This page is for a provider who is trading, or nearly trading, and has nobody on the books yet. It is not a guide to setting the business up. It is what actually produces the first referrals when you have no reviews, no case studies and no relationships with support coordinators.
At 31 March 2026 the scheme had 774,456 participants and 277,376 active providers (NDIA Quarterly Report, Q3 2025-26). That is fewer than three participants per active provider on average — our arithmetic, and a blunt way of saying you are not walking into an empty market.
The useful part is that the competition is local and shallow. You do not have to beat 277,376 providers. You have to become the obvious choice in one catchment, for the two or three supports you actually deliver.
We would rather send you somewhere useful than sell you something you are not ready for.
Most marketing advice assumes you already have proof: reviews, case studies, referrers who trust you. A brand new provider has none of that, which quietly rules out half the usual playbook. What is left is smaller, duller, and it is the part that actually works.
Be findable by name. Word of mouth still gets searched. A coordinator hears your name in a meeting, types it into Google that evening, and finds either a business or nothing. If it is nothing, the referral dies and nobody tells you. A verified Google Business Profile and a live site with your name on it close that gap in about a week.
Be findable by need. The other search is not your name, it is “support workers in Blacktown” or “NDIS occupational therapy near me”. Google cannot show you for those until your site states, in plain words, the supports you deliver and the areas you cover. That is the whole mechanism behind local SEO for NDIS providers; everything after it is refinement.
Be where shortlists get built. Support coordinators do not browse. They keep a list and refill it from directories, from provider lists, and from providers who introduced themselves. Listing is cheap, mostly free, and most new providers never get round to it.
Then ask. A short, specific introduction — what you deliver, where, how much capacity you have this week, and how to refer — outperforms every clever campaign in the first 90 days, because it is the only channel that does not require you to already be known.
New providers avoid it because it feels like cold calling. It is not. A coordinator holding a participant who needs a Tuesday shift in your suburb genuinely wants to hear from you.
What does not work early: ads pointed at a page that cannot convert, social posting to an audience of nobody, and waiting for a registration certificate to generate demand on its own. It will not.
| Channel | Why it works before you are known | The honest caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Free, fast, and the first thing that appears when someone searches your name or your suburb | Needs a real service area and a number someone answers |
| A plain website | Answers what, where, and whether you are taking referrals | Nobody reads your About page. They read services and catchment |
| Directory listings | Puts you in front of coordinators building shortlists | Details must match your profile exactly or it works against you |
| Coordinator outreach | Needs clarity and capacity, not reputation | Slow and personal. There is no shortcut and no tool for it |
| Reviews | Turns your first participants into proof for the next ten | Must be asked for compliantly. Never incentivised |
| Paid ads | Buys traffic quickly | Pointless until the page converts. Wait |
New providers lose months guessing what to do first. This is the order that makes sense, because each step makes the next one work better.
A verified Google Business Profile and a site that names your supports, your suburbs and your phone number. Until this exists, every other channel leaks.
Directories, local search foundations and a referral page you can send as one link. This is where coordinators and plan managers go when they are building a shortlist.
Named introductions to the coordinators and plan managers in your catchment, monthly follow-up, and a review request built into your first participants’ experience.
Write one sentence: we provide X and Y to participants in Z. If you cannot, no amount of marketing fixes it. Narrow beats broad in year one. A provider known for one thing in one area gets referred; a provider offering everything everywhere gets remembered by nobody.
Correct primary category, a service area rather than a home address if you travel to participants, real hours, a phone number, and photos that are not stock images. This is the highest-return hour of work available to a new provider. Detail in our guide to Google Business Profile for NDIS providers.
What supports do you deliver, which suburbs, are you taking referrals right now, and how do I reach a person. Everything else is optional. Make it work on a phone, keep the language plain, and make sure someone using a screen reader or keyboard can get through it, because a real share of your audience needs that. More on accessible NDIS website design.
Work through the directories one at a time with identical business name, address and phone details on every entry. Inconsistent details actively hurt your local rankings. We keep a current list of the NDIS directories worth listing on.
A single link a coordinator can open: supports, catchment, current capacity, intake steps, expected response time, and who to call. Most providers make coordinators dig for this. Being the easy one to refer to is a genuine advantage and it costs nothing.
Build a list of the support coordination and plan management organisations operating in your catchment, then send a short, specific message to a named person rather than an info@ address. Follow up once. Repeat monthly, not once. More on winning support coordinator referrals.
Answer the phone the same day. Keep the intake form to two minutes. Be honest about your real capacity, including when you have none — coordinators remember the providers who said “full until March” instead of going quiet, and they come back.
Once someone is genuinely happy, ask for a Google review using a saved review link so it takes them thirty seconds. Never offer anything in exchange. Run your wording through our NDIS marketing compliance checker first. Twelve reviews changes what your business looks like to the next coordinator; the broader playbook is in how to get more NDIS clients.
This is a commercial note, not registration advice. The rules sit with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and you should read them there before deciding anything.
The part that matters for marketing is who is allowed to pay you. An unregistered provider cannot be paid directly by the NDIA, but it can be paid by a plan manager, or directly by a participant who self-manages.
In the March 2026 quarter the NDIA paid $12.4 billion to providers: $7.9 billion (64%) plan-managed, $1.2 billion (9%) self-managed and $3.3 billion (27%) NDIA-managed (NDIA Quarterly Report). Add the first two and roughly 73% of scheme payments are reachable without registration — our arithmetic on the NDIA’s figures.
That is not a loophole, it is the shape of the market. 526,376 participants use a plan manager, about 68% of all participants (our arithmetic), and they are served by around 1,481 plan managers. A new unregistered provider is not marketing to a fringe. It is marketing to most of the scheme.
What the decision does change is your audience. If NDIA-managed participants are off the table, point everything at plan managers, support coordinators and self-managing participants and their families — and say plainly on your website that you accept plan-managed and self-managed participants. New providers routinely leave that sentence off. It is the exact sentence a plan manager is scanning for.
Two caveats worth taking seriously. Some supports require registration regardless of how a plan is managed: from 1 July 2026, supported independent living and platform providers must be registered.
And some coordinators will only shortlist registered providers whatever the rules permit, so registration can be a commercial decision as much as a compliance one. Confirm the current position with the Commission before you build a plan around either path.
| Plan management | Paid to providers, Mar 2026 quarter | Share | Reachable unregistered? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan-managed | $7.9b | 64% | Yes, via the plan manager |
| NDIA-managed | $3.3b | 27% | No |
| Self-managed | $1.2b | 9% | Yes, direct from the participant |
| Total | $12.4b | 100% | About 73% (our arithmetic) |
Source: NDIA Quarterly Report to disability ministers, Q3 2025-26, covering the quarter to 31 March 2026. The dollar figures and percentages are the NDIA’s. The 73% combined figure and the 68% plan-managed participant share are our own arithmetic on those numbers, labelled as such.
So the three audiences worth your first 90 days are support coordinators (they build the shortlists), plan managers (they hold 526,376 participants between them) and self-managing participants and families (they choose directly and they search).
None of these are exotic. They are the ordinary ways a good new provider stays invisible.
All three are free, run in your browser, and need no email address.
Everything on this page is doable without an agency, and we have written it down: starting an NDIS business, the directories worth listing on, how to get NDIS clients and the 50-point checklist. It costs time rather than money, and for a provider watching cash in month one that is often the right trade.
We build the foundations for you: an accessible provider website, Google Business Profile and local search setup for your catchment, directory listings, and the referral outreach that produces the first conversations. Month to month. Ask for the free growth plan first and decide afterwards.
We are a marketing agency working only with NDIS providers across Australia. This page is general marketing guidance, not registration, legal or financial advice. Every scheme figure on it is sourced and every calculation of ours is labelled. Ask for a free growth plan.
In this order: be findable, be listed, be referred. Claim and complete a Google Business Profile, put up a site that plainly names your supports and your catchment, list on the directories support coordinators actually use, then introduce yourself directly to coordinators and plan managers in your area with your current capacity.
Direct outreach is the one channel that works before anyone has heard of you, because it does not rely on you already being known.
Not for every support. An unregistered provider cannot be paid directly by the NDIA, but it can be paid by a plan manager or directly by a self-managing participant. In the March 2026 quarter the NDIA paid $12.4b to providers: $7.9b (64%) plan-managed and $1.2b (9%) self-managed (NDIA Quarterly Report), so about 73% of the money is reachable without registration — our arithmetic.
Some supports do require registration, including supported independent living and platform providers from 1 July 2026. Check the current rules with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.
There is no reliable timeframe, and anyone giving you a guaranteed one is guessing. What is predictable is the sequence: being findable takes days, being listed takes a few weeks, and referral relationships take as long as they take. In practice the first enquiry usually follows the first real conversation with a support coordinator rather than the day a website goes live.
In practice, yes. Word-of-mouth referrals still get searched. If someone is handed your name and finds nothing, or finds a half-built social page with no services or service area on it, the referral quietly dies. The site does not need to be big. It needs to state what you deliver, where, whether you are taking referrals, and how to reach a person.
Start with Google Business Profile, then the NDIS directories coordinators use to build shortlists, then any local council or disability service directory covering your catchment. Keep your business name, address and phone number identical on every listing, because inconsistent details weaken your local search rankings.
Usually not. Ads send traffic to a page. If that page does not yet say what you do, where you do it and that you have capacity, the money buys visits and nothing else. Get the free foundations converting first, then consider paid traffic once you know what an enquiry is actually worth to you.
No. If you are still deciding whether to start, what supports to deliver, or how registration works, read our guide to how to start an NDIS business first. Marketing cannot make those decisions for you, and spending on it beforehand is wasted.
A specialist maps your first 90 days: what to build, in what order, and which parts you are better off doing yourself. No pressure either way.
A specialist reviews your visibility against the providers competing in your catchment, and sends a written growth plan within two business days. You keep it either way.