As private practice business owners, we often hear how important it is to niche down. There are lots of good reasons to pick one area of specialty for your practice, especially when you’re first starting out.
With one niche it’s easier to market because you can write your ads, website copy and content marketing to reach that one ideal client.
But what happens if you like working with more than one type of client?
Start With One Niche
When I first entered private practice, I focused on one specific niche. I love working with LGBTQ people around a wide variety of different issues. Before selecting this niche, I did market research and discovered that there was enough need in my city to make this a viable option. When picking a niche, it’s important to make sure that you feel passionately about working with your ideal client and there is a need in your community for those services. For more information about finding a niche, check out this article.
Expanding From There
I’m the type of person that loves new challenges and thrives on growth and change. After starting my practice, I continued to get more training and experience working with couples and decided that I wanted to make couples works another focus of my practice. While I felt passionately about making this change, I was also nervous about adding an additional service to my practice. I’d heard so much about the importance of picking just one niche.
Adding An Additional Niche
When thinking about adding something new to your practice, it’s important to do the research and figure out if it makes sense from a business perspective. Just because you’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean that it needs to be a focus of your business. That being said, usually with enough creativity you can find a way to make it work. To learn more about return on investment and adding new services to your practice, check out this article.
Marketing For Two Niches
In my practice, I decided that I wanted to continue working with LGBTQ individuals and add in all different types of couples. It was tricky at first to figure out how to reach those different demographics without alienating someone along the way. I decided to split my focus, meaning that I have two different specialty pages on my website and I alternate my content marketing between my two niches.
A Work In Progress
For the time being, my spilt approach is working. However, as a business owner I am constantly working on how best to reach my ideal clients. I’ll continue experimenting and finding new ways to figure it out.
Tom Bruett is a licensed psychotherapist in San Francisco, CA. Tom works with couples and individuals that are looking for more connected and meaningful relationships. You can find out more about his practice here.
