Monthly Archives: October 2019

Drug Rehab Marketing: 5 Tips for Success in 2019

This entry was posted in Advertising, Local, Marketing, SEO on by .

When it comes to drug rehab marketing, your approach has to be different than the typical advertising methods you may be used to. Thankfully, you can reference this cheat sheet when creating your marketing strategy – and consult with industry professionals to get it all off the ground.

Know Your Message and Cater to Your Consumers

Few industries are more consumer-centered and customer-driven than drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Your message as a business is about more than an advertisement. It’s about changing lives and improving clinical outcomes. Keep that in mind when crafting your advertisements and never lose sight of the fact that your ads double as outreach

Don’t Skimp on SEO Investment

Just because you think you understand search engine optimization doesn’t mean you should take matters into your own hands with it. SEO is your most vital tool for reaching the right audience. Trusting it to anyone less than an experienced professional with industry experience is like handing over the keys to your business and hoping that whoever you give them to takes care of things. If that doesn’t sound advisable to you, make the smart decision and invest in your SEO.

Follow Up with Leads Properly

The leads generated by your advertising efforts are more important than they would be in almost any other industry. After all, those people aren’t just potential customers. They are people whose lives may be in danger as a result of their motivation to contact you.

Following up with your leads isn’t just a solid business practice in the world of drug rehab advertising. Its a prudent choice for legal reasons and for the health and safety of those who are putting their trust in you.

Embrace the Paid Ad

It is easy to think of paid advertisement as being in direct opposition to everything that drug rehab marketing stands for. After all, it isn’t organic, it isn’t patient-centered – you aren’t tailoring your approach to your consumer!

When you have the chance to step back and examine the so-called “necessary evil” of paid advertising, though, you will see that it is actually a much better fit for your business than you might have initially imagined. Placing ads in places likely to be seen by your consumers, creating campaigns that meet their needs where they already are – you can make a patient-centered approach out of even the most obvious PPC efforts.

Understand the Importance of Social Media

These days, your consumers are on social media. That isn’t just to say that they are using social media to keep up with friends and family and laugh at funny viral posts. They are also using it to find local businesses – even those that provide drug and alcohol rehab services.

Studies show that consumers often search for the social media profiles of business they are thinking of patronizing. Don’t let that statistic exclude your facility. Invest time in your social media presence to foster a relationship with consumers from that very first search.

7 Powerful Benefits of Using PPC Advertising

This entry was posted in PPC on by .

You have probably heard about PPC – or pay-per-click – marketing before but may not know why so many businesses love this approach. Before committing to partnering with a PPC company in Ventura, check out this quick list of reasons why PPC remains relevant – and highly-favored!

PPC is Easy to Measure and Track

A marketing campaign doesn’t amount to much if you can’t keep track of the results. With PPC advertising, doing so is easy. You’ll have everything you need – data regarding costs, views, profits, website visits, and more – to analyze and create better, smarter campaigns on a constant basis.

PPC Can Help You Achieve Your Business and Marketing Goals

Reaching your audience isn’t all that PPC can help you do. It can also help you reach goals that you might never have thought possible, including meeting market outreach goals and hitting new business milestones.

PPC Delivers Ultimate Control

Are you a control freak? Then PPC marketing may be just what you’re looking for. This approach allows a level of customization and control that many business owners love – plus the freedom to change things up whenever you like.

PPC is Quick and Easy to Deploy

Do you sometimes feel like your competitors are light years ahead of you in terms of their marketing approaches? If so, you may be discouraged when thinking of implementing something new. How will you ever catch up?

Thankfully, PPC offers a great way to get on the same page and quickly surpass your competition. Since it is quick, easy, and intuitive in its integration and deployment, you won’t have to spend tons of time learning the technology and trying to keep pace with other companies. Simply launch and go!

PPC is Highly Compatible with All of Your Other Marketing Efforts

For those who might be concerned that employing PPC advertising would clash with other marketing efforts and approaches, fear not. PPC is actually very compatible with other methods – including SEO. This is because it operates independently of these other approaches, making it great as a supplement or all on its own.

PPC Delivers Lots of Marketing Data

Do you need a marketing approach that offers plenty of data to analyze and use for tweaking future campaigns? Few methods are as perfect in this respect as PPC. With a rich supply of data built right into tools like Google Business optimization, you can easily access the info you need to continually adjust and improve your approach.

PPC Makes Targeting Your Audience Easy

If you’re worried that reaching your target demographic will be difficult with PPC advertising, few things could be further from the truth. This approach allows you to easily target the audience you’re aiming for and creating customized campaigns designed to optimize your reach. No matter who you’re marketing to, as long as they have the internet and a device to access it with, you can easily reach them with PPC.

Optimize Your Business for Local Searches with These 8 Google My Business SEO Tips

This entry was posted in Advertising, Local, SEO on by .

Local SEO is imperative to your business’s success. Thankfully, Google My Business offers free tools to help you realize local advertising success – but only if you know how to optimize your content for use with these tools.

Here, we’ve collected tips for Google local optimization from SEO professionals to help you make the most of what Google has to offer.

Start by Verifying Your Business

One of the first steps you should take when optimizing your content for use with Google business is also the most important. Verifying your business is a several-week process, but it is simple and crucial for establishing your company as trustworthy and legitimate with Google – and therefore consumers.

During verification, Google will create and send you a four-digit pin code via the mail. Simply enter this code on the predetermined website to verify your business.

Ensure Your Business Profile is Complete

Why have a Google business profile if you aren’t going to complete it? Far too many companies have a web presence that is lacking due to inaccurate or incomplete information. All you have to do to avoid being part of this problem is to update your profile with all relevant information and ensure that it is complete. This way, consumers can easily find the information they need.

Keep Your Profile Up to Date

No matter how accurate and comprehensive your profile is, it won’t be of much use to you if you don’t keep it up to date. Do so by regularly reading over your Google business results and comparing them to current information. Keeping things current will direct as much consumer traffic to your site or business as possible.

Choose the Most Relevant Categories

Marketing via Google business involves tagging your company with the correct categorical tags. This ensures that local consumers looking for your specific type of goods or services will find them – and that they will find them with you!

Include a Mixture of Professional and Informal Photos

One problem that many businesses have is that their websites and their overall online presence are too formal. Don’t let this hinder your outreach to your desired demographic. Include formal as well as informal photos to give consumers an idea of what you do, as well as a reason to relate to you on a more personal level.

Obtain More Reviews

Consumer feedback and reviews are a great boost to your business. These free testimonials are a way to offer future customers a look into what makes your brand tick – and what makes consumers just like them love what you have to offer. Encourage and reward reviews to bulk up the amount of content available to those who are searching for information regarding your brand.

Assure NAP Consistency Everywhere

What is NAP consistency? NAP refers to your name, address, and phone number – the three most important pieces of information your business can share online. Assure that this information is listed accurately and consistently on every website where it appears to improve the odds that consumers will find you.

Take Advantage of Google Posts

No list of ways to maximize the impact of the tools offered by Google would complete without this tip. Use Google posts to maximize your reach and create traffic to your site – all with the reliability that is built into Google itself.

The Key to Using Keywords in SEO

This entry was posted in Marketing, Mobile, SEO on by .

Keywords are a notorious buzz phrase for SEO, but it can feel nearly impossible to find specific instruction on what they are, how to use them properly, and why they are important.

When google crawls your website pages, it picks up on which words you use frequently in a specific piece of content in order to place it correctly in front of an audience who would most likely be interested. These are keywords—the words that you are consciously (or unconsciously) working into your content in order to communicate to Google what your content is about.

Keywords should represent your content accurately, specifically, and consistently. So how exactly do you ensure that your website is utilizing keywords correctly? Continue reading

Bottle of pills dumped out

Ethical Marketing in the Midst of The Opioid Crisis

This entry was posted in Marketing, SEO on by .

Since the early 2000’s, the U.S. has been dealing with an opioid addiction and overdose crisis. In 2016, opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths, which was more than any previous year on record. One year later, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared a public health emergency.

And perhaps more upsetting, an estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription. This past March, the company that makes the narcotic painkiller OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, agreed to pay a $270 million settlement with the state of Oklahoma for playing a role in the opioid crises.

Not soon after, Teva Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest generic drug maker, appeared alongside Johnson & Johnson in court against the state. Both ended up settling—Teva for $85 million and Johnson & Johnson for $572 million.

According to Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, opioid overdoses in Oklahoma killed more than 4,600 people in the state from 2007 to 2017, and it will take an estimated $17.5 billion over 30 years to address the crisis.

There are some signs that opioid addiction is beginning to decrease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 12,757 overdose deaths from prescription painkillers in 2018, which is down from 14,926 deaths in 2017—but is still too high.

Now an estimated 1,500 similar lawsuits are to be filed by state, local and tribal governments in order to compensate individuals for pain and suffering, ambulance runs, jail treatment costs, and childcare for children whose parents have died from overdoses.

It’s no wonder that the trust U.S. consumer’s have in brands has been steadily declining over the last few years, now holding at about 54 percent, according to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer.

But it’s not just pharmaceutical companies that are receiving blame for shady and immoral marketing tactics—it’s also addiction treatment and drug rehab centers, the very places these settlements will be invested into in order to prevent and treat opioid addictions.

Facts about the opioid epidemic

False, Deceptive, and Misleading Marketing  

Public nuisance laws are typically applied broadly to cases in which something is interfering with the general public’s rights—such as rights to public spaces like roads, waterways, or parks. But in the recent legal suits against pharmaceutical companies, the state of Oklahoma is arguing that false, deceptive, and misleading marketing is interfering with the public right to health.

While many treatment centers are honest, upfront, and truly do only want the best for their patients, some unfortunately resort to deceptive tactics, dishonest marketing, and even scams in order to get and keep clients.

And unfortunately, these scams have been known to target patients who have a lot of money—or good insurance. This hurts those patients as well as patients without money or good insurance coverage. For example, in 2017 some marketers were using the Google geographic targeting features to hide their ads for searches made from low income areas, such as Trenton or Camden. They would also hide their ads from searches made with the words “free” and “Medicaid”.

Some third-party businesses even sprung up in the wake of the opioid crisis that acted as referring hotlines—sometimes to their own treatment centers, and sometimes just to sell leads to centers who would pay top dollar for desperate clients who could pay handsomely—no matter whether they were reputable centers or were a good fit for the clients.

And Google unintentionally made this an easy scam by offering advertisers unique “tracking” phone numbers that would forward to a company’s phone—and they would only stay up as long as the ads did.

Sometimes even legitimate treatment centers experienced their Google ads phone numbers being hacked and remoted to other locations. According to a Google Top Contributor, since business owners aren’t notified of such changes by email, they would have to login to their “Google My Business” account page in order to verify periodically that their information was still correct.

Worst of all, some of these shady treatment centers were hardly even treatment centers at all. There were reports of human trafficking, prostitution, forced drugging, and kick-backs between labs, treatment centers, and halfway houses in order to keep profitable patients in the system, pulling profits from charges for daily stays and urine testing.

Protect Your Business, Your Reputation & Your Clients

In order to protect your business reputation as one that is secure, legitimate, and compassionate towards those that are suffering from addiction, you’ll need to in fact be secure, legitimate, and compassionate.

You can ensure that your business and your clients are protected from any possible hacking attempts by:

1.Obtaining an SSL certification for your website.

This will ensure a secure connection from a web server to a browser to protect your clients from harm when they visit you online.

2. Claiming your Google My Business Listing.

If a business hasn’t claimed its listing, anyone can “suggest an edit” and change the phone number or other contact information. Be sure to check on your Google My Business Listing regularly to make sure that it is taking your clients to you, rather than any would-be hacker.

3. Giving advise to your clients about what they can expect from contact with you.

Who will be taking their calls, how they can know they’re really speaking with you, and what are the locations that you work with? The more information you give your clients, the more secure they’ll feel that they’re really in the right place.

Once you’re sure that you and your clients are safe from harm, you’ll need to ensure that you’re worthy of your clients by maintaining ethical marketing practices that put their recovery first.

Remember Your Mission

Never forget that you should be in the treatment center business out of a desire to help people and their families, not to use them for your own financial gains. The opioid epidemic can only be taken on by true compassion for and devotion to our communities.

If you do choose to ask your clients questions about their insurance, do so out of a desire to get them the best treatment they can afford, not to know how much they’re worth. Consider that just because you or an associate accepts a client’s insurance, does not mean that it’s a good fit. First and foremost, pay attention to your client’s needs.

Be sure to also pay attention to what your treatment center has to offer that could set it apart from others. Do you have a low client to counselor ratio? Do your counselor’s have personal experience in dealing with addiction themselves? Do you have a lot of experience working with a particular addiction or demographic? Your goal shouldn’t be to help everyone—you should realistically aim to help a certain group of people more efficiently rather than all of them no matter what their unique situation is.

Don’t shy away from building a network with other treatment centers that are different from your own and referring patients to where you think they will do best. Whether the client has success with you or a another center in your network—a positive review will reflect well on everyone involved.

Tread Carefully on Social Media

Social media can be an amazing tool to reach out to people who are in need and may be disconnected from family, friends, and their community, However, be careful not to use it as just a lead source or simply a platform to push your services.

Social media is best used to educate, inform, and connect people in need with services that you may or may not be the best center to provide them with. Your best bet is to publish a blog with regular updates that will give valuable information to people who may be thinking of trying rehabilitation services but are wary of the process or recovering addicts who may need some extra reassurance that their struggle is real and they are not alone.

SEO is one of the best methods for treatment centers to flourish online—but it will do its best if you have real, authentic content that can be key-word optimized.

If You’re Good at What You Do, It Will Show

 Your client testimonials and reviews are your best marketing materials. Encourage your previous clients to give you feedback, positive and negative, and grow authentically with any criticism you receive. Ensure that your reviews are front-and-center on your website and even consider incorporating them into your blogs every once in a while.

Be sure to also check up on your web presence on third-party sites and apps. You can set up a Google alert for the name of your drug rehab or treatment center so that you’ll receive an email notification when you’re mentioned online.

Finally, if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional. An SEO or digital marketing company like SeoTuners can help you get your treatment center’s name out there while using ethical practices such as white-hat link building, organic and local SEO, and review monitoring. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you accomplish an effective addiction treatment marketing plan.