Mental health marketing for therapists, psychiatrists and private practices.

What does therapist marketing include?

Therapist marketing, like all private practice marketing, makes the practice easy to find, easy to trust and easy to book, and it does that without ever implying anything about the person reading. For a mental health practice that means six pieces of work, each with its own rule.

Before writing this page we read what practice owners actually search. Mental health advertising and therapist marketing draw the most searches; private practice marketing and therapy practice marketing follow.

Can therapists and psychiatrists advertise on Google and Meta?

Yes. Therapy and psychiatry ads are allowed, but health is a sensitive interest category on Google, and Meta bars ads that imply something about the viewer, so both the targeting and the wording change. Drug and alcohol addiction treatment is the one area with a certification gate; see rehab marketing for that track.

Targeting: who can see the ad

Google's personalized advertising policy lists "Counseling services for mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and addiction, such as gambling addiction and alcohol addiction" as health content. For that content, "You can use predefined Google audiences." and "You can't use advertiser-curated audiences." Customer Match, your data segments, audience expansion and lookalike segments all sit on the curated side. In practice that means no remarketing lists built from your website visitors and no uploaded client lists. Search campaigns on the services you offer, in the area you serve, carry the load.

Policy: which rules apply

Google's addiction policy is narrower than many owners think: "Promotion of services unrelated to drug and alcohol addiction, like services for impulse control disorders, behavioral addiction, or nicotine addiction, are out of scope of this policy." So a practice treating anxiety, depression, trauma or a gambling problem is not under it. A practice whose website also describes substance use disorder treatment can be, and LegitScript warns that advertising platforms "may classify your business under their addiction treatment policies" in that case.

Telepsychiatry is the other gate. Google's US policy says: "Google allows telemedicine providers if they’re accredited by LegitScript’s Healthcare Merchant Certification Program, which offers telemedicine certification to websites that provide virtual healthcare services and facilitate prescribing."

Wording: what the ad can say

Meta's personal attributes policy bars ads that "Imply knowledge of Medical information of a user or user’s family." Its own example: "Depression counseling" is allowed; "Depression getting you down? Get help now." is not. Here is how we apply that line to therapy ads (our examples, not Meta's words):

The same discipline goes on the landing page. Every ad and page is checked against the platform's current policy before it runs, because platforms change these pages without notice.

How does private practice marketing work in search?

Search is where most private practices win: a complete Google Business Profile, a page for each service and each clinician, and the same facts on every directory where the practice is listed. People looking for a therapist tend to search by specialty, place, insurance and format, so the site has to state all four plainly.

1. The Business Profile. Correct categories, hours, telehealth noted, photos of the real office, and the same name and phone as the site.
2. A page per service. Individual therapy, couples therapy, EMDR, medication management, groups: what the service is, who provides it, session length, fees or insurance and how to book. Written about the service, never about the reader's diagnosis.
3. A page per clinician. License type, the state that issued it, specialties, approach and availability, published only with that clinician's written OK.
4. Fees and insurance. One clear page. Cost is often the first question a new client has, and an honest answer builds trust before the first call.
5. Directory profiles that match. Therapist directories, insurer directories and local listings carry the same name, address, phone and specialties as your site.
6. Reviews, inside your ethics code. The APA Ethics Code says: "Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence." Counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists have their own codes and boards. We never run a review campaign at current clients, never offer incentives, and never confirm in a reply that a reviewer is a client.

City pages exist only where the practice actually sees clients. A page that swaps one city name for another does not help anyone find care and can be treated as spam.

How do you track marketing without sharing client mental health data?

Count booked consultations, not people: ad platforms receive a conversion with no name, service or symptom attached, and intake details stay in your EHR or a CRM that has signed a business associate agreement with you.

The FTC has shown what happens otherwise. In March 2023 it announced a proposed order "banning online counseling service BetterHelp, Inc. from sharing consumers' health data, including sensitive information about mental health challenges, for advertising," and requiring a $7.8 million payment to settle charges that BetterHelp shared sensitive data with third parties such as Facebook and Snapchat after promising to keep it private. The FTC noted that people interested in the service "must fill out a questionnaire that asks for sensitive mental health information."

For HIPAA covered entities, HHS defines a tracking technology as "a script or code on a website or mobile app used to gather information about users or their actions as they interact with a website or mobile app." It says sending PHI to tracking vendors for marketing without HIPAA-compliant authorization would be an impermissible disclosure. A June 20, 2024 federal court order vacated the part of that guidance covering a visitor's IP address on public, logged-out pages about specific health conditions or healthcare providers; HHS says it "is evaluating its next steps." Logged-in portals, intake forms and booking flows are where we are strictest.

• The conversion we send is named something neutral, such as "consult booked", and carries no form fields.
• Intake questions live in your EHR or a BAA-covered intake tool, never in a Meta or Google lead form.
• No pixel on the client portal, the intake form or the booking confirmation page with client details.
• Reports show booked consultations by source and cost per booked consultation. Nothing about who booked.

We are not your lawyer, and we do not promise compliance coverage. Your counsel makes the call on what applies; we build to their written answer.

Where do new clients come from besides ads?

From physicians, other therapists, psychiatrists, employee assistance programs and the people your past clients talk to, and good marketing makes each of those easier without paying anyone for a referral.

• A one-page referral sheet. Specialties, ages seen, insurance, telehealth, current openings and how a referral reaches you. Updated monthly so partners trust it.
• Openings marketed by clinician. When one clinician has room and another has a waitlist, the site, profile and ads point to the person with room.
• Fast replies. A new-client inquiry gets a response within one business day, with a clear next step.
• Therapy and psychiatry, side by side. Practices that offer both explain how a client moves between them.

Paying for referrals can run into federal and state anti-kickback laws, especially when a practice bills insurance. We never build pay-per-referral or pay-per-client arrangements, and our own fee is a flat monthly retainer.

How do people find therapists through AI assistants?

They ask by specialty, place, insurance or format, and AI answers lean on pages and listings that state those facts plainly. Google's own guide says: "From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO."

• Each service page answers its main question in its first sentence: what the service is, who provides it, in person or online.
• Clinician names, credentials and specialties are identical on the site, the Business Profile and every directory.
• Insurance and fees are written out, since "therapist that takes my insurance" is the question behind many searches.
• Each month we check what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI answers say about the practice and correct wrong facts at the source.

We never promise that an assistant will name a practice. No AI platform publishes how it picks sources.

What does a mental health marketing plan look like?

A mental health marketing plan starts with privacy and the Business Profile, adds service and clinician pages, then turns on one paid channel aimed at the clinicians with open caseloads. Here is one, step by step.

A practice like this would start on Launch, $3,500 a month, with one paid channel, or on Growth, $5,500 a month, which can run as a search and AI program with no paid ads. Pages beyond the tier's monthly articles, and any intake or EHR build, are priced separately. Both carry a one-time setup, and ad spend is billed by the platform to the practice, never marked up. We do not promise client numbers; we report what happened, every month.

Which practices is this built for?

Licensed mental health practices that want more of the right clients, found and booked in a way their board and their clients would be comfortable with.

Run a detox, residential or IOP program for drug and alcohol use? That track has its own rules: rehab and addiction treatment marketing.

Why does an operator's view help a therapy practice?

Because marketing that ignores clinical reality fills the wrong slots. PELORA's founder, Preston Durnford, co-founded SoCal Mental Health, which ran three crisis stabilization residentials and operated through 2024, and built and ran Epic Journey Recovery, a behavioral health company.

The team has managed $5M+ in ad spend and has a 5.0 Google rating. Treatment programs can see the full operator-built program on our behavioral health marketing page; Preston's background is on the founder page.