Someone discovers your website at 11pm, goes through your page regarding your anxiety therapy, and then closes the tab. Not getting a conversion can be taught.
They're just not quite ready yet because therapy is a huge commitment and hardly anyone schedules their therapy right after a single visit to your website. Weeks later, they forgot about you altogether, and end up choosing their therapist from an online directory.
This is where retargeting therapy marketing can help bridge the gap reminding your visitors that you exist, without being obnoxious about it, so that when they eventually need your services again, you're their go-to choice.
However, the word "retargeting" implies certain associations which may be good or not. Who hasn't been followed across the internet by those shoes you once saw?
And when it comes to therapists who deal with vulnerable people, it's important to do it right. In its worst-case scenario, retargeting can be considered aggressive and predatory; in the best-case scenario, it will be nothing but a timely reminder. Here's how to use retargeting ethically.
There is no such thing as a long decision cycle in therapy. Patients do their homework privately, perhaps for months at a time, before ever reaching out to you. They go through multiple potential therapists, they fret about money, fit, and timing and they stall. Websites lose the vast majority of first-timers; they didn’t “no,” they just “not yet.”
There's also something called Churn that you have to take into account when running any form of campaign. As we noted in Google Ads for Therapists: Are They Worth the Investment?, churn rates generally run around six to eight weeks, so even a thriving practice is constantly refilling its caseload to become profitable for new clients.
Our piece on How Many New Clients Does a Therapy Practice Actually Need Per Month? works out what that means in practice: a steady-state solo practice needs only two to three new clients a month or four to six if you're starting from scratch or rebuilding.
This all depend on your pricing model and the amount of therapists you have that can pick up the slack when new clients come into the practice.
Retarget only your own audience, not some stranger off the internet.
The least risky form of retargeting is to use cookies/pixels from visitors of your website – it's them who chose to contact you. Never use purchased data on third-party lists about people who supposedly interested in depression treatment, or any such – it's most likely unreliable, illegal under advertising platform guidelines, and contradictory to your role as a therapist.
Be mindful of sensitive categories restrictions.
Google and Meta place limits on how health-related audience can be targeted. Construct your campaign on website contents and broad audience's interests rather than making assumptions about individual conditions. Your advert must describe what is being advertised ("CBT in Manchester") rather than make suggestions about possible diagnosis ("Struggling with depression?").
Use reassuring tone, not scare tactics.
Retargeting ads that work the best for a therapist sound more like a friendly reminder than ultimatum. Mention what your specialities are, mention the cost of consultations, and remind of the possibility of getting a free one.
Limit frequency of exposure to your ad.
Twice a week sounds good enough, twelve times a day is more like spam. You can limit number of impressions by each user on Google ads and work with only the keywords that convert. This saves time and money overall whilst giving you the best possible setup for succeeding.
Retargeting cannot work unless there is already traffic to your site; retargeting cannot save a site that doesn’t even receive any traffic at all. It follows logically that you should create visibility for your site first (through SEO or PPC), and then retarget the resulting traffic.
If you're weighing up paid search itself, our Google Ads breakdown for therapists goes into the maths in great detail: at an average cost-per-click of £4.00, targeting for 10 clicks per day amounts to about £1,200 per month. However, at a conversion rate of 2%, 300 clicks per month means 6 new clients.
At a customer churn of six appointments and £150.00 per appointment, this results in £5,400 in revenues from an investment of £1,200, meaning a 4.5 times ROI. And, importantly, running Google Ads ads helps you build your retargeting audience: each click generates a list of old visitors you can target for pennies. Even if all you have going on is therapy SEO, you still can retarget — your organic traffic is high intent, because these people came to you without being paid to.
