is this possibly why we don’t see commercials for clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, forensic psychologists, etc…? I know there has been some concern raised about how clinicians (often from professional schools) will have websites glorifying their services. Is that where some of this fear comes from? Ethics boards complaints? (I am by no means justifying these shoddy practices)

I was thinking the other day about how many commercials I see for dentist, orthodontists, physical therapists, etc, and that I would probably be shocked to see one for a clinical psychologist. I also had a hard time deciding what my reaction would be to it (i.e., would I immediately denigrate the professional offering their services as being a hack just “trying to sell something (where does that come from?)” or if I would take it seriously). Anyways, a bit of an open ended question and food for thought. Not surprisingly, the most successful supervisors (at least financially) that I’ve had, have all been able to market and sell their services to a particular client-base. Thoughts?

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Hi All,
I was wondering what any of your thoughts were on the nature of marketing in our field. Based on a small sample of professors and past supervisors I’ve worked with, they have generally been of the consensus that psychologists don’t do an adequate job of marketing their services. I believe I’ve seen this sentiment expressed a few times in related threads on here as well. However, I’ve also seen (albeit on a surface level) an attitude from some professionals in the field (again small n) against marketing, and they often seem to make the assumptive leap that marketing one’s services equates to us being no different than, for lack of a better term, a used car salesperson (Nothing against people that sell used cars). It also seems that psychologists (at least one’s that are trained competently) are consistently afraid of stepping outside their area of competence, and that by marketing one’s services, there is a greater potential or capacity for this to take place. Is this possibly why we don’t see commercials for clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, forensic psychologists, etc…? I know there has been some concern raised about how clinicians (often from professional schools) will have websites glorifying their services. Is that where some of this fear comes from? Ethics boards complaints? (I am by no means justifying these shoddy practices)

I was thinking the other day about how many commercials I see for dentist, orthodontists, physical therapists, etc, and that I would probably be shocked to see one for a clinical psychologist. I also had a hard time deciding what my reaction would be to it (i.e., would I immediately denigrate the professional offering their services as being a hack just “trying to sell something (where does that come from?)” or if I would take it seriously). Anyways, a bit of an open ended question and food for thought. Not surprisingly, the most successful supervisors (at least financially) that I’ve had, have all been able to market and sell their services to a particular client-base. Thoughts?

Lack of marketing, both to consumers AND to the larger healthcare landscape, IS psychology's problem. And its why we are where we are (or rather, where we are not), and why we have to fend of scope creep
 
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Lack of marketing, both to consumers AND to the larger healthcare landscape, IS psychology's problem. And its why we are where we are (or rather, where we are not), and why we have to fend of scope creep
"Yes Dr., I concur" :)
We need to market our services and our profession as a whole. I remember the APA having a mission to make psychology a household word. Don't know if that went very far. We need to recognize that business is not a dirty word. One of my professors always said that psychologists feel more comfortable talking about sex than we do money. Money, Business, Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Promotion it is all necessary. It doesn't mean that we have to use cheezy or unethical ads, "Refer a friend, get your next session free!", but if we don't do these things we will lose the prestige that the term psychologist has. Right now, terms like counselor and therapist are taking that over, I would hate to see a day when people do not know what a psychologist is and does.
 
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The average persons impression is that a Psychologist is someone you share your feelings with and that they are there to give good advice.
 
I agree with all of the above--psychology has done a horrible job of marketing (perhaps because, as you've mentioned, "old school" psychologists may have viewed the practice as somehow beneath them, demeaning to the field, etc.), and because of that: 1) relatively few people know what we actually do, 2) relatively few people know to seek out our services, and 3) other folks have come in to fill that marketing void. And related to #1, schools with poor training models can then pop up because the average consumer may not know what a competent psychologist actually looks like.

Like T4C, I'm a huge proponent of marketing and education about the profession.
 
One of my professors always said that psychologists feel more comfortable talking about sex than we do money. Money, Business, Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Promotion it is all necessary. It doesn't mean that we have to use cheezy or unethical ads, "Refer a friend, get your next session free!", but if we don't do these things we will lose the prestige that the term psychologist has.

Yes, mostly :) I am not, as you all know, part of the "we" above. I am hoping to become a non-traditional student receiving mid-level training in the near future. This has given me the benefit of participating in or running a few small businesses in the past 20 or so years.

Marketing is hard; it does feel sort of distasteful to tout one's talents and expertise. But without it, we get hungry...

At some point, we have to get comfortable with exposing the target demographic to honest information about ourselves, the services we provide and the ways we can provide them that may even be (here's the hard part) better than our competitors.

This never has to be cheesy, just honest and clear. You can succeed with integrity in this market. You just have to watch out for the unethical people who will absolutely take advantage of you given the chance.

It is unfortunate that so many posters in general, not specifically in this thread, aspire to private practice (when the VA hires more than any other entity) but they have no concept of running a business or helping it thrive.
 
IME: there's no need. Do great work. You'll get great referrals. Then you ask them to quit sending more patients, and they don't. And then they tell their physician friends, even after you beg them not to.
 
Yes and no. In some markets it is hard to establish yourself and build enough of a reputation (at least early on) to get enough referrals. It took me about a year to hit consistent capacity for referrals, and that was the result of developing relationships and tailoring my assessments to what the referrer needs. Now I'm swamped to the point I can drop off insurance panels who are unwilling to match rates offered by their competition. It's important to educate the referring providers about the reimbursement differences, as some aren't very involved in billing so they assume every clinician takes most/all insurance plans. I try and keep a few names of providers who are still in-network providers on each dropped panel so I can at least get their patient seen by someone.
 
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