Boot Camp Follow-Up, #3

I hope you’ve been following Steffanie’s experience as our Boot Camp Contest winner.  This was Steff’s third week in the Basic Training Boot Camp.  We covered A LOT of material in the Boot Camp, and it’s not unusual to get a bit overwhelmed three weeks in.  The juices are flowing…  the ideas are firing off…  and sometimes it’s difficut to determine where to put your focus.  You’re excited to work on your practice, but where do you turn first???

Herre’s what Steffanie had to say about her experience this week…

As someone who is just starting out it practice, I have often wondered how to best “focus my efforts”.  Do I have a website, send letters, write pamphlets, create You Tube videos, try to meet people in person (if so, which people)?  How do I best go about letting people know I exist and give them a feel for who I am as a person and as a psychologist?  What are the things I haven’t thought of doing that may be effective?  When I talked with Deb about this topic this week, she gave me a great answer…do it all:)  As she said, people get to know you by being exposed to who you are muliple times and in multiple ways.  As we all know different people have different learning styles so we need to present ourselves to others in a variety of modalities…this really made sense to me.  I have really started to enjoy the idea of getting myself out there, although it will definately take some time to take this all on!  I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the blog!

As you can tell by her comments, Steffanie now feels she has more confidence, ability, and motivation to actively seek new referral sources.  That feels like a good news/bad news situation when you are three weeks into the Boot Camp.  There are so many possiblitities, so what to do first?  Also, what to do when you reach out in a great way to someone and you haven’t gotten referral #1 yet?

I told Steffanie that I could think of a few things she might do next even with regard to this great contact she made last week.  Here are some of my thoughts:

• Be sure to send a thank you for the meeting and include more business cards, brochures, and something NEW that they haven’t seen yet
• In a couple of weeks, stop by the office with about 100 copies of a 1 page newsletter that would be helpful and appropriate for their waiting room.  Introduce yourself to the office staff (as they will likely be the ones in charge of handing out your cards) and let them know you will be happy to replenish the stock of newsletters when needed
• Work up a couple of different “patient education” pieces that the docs can use to help provide information to their patients.  They don’t have to be fancy and they should not be too in depth.  They should, however, be informative and inviting to read.  Something like:  “10 Ways to Know When Your Stress is Out of Control” or “5 Homework Tips to Help Your Child with ADHD”.  These should be something that covers a topic you can further help them with (be sure to include your contact info on ALL of your materials) — make sure to put a call to action on your materials too — i.e.  For more information and tips contact Sue Smith LPC at 555-555-5555, or visit my website at www.SueSmithLPC.com.

Now that I’ve got you thinking, I’ll be you can come up with some ways you can have some fun with your marketing efforts.  Use your interests and expertise when you can.  If you like video, You Tube videos can be a great way to provide information to folks.  Create a really cool flyer or brochure that will catch people’s eye.  Write an article for which you can provide a link in your newsletter or on your website.

Just do something… do LOTS of somethings.  If you really want to get this party started, do what you have to do (and have some fun in the process!).

 

 

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