Don't just get found; get chosen.
Showcase yourself to leverage the power of the marketplace!
AgoraMHN is the online marketing system for professionals serious about marketing. Shouldn't it be yours too?
Ah! ...the allure of private practice...with the freedom to set your own schedule, set your own fees, and see as many (or as few) clients as you want. Be good at what you do and the clients will come. That’s the allure anyway. However, the reality is a lot different. Being good at what you do is certainly no guarantee for success. The success of your practice depends instead on some simple business realities. After all, your practice is a business.
To this point, you’ve already spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars to learn how to provide care to patients/clients. But, are you missing a steady stream of patient referrals? Is your practice income stunted by declining insurance rates over which you have no say? Where’s the freedom you envisioned? Who’s in control of your income?
Whether you're a novice or a seasoned professional, with the supply of practitioners increasing, your financial success (and livelihood) depends on creating a demand for your services. To be more precise, that means creating a steady stream of people who want to see YOU. That means…marketing yourself.
There, I said it. You still there?
Marketing...universally disliked and/or despised by mental health professionals. So, it’s no surprise that we’re pretty bad at it too. Yet it’s also the one aspect of practice that we all know is necessary to a steady flow of clients.
What do you do to market yourself? Do you post a "profile" with one of those therapist-finder services? Do you have a professional website? For the time, effort, and expense, how effective are those, really? Do they get you seen by prospective clients? See, it's not enough to get found if you don't get chosen.
We knew there was a better way. So, we designed the Agora Mental Health Network®.
A purpose-built, online marketing platform to create real demand for you.
We designed it for you, so you can do a proper job of marketing yourself. We designed it to satisfy the needs of modern health care “consumers” who are searching for the right professional. Imagine if you had a line of people waiting to talk to you...prospective clients looking for someone with your special skills. If you could get in front of them, how many would actually choose you? So, how do you get in front of hundreds of prospective clients ready to choose a professional? With effective online marketing, that's how. Not only does AgoraMHN help them find you, we help them get to know you and feel confident enough to schedule that first appointment.
How does it work for professionals?
We approach online marketing for mental health professionals the way any business would. Know your customer's wants and needs when they go online looking for help. Then, give them more than they expected. Communicate openly about your skills and specialties so consumers can form their own judgments, settle their doubts, and then feel comfortable to take action.
Here’s how the Agora Mental Health Network® (AgoraMHN) does that.
1. We treat your practice like a business
A successful business operates with a sharp focus to maximize the exchange of value between provider and customer. It’s no different with mental health care. You can be both a compassionate professional as well as being a savvy businessperson Our mission is to help you to profit even more by incorporating business practices not often utilized in mental health care
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2. Get maximum value from your marketing budget
Done right, marketing is an investment of time, effort, and money that pays for itself many times over. Add up the current costs of your online marketing (subscriptions to multiple provider lists, maintaining your own website, etc.) and consider what you get for that monthly outlay: a static page or an online brochure at best.
Now consider that AgoraMHN gives you a bevy of marketing tools you won’t find anywhere else. Those tools make it easy to create and maintain a dynamic marketing hub... to grow your reputation with consumers and your best referral sources. AgoraMHN may cost a little more, but as the saying goes, "If price is what you pay, value is what you get." Invest in the best tools to achieve your business goals and seize the power of a modern marketplace.
3. We appeal to modern healthcare consumers
70% of mental health consumers now go online to research professionals, but the value of information they find depends on whether it is meaningful to them. With online "provider lists” so plentiful, visibility is not the problem. The problem is that those online profiles make us all look alike to the average consumer. At AgoraMHN, we start with a marketplace and make it transparent so that consumers have plenty of information that actually matters to them.
4. We help consumers make highly personal choices
We know what consumers want because we asked! They said they want to be able to make their own choices and not just rely on blind referrals. Since they can't easily tell us apart, we designed a unique user experience founded on transparency. We give them the information they want and use decision supports--such as head-to-head comparisons--to enhance their preferences so they'll feel comfortable to choose. To achieve that transparency, professionals must record a video interview, post customary fees, respond quickly to consumers' inquiries, and offer a 10-minute, introductory greeting if a prospective client requests it (see Terms and Conditions of Membership for further details).
5. Showcase yourself inside your own portal
When consumers go looking for expertise and a personal connection, a picture-and-a-paragraph profile doesn't cut it. Inside your own portal, however, you can demonstrate both...convincingly! You get to differentiate yourself and they get a believable experience...so they can judge for themselves. As part of that experience, we require that all professionals will record (or sit for) a video interview to answer a set of questions that consumers might typically ask before scheduling their first appointment. With video, on-page blog posts, and the ability to upload all kinds of professional information about yourself, consumers can finally believe what they see.
6. Place your portal inside an efficient marketplace
Unless they have your name already, consumers go online to search for help by location, asking Google for 'therapists near me". So, a marketplace of therapists will attract far more attention from consumers than your personal website ever could. With your portal inside our marketplace, more prospective clients--who've never heard of you--can find you, get to know you, and even choose you.
7. Stand out from the crowd using our tech-friendly tools
Marketing is all about effectively communicating your value to your potential customers. It's not hard, really! Our show-and-tell methods convey what facts and figures can’t. Streaming videos, embedded blogs, social media integrations, and email templates all play powerful roles to grow your brand and position yourself in the minds of consumers and referrers. Best of all, no technical skills needed!
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Streaming video
People love videos. It's more "real", more memorable, drives more traffic, and is more persuasive than text alone. Come alive in your personal interview video and let people get to know what it would be like to work with you. You can create unlimited videos and/or embed other external videos inside your portal. It's your own professional channel.
Blog and opinion
With your in-portal blog, you can express yourself to demonstrate both your interests and your expertise. Offer consumers a sample of your professional mind to position yourself as an authority. Prospective clients crave evidence of your professionalism and will eagerly read and share your writing across social media.
Email templates & Contacts management
Email is still the most effective medium for professional communication, especially to third-party referrers. So, get connected with email and stay top-of-mind with potential referral sources with so little effort! Leverage your email contacts using AgoraMHN-branded email templates or create your own. Steer your connections to your marketing hub and they’ll never have to search for you again.
Share your content with social media
Use social media to expand your reputation and reach. We make it really easy to promote yourself on multiple channels with integrated tools. Let the network effect work to spread your work to consumers and professionals alike.
8. Grow your profits, not just your caseload: Attract "choosier" clients
As the costs of health care shift back to consumers (increased out-of-pocket costs in the form of higher deductibles, copays, and co-insurance), consumers are looking to get better value for their healthcare dollars. More than ever, consumers have financial incentives to choose the "right" professional. If they can't find that person, they'll go out-of-network or pay for treatment entirely out-of-pocket. When you attract these consumers you rely less on insurance-based referrals and reimbursement. AgoraMHN professionals can even advertise discounts to make it easier to attract those cost-conscious consumers who might gladly go out-of-network in order to see a specific professional.
9. Use “dynamic pricing” to boost your profits
Dynamic pricing is commonplace elsewhere and now it comes to mental health care! If you've ever extended a "sliding fee", then you've already used dynamic pricing. When you can set your own fees based on the demand for your appointment times, you can maximize your profits. Using this feature you can get paid premium fees for your most precious appointment hours, or fill empty slots with discounted fees. Only at AgoraMHN, can you routinely leverage your professional time this way.
For the practice you always wanted, get started now!
