Treatment Center SEO 101: 8 Mistakes Made Generating Drug Rehab Leads

Are you making these drug rehab marketing mistakes? Here are smart, simple and executable ways to rectify them.

There are a lot of people out there that need your help to overcome their substance abuse addiction. In 2015, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reported nearly 21 million Americans beyond the age of 12 had a substance abuse problem.

The SAMHSA report (updated for 2015) also showed only about 11% of this number gets help at addiction treatment centers. With prudent drug rehab marketing, you can reach this target audience and offer your addiction treatment solutions.

To help generate good quality leads using a smart treatment center marketing plan doesn’t mean purchasing leads from unverified sources. Always make sure you know where the leads are coming from. 

But many drug rehab lead generation efforts lack the essentials of getting sensible ROI (if any). Here are just eight mistakes you do not want to commit in your drug rehab marketing campaign to boost business and get ahead of the competition. Because these mistakes may hurt your business in the end. 

1. Lack of USP for Your Brand

 With over 14,000 drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers in the US alone, you need to stand out from the crowd with a unique selling proposition if you are to attract and earn more business. Do you have a specialty?

For example, are you:

• A drug rehab center for only men or women?
• A detox center alone or include drug addiction recovery treatment
• With about 50% of substance abuse victims suffering from a mental disorder or have developed one, do you also offer additional mental health treatment and recovery?

You’ll want to clearly and honestly let your target audience know of your drug addiction recovery success rate, addiction treatment philosophy, and how qualified your addiction treatment center professionals are.

2. The Absence of a Website (To Begin With)

 HubSpot found 97% of all searches online are made with an intention to find local businesses. Over 68% of searchers checked out a business’s official website before calling in.

An attractive, easy to navigate, informational, and responsive website serves as the basis for any sound digital marketing campaign for a drug rehab center. If you do not have a website, you miss the online visibility and landing platform you need to earn trust, organic leads, and more customers.

3. Drug Rehab SEO Leads

 Generating organic addiction treatment center leads can be tough, but buying untargeted and unqualified rehab leads can be even more costly, time-wasting, and destructive to your brand reputation.

You’ll want to verify the source of your leads and exactly how they were acquired. 

There are plenty of call centers around the world that will gladly cold call unscrupulous lists of people who had maybe reached out for drug treatment in the past. This can be an awkward strategy that actually invokes anger and suspicion on the part of the person being called.

At the end of the day, this could put your organization in a bad place and shed a negative light on your business.

Your best bet is to partner with an affordable SEO company that can help guide you to finding the most appropriate keywords for your enterprise and how to rank on Page One of Google’s search results.

There’s a very specific science to the art of SEO and it will take time to beat out the competition especially for the most desired keywords.

Some people prefer to start with a modest budget and actually buy keywords using Google’s Pay Per Click program. So long as the budget remains manageable and the Return on Investment is penciling out at the end of every month, then this can be a wise and affordable internet marketing strategy.  

4. Online Presence Lacks Prominence

 Maybe you have a website, blog and several social media accounts registered. But you do not provide high-quality, useful, and evergreen content on a consistent basis. 

You’ll want to help your target audience understand how you can help them, why you are qualified to help them, and that you actually care about helping them get their life or their loved ones’ lives back on track.

Updating your website often with fresh content also helps your business earn authority in Google’s eyes. And authority means more eyeballs and visitors to your site. 

5. Inadequate Drug Rehab Marketing Strategy

 Do you have a solid drug rehab marketing plan?

Are you aware of the opportunities available in multi-channel marketing for rehab lead generation? 

A solid plan goes into detail about what you want to achieve as an addiction treatment center, your most relevant and targeting drug rehab marketing channels, branding plan, and how to implement the entire plan. 

You can as well get help nailing the details from a professional drug rehab marketing agency or service.

6. Affordable Internet Advertising if You Lack a Large Drug Rehab Marketing Budget

 Many treatment centers do not have a defined marketing budget for their drug rehab. But you do not have to have more than $10,000 to start setting a marketing budget aside. 

You can start at whatever financial situation you are now with digital marketing, which is comparatively cheaper to traditional methods such as TV and print media advertising—yet offers higher returns.

Furthermore, online marketing makes it easier to target drug and alcohol addiction patients without ramping up stigmatization-based resistance.

7. Not on Google My Business (GMB)

 Even the best online business directories offer free listings to any interested business. Surprisingly, most businesses’ online directory listings are unclaimed. 

Yet showing up in a Google My Business (GMB) spot can rank your rehab center high up on local search results, increasing the number of quality leads visiting your website, making contact, and converting to paying customers.

There are many other free online directories you could take advantage of. 

Also, pay attention to review websites. It’s best to interact with people posting on review sites – good or bad. Showing interaction with past or present customers proves you’re a business that takes itself seriously and truly cares what people think.

8. Choose the Paid Option Over Organic Drug Rehab SEO 

 Like buying rehab leads straight-up, always choosing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) solutions can leave you with a poor understanding of your target customers, decreased inquiries and, ultimately, customers hence poor business performance.

Email marketing and content marketing offer two of the most affordable, profitable and simple rehab marketing channels for attracting targeted, high-quality, and conversion-ready customers. 

Word of mouth and targeting “treatment center SEO near me” will help best target potential clients who want to keep their loved ones local. 

Even going old school and putting flyers into public treatment center or hospital foyers can be relevant to your marketing campaign.

You also want to always keep in mind with any treatment center marketing that you’re most likely trying to reach friends or family of an addict who are looking to intervene or get their loved ones into recovery. It’s rare that a using addict will seek help addiction therapy treatment on their own unless they’ve truly hit rock bottom.

Be smart and safe with your approach to drug rehab marketing and always keep a very close eye on the success rate of your leads and where the best sourced leads are coming from.

That will help build better and bolder marketing ideas to grow your business and help those in need.