What marketing moves the needle for therapists in private practice
A look at what 500 therapists actually spent on marketing in 2024 and 2025, and what happened to their revenue.
For most therapists, marketing is guesswork, word of mouth, and hoping the directory listing pays for itself. We wanted to know what's really working. So we looked at where therapists are putting their dollars, and where those dollars seem to come back.
Every number in this report comes from anonymized, aggregated data across a random sample of 500 Heard members. No individual therapist or practice is identifiable. Personal details, names, and account information are stripped out before anything is reviewed. What's left are patterns at the level of the sample as a whole.
What we measured
The marketing therapists pay for, and what their practice earns
For each of the 500 therapists, we looked at their advertising and marketing spend across 2024 and 2025: Psychology Today, Google Ads, Meta ads, SEO agencies, website builders, niche directories, and the rest. Then we matched it against how their total practice revenue moved year over year.
"Revenue" means total deposits into the practice, not session count or session fee. Every pattern below is a correlation across the sample, not proof that any one channel caused growth. The median therapist brought in about $98,000 in 2024 and $96,000 in 2025, with median year-over-year revenue down a hair (about 0.83%). That's the baseline. Everything that follows is measured against it.
Where the money goes
Most therapist marketing dollars flow to four places
Across the 500 therapists in our sample, the categorized marketing spend totaled just over $1.07M across both years. Directories, SEO agencies, paid ads, and website tools account for nearly 90 cents of every dollar.
Sample total: $1.07M, 469 marketing-active therapists.
The headline
Three things stand out
Psychology Today is universal among therapists who market at all, but it doesn't separate winners from anyone else. The therapists who grew their revenue the most in 2025 weren't the ones spending the most. They were the ones running a wider mix of channels, and especially the small group who hired SEO or marketing agencies. And a few well-known channels look like dead weight: Zocdoc, GoodTherapy, and the therapist-specific website builders.
One Psychology Today listing and a website is rarely the marketing stack of a fast-growing private practice in 2025.
Therapist directories
Psychology today
Table stakes, not a tiebreaker
381 of the therapists who do any marketing pay for a Psychology Today listing. That's 81%, by far the most universal investment in the dataset.
Their median 2025 revenue was $99,277 and their median year-over-year was -0.46%, almost identical to the broader sample. Having a Psychology Today listing doesn't put a practice ahead. It also doesn't put one behind. Think of it as the price of entry.
Beyond psychology today
The directory landscape, ranked by revenue trajectory
Some directories track meaningfully above baseline. A few track below. Cost varies more than people expect.
| Directory | Therapists | Median spend | Median 2025 rev | Median YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zencare | 31 | $1,117 | $119,237 | +5.98% |
| Mental Health Match | 30 | $199 | $110,400 | +4.15% |
| TherapyDen | 33 | $180 | $104,150 | +0.29% |
| Therapist.com | 16 | $44 | $96,708 | -0.59% |
| GoodTherapy | 18 | $333 | $112,088 | -4.84% |
| TherapyTribe | 8 | $344 | $106,810 | -10.73% |
| Zocdoc | 15 | $700 | $98,582 | -11.85% |
Zencare users had the strongest revenue trajectory of any major directory: median 2025 revenue of $119,237 and a +6% year-over-year median. Mental Health Match users were also above baseline. Zocdoc was the most expensive directory in the sample (mean spend over $4,600) and had the steepest decline.
If your only listing is Psychology Today, Zencare and Mental Health Match are the two paid directories most associated with above-baseline growth in this dataset.
Identity-focused directories
Specialized directories outperformed baseline
58 therapists in the sample paid for at least one identity-focused directory: Therapy for Black Girls, Inclusive Therapists, South Asian Therapists, Reclamation Collective, LGBTQ-focused listings, and similar.
Stacking directories
One of the cleanest signals in the data
Therapists who paid for multiple directory listings did meaningfully better than therapists who relied on a single one.
Median YoY revenue change by directory stack.
Therapists with three or more directory listings had median 2025 revenue more than $22,000 above the single-directory group, and grew their revenue while the single-directory group shrank slightly.
Paid advertising
Google ads
Higher-revenue therapists, but no clean dose-response
41 therapists in the sample ran Google Search ads in 2024 or 2025, putting a combined $177,000+ behind paid search across both years. Median annual spend: $1,121.
Google Ads users skew higher-revenue overall (median 2025 revenue of $117,041 against the $96,000 baseline), with median year-over-year of +2.45%. The wrinkle is that more spend didn't predict better growth.
| Spend (both years) | Therapists | Median 2025 rev | Median YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $500 | 11 | $120,161 | +10.3% |
| $500 to $1,500 | 12 | $105,385 | -7.1% |
| $1,500 to $5,000 | 10 | $96,775 | -1.6% |
| $5,000+ | 6 | $166,301 | -10.4% |
Selection bias rather than a verdict on Google Ads. Therapists with full caseloads have the option to scale ads down. Therapists trying to fill seats often increase spend because they need more clients. The strongest results came from therapists who used Google Ads lightly, or paused them.
Meta ads (facebook and instagram)
Common, mostly small, and on the way down
44 therapists in the sample ran Facebook or Instagram ads in 2024 or 2025, spending a combined $20,800 across both years. Most spending was small: median per therapist was $90, mean was $473.
Median 2025 revenue for Meta advertisers was $103,471 and median year-over-year was +2.14%, basically in line with the broader sample. The bigger story is the decline.
$12,701 spend
$8,101 spend
Total Meta ad spend across the sample fell 36% year over year. Active Meta advertisers fell 43%.
Inside that, one spend band stood out.
Median YoY revenue change by Meta ad spend band.
The $100 to $500 band is where Meta ads correlated with meaningful revenue growth. Below that, the spend was probably too small to matter. Above that, the sample is small and the signal noisy.
12 therapists ran both Google Ads and Meta ads
median YoY revenue, with a median 2025 revenue of $163,424. The largest paid-ad combination effect in the dataset, though the sample is small.
SEO and marketing agencies
The strongest signal in the data
A small group hired help, and grew well above the median
18 therapists in the sample paid an SEO firm or marketing agency in 2024 or 2025. These services help with website rankings, local search, content, lead generation, or paid media management. Median annual spend was $3,978.
median 2025 revenue: $123,126
median 2025 revenue: $95,953
Therapists working with an SEO or marketing agency grew about 20 percentage points faster than the median therapist. The combinations were even stronger.
The sample is small (18 therapists), so the confidence interval is wide. Therapists hiring agencies were already higher-revenue in 2024 ($108,544 median vs $98,148 baseline), which suggests selection bias. The data can't separate "agency caused the growth" from "growing practices have the budget for an agency." But the gap is large enough to take seriously.
