Mental health marketing covers every way a practice gets found, chosen and booked: the Google profile, website, directories, ads, referrals and reviews, and the intake call that follows. This guide is for owners of therapy group practices, psychiatry groups, intensive outpatient programs and clinics that offer treatments such as TMS or Spravato.
The benchmarks come from our 2026 study of 3,196 US practices in the TMS List directory and the 2,468 websites we could load. Of those practices, 1,477 are mental health clinics and 882 are psychiatry practices.
Why mental health marketing is different
Three things set it apart from other healthcare marketing:
- The reader may be in distress. Copy has to be calm, clear and free of pressure. Every page should say what to do in a crisis: call or text 988, or go to the nearest emergency room.
- Privacy is part of the product. People notice when a site loads trackers or an ad follows them around. They also notice discretion: an office entrance, how the phone is answered, how you sign off emails.
- The rules are tighter. Professional ethics codes limit testimonials. HIPAA governs how you reply to reviews and what your tracking tools can see. Ad platforms restrict targeting by health condition.
None of this makes marketing harder to do well. It just rules out tactics that work elsewhere, and it rewards practices that are clear and trustworthy.
Market each service separately
A multi-service practice usually markets itself as one thing: "comprehensive mental health care". Patients don't search that way. They search for the thing they need:
| Service | What the patient searches | What decides the booking |
|---|---|---|
| Therapy | Therapist near me, couples counseling, EMDR, a therapist for anxiety | Insurance, a clinician who fits, evening slots |
| Psychiatry | Psychiatrist near me, ADHD evaluation for adults, medication management | Wait time, insurance, telehealth |
| IOP / PHP | Intensive outpatient program, partial hospitalization near me | Insurance approval, schedule, level of care |
| TMS | TMS therapy near me, TMS for depression, NeuroStar provider | Insurance coverage, referral, device and protocol |
| Spravato / ketamine | Spravato clinic near me, esketamine treatment | REMS-certified site, insurance, monitoring |
Each service needs its own page, its own Google profile service entry, its own ad group and its own way to measure results. Otherwise the busiest service hides the others, and you can't tell which one is bringing patients.
Getting found: Google, maps and AI
For local searches, the map pack and the Google Business Profile come first. Pick the most accurate primary category: Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Counselor, Mental health clinic, Psychiatrist. Add a secondary category for each service you really offer. Keep one profile per staffed location.
of the 1,477 mental health clinics in our directory could be matched to a Google Business Profile. Psychiatry practices were higher at 85%.
Organic search follows the same rule as in psychiatry: one page per service, per condition and per location, each answering cost, insurance, what to expect and how to start. Add medical-business and FAQ schema. Only 38% of the practice homepages we loaded had medical or local-business schema, and 6% had FAQ schema.
AI assistants (ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity) now answer questions like "which clinics near me offer TMS?". They draw on the same signals: clear service pages, consistent details across directories and real reviews. Practices that are easy to describe get described.
Trust: reviews, ethics and tone
Reviews matter more in mental health than in most fields, because they're the only way to hear from other patients before booking. They're also thinner than in most fields.
Google reviews for the median mental health clinic matched to a profile, against 22 for psychiatry practices. 52% of mental health clinics have fewer than 10.
Know the rules for your licence before asking for reviews:
- Psychologists: APA Ethics Code standard 5.05 bars soliciting testimonials from current therapy clients, or from anyone vulnerable to undue influence.
- Counselors: the ACA Code of Ethics (C.3.b) has a similar limit.
- Psychiatrists and medical practices: asking patients for reviews is generally allowed. Make it optional and unconnected to care, and never offer anything for a review.
Whatever your licence, reply to reviews without confirming the reviewer is a patient. Keep replies general, and take anything specific offline. In the copy itself, use plain language, real photos of real clinicians, and no before-and-after promises.
The website: from visit to intake
A practice website has one job: get a suitable person to the first appointment. In our crawl:
- 11% of practice homepages had an online booking or scheduling tool, and 52% at least invited visitors to book or request an appointment.
- 6% offered live chat or text messaging.
- 65% mentioned insurance on the homepage, and 5% showed a price.
- 11% had no tap-to-call link, form, booking tool or chat on the homepage at all.
WordPress runs 53% of the sites we could identify. The platform matters less than what's on the page. Put insurance, cost, wait time and a way to start where nobody has to hunt for them. Keep forms short, and say who will reply and when.
Paid ads, privacy and certification
Paid search works well for mental health services with clear intent, such as "IOP near me", "TMS therapy" or "psychiatrist that takes Cigna". Paid social works better for awareness and for services people don't yet know exist. Keep in mind:
- Addiction treatment ads need certification. In the US, Google requires LegitScript certification before you can advertise addiction services.
- No health-condition targeting or retargeting. Google and Meta both block targeting people by mental-health condition, and ad copy can't imply the reader has one.
- Watch your pixels. HHS guidance on online tracking says pages where patients are identified, such as portals, intake forms and booking flows, can't send health information to ad platforms without a business associate agreement. Several health systems have settled class actions over pixels on those pages.
9% of the practice websites we loaded had a Meta Pixel and 11% a Google Ads tag. If you have one, check which pages it fires on.
Intake is marketing
The most expensive leak in mental health marketing comes after the enquiry. Someone works up the courage to call, gets voicemail, and doesn't call back. A form gets a reply two days later, after the person has booked somewhere else.
- Answer calls live during opening hours, or use a service that can book.
- Reply to forms and texts within an hour during the day.
- Verify insurance quickly and tell the patient what they'll pay.
- Follow up on every enquiry that didn't book, twice, then stop.
- Record where every enquiry came from, so marketing can be judged on patients rather than clicks.
Multi-location groups
Groups with three or more locations under one website make up 5% of the practices in our directory, across 28 groups. They have advantages: brand recognition, a bigger review base and shared ad budgets. They also make the same mistakes many times over:
- Location pages that are copies of each other with the town name swapped. Google treats them as thin.
- One phone number and form for every office, so nobody can tell which location gets results.
- Google profiles that link to the homepage instead of the location's own page.
Give each location a real page with its own providers, services, insurance, directions and reviews. Link its Google profile to that page, and report results by location.
Benchmarks from our data
How the four kinds of practice in our directory compare:
| Practice type | Listings | Median Google reviews | Under 10 reviews | Online booking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated TMS centers | 716 | 2 | 68% | 9% |
| Psychiatry practices | 882 | 22 | 33% | 10% |
| Mental health clinics | 1,477 | 9 | 52% | 12% |
| Hospitals and health systems | 121 | 17 | 40% | 11% |
Review figures cover practices matched to a Google profile. Booking figures cover websites we could load. The methodology explains both, and the state-by-state tables are in the full report.
Want to know where your practice sits? Ask for a free audit and we'll compare your profile, reviews and website with these benchmarks and with the practices near you.
Questions practice owners ask us
What is mental health marketing?
It's how a therapy practice, psychiatry group, IOP, TMS clinic or other mental health provider gets found by people looking for care, earns their trust and turns enquiries into first appointments. It covers the Google profile, website, SEO, directories, ads, referrals and reviews, and the intake process that follows.
Can therapists and counselors use testimonials?
Professional codes limit it. The APA Ethics Code (5.05) bars psychologists from soliciting testimonials from current clients, and the ACA Code of Ethics (C.3.b) has a similar rule for counselors. Online reviews that clients leave on their own are different, but you still can't confirm in a reply that the reviewer is a client. Check your own licensing board's rules too.
Do mental health practices need a marketing agency?
Not always. A small practice with a full caseload may need only a correct Google profile, accurate directory listings and a website that answers the basics. An agency helps when you're adding clinicians, opening a location or launching a service such as TMS, Spravato or an IOP, and need predictable new-patient volume.
Is Google Ads allowed for addiction treatment?
In the US, Google requires addiction treatment providers to be certified, typically through LegitScript, before running ads for those services. Mental health services that aren't addiction treatment don't need that certification, but they're still subject to Google's healthcare and personalized-advertising policies.
What should a mental health practice measure?
New enquiries by source, how fast each one gets a response, the share that book, the share that attend, and cost per new patient for paid channels. Reviews gained and map-pack rank for your top searches are the leading indicators.