It’s been awhile since we’ve chatted therapist branding tips. Not because it’s unimportant; mainly because AI has swooped in and changed the spectrum of all things on the internet. While it’s important to be focusing on your SEO strategy right now, you cannot forget about having a professional brand. In this blogpost, we’re chatting about what makes a therapist brand standout and ways you can make it happen without hiring out help.
What Is Therapist Branding and Why It Matters
When we refer to “therapist branding” we are alluding to multiple things. While you may think visuals, your brand is actually more than that.
A really good brand is comprised of three elements: visuals + messaging + client experience. For an example, when you think about the company Walmart, you probably don’t think just visuals. You likely envision their logo in addition to the experience (affordable living) and their slogan “Save Money. Live Better”. This is because they did a great job at branding themselves!
As a private practice therapist, your branding influences first impressions, client trust and retention rate. These are huge things when you are new in practice or a seasoned practice owner. To establish a great therapist branding, we recommend working with a professional designer. When that’s not available to you, use this post as a reference point.
Ways to Improve Your Therapist Branding
Working with a professional designer that specializes in therapists is our recommendation. However, we understand this isn’t always an option. When it isn’t, we recommend following these steps to get back to the basics before establishing a therapist branding.
Step One: Clarify Your Niche and Audience
Often overlooked; highly important.
Your niche and audience are who you speak to within messaging. Nailing this down is the sole reason that you’ll be successful or not as a therapist. We encourage therapists to identify who they serve or what your specialty is. This might be helping postpartum moms combat anxiety, targeting individuals navigating childhood trauma or marital issues.
Action item: Write down an ideal client persona. Think of this as a fake person. Give them a name, outline what they struggle with, how your services can help them and why you’re the fit for their needs. Then, dive deeper into their demographics such as where they live, what hobbies they have or what income levels they identify with.
Narrowing down your focus as a therapist will align all other brand decisions. Think of this as your starting point!
Step Two: Define Your Brand Personality
Don’t let people tell you that your therapist branding cannot be personalized. Around here, we love having brands infuse personality through voice, tone and messaging. Most of the time, our clients’ brand names are their name – which is highly personal!
Action item: Write down a few adjectives that describe how you want to come across as a brand. Do you want to feel strictly professional? Does it feel calm or outgoing?
Once you outline words you identify with, this helps correlate brand visuals to ensure they are aligned.
Step Three: Choose Colors That Reflects Your Practice
In this post we aren’t going to chat about DIYing brand visuals. There’s a time and place for that. However, we want to focus on areas that we know you can nail. One of those being your color palette!
Colors are very psychological because they automatically have feelings + emotions associated with them. If being calm is part of your brand personality, we recommend diving more into a neutral color palette.
Action item: Go into Canva and create yourself a color palette of 5 colors. 1 needs to be the lightest color in your palette (think white or cream) and 1 needs to be the darkest color in your palette (think dark grey, brown, black). Fill in other colors that align with your personality.
For context, it’s normal that trauma-focused therapist branding uses neutral tones whereas a high-achieving postpartum therapist might use bright and bold colors.
Step Four: Align Your Therapist Branding with Your Website
Now that a color palette is solidified for your practice, continue consistency across all platforms. Your website and social media are important to match. This creates brand awareness.
Action item: Audit your website. Does your fonts and colors match what you are using on your social media? If not, make some changes.
Be sure to check readability of all fonts and colors on mobile. It’s 2025 and mobile design is the top platform of viewership on a website.
Step Five: Incorporate Your Brand Everywhere for Experience
Creating a “client experience” is key. After you’ve established a color palette and branding, use it everywhere! Make it your personality. When we rebranded to Studio Adagio, I immediately purchased water bottles, clothing items and accessories in our signature green brand color. While I do love this color, this was a marketing tactic to create an experience around our branding.
Action item: Review your intake forms, email signature, PDF and any internal documents. Make them all cohesive with the colors and fonts you’ve decided.
Always Keep Evolving Your Therapist Branding
Your brand is not something that can be “set” and then “forgotten” about. While it can last for a few years at a time, we recommend consistently evolving your brand as you grow. Review your branding to ensure that your values align with your personality, tone and visuals. If it is, great! If not, consider making some changes or contacting a professional designer to audit how things are going.
Following these five steps will help you to craft a brand that feels completely aligned with who you are as a human and professional. While many designers believe that your branding isn’t the place to infuse personal things – we believe opposite. As clinicians, you are your brand. Your face, your words and your personality matter. We want that to reflect through everything in your practice, because that’s where content creation and marketing becomes easier!
If this post was helpful and has you wanting to dive more into branding, consider downloading our Instagram Brand Workbook to help you identify all of these items in a workbook. Or, take our Private Practice Focus Quiz to understand where to place all your efforts.
When you’re ready to take the leap into professional branding, apply to be a client at Studio Adagio. We specialize in therapist branding and website design as you grow and scale your private practice.