Image of Liane Wood in a red shirt with the text, Episode #63 of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast: Marketing Ethics, Informed Consent, and Google Ads with Liane Wood.

Today I’m speaking with Liane Wood, a psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada, and the founder of Psychotherapy Mastermind, an organization helping therapists navigate entrepreneurship and build successful practices.

Liane’s first career was in insurance, so she has a unique perspective on helping practitioners navigate risk as healthcare providers.

In this episode we talk about some unique ideas, including what makes ethical marketing, what counts as informed consent, and much more.

Liane also runs a successful multi-practitioner office, and we discuss what marketing is working for her right now.

Hope you enjoy!

🎙️ Listen to Episode #62: Marketing Ethics, Informed Consent, and Google Ads with Liane Wood

Show Notes:

Thank you to our sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by Jane. Jane is an all-in-one practice management software designed to help you streamline your Acupuncture practice. I use Jane in my practice and I love it! 💙

With helpful features like online booking, electronic charting, insurance billing, and much more, Jane works hard to keep up with your busy practice.  

If you’re interested in learning more, head to jane.app/acupuncture-us.

Don’t forget to use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO at sign-up for a one-month grace period inside Jane. 🕺

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify

 💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:04):

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

(00:28):

Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane. Jane is an all-in-one practice management software designed to help you streamline your acupuncture practice with helpful features like online booking, electronic charting, insurance, billing, and much more. Jane works hard to keep up with your busy practice, and if you need a helping hand, you’ll have access to unlimited phone, email, and chat support included in all Jane subscriptions. If you’re interested in learning more, head to Jane.app/acupuncture-us. I’ll include a link in the show notes. Or use the code [ACUSCHOOL1MO] at signup for a one-month grace period inside Jane, and I’ll include the code in the show notes as well.

(01:16):

All right, let’s get into this episode. Today I’m speaking with Liane Wood, a psychotherapist practicing in Ontario, Canada and the founder of Psychotherapy Mastermind, which is an organization dedicated to helping therapists navigate entrepreneurship and learn to build successful practices. Liane’s first career was in insurance, so she has a pretty unique perspective on helping healthcare practitioners navigate risk and, in this episode, we talk about some unique ideas, including what makes ethical marketing, what counts as informed consent and much more. Liane also runs a successful multi practitioner practice, and we discuss what marketing is working for her right now. I hope you enjoy this one. Without further ado, I give you Liane Wood.

(02:07):

Hello, Liane. Welcome. How are you today?

[LIANE WOOD] (02:12):

Hello. I’m good. I’m good. Thanks for having me here.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (02:16):

Absolutely. My pleasure. I am excited to talk to you about marketing ethics and informed consent and how you market your multi-practitioner practice. You are a psychotherapist in Canada, will you remind me where you are in Canada?

[LIANE WOOD] (02:34):

Absolutely, yeah. I’m in Belleville, Ontario, so I’m east of Toronto. I have a private practice there with, there’s three therapists here.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (02:42):

Okay, perfect. Does that include you? Are you the third one?

[LIANE WOOD] (02:45):

It does, yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (02:46):

Very nice. I know that you have a history of working in insurance, is that right?

[LIANE WOOD] (02:53):

I do, yeah. I was, I have, this is an encore career for me being a psychotherapist and before this career, I’m dating myself, but I had just over 25-year career in insurance as a broker and worked in a number of different roles there.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (03:12):

Very nice. So that is what led you into teaching other psychotherapists and other healthcare practitioners about things like informed consent and new ways of thinking about it? Can you tell us a little bit about that transition and that journey?

[LIANE WOOD] (03:29):

Yeah, yeah. So, for myself, when I went to my education program for psychotherapy and studied that I got to the end of my program and was recognizing that there hadn’t been, there’d been great training on psychotherapy and how to be a therapist and run therapy sessions, but what was missing was the business side of running a practice and pieces around documentation and consent and marketing. As I started looking at all the regulations and the framework that I had to work within, I very quickly became overwhelmed and started looking for resources to help me put this together, because in my previous career in insurance, I’d actually spent a fair amount of time working in the area of professional liability insurance, like malpractice and errors and emissions.

(04:24):

And one of the things that I did in those roles is I would work with various groups of regulated professionals, helping them understand the regulations and come up with policies and workflows to keep them within that framework. So I recognized, oh, my goodness, I can’t find that framework for what I’m doing now as a psychotherapist and so I had to, I felt like I took a step back, really studied up on that, figured out how to do it in my practice because I felt like I needed that peace of mind that I had all those bases covered. And throughout that process, and I would have colleagues that I was talking to, and they’re like, “Oh, did you figure, how are you doing that?” They’re asking me all these questions. So it started with me sharing what I was learning with my colleagues, and then it’s just really expanded from there and so now I do, I teach other psychotherapists the business side of psychotherapy practice.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (05:21):

It sounds very familiar to acupuncture school where you’re extremely well trained in acupuncture, and then they really do their best to give you as much info as they can about setting up your practice. I know the school I went to, they were great about things like paperwork, like these are the legal side. They even tried to teach us like how to bill insurance, but marketing, there wasn’t a ton of marketing. But yeah, I think it varies depending on the school that you went to. So we had had a really interesting conversation previously about how informed consent is not just signing a piece of paper, like a legal document, which, when I think about it really makes sense. But I’ll let you dive in a little bit.

[LIANE WOOD] (06:05):

Yeah, absolutely. There is this idea that you consent, well, yeah, consent is signing a document, a waiver, so to speak, but many regulatory colleges, depending on the profession you’re in, actually talk about this concept of informed consent. That just really raises the level of consent that needs to happen when you’re working with your clients or your patients. So the idea of informed consent, when you think about what being informed means, can we actually say, “Well, I emailed them a consent form, they signed it, we’re good.” Is that informed consent and how is that informed consent? Because when I think about, I have an Apple device and they come out with a new service agreement or whatever, and I think I do what most of us do, which is quickly scroll to the bottom, click, “I agree,” and get me into what I need right now. Like, I won’t even read any of it.

(07:05):

And I think how many of my own clients do that with a consent form that I email to them? Do they just like scroll to the bottom, I agree, sign and boom, they think that they’re done? So that might be consent in that you have a form that is signed by them, but the idea of informed consent is that they’re informed, they’re making a conscious decision. So when I really started looking into this, I realized that, okay, this is not informed consent, just getting a signature on a piece of paper, never having a conversation, never talking about what we’re actually going to be doing in our work together.

[LIANE WOOD] (07:43):

So as I started looking into this more, I came across this fantastic, to me it was fantastic, and I’ll share it with you here, a way of going through an informed consent process and so I just want to be really clear that I did not come up with this. This actually came from midwives and doulas in, through like labor and delivery processes and looking at what is going on there. They came up with this beautiful acronym using the word BRAIN for informed consent. You can use this acronym to really walk through a process of consent with your clients and your patients. I’ll run through the BRAIN acronym with you here. I’m not, I’m a acupuncture client, but I’m not going to try and customize the BRAIN acronym to acupuncture because I just don’t feel like I know your field well enough.

(08:39):

The B in BRAIN stands for benefits. When you’re having your informed consent with conversation with your clients, tell them you’re going to run through, I tell my clients, I’m going to run through the BRAIN acronym because this is really going to help us with staying on track for consent. So I talk about the benefits of therapy, and so what they might expect as a benefit of participating in therapy. You guys would talk about the benefits of acupuncture. So after you’ve laid that out a little bit for them, then you move on to the R, which stands for risks. You talk a little bit about the risks of working with you, like what are some things that maybe could be uncomfortable or go wrong? Like what do they need to be mindful of? When do they need to speak up?

(09:28):

Then the A stands for alternatives. They need to, if they’re going to have informed consent, they need to know what their other options are. Like, what are their, for me it’s like, well, what are the other options to participating in psychotherapy? I run through those options and one of those options is, you don’t have to work with me, there are other psychotherapists. So for you can say there are other acupuncturists, but also talking about there are other ways that you can address these issues, and here are some of those ways. Then you get to the I, and the I stands for either instinct or intuition. That’s really when you get to the I, that’s where you’re checking in with your client or patient and you’re saying, “How is this sounding to you? How is this landing with you? What questions do you have about us working together?” That’s your check-in with the client.

(10:20):

Then you wrap up the informed consent with the N in BRAIN. That stands for no. There’s two types of no. You need to let your client understand, help them understand that they can say no at any time. Anything that you’re suggesting that you try in your sessions with them, they have the right to say, no, I don’t want to do that. No, can we do something else? So you let them know that they have that power to say no. They also have the right to know, as in understand what we’re doing in our sessions and why we’re doing it. I love the BRAIN acronym because it covers off all those key points that really make an informed consent. So you talk about the benefits of working with you, you talk about the risks, you let them know what the alternatives are to working with you, you check in with them, “How are you feeling about this, what are your questions around this,” and you let them know “You always have the right to say no to anything I’m suggesting, and you have the right to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.” Then once you get the client to say yes to that, now you can confidently feel you have informed consent.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (11:32):

I love each of those pieces and, especially the no one, because sometimes when I’m talking with a patient about trying like an extra modality like cupping or moxa or something like that, they are like, they look nervous occasionally. If they’re brand new to acupuncture, they’re like, “Well, you know what’s best.” I’m like, “Well, you can, like I’m going to walk you through what this is like before we do it and if you don’t want to try it today, we don’t have to. We could always think about trying it next week or not at all.” I think it is really actually important to let people know that they have the right to ask you like nitty gritty questions and I also try to remind people that it’s okay to ask those questions of all of their healthcare providers because they do think that sometimes patients, they, when they come to acupuncture, they’ve sometimes been a lot of other places.

[LIANE WOOD] (12:29):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (12:29):

Like they’ve seen many other providers and they’re frustrated and they’re like, “Oh, well my doctor said to do this and it didn’t help. I’m sorry that I tried X, Y, Z method because it made me feel a little worse. Or I didn’t feel comfortable asking for alternatives.” I’m like, “You have every right as a patient to question your doctor the same way that you have every right to question me like what are we doing and why are we doing this? How long is it going to last? How long are you going to leave me alone with needles?” Yesterday I had a new patient, it was her second visit, and she just was so anxious being left alone with needles in the first treatment and even though I asked her, is it okay that I leave you, do you want me to leave the door open so you can call me if you need something. Then, so at this treatment, I was like, “How was that?” She was like, “I didn’t like it. Will you stay with me?” So we did moxa for like the whole time because she was, it was really too much. I’m like, “Okay, well that’s great that you told me because I don’t want this to be a stressful experience to you.” And that’s is really rare. Most of my patients are like, “Please leave so I can nap.”

[LIANE WOOD] (13:38):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (13:40):

But if you don’t ask people questions and let them know that they have permission to question what you’re doing, then they may not tell you when they’re feeling anxious and then they just, they won’t come back or something like that.

[LIANE WOOD] (13:53):

Well, exactly.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (13:55):

Then I think the alternatives is beautiful. When we talked earlier, you had mentioned that this came about from labor and delivery and that people were, for example, just being rushed into like a C-section or some other procedure and like being signing consent. But there was no discussion of like, you don’t have to do this, here might be your options, or this is quite an emergency of your other options are limited. And just the idea that nurses were noticing that it didn’t feel like people had consent. So, yeah, I think especially in those situations, like a whole big discussion is necessary although it is maybe they are rushed, it feels like a rushed conversation, but essential.

[LIANE WOOD] (14:39):

Well, and see we have the luxury with what I’m doing in psychotherapy and what you are doing to me with acupuncture, that we’re not in those crisis situations. So really, why wouldn’t we take those moments to really check in with our clients? I often feel as a practitioner that I’ve got this great idea for what we can do and how it’s going to go for my patient or my client and when I take that moment, just to check in with them and say, listen, this is what I’m thinking and here’s why, here’s what I, how I think it could work, and then they have a very valid reason why they don’t want to, or why it may not work for them. And I’m constantly, it’s almost like these little mind-blown moments, like thank goodness I asked. That could have been terribly upsetting for them or just not been as effective as I thought it was going to be. So really taking the moments to get that informed consent. The other piece that it really does is it really fosters a strong connection between your client and your patient and you as a practitioner because they know they can trust you. You’re explaining things, you’re checking in with them. It really builds that trust between the client and the practitioner.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (15:52):

Yeah, absolutely. That brings me to our next topic, which is ethics in marketing. Because I think that really, really great marketing builds trust in your potential patients. And I know that one of the reasons a lot of my marketing clients and marketing students don’t want to do marketing is they’re worried about coming across as pushy or sleazy and they are real community members in the area where they live. They’re like part of the local community and so their focus is being trusted by real life people and so they are really worried about the idea of creating marketing that comes across feeling gross. And I find that often this is more of a theoretical worry than something realistic. I think that people who are already conscientious of not creating gross marketing are not going to do that because They’re already sensitive to it. That’s on their radar. So I would say most acupuncturists are not about to create a gross, awful commercial for TV that people can’t stand. It’s really, really unlikely, but it’s a concern that we have. And so sometimes I like to remind them that you are probably going to create this lovely ethical marketing that feels good to you and to your clients, but sometimes that’s a really new concept for people. What is ethical marketing and what does that look like? So I’d love to hear your perspectives on it or some examples from your experience.

[LIANE WOOD] (17:29):

Well, I don’t have acupuncture examples, but I think from my perspective, it is about this idea of building trust with people. What I have found to work really well is approaching my marketing from an educational perspective, talking about some common things that psychotherapy can help. I will talk in my marketing about depression. What are the signs of depression? What do you need to watch out for? How can therapy help depression? I’m not saying you should be in therapy. I’m letting people know like, what I’m letting them know about this condition that psychotherapy can help. So there’s an education piece around the issue and then also talking about how therapy can help. And I’m not saying you should talk to me, it’s very conversational, it’s educational that way, and what happens is over time people come to go, oh, Liane works with people who have depression or whatever the issues are, and so there is that, from a marketing perspective, it’s called the know, like, trust factor. People need to know who you are, they need to like you, and they need to trust you and once they know you, like you and trust you, then they might be ready to work with you.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (18:54):

Yes.

[LIANE WOOD] (18:55):

As I’m thinking about acupuncture, I’m a client of acupuncture, I love it, getting some marketing about different things that acupuncture can help with. Like, I’m sure, well, I shouldn’t say sure, I know that I don’t know all the things that acupuncture could help me with. To be able to see some stuff, it’s like, oh, I didn’t know acupuncture could help with that or how does acupuncture help with that? Why might I think about trying acupuncture for those things? I would think that’s an amazing way to start off your marketing in a way that isn’t salesy or pushy or any of those other things that you don’t want. Like it can, you can really position yourself as the expert in the professional in this area.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (19:37):

I definitely agree, and I’m always asking my students to think about marketing from that educational perspective for sure and really emphasizing that marketing can ultimately be about sharing information and knowledge, which is pretty empowering to individuals. Because really what we’re doing by marketing in this way is we are just giving people another option for their healthcare. Then even if they decide not to work with us and try acupuncture, at least they had that extra information as a potential in their toolkit and then they can say like, okay, well, I could try acupuncture, I could get massage, I could take medication, or I could go to physical therapy, and right now, like mentally I’m prepared to, I don’t know, go to physical therapy. But that doesn’t mean that they’re never going to come back and try acupuncture.

(20:31):

Then of course, our hope is that they will be convinced and try acupuncture, but it just, it takes so much pressure off of people when you, when they’re thinking that marketing is going to feel gross and the have this like, stress and pressure about getting started with it. When you just remind them that by getting acupuncture visible in their community, they’re empowering people with options about their healthcare and allowing them to make well-rounded decisions for themselves and their family that feels really good. Like, that’s what we are here to do as healthcare providers, is even if people don’t choose us, we’re here to support our community in making the decision that feels the best for them at this time. I just like, I wish I could shout it from the rooftops and be like, there’s so many kinds of marketing you can do that feel like warm and fuzzy on both sides, helpful and just imparting knowledge.

[LIANE WOOD] (21:25):

Well, and even, like you’re talking about them making their own decision, but each individual that you educate about what you do, they have a circle of influence. So even if they’re not ready for acupuncture themselves, if they’re talking with friends or family members who say, I’ve got this going on, and they now know that they didn’t know before, but they now know, oh, hey, I just read about acupuncture and how it can help with that, they’re going to say that. They’re going to say that to their friends or family. So sometimes when I do email marketing as well where I’ll, but from an educational perspective, and I will often at the bottom of the email say, if you know someone who would benefit from this, feel free to share it.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (22:14):

I am so happy to hear that you do that because I teach email marketing like, as much as possible. It’s one of my favorite kinds of marketing and I think that is just the smartest thing to put at the bottom of every email that you send, is some sort of call-to-action where you are inviting people to forward the email because you think it’s relevant or you are inviting them to refer their friends and family, because it’s always an honor to take care of their loved ones. It’s just, it’s good feeling marketing. I also, I love email marketing because you get to write emails in your jammies at your desk at home, and you don’t have to learn a dance on TikTok or something like that. It’s very low-pressure.

(23:01):

We had also talked about testimonials, which I think is such a fascinating topic in marketing. This is how you’re a real marketing nerd when you’re saying things like testimonials are fascinating. Because in the United States, we have a lot of freedom for the kinds of marketing that we can do as healthcare providers, but in other countries, people have a lot of limitations sometimes about what sort of marketing they’re allowed to do as healthcare providers. So I know that where you are located, and then certainly in Australia, people are not allowed to use testimonials as part of their marketing if they’re in healthcare. So I would love to talk about that a little bit.

[LIANE WOOD] (23:43):

Yeah, you’re right. Where I am in Canada using testimonials for psychotherapy is not permitted. So that would be like a huge no-no. I find myself getting disciplined pretty quick if I started using client testimonials in my marketing. The reasons that have come from my regulatory bodies is that what one client experiences may not be what another one experiences and so can we make this claim ethically that working with Liane is going to cure your depression or whatever the issue may be. So that is just not really a good idea to do that. The other thing that I can’t do in my marketing is say that I’m the best. I can’t say “best psychotherapy in Belleville or in Ontario.” That can’t do anything like that or anything in my marketing that creates a promise. “Do this psychotherapy with Liane and you will be cured of the issue.” I can’t do anything that way.

(24:53):

Again when you think about it, I’m not sure you know exactly how this correlates to acupuncture, but in psychotherapy, the results are very much dependent on the client’s active participation in the therapy. So they need to be actively engaged and participating in therapy to really get the full benefit out of it. Well, I don’t know how active or participating a person is going to be in therapy, so how can I ethically say this is going to be your result? So I use words in my marketing, like, may experience, it can do this, it may help you with that. So there are ways to get around it a little bit, but in a way that’s not promising or guaranteeing those results. Does that answer your question, Michelle?

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (25:43):

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I certainly think that it’s smart not to make promises in marketing it, because, again, I think as far as I know in the US, I don’t know of any specific rules that say we couldn’t use those promising words like, acupuncture will result in X, Y, Z. But I think most people have a strong feeling that like, that’s not a good idea. And because we care so much about whether what we are saying is actually true, like, are we building trust or are we making false promises, I think a lot of acupuncturists are already very cognizant of that idea that like, it’s better to play it safe and use the language that doesn’t make those promises in their marketing. And yeah, the testimonial thing is, I am a huge proponent of if you live in a country where you can use testimonials, especially Google Reviews, because they help boost your, the rank of your website on Google, like if you can use them, I always tell people to maximize them. Ask every happy patient to give you a review, and then we just sort of have to hope on the backend, the people reading the reviews will have the presence of mind to know that, well, this was one person’s experience, and results are never guaranteed.

(27:09):

I do remember, I actually have a marketing ethics class, like a PDA credit for acupuncturists, and we talk about testimonials in that class. I had done some research on why Australia doesn’t allow them and they had pointed out that for most testimonials, the practitioner has the opportunity to decide whether or not to publish them. So naturally we aren’t going to put negative testimonials on our website if we receive one, which doesn’t happen very often. I think that’s really interesting because with Google Reviews, people have the freedom to leave whatever review that they like and you can’t just take it down. If you think it’s totally incorrect, you can flag it and ask Google to take a look at it, but I think in like a decade, however long it takes a real-life person and not a robot at Google to look at it, then they might evaluate it. But for the most part, those are pretty much out of your hands. So for me, I feel like, oh man, my American friends, I feel like you should go for it. I know that that is a really strong marketing avenue for my own practice.

[LIANE WOOD] (28:17):

I think there’s a difference. I think there’s a difference between testimonials and reviews. So testimonials, something that you use in your marketing.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (28:27):

Yeah, like on your website.

[LIANE WOOD] (28:28):

Yeah, like our regulatory, I mean, how can you stop somebody from leaving a Google Review or rate my therapist or whatever, like those websites? I can’t control what people are doing. Our regulatory colleges reviews, if they happen, okay, they happen, we’re not allowed to solicit reviews. I’m not allowed to say to a client who has a great experience, “Hey, can you give us a Google Review?” Or whatever. But those reviews, they’re going to happen at some point in time with people. So I think there is a distinction between testimonials and choosing which testimonials you include in your marketing and then there’s reviews that happen, and hopefully you get some positive reviews because they do really help. But yeah, absolutely. If you are somewhere where you can actively solicit reviews or use testimonials and you can do it in a way that is ethical, not getting your friends and family members to write them.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (29:29):

Oh God, that’s a really good point. Yes, there’s a specific way that I teach my students to ask for reviews inside my online class, Acupuncture Marketing School. I am a very introverted, low-key person, so I like to ask over email because I think that’s low-pressure and often, I really intend to ask people to write a review when they’re present with me in the office, but then through the checkout process, I’m just on autopilot, and then they leave and I’m like, darn it. So I’ll do an email follow up. But basically, the email is asking, “Would you be comfortable leaving a Google Review? If you are, here’s the link that goes directly to the review page.” Then I also give them an out, if you’re not comfortable leaving a review, I completely understand, because not everybody is willing to make a public statement on the internet with their name attached to it and so there’s zero pressure if you just don’t want to do this.

(30:20):

So I find that people who are happy to write a review will respond and be like, yeah, no problem. Then they’ll do it immediately and then some people will just sort of never answer me. I take that as, okay, I’m not comfortable making a public statement on the internet. So it’s sort of giving that, I guess it’s giving them their alternative for their informed consent for their review. Your alternative is not to do it and not to answer this email. But I feel like maybe 50% of the people that I ask will leave a review and at this point, I mean, I don’t know why more people don’t do it. I believe I have 67 Google Reviews and the nearest person to me is maybe a 15- or 20-minute drive and they have, I think they have 35 reviews and then it’s like everybody else locally has four. I know for sure that, for sure those acupuncturists and everyone listening has patients who are their biggest fans and they would love to leave you a review if you just made the request. So I’d love to hear the structure of your practice, because you said there’s three of you at your office, and to talk about what marketing works well to bring people in and then, I’m also curious how you divide up, when you have new clients, how do you decide who gets them in a practice with three people?

[LIANE WOOD] (31:46):

Yeah, great questions. So in terms of marketing, I am someone who doesn’t put all my eggs in one basket.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (31:55):

Oh, I like that.

[LIANE WOOD] (31:56):

I really feel that there needs to be several streams happening to be bringing new clients into the practice. Some of them are paid marketing strategies and some of them are not paid. I would encourage you, especially when you’re starting out, to look at those not paid marketing strategies and really jump on them to get the ball rolling because you can do a lot for your practice that doesn’t involve laying out money to attract people to your practice. So the stuff that doesn’t cost money is the social media posts. You can also think about, we’ve done a number of psychoeducational workshops just talking about, well, how do you manage anxiety? We’re going to do an hour-long workshop, it’s totally free, we’re just going to talk about some common general ways to manage anxiety. So I imagine for you, there’s probably some educational pieces that might be really beneficial. It doesn’t cost money, it costs your time and effort. And what I do at the end of those workshops is there’s always a feedback form. I’d love to hear from you what you liked about this workshop, what you didn’t like about this workshop and are you interested in booking a free consult with us, and to see if we might be a fit to work together. So it’s a feedback form, which helps me make the next workshop better.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (33:16):

Love that.

[LIANE WOOD] (33:17):

But it’s also that moment of just asking them, would you like to work with us? And every time we’ve done a workshop, we get a client or two, every single time. So it really makes it worthwhile doing that. Another free, and when I say free, I mean like, I’m not paying money to do this, is building networking connections with allied health practitioners, talking with them about what I do, how I might be able to support them, how I may be able to help their clients or patients, that type of thing, and building those relationships where people can start to refer clients to me and to my practice, that’s also really helpful. And doing it reciprocally, so that it’s like, oh my goodness, if I have someone come in it’s like I have a physiotherapist that I work with and few other practitioners that I work with because just because someone is showing up in my office for psychotherapy there are actual physical things that can cause distress. You fix the physical problem and that distress is gone and psychotherapy is just not going to do it because it’s a physical issue, so I need to have that network. So building that network of other health professionals or even, I mean for me as a psychotherapist, I really would have to think for a few minutes about acupuncture, but I’ve reached out to places like funeral homes, people who are grieving and saying to funeral homes, “Listen, if people need grief counseling, please pass my name along.” So these are all things that cost a little bit of time and a little bit of effort, but they don’t require a cash layout.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (34:52):

Yes.

[LIANE WOOD] (34:53):

And they will bring clients to your practice. And then you can get into some of the paid stuff, things like, whether it’s social media advertising or whether it’s Google AdWords or whether it is a newspaper ad or billboards or whatever you think is really going to work for your practice. But I just really want to emphasize that there’s a lot that you can do to market your practice that doesn’t cost you money.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (35:19):

Yes, I’m a big fan of that. What paid advertisements are you doing?

[LIANE WOOD] (35:24):

We use Google AdWords for sure. That’s the big one that we’re using right now. And then we do some stuff on social media as well. So if we have like a free workshop coming up or something like that, we’ll run an ad on social media promoting that free workshop to get people signed up for the workshop.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (35:41):

Do you have any tips for the Google AdWords? It’s pretty small snippet of text, so you don’t have a lot of space to say what you need to say to convince people

[LIANE WOOD] (35:55):

Well, you have to really think differently. I find I have to really, when I’m looking at my Google AdWords, I have to really look at it from my client’s perspective. My client may not say, “I feel depressed.” They may not say that. So I have to think about, okay, when someone is experiencing depression symptoms, how do they describe what the problem is?

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (36:25):

I love that.

[LIANE WOOD] (36:26):

Those are the key words, and that’s the languaging that you want to use. So if you’re going to get into Google AdWords, I would really encourage you to really listen to what your clients and patients are saying when they come to you, how are they describing the problem that they’re experiencing? Really pay attention to exactly the words that they’re using. How are they describing it? Because that’s likely what they’re going to search on Google.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (36:54):

That’s so true. I feel like you should teach Acupuncture Marketing School with me, You could be my co-teach. I am always telling people, you have to know your target market. You have to know your ideal patient because once you know that, then you know how they would talk about their symptoms or their difficulty that they’re experiencing, as well as how they would talk about the outcome that they want. Then once you know that you can use those words to really get their attention in your marketing. That’s so much more effective. I always think about, because I don’t think I’m running any Google ads right now, but I really do like them and I have run them in the past and I’m in a pretty, I guess I would say like rural conservative area, and so I’m still doing a lot of education about acupuncture, what is it, who can it help, that sort of thing.

(37:43):

So where I live, I find that for my Google Ads, it’s helpful to do exactly what you said, to think about, is a person going to say, I have knee pain, I need acupuncture. Probably not. They might look for things like natural relief for knee pain. So they know that they have knee pain, they don’t necessarily want to get a shot at the doctor’s office, or they’re worried that the doctor’s just going to tell them to take ibuprofen and put ice on it. Or they’ve already tried that and they’re like, ah, it’s still bothering me. I don’t want to go back to the doctor. So they’re like, well, what can I do by myself to take care of this? That’s the sort of angle that they might be coming from. Whereas someone who lives in a larger city or an area where acupuncture is a lot more common, there could be people who are already really well educated about acupuncture and that is what they’re Googling. But you have to know your target market and your ideal patient to understand which angle are they coming from. Really, really helpful.

[LIANE WOOD] (38:41):

So true. When you can figure out your ideal client’s problems, like what their common problems are, how they talk about those problems, and what they’re hoping the outcome would be if things were to get better and you use that languaging, that’s when your marketing really clicks.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (38:59):

Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I have one more question for you, and that is, what is your definition of success?

[LIANE WOOD] (39:11):

Ooh, that’s a good question. Success is a relative term, I think. It can mean different things to different people. In my mind, I think success is tied to being fulfilled and I think everyone within that has their own idea of what it means to be fulfilled. So it could include things like having close meaningful relationships or having a sense of deep purpose in life and being able to pursue those areas of passion and really having a sense of peace. So I think in my mind it’s really tied into fulfillment.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (39:55):

I love that. Well, thank you again. Where can we find you? Where can we follow you? Is there, I know you have your therapy website, is there a place where as practitioners we can connect with you or work with you if people have questions?

[LIANE WOOD] (40:09):

If you want to do a consult with me around informed consent or marketing, that type of thing, go to my practice website, which is rethinkme.ca and you can click the booking link and you’ll be able to. It’ll say Psychotherapist Consult, but that’s okay, you’re booking the consult as another professional. And on social media it’s Rethink Me, my therapist education, social media is Psychotherapy Masterminds. So if you look for Psychotherapy Masterminds on Facebook and Instagram, you’ll find me there where I’m talking about the different education pieces that I do there for psychotherapists. Some of it is transferable as we’ve been talking about today to the world of acupuncture.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (40:54):

Well, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

[LIANE WOOD] (40:57):

It’s been an honor being here with you today, Michelle. Thanks so much for having me.