Janet Jackson, marketing and me

I was twisting the dial on the radio in my kitchen on the weekend and managed to get a gazillion north London pirate radio stations. One of them made me stop because it was one of my favourite songs of yore – Janet Jackson’s “What have you done for me lately”. I bopped around the kitchen and then flopped onto the sofa to finally get around to reading Therapy Today (or any non-therapists reading this, it’s the magazine the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy put out for its members).

I enjoy Therapy Today but I noticed on the inside cover that the they state the mission of the organisation. The first one they state is that their mission is to raise the profile of counselling and psychotherapy within the public sphere.

And this is where Miss Janet came in…what, exactly, has the BACP done for me lately? What’s it done for you lately…marketing wise?

When a friend confessed that when he finally admitted to himself he needed the help of a therapist, he had no idea where to turn. He’d never heard of the BACP, and although I found that disappointing, I wasn’t all that surprised. Don’t get me wrong, I am a member and I do think they do a great job in representing us to all sorts of different parties (the public, the government etc). But they can’t do everything, we can’t just kick back and say it’s not my job to make it clear and obvious what I do, how I do it and who I help.

And that’s ultimately the point of marketing. Marketing is just another way of saying “the stuff you do to get people to know what you’re selling and why they should buy it from you and not someone else”. We have to be more proactive, the BACP can’t do the job of marketing everyone’s individual practice.

My feeling is that if we all dedicated a bit more time to marketing our practices, more people would be hearing our messages and more people would be understanding the value of counselling. And guess what? This will become a positive feedback loop – the more people who know about the value of counselling, the more people will seek us out, the more clients we all get. Everyone wins.

What do you guys think? Does marketing still just bamboozle you? Is it scary and something you just don’t want to do or are you excited about it? Leave your thoughts in the comments, esspecially if you want to see more posts here on topics I haven’t been covering.