I am excited today to introduce you to Kimberly Sena Moore. Kimberly is one of those e-gifts that came along when I was researching online for a music therapist / client of mine. Kimberly is a Board-Certified Music Therapist and a Neurologic Music Therapist. She is also the owner of NeuroSong Music Therapy and a co-host of The Music Therapy Round Table podcast.
And, as you might expect from this list of accomplishments, she is a colleague who knows how to develop and market a small business. I’ve invited her to share some of her thoughts about what you, as mental health professionals in general, and music therapists in particular, bring to the experience of marketing a private practice.
Thanks, Kimberly, for so graciously accepting my invitation!
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A Guest Post by Kimberly Sena Moore, MT-BC
(If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.)
Music therapists have the potential to be killer marketers.
Yes, marketers.
Marketing is not the same as selling. That’s marketing at it’s worst. At it’s best, marketing is simply communicating to a prospect how you can help them solve a problem. And our training as music therapists helps us immensely as marketers. Here’s how:
- Learn their history. As
music therapists, we spend time during the assessment phase researching our client’s history. This background work helps inform the treatment goals we establish. These same skills should be used in your marketing efforts.When preparing for a new client meeting or establishing a new target market, do your background research. What are their needs? What other treatment services do they seek? What problem do they need help solving? - Build rapport. One of the first steps in the therapeutic process is to build rapport with your client–it’s how you start to develop trust in the therapeutic relationship. Guess what? Prospective clients need to trust you, too. By building rapport with them, you are beginning to develop a working business relationship. So turn on that therapy charm, practice your active listening skills, and be 110% present when with a prospect.
- Fill a need. In therapy-ease, we call this creating goals and objectives. In marketing-ese, your job is to help your prospect solve a problem. I once heard someone say you don’t buy a drill to buy a drill—you buy a drill to create a whole in your wall. Your clients are not interested in music therapy; they are interesting in improving their quality of life. Similarly, your prospects are not interested in music therapy; instead, they are interested in saving money and improving the quality of care of their patients. Be the person who fills the needs and solves the problem.
- Be a consultant. As a music therapist your work often extends beyond the session time to include consultative work. Maybe you train clients to do daily music-based exercises or maybe you recommend other services that may help them. Similarly, your job when working with prospects is not to sell them your services. Your job is to listen to them, to understand their needs, and to help them solve a problem. It may be that your services are not the best answer to their problem. So what!?! You’ll earn their professional respect by being honest and genuinely helping them in the best way possible.
- Follow up. As a music therapist, you keep the communication lines open with your clients. Whether through phone calls, progress notes, emails, or newsletters, these correspondences help your clients feel cared for and improves the value of your work. Why would you not do the same for prospects? Keep the communication channels open. Drop them a “hey, how are you doing?” or “I saw this article you might be interested in” email every few months. Even if they say “no” at first, these types of follow-up contacts improve the chances of them saying “yes” later.
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