Danny Star, CEO and Founder of Website Depot Digital Marketing Agency, has helped hundreds of small businesses grow and expand.
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Have you been looking to get more rehab/treatment center clients for your digital marketing firm? Or, alternatively, do you have a rehab/treatment center and are searching for effective in-house marketing strategies or outsourcing the right digital marketing firm?
From the perspective of a digital marketing firm, rehab/treatment center clients are invaluable. They’re doing real, actionable good in the world — the kind that improves and even saves folks’ lives. Moreover, most will be in business for a very long time, with a steady stream of income. So, establishing a working relationship with a rehab/treatment center can greatly help your business.
If you have a rehab/treatment center, it makes sense to bring someone in to help with your digital marketing. You have so much to do with your patients, facility and everything else, that handling SEO, web design and more on top of that can be far too much. That said, you want to go with the right digital marketing firm.
At Website Depot, we’re fortunate and grateful to have many clients in the rehab/treatment center space. Below are some important marketing practices we have found to be effective in building trust with clients and their target audiences.
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Do the work and don’t cut corners.
Every client’s marketing is different, as each industry (and company in that industry) has different challenges and opportunities. Drug and alcohol detox/rehabilitation center marketing, though, really is different.
For example, testimonials are a powerful, effective way to market any business. That’s especially true for drug and alcohol rehab facilities. However, in this industry, we see too many testimonials copied from some other site. It’s one of those things that even well-meaning folks can too easily laugh off: “We’ve got to get the site going now, we don’t have testimonials, so just grab something” is more common than you might think.
That’s just one of the ways that legality can get stretched in this industry. Instead, it’s important to do the work. In the case of reviews, this means reaching out to patients that may be in recovery but have moved on from the facility, getting their approval and publishing a real testimonial.
Of course, this is true for just about any industry. If you have great, authentic testimonials, they can help your business regardless of what industry you’re in.
Don’t sell leads; generate them for customers.
As a company with many clients in the drug and alcohol rehab treatment industry, we’re often asked for leads. After all, those leads could be very valuable.
In fact, there are plenty of rehab centers that say something like: “Call us for a free evaluation.” Many ethical, wonderful rehab centers say that. However, the unethical ones say that, too. The latter then takes all of the caller’s info and sells it to the highest bidder.
Is that lucrative? Yes. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely not.
What you need to do is generate leads for your clients. There’s nothing unethical about that at all. Make sure that your clients are more visible to those who could use their services. Then, help to facilitate that connection.
By putting our clients in front of those in need, we can do our small part to help improve lives.
Don’t just say you prioritize mental health; actually do it.
It’s very easy for a CEO to say: “We prioritize mental health.” And then they send out an email. Or post flyers in the office that say things like: “Take a 15-minute break every two hours.” Regardless of their intentions, they do the absolute minimum (or less) for their workers.
Simply giving your employees exposure to good advice is not a commitment to mental health. Rather, you have to be able to be there for your workers when they need it. That’s not to say that you accept less-than-professional work. Nor does it mean that you let an employee take off for months with pay. But it very well may mean changing your mindset.
If one of your employees is having a mental health concern, it has to be treated like any other kind of health struggle. Too often, a mental health concern is seen as something to be “worked through.” That may get you a bit of work out of an employee right now. But, ultimately, you’ll get less and less out of that employee (to say nothing of the fact that it’s the wrong thing to do).
To foster a better environment, you have to make it clear that you really do take mental health seriously. It’s the same as any other health concern, no less.
You might have read this last section and thought: “Okay, great. But what does that have to do with rehab center marketing practices?”
In a word: everything.
Rehab/treatment center workers are going to know who walks the walk, so to speak, in terms of authenticity. Indeed, so much of their jobs involve discerning who is and isn’t telling the truth.
Making a serious, legitimate commitment to mental health at your business will both make your business better and make you more attractive to rehab/treatment center clients.
If it comes down to your digital marketing firm, which prioritizes mental health, and another that may not, which do you think the client is going to go with?
This is an effective, easier-than-you-might-think way to help your business both today and in the future. It certainly strengthens employee loyalty. Plus, it can pay off in ways that you may not be aware of when you begin.
By prioritizing mental health, getting legitimate, real testimonials, and then being as honest as possible every step of the way, you can help grow your business.
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Author: Danny Star, Forbes Councils Member
