Joe Sanok 00:00:00 You’re someone with a vision for your practice, for your side hustle, and for your personal journey. But when it comes to establishing your path and how to get to where you want to be with your practice, things get a little messy. You’re also someone who’d prefer to go in person instead of to groups and listening to everyone else’s story. To me, it sounds like you could benefit from one on one consulting with our experienced practice of the practice consultants from 595 a month and up, you can work with a consultant that will give you more direction and practical, tried and tested tips matched to you and your goals. For more information, visit practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Again, that’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Sarna session number 108. Welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. We are going to be doing a series between now and the beginning of November, where we are going to be playing all of our level Up week trainings that we did in September of 2024. Joe Sanok 00:01:21 And we’re going to be talking about from empty to overflowing, talking about your branding, talking about Multi-location shifting from 1099 to W2, all sorts of different things during this series. And if you want help from one of our consultants for every single phase of practice, or if you’re just not sure where you fit in our memberships versus our consulting, I would love for you to talk with me over at practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. We can schedule a 30 minute call together and dig into all those different areas that you want to get started again. That’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Now let’s get started with the Level Up Week series. Welcome, everybody. So excited to have you here today. we are on day three of Level Up Week, and I’m really excited to have you. we’re going to be talking all about pay per click advertising, marketing best practices, maximizing your reach, all those good things. if you’ve missed the first two days at all, we’ll be sending out some recordings of those. Joe Sanok 00:02:23 You’re going to be replaying it on the podcast. so worry not. we’ve got you covered now. It was probably last January, know two January’s ago when I had a friend who helped me with some Google ads to get them set up, and I accidentally spent $3,000 that I did not intend to spend because of one thing I didn’t click. there was something I don’t even. I’m not even going to use the right terms, but it was like broad reach or something like that. Basically saying you like these keywords. but if we have other ideas that people might click on, we’ll use those. So I got all these clicks on things that were so not connected to my ideal audience, didn’t set a spending cap like I should have, and it just showed me how. You know, sometimes when you do things on your own, it’s just way worse. I know that I can if I’m doing a renovation project, I’m great at tearing things down. I can take down drywall, I can knock out tile. Joe Sanok 00:03:16 But when it comes to rebuilding a house like, no, I will end up doing it poorly and then have to redo it anyway. So there’s certain areas that it’s just good to learn from an expert. And that’s what we’re going to be doing today. I’m Joe Cenac and if I haven’t met you yet, I’m the founder of practice of the practice, which I started in 2012. We have the practice of the Practice podcast, which just passed a thousand episodes in June. We are on track to hit 100 episodes in November. We’re doing it five days a week or more, depending on our sponsors. and it’s just awesome. I get to interview interesting people, be curious with them around every aspect of private practice. So some interviews are around private practice issues. Some are around marketing issues, branding, clinical, all sorts of different things. So if you haven’t checked out the Practice Practice podcast, we’d love for you to check that out. Also, I do all sorts of things outside of work. Joe Sanok 00:04:07 I teach improv on Tuesdays and also then participate in improv. I write some sketch comedy. I also love playing board games and Santa paddle boarding and hanging out with my two daughters. So that’s a little bit about me. We have Amber Rose Thomas with us today. Amber is a marketing strategist, consultant and paid ads expert specializing in helping coaches, consultants, and course creators find more leads and make more sales online. Since she’s, she’s been in the ads world since 2015 and since has managed over $5 million in ad spend and is based out of the UK. Amber, welcome. So glad that you’re here today. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:04:43 Thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here. Thank you for that intro. Joe Sanok 00:04:46 Yeah, well I know you have some slides so I’ll let you pull those up. and then have you present an on And ads, marketing, pay per click. All that while she’s getting that all set up. if you have questions, as Amber goes, please drop that in the chat area. What always happens is at the very end we get so many questions and we can’t cover them. Joe Sanok 00:05:06 So make sure you put your questions in there. If you do have a question that you think that Amber will be better suited to go back and forth with you on, maybe your situation’s a little bit unique, or you think that there just might be some back and forth. Please go to the react button, and when you click on that, you’ll see raise hand. And that just tells us that you’re willing to unmute yourself and to potentially come on video, to ask your question. So that’s where we’re going to be doing that. But Amber, take it away. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:05:31 Lovely. Thank you. So yeah, as Joe said, I think ads are one of those topics where it’s better to bring in someone who has some experience in it because they’re so fun. They’re there. So there’s really cool things you can do with ads. But as there are many things to do, there are also many settings and things and toggles you can potentially get wrong. And I’m literally this week in the process of hiring someone to replace your will for me, because I ain’t it. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:05:54 Maybe Joe can come and do it for me. I’m not doing it. So today we’re going to do everything about pay per click, which I can do. And today we are going to cover why your practice probably needs more reach and visibility. What pay per click ads are, how they work and how they can support your practice. How to master pay per click ads for your practice. Whether you’re dying or outsourcing, this is going to be some useful things to take with you, no matter when and where you end up doing ads. So let’s start at the beginning. One of the things we have in our title is about getting more reach, which is basically visibility marketing. So what is that? So visibility will reach is basically just about how many people get to hear about your business and how many people get to find you. And this is a really important part, because your practice is going to grow by consistently reaching new potential clients. And that is the game we’re all in when it comes to marketing, no matter what we’re marketing. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:06:50 And that’s another good reason why your number one marketing activity, in my opinion, should be lead generation. Which brings us into that whole visibility reach space because you can’t get leads if you’re not reaching new people. So every new client you or I are ever going to get has gone through the same, or at least a very similar customer journey. And it looks like this. They’ve they have no idea who you are and they don’t care. Not likely. Never heard of you. Then they’re going to get to the point where they have heard of you or they’ve seen you online. If it was Joe, perhaps they listened to an episode of one of his podcasts. There’s a thousand to choose from. or they’ve seen you show up on a social post or on psych. Stay on a whole bunch of places. We show up on the internet after they met you, then they could potentially be interested in working with you, and then they’re going to interact with you in one way, and then they’re going to hire you. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:07:41 And that process is exactly the same whether you are doing drywall or consulting or counselling. And it doesn’t matter how they find you in the first place, they’re still going to go through that process. And it’s exactly the same whether it’s Google search, referral or social media. And this is also kind of known as a sales pipeline. If that whole idea that people are going to work their way through this, but that visibility piece is step one and two, you will have to have that. Otherwise the whole other thing can’t happen because basically that workflow is empty. And you also might have heard of this as a sales funnel. So a pipeline is basically it’s the same thing. We’re just putting it in a different direction. But as you kind of see as we go through this, you can’t do anything unless you’re getting people to meet you in the first place. And that’s where that whole reach, visibility, growth piece comes in and why a lot of us end up turning to pay per click to help with that. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:08:34 So every marketing tactic out there has their end goal of adding people to the start of this funnel, or moving people from one stage to the other. So email marketing and other pieces might be moving people along the funnel. hosting, workshops, hosting, you know, networking events, being interviewed on podcast every all those kind of tiny things. It’s usually about getting people in at the very beginning. And this process is what’s going to keep getting your clients. And that’s why I believe it should be one of your number one priorities in your business, if not the number one. So hopefully you’re on the same page now in terms of, okay, I get it, we need some more reach and I’m on board. What are we going to do with that? How can we maximize what we’re doing here. So basically more reach equals more leads equals more clients. That is why we want to do this. It’s purely as simple as that. And there are some ways in which we can do that. So there are some other benefits of having a warm audience beyond just getting clients, which I want to touch on here, because I’ve had this come up in a very real way this week with a client of mine. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:09:35 So I want you to imagine that you want to start running group sessions for your business, and you’re going to need 6 to 10 clients to fill each one of those groups. but you post about it only to get crickets because you didn’t do any of the groundwork. You didn’t have a warm audience there to launch it to. So having that warm audience there means that whenever you want to bring on another clinician, host a retreat, which I’ve heard of recently, starting a group program, writing a book, or selling a podcast, you’re going to have an audience there ready to do any of those things with you, and they can be ready and waiting for you and those items when you want to put them into your business. So having that, those people who are basically primed to buy is going to make everything you do in the future so much easier and more fun, because it’s much more fun when we’re doing things with people instead of promoting them to crickets and no one being interested. So okay, ways to build your audience. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:10:31 Let’s go into this piece in terms of how we can actually do that. How are we going to get these people in? So here’s a list of ideas which has been written completely neutral with no bias. Of course for me you can send called DMs and emails. You can join in this directory or apps and things. You can network with referral partners who never actually refer you to you. You can post stuff on social media, you can be interviewed on podcasts, you can work on your SEO, or you can run PRS, which is also known as pay per click. So there’s lots of options, but obviously I have a preference and we’re going to go into why. So what pay per click is or PPC if we see it all over the place. it basically means you’re spending money to skip the queue. I don’t think pay per click is necessarily the most accurate way of talking about ads, because you’re going to get charged whether people click on your ads or not, but it basically means that you are getting to the front of the queue in no matter what place it is you have run your ad, which I’ll give you some examples in just a second. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:11:32 So you will be getting to the front of the line in terms of the algorithm, in terms of search results, when you are paying to be there or that whole pay to play idea. Now there are different types as I mentioned. So how do these different types of work? So the main two you’ve probably heard of are Google ads as you mentioned, and social ads, which is what I tend to prefer. and they work in different ways, even though they both will give you the result of more traffic and more reach and more visibility. So Google Ads is something that someone’s going to see when someone is already looking for something, when they’re searching for, landscaper near me, pre-marital counselling near me, that’s going to come up when they’re already searching for it. So it might appear as a search engine result or a list in that result when you’re actually going for something. So you’re competing against your competitors and other people’s ads and other people seek SEO. And this is I find it really interesting thing is because as we know with SEO, if you’re not on the front page, you might as well not be there at all, because I don’t remember the last time I clicked through to the third or fourth page of Google results when I was looking for something. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:12:44 so this is a way of skipping to the head of the queue. Means you’re going to get on that first page depending on your budget. Whereas with social ads are slightly different, they’re going to show up in the news feeds of people when they’re on their phones. Of the people you have chosen with your ideal clients demographic. so that might be if you were going to have premarital counselling as your thing. That’s going to be people who are recently engaged within the sites that you are licensed. Then it’s also going to appear as a feed post. That’s not going to show up like a result in the search engine, and it’s not going to show up only when they go looking for it. It’s going to be in their newsfeed as they’re just scrolling through and, you know, procrastinating whatever they’re doing that day. and it’s also it’s competing against other social content, not other listings on the same topic is competing against all the other stuff which is out there on the internet. So it’s a bit different. And there’s a reason why, from all of those differences, that I prefer social ads And that is with Google. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:13:41 You are showing up alongside other people who offer the same thing as you. And my experience, as I’m sure as many others, when you go to Google to look for something, you type in your keyword, you get a whole bunch of results. And I go open a new tab, open a new tab, open a new tab, and then go through all my options. And I’m making a direct comparison between two of the same thing. And I might go with the one that has the better website, the better pricing, the better communication who I just like the look of, and it is literally a direct line up of well, which one do you want? Because they all do something similar. Whereas with social you’re presenting yourself as the only option. You are being presented independently of anything anyone else does. Because the thing above you is a cat video and the thing below you is something completely random. Someone doing a dance routine. So you’re showing up independently of anything else. And it’s not saying, well, which pre-marital counselor would you like? It’s do you want it or not? And it makes the decision much easier. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:14:37 And it really guides people towards a single action, which is hopefully going to be booking a call with you. So if you couldn’t tell already with this whole idea of, you know, getting in front of people, it isn’t a numbers game, it’s a numbers game in terms of getting people into your business and getting people to convert into clients, and also the way that ads work. But it doesn’t have to be complicated. So the easiest way, in my opinion, to consistently get new leads into your practice without the whole wait and see game of posting things, places, or working on your SEO and waiting for it to start paying off is to use social ads. because you are going directly to the people that you want, rather than waiting for them to come to you. So Facebook ads allow you to target people immediately and show up on their news feeds with an offer from your practice. And ever since Facebook bought Instagram and rebranded themselves as meta, which no one seems to use. when you run ads on Facebook, it will also simultaneously run on Instagram. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:15:37 So you’re kind of getting two for one on that one. So here’s something I hear all the time, because when people talk about pay per click, I nearly always hear it within the context of Google. Then I come along and go, nah, don’t use Google, use social. And then people say, well, can’t I use both? Shouldn’t I use both? Well, the answer to that is yes. So you can use Google Ads to bring in new people to your website by capturing the attention of those people who are going and searching for keywords like premarital therapist Nelly. You can you can use Google to get those people to come and find you in the first place when they’re opening all their new tabs. And then you can basically follow up with them by retargeting them with social ads that will then show up in their Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds and buy that. Just to be very clear, is using a feature which is pretty unique to Facebook and Instagram ads. not in comparison to other social ads, but socializing in general, where you will have a pixel if you’ve heard of that, which is basically just a cookie that will show up on your website, and then it will attach themselves to all those people who came to you via Google and follow them around the internet. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:16:41 I had to call it ethical stalking because you’re basically you’re going back after them and you’re following up with them, but in their newsfeed instead of in their inbox or on the phone. So this method of doing Google and then social is frequently called layering ads. And it works. It really does. It’s a lovely strategy. So if you want to do both, you can because it works. So I’m going to talk more about social ads as we go through this. But if you’re like, oh, I really wanted to do Google. Don’t feel like I’m saying don’t do Google. They’re totally valid. They have a place that’s an option as well, and you can bring them in together if you want to. So what the ads look like, what are we even talking about here? When I’m talking about social ads, particularly within the context of the therapists and private practice owners. So here are some ways that you can use these social ads and what that might look like, and how they’d even fit into the bigger ecosystem of marketing that you’re trying to do for yourself. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:17:33 so you can use ads to offer free or discounted trial sessions. You can use them to invite people to a free or paid console call like little ones, like 15 20 minutes. You can share a free guide in exchange for their email, for example. Ten questions you should ask your Fiancee before you get married. If you’re pre-marriage a counselor, you can invite people to submit an application or an inquiry form. You can get people to attend a free life workshop like this one. or you can get people to come and follow you on social media and grow your audience that way. If that’s where you’re choosing to show up and where you’re enjoying spending time on the internet. So examples in a very visual way. Here are some examples that I have gathered over time of ads which have been running in that kind of space. And all of these are within the context of getting people to immediately come and pick a call. You may have heard of BetterHelp. It’s a pretty big thing. They’re very easy to find because they spend a huge amount of money on their ads. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:18:28 but that ads are very simple, and that’s just the style that they have chosen, and they’re also quite impersonal. If you notice, there are illustrations and they’re very bright, but they’re very simple is basically just saying, do you want this thing? Come and book a call about it, and that’s what it can look like. But when you’re more personal, your ads might look like this. They might look like a local therapy service offering assessments. It might look like a practice. Who is offering, you know, a certain type of therapy in Connecticut, in your local state. It might be you promoting a free quiz that you’ve created in order to get people into your audience and going in, you know, build your audience that way. So there’s lots of different ways that they would show up. But on a very practical level here, they look like interesting image. And there’s some text at the top and some text at the bottom, but they’re not hugely complicated. And I hope when we’re looking at these it’s it’s making you go, I can make that encounter, I understand that, I can I can see that I’ve seen templates for that one. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:19:27 I’ve been doing stuff for my own social media. That’s not a lot of text. I could write that because it isn’t a lot, and there is some strategy to it, and there’s some nuance to it which we’re going to talk about. Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you on your own for it. But I want to kind of demystify this idea that they are this big, ridiculous, complicated thing. There is some strategy to set up the actual ad yourself at itself. That you’re going to run doesn’t have to be hugely complicated, or even that professional or glitzy or anything like that. Sometimes simple wins. So once you have these ads up and running, they will be bringing leads to you all the time in keeping that pipeline of new clients active. So you’re not wondering where the next one is going to suddenly appear from. And trust me, that is life saving and reassurance in a way that you have not experienced yet. If you do not have an active pipeline, it’s amazing. So I really love that feeling of it being hands off and automated in the background, where they’re always bringing in new people. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:20:24 So I talked about the idea of it doesn’t have to be very complicated, but there is some strategy there. So what makes a good add? So as we mentioned in terms of social ads, you’re not competing against your competitors and business. Even if you want to talk about competitors in that way, you’re competing against the funny cat videos which are showing up above you and the people doing a TikTok dance routine below you. You’re showing up in that context, not on a list of people who are all doing the same thing as you. So what you need to be doing needs to show up in a way that this isn’t. Let’s not compete in the entertainment industry because you’re going to lose out to the cat. It’s it’s simple. I use to the cat, you lose to the cat. It’s just what’s going to happen. So we need to show up slightly differently. So your idea is to do something like this. You need to use words that shows how well you know them even when you’ve never met them. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:21:15 And I’m going to pause here to go over this a bit more with the idea of the pre-marital counseling example, because if I were someone, I’m do I count as a newlywed when I’ve been married two years? I’m going to steal it because as a newlywed, if I’d seen an ad kind of saying, you should answer these questions. You can ask these questions of your spouse, and perhaps you should get premarital counseling before you get married. I might have gone. Maybe I’ll think about it. Whereas if I saw something that said, do you want to make sure that this is the only time you get married, you want to make sure you’re building something that lasts. You want to make sure you’re going into your marriage on a strong foundation. You want to make sure that if you if it’s a if it’s your second marriage, you’re doing everything right. If you’re blending families, you want to make sure that you’re creating a strategy for that going in at the beginning. there’s lots of different ways you can talk about this, but you knowing your ideal clients will know what worries them because they probably tell you when you have that very first call with them, they probably come to you and say, yeah, I’m my parents are divorced. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:22:16 I really don’t want to ever get divorced. I just want to make sure we’ve covered everything we possibly could before we get married. I’m sure people are coming and saying something to you if you’re a premarital counselor. things which are very specific things that they are feeling, things that are going to make them go, wow, that is exactly how I feel. I believe this person can help me. And that’s what’s going to make you stand out in a way that nothing else will, because it’s that feeling of recognition and you just you cannot recreate that or beat that in any other way. So this is what’s going to make an ad really powerful in a way that nothing else will. And no other graphic, no other image, no other video will be out, something like this. So on a more practical level here, where that’s going to go, here’s a breakdown of a good ad, and I’ve just used an example here of one that I used for a marketing agency a while ago, because I happen to have it. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:23:04 And I had, and it was easy to break down the different elements. So in terms of a good ad here, what you have included here is starting at the very top. You have a branded page with a photo or logo for your business, and hopefully that will be your photo. Or if you have a group practice, I recommend you use a logo because you want to create a bit of separation between yourself and how you’re inviting people in. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a lot of leads that only want to work with you and not your other practitioners. you then want to make sure that this opening text summarizes what you’re offering and also leads into that whole thing we just talked about in terms of, you know, empathy. And so if you read more of this after the little Seymour, it really goes into the the pain points around this particular topic. And then you want to have an interesting graphic that shows what your offer is. And sometimes that is something very simple in terms of just an image of a person. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:23:58 I have some ads running for practice at the moment where it’s just some really nice stock images, which are the exact demographic of clients they want, with a little bit of text on it saying, come and book a free call. And those ads are doing beautifully and have beaten out any interesting graphical video that we’ve run. So sometimes simple works best. then you want to make sure you have a headline which is calling out exactly who the who you want, because that’s going to be the first thing they see, And that’s going to be something like premarital counseling for newly for newly engaged couples or however you want to word it. And that is what is going to build together a really good ad and a really good picture because you are simultaneously going, hi, untrustworthy, here I am, this is who I am, I understand you, this is what it is. This is who you are. And so it was a good match. And all together that creates an instant recognition and trust and it gets people to go, this is for me. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:24:51 And click through and follow through in a way that they might not have if all they had seen on even on a Google listing was name of website, counseling in Massachusetts, and that’s all they’ve seen. So that’s another reason why I think I love social so much, is because there’s so much more you can do with it, in terms of how much more information you can give people and how much more space there is for connection. Joe Sanok 00:25:21 I am so excited about alma. When I had my private practice, I struggled building my caseload, attracting the right clients, managing the business side. And honestly, one of the reasons I didn’t take insurance was it was so difficult to navigate. So many of my consulting clients deal with these problems as well, and almost supports clinicians in building rewarding private practices with simplified insurance credentialing in under 45 days, enhanced reimbursement rates, and guaranteed two week payback, plus a free profile in their searchable, filter able directory, making it easy for clients who are the right fit for your practice to find you. Joe Sanok 00:26:01 Learn more about how alma could support your private practice at. Hello, alma. Com forward slash Jo. That’s hello alma.com/jo to learn more. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:26:16 So if we’re running some ads you might be thinking, okay, cool. Amber, these are great. Interesting show. I can meet those. What are we talking about? What are these going to give me? How are they going to pay off? What are the potential results? So let’s look at these a little bit more. So when you start running ads you’re going to have to answer one key question. How much does it cost for me to get a new kind from these ads? There’s going to be a lot of other things you’re going to work on in the meantime. But ultimately, this is what we’re aiming for is if I’m going to throw some money at some ads, how much is it going to cost me before I start seeing new clients come into my practice? Well, let’s make some assumptions here. So let’s assume that 50% of all your free concert calls convert into a paid client, which would be great. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:26:59 And then let’s assume that you charge $200 an hour, and most clients will stay for around ten sessions last round using numbers. That’s going to help us in a minute as we do some maths. So if those were true, that means that if you book ten calls a month from your paid ads, you’re likely to get around five clients because 50% of them turn into a paid client. And if they stay for ten sessions each at $200, that’s the value of how much those clients are worth to you on that level before you’ve taken anything off of it, including taxes and fees and things. Obviously, we all have expenses, but that’s your starting point. And then after that, if you’re paying $100 per free consult when you’re running your ads, then it’s going to cost you about one K to get those clients. And then you have the ads cost. And already I’m looking at that gap and going, that is a roulette machine. I would play every day of the week if that’s what it’s going to turn out for me in my business, and it’s different for everybody, and not everyone gets these results straight out of the gate. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:27:52 And most of the time, the truth is that’s something that takes a bit of perseverance and testing. But it’s not unrealistic because once you look at the averages across the board for what you can do with ads, this is often where it lands, and there’s things you can improve and things that you can that will influence how well your ads do. But that is what could happen when you start thinking about ads, and that’s how it would work. If we’re talking about on a hypothetical level. How would you calculate how well these ads work for your business? That is what it would look like. So let’s talk about this from a different angle. How many leads do you actually need to fill your practice? We’ve been talking about visibility. We’ve been talking about getting more people into your business. Well how many how many do you actually need for you to get to the point where you’re like, I have I have a full client roster. We’re fully booked. We’re good. So here we go. So how many clients you actually need to keep on your books to keep the business well funded and to do everything? Let’s say you need eight for the sake of simplicity again. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:28:52 So you need to do two things here. You need to be replenishing your your your your current contracts because people are going to leave. This is inevitable. If we kept every client we have ever achieved, we probably be so fully booked we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. So clients do tend to come for a certain amount of time and then move on to something else. They stay for a certain number of sessions, and you can probably look back and work out what your average is and you will say, okay. On average they save for ten sessions. On average they stay for three. On average they save for a year. Everyone has something different. You also need to know how many new clients you get to grow your total roster over time. Because if you’re losing a client every month, just because that you know it comes to an actual conclusion and you’re gaining a client every month, you’re not actually growing, you’re staying the same. So we need to know both numbers here. As an example, here’s what it would look like over the course of the year if January you got two clients because people on average day for this many months, then you’ve got two, then in February you’ve got another two. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:29:52 So now you’ve got four down. The next month you got another two, and now you’ve got six. And it keeps going all the way up until May, because people tend to stay for four months or so, because now the people from January are going, and then the next month the people from February are going, and the next month the people from March are going. So now all of a sudden these numbers aren’t growing, they’re staying the same. And this is something I see all the time when it comes to running the numbers and deciding how you’re going to run out is forgetting that you need more than you think in order to actually sustain growth, because we have to balance that out. So now we know how much you need, hypothetically, you need a minimum of two clients every month just to keep things going and just replenish things. And you need three or more to be growing. And now that you have your monthly goal, you need to calculate your monthly lead goal in terms of if you want to get three clients in how many leads we get, and you might already be able to skip ahead to this from what we talked about. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:30:45 But let’s look at that exactly. So what percentage of your consults turn into a paying client? Let’s say it’s 50. Then that means you need to double the number of leads you need to get clients. So if you’re saying, well, these are my numbers, I’m. But I actually need 20. That’s fine. You just double it. If you have 20 clients you need to get you need 40 consoles. It’s all good. The numbers, the numbers method works no matter how what scale we’re talking about. So then I want you to think about how many leads did you get into your practice last month? How many calls did we get booked? Was it enough? Was enough to hit those client goals? And if not, perhaps it’s time to start running ads or adding something else in to make sure that you are hitting that and fulfilling that and bringing that growth and visibility in. Because people don’t always take action immediately, and sometimes it takes them some time to decide to make do something, because behind the scenes we’re making decisions, we’re talking about things. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:31:40 And again, in the context of something like premarital counseling, one person might see your ad and they’re going to go talk to the other person involved and go, hey, I think we should do this thing. What do you think? Here’s the link I found. Here’s the website. Yeah, I’m making dinner. Come talk to me tomorrow. You know, and then they put you put it off, you forget about it. You send them a text and go, oh, yeah. Do you remember that thing? We were going to go look at it. And then eventually they end up booking a consult and they go, oh, well, actually I can’t do this time. They can’t do this time. Let’s come up. We can actually make it in two weeks, right. Let’s do that. And so in between seeing your ad becoming a client. It might have taken them two months to do it, but the ad still paid off. So it’s one of those things where you want to layer up and build over time. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:32:20 Because unlike SEO, which pays off over time as it builds and optimizes and grows, the same thing happens with ads. You’ll often build in relationships which will pay off maybe not even instantly, but a bit further down. And I’ve had people come to me and so hey, so I saw an ad of yours last year, and I’ve had your website bookmarked ever since, and I’ll be like, amazing, that’s incredible. But last year, I wouldn’t have even thought about the fact that I might be doing groundwork that would get clients in a year’s time, or even a month’s time, or even a week’s time. But you’ll be amazed at how it starts. And it paid off. So we’ve talked a lot about averages, but this is something where, instead of being hypothetical, here’s something a bit more concrete for you. These are the average metrics for ads of things that you might expect to see. If you did choose to run ads, particularly for social media in terms of Facebook and Instagram, that’s where I’m referring to these. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:33:06 not so much Google, but these are our average prices across people who are trying to get concerts booked for done for youth services in some way, particularly within the space of counselling and consulting and therapy. So if you want to take a photo of your screen right now and say please for later, you’re more than welcome to. But what you’re looking at is for a cost per click in terms of people to get through to your landing page, wherever people are going to book a call with you. Coming back to that whole pay per click thing, you’re going to probably pay at least $2. But that’s what we’re hoping for. If you run your ads well, and you’ve done and you’ve done a good job of writing the copy, that really resonates with people and you’ve done some testing, you’re hoping to get $2 or under, and you want that landing page to have 2% of people, or better actually booking calls, which sounds ridiculously low, two people out of every hundred. But you wouldn’t believe how these averages stack up across the industry. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:34:01 And some people even tell me that it’s a 0.5 or 1% conversion rate. And I’m like, I want two. I’d be happy with two. So you’ll see numbers across the board in terms of I see some people saying at 0.5, some people saying all the way up to 5% or better. It depends so much on what you’re promoting. If this landing page was for a free guide or something, it might be at least 20% or better because all you’re asking for is an email address. So we’re asking people to find time in their schedule and book a call with you, which to me is what we ultimately want because the calls and the contacts is what’s going to create clients 2% or better. And then finally, I always want to pay $200 or under to get a call booked. And that’s how it usually shakes out. If all those numbers are on track about the same. And I know that, you know, based on how many people tend to become a client after having a call, it’s worth it. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:34:51 Because if someone came up to me and said, oh, I’ve got contact for you, you paid 200 bucks for it, I’d be like, that’s a lot. But once you kind of look at it over the long term, I go to know what actually is worth it. And it’s one of those things, I think, with a lot of marketing is that it takes perseverance and it takes time and it takes a bit of commitment in terms of getting it working. But once it does, my goodness, does it work. So big thing here. How to know if you’re ready for ads. Should you start running them yet or should you put them off. And here are some very little questions I ask people to make sure they’re ready. So you are ready potentially for ads. If you could happily spend $300 a month on ad spend and still not get any scores, but because testing takes time. So if you’re looking at that and going, I can’t afford to do that and not get results, I would say put a pause on it and come back to it later, because there are no guarantees with anything in terms of paid ads, whether it’s Google or whether it’s social. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:35:45 But it takes some time to get them working. And I find that you do get better results if you do have the space to do some testing and everything. So if you’re like, yeah, I’m willing to put some time and money into it, then it’s probably a good fit, if not yet come back to it later. Next thing is, you need to know your ideal client, and this has to be more specific than anyone who’s happy to go on private pay and doesn’t want insurance that I don’t offer. This needs to be things like I will. I want to work with these people on these topics, and I know them really well, because you can’t speak to your ideal clients in a way that resonates with them if you don’t know them. It’s it’s so much more difficult. And so sometimes if you’re new, then it’s going to take some time to figure out what kind of clients you like to work with and work out which things are good for you and which things are not. But if you’ve been working with people for a while, you probably have favorites. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:36:37 You probably have topics where you go, amazing! I love working with these kind of clients, and you probably have ones where you go, well, yeah, I can help with that, but I wouldn’t choose to have another ten of them on my client roster if I had to. So think more about who you really love working with, and then spend some time getting to know what really is important to them and what makes them actually come and work with you. And something I often give my clients homework is to go away and think about what phrases do people actually use when they come and become a client of yours for the first time? Because if I asked you, looking back, what problems did your client have? You might be able to say things like, oh, well, you know, they had issues with, self-esteem and resilience and a whole bunch of things like that where your client might have come to you and gone. I have a really hard time with boundaries. I know I need them, I just don’t put them in place. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:37:30 And you might be going, well, there’s a reason why you struggle with boundaries, but they don’t know that yet. They don’t have half the knowledge and the insight that you do. And that’s why you’re so awesome at what you do. And that’s why your work is so needed. So you need to be able to keep an eye out for how are people describing what they want help with at the very beginning, before they know anything, before they’ve worked on things? How are they talking about it? Are they saying I, are they saying that I need help with boundaries? Are they saying that they need help with anxiety? What do they say? How did they put it? Are they saying I need help with communication because my spouse just does not listen to me? Like, how do they put it compared to what you can observe as being the problem? Because that is what is going to resonate with them. Because a lot of people don’t like what they don’t like to read the truth about themselves, but they might not recognize that in themselves yet. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:38:20 And it’s that piece that they recognize which is going to really make your ads work. Well, then finally, you need to have a website that you can easily update, and I will come back to that in a second. And a way for people to book calls with you and a website that you can easily update to me is that you ideally need to have some control over what you’re doing, rather than having to go, but back through a place where you can’t edit anything. It ideally needs to be flexible. And the reason for that is because that important step we talked about earlier in terms of a 2% conversion rate, if your conversion rate is not 0.5, you’ve got to make some changes to your landing page. And I have often seen situations where you have problems and it takes 6 to 8 weeks to get something turned around and get improved. So ideally I want you to go like, yes, I can easily update this and I know what I’m doing. so if you have a website already, make sure that you have a way of doing that. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:39:12 And some people are like, I’m just going to leave the website and not touch it because it’s perfect, and I’m going to go and get a landing page for the, like, lead pages. That’s totally fine as well. and you need to have a way for people to book calls with you. And my preference is always to have people able to book calls directly with you via something like Simple Practice or Acuity or Victor or Calendly. because then you’re not creating any barriers, people booking calls with you. But equally, if you just want people to submit an application form, that’s fine too. But that is a way of reaching out to you that as a way people to book calls with you, even if there is an extra step. So, so long as you have all of that in place, that’s fine. So if you’re starting fresh and you’re like, I literally just have myself and I don’t have a website and I don’t have anything set up, and I’m doing all my notes by pen and paper, perhaps get some stuff set up before you come into this, because it will make your life so much easier. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:40:03 Okay, so I am sure you’re going to have a whole bunch of questions, and I’m excited to talk to you about specifics in terms of how you can run ads and what they would work and how they would look like for you in different situations. But plans are great for both solo practitioners and group practices. They can help you fill up your own client roster and help you get them for other people and clinicians on your team, and they’re always going to be there for you whenever you’re ready for them. There’s no rush. You can come back to them when you’re ready. So if you’re like, this sounds amazing, but I don’t fit the criteria, I need to come back to this. That’s totally fine. They’re not going anywhere, and they’ll always be there when you’re ready to grow and do the next piece. So I hope this was interesting and I hope you found this fun. And I hope this is giving you some ideas about what you could do with paid ads. And I’m looking forward to chatting you about it in more detail. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:40:46 And if you want to come and find me, as Jay mentioned, you have places where we can do that and we will talk more now where we can go over Q&A. So back to you, Joe. Joe Sanok 00:40:55 Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that. So we’re going to take some questions for Amber or for me about the communities about, different kind of ways we think through things when it comes to paid marketing. I’m going to pull up these questions I’ve got. first question is one thing I’ve heard is advertising on social media is a waste of money because nobody looks for a therapist on Instagram. They Google it. What are your thoughts on that? Speaker 3 00:41:19 Really interesting. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:41:20 Question. It depends on where people are in their journey for things because, yes, they tend to Google it. But equally before they Google it, they may well be following people on social media who are talking about those topics. There are now a lot of people out there who are content creators in that space, and there’s a content creator on everything under the sun. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:41:39 I’m always amazed at how many different niche topics there are, and this is no different. So these people, that’s how they’re spending their time. And I spend my time scrolling through Instagram, not scrolling through Google. So I see it as I go. So that is where I would go for for that reason. And equally, the advertising is the same way, like you’re showing up to the exact people. It’s not a matter of, give it to everybody and have people ignore me. You can literally narrow it down to the exact people you want to work with and make sure only they’re seeing it. So yeah, I say it’s a bit of both. Like people who are absolutely ready are going to be googling people who are stuck in that problem and don’t know how to solve it. That’s where you’re kind of showing up as the fairy godmother and fixing it for them with your ads. Joe Sanok 00:42:24 Yeah, I mean, I think people aren’t typically posting like, hey friends, does anyone know a good therapist for this thing that I’m dealing with? They may not be doing that, but yeah, if you see something that says, you know, are you getting married soon, like premarital counseling, you know, to help couples or like some sort of hook? I think that’s where people are more likely to click on it. Joe Sanok 00:42:44 next question is, do you suggest that we have a separate calendly for those pre counseling consults in the EHR for appointments, or do you recommend having them all go through the EHR? that might be more of a technical question on my side, but I would say. And tell me what you think, Amber, because I know that you know this also, or probably have opinions on it. I think keeping it all in the one system of the EHR, there’s ways that in most systems you can have kind of pre client sessions and then regular sessions. what are your thoughts? Amber. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:43:12 I think it depends on specifically what your setup is and also what you want to track, because everyone has different feelings about what they want. And as long as I seen growth are happy, other people want to be able to break things down to the exact to everything. So it depends on how data driven you are with how you think about things. But the reason for that is because that pixel that I mentioned with the cookie that will still people around the internet, you also have to put it on your system in order to track how things are going. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:43:38 And so some places won’t let you do that. And I think simple practice is one that I come up with against a lot. Is that, It’s lovely. It’s such a great system. It’s a nightmare for advertisers because it’s so hard to track what’s going on. So it’s up to you. You can do both for simplicity. If you can keep all in one place. Do that. You’ll love it as much better. but if you really want accurate tracking down to the detail, you might want to create a separate one just for advertising. Joe Sanok 00:44:03 Yeah. And Chad’s follow up question here is how do we skip doing consults to convert to appointments, which I think is great, a great idea. I mean, you think about if you’re changing to a primary care doctor, you don’t usually have a meet and greet with that person. They’re too busy. you just say, I’ve heard good things about this person, and they’re like, we can get you in in 90 days. so I think it’s great, Chad, that you’re thinking about that. Joe Sanok 00:44:22 Amber, what do you think about just skipping, kind of the meet and greet and going right to the intake? Amber-Rose Thomas 00:44:28 totally fine. So long as you were addressing the reasons why some people might want the meet and greet. So if you have people who are coming and asking for consults because they’re like, I don’t get a good sense of who you are, I don’t get a good sense of who you work with. I don’t really understand how your process works. All of those things that you think people would want to talk to you about, so long as they’re on your website and on your sales page and you’re addressing those and you ideally have, you know, a certain amount of, Well, it’s difficult with social proof with people in our industry because you don’t want to have testimonials in the same way that us. We would have them as like marketers. so you just want to make sure that language that we talked about in terms of what’s in your ads is following through onto all of your marketing, including the website, because if you’re addressing those concerns there, a lot of people will want to skip the console and go straight through. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:45:13 So if you’re having people, if you’re if you’re just not getting any, I would rather people add the consulting because it might break the break the the dummy. I finally get you having some people through. But if you’re at the point where you’re like, I can’t bear to have another free consult, hire me or don’t hire me, I don’t care. I’m not showing up for another 20 minutes where people tell me their life story and then never work with me. Skip them, go straight to an application and then just say, great, here’s the rate coming up or not, and do it that way. But as long as you’re addressing that ahead of time, you should be good. Joe Sanok 00:45:41 Yeah. You can also have a virtual assistant. do those pre consulting or pre counseling calls. Next question is I’m needing clients sooner than later. What do you think is best to getting clients? I was thinking ads, but you said wait. FYI, I’m still waiting on my website to get finished. Maybe in two weeks, but not sure. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:45:58 it depends on how you’re getting those clients in, I recommend it. I think you’ll get your best results from it. There are ways and means of doing everything without a website, so if it’s like sooner rather than later, this is what I suggest you do. You go onto Facebook, you use Facebook lead ads, you can get loads of trainings. I think we have some in the membership and we have there’s loads on everywhere where you can learn how to do those. And the great thing about those is that you are sending people to one of those, like little pop up forms. So if you’ve ever clicked on an ad and then it comes up immediately with a little form that says name, email, cell number, you’re going to get used that one, not the one that redirects you through to a website, because that will gather those leads for you directly within the app. You don’t need a website, you don’t need the pixel. You can skip all of that. And you will immediately getting those people that you can then reach back out to and schedule that, of course. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:46:45 the reason I didn’t mention that in the workshop is because I find that the drop off weight between people putting in their details and actually becoming a client is not as good as having people go through the other way, because you have no context. There’s nothing around it which proves you know anything about what you’re doing, who you are. There’s nothing. You’re kind of going in blind from your Leeds perspective. So there is more of a drop off rate. So it means that your eventual client as and your cost per getting a client will be more expensive, but it doesn’t mean you won’t get them. And I think that’s probably the best direct to client route that I would go down. If I was starting fresh in any niche, I would do that. Joe Sanok 00:47:22 In terms of time, how long does it take to learn Facebook ads and how long does it take to manage them? Amber-Rose Thomas 00:47:27 in terms of how long it takes to learn? Good question, because I still haven’t hit the point where I’m like, I know everything, so I’ll let you know when I hit that. Amber-Rose Thomas 00:47:36 but in terms of getting the basics, I think you could cover it in like an hour or two. If you get a training call with someone and it might take you a few hours if you decide to get a course or program or come into a training like this one about it in terms of an A membership. and then in terms of managing it, once you have it running, 15, 20 minutes every couple of days to check in on it, make changes, adapt from there. Like babysitting ads. Doesn’t take a lot of time at all. It’s the initial setup and the learning that takes a bit of investment in terms of time. But after that, you’ve got it and you’re good. Joe Sanok 00:48:09 Cool. So awesome. Thank you so much for letting us into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the Level Up Week series. I hope you are getting so much help out of this. If you need extra help, head on over to practice of the practice. Joe Sanok 00:48:34 Com forward slash apply. I would love to spend 30 minutes brainstorming with you as to your phase of practice, and helping you determine whether a membership, community, or consulting is right for you. Again that’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. And we couldn’t do the show without our amazing sponsors. We are so excited to bring these types of things to you as much as we can, so that you can level up your practice in a way that’s just amazing. head on over to Alma’s website. Hello, alma.com/jo, if you want help with credentialing, if you want help with reimbursement rates and a guaranteed two week payback again, that’s. Hello alma.com/jo. Thank you for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. Joe Sanok 00:49:38 If you want a professional, you should find one.