Category Archives: Treatment Center Lead Generation

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!

Addiction Treatment Center Marketing Plan Primer

Most likely you are already doing “something.” The problem is that “something” might not be doing enough. Let’s face it, times are tough in 2010. You can do an elaborate marketing plan or you can do something fast and simple that works. Here’s the short list, list out all the ways that you are attracting clients to your treatment center. Hopefully you have 4-6 proven ways to generate leads that turn into referrals or conversions as I like to call them. This is my secret addiction treatment marketing strategy, find out what works the best and do more and do it better. That’s right, if it is working do more of it, refine it, test other methods or in some cases hire more people if it is on ground marketing.

What if what we are doing doesn’t work? Then you have two options, drop it or change it. And do it fast. As Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And as Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So in my view this marketing game looking for high quality leads requires testing and tracking. Finding out what is working for your business and doing more of it. We don’t have the kind of time Mr. Edison had many years ago.

The internet provides a great platform for testing. PPC is the most optimal and controllable testing method I have found. The more qualified traffic you drive to your site or landing and squeeze pages you will be able to learn what types of clients are attracted to your business. Then you can target more of them. You do not want to have to convince them to get them into the treatment center. If you furnish what they are looking for then it is much easier to just have a “fit” vs. a hard closing sale.

At the end of the day Google wants two things from your web site, content and incoming links. Both are important and there are different schools of thought that will tell you one ranks over the other. What I know is if you do both all the time you will land on top of the Google Search Engine Results Pages, (SERP) obviously there is more to it than that but this will propel you in the right direction. The reason why this is so critical is because when a person is in a moment of decision they search for an answer and you want to be able to get between them and Google and field that call, you have a higher probability of closing the admission.

Here is some “bad news.” (Why is it bad news? Because it takes work). You want to keep adding content and incoming links to your site all the time, forever! You might ask how much new content does Google want? Well, as far as content goes in a perfect world I would shoot for 2 articles per day every day. If that is too cumbersome then shoot for 2 per week. You must keep adding quality content to your site if you want the Google Spider to come back to the site and index the pages. As far as incoming links go in my experience quality is better than quantity. I also think that you want to continually add more links, ask your suppliers, your friends and business colleagues for links.

Having come from the direct response marketing profession I’m a big believer in direct mail. Yup, good old fashioned US Mail. It is easy to test a small market or list and mail out postcards. But mail to them frequently at least 7 times, but make sure they are your target market. Measure the response, drive them to your web site with a special URL so you can track the effectiveness. An example here is if you are a low end treatment center you might want to send postcard to the higher end treatment centers and ask for referrals. Out of sight out of mind, so if you keep sending the reminders it helps a lot. Also, think about sending Holiday Cards to all of your alumni and ask for referrals. You can automate this task with Send Out Cards.

I’ve also spoken with treatment centers that are doing billboards on the main highways in their cities and that opens up the opportunity for a conversation between two people in a car. The thing about outdoor advertising is it can be expensive and you want to do it over a few months to see the real results. Again like any other medium you want to track the outdoor ad with a new URL and a new 800#.

If you have thought about writing a book now is a great time to do that since being a published author does so much for your brand. If you need help writing the book find a ghost author on ELance.com or Guru.com and get the book going. It helps secure speaking engagements and media interviews and press is the cheapest and most creditable way to generate eyeballs. Books are nothing more than lead generators to me and very fancy calling cards but they work.

Do you want to add some great corporate videos to your web site? You can do this for less than $1,000 per video. The thing I love about video is that it communicates so well and we all want to do business with people we know like and trust.

In the addiction treatment and behavioral health field we have several industry trade shows. This is a great place to meet your peers and establish new relationships. What I try and do is “keyword optimize” my name tag. So if I am a “Pet Friendly Treatment Center” I might title myself as “Pet Friendly VP.” Why? Because it is fun and silly and it is a great conversation starter, it is an ice breaker. You could do the same thing with Dual Diagnosis VP, you get the idea. I’ve done it at software shows where the introverts are plentiful and it even works on them!

In summary, the marketing plan will be determined by the company resources and staff available to help and it will be individual to each treatment center. Keep testing, do what works and keep refining it. If it does not work kill it or change it.

Jim Peake is an internet marketing consultant with special focus on the behavioral health and addiction treatment industry. He helps treatment centers improve their web presence and in lead generation online as well as offline. He uses advanced SEO and PPC direct response advertising for addiction treatment search engine marketing. His video marketing agency is at Viral on Video.

Drug Addiction Treatment Centers Using Google Local SEO

This is arguably the smartest way to the top of Google and it is free, use the Google Places formerly called Google Local Business Center to add your business profile. It is my understanding that many folks also call this Google Maps. If you have multiple locations you will want to add your addiction treatment center to the free Google Local Business Center in each location. If you have a center on main street and another sober living facility in the next town you want to create two listings, even if they are the same name, you have two locations and two physical buildings of operation, use this to your advantage on Google.

Where this comes in really handy is in some of the larger treatment areas like Delray Beach Florida where dozens of treatment centers are located. Try this, type into Google treatment centers in Delray Beach Florida. You will see multiple local listings in Delray Beach.

   

So too if you type in treatment centers in Marblehead, MA you will see https://www.americainrehab.com come up first. You can either send the user to the Google profile or directly to your web site. Try this in your local town and see who is listed there. You might find no one. So make the move now and get listed!
I recommend that you fill out the Google Local Business Center to 100%. This means you add at least one great video and up to 5 videos per listing, (read again, please add a great video) a web URL, phone, location, multiple images, coupons, keyphrases, a strong description and make sure you tell your clients to give you reviews. This is a great way to pass around positive feedback, however it is also a way to pass around negative feedback, so make sure that you are ok with being transparent. In the long run it should pay off for you.

How to rank for local listings? Make your listing “relevant.” What this means is make the listing with your major keyphrases like Teen Drug Addiction Treatment Center. I would try and go for the keyphrases that really fit your strong suit in business. Just putting in treatment center or drug rehab is not as effective.

Here is an article that does an even better job of explaining what I just told you above. Better Rankings for Google Local Search.

Jim Peake is an internet marketing consultant with special focus on the behavioral health and addiction treatment industry. He helps treatment centers improve their web presence and in lead generation online as well as offline. He uses advanced SEO and PPC direct response advertising for addiction treatment search engine marketing

Why PPC Lead Generation for Drug Addiction Treatment Centers is Pricey

PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising or better known as Google Adwords) can make or break a drug addiction treatment center business. I used to be proficient in Google Adwords but it is changing so fast that I now work with professionals in the industry. On the job training can be very expensive. This article only offers a brief overview of some of the things to consider when deploying an Adwords Campaign.

As we all probably know you can get to page one of Google using their Adwords program, but the only problem is you WILL pay for it especially if you don’t know what you are doing. Here’s why, it could be the most expensive real estate online. This is where the BUYERS are. As Red Adair said, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur,” this is so true in the Adwords business. I have watched over the past two years many treatment centers spend $10’s of thousands of dollars every month. I can also tell you that they are converting terribly and they are paying super premium dollars for many of these keyword phrases. How do I know? Much of the information is all public for us to see on Spy Fu and Keyword Spy. Do a search on Youtube for Google Adwords Bidding Tutorial for a start to Adwords training on the Google Business Channel.

It makes sense to learn how to do Adwords before you get involved, even if you hire someone to do it for you. You must be able to manage the Adwords professional. The reason is you can find yourself on the other side of a massive credit card bill and no admissions into your drug addiction treatment center. What happens then is the owner gets frustrated with the whole internet thing and loses any confidence that they can convert web traffic into admissions, at the same time seeing their competition pass them in the information super highway.

If you want to start throwing money away today just take a look at the companies pointing their Adwords clicks right to their home pages! (Big No No) Shut off the campaigns immediately and fix it. The boys at Google hate this, but their bank accounts love it. They would rather see the user have a relevant experience and buy something from the ad you ran on Google. Why? Because, if Google finds a solution for their users they are sure to come back to Google again and again because they find what they are looking for. Google does not want people to keep hitting the back button.

So what is a drug treatment center to do in the Adwords Game? Start by learning about landing page optimization. There are plenty of books about it and I have interviewed author Tim Ash of Site Tuners who is one of the industry leaders. Type in to Google Tim Ash interview with Jim Peake and you will see the interview. You will need to start testing many different variables in your Adwords campaigns. For example, the ads can be tested, the geography can be tested, the bids can be adjusted, the time of day and the days can be adjusted, the landing page offers can be split tested, i.e. a green page and a blue page. (Yes color can make a HUGE difference).

If your ad says Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center for Women send the user to a web page that says that. Don’t send them to a Christian Drug Treatment Web/Landing Page. Users do not like surprises, what they will do is hit the back button and go back out to Google and you have been dinged by Google because the user rejected your web page and your quality score will go down. (A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query — that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad). They record this and your quality score goes down. Google tracks everything.

The Adwords goal is to make the phone ring with calls of people looking for Drug Addiction Treatment and web forms to fill your inbox. Answer them quickly. Do your best to answer the phone in three rings and hopefully within the hour on the web forms. (Have the calls go straight into your smart phone). The first one to help usually has a much greater likelihood to win the new client, even if you can’t help the client you can refer the client to another center who often will reciprocate.

The name of this whole Adwords game is to capture consumer data either via phone or web form/email. I find that too many addiction treatment centers provide a web page with reams of content and 50-100 links, the user is now overwhelmed and they hit the back button, you just got dinged again by Google. Capture their information BEFORE you let them into your site.

Here’s another simple idea for Adwords. Go local. If your treatment center is located in New Mexico only advertise in New Mexico. Master this market first, then go after other bigger states like Colorado and Texas. Typically I see many treatment centers get most of their business within a days drive from their center.

Why are the keyword bids so expensive in the drug addiction treatment space? Because very few centers are doing it correctly, artificially inflating the prices. We have a saying in the DRTV industry and it is called a MER ratio. Media Efficiency Ratio. Spend $1 and generate $4 in revenue and you have a 4:1 MER or more commonly known as a 4:1 ratio. If you can spend $10,000 per week you want $40,000 in revenue to get to a 4:1 ratio. This ratio might work for steak knives but it might not for many treatment centers.

In a couple of other areas we can add third party software to track the keyword based on the phone call. It costs a bit more but it can be a valuable investment if you are able to determine which of the keyword you are bidding on are converting into admissions over the phone. Many admissions coordinators have a lot to process when speaking to a client, asking them to ask the client for a keyword phrase can be awkward. You can also put demographic overlays into your Adwords campaigns so you can only target zip codes with income over $100K in income. Again, there are a lot of moving parts to a successful Adwords campaign.

Jim Peake Bio- Jim is an internet marketing consultant with special focus on addiction treatment in the behavioral health industry. He helps treatment centers improve their web presence and in lead generation, online as well as offline. He uses advanced SEO and PPC direct response advertising for addiction treatment search engine marketing. He helps sellers meet buyers of treatment centers. Jim is also active in social media marketing.