Monthly Archives: June 2010

Addiction Treatment Referral’s Lead Generation Holy Grail?

Quick, what the hottest form of lead generation in the addiction treatment marketing space? Word of Mouth? Internet? TV? Social Media? E-mail? Pay Per Click Advertising? While I don’t have the exact answers for you and it is different for each treatment center and the one common method I keep hearing over and over again is REFERRALS.

Referrals come in many different forms and sizes. They can be word of mouth and Internet and all of the above, but they are referrals nonetheless. Remember back to your first few dates? The dates that were introductions were probably more successful than the picks up’s at the local watering hole, or for Jim Peake, I even picked up a gal on the New Jersey Turnpike Toll Plaza coming back from a weekend at the beach. (It did not work out for very long, that was 20 years ago). I think that because of the “accountability factor” and referred date tended to be a little more responsible.

And in the drug addiction treatment field it is no different than the dating arena, there are stakes involved, big stakes for both the referrer and the referee. So if the stakes in referrals are high why not learn from someone who wrote the book on it and pick up on the nuances so that we can get better at it? I read John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing for Small Businesses a few years ago and he recently came out with The Referral Engine, Teaching Your Business to Market Itself.

I decided to investigate the book to see if there might be any possible fits in the treatment center arena and Jantsch did not disappoint. At the same time his advice is also relevant to my own consulting business in the treatment center space.

Referrals are the Life Blood of Treatment Centers

To quote John Jantsch in Chapter 1, “There is a tiny part of the brain, the hypothalamus, that – among other things – helps regulate sexual urges, thirst and hunger, maternal behavior, aggression, pleasure, and, to some degree your propensity to refer. The hypothalamus likes validation – it registers pleasure in doing good and being recognized for it, and it is home to the need to belong to something greater than ourselves. This is the social drive for making referrals.” Does this sound familiar?

In my time in working in the addiction treatment field I have noticed that the referrals practice is alive and well in recovery as it is in addiction. (Remember we all knew who had the good weed?) I am seeing referral everywhere for example; therapists referring to treatment centers, on ground marketers sending in leads to treatment centers, treatment centers referring to other treatment centers, Google referring PPC ads, Directories referring leads etc.

Referral leads tend to be much better qualified than cold leads coming in off Yellow Pages or the Internet or anywhere else for that matter. On a side note, if you take for example a keyword search on the phrase “drug rehab” which is searched on 1,138 times per day and “Georgia drug rehab” which is searched on 42 times per day which one do you think will refer and convert a higher quality Internet lead/person to the treatment center in Georgia? So even internet referral leads have different quality scores and admission rates and so too the warm hand off between individuals.

Referrals as a Form of Survival?

Like the keyword example above the same goes true in all the other facets in marketing to treatment centers. So if not all of these referral sources are created equal would it not make sense to treat them differently so that we can obtain the optimal results from each? That is what this Referral Engine book is all about, putting referral systems in place. It is about taking referrals and systematizing them so that the maximum results are gained. With that said, there are time and money resources that are involved in making these referrals easy for the referrers, the easier they are the more we will get.

Why do we do referrals? What are the referrers looking for? In some cases some people want nothing other than a warm thank you. In other cases they have a strong desire to help people especially the ones with the addiction. They want a sense of community, a sense of belonging. Others want money which opens up an ethical can of worms. “Some people just make referrals because they need to and others refer as a form of survival. “ (Page 4)

What?! Holy Toledo! Referrals as a form of survival? Really? I don’t believe it, or I can’t believe it but I continued to read on. Jantsch does seem to support this pretty well throughout the book. He also says that “we refer to connect with other people and to build our own form of social currency.” That seems pretty straight forward and logical and I can get my head around that.

What systems do “we” have in place to manage addiction treatment referrals?

Jantsch did an informal survey with several thousand small businesses and found that 63.4% of them got their business through referrals! Wow, this number goes back to my instinct in the beginning of the article that referrals were big in the treatment business but this is the small business sector. (Slightly different) I would think that the addiction treatment business the 63.4% number is probably much higher just because of the nature of the business and most of us are small businesses to boot.

What was even a bigger glaring statistic (page 11) that 79.9% of the small businesses “readily admitted they had no system of any kind to generate referrals.” I’ve got to admit, that I too don’t have a “system” either for my consulting business. I don’t get my leads from SEO or the internet; I get them from word of mouth. So I too have warm hand off’s from the referrer to client and myself.

So I too need to take some of John’s advice and put my referral systems in place. While The Referral Engine is not a unique book in its topic, it is up-to-date (2010) and can serve as a perfect blueprint for helping treatment centers manage our referrals and improving the lives of many addicts.

Adwords Blame Game

After coming back from the West Coast Symposium and NAATP one of the things that came to light was the blame game. Treatment Centers blaming other treatment centers for their internet practices like buying keywords on their branded names, which is legal according to Google. I can buy a Google Adwords keyphrase that has the name of another treatment center. What I can’t do is use their NAME in my Google Adwords Ad. (In most cases)

So let’s set the record straight. Stop blaming and start learning. I picked two keywords “beachside” and “mountainside” since they are both descriptive and could both appeal to a treatment center customer. When I punch them into Google you will notice Promises.com comes up first on the example below.

Why? Because they bought the keyphrase Treatment Center. They did not buy the name Beachside Treatment Center. Notice how Google highlights the two words Treatment Center. If you don’t like this practice call Google and complain to them and stop blaming and accusing. They set the rules, Promises or any other paid Google Adwords treatment center does not.
Now if you really want to have some fun type into Google Jo Blow Treatment Center, or better yet Cancer Treatment Center. What do you get? Do you get SOMEONE trying to rippoff their names? Hell no!

The same thing happened to Apple.  They bought the keyphrase Games and Apps and their PPC ad showed up for Sex Game Apps!

What is Addiction Recovery? An Unknown Thank You!

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This past week I was fortunate enough to attend the West Coast Symposium in Addictive Disorders hosted by C4 and Recovery View. The conference went extremely well in my opinion and it was a huge success for their first symposium on the West Coast with about 75 exhibitors and close to 400 people. This will now be the annual sister symposium to the Cape Cod Symposium.

While I’m not a clinical person or a therapist I thought I would share this little experience with the folks who actually do the real work in drug addiction treatment and recovery. A lot of times one might ask “what is addiction recovery?” Well I think I have a really good example of what addiction recovery is.

While spending my final night at The La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs something interesting happened to me. I was having dinner by myself at the Adobe Grill Mexican Restaurant. There at the bar I had bumped into a couple of guys I also ran into at the pool. We had a good conversation that led into many topics including golf, oil, politics and addiction and the usage here in the USA. These two middle aged men were well educated golfers who came to La Quinta for their annual guys trip (about 80 guys) from all over the USA.

The conversation ended, they walked out, I was finishing up my dinner. The one guy walked back in about 45 seconds later to thank me. (I did not get his name and I will most likely never see him again). I asked him why was he thanking me? He said because I like what you are doing, some people in the addiction recovery business had touched someone in his life that was near and dear to him and helped them successfully recover. He then gave me a heartfelt hug, never met this guy before, don’t know his name but I can tell you for sure that the folks in our business ARE making a big difference in many people’s lives. I happened to be on the receiving end of the hug, but really the big hugs go out to those who are making the real difference, thanks for everything that you do!