Thriving in Local Therapy Marketing with Becky DeGrossa

welcome to Mental Health Evolution, a podcast about what's changing in mental health and why it matters. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, inviting you into honest conversations with people from all perspectives in the field. Clinicians, tech founders, investors, insurance companies, and all the folks in between. Let's explore what's working, what's not, and what's next.

Welcome back everyone, to the Mental Health Evolution podcast where we are talking about how the landscape is quickly evolving in the mental health industry. Today we are joined by Becky Dagrosa, who is the founder of Counseling Wise, which is a digital marketing firm for therapists. We are talking to Becky today because she recently sent out an email and I get her emails and I found her discussion really compelling and wanted to get her on the pod to let you all listen to the conversation. And in it she basically discussed the state of mental health marketing and how private practice therapists can leverage local marketing to thrive. One point that stood out to me was how a local clinician with a bricks and mortar practice has a unique advantage over what can feel overwhelming competition from large therapy platforms. Becky explained how understanding local search patterns, identifying different types of therapy searches and searchers like crisis research, contemplation and never, and building a strong local presence allows private practice therapists to connect with clients in ways that national platforms cannot. She shared some practical insights about mapping the search journey, nurturing potential clients, and creating a strategic approach to connect with the right people at the right time. I will tell you too, part of why this stood out to me is that as I've been doing this rebrand and launching this new podcast, some of our listeners have been reaching out to me saying, Rachel, this stuff is so great and so informative and now what do I do? So I think Becky has some cool ideas that we're going to dive in and talk a little bit more about. But just to give you some more about Becky, she spent two decades at IBM before pursuing a master's in psychology and becoming a successful therapist. She now combines her technical marketing and psychology backgrounds to help therapists build and grow their digital presence. Becky loves learning new things, calling herself a process nerd. I totally love that and brings a mindset of experimentation and openness to both therapy and marketing. I'm excited for this discussion and as you know, before we dig into the conversation with Becky, I just want to share a couple of relevant articles. Kind of a what's in the news related to our topic today and I hope that these are helpful for listeners to kind of understand a baseline of where this conversation comes from and give you some research resources if you want to look into things afterwards. So this first article is from Mental Health Match and it's called Is this the End of the Private Practice Therapist? This article talks through some of the changes on the business side of things, citing things such as the race to acquire market share in the vc, meaning venture capitalist backed tech health space. It also mentioned tech companies who offer mental health care are often asking therapists to ignore ethical and legal requirements in the field, such as limiting the number of words allowed to respond in text therapy, which I would add in and of itself is an ethical violation to some, and also hiring coaches to provide care instead of therapists. This article also talked about MSOs that are looking for the market share and we've talked about that in some of our previous episodes. Check out Jeremy's episode for more on that. It talked about new clients going to tech companies or MSOs due to their high marketing budgets, but also maybe not staying too long with those therapists. It talked about the lack of building the right fit and relationship to support effective therapy. And ultimately this article states that this is a whole new market kind of thinking about everything has changed and how solo and group practitioners will have more challenges to acquire clients. So that's kind of a baseline for that initial article. The second one with kind of a different take is called the marketing formula that's fueling small business success. And this was from Entrepreneur magazine and it is looking at small businesses and talking about a formula that is the great equalizer and that is combining local marketing with AI. I know Becky has a lot of opinions on this, so we'll just give the overview here. But this article had an interesting angle stating that in the past big corporations and big companies have a huge advantage because they have a marketing budget and the little guys, the small group practices, the individual solo practice owners had a harder time competing in that marketing space. And what this article is saying is that AI and and leveraging that plus the local marketing is a great equalizer, allowing the smaller fish to also have some great marketing reach. So that's kind of the background there and now we get to dive into the conversation. So as you know, we let this conversation go wherever it goes. But I'd like to start out with just some brush broad stroke conversations about marketing, specifically in the mental health space, since that's what you do. Becky, I know you talk about local therapy markets as eco living ecosystems, so maybe Maybe first, what's your general, like, bird's eye view on marketing for the mental health industry? And then we'll get into these living ecosystems a little bit.

So what I see is that, well, what I've lived, I guess, for the last 17 years in this space is that it's always changing. So that's nothing new. It's always changing. Right. And of course, I started out just like everybody else. I got out of grad school and I thought, oh, great, I have this tech background. This is going to be a piece of cake.

Yeah.

And I website that I thought was beautiful and nothing had. And so then I was like, oh, that's a little, you know, humbling. And so I had to learn strategy, I had to learn SEO. And back in those days, I'm going to age myself here. It was wild west in terms of SEO. And it's just like, AI is okay, AI is the wild west, right now. SEO used to be that. And so there were all sorts of silly things. You know, it was, you could do keyword stuffing, you could do all this crazy stuff, and you, you got away with it. I mean, I was able to rank people in like two days, top of Google, you know, with some of the things. And then, you know, that stuff got shut down. Right. Yeah, the wild.

I'm going to pause you just a second. Can you define SEO for people that are like, I've heard that, but I don't know exactly what you're talking about.

Very, very good, very good. It's search engine optimization. And so it's basically getting your website optimized so it'll show up in Google searches. You know, Google owns like 85% of the market, so other search engines as well being, you know, whatever, but mainly Google. Yeah. Okay. That's what optimization and that's what it's historically meant. But to bring that forward, the new that I like is search everywhere optimization. Because now we do have AI and we do have, you know, Instagram is indexing posts for local businesses. You know, you have Pinterest, you have all these other things. So there's a bunch of different platforms now that might be relevant. You don't want to waste time with those that aren't relevant, but you want to keep an eye on. Is what I'm doing going to help me show up in all these different places that matter to my market? Okay. So that's the new term we prefer is search everywhere optimization. But anyway, it was the wild west back then. And then things got changed. You know, there was the panda update in 2011 and then the penguin update in 2012 and then the hummingbird updated 2013. And each one of these was basically shutting down all these gimmicky little things that used to work, much to my chagrin. You know, at one point I was 300 or $3,000 from a site, you know, myself just on ads. And then all of these things get shut down. So the. It's always been that easy doesn't last. Okay, that's finally what I. And that's, I mean Psych today, perfect example. Easy doesn't last, right? That used to be so easy. So 29 bucks you would get calls and now most of the traffic that goes out of the Psych Today directory goes to those companies. It doesn't quote. The majority goes to those companies, those VC backed companies.

Okay.

And so they've taken oversyke today, you know, and so easy doesn't last. It never has lasted. It's a fun ride for five minutes. It is really fun. That's what got me into it.

Right.

It was really fun. But dang, it doesn't last. And so it's, it's the sad story of darn. You have to do some work, right? You have to treat your practice like a business and you have to provide quality content and a good user experience for someone searching. And you should really go after what's in market demand. You know, there's so many people that are doing. I'm going to develop my own little special niche and I'm going to treat, you know, whatever women who, you know, bipoc women who are traumatized by something that happened at work and they're in their 40s or something. That's great. If there's enough of those people in your market that you can help, there's probably not enough that are going to find you to make a business out of that. Right? Yeah. So have that. If you love that, go for it. But also do some other things that are actually in market demand. Right. That actually have market demand. So that's the kind of thing that we teach and do and coach people to implement and we help them implement it if they don't want to do it themselves. But that grows practices that are viable and once you're visible, you tend to stay there. We have practices that have been visible for 15 years. Once they get up that mountain, they stay there, right? They have authority and trust and so they stay. So anyway, it's always changing. That's the message. Everything is always changing. And right now I'll just Make this one point. I put out an email today on this AI thing. It's all the rage right now. Everyone is saying, oh, AI is the new thing. It's the great equalizer. Like you said in that Entrepreneur article. It's going to be, it's going to be very short. Okay, so what makes you fair up? Well, what I mean is the gimmicky part of getting ranked in AI is going to be very short lasting.

I see.

Yeah, yeah, it's just the SEO world all over again, right? It's, ooh, here's this new thing and everyone tries to game a system. We're built that way, I guess, right? So, oh, now look, Reddit is working. Then I'm going to go get in Reddit or whatever, right? Citations, schema, whatever it is. And anything that is easy is going to be done better and harder by someone who has more money than you. So sad. It is. It's sad, right? Because it's really fun to think that we can figure out some cool little loophole and we can just, you know, be successful. So I've been there, I've got all those things. It's human nature to want it. I get it, no judgment. But if you really want, if you want it to last, just do the right thing, right? Put up pages that talk about anxiety and depression and that you get it and you know what it's like and there's hope that therapy can help and I've done this, but I mean, come across as a professional who's helped people, right, and give them really good content. I mean, have blogs on how to get to sleep at night if you're highly anxious, all the things, right? And then you'll just go up. You'll not only rank in Google, but you'll also rank in AI and you'll practice at the end of the day.

Yeah, so that was going to be my comment for you or my question really is if AI is on the marketing side. And we've, we've talked about AI on this pod a lot. So I just want to clarify that Becky is talking about literally like ranking in AI and coming up in AI searches that people are doing and things like that as a marketing approach. But so if we are competing, I do think one thing that has changed in our field, you're right, change is constant in this marketing realm. But in the mental health industry, I don't know that we've had this many venture backed companies, either tech companies providing platforms or MSOs. And I don't think we've had the level that we have or literally AI being a therapist. Right. So we have all these different platforms, players that are putting marketing money into them, acquiring market space, them acquiring clients. So how do you recommend people even just start to think about. I'm sure everybody's situation is different. I'm not asking for like a marketing plan, but what are some buckets to think about to compete with that level of marketing?

Yeah. So the first thing is, and this is not all the, all the VC companies, but most of them the better helps the talk space. The, you know, I mean, a lot of them are online.

Right.

And so they're blasting traditional marketing venues like magazines, newspapers, radio and tv, podcast. Exactly. You know, they have Oprah talking for them, putting in a, putting in a pitch or whoever. And so they're trying to get these like new to therapy or crisis clients to say, oh, this is really easy. All I have to do is sit in my house and I could text somebody and do therapy that way or whatever. So they're trying to reach an audience that the traditional practice has never tried to reach. Okay. Like we don't. I mean, typically as a therapist, I was never going to offer text therapy. Give me a break.

Right.

That's like fake therapy. I think it's fake therapy. And that's not to say that the therapists who are engaging in it are fake therapists, but the system that is put on them forces them to engage in substandard therapy, if you even want to call it that.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, and so they're going after that. But what they can't do, and there are some in this space that are doing it, like life stance, I believe is actually buying and, and buying up practices and then having a local presence. Right. And there may be more that I'm not of the. I'm not aware of, but I mean, I'm in search every single day millions of times. Right. So I can see who's showing up. And outside of lifestance and I mean a couple of other ones that have little, little bit of presence here and there, mostly what shows up in Google, which is the biggest source of traffic, is local therapists. Okay. Because why Google gatekeeps it. They say you have to have an office physical address.

Yeah.

With a legit address. You have to do a video showing us that you can get into that office with a key and show us your signage and the whole deal, which is really a pain for everybody, but it keeps those companies out. Otherwise they'd be saying, oh, we're at this Address. And this one, and this one, right?

Oh, yeah.

But it has a map. Yeah. So you can be a real fixture in your city and you have an advantage over these companies doing that. Okay. So that is what we recommend is be a real player, be a real practice, take care of your clients, take of care, build relationship in the community, all those things. And they can't. You do not see better help and talkspace and, you know, Alma and headway in Google search, they're not, they're not there. And very rarely do they even buy ads. Okay. Very rarely. So it's your domain. It's like protected for you. And you can, you can make that happen.

I love that.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So if, if a private practitioner is going to try to rank higher in local search, are there things you see like kind of as common mistakes or pitfalls or things to try to avoid?

Yeah. You know, so many after Covid don't want to get an office. They don't. You know, they're like, I'm virtual only. I can be virtual only. And this isn't fair. Yeah, I mean, you could say it's not fair, or you could just say, I'm going to do what it takes to be a solid business in this city and I'm going to get an office. You don't have to even be in it all the time, but you have to have access to it. You have to be able to do your little video verification to get your Google business profile verified. Right. But then just have it Saturday morning for two hours so that you can say you have it. You, you don't have to pay very much even. Oh yeah, I sub to people on Saturday morning and they paid me a hundred bucks a month back in the day. Might cost you 200 an hour, but still there's ways to work around this, right? And you can do that. And so that's the first thing. You gotta have an office and you gotta have the Google business profile. And then you need a decent website. You know, you need one with good content and you need it to be positioned to show up for things people actually search for. You know, anxiety therapy, child therapy, teen counseling. And in bigger cities, you can even really rock it with modalities, Right? Because in bigger cities, there's enough people that know what Gottman is or IFS or EMDR or whatever, and they search for those things. And so you can rank easier for those. And then you get really pretty mature clients for those. Right. Because they know enough to know that they like a modality that's a good client.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

I want to ask you a question and it might, I mean, it's really just predictive in nature. So there's not like a hardcore science here. But I'm wondering about, like, looking at all of these players from a marketing perspective, what do you see as potential things in the trajectory? Like, what would you guess the market going to look like a year from now, five years from now? Like, what kind of patterns or things do you see on the horizon for us?

I tend to be an optimist and I tend to just kind of look at history with what happens. And VC companies don't have to make money now when they're starting. Eventually they do.

Yeah.

Right. And so there's already been, for instance, a big behavioral health company that bought up a whole bunch of stuff and crashed and burned because they couldn't make it. Right. They had to start making money and they couldn't do it. And so I think we're going to see a bunch of them fall. The market is going to distill down to a few players and it's still going to be so much easier for them to be online than it is. I mean, it's a lot of work to have an office and a receptionist and have your tea and your coffee out and all the things. Right. And take care of your clinicians and take care of your clients and get good reviews, not even from your clients because you can't ask them.

Right.

But from peers. And, you know, how are they going to get reviews from peers in Google? Right. There's so much they can't do well and when it distills down to a few players, they're going to still probably try to do the leveraging online thing. So give them those clients. Let them have those clients that are first, first to therapy. I think the other thing that's going to happen is, and we've seen this in many areas already, but these clients are going to not have a good experience with the therapy and then. And they're human, so they're going to have stuff come up. It's not going to be, oh, I'm done with that. It's going to be, that wasn't a very good experience. If we get the word out there more, hey, have you tried fake therapy and you didn't get anywhere? We get it. Why don't you come and actually engage with a human being who has training and really actually cares about helping you through whatever you're going through? Right. I think that's going to be the Next wave of the people who tried the easy button and it didn't and it was inexpensive and it was very convenient, but now they're ready to actually, maybe they're a little older now and they're ready to actually engage in some real work. Right. So in my experience, I see this all the time with therapists who want the easy button.

Right.

They come and they talk to us. Really? That's expensive. I don't want to do that. You mean I have to put up a website. I just want to do a Psych Today listing or whatever. And so long ago I learned they're just not ready. Okay, that's fine. You know, no harm, no foul. Go do your thing. And we're always here. Invariably they come back in two years, 18 months, whatever it is. And when they come back, they're believers because they already tried this thing that didn't work. And so now they're open minded. They're like, ah, okay, I get it. I get why this is different. I think the same thing's going to happen with these therapy clients. Yeah. So in a way you can thank the tech companies for giving them a bad experience because when I'm back, they're going to be like, oh, real therapy. This is much better.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know it's a very positive spin and I know it's also very painful right now, but the people who are going to do the research right now are going to be better clients. The ones they just are. Right. They read your site, the people who spend the more time on your site and who call, they're so much better clients than the people who are grabbing the first thing.

Right. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Well, we are just about out of time. But I'd love to ask you if there was one thing that you could say to clients, to clinicians, to businesses in this space, what would be the most important takeaway from your perspective on this topic?

It would be just do the work. Just do the work to create something solid. You know, really think about your potential client and kind of go back to beginner's mind. You know, imagine a panic attack you ever had or high anxiety you ever had or anything. And just really think about what they want to hear at that point that's going to help them and do the work to provide it and do the work to do it strategically. So you're visible. Right. You have to be visible. And once you do that work, I don't think you're going to look back because it's going to serve you for years to come. And if you're not ready to do it, then that's okay. Throw more things against the wall, you know, see if they work. It's just, I get it. I've always wanted the easy button myself, but it just, you know, don't stay there spinning around for too long. Eventually just do the work. And I. There's still plenty of opportunity. We have clients opening offices left and right and so it's still totally possible. You know, you have a lot of offices.

Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. Do the work from a client consumer perspective too, right? Do the research, find your good match. There are really great brick and mortar relationship based therapists out there to definitely connect with. Yeah.

Yeah.

Amazing. Well, we will have all of Becky's information in the show notes if you are interested in connecting more with her her after this podcast episode. And I just have to thank you. I really appreciate your perspective, I appreciate the way that you're thinking about things and thank you for helping people in this industry to be more visible. That's a pretty cool mission. It's great to have you.