The day has finally come that Google realized how much they were shooting themselves in the foot but also hurting real recovery centers around the country with their PPC ban on most addiction related keywords.
In an announcement from Google, they basicly said that they are working with a firm, Legit Script (https://www.legitscript.com/service/certification/addiction-treatment/) to review all recovery centers to ensure they are actually centers. This will still eliminate a lot of lead generation companies and body brokers, which was the entire point to begin with. Click the link above to begin your two step process. Step one is paying the fees. One time fee of $995 and an annual fee of $1,995. Then you will need to provide a long list of documents that are needed. The key document being your center Policies and Procedures manual. That is a genius move as all licensed centers must have a P&P for licensure which will weed out the lead gen companies and body brokers.
That all being said, and we are VERY excited for our clients to have access to Google Adwords again, don't forget about what happened. If you are reading this blog, chances are you were hurt, badly, by the removal of Adwords from your marketing spend. That change lowered your census and put you in a rough financial spot.
The old school mentality of marketing for recovery centers is dead. That needs to be 100% said and without any interpretation. The days of just spending $20k in Adwords to generate 5 intakes instantly is gone. The process has changed, which means your marketing strategy needs to change with it. Or, go the way of the 100's of treatment centers that didn't adapt and are now closed for business.
The process from initial interest to entering treatment is a window of 27-46 days. That is how long it takes the average person to trust themselves enough to make the call and change their life. Throwing money into Adwords doesn't speed that up. (although sure, you could target bottom of the funnel keywords to be included in the conversation, but that will increase your Cost Per Intake to a major level. This is why we are happy to be the only addiction marketing agency offering retargeting and connected TV to our clients. These two platforms allow our clients to continue the conversation with those that have landed on their website but not yet made the choice to call or enter treatment. Through both retargeting across the web and on television (yes, tv. The days of buying a demographic are over, its all about targeted advertising) we can continue to brand your treatment facility and message the individual until they are ready to make the call. Our data shows that when used, correctly, our clients say a 42% increase in the number of leads they received.
In conclusion, as an agency parter of Google's, we are very happy that our clients are able to get included in this program quickly and we are excited to fire up the Adwords programs as well. However, we also will never forget what this did to many of the smaller centers in the country that were doing good work. Our advice? Engage with Google Adwords, but incorporate more than just Adwords into your marketing strategy. Not only will this benefit you today, but if they ever make a change like this again, you won't be hurt as badly.
If you would like to learn more, just give us a call. 877-506-8389. We would be happy to explain the process further.
