Canadian Rehab Marketing: How to Get the Phone Ringing

If you’re operating a drug and alcohol treatment center in Canada, you need to make sure you’re doing everything you can to attract new patients to your practice by utilizing the most effective Candian rehab marketing strategies.

Whether you offer outpatient treatment or inpatient programs, you will need a strong digital marketing arm. In this article, we will share the top 10 digital marketing channels and techniques you should be using to fully realize potential admits to your treatment facility and how each can address both local and provincial admits from your province as well as other provinces in Canada.

Responsive Website Design

The very first thing your addiction treatment space needs is a mobile-friendly website design that is easy to navigate and has strategically placed Calls-to-Actions (CTA) such as “Call Now”, short form submission options, and Live Chat functionality. It’s also important to have rich content that entices your target audience to get in touch with admissions to inquire about your services and how your alcohol and substance abuse treatment center can help.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO should be at the top of the marketing priority list — no question. Other than strategic partnerships, boots on the ground, and court-ordered referral networking opportunities, there is an eager audience proactively looking for your treatment services on the search engines every single day and if they’re not finding you, they’re finding your competition. Make sure you have SEO for your addiction treatment center is priority #1!

Google Business Profile (Local SEO)

Google Business Profile is one of the strongest marketing channels to gain new admits to your center from your local market. The only caveat is Google only shows the top three local companies it feels is the most relevant to a particular search, so the real estate to garner the attention of your audience is finite and requires a strong local strategy to execute Google Business Profile properly. The rewards will be fantastic if you do it correctly and can account for up to 60%+ of your admissions if you play your cards right.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a way for your rehab facility to write about addiction types, treatment options, drug and alcohol abuse statistics, and so much more and is effective in differentiating your treatment center from competitors if the topics covered and well-written and conversion-focused content resonate with your audience. First things first though, put together a solid content marketing plan for several weeks, if not several months out before cranking out content. Authenticity and uniqueness are key here.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)

Normally, we’d write a glowing section about how PPC is the closest thing to instant gratification when it comes to promoting addiction treatment centers online on platforms such as Google, Bing, and Facebook and “pay per click” for targeted phrases and ads. Unfortunately, addiction treatment providers need to be LegitScript certified before they can run ads on them and as it stands today, LegitScript only applies to US-based rehab centers. We know. It sucks, but we have a feeling LegitScript will be offered to Canadian centers in due time, so be patient and pursue all other organic channels.

Social Media Marketing

Social sites such as Facebook and Instagram offer an amazing way for treatment facilities to showcase their facilities, success stories, staff, and their overall brand to the masses. You will have limitations in terms of your content being seen since boosting posts and running ads on these platforms require LegitScript certification, but remember, people will also look at your social profiles and review sites to evaluate reviews and experiences of previous patients during their evaluation process. PLEASE be sure to keep it authentic and engage your audience as needed, but tread lightly with detractors. Marketing through social media should remain a priority for your rehab center!

Email Marketing

Email marketing is old school, right? Wrong. It’s the new old school that a lot of rehab centers seem to forget can pull in new admissions from older inbound lead inquiries. Additionally, email allows you to keep in regular contact with alumni alerting them to upcoming alumni events and gatherings. If you don’t have an email program in place, you’re missing out BIG time.

Optimized Press Releases

Optimized press releases are a fantastic way to megaphone announcements ranging from launching a brand new treatment center website design to a new treatment center location to new treatment offerings such as dual diagnosis and beyond. What’s fantastic about optimized PR is it puts your message in front of other businesses in the space which can initiate B2B partnership discussions with other centers as well as capturing additional real estate in organic search and news search such as Google News. It’s pretty badass in our opinion. 

Conversion Rate Optimization

If you think it’s okay to simply design a website, promote it online, and call it a day, you would be wrong. Successful drug and alcohol rehab centers know there’s always room for improvement with their page layout, content, CTA placement and associated colors, navigation scheming, etc. In other words, if you’re not identifying pain points via analytics analysis and aggressively addressing them to increase conversion rate potential of site visitors, you’re potentially missing a lot more heads in beds for your treatment center. We guarantee it.

Call Tracking for Treatment Centers

HIPAA compliant call tracking is a must-have in today’s world of digital marketing. Not only can addiction treatment centers dedicate unique phone numbers to individual marketing channels such as Google Organic, Facebook, Google Business Profile, etc., but you’ll be able to attribute new admits to your centers from each which we can all agree helps bridge the gap between online marketing and actual patient acquisition.

Get Guaranteed Results With Unrivaled Advertising

Addiction treatment marketing in the Canadian market isn’t too dissimilar to marketing US-based treatment centers other than health insurance and certain geographic nuance. Major markets such as Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal, are substantial in size and people are seeking treatment to overcome their addictions. Now is the time for your treatment facility to act and get in front of them during their critical time of need. 

If you’re unsure where to start or not confident your existing drug rehab marketing agency partner is hitting on all cylinders for marketing your practice online, just give us a call for a free, no-obligation consultation. We do an early wins assessment to determine the best Canadian rehab marketing services for your center.