This is how you create a unique therapy niche
It’s not easy to get a full caseload, but having a specific, unique therapy niche can put you in front of people who might otherwise not find you.
The good news is that you can specialize in almost anything, and having a particularly unique set of skills will get you very far as a private practice therapist.
I have spent the last five years learning marketing while working for various mental health practices, and I can tell you from experience that the clinicians who have the most clients are the ones with a selection of hyper-specific knowledge and experience.
Ultimately, the key is to create a niche by combining specialties.
What’s the difference between a specialty and a niche?
One common point of confusion is that your specialty IS your niche. It’s not. Ultimately, your specialties can inform your niche, but it’s not the same thing as your niche. (That’s right; being a solutions-focused therapist is not your niche!)
The difference is minute, but it is there. Your specialties are how you describe yourself. You are a marriage & family counselor who is trained in both CBT and play therapy, or you are a psychodynamic counselor with a background in working with couples.
Your niche is how you describe your clients. That is, children between the ages of 3-10 who have anxiety, or couples who have experienced childhood trauma.
What is a therapy niche?
The easiest way to think of your niche, if it’s not the same as your specialty, is a combination of your areas of interest. You’ve probably heard of having an “ideal client,” and having a niche is essentially the same thing. What identities do you prefer to work with? What backgrounds and experiences do you have that make you unique?
It’s important to keep in mind that you can have too specific a niche. If you only work with women ages 21-26 who are breast cancer survivors and experiencing grief after the loss of a loved one, your pool of potential clients will be pretty small. If, however, you work with women ages 40+ who have survived cancer and are experiencing grief, your client pool may be larger.
You also need to be sure that you’re not making your list too long. I would recommend picking 2-3 areas of interest at most, and leaning into those.
List of therapy niches
You could probably make a list a mile long of different areas of interest you may have, but I’ve taken the liberty of doing that for you. They are divided into different categories, so feel free to scroll around and piece something together that feels right to you:
Communities
Childless by choice (or DINK)
Ethnic Minorities
LGBQ folks
Nerds/Gamers (self-identified)
Social justice activists
Transgender folks
Conditions/Diagnosis
Addiction history
ADHD
Cancer survivors
Diabetes
Eating disorders
Infertility
PTSD/Trauma survivors
Suicide/self-harm attempts
Tobacco use
Employment
Child actors
Customer service/retail workers
Entertainment industry
Executives
Health care
Military background
New workers
Therapists who see therapists
Life Events
Adult children whose parents have passed
Children
Consensual non-monogamy
Elderly folks
Empty-nesters
Infidelity
New parents
Premarital counseling
Teens
Marginalized
Black/Indigenous people of color
Children of immigrants
Deaf/deaf or hard of hearing folks
Disfigurement
Immigrants
Low-income folks
Prisoners or ex-prisoners
Racial Minorities
Religious minorities
Sex workers
Why should you have a therapy niche?
I’ve heard it said that only those who are relying solely on word of mouth shouldn’t worry about having a niche. That said, if you plan on doing any form of internet marketing, including appearing on therapist directories, you should have a niche.
A therapy niche will set you apart from other therapists. Let’s take Diane, for example. She is a Cuban-American woman with a history of childhood trauma. She’s been to therapy before, but is now looking for someone with a racially-informed background to help her work through her racial and social identities. She will likely want a hispanic therapist, but if you happen to also be Cuban-American and work specifically with racial identities, she will undoubtedly pick you over the other hispanic therapists available in her area.
Do you see how helpful having a unique therapy niche can be?
You also get the added benefit of attracting clients that you actually want to be working with, which benefits both you and your clients and will yield a higher success rate overall.
How do you create a unique therapy niche?
Ultimately, you need to decide if a niche is right for you. If you expect your private practice won’t have a large pool of clients to begin with, for example, if you work in a very rural area seeing clients in-person, you likely shouldn’t niche down because your pool of potential clients is already so small.
If, however, you find yourself in a metropolitan area with five different practices within five miles of you, it’s likely a good idea to decide which clients you’ll see, and which you’ll refer out to one of your colleagues.
When you find that you do need a unique therapy niche, a good rule is to choose 2-3 different areas of expertise that align with your ideal client. You can pick from the list above, or you can use your own personal experience and training to help you decide, but less than 2 won’t be specific enough, and more than 3 might yield an over-specialization, which comes with its own unique problems.
Marketing Your Niche
Creating a niche is a lot of work, and it can raise that ever-present flag therapists have that object to it, saying “I have to help as many people as I can!”
If this is you, then I would recommend you look into my Market Research and Direction package, where we can figure out what your ideal client looks like (and if you even need one,) together.
I’ll also spend a few weeks researching your specialties so that when we do narrow down your target client, you can make sure your marketing speaks to them directly. It’s a lot more affordable than my full brand kit, and if you’re new to the world of private practice, I would highly recommend giving this a shot.