Category: Sales & Marketing

The addiction rehab industry is quite competitive.  There are many rehab centers and millions of addicts.  Many people may not realize that they have options when it comes to addiction treatment care.  If you are in the treatment industry and are not satisfied with your client totals, you should know that social media may help. 

You may need to drive more traffic to your addiction rehab website.  If you are unsatisfied with your profits or the amount of clients you are treating, consider learning more about social media marketing today.  You may learn marketing strategies to help you connect with the needs and emotions of potential clients. 

SEO and Your Social Media Marketing

One of the best things you can do for your addiction treatment website is to improve your SEO (search engine optimization).  When participating in any type of online marketing, SEO is a big deal.  It should be one of your main priorities when creating content for your website. 

Search engines may lead people to useful, quality information.  If you want your website to appear at the top of a search engine’s list of search results, SEO may help.  Some SEO tips include the following: 

• Creating valuable, quality content – If you want your website to be noticed and want more people to click on your links, you must provide content that contains valuable information.
• Choosing the right keywords – Search engines analyze keywords in websites. If you want to bring more people to your website, use keywords that rank high on search engines.
• Using backlinks – Backlinks, or links to other pages, can let users see more pages on your site and may help build the number of views on your website.

If you are not currently following these three strategies, now is the time to start doing so, especially if you want to increase the number of visitors to your website. 

Using Social Media Sites for Addiction Rehab Centers

Social media sites are some of the best ways to advertise and market your company.  This is because billions of people from all around the world use social media sites.  Many of these social media users could be looking for a rehab center. 

Some ways to leverage social media sites include using hashtags, website links, images, posts and more.  You want to attract people to your rehab center.

 

There are many social media platforms to use, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more.  While using these platforms, you can create and release ads to target certain geographic and demographic locations.  If you want to target certain ranges of potential clients, using social media may be a way to do so. 

Using Pinterest to Market Your Rehab Center

Pinterest is a social media platform you can use to market your addiction rehab center.  By using pins to help potential clients see great things about your company, you can reach them on an emotional and logical level. There are many ways you can reach potential clients through your Pinterest pins.

 

On Pinterest, you can add pins to inspirational quotations, photographs of alcoholic-free beverages, images of sober people and sober fun, and so much more.  Pinterest gives people a visual way to depict addiction rehab and sober lifestyles.

Using Facebook to Market Your Rehab Center

Facebook is another social media platform you can use to market your rehab business.  Billions of people use the platform worldwide, so using it may help reach many people. 

On Facebook, you can increase your brand awareness and interact with your target clients.  You can create polls, posts, events, and groups for your rehab center.  You can share blogs from your addiction rehab center’s website.  By sharing unique, helpful, and engaging posts, you can improve the visibility of your addiction rehab center.  You can reply to comments and build quality, trusting relationships with your target clients.

Using Twitter to Market Your Rehab Center

Twitter is another great option if you want to market your addiction rehab center.  This platform allows you to reach out to and make connections with target clients.  Twitter is well-known for utilizing hashtags and you can utilize these as well.  If you want to target specific demographics, hashtags may help you do that.

You can share content via Twitter.  While the platform limits each post to a certain number of characters, you can link back to your blog or provide other quality information for your target clients.  Images can be shared on Twitter as well.  You can use images to show your facility to your target clients.  You can introduce staff members and display pictures of your rehab center.  Twitter also permits people to utilize PPC (pay-per-click) advertisements for further promotion. 

Creating Valuable, Quality Content Continuously

As previously mentioned, the content you create is a big deal.  When it comes to marketing your addiction rehab center and distinguishing it from others, the quality of the content you create is important.  There are many content strategies you can use.  One thing to remember is that you should create quality, valuable content continuously.

Running an addiction rehab center requires considerable time and effort.  If you hire a quality content marketing team and quality content writers, you may maintain a continuous production of content.  By doing this, you are more likely to establish your rehab center as one of the best.  You may be able to show potential clients why your addiction rehab center is the place for them.

Every time you create a blog for your site, you add to your list of indexed pages.  The more pages you have, the more leads you may be able to generate to your website.  Some potential topics for your site that may help generate leads include the following: 

• Talking to addicts’ loved ones about their struggles
• Speaking about patterns of addiction and substance abuse
• Discussing therapy options and treatment programs
• Explaining emerging research in the addiction field
• Writing about recovery tools to help people get and stay sober

This is a short list of topics you can use on your addiction rehab center website.  It may give you a good idea of where to begin.  By creating unique, quality, and regular content for your website, you may build your credibility and visibility online.

Creating content that is optimized, information, unique, and thorough, along with including relevant keywords, may help you increase your search rankings.  Content that is higher in quality is read more often.  The more often readers engage with your content, the more traffic you bring to your addiction rehab center website.  In addition, the more traffic you experience, the more likely it is that other people will include your links in their websites.

Sharing Your Content

When you share your content with various social media platforms, you can increase exposure for your company.  You can drive more traffic to your addiction rehab center website.  If your content is interesting or helpful, people are much more likely to share it.  With billions of users on social media sites, this is the type of content you want to have. 

Continuing to create useful and beneficial content may help build the credibility of your site and your company.  You improve your website’s placement on search engines, so more online users can find you.

Even if people are not initially clicking on your website, they may see your company appear at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).  This visible placement is more likely to increase your brand awareness. 

Seeing your website shared on Facebook and other social media sites will increase your brand awareness as well.  You want people to be able to recognize your rehab center when they hear its name.  If you have a well-known name, more people may be more likely to attend your addiction rehab center.

Content is a great branding tool.  You can create content to talk about your company in length.  You can discuss your treatments in depth.  Through your blog, you can highlight specific services.  The content you create gives your visitors information about your brand.  They learn that they can trust your company. 

Consider including calls-to-action on each piece of content you create.  If you have attention-grabbing calls-to-action, more people may be more willing to explore your services.

Do you need to market your addiction rehab center?  If so, consider utilizing social media marketing and content services today. 

About the Author: 

Charles Watson is an alcohol rehab specialist, currently writing for Sunshine Behavioral Health.  When not helping others, you can find him reading updated material from his favorite author Tim Ferriss.  He can be reached directly on Twitter at @charleswatson00.

If you consider yourself a conscious, heart-centered, mission-driven, spiritual entrepreneur, you may have been horrified when you first learned the basics of traditional copy, marketing, and sales.

There was NO WAY you wanted to use tactics and strategies that felt so hype-y and sales-y and inauthentic in your marketing. Right?

But, what were the alternatives? Not using the power of direct response marketing and copy and sales to promote your business and get your message out into the world? Continuously struggling to gain traction with your business?

That’s exactly why love-based copy is such a hit! It resonated deeply with entrepreneurs who wanted to grow their business in a way that felt good.

The best part is love-based copy DOES work. (My clients have sold nearly $50M using love-based copy and marketing.)

HOWEVER, I think it’s worth pointing out that (at least for the moment), fear-based marketing and sales work, too.

Why?

To start, let’s recap how persuasion works. In order to persuade anyone to do anything (it doesn’t matter if you’re having a sales conversation with a potential client or persuading your kids to go to bed at a decent bedtime), you need to tap into their emotions.

And you have a choice: you can tap into fear-based emotions (including fear, worry, grief, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, etc.), OR you can tap into love-based emotions (love, joy, hope, connection, etc.).

So WHY does tapping into fear-based emotions work? No one wants to feel them, so why would triggering those emotions persuade people to take action?

So, to answer that, let’s dig into how the fear-based emotional cycle works.

For most people, when a fear-based emotion comes up, their first reaction is to do something to stop feeling it.

After all, why would anyone want to feel icky and uncomfortable … or even worse, be STUCK in one of those types of emotions?

So instead, when you have a bad day at work, you go home and open a bottle of wine. You deserve it, right? You had a hard day.

Or, maybe you find yourself digging into the freezer for the ice cream.

Or, maybe you start yelling at your kids even though they really didn’t do anything wrong. Or you go on a shopping spree. Or you call your friends and start gossiping.

The point: Rather than sit and feel those emotions (because emotions just want to be felt, you can’t reason or argue with emotions), you take some sort of action to run away from it, or bury it, or hide from it, or otherwise not feel it.

But, THEN what happens? You wake up with a hangover, your pants are too tight from the ice cream, your credit card is maxed, your kids are crying, or you’re feeling like maybe you went too far with your friends.

You’re remorseful for your actions (which is yet another way to distract yourself from your fear-based emotions).

Okay, so now let’s look at this cycle from a sales and marketing perspective: entrepreneurs or business owners choose to trigger fear in their sales and marketing (some of the most common are fear, or worry about the future, or shame).

The clients don’t want to feel the fear-based emotion. So, they look for an “action” to take to stop feeling the emotion.

And the implicit promise in the sales or marketing conversation is that, if they buy the product or service, the fear-based emotion will go away.

So, they buy. Because they don’t want to feel the fear-based emotion anymore.

And, what happens the next day? They feel buyer’s remorse!

This is why fear-based marketing may get more initial sales, but you’ll also likely experience a higher percentage of unhappy clients and customers, who may end up:

• Demanding more of your time and energy (and despite your best efforts, are still never happy).

• Disengaging and dropping out.

• Asking for a refund (you almost always get a higher percentage of refund requests using fear-based tactics than love-based).

And over time, fear-based marketing and sales will erode your brand. Because you’re triggering fear-based emotions in your marketing and copy and sales strategies, you’ll end up attracting people who aren’t your ideal clients.

And, since they’re not your ideal clients, they’ll likely not be as happy or satisfied with your program as your ideal clients are. Even if they’re not out there actively complaining about you, there’s still a ripple effect.

Now, contrast that to using love-based marketing and sales. Because you’re not triggering fear-based emotions in a manipulative way, you’re allowing your ideal clients to decide for themselves if they’re ready to make a change. If they do decide to become a client, now they’re committed. They’re not reacting to the fear-based triggers in your marketing, but rather, they’ve dug deep inside themselves and have decided they’re ready to shift.

These are the clients who will show up, do the work, get the results, and tell the world about you.

Which is why, over time, love-based copy and marketing and sales will grow your business in a more organic, word-of-mouth type of way.

Millennials are currently the largest generation within the U.S. labor force with a purchasing power up to $200 billion per year. Your business’s success is dependent on marketing to them. Understanding their buying behavior is the first step in this process, so we’re going to go into some of the strategies for millennial marketing.

Influencers

Influencers have the power to be engaging through their content even if it’s promotional. With word-of-mouth weighing heavily on millennial purchasing decisions, an influencer program is definitely something to look into. Aside from generating sales, they also build brand awareness which will grow your social following.

Two-Way Conversation

Millennials are selective with the brands they trust. This means you should be actively trying to build a relationship with them. Utilize social media to increase brand awareness and also to respond to customer’s questions and concerns. By communicating with them through social media, you’re giving them an opportunity to instill confidence and trust within your company. It may also be a good idea to conduct customer interviews, it’s a great way for your business to gain insight on what they’re looking for.

Video Content

Give millennials a digital experience by creating video content. There is 80 percent of millennials that use videos to conduct research so it’s important to have it readily available. It can quickly grab their attention when scrolling through their social feeds and is easy to share among social platforms. You can even be creative about it and give users a digital experience by posting it on a landing webpage, similar to Audi’s.

Transparency

Millennials will do all the necessary research before making a purchase. They are also quick to fact-check what you claim your products to be. Ensure that your marketing efforts don’t include exaggerated ads of any sort and you’re completely transparent about your products and services. If they’re not, it can cause a negative wave of word-of-mouth.

Social Responsibility

If you’re a brand that tries to support causes and gives back to the community, millennials want to see that. They’re looking for companies that are making an impact on the world around them.  If you can effectively communicate exactly what your purpose is, you’ll make an emotional connection with them.

Optimize for Mobile

Most millennials are going to be viewing your content through a mobile device. You want to ensure that your content is mobile friendly. Your landing pages and emails should be optimized and image loading time should be quick. Creating vertical images and videos can also create a better experience for the user.

After having a strong grasp on millennial shopping behavior, start implementing some of these new strategies. Track your analytics to see what’s working and pay attention to those demographics. Once you’ve established your credibility to them, you’ll gain their loyalty.

Byline

This guest post was written by Katherine White. She writes articles for businesses that want to explore different marketing strategies. Currently, she is a contributor for 365 Business Tips and a digital marketing expert.

A significant proportion of marketing advice for small businesses focuses on digital marketing – using your blog, targeted advertising, or social media – and this approach makes it seem as though digital advertising is the only kind that matters. In doing so, this advice overlooks the power of in-person contact and any exciting and affordable ways to reach your community. Build deeper connections with these classic strategies, standbys from a brick-and-mortar era, that never stopped working.

Join Your Chamber Of Commerce

Your local Chamber of Commerce may seem like a minor organization, especially if you’ve been in business for a few years, but joining forces with your area branch can yield a number of benefits. In particular, the Chamber of Commerce tends to promote new members and can increase the visibility of area businesses through their events, social media activity, and community outreach events. Your Chamber of Commerce also offers valuable networking opportunities, which can create connections and foster cross-promotion with other local businesses.

Try A Trade Show

If you’ve considered attending a trade show in the past but declined, now is the time to try something new, even if you only go to a small or niche show. Trade shows offer you an opportunity to meet others in the field, a kind of real-life LinkedIn, and practice your professional pitch in a place where pitching is expected. Furthermore, you don’t need much to go to a local show: invest in a branded tent, print some fliers, and set up shop. Types of marketing require a big investment, but your first trade show doesn’t need to be.

Create Community Ties

Working with your local Chamber of Commerce isn’t the only way to create ties with your community; in fact, some of the most tried and true options are to sponsor a local sports team or make a float for an area parade. By doing so, you have an opportunity to foster goodwill among a wide range of people and give something back to those who support you. The fact is, even if you don’t have a real interest in being in the local Memorial Day Parade, many people will turn out and see your willingness to participate as a sign that you’re an active member of the community – and that could be the first step towards a sale.

Sponsor Something Special

In addition to sponsoring local sports teams and other extracurricular events, consider planning a business event for other professionals in your community, such as a speaker series or networking event, or bring other businesses together to host a job fair. Don’t aim for anything too big, just something that will increase your opportunity for exposure and enhance your local connections. Despite the shift to online-first marketing, people still prefer to do business with local companies so how you engage with your local community matters.

Even if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location in your town or make many sales in person, face-to-face marketing opportunities are vital to your success – so don’t overlook them. Whether or not you make a valuable connection that day, those events could be the start of word of mouth promotion and support that will take your business to the next level.

As a small business or startup, the holiday season is a great time to watch your revenue grow — it’s estimated consumers will spend $1,536 each on holiday goods and gifts. But you have to plan ahead and develop the perfect holiday marketing campaign before you can reap the rewards. Here are eight holiday essentials for small retail businesses and startups.

1. Plan a Holiday Marketing Campaign

The holidays are about more than selling your items. You need different messaging and tactics to tug at people’s heartstrings and remind them of your brand name. Your holiday marketing campaign such include SEO, emails, influencer marketing and display advertising. Don’t forget to adapt those messages whenever an event or a holiday happens to bring in even more customers.

2. Create a Personalized Experience

During the holidays, you can choose to increase your revenue by bringing in more customers, or you can increase profits through quality, loyal customers. Neither way is wrong, but choosing to focus on loyal customers may pay off in the long-term. Try to make your business approach personalized to keep those customers coming back. Hand-write thank you notes for purchases that are shipped or create an email campaign that targets repeat customers to keep people coming back.

3. Take Advantage of Big Shopping Dates

The last quarter of the year is typically when the biggest shopping dates hit. Throughout October, November and December you need to plan for Columbus Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas. Also look at some of the big online spending days to figure out when you should be pushing paid advertisements and more.

4. Decide on a Return Policy

This one isn’t as exciting, but you should decide on a return policy and payment options before you get a rush of customers. Some online and offline stores offer more liberal and extended return/exchange policies during the holidays. Consider what is best for your store and how it will impact sales. You can also consider accepting other payment options such as PayPal.

5. Offer Multiple Delivery Options

Another important aspect of holiday shopping is delivery. Holiday shopping is important to consumers, and you want to keep them coming back by offering multiple delivery options that will allow their package to get their on-time. Whether it’s FedEx, UPS, USPS and more, check out the drop-dead shipping dates to know when the last possible day you can ship something is.

6. Pay Attention to Pricing

All sellers know that consumers will buy during the holiday season, no matter what the price of the product. However, good sellers will drop or increase the price of an item at just the right time based on many factors. Either watch the changes yourself or use dynamic repricing tools that use an algorithm to price things accordingly.

7. Make a Few Site Improvements

The last thing you want is for consumers to have a cart full of items that disappear if your site crashes. Factors such as site speed, slowdowns, content issues and overall stability will impact whether or not you make a sale. Take some time before the holiday rush to see what you can do to improve your site and make it more user-friendly for individuals who prefer to shop online.

8. Decide Where to Advertise

Not every advertising channel is the same, and you need to craft different messages depending on where you’re advertising. The more targeted you get with your promotions, the more people will buy. Do your research ahead of time to see where your competitors are advertising. Will a Facebook campaign work best? What about PPC on Google? Find the best ways to reach your audience this season to realize the biggest rewards.

Have Fun While Doing It

The holidays can often seem stressful, but they don’t need to be. As a small business or startup, you should have fun experiencing the holidays along with your customers. Help them find the perfect gifts for friends and family and do it with a smile on your face. The holidays are about giving, so give back with a cheerful attitude especially when the sales start to pile in.