staff working at our addiction treatment marketing agency

To maintain that steady flow, you need an addiction treatment marketing agency that can help you beat your competitors. If you’re a small facility, one of your biggest challenges will be how to compete with large, national treatment centers.

When you’re looking for ways to increase admissions to your rehab or mental health center, you have to consider your target audience first: substance users and family members who wish to help them.

You may not have the capital to pay for TV commercials, but one surefire way to get yourself in the public eye is via the Internet.

Below are some of the top-performing strategies you can use to help develop a strong alcohol and drug treatment marketing campaign:

Book a Discovery Call

If you prefer to speak with someone now please call 855-876-7238.

AddictionTreatmentMarketingGuide Cover

LEAD TO RECOVErY

The Definitive Marketing Guide to Full Admissions

You opened a treatment center. Now what?

Perhaps you’re just opening up a new center and looking to establish your brand identity. Or maybe you have an established center and are looking for a comprehensive way to promote your facility.

Benefits of Addiction Treatment Marketing

Top 10 Reasons to Hire an Addiction Marketing Firm for Your Treatment Center

Develop A Search Engine Optimized Website

If you want to make sure that you’re your information is getting to the right people at the right time, then your web content needs to be search engine optimized.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to a process that improves a website’s search engine ranking. What this means is that with effective SEO, your website will appear high in the search results in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. As part of your drug and alcohol rehab marketing strategy, SEO can boost your website traffic, increase the use of your contact forms and phone calls, and it can make this happen quickly and cost-effectively.

Why waste money on untargeted advertising when you can reach out to your specific audience? Bear in mind, however, that SEO practices are complex and are frequently updated. For these reasons, it pays to have a professional addiction marketing expert optimize your site to maintain its high search engine ranking.

Create A Strong Social Media Presence

Social media is one of the most popular means of communication today. You can use it to help your business by creating a strong presence, but use your social media channels wisely. Don’t just use social media to promote updated information on your website.

As well as spreading your overall message, you can also use social media as a means of reaching out to people in recovery and to provide tips to help them maintain their sobriety.

Publish a blog with regular updates: Don’t just use your blog to tout your services. Use it to offer valuable insights to people who are thinking of trying drug rehabilitation or for those who are currently in recovery. You can use your SEO practices in your blogs as well as regular web pages. If you’re struggling for ideas, think about the information that parents or loved ones might want to find out, such as how family members can help a loved one with recovery, or how to handle a relapse.

Keep Track Of Your Web Presence

Reputation management is key to any business, but perhaps even more so when it comes to addiction treatment marketing. You need to know when and where people are saying positive things about your rehab center, and also when and where their comments are negative.

An easy way to track this is by setting up a Google alert for the name of your rehab center. Once you have done this, you will receive an email alert each time the center is mentioned online. It will save you doing repeated daily searches. If you come across a negative comment, contact the person individually and try to work through the problem and resolve any issues. This will leave a positive impression for anyone else who may come across the review.

Make Use Of Third Party Sites

One of the most undervalued strategies for marketing a drug rehabilitation center is by promoting your facility on third-party review sites. When a third party gives your facility a good review, it is immediately seen as more legitimate and trustworthy.

Reach out to past clients or people who are currently going through your rehabilitation program. Both positive and negative reviews can help give you publicity, as long as you respond to the negative reviews in a professional manner. Research shows that for more than 50 percent of people looking for drug rehabilitation treatment for themselves or for a loved one, reading reviews posted on a third-party website is an important part of the selection process.

Make Use Of Client Testimonials

When people are searching for help with drug addiction, they want to be sure that the staff at their chosen rehab center can help them recover from the addiction and get better. It’s very important to promote your patients’ success stories because it builds trust that you are the best treatment center to meet their individual needs.

When visitors reach your website, they will most likely be looking for some testimonials from past clients. Make sure that you put them in a place where they can be easily found. Testimonials from recovered clients can help potential clients trust your service and make a decision.

Consult A Professional

You have enough responsibilities running your rehab center without trying to take on the whole process of marketing your company. Consult an addiction treatment marketing agency like Lead to Recovery and let them do the work for you.

We are a leading digital marketing agency for inpatient, outpatient, residential, and detox addiction treatment centers with a proven track record of marketing services that increase admissions and ROI. Our range of digital marketing services for behavioral health professionals and treatment centers will prove well wroth your investment.

1. Internal resources can’t do it all.

I can’t tell you how many discussions I’ve had with addiction treatment marketing ideas drug rehab centers that say “we have a person”, “our marketing person is doing just fine”, “our outreach coordinator does a great job with that, thanks”, and the list goes on.

I’ve always found it interesting to get these types of replies from recovery centers because I find it nearly impossible for any one person to do it all. However, it is possible their outreach person or their “person” is doing a fine job but chances are they’re doing a good job in only one or possibly two particular aspects of alcohol rehab marketing.

Agencies that have a proven track record in the rehab space should be looked at seriously to augment any in-house efforts currently in play. Why? Because agencies with extensive addiction treatment marketing focus can not only bring a wealth of knowledge in the substance abuse vertical they’ve gained from having worked on dozens of competing sites over the years but oftentimes have individual members on their staff that specialize in particular service lines such as SEO, Social Media, Pay Per Click Marketing, etc.

2. Conversion-focused rehab website development is part art form and part alchemy.

A well thought out, carefully crafted website is an art form, but the reality is drug rehab centers should NEVER just design a site and call it a day. This may come across as a puzzling statement, but if you went through the process of rehab website design and did nothing more to it, you’re doing your facility and your bottom line a horrible injustice.

image of a successful drug rehab marketing campaign

Great designers and agencies look at a brand new site they just created almost like a new parent looks at a newborn child — with love and admiration. And just like a child, a site needs to be fed, clothed and guided to grow up strong and healthy in an ever-changing environment. This is why great designers (and digital marketers in general) always look to mix things up a bit even after a brand new site officially launches.

Like scientists in a lab with their beakers and chemicals, great designers should always mix things up like website architecture, content, layout, etc., in an ongoing and sustained manner to identify ways to enhance the value of a site in the eyes of its users and to enhance conversion rate potential.

If you already have a website, great! But there are a few questions you need to think about even if you already have a website in play.

  • Is my site using beautiful imagery, well-written content, and videos to instill confidence and trust in the eyes of its end users?
  • Is my site optimized in both desktop and smartphone environments?
  • Is my site’s analytics showing low bounce rates or above-average user sessions?
  • Does my site incorporate strategically placed Calls-to-Action (CTA)?
  • Is each of my site’s goals being tracked individually in analytics so you can easily reference what’s working and what needs to be improved upon with site pages?
  • Is my site constantly changing by challenging itself with new content, brand messaging, CTA placement, UX changes, etc., to increase conversion rates?

Should you find yourself answering “no” to any of the above questions, it may be time to look seriously at either refreshing your current site or completely redesigning it to take things to the next level for your rehab center. And please do yourself and your facility a favor and NEVER stop redesigning it. Don’t ever be content!

If you don’t have a site, you better get with it and build one STAT! But before you find a partner to design it or decide to use in-house resources, make sure you build it with a solid content strategy in place (text, images, and video) and with Search Engine Optimization top of mind. And please, for the love of all that is good, make sure it’s responsive and automatically adjusts to fit the screen size of whatever device it appears on whether it be desktop, laptop, or smartphone environments. You don’t want to have one of those sites that someone pulls up on their phone and is immediately frustrated because it looks terrible and is impossible to navigate.

3. Print, TV, Radio, and Billboards can be expensive and difficult to quantify

Years ago, and I mean YEARS ago, print, radio, tv, and billboards were all you needed to succeed in addiction treatment marketing. Unfortunately, each one of them has since lost its luster with the advent of the internet and typically doesn’t compare to the cost-effective and quantifiable nature of online marketing. And unlike online advertising, traditional media is difficult to track ROI with any level of certainty.

Print

Print circulation numbers are way down, and most people get their information online.

TV

TV still has influence and I’m sure we’ve all seen Passages Malibu commercials airing on and off for years now, so it must be working for them. However, the cost of running tv ads is unattainable for most drug rehab centers due to high production costs and airtime fees.

Radio

Radio works well in certain markets, but in today’s world of commercial-free music options the likes of Spotify, ad-free satellite radio, and the fact that radio listener numbers continue to decline, it’s probably not the best way to promote your center.

Billboards

Billboards serve their purpose and can attract people at the right time as they commute to work or while they head to see Aunt Beth the next town over. Unfortunately, billboards can sometimes be difficult to remember other than maybe a brand name or a catchphrase. Sorry to say it, but someone doing 75 MPH down the freeway and just glancing up to see a billboard message will probably net zero influence. Placement is key for billboards such as just outside a jail, a hospital or near a courthouse.

4. Traditional Outreach can’t cover proactive search.

I’m a firm believer that all reputable substance abuse treatment centers should have an outreach arm of their organization to establish relationships with potential referral partners. They’re also a fantastic resource to get a center’s overall brand in front of the right people to bring in new patients on a consistent basis. Let’s just face it. Outreach personnel tends to be the lifeblood of drug rehab centers.

The only challenge is outreach coordinators and managers can’t reach everyone all the time. This holds especially true for those individuals sitting at home thinking they need help because they think they have an alcohol problem or perhaps people seeking drug rehab program for a loved one because their loved one is showing signs of addiction and behavioral changes. It’s at this point, people in these types of situations then turn to a search engine such as Google to source rehab marketing options at that critical point they’re looking to commit. Outreach personnel can’t compete with that nor should they have to. It’s our recommendation that you need both.

5. Google Business Profile Optimization isn’t as easy as merely claiming your business listing.

Google Maps Optimization, also known as Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization, is probably one of the most valuable endeavors a center can use to pull in potential patients from their local market. GBP is an amazing opportunity for your center to get in front of people searching for geo-targeted terms such as “addiction treatment centers near me”, “alcohol rehab + [your city or state]”, etc. and also factors into the equation in Google search results for “rehab centers”, “drug treatment centers”, etc.

google business profile optimization for drug and alcohol rehab centers

Most centers make the mistake of not even claiming their business on GBP. This represents a slew of issues which we will cover in a later blog post, but for now, if you haven’t claimed your GBP listing, get that ball rolling immediately.

If you have already claimed your listing and have done nothing more than that, you’re missing the boat here. For claimed listings, businesses are able to inject key information into their business profile such as address, website, phone number, hours of operation, payments accepted, images of your facility, videos, and so much more.

Aside from claiming your listing and optimizing your center’s profile, there is still additional optimization needed in the form of ongoing citation building in order to capture one of those valuable top 3 slots in Google Maps on search engine results pages.

6. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) in the addiction treatment marketing industry is tough and expensive.

PPC is a fantastic way for your rehab center to get in front of a relevant audience who are proactively searching for treatment options either locally in your area or nationally depending on where you’re looking to acquire patients from. It’s an auction-based platform whereby you bid on keywords and phrases against your competition which helps dictate where your ad appears on search engine results pages.

get legitscript to advertise on google

Rehab PPC Marketing may have high cost-per-click fees associated ranging anywhere from just a few dollars per click for low volume phrases to $70+ per click for higher traffic, more competitive terms. If you’re not careful, you could burn through an entire PPC marketing budget in days when you were hoping to have it last for weeks. Paid search ads can, however, be a costly endeavor if you’re not careful.

Drug addiction rehab competitors doing PPC are fierce and they don’t like to lose, so when they see a new player come onto the scene, they tend to get more aggressive with their bidding strategies among other tactics to try and push you out. Their goal? Well, their goal is to win, of course, and they won’t stop until they do. Needless to say, but if PPC is something your rehab facility is looking to endeavor, you’ve been warned that once you step foot in the arena and the battle starts, it doesn’t end and the depth of your pockets will likely be tested.

Be advised that if you’ve never done PPC in the past, you better put aside a minimum of $5k/month for a small local rehab center push to upwards of $200k+/month for a national approach to running a successful PPC strategy. Furthermore, in the case of running ads on Google in particular, you’ll first need to go through the process of getting LegitScript certified which can take a few months from the date of your submission for verification until you get approved or rejected. Once LegitScript approved, you’ll then need to get verified by Google before you can start running ads on their platform.

For additional information including LegitScript certification for addiction treatment facilities including their one-time verification fee and annual fees based on the number of locations you have, please visit here.

7. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specialized skill that requires patience and persistence.

Organic Search Engine Optimization is the process of adjusting code, content and linking variables for a website in order to gain search engine rankings for targeted keyword phrases you’re pursuing your center’s website pages. Unlike PPC where it’s the closest thing you can get to instant gratification (once your center is LegitScript certified, of course), SEO takes time and patience in order to start seeing results from your efforts. You can look at SEO as more of a marathon pace vs. PPC’s sprint.

If your center has a drug rehab marketing strategy in place, that’s great news! But are you sure you’re targeting the right terms? Is analytics showing incredible traffic volume but low conversion rates? Are you publishing conversion-focused content that is authoritative and builds your brand as THE authority in the space? These are questions I typically ask of companies and you’d be surprised by the answers I get and the rebuttals I volley back at them. All too often, we’ve seen drug rehab center sites with tons of traffic, but low conversions.

In situations like this, it makes sense to carefully audit analytics and the page content components to see if page traffic is artificially inflating the traffic stats. After a thorough audit, the next step is to strongly consider a content consolidation effort to only focus on key pages that show the level of targeted traffic and conversions that actually matter most to your practice while also working on a new content strategy to gain additional and more meaningful traffic and conversions.

If you don’t have an SEO strategy in place, don’t wait. Drug rehab SEO can take anywhere from 3-7 months from the date you get a project started until you start to see solid traction in terms of rankings, back-links, and targeted traffic to your site.

8. Social Media can make or break addiction treatment centers.

Rehab Social Media Marketing can do the work for you. It’s in this realm where people share their stories, exchange ideas, share thoughts on a wide array of subjects, write reviews on business pages along with a narrative about their positive or negative experiences, and so much more.

social media icons for substance abuse marketing

Centers that currently have a social media marketing strategy in place and disseminate engaging content on a regular basis are probably reaping the rewards of having a presence on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. What are the rewards you ask? It’s simple. Rehabs that are engaged with their social media communities not only create buzz about their services but are also ensuring their followers become ambassadors of their center by spreading the word for them to their peers who can then, in turn, continue spreading the word to their social circles. This equates to nothing less than continued fanaticism about their brand which then translates into new patient referrals to their facility.

Facebook and Instagram also offer advertising options for rehab centers that include “boosting” posts and running ads in general. But just like Google, Facebook and Instagram require treatment centers to first get LegitScript certified before you conduct advertising on their sites. Other than Facebook and Instagram, we also suggest LinkedIn (LI) as a part of your addiction center marketing mix. It’s the best social platform for drug rehab centers to establish B2B relationships and partnerships available today. Tread carefully though. The keys to success on LI is to be authentic and purposeful with messaging whether it be LI updates on your personal profile, business profile, or through “connect” requests to people you’re interested in engaging with on LI. If you’ve been ignoring setting up social media accounts for your addiction treatment marketing campaign, you better get to it. Conversations are being had about your firm and you’re not a part of the discussion. For some rehab facilities, they’re a bit nervous about setting up social media profiles for fear of getting bad reviews and such, but the reality is if you don’t get in on the conversation, it’s still taking place with or without you. And if negative reviews are your main concern, you may want to rethink your business operations and strategy at an organic level to get your house in order first anyway.

Keep in mind that engagement on social platforms needs to be strategic and timely. If your center goes into social without a plan and you engage the wrong people at the wrong time, it could cost you more than you’ll ever know.

9. Email Marketing requires strategy and strong, timely messaging.

Email marketing is dead, right? Wrong. For some reason, a lot of drug rehabilitation centers just don’t do email marketing at all and I don’t get it. If you are getting treatment leads into your system from contact us form submissions, insurance verification form submissions, or other email capture formats, why on earth would you not leverage that information if people didn’t immediately commit to treatment at your facility?

email marketing a substance use disorder therapy center can be highly effective

As you can imagine, email marketing services for drug rehab centers take a different approach than companies in other industries. What we’ve seen work is to take inbound leads that haven’t quite committed to treatment and “drip” on them periodically with information about your facility, its capabilities, and perhaps relevant drug and/or alcohol information to keep your brand and treatment center top of mind.

Another way facilities can benefit from email marketing plan is to also use it for Alumni outreach about upcoming events which can be very powerful for a practice.

Email marketing may sound simple, but it requires special attention to detail such as timeliness of email follow-ups/drips to potential patients, subject line split testing, email template content and CTA testing, and much more.

10. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a unique skill set most in-house personnel can’t do correctly.

This can come across as an arrogant #10 headline, but it’s true for most drug rehab centers. Rehab CRO is probably one of the most challenging endeavors a digital marketer can undertake. It takes testing, testing, and even more testing regardless of positive or negative outcomes.

If you find yourself asking “what is CRO?”, it’s a lot easier to describe than it is to actually put into practice. CRO is the process of taking website pages and changing variables on them that can include changes to headlines, content, CTA placement, color changes to CTA’s, inclusion of new page elements to funnel users into the conversion funnel more efficiently, and so on.

For CRO, there are two main types of conversion rate tests.

Multivariate Testing

The first test is called multivariate testing. As the name indicates, multiple variables are changed all at once to see how the “new” page which is commonly referred to as the “challenger” compares to the current version of the page which is known as the “champion”. Once the challenger page elements are in play, the traffic is then equally split between the champion and challenger to see which page performs better in terms of conversions. If enough data is collected and the challenger comes out as the clear winner, that page should then replace the old champion page for all traffic.

A/B Testing

The second test module is called A/B testing. Unlike multivariate testing, A/B testing only changes one variable on a site page before splitting the traffic to test effectiveness. For A/B testing though, please make sure you have a significant amount of traffic coming to that page for the test. Otherwise, the results won’t be definitive and you could end up pursuing the challenger as your new champion page that in the long run wasn’t the right decision to make.

As you can probably tell, Conversion Rate Optimization is part science and part experiment. If you decide to go down this path on your own, we strongly suggest you read up on the subject extensively before conducting any addiction marketing tests at all.

Book a Discovery Call

Whether you provide one-on-one counseling in a private practice or group therapy in a residential facility, marketing is essential to your success. After all, you can’t attract new clients if people don’t know about everything you have to offer. If you’re struggling with few to no leads and don’t know how you’ll grow your business, it’s time to ramp up your marketing efforts.

About Lead to Recovery

Website design experts during meeting that will help promote your mental treatment center.

At Lead to Recovery, our sole purpose is to help businesses achieve the highest possible level of online success through responsive web design and effective online marketing.

Our team delivers results-oriented services along with the industry’s latest best practices, producing tangible growth and ROI for your business — all at affordable prices. With Lead to Recovery, you’ll always stay ahead of the curve and in front of the pack.

Request a Consultation

Don’t worry: We can walk you through the process to make it as pain-free and seamless as possible. Also, the sooner you start, the better, which is just another reason you can only win by requesting a consultation with us.

behavioral health centers logo
camelback recovery logo
green branch logo
virtue at the point logo
partner logos 2
valley recovery center logo
virtue recovery logo
clinic les alpes logo
recovery at the crossroads logo
changing tides logo
calusa recovery logo
holdfast recovery logo
beachside recovery logo
new day recovery addiction treatment in ohio
co-founder at lead to recovery matthew travers

Content written by rehab marketing expert Matthew Travers

Co-Founder

Matthew Travers is a seasoned Digital Marketing Professional with a distinguished career spanning 21 years, dedicating the last decade to the specialized fields of addiction treatment and mental health marketing. He brings a deep passion for creating powerful marketing strategies, with a distinctive proficiency in SEO and conversion rate optimization, aligning business objectives with innovative solutions to drive success.