Marketing for Counsellors: How to Know What to Focus on Next

Three years.

That’s how long she’d been meaning to sort out one shelf.

She set a timer, emptied it, decided what she wanted to keep, gave it a quick wipe, put everything back and…

Twelve minutes.

It took a total of twelve minutes.

And as I sat there watching her on YouTube, feeling ridiculously pleased for a woman I don’t even know and her newly organised shelf, I realised I do exactly the same thing.

And I’m pretty sure you do too.

Because there’s something we do with the things we haven’t got round to that makes them grow. And grow. Until something that could take twenty minutes starts to feel so big that we don’t know where to begin.

And when I realised what was actually making that shelf feel so enormous, I suddenly saw something I’ve watched counsellors do with their marketing for years.

So uf your marketing has started to feel like one enormous job you’ll get on top of ‘when you have time’, you might want to hear this.

Lately, I've become slightly obsessed with watching cleaning and decluttering videos on YouTube.

Now, if you know me, you might find that quite amusing.

Cleaning has never really been one of my favourite things. In the years when I was bringing up my children on my own, life was busy enough without worrying whether the kitchen cupboards were beautifully organised. Add in running a business, the occasional bout of depression, and all the general chaos that comes with being an adult with kids, and it's fair to say that my house has always looked... lived in.

Don't get me wrong, it's not awful. Nobody's calling in Stacey Solomon to 'Sort My Life Out', (although, if anyone does fancy giving me a house makeover, I wouldn't complain...)

The videos I enjoy most aren't the ones where everything already looks immaculate and they scrub an already immaculate worktop and appear gobsmacked at the immaculate results.

No, they're the ones where someone looks at a bookcase that has things crammed higgledy-piggledy in and on, laughs, and says, 'I've been meaning to sort this out for about three years.'

I always smile when they say that because I know exactly what they mean.

Then, they set a timer, empty a shelf, decide what they're keeping, throw a few things away, give it a quick wipe over, put everything back... and twelve minutes later they're finished.

Twelve minutes. After putting it off for three years.

Every single time. And they look (rightly) pleased with themselves, wondering why on earth they didn't just do it sooner.

And I love it!

Next time, they do a different shelf.

Watching those videos has had a slightly unexpected but dramatic effect on me because, every now and then, I've found myself wandering off to tackle one of my own long-forgotten jobs. And do you know what?

Exactly the same thing happened.

The jobs I'd built up in my head as these enormous, exhausting tasks often took no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Sometimes even less. I'd finish, stand back, look at what I'd done and think, 'Why on earth have I been carrying that around in my head for so long?'

One of mine this week was the windowsill next to where I work. It had become one of those places where I just kept putting things, so every time I looked out of the window, I saw the clutter. It didn’t take long to sort out at all, and now every time I walk into the room and see it clear, it gives me a little smile.

That was the bit that really got me thinking.

Looking back, I don't think I was avoiding the cleaning at all...

I was avoiding the overwhelm: that feeling that there was simply too much to do.

Because the shelf was never just a shelf.

It was the shelf, the cupboard, the paperwork, the windowsill, the kitchen drawer, the weeds outside, the pile of things that needed taking to the charity shop... all rolled into one giant, slightly overwhelming feeling that there was always something else waiting for me.

When I looked around the house, I wasn't seeing one small job that needed doing.

I was seeing all of them, all at once. And that's a very different feeling.

When I thought about it, it struck me that this is exactly what I see happening with marketing.

Very rarely is it one blog that's causing the problem, or one website update, or one directory profile that needs refreshing. It's the fact that all of those jobs are sitting there together, taking up space in the back of your mind. They merge together to become one enormous mental to-do list that follows you around, making everything feel much bigger than it really is.

And I think that's where so many counsellors get stuck.

Why can marketing your private practice feel so overwhelming?

Nothing gets finished. In fact, often things don't even get started, because every single job feels equally important, and when everything feels important, it's so hard to know where to begin.

I don't know about you, but that day where everything suddenly falls into place and I feel motivated to tackle the whole lot... well, it's never happened for me.

In fact, I've noticed the opposite tends to happen. The longer something sits on my to-do list, the bigger it becomes in my mind. A job that would probably take twenty minutes somehow starts to feel like an afternoon. Then it feels like something I need to block out a whole day for. Before long, it has become one of those jobs that feels far bigger than it really is.

Over the years, I've realised I'm not the only one who does this.

I've had the privilege of talking to hundreds of counsellors about their marketing, and I've lost count of the number of times someone has told me they don't know where to start. Then, as we begin talking, it quickly becomes obvious that they don't have one marketing task sitting on their list.

They've got a website they'd like to improve. A directory profile they know could be stronger. A blog they've been meaning to write. A Google Business Profile they keep meaning to set up. Perhaps they'd like to try networking, become more active on LinkedIn or any of 100 different things.

Every one of those jobs makes sense. In fact, I'd probably encourage them to do every one of them at some point.

The difficulty comes when they all arrive in your mind at the same time.

Instead of seeing a handful of individual jobs, they merge together into one enormous tangled-up ball of Christmas tree lights called marketing. You know there's probably a sensible place to start, but when you're looking at the whole tangled mess, it's almost impossible to see it.

That's where so many counsellors get stuck.

And it's not because they aren't capable of doing the work. Most of those individual jobs are well within their abilities. It's because deciding what to focus on has become a job in itself.

Meanwhile, every unfinished task picks up a little more emotional baggage and adds to the tangled ball of Christmas tree lights.

The blog isn't simply a blog anymore; it's the one you've been meaning to write since January. Your homepage isn't just your homepage; it's another reminder that you still haven't updated it. Every time one of those jobs pops into your mind, it brings a little frustration, a little guilt or a little self-criticism with it.

Before long, you're no longer carrying a marketing to-do list, you're carrying all the feelings that have become attached to it.

Everything feels equally important, equally urgent and equally unfinished.

Where should you start with marketing your counselling practice?

So, what do you do?

If you've listened to my podcast for any length of time, you'll probably know what I'm going to say...

Don't try and sort the whole house.

Just choose one shelf.

It sounds almost too simple, doesn't it? After all, one shelf isn't going to transform your entire home. There will still be cupboards that need sorting, weeds that need pulling up and that drawer full of mystery cables will still be waiting patiently for its turn.

But the interesting thing is, the moment you've cleared that one shelf, something changes.

Not only have you got one less job following you around in your head, but you've also proved something to yourself.

You've proved that progress is possible.

You've broken the cycle of thinking about doing something and actually done it.

I think that's why momentum is so powerful.

It rarely arrives before you've started. More often than not, it turns up afterwards.

The first shelf leads to the next shelf. One blog makes it easier to write another. Updating your homepage gives you the confidence to tackle your directory profile. Claiming your Google Business Profile suddenly doesn't feel quite so daunting because you've already got one thing ticked off your list.

Before you know it, you're moving again.

And it isn't because you've found some magical burst of motivation, but because you've stopped trying to carry the whole damn house around with you.

How do you decide what to focus on in your marketing?

And that's something I've noticed time and time again when I've worked with counsellors.

People often come to me believing they need to do everything.

• Improve the website.
• Write blogs.
• Sort out SEO.
• Get active on LinkedIn.
• Set up their Google Business Profile.
• Go networking.
• Work out their niche...

The list goes on.

They might well need to do those things - but they never need to do all of those things next, they just need to know what deserves their attention first.

Sometimes that's their homepage because that's your home base and where people are already landing.

Sometimes it's their directory profile.

Sometimes it's blogging because the foundations are already in place and it's time to help more people find them.

There isn't one right answer, there's only the right next step for your business.

If I sat down with ten different counsellors, I could quite easily give ten different pieces of advice, because it depends on what’s happening in your practice and what’s happening for you. What are you good at? What do you struggle with? What are the things that make you squirm and therefore keep getting pushed down the list?

After years of working with counsellors on their marketing, I've learned that the answer is rarely to simply do more. It's about looking at what's already happening in your business — how people are finding you, what happens when they do, and where things seem to be getting stuck.

And I think that's where so many counsellors breathe a sigh of relief, because once you know which shelf you're clearing first, the whole house suddenly feels a lot less overwhelming.

But, of course, there's one rather important question left.

Which shelf?

Because choosing one thing sounds simple enough until you're still looking at a homepage, directory profile, Google Business Profile, SEO, blogging, LinkedIn and networking and trying to decide which one deserves your attention.

And that's exactly why I created Find Your Focus.

Find the right next step for your counselling business

Find Your Focus is a 90-minute one-to-one session where we sit down together and look properly at your business as it is now.

Because sometimes you’re simply too close to your own business to really see what’s going on. You can get so caught up in your own thoughts - and that inner critic telling you that you’re rubbish or you can’t do it - that it can cloud your judgement about what actually needs your attention.

You might be able to see all the things you could change, improve or work on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can see what’s actually keeping you stuck. Sometimes having somebody else look at the whole picture with you makes it much easier to see what matters.

If people aren't finding you in the first place, we'll look at that. If people are finding you but not getting in touch, we'll look at what might be happening there. And if you're getting enquiries but they're not turning into bookings, that's useful information too.

We'll look at what's already working, where people are finding you, what might be getting in the way and, importantly, what actually deserves your time and energy next.

Because the aim isn't to send you away with another enormous list of things you could do - I mean, you've probably got enough of those already.

The aim is for you to come away knowing what to focus on.

Afterwards, you'll also get the recording of our session, a summary and your own personalised focus document, so you've got something concrete to come back to when your brain inevitably starts whispering, 'Yes, but shouldn't we also be sorting out SEO... and Instagram... and that page on the website...?'

No. Back to your shelf.

If you're not quite ready for a one-to-one session, you can also start with my free FIND Assessment. It looks at four areas of your marketing — Focus, Identification, Navigation and Decision — and will help you begin to see where things might be getting stuck and where your attention could be best spent. 

But if you've been carrying the whole house around in your head for far too long and you'd really like somebody to sit down with you, look at it all and help you decide 'Right. This is where we start,' then Find Your Focus is for you.

Find Your Focus officially opens on Monday 21 September, but if you're on the waiting list, you'll get early access from today and first choice of the available appointments.

And I think that brings me right back to those decluttering videos...

Three years of thinking about a shelf.

Twelve minutes to actually sort it.

I'm not promising we'll solve three years of marketing in twelve minutes, that would be a rather ambitious sales claim, even for me.

But I do know how different things can feel when you stop looking at everything you haven't done and finally know what you're going to do next.

You don't need to sort the whole house.

You just need to know which shelf comes first.