How to Promote Your Therapy Practice by Brainstorming

Why try to do everything yourself? When you are thinking about promoting your therapy practice, consider other therapists as allies rather than competitors.

A great way to get promotional ideas for your therapy practice is through brainstorming with other therapists. This will give you a chance to discuss different ways to promote your practice. Each person in the group should be invited to share their personal experiences and put forward ideas or suggestions. Everyone wins; nobody loses.

Working together in this way allows everyone in the group to learn more about promoting and to develop new friendships. These friendships can easily turn into productive promotional relationships for each person who is involved. People who participate and help one another usually attract more attention to their practices.

Ways to Brainstorm in Person

Brainstorming can be done with a local group that meets each week or each month to discuss the promotional possibilities face to face. Many communities have networking groups that meet on a regular basis. The purpose for many of these groups is to allow the members to get to know one another and to pass referrals to other members of the group.

This is especially effective for a group of people who offer complementary services. What sort of additional services do your clients need? What sort of therapists or other business people deal with your target clients? These are people that you can refer to or who can refer clients to you. It’s worthwhile to create a list of the sort of business people who would be joint venture partners for you. This sort of a promotional group can work together to build each other’s businesses and they will be able to give their clients more complete care.

Another possibility is to meet with a group where you work on marketing ideas together. This works face to face or over the phone. Even if these are not people you would not refer clients to, you can still share promotional ideas and suggestions.
Brainstorming groups can be made up of friends, family or business associates. Anyone who can and will offer useful input about ideas to promote can be part of this group.

Online Book Brainstorming Options

The internet has opened up a world of possibilities when it comes to networking with others. One big advantage of this is that you can locate and talk with people who will never be in local competition with you. Basically, you can talk with therapists from around the globe to discover how they promote their practices.

You can post a link on your website to ask people for their thoughts. It would be interesting to post a graphic to represent a “suggestion box” and invite website visitors to send their ideas. It would be interesting to see what your clients or other website visitors would like to share with you. There is no way to know where the valuable ideas will originate.

You can create and organize an online brainstorming group which would communicate with online message boards, forums and marketing groups. This doesn’t need to be an expensive promotional venture. Online promotional brainstorming should be free. Promotional forums are a great way to brainstorm and share ideas. Anyone can ask questions, start a discussion, ask for feedback about your practice or let your hair down and have some fun. It offers you the chance to become acquainted with others and to share ideas. You may be able to find therapists who offer similar therapies.

Free Message Boards

Some good places to establish free message boards include:

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://groups.yahoo.com/" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://groups.msn.com/" target="_blank">http://groups.msn.com/

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://groups.google.com/">http://groups.google.com/

You don’t need detailed technical knowledge to establish or monitor message boards. Anyone who is familiar with the internet can set this up. It’s good to visit other similar message boards or forums before you make a decision about where to establish your board. There are boards on MSN and Google, but there is a wide variety of options and much more visibility and participation with Yahoo. This could change in the future and depending on service issues with Yahoo.
Some sites for information about free forums:

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.freeforums.com/">www.freeforums.com

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.forumco.com/" target="_blank">www.forumco.com

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.ezboard.com/" target="_blank">www.ezboard.com

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.freewebspace.net/forums" target="_blank">www.freewebspace.net/forums

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.chatarea.com/" target="_blank">www.chatarea.com

<---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.forumforfree.com/" target="_blank">www.forumforfree.com

Forums are an effective way to stay in touch with your networking associates. The best way to make a brainstorming or networking group work is by being enthusiastic and choosing quality people to be in your group.
Don’t ever feel like you have to promote on your own again.

A great way to get promotional ideas for your therapy practice is through brainstorming with other therapists. This will give you a chance to discuss different ways to promote your practice. Each person in the group should be invited to share their personal experiences and put forward ideas or suggestions. Everyone wins; nobody loses.

Kim Richardson - the therapists' coach - helps you make a success of your therapy business. To download your FREE 7 Part mini course please see his life coaching website.

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