How to Market Your Christian Counseling Private Practice Without Fear

Camille McDaniel (00:09.496)
Today we are tackling a pretty big question.

that many Christian counselors wrestle with. And that is, how do I market my private practice boldly without fear and without isolating non-believers? Right, so for many of us, marketing feels very uncomfortable still. For many of us, marketing does feel like sales. Like we are trying to convince people to

see us. We are trying to kind of beg people to see us and just give us a try even though we might say we’re Christian. Please don’t think all of these things that are bad. Please give me a try. And we don’t want to be in that position. We’re not called to be in that position. So what we want to do is actually figure out how do we get around that.

How do we do marketing well, boldly, confidently, so that we’re not worried? Worried that maybe we are…

using the word Christian in our branding. I know some of you all have gotten feedback from others when you’ve asked other people, hey, can you check out my website? And what do you think when you read the text or, know, hey, can you listen to my my elevator pitch, if you will, you know, what you know how to quickly say in order to explain and get to the root of.

Camille McDaniel (01:47.948)
what you do to help other people. And you’ve been told, maybe you should kind of take all that Christian talk out of it, right? Because it’ll probably turn people away. Or maybe you’re afraid you’re seeming not religious enough. Maybe you feel like what you say waters things down, kind of hides who you are and how you operate as a counselor in this world.

You might be feeling a lot of ways about it. And so what you want to know is how do I reach clients in ways that really align with what God has called me to do in this world and who he has called me to serve in this world, but also come across as professional and inviting to those people who may not share your belief system at all.

So we’re going to look at how we put ourselves out there confidently. How do we attract the right clients while still staying faithful to our calling? And how do we ensure that our marketing reflects Christ rather than just trying to sell a service?

So we’re going to talk about strategies. We’re going to look at real life examples. And we’re going to look at the mindset shift that has to take place in order to help you step into your marketing with clarity and with boldness. Because we want to feel good about the good works that we’re doing. We want to believe that what we are sharing with the world is impactful.

is needed, is necessary. And when you believe that wholeheartedly, there should be no fear about spreading that message. But you just have to know how to actually put that message together. Okay. So grab your comfy blanket or your drink of choice, water with lemon or lime or coffee or tea, whatever it is.

Camille McDaniel (04:00.226)
Let’s get comfortable and let’s get started and we’re going to start right with overcoming fear in marketing. All right the common fears the things that really kind of weigh on people is it’s really it’s fear of rejection often times that if you put this message out there

you’re going to be rejected. Maybe colleagues won’t want to refer to you as your fear. Maybe you’re fearful that you’re going to lose potential clients or you’re afraid of being labeled too religious, you know, or cancel culture, you know, whatever it is, it is really, it’s causing you to shrink back instead of step forward. And so I just want to, I just want to put out there, let’s go ahead and lay the foundation.

out with the Word of God. And for those who already know this, hey, this is just like a gentle reminder. And for those who don’t know it, you know, go to the scriptures and start looking at it for yourself. Because it says in the Bible, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind. Okay?

And the other thing he also says and calls us to do is to be a light. Again, in the book of Matthew, the first one that I talked about came from 2 Timothy. But the next one is in the book of Matthew where it talks about, your light shine before men.

that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So when they see the great work that you’re doing, when they see the compassion and the expertise that you are putting out there to help heal them, solve their issue, their pain point, then sometimes they will actually reflect. I’ve had this happen myself. They will reflect or they will give honor to God.

Camille McDaniel (06:09.638)
for you even coming into their life, for you doing a good work. So this is kingdom. This is biblical. You are doing the right thing. The Father has put in you gifts and talents, and you want to use those boldly. Don’t shrink back. Don’t hide. We want to look at how to, as we shift our mindset, knowing that we are doing a good thing,

knowing that we are helping to heal broken hearts, families, marriages, minds, bodies, all of that. Now we want to look at, so now how do we effectively put this into practice? And we have to first, we got to know our audience.

Who are you supposed to be serving? So those clients who are supposed to be coming to you, they will be able to identify that you are serving their need. So know your audience. Okay, so the first thing is that, again, if you are moving beyond a mindset of fear,

then you can move into looking at who you’re supposed to be serving. It doesn’t matter whether child or teen or couples or adults or whatever the challenge may be, know your audience so that you can then properly address them, craft your message. Who are you supposed to be connecting with? Is it church leaders? Is it pastors and their congregants? You wanna attract?

Clients who are seeking just biblically based counseling or do you feel called to attract clients no matter what walk of life, right? You know, who’s your audience? And then that goes back to what I said. Once you know your audience, then you can actually craft a message that makes sense to your audience. So be totally transparent in your message about what you offer.

Camille McDaniel (08:19.306)
Don’t feel like you have to tone down your faith. Okay? You don’t have to. You just want to go ahead and put it into a message that’s going to be effective. That’s what you want. You want it to be effective. You don’t have to shrink back. You don’t have to not share your faith. You just have to be effective in the way that you share it. So here’s an example. So instead of maybe just saying, you know, general terms,

help people understand what that actually kind of looks like when they come to see you. So instead of saying, I offer Christian counseling, you could even go further in your effectiveness by saying, I integrate faith and mental health with evidence-based practices. Or you can say, biblically aligned therapy.

using evidence-based practices to help individuals who have struggled with domestic violence and other forms of trauma. You know, you can kind of, you can put it all together so that people understand what it is you’re bringing to them, how you are bringing it to them, and what pain point you’re going to help them heal from. Okay, and we can, you know,

kind of continue to massage those different messages depending on who it is that you happen to serve. And then from there, you want to be able to put that message out there on different channels of marketing tools. So whether it’s your website or if you happen to have…

social media, you want to be able to continue this branding of your practice and your services after you are clear on who you serve and how you serve and put that message together, then you want to start sharing that message, right? So you can make things faith-focused in a way that feels very inviting, not exclusive at all, right? So for example,

Camille McDaniel (10:26.206)
Again, I help clients to navigate their life transitions from working full time to relaxing and having all the time in the world in retirement. Let me help you develop what that life is supposed to look like. No worries about feeling lost. You have a purpose and I’m going to help you find it.

You know, however you decide to, you know, target your audience with that message, make sure that you are addressing the issue that they have. So in that last example, I know that there are many people who do have an issue with purpose once they have retired from full-time employment or part-time employment. They have a big life transition when they go into retirement, and some people don’t know what to do with themselves. They no longer know what their

purpose is and what they’re supposed to be doing in this new season of life. And that creates sometimes a sense of lostness. And sometimes people feel like maybe I don’t have any purpose, but you know that everyone has a purpose. Why? Because the Lord has given us all a measure of gifts and talents to use in this world as long as we have breath in our lungs. So what you’re going to be doing is you’re going to help them find that purpose for that particular season.

in their life, you’re going to have your faith focus involved, integrated into it, so that for those individuals who want to make sure that they have a holistic approach to their plan of action after they have worked all of those years, they can have both. They can have their faith and they can allow it to help them find their purpose at this new season in their life. And you are going to be the facilitator of finding that purpose and integrating that faith.

So again, it’s all about how we are going to inform our clients of how we can help them through their challenges with clinically sound and faith informed counseling. We wanna also make sure that this message, this way of branding ourselves with our message goes beyond just our website and beyond our social media.

Camille McDaniel (12:48.536)
but we also want it to be local. So again, who are you actually connecting with, networking with, forming real genuine relationships with? You’re going to want to make sure that you start collecting lists of colleagues and potential referral sources that you check in with. Give them updates on how you can help. Give them updates on what new things you happen to be.

doing in your practice and offering to potential clients and asking them if there’s any way that you might be able to support them in what they’re doing or Support them and helping individuals that they serve as well That that’s how we start building, you know, you don’t you don’t get to you know Five years ten years fifteen years beyond in private practice without building relationships

You absolutely have to do that. And sometimes it’s beyond just online. It is actually locally as well. So you want to figure out who do I need to be connecting with? Who do I need to start building relationship with? Yeah, absolutely is what we want to do. And then go and do it. Go and do it. But again, not being fearful because what you are bringing to the world is

going to heal the generations. And you have to absolutely know that within the bottom of your very soul and being. And so if you knew that you had the potential to heal not just the individuals in front of you, but generations to come, why would you not wake up super excited to do what the Father has called you to do and run, don’t walk, to help as many people with the message that you have?

and the skill set that you have, people will come. And I’m not talking about just if you build it, they will come because that’s actually not always true. But if you actually have proof and you know that there is something that people need in the world because you have seen evidence of it or you have actually been helping people for a while now and you repeatedly see these pain points come up, then you already know it’s an issue to be addressed. Okay?

Camille McDaniel (15:07.956)
I hope that you are also doing this other next thing when we’re talking about marketing boldly, confidently. I hope that you’re jumping out there and that you are making sure that you have a way to ask those clients who are coming to you if they would like to be on your newsletter and that you are actually building a list so that you can start a newsletter to inform clients. Again, we wanna be helpful.

to inform clients of what you happen to be offering, what new services are coming their way, tips that they can use when they are not seeing you, different checklists in order to help them keep themselves well. You want to be able to give, give, give, right? And that will help them to see how much you actually have the potential to change their life. Now,

When you do these newsletters, are going to want to make sure that you look at the analytics. Look at how many people are opening up the newsletter. What is going to work as far as topics? Which topics happen to be really great popular topics? A lot of people opened up from that headline versus some topics that didn’t really get a lot of opens. You may also want to make sure to just double check and see how frequently people

are opening them based on how frequently you send. for example, if you send weekly newsletters and you start noticing like a dip in your open rate, try sending every other week. Try backing up a little bit. You might be kind of like overwhelming your list, your email list. And you might notice that the rates of opening like shoot up as you kind of give less.

And for some people, it might be that that works perfectly. So you’re just going to have to make sure that you go back to look at your analytics so that you’re getting information and you’re not just like blindly putting things out there with no direction at all. All right. OK, so here’s the thing. Let’s look at some kind of examples of marketing without fear. So let’s say, for example, therapist A, we’ll call it, therapist A.

Camille McDaniel (17:27.37)
as somebody who was worried about mentioning faith on their website, as we talked about a little bit earlier, but they reworded their services. Okay, so now they say, you know, as a licensed therapist, I offer counseling that integrates biblical principles with clinical expertise to help you find healing and hope after you have experienced a divorce. Or it might be, you know, helping you

with expertise after you have experienced and then fill in the blank or helping you to find healing and hope from whatever, from experiencing depression or experiencing challenges with knowing what to do with your life.

After you have no longer been able to keep your full-time employment, know There are a lot of individuals who are losing work these days So whatever it is that you can help heal or you can instill hope into you want to kind of put that in that message so again When you put that message out there of letting people know that you offer counseling that integrates biblical principles with clinical expertise Now what’s happening?

Well, now more people who are faith aligned, who are looking to integrate their belief in Christ into their counseling experience, they’re gonna find you. Matter of fact, Google is gonna pick you up. The search engines are gonna pick it up because you have put certain wording that kind of like aligns with searches that people do. So Google may actually pick it up and allow you to be found.

by more individuals who are looking for counselors who align with their faith so that they can have both integrated into their experience. let’s look at another example, okay? So we have like therapist B is fearful of pushback on social media, but they started posting client centered faith based encouragement instead of just like,

Camille McDaniel (19:44.462)
preaching at people, right? And what was the result? Well, increased engagement, maybe even new client inquiries. Why? Because there are especially certain times where encouragement, instilling of hope, instilling of healing, that is what people are seeking. People are really struggling these days and people are looking for

someone to just let them know that it’s worth going forward to keep going day to day. That it can get better. That there’s a way to fix certain things or heal from certain things. And let’s say Therapasy. Therapasy is a counselor who created an email series on faith and mental health with some free resources. And this leads to what? Maybe an influx

of referrals from maybe churches or maybe other referral sources or just people who are self-referring, right? Why? Because you’re giving hope, you’re giving answers, you’re giving solutions, you’re giving tips, you’re giving tools, you are giving something that the people need and that will then possibly cause them to want more, especially if they need more.

And now you have established yourself or you start to establish yourself as an authority in this particular area. So again, with, with this series, I want you to start looking at how you are currently marketing. want you to assess yourself. I want you to make sure that you’re being clear that you know who you’re supposed to be serving. want to, I want you to make sure that your branding message is also very clear.

I want you to step boldly. Don’t shy away from mentioning your faith. depends on how you construct your wording and your message means that you’re going to reach people who are looking to have their Christian counseling or their Christian faith integrated into their counseling experience. And it is also going to let other individuals who are not Christians know that you have expertise in an area

Camille McDaniel (22:07.65)
that they need and they don’t have to worry that you’re going to make them have to listen to your prayers or your scriptures if they come your way. Because of the way you construct your message, they will be fully informed that your worldview is guided by Christ, but they will know that it seems as though because you will have a constructed message that allows it to be known that all are welcome, but you’re just fully informing them

of who they’re going to get when they come to your practice. So be encouraged, please. Your ideal clients are looking for you without a shadow of a doubt. God has called you to serve boldly with love, with compassion, with truth.

Market your faith-based practice. It doesn’t mean that you’re excluding people. Instead, it means you are attracting people who are looking for what you have to offer. You are attracting those that your message resonates with while also maintaining your professionalism. Trust the process. Trust the process because the Lord has gifted you with these talents and he will honor.

what you put out in your work as you seek to do what he has called you to do. I hope this has encouraged you. If you need any help with marketing, with business planning, reach out to me. I love to be able to help you. You can reach out to me at hello at christinprivatepractice.com or you can reach out to me at info at healingpsychotherapyGA.

And you can check me out on either website ChristinPrivatePractice.com, HealingPsychotherapyPracticesGA, excuse me, HealingPsychotherapyGA.com, that’s my private practice. Either way, you can reach out to me. And if you need a website or if you need some help with developing content for your website that aligns better with your faith,

Camille McDaniel (24:27.234)
then you can check us out at spectrumsites.com for a website for your Christ-aligned private practice or for helping with copy or even putting out those blog posts to help you market, to help you put things out there that you can offer to your clients. We love it all. We love it all. So reach on out, let me help, and God bless as you step boldly into what the Lord has called you to do.

Until next time.

CPP Ep. 28 How to Market Your Christian Counseling Private Practice Without Fear