Addiction treatment marketing is highly complex, changeable, labor-intensive, and intensely competitive. Your biggest problem is that the medical industry as a whole has had a very hard time transitioning into marketing in an online world. A mixture of conflicting advice and conflicting results has left the whole system in a big mess where only the massive companies are able to buy their way into the public eye. Here are a few reasons why medical treatment marketing is so difficult with regard to addiction and rehabilitation.
Targeting is Very Complex
You have an audience that often congregates around the same websites and online areas, and yet has very different motivations and concerns. You need to appeal to the medical community too because you are part of that community whether you like it or not.
Failing to attract the medical community means that you will not be featured on directory pages and best-lists for rehabilitation centers. It may also mean you lose out on potential contacts, on suppliers, on buyers, and on more corporate and medical contracts.
Targeting addicts, families of addicts, spouses, kids, older people, co-workers, and even teachers and professors all have to be done on the same platforms. These all have very different concerns and priorities. Where the softly-softly approach works for addicts, it may seem too easy-going for concerned parents, or too easy in the opinion of co-workers and teachers.
Improving Your Campaigns is Difficult
Under most circumstances, an online seller or service can figure out its customer’s motivations and their general demographics, but that is not so easy with marketing addiction treatments. When somebody makes an inquiry that leads to a sale, then you judge the quality of your SEO campaign, especially if you can see where that person came from.
Yet, how is a medical center to know what motivated the person who became a client. And, with that in mind, how can that medical center improve its SEO to capitalize on that success. Family, friends, and co-workers may be the ones who were influenced by the online content, but they are not the ones that become clients. Being unable to track users and monitor their motivations, it is difficult to know where to invest money. Is it all the guest posting that is doing the job, or all the posts on forums, or all the content uploaded to YouTube? It is very difficult to know for sure.
There is Very Little Community Sharing
Take the coding and programming industry. With the exception of the Apple/iOS community, it is all about sharing and collaboration. There is more free and shareware in the coding community than in any other. Companies, individuals, experts, and entrepreneurs are happy to give out free marketing information about and surrounding their own industry (just look at all marketing content you find on YouTube).
Yet, the addiction treatment industry is very tight-lipped about how it markets and how it promotes. People are not learning from other people in their industry. They are forced to use marketing and PR companies simply because they are the only ones giving out useful information.
One suspects this is not a callous move on the part of rehabilitation marketers but is more due to the point made earlier. The point is that the rehab and medical industry is late to arrive on the Internet. The industry hasn’t matured online, and so things are still a little fresh even by today’s standards.
Would You Like to Beef Up Your Addiction Treatment Marketing?
Most functions of a business you can handle on your own, and that includes your marketing. However, there is a lot to be said for having seasoned professionals do the marketing for you, or at least advise you on where to go next and what my work for you. It is all about the experience. A PR firm and marketing company have experienced every week of working with different companies and learning more and more about modern online marketing as it evolves. With the best of intentions, even your dedicated marketing department is going to have limited experience when compared to marketing professionals. At the very least, get in touch with Reputation Rehab and see what they have to offer, you may be pleasantly surprised.