Picture this: You’re at a family gathering. Your cousin’s kid, maybe 12 years old, wanders over while you’re refilling your drink.
“So what do you do?” she asks.
What comes out of your mouth next reveals everything about whether your marketing will work.
Can you explain what you do without using words like “modality,” “evidence-based,” or “therapeutic framework”? Can you describe your work in a way that makes her say “Oh, cool!” instead of glazing over and looking for the dessert table?
If you can’t, we have a problem.
This Matters More Than You Think
Your ideal clients don’t have psychology degrees. Most of them couldn’t tell you the difference between a psychologist, an LMFT, and an LCSW if their lives depended on it. And they shouldn’t have to.
When someone is struggling with anxiety, they’re not searching for “a clinician who specializes in cognitive restructuring.” They’re lying awake at 2 AM thinking, “Why can’t I stop worrying about everything?” They’re typing into Google, “Why do I feel so anxious all the time?”
Or if they’re ready to convert, simply, “Therapist near me.”
Your marketing needs to meet them where they are. Not where you are after years of graduate training.
If you can’t explain what you do simply, you can’t market effectively. Full stop.
I want you to imagine that 12-year-old is sitting in front of you right now. She genuinely wants to understand what you do all day.
You have maybe 30 seconds before she loses interest.
No clinical terms allowed. No acronyms. No words you learned in grad school.
Go.
Harder than it sounds, right?
Let me show you what I mean.
Don’t say: “I utilize CBT techniques to help clients engage in cognitive restructuring and challenge maladaptive thought patterns.”
Say instead: “I help people notice when their brain is telling them scary lies, and I teach them how to replace those lies with thoughts that actually help them feel better.”
Don’t say: “I specialize in trauma-informed EMDR therapy to help clients process unresolved traumatic memories that are stored in the nervous system.”
Say instead: “You know how sometimes a bad memory gets stuck and keeps bothering you, even years later? I help people’s brains finally file those memories away so they stop hurting.”
Don’t say: “I provide evidence-based treatment for anxiety disorders using exposure and response prevention protocols.”
Say instead: “I help people do the things that scare them, a little bit at a time, until those things aren’t so scary anymore. Like training for a race, but for your fears.”
You spent years learning sophisticated clinical frameworks.
You read dense research papers. You understand the intricate mechanisms of the brain and behavior.
Sometimes, TPAers mistake their websites for places to flex their academic muscles.
Be very clear what your website is for: generating inquiries.
It’s not an art project. It’s not a technical manual. The highest aspiration of any therapist’s website is to meet people exactly where they’re at and communicate in terms they can understand.
Simplicity is the proof of expertise.
I once came into a conversation where one of my friends was explaining something to another friend of ours. It took me about five minutes before I realized he was talking about lighting a fire.
The mechanics of airflow, something about the contact points and density of the wood, water saturation, and ground temperature, and about fifteen other things that were completely beyond our interest or understanding.
Any idiot can make something simple sound complicated.
The master can make something incredibly complex sound simple.
Google Richard Feynman’s lectures at Caltech for possibly the best example of this in recorded history.
Think about the best teachers you’ve ever had. They didn’t impress you by using big words. They impressed you by making difficult concepts suddenly make sense.
Your potential clients aren’t evaluating your intelligence based on how many syllables you use. They’re evaluating whether you understand their problem and can help them solve it.
A complex sentence is a tiny barrier. Enough tiny barriers, and your user clicks away to find someone who speaks their language.
Your Assignment
I want you to write three or four sentences explaining your work. Imagine you’re talking to that 12-year-old at the family gathering.
Use metaphors. Compare the brain to something familiar. Compare therapy to an activity they’d understand.
No acronyms. No hedging with “I tend to” or “my approach involves.”
Here’s the problem, here’s what I help with, here’s how it works.
Then look at your website. Look at your Psychology Today profile.
Does your marketing sound like what you just wrote? Or does it sound like a textbook?
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Stop losing clients to confusion. Start winning with clarity at TPA. Click here to get started.