Addiction Treatment PPC Advertising
In 2020, PPC advertising for 
addiction treatment centers remains one of the best strategies for getting new clients. A strategically targeted PPC advertising campaign can and will increase your census when done correctly. The challenge of PPC advertising though is not just turning them on, but putting together all of the pieces that convert more highly qualified people. Unless you are one of the few, chances are that your treatment center is only looking for PPO policies or cash pay clients.
In this 2020 addiction treatment PPC advertising guide, we’re going to show you all of the important pieces that you need to get more clients, and save more lives! If you need a little help getting things started or have tried unsuccessfully in the past, give us a call and we can set up and manage your campaigns for you.
What is PPC Advertising?
PPC advertising stands for Paid Per click, and is exactly as it sounds. When you set up a PPC campaign, you are bidding to show up in front of someone who is searching for a certain keyword or related keywords. As per the name, you are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad. There are a lot of elements that go into creating a successful addiction treatment PPC campaign but we feel these are the most important:
Landing pages – Quite simply, it’s not good enough just to drive PPC leads to your home page. You need a highly converting landing page that encourages the person searching for help to reach out in the first place.
Headlines – The headlines you use in your PPC campaigns are the first thing that the searcher sees. It’s important to not only hook them into clicking, but establish an initial trust value. We recommend doing some searches for keywords you would like to bid on, and see what the top ad results are showing
Strategic Keywords – You may think keywords like “drug rehab” and “alcohol treatment” may be good keywords, and if you bid on those, you may end up getting a solid PPO policy, HOWEVER, they are expensive terms, that are not targeted enough and will drastically increase your cost per admit. Narrow it down and focus on unique, fewer searched terms that indicate higher quality.
Website Speed – You may not have not have thought about how your website speed impacts the results of your PPC campaigns. The speed at which your page loads not only affects the quality score of your ad, but your drug rehab SEO rankings for showing up organically.
How Addiction Treatment Centers Can Get Clients From PPC Advertising
We assume you could use additional admits coming into your center on a consistent monthly basis, right? That is exactly what a successful addiction treatment PPC campaign can do for you and your center. Imagine not having to worry about word of mouth and the inconsistency of admits and referrals coming in. PPC advertising can give you that peace of mind and allow you better control of who is finding your center in the first place.
By focusing on strategic keywords that indicate the addict or loved one in need of treatment has an insurance policy that your treatment center accepts, your cost per admit goes down. For instance, bcbs drug rehab is an excellent keyword term to bid on. You can focus on keeping your census high and saving more lives.
Legitscript Certification for Addiction Treatment PPC Advertising
If you are thinking about advertising through Google, Bing, Facebook, or YouTube, you will need to get LegitScript certified. This is a third party company partnered with Google that has an extremely thorough vetting process . While it takes time to complete, and comes with a fairly high price tag, depending on how many licensed facilities you have, if you do not have it, you can not advertise on the aforementioned platforms. If you would like help getting your treatment center LegitScript certified, please reach out to us for guidance. We have helped several centers get approved as well as renewed since this has become mandatory.
How to Increase Your PPC Performance
In order to have a truly successful PPC campaign for your addiction treatment center, there are a few key elements that you need to focus on. All of these elements help increase your “quality score” which helps increase the overall effectiveness of your ads and can even give extra consideration in the position that your ad shows up. Google tells us that the key determining factors for your quality score are:
Landing Page Experience – This reflects the user’s experience after they click on your ad. If they stick around and click on a few things, Google sees this as a good experience. On the opposite, if they click onto your page and immediately leave, this is viewed as a bad experience.
Ad Click-Through Rate – This refers to the overall amount of people who have seen your ad and actually clicked it. The higher your click-through rate, the better your ad will perform.
Ad Relevance – Ad relevance refers to how similar the language is to the keywords you are bidding on. You want to include those search terms within the headline, in the description, and even on the landing page!
While the quality score is something you should always aim high for, we recommend you focus on the verbiage that people seeking treatment are looking for. Here are some of our personal recommendations based on trial and error for increasing treatment centers PPC results.
- Include testimonials on your landing page
- Have a live chat option on your landing page
- Focus exclusively on keywords that indicate quality leads
- Consider including videos in your ad landing pages
- Use responsive search ads and list a variety of headlines (Google will surface the highest performing ones)
- Have an aggressive follow-up strategy(not everyone converts into an admit on the first contact)
- Use a trackable phone number and system like Call Tracking Metrics to monitor the performance and store recordings
- Create a negative keyword list over time
- Give it time.
We recommend testing and micromanaging your ad campaigns on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. By focussing on what’s working, and eliminating what isn’t, over time your ads will perform better and your cost per admit will go down!
How Much Money Should Drug Rehab Centers Spend on PPC Advertising?
The budget that you’re able to invest in PPC advertising will greatly impact your overall success. Addiction treatment marketing is a highly competitive space and prices are very inflated due to the amount a PPO policy pays. Depending on your level of care, we recommend investing at a minimum $5000/month. We regularly see the cost per admit from Google PPC ads in the $3000-$5000 range. And while no guarantees can ever be made when it comes to advertising, when you take the time to grow your campaigns the right way, the average cost per admit will drop.
Best Places For Addiction Treatment Centers to Advertise
While Google search ads remain the top performer consistently for driving new admits, there are other paid advertising platforms worth considering. While the majority of treatment centers take to Google, you have an opportunity to reach targeted people on other, less saturated platforms. If you have the budget, this can give you a competitive edge! Here’s our list of other platforms to test advertising your treatment center on:
- YouTube Video Ads
- Bing
- Facebook(Video and Image Based)
- Podcasts
- TikTok(while the platform is geared towards a younger audience, it’s a completely untapped market with 1 billion monthly active users.)
PPC Advertising VS. Organic SEO
Depending on how quickly you need to get the phones ringing, there are significant differences between PPC advertising and an effective SEO strategy. Pay per click pretty much guarantees that your phones will start ringing within a few days if you have set up your ads correctly to convert. PPC campaigns typically cost a lot more money upfront, and are turned off as soon as you decide to end them or stop paying.
An organic SEO strategy, when applied correctly, will virtually never stop working for you. SEO is the employee for your treatment center that works 24/7 generating you more leads. The only downside is that it takes time to rank on Google, especially in such a competitive space as addiction treatment. You can look at our definitive drug rehab SEO guide here or give us a call if you have any questions.
Article written by Austin Armstrong
Could You Use Extra Admits Every Month?
At Socialty Pro, we take addiction treatment marketing to a whole different level. Not only can we help you generate leads and admits from YouTube Video Marketing, Social Media, and Paid advertising, but we can help you convert them! If you are just starting out, we will help you incorporate the systems to effectively track and follow up with every lead that is generated so that you can convert more into admits.
Need a closer? We have trained staff to answer all of your phone calls, live chats and form fills, follow up with leads until they admit or block us, and work with your team to get you more admits. Are you located in California and need expert clinical staff training, ACA blocking, treatment interns, or simply want to add highly credentialed people onto your website for credibility? We can help you with that as well. Give us a call to see what we’re all about!
Addiction Treatment PPC Advertising Cost
We want to be completely upfront with our costs and packages for you. Our addiction treatment PPC advertising packages start at $1000 initial setup fee and 20% of ad spend billed at the end of the month. Put simply, we ONLY focus our PPC advertising efforts towards search terms that translate to lead generation and admits. In our years of experience running PPC campaigns for addiction treatment centers, we have learned exactly what works and what does not so that we can hit the ground running. Here’s what our PPC Advertising packages include:
- Landing Page Creation and A/B Testing
- Campaign Setup and Micromanaging For Optimal Performance
- Geo Targeting Based On Where You want to Get Admits
- Optional YouTube Video Advertising
- Optional Facebook Advertising
- Optional Lead Handling And Closing
Costs:
Google Search, YouTube, Facebook Management: $1000 Setup Cost and 20% of ad spend billed at end of month.
Assistance With LegitScript Certification: $2500
Lead Handling and Closing: $2500/month
Call Us now for more information.
