Article 3: Your Brand...

Hello again everyone, today I’m discussing another important aspect of your business - your brand. You may be thinking “I’m a therapist, why do I need a brand?”…..that’s a very good question. Let me explain.

I worked in Advertising for 10 years, in my experience the brand is very important. I have experience of dealing with all sorts of companies from “one man bands” to massive conglomerates and let me tell you, the most successful ones had a brand. I remember in particular one mediator who built up an incredibly successful business, just using his own name, and this name became his brand. He has a fantastic website and whenever I spoke to him he was busy. So you see, you don’t have to be a massive company and have a company name if you don’t want to, although I would suggest you have a logo.

For those therapists with experience of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) you will be familiar with the concept of learning modalities. Let us imagine a potential client is looking for a therapist, who are they going to remember - just a name or a name with a brightly coloured logo? Also remember that clients usually take a while to choose a therapist, they shop around, and those therapists that feel familiar they will choose. Companies have logos because they’re easier to remember and therefore familiarity is easier to build.

Next, your business address. Some therapists do choose to work from home, but many are choosing to hire a therapy room or something similar. Whichever you choose, and I cannot stress this enough, you MUST have a business address. I’ve had therapists not sign up to use Chelmsford Therapy Rooms because “I’m waiting to get a client first”…….this creates two problems:

1: When potential clients look for therapists location is important. In fact it’s a main factor. How will a client choose you if they don’t know where you’re based?

2: Say a client has contacted you, where will you tell them to go?

In answer to these questions I usually get “Oh, well now I know I’ve got here….” I’m sorry, but that isn’t correct. Unless you have the keys and access to your place of work you do not have anywhere. Say you get a client, and suddenly need to sign up to a therapy room or hire office space etc, what if the manager is on holiday or can’t meet you to give you a set of keys? You must take these things into account. Also, ask yourself this……why are you really avoiding signing up to serviced offices / a therapy room etc? Do you believe you’ll actually attract clients? Is this a confidence issue? At the end of the day if you definitely have a place of work, you definitely have somewhere for clients to go. Next we have to work on attracting those clients, so next time we’ll look at websites.

Jen