Frequently Asked Question’s
You’ve got questions about marketing your psychology practice. We've got answers - grounded in 20 years of marketing, CPBAO compliance, and the realities of regulated practice.
Marketing for Psychologists
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Yes. Psychologists in Ontario are permitted to advertise under CPBAO (College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario) regulations govern advertising and public statements, requiring that all marketing be accurate, not misleading, and consistent with your professional obligations. What's not permitted includes making claims you can't substantiate, guaranteeing outcomes, or engaging in direct solicitation of individual clients (Standard 6.3.f). Beyond that, you have more room to market your practice than most psychologists realize — you just need to know where the lines are. That's exactly what we help with.
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This is the most common concern we hear, and it's a good instinct — it means you care about doing right by your clients. The discomfort usually comes from associating marketing with manipulation. But marketing for psychologists isn't about persuading someone to buy something they don't need. It's about making sure the people who are already looking for help can actually find you. When your website clearly explains who you help, what you specialize in, and how to get started, that's not selling — that's a service. The EQ+AI Method™ is built around this principle: everything we create is designed to sound like you, comply with CPBAO standards and help the right clients find you.
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Marketing your practice through a website, social media, directories, or content is permitted under CPBAO regulations. Direct solicitation — reaching out to specific individuals to offer your services is prohibited . The distinction is between making your services visible to people who are actively searching (permitted) versus approaching people who haven't asked (not permitted). Everything Rose+Thorn builds falls into the first category: we help you become findable to people who are already looking for a psychologist.
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A full caseload today doesn't mean a full caseload next quarter. Clients complete treatment, move, or stop attending — and without a consistent referral pipeline, you can go from a waitlist to empty slots quickly. Marketing builds a foundation that keeps working whether you're actively thinking about it or not. It also gives you the ability to be selective: instead of taking whoever calls, you can attract clients who are the right fit for your specialization. Many of our clients start marketing precisely because they want to stop relying on word-of-mouth alone.
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We offer fixed pricing options for those that are looking for something specific. We also offer customized pricing based on project type and complexity. After an initial conversation, we’ll provide a transparent quote with no hidden costs.
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Collaborative, honest, and straightforward. We're here to guide the process, bring ideas to the table, and keep things moving.
The EQ+AI Method™
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The EQ+AI Method™ is Rose+Thorn's proprietary framework for building marketing strategy for psychologists in private practice. It combines emotional intelligence (EQ) — the human understanding of how regulated professionals actually work, communicate, and build trust — with artificial intelligence (AI) trained specifically on your voice, your language, and your clinical philosophy. The result is marketing that sounds like you wrote it, complies with CPBAO advertising standards, and is optimized to help the right clients find you through both traditional search engines and AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
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AI in the EQ+AI Method™ is a tool, not a replacement for human judgment. We use AI to analyze your existing content, learn your communication patterns, and help generate marketing materials that match your voice. Every piece of content is reviewed for CPBAO compliance and clinical accuracy before it goes live. AI helps us work faster and more consistently — it doesn't make ethical decisions. That's where the EQ side comes in: 20 years of marketing experience applied to the specific context of regulated psychological practice in Ontario.
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Yes. The Voice Blueprint™ service trains an AI model on your actual writing, your speaking patterns, and the language you use to describe your work. We don't use generic templates or one-size-fits-all prompts. The AI learns how you explain things to clients, the phrases you return to, and the tone that feels natural to you. The output sounds like you on a good writing day — not like a marketing agency wrote it for you.
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We never input client data, session notes, or any personally identifiable information into AI tools. The AI is trained on your public-facing content — your website copy, your professional bio, your published writing, and recordings you provide of yourself describing your approach. No client information is ever part of the process. Our privacy practices are aligned with PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) and CASL (Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation) requirements.
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We offer flexible pricing based on project type and complexity. After an initial conversation, we’ll provide a transparent quote with no hidden costs.
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Collaborative, honest, and straightforward. We're here to guide the process, bring ideas to the table, and keep things moving.
Pricing & Services
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Rose+Thorn offers five services at transparent, fixed prices:
The Growth Workshop™ — $195 CAD per seat. A focused marketing workshop designed for psychologists in private practice.
The Visibility Scan™ — $495 CAD. A comprehensive audit of your current marketing presence, identifying what's working and what's missing.
The Growth Strategy™ — $1,500 CAD. A complete marketing strategy tailored to your practice, including competitive analysis, messaging, and a step-by-step growth plan.
The Voice Blueprint™ — $1,500 CAD. An AI system trained on your voice so your marketing content sounds like you.
The Partnership™ — $550 CAD/month. Ongoing marketing strategy and support with regular check-ins and continuous optimization.
Most psychologists start with either The Visibility Scan™ (to understand where they stand) or the Growth Strategy (to build a plan from scratch).
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Industry guidance suggests allocating 5–10% of your target annual revenue to marketing. For a solo practice aiming for $150,000 in annual revenue, that's roughly $7,500–$15,000 per year, or $625–$1,250 per month. That said, you don't have to start at that level. A one-time investment in a Growth Strategy ($1,500) or Practice Visibility Audit ($495) can give you a clear roadmap before you commit to ongoing spending. The goal is to make informed investments — not to spend more.
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It depends on the channel. SEO (search engine optimization) typically takes 3–6 months to show meaningful ranking improvements. Paid advertising can drive inquiries within days. Content marketing and social media build authority over time — most practices see consistent traction after 3–4 months of regular publishing. The Partnership™ is designed for practitioners who want ongoing support through this process, so you're not guessing at what to do next.
Working Together
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It depends on which service you choose, but the general flow is: we start with a discovery conversation to understand your practice, your specialization, your goals, and your comfort level with marketing. From there, we conduct research (competitive analysis, keyword research, audience analysis) and build your strategy or deliverables. You review everything before it goes live. For the The Practice Partnership™, we meet regularly to review performance, adjust strategy, and keep your marketing moving forward.
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For one-time services (The Workshop, Audit, Strategy, Voice Blueprint), you'll need 1–2 hours for the initial discovery conversation and time to review deliverables. For The Practice Partnership™, expect about 1 hour per month for our check-in sessions, plus any time you choose to spend reviewing or approving recommendations. The whole point is to take marketing off your plate — not add to it.
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Rose+Thorn specializes in marketing for psychologists in Ontario because that's where our regulatory expertise (CPBAO Standard 10 compliance) is deepest. If you're a psychologist elsewhere in Canada, we can still help with marketing strategy — we'll just need to review your province's specific advertising regulations together. Our core methodology (the EQ+AI Method™) applies regardless of jurisdiction.
CPBAO Compliance
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Standard 6 of the CPBAO (College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario) Standards of Professional Conduct, 2024 governs how psychologists and behaviour analysts communicate with the public, including advertising. It requires that all advertising be accurate, not misleading, and not appeal to clients' fears or anxieties in ways that could be exploitative. It also requires that you can substantiate any claims you make about your services or qualifications. Notably, Standard 6.3(e) prohibits using testimonials to promote a registrant's practice. Together, these provisions create a framework for ethical marketing that protects the public while still allowing psychologists to make their services known.
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No. And this is one of the most misunderstood rules in psychology practice marketing. Standard 6.3(e) of CPBAO's Standards of Professional Conduct (2024) prohibits testimonials from being used to promote a registrant's practice (including testimonials from clients, former clients, or their friends and relatives). This isn't a grey area: even a star rating counts as a testimonial if you use it in your advertising.
Here’s what the standard doesn't prohibit: clients leaving reviews on their own, on third-party sites like Google or Lumino Health. Those reviews can exist — provided you never request them, never influence which ones get published, and never use them in your own advertising (including linking your ads to a review page).
The distinction that matters: the prohibition covers testimonials from your clients about your practice. A psychologist sharing their experience as a client of a business service — say, a marketing consultancy — isn't a clinical testimonial. That's why we can publish what our clients say about working with us, and your clients can't be quoted saying anything about working with you.
If you're ever unsure whether something crosses the line, CPBAO's Practice Advisory Service exists for exactly this question.
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Under CPBAO Standard 10, avoid: claims you can't substantiate with evidence, guaranteed outcomes (e.g., "I will cure your anxiety"), misleading credentials or specializations you don't hold, appeals to fear or vulnerability designed to pressure someone into becoming a client, and comparative claims about other practitioners. Stick to factual descriptions of your qualifications, your approach, your specialization, and how to contact you. If you're unsure whether a specific claim crosses a line, that's exactly the kind of question we help answer.
Have a question that's not listed here?
Reach out at hello@roseandthorn.ai — we're happy to help.
Your practice deserves marketing that sounds like you.
You've spent years building something real — a practice built on trust, expertise, and the relationships you've earned.
The EQ+AI Method™ gives you a marketing system that honours all of that while finally giving you the visibility and consistency you've been missing.
Start with The Growth Workshop™, book The Visibility Scan™ or just reach out and tell us where you're stuck. There's no pitch, no pressure — just a conversation about what's possible.