Ever feel like your treatment center might be missing out on opportunities for new admissions? Heck, you get calls every day from marketers promising you the moon, surely there may be some merit to what they offer.
How do you effectively market an addiction treatment center in 2015?
Networking: Relationship building, network marketing, you can call it whatever you want. Networking brings referrals, referrals bring in new admissions and new admissions keep the business running! Network with treatment centers that don’t specialize in your field. If your treatment center specializes in drug addiction but receives a call from an individual seeking treatment for an eating disorder, you’ll want to refer them to the right place. Network with other treatment centers that are “competitors”. When a competitor hits capacity and receives an admission call, they need to refer that call to another facility. Why can’t that be you?
Pay Per Click: The quickest way to get found on search engines is using PPC, also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM). With PPC, you bid on keywords (what your prospective customer may type in to google.com) and pay for every click that your website gets. It sounds pretty easy, but PPC is quite complex.
Local SEO: If you perform a search on google.com for “drug rehabs” you will get results based off of your computers IP address. By utilizing local SEO, you are attempting to get your treatment center to show up both in the Maps section of the first page and in the regular results as well.
Inbound Marketing: With inbound marketing, you are essentially casting a much wider net to capture traffic and top of the funnel leads. By creating content that is useful to your target audience much earlier in the conversion process, you gain trust and authority. This moves leads through the conversion process quickly by utilizing email marketing automation.
Social Media Marketing: There isn’t a better way to connect with people than by utilizing social media. The purpose of social media is to ENGAGE with your target audience. Simply joining a social media website and blasting your offering day in and day out is NOT social media marketing. Show people what your treatment center stands for, share information that is useful to them, ask questions and engage with people.
Advertising On Notable Sites: If you are looking at the websites that rank for keywords like “drug rehabs” or “treatment center” you will see third-party directory websites. Besides getting included on these directories, they usually offer advertising. Pricing does vary, but it can be useful if they have great rankings on the major search engines.
This is by no means a definitive list of ways to market an addiction treatment center. These are just the most common ways that actually bring a positive ROI. With every category, there will be limitations, costs, and time expectancies for things to start working. Each one has its pros and cons. Some treatment centers want the phone to ring yesterday, while others are looking for a long-term approach.
Before jumping into one area or another (except for networking), its a good idea to establish your business goals and needs. This will help you and your team work toward a definitive goal. If you’re engaging with a third party to help you with one of these areas, they should also give you reasonable timelines of what they can deliver. Just remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. However, third parties can be particularly helpful when it comes to marketing your addiction treatment center. You are able to focus on your business, while others are able to help you do the marketing. For more answers to your treatment center marketing questions, contact RicketyRoo.
