Marketing for private practices
You spent years learning to help people, not to rank on Google. We handle the part that gets found — HIPAA-aware SEO, ads and websites that bring the right clients to a solo or small group mental health practice.
Mental health only HIPAA-aware marketing No lock-in contracts
You went into practice to do the work, not to market it
Most private practices grow the same way at first. A supervisor sends someone over. A former colleague refers a client. A Psychology Today profile fills a few slots. It works, right up until it doesn’t — a referral source retires, the directory gets crowded in your zip code, and suddenly there are gaps in the week that weren’t there last year.
The frustrating part is that people in your area are searching for exactly what you do. They type “therapist near me who takes Aetna” or “psychiatric NP accepting new patients” and land on somebody else’s website. Not because that practice is better than yours. Because Google can find it and can’t find you.
That’s a solvable problem, and it’s the only kind of problem we work on.
Who this page is for
We built this page for practice owners:
If you’re a solo therapist and want the detail specific to therapy practices, the therapists page goes deeper. If you prescribe, so does the psychiatrists page. This page is about running the practice — the business that has to stay full.
We’re probably not the right fit if you’re a 40-provider behavioral health organization with a marketing director already in seat. That’s a different engagement, and we cover it here.
- Solo clinicians who own their caseload and their calendar
- Small group practices, roughly two to ten providers
- Counseling and psychotherapy practices, LCSWs, LPCs, LMFTs, psychologists
- Psychiatric NPs and MDs running their own panel
- Practices that are part in-office, part telehealth
- Practices moving off insurance panels toward cash-pay, or the other way around
What we actually do for a private practice
Not all of it, and not all at once. A small practice doesn’t need six channels running — it needs the two or three that fill the calendar, done properly. Here’s what’s on the table.
Local SEO that puts you in the map pack
Google Business Profile, consistent NAP, and a page for each thing you treat — plus citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Google Ads, when you need clients faster than SEO can deliver
Tight keywords, insurance-aware filters, and tracking to booked consults. Your ad budget stays in your account — we charge a management fee.
A website built around the intake, not the brochure
Fast, plain pages that answer insurance and availability above the fold and make booking the easiest thing on the page.
Answering the phone when you can’t
Voice AI agents that pick up after hours, answer basic questions, book intakes, and flag anything urgent for a human.
Follow-up that doesn’t depend on you remembering
Instant replies to new inquiries, ongoing follow-up, and confirmations that cut no-shows — without you touching a thing.
What the first 90 days look like
Every practice we take on starts with the same four steps.
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Free audit
We look at your site, your Google Business Profile, what you rank for now, and who’s outranking you locally. You get the findings whether or not you hire us.
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Strategy and plan
We agree on which one or two channels get worked first, what “success” means in numbers, and what it costs. No quotes before the audit — we don’t know what your market looks like until we’ve seen it.
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Build
Site fixes or a rebuild, treatment pages, GBP optimization, tracking, ad campaigns if they’re part of the plan.
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Launch and optimize
Then we watch what happens and adjust. You get a plain-language monthly report on booked consults and where they came from. Not impressions.
Why a small practice needs a different plan than a 40-provider group
Big groups can spend their way into visibility across a metro area. A solo practice can’t, and shouldn’t try. Three things change when the practice is small:
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Your capacity is the ceiling
There’s no point generating sixty inquiries a month for a clinician who can take four new clients. We aim at the number of intakes you can actually absorb, and we’d rather bring you eight good-fit clients than forty inquiries you have to turn away.
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Your geography is narrow
You’re competing for a handful of neighbourhoods or a single telehealth license state, not a national market. That makes local SEO unusually effective and makes broad paid campaigns unusually wasteful.
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You are the brand
In a group practice, people book the practice. In a solo or small practice, they’re choosing you — which means your bio page, your photo, and how plainly you explain what you do carry more weight than any keyword.
How long before it works
Honestly: it depends on your market, your budget, and how much competition you have locally. But the general shape holds.
Ads can produce calls in the first few weeks. SEO usually takes two to four months before you see meaningful movement, and longer in a crowded metro. Website and intake fixes tend to show up fastest of all, because you’re converting more of the traffic you already have.
No honest agency can promise you an exact number of clients. We won’t. What we will do is show you, every month, how many consults were booked and which channel produced them, so you can decide whether it’s worth continuing.
Questions private practice owners ask us
How do I market my private practice if I have almost no time?
Start with the things that keep working without your attention. A complete Google Business Profile, a website that answers the insurance and availability questions clearly, and automatic replies to new inquiries will do more for a busy clinician than any content or social strategy that needs weekly upkeep. That’s usually the first phase of what we build.
Is this HIPAA compliant?
We work HIPAA-aware, which is a deliberate phrase. We build tracking and campaigns so client information never reaches Google or Meta, and we’ll flag anything on your current setup that’s leaking it. That’s not a substitute for your own compliance program, BAAs, or legal counsel — we’re a marketing agency, not your compliance officer.
Do I have to leave Psychology Today?
No. Directories still send real clients. The problem is depending on them entirely — you’re renting attention in a listing where you sit next to forty comparable profiles and compete mostly on photo and price. Owning your own search visibility means the next referral source can’t be taken away from you.
Can I afford this as a solo clinician?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and we’ll tell you which. A solo practice usually starts with the Launch package: Google Business Profile and local SEO, a small set of well-built pages, basic lead capture, and a monthly report. If your market is expensive and your budget is tight, we’d rather say so at the audit stage than take you on and underdeliver.
Am I locked into a contract?
No. We work month to month. We’d rather you stay because it’s working.
Do you work with my practice management system?
We integrate with SimplePractice, Osmind, AdvancedMD, Calendly and Zocdoc, and we run our CRM and automation work in GoHighLevel. If you’re on something else, tell us at the audit and we’ll check.