How to Use Your Website to Grow Your Practice

So you have a new website. Awesome! Now what?

Now it's time to put it to work.

A website is only as good as its' ability to convert visitors into prospective clients, no matter how pretty it is (and I'm a fan of pretty websites).

So. First thing's first. Your website needs traffic to be useful (traffic is the amount of people that visit your website). Just like a candle shop needs people walking through it to make sales, your website needs people visiting to get clients.

I know it may seem like everyone in the world can see your website, but unless you tell folks about it, your traffic is going to be reminiscent of a country road.

I want your website to have prime internet real-estate, so here are four things you can do today to boost your website traffic:

1. Make sure you follow SEO best-practices. Not sure where to start? Take my workshop: Website SEO Basics.

2. Blog consistently & share to social media. Okay, this is an ongoing thing, but if you have existing blog posts that you haven't shared in a while, share away!

3. Put your website URL on your social profiles. Don't hide your website away. Keep it front and center so people know where to learn more.

4. Guest blog & include your URL in your bio. Writing as a guest on someone's blog is a great way to boost your site traffic, especially if the blog gets more traffic than your website.

Generating traffic is great, but most therapists miss the most crucial key to using their website to grow their practices:

List building!

Once people are on your site, it's your job to give them a chance to stay connected. And the best way to stay connected is by opting in to your email list.

Keeping a list of people who are interested in learning more from you not only increases your ability to help a larger number of people, it gives you an automatic list of potential clients.

The best way to invite people onto your list is by offering a freebie (or opt-in offer) for joining your list. Your freebie should be relevant to your practice and niche, and should be relatively easy to digest and actionable.

For instance, if you specialize in High Functioning Anxiety, and you know your ideal client doesn't have a lot of time on her hands, you could create a freebie such as a five-minute meditation to reduce anxiety.

After you create the meditation, you would create an opt-in form on your website that encourages folks to join your list to receive the meditation.

Using a list management service like Mailchimp or ConvertKit will help you automate this process so that your freebie gets delivered automatically, as soon as someone opts in to your list. (Hello, ease!)

Now, of course we want to make sure your subscribers (list members) stay on your list, so sticking to a communication schedule is really helpful. Communicating with your list on a regular basis with blog post updates, additional resources, and helpful anecdotes or stories are all great ways to build relationships and trust - before your prospective clients even walk through your door.

Building a list is about building your community. It's about helping more people - people who may not be able to work with you right now.

Image: Unsplash.com

Most of all, building an email list is about building relationships. Therapy and coaching are all about the relationship, and it's hard for folks to know whether or not they want to work with you if they don't know what the relationship will be like. The best way for them to know is to feel it.

Yes, we can build relationships through social media, but the followings we build there rest on algorithms that can change at any time.

When you have an email list, you can communicate with your community anytime. Plus, I know I usually spend more time reading a resource-filled email than I do a social media post. So if you've got something important to say, it's best to say it in an environment where people are likely to listen.

Bottom line: if you want your website to help your practice grow, it has to do three things:

1. Connect. Your website should be designed to connect with your ideal clients.

2. Hold. Your website should be a resource that holds space for your ideal client's current struggles and concerns.

3. Transform. Your website should transform visitors into prospective clients, and it can do this if you set up an email list.

I know list building can seem daunting at first, but it really is the best way to connect with your website visitors in a meaningful way.

There's more to be explored on the topic of list building, so leave a comment to let me know what questions you still have about building an email list!