The Fastest Way to Failure in Private Practice

If you’ve been putting time and energy into your marketing and thinking, “Why isn’t this working like it used to?” — you’re not imagining things. Things really have changed.


Costs are going up. Focus is down. Your audience is more excited about hobbies, their friends, their families — and less tuned in to every offer, ad, or email in their inbox.


At the same time, more and more practitioners are entering the online space. E-commerce has exploded. Since COVID, the number of businesses online has jumped over 180%. And it’s not just physical products. It’s coaches, course creators, memberships, and clinics. Everyone is out here.


So, the game is different. But that doesn’t mean marketing doesn’t work. It just means we have to change how we play.


Let me walk you through what’s really going on — and how to think about your marketing in a way that makes sense in 2025.

Woman holds up a smartphone while two toddlers reach toward the table in a home kitchen.

1. Attention Is Fragmented — So Marketing Needs to Stick

Let’s start with the most obvious one: people are distracted. Like, really distracted.

We’re all juggling more — phones, DMs, news, texts, kids, work. No one is sitting down with 100% focus to consume your content. They’re seeing thousands of messages a day, most of them while multitasking.


And yet, we’re still expecting our audience to click the link, buy the thing, book the consult — all from one email or one post.


We have to remember: attention is earned. Repetition is required.

You’re not being annoying by showing up consistently — you’re being remembered.


And what used to take 7–10 touchpoints? Now takes 15–30. That’s not a failure. That’s just the new baseline.

Crowded city street packed with people in suits and coats, shoulder to shoulder, black-and-white photo.

2. Competition Has Spiked — But That’s Not the Problem

Yes, the market is more crowded. More people are building businesses. More people are showing up online.


But the problem isn’t just competition — it’s that we expect people to behave the way they did 10 years ago. They don’t.


When people see your offer now, they don’t act immediately. They research. They lurk. They go down rabbit holes.


Let’s be honest: you probably do this too.


You see an ad, then you:

  • Look up their socials

  • Maybe sign up for a freebie or a discount

  • Come back to their site a few days later

  • Maybe read a blog, watch a video, or check out testimonials


That’s the "Messy Middle" — the part of the buying process where people are circling around your brand, gathering info, and taking their time. It’s real. It’s backed by research. And it’s the new normal.


Our job is to show up consistently across that entire journey.

Mobile home screen showing AI apps: Character.AI, Perplexity, App Store, Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini.

3. AI + Platform Shifts Are Reshaping the Rules

Let’s talk about Meta. It used to be that you could run an ad, target by interest, and get decent results. Now? Not so much.


Meta doesn’t track clicks the same way. Interest targeting is way more limited. The algorithm is constantly learning from behaviour — and it doesn’t give us the same control we used to have.


Add in AI, and everything is moving faster and smarter than we can track.


And sure, we don’t know what AI is going to look like in a year. But we do know it’s shifting how people interact with content, search, and even decision-making.


So instead of trying to predict every change, what if we focused on staying nimble?

What if we looked at where the ball is going, and positioned ourselves to meet it?

It’s Been a Hard Year — But There Is a Way Forward

So yes, it’s been a weird, hard, evolving year.


Ad costs are up. Attention is fragmented. Competition is up. Interest targeting is down. AI is reshaping the way we work.


A signal. A shift.


This isn’t about giving up. This is about pivoting. About understanding the shifts and asking, "How do I show up differently now? What strategy actually fits the market I’m working in?"