How to Find Your Brand Voice As a Therapist: A Guide

In the context of being a therapist online, your brand voice is the unique and consistent way you communicate with potential clients and the broader online community. It's more than just your tone of voice; it encompasses your personality, values, and the overall feeling you evoke through your written and visual content.

For therapists, a strong brand voice will not only make your content visually and tonally stronger, it will also help you find better-quality clients who get more from your personal therapeutic methodology. This is because you’ll learn how to attract clients who align with your values, match your target audience, and understand who you are fundamentally before they even schedule an intake session. This can result in longer-lasting, higher-quality clients who you have more impact on, because the issues they face and the type of person they are aligns well with you. 

Know Your Values

As a therapist, it is vital that you are able to identify your core values as both an individual and a therapist. Knowing your values allows you to authentically market yourself using your personal and professional values, and that will create a genuine connection with your clients.

Let’s look at an example:

Gina is a therapist who primarily specializes in childhood trauma, anxiety, and body image issues. Her marketing strategy is simple: She ranks well on PsychologyToday and gets a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from other counselors in her area. Her schedule is relatively full very consistently. This is not a bad thing, but there are a few improvements that can be made.

For example, because Gina ranks well on PsychologyToday, she likely gets a lot of clients that aren’t necessarily a perfect fit for her. She may get eating disorder clients, depressed clients, and couples. She is willing to see them because she feels she has the training necessary to help them, but because they are not clients that align with her specialties, she may not feel as excited about working with them, and they may feel that her methodologies aren’t working well for them. She gets a lot of clients, but she cycles through them fairly frequently.

Now let’s look at George. George is a counselor who specializes in seeing young professionals and entrepreneurs who have a poor work-life balance. He also gets some word-of-mouth clients, but his primary marketing strategy is posting frequently on Google, targeting his client base on LinkedIn, and creating messaging that appeals to his target audience on YouTube. For example, he may post a short-form video about how to tell when burnout is occurring. 

His schedule is about as full as Gina’s is, but his schedule is full of clients that heard what he had to say and felt seen by his marketing. They align with his target demographic, he is excited to work with most of them, and his methodologies work well with them because they are facing the issues he feels well-equipped to handle.

This is why incorporating your values into your brand voice can be so, so effective. It can help you find a client base that matches your specialties, which will result in longer-lasting client relationships and more effective therapy. Everyone wins.

Some prompts to reflect on to help you find your values:

• What principles or life lessons have guided your personal life decisions?

• When have you felt most fulfilled or aligned with your true self?

• What qualities do you admire most in others?

• What qualities are essential to the way you practice therapy? (Empathy, authenticity, calm, humor, etc.)

• What kind of changes do you hope to create through your work?

• What values were present in the most successful therapeutic experiences you’ve had with clients?

Who Is Your Ideal Client?

Now that you’ve identified your core values, it’s time to identify your ideal client. Understanding your target client can help to shape your communication style, tone, and methods you use to reach them. For instance, George does a great job reaching his target clients through LinkedIn and YouTube.

You may already have a target client in mind, and if that’s the case, you can skip this step. But if you don’t, we can do it together. All you need to do is invent one person who would be the perfect client for you to see. Fill out the following details about this person, being as specific as possible. Try to avoid using ranges for age, demographic, and location. The key is to be as specific as possible.

• Name: 

• Age: 

• Race: 

• Occupation: 

• Marital Status: 

• Location: 

• Living arrangements (owns home, rents, lives with family, etc.):

• Family status (parent, caregiver, etc.):

• Income level:

• Educational background: 

• Personality traits (introverted, extroverted, empathetic, etc.): 

• Values (personal and cultural): 

• Religious beliefs: 

• Lifestyle preferences (urban vs. rural, active vs. sedentary, etc.): 

• Interests and Hobbies: 

• Behavioral Patterns (health-conscious, risk-taker, routine-oriented, etc.): 

• Primary reason for seeking therapy: 

• Secondary reasons for seeking therapy, if any: 

• Previous therapy experience (if any): 

• Coping mechanisms currently using: 

• Level of self-awareness and readiness for change: 

• Emotional resilience and ability to manage stress: 

• Cultural background and heritage: 

• Language preferences and proficiency: 

• Immigration or acculturation experiences: 

• Attitudes towards mental health and therapy within their cultural context: 

• Sensitivity towards issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion: 

• Physical health conditions or disabilities impacting mental health: 

• Use of medications or treatments affecting mental health: 

• Lifestyle factors influencing mental health (diet, exercise, sleep patterns, etc.): 

• Interest in holistic approaches or alternative therapies: 

• Relationship status: 

• Family dynamics: 

• Interpersonal challenges: 

• Support system: 

• Employment status: 

• Career aspirations or challenges: 

• Work-related stressors or conflicts: 

• Impact of work-life balance on mental health: 

• Location: 

• Accessibility to your practice location (if applicable): 

• Preferences for in-person vs. virtual therapy sessions: 

• Preferred therapy approach or modality: 

• Expectations regarding therapy outcomes or goals: 

• Views on therapist characteristics (age, gender, cultural background, etc.): 

• Comfort level with technology and online communication tools: 

• Preferred methods of communication: 

• Accessibility needs (accommodations): 

Now, this list might seem long and alarmingly specific. I have worked with many clients in the past who believe they don’t need to identify a target client because that will alienate so many clients who don’t meet the criteria they might list here. 

That is a very valid way to feel, but hear me out for a second. This target client isn’t the only client you’ll allow yourself to see. In fact, 99.9% of all clients you ever see will likely not match the persona you create. However, using this persona to inform your brand voice will naturally help you filter out clients who don’t mesh well with you at all. 

For example, if you decide your target client is a female, gen alpha teenager who loves Chappelle Roan and hates men, your Instagram feed might look a little like mine. If, on the other hand, your target client is a millennial married man with two kids who is burnt out from overwork and needs to figure out if he should quit his job or start his business, your Instagram feed might look more like this.

So it IS important to do this exercise, especially if you plan to use social media, or even analog marketing like business cards and pamphlets, because knowing who you want to see you will inform the design and tone of your brand.

And, speaking of tone:

Analyze Your Communication Style

You also need to analyze the way you currently communicate with clients (both in writing and in-person). Tailor that communication style to your target audience. This shouldn’t be too difficult, and you’re likely already speaking and writing the way your target audience wants to be spoken and written to. But, just in case, consider the following:

• What are your natural communication strengths? 

• Are you more formal or casual in tone? 

• Do you prefer direct or indirect language?

Highlight how your communication style aligns (or doesn't align) with your values and target audience.

Authenticity is Key

If you take anything away from this blog post, let it be this: staying true to yourself when developing your brand voice is quintessential. I call this ethical marketing, and it is exactly what it sounds like; showing up as the real you in your content so that those in your audience know exactly what they’re getting when they “buy your product” or schedule with you. 

I highly recommend NOT trying to compare yourself to or imitate others in the space. Doing this will create a brand that doesn’t feel genuine, and I find that therapists who do this tend to see marketing as feeling icky or disingenuous. 

Instead, use the tools we talked about above to find a voice and a design style that you feel aligns with you AND your target audience, and then just be yourself. For instance, if you like to use humor in sessions, use humor in your content. If you find yourself constantly stressing the importance of self-care in sessions, stress self-care in your content. If you’re the go-to “break up with him” friend, be that person online. 

Just find what speaks to you and be true to that. It will feel genuine and attract clients who like or need that type of thing, which will result in better therapeutic outcomes in session.

Experiment and Test

Now is the time to get creative! Try out different social media and methods of contact for your audience. See what works and what doesn’t. And remember, what works also means it works for you. In other words, if you’re not enjoying posting to Instagram, drop it. Even if you’re finding some success. There are always other ways to reach your audience.

Some mediums to look into include:

• Blog posts

• Email newsletters

• Instagram

• TikTok

• YouTube

• LinkedIn

• Facebook

• Twitter/X

• “Analog” methods (handing out business cards and pamphlets)

• Appearing on other blogs, podcasts, etc.

Any of these methods are valid, and will get much more mileage using the steps above to craft your brand voice first.

Conclusion

So, to recap, the steps to find your brand voice as a therapist include:

• Considering your challenges

• Knowing your values

• Identifying a target client

• Analyzing your communication styles

• Being authentic

• Experimenting with different platforms

Brand development is always an ongoing process. If something doesn’t work or doesn’t feel good, change it up! 

Regardless, I absolutely encourage you as a therapist to embrace your unique voice and use it as a catalyst for good; you can change the lives of so many people when you do this correctly, and I find that that is the biggest value clients tend to get from me.

If you want to work together to figure this out, I would recommend my Market Research & Direction package. I’ll do a deep dive on your target client and help you come up with a direction that feels good for you and aligns with your target client so that you can go into your marketing with more tools and more information. If you’re interested in working together, let’s chat!