Connecting to people seeking help for addiction through online marketing hinges crucially on the quality of the services we offer and the sincerity with which we offer them. Successful marketing expresses truth and builds trust. It also helps to have effective strategies, especially the use of social media, which more than any other channel is being used to link young people with the services they need. Because the online generation is not very interested in websites that appear in a search engine result, strategies like SEM are essential to effectively place ads where they will be seen.
Comprehending the actual ways in which search engine marketing functions within the context of addiction treatment might not be the simplest task. That's because it's a fairly new marketing entity and one must possess a significant amount of historical marketing knowledge to fully grasp the reason why it's being taken seriously as a business practice.
There are many ways to boost visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). Paid ads have long held a secure position when it comes to sharing the SERP with search results. Let's face it: No one wants to scroll to the bottom of page two to find an ad. For that reason, most pay-per-click (PPC) ads are displayed at the top of the SERP. PPC ads, along with organic search results, help make addiction treatment centers more visible to potential patients and loved ones in their time of need.
SEM plays a very important part in the treatment of addiction. It is a method that affects every aspect of a treatment program. From program development to evaluation, SEM gives treatment professionals a valuable tool to bring about the changes needed to lead people toward and keep them in recovery.
The treatment community has a well-established culture of being outcomes-focused; that is, being dedicated to the utilization of evidence-based interventions and maintaining a system of accountability. SEM, being an evidence-based practice, fits well in this culture.
Becoming more visible in your organization can mean several things. It could mean you become more visible to your superiors and your peers. It could mean the folks who hand out the dollars have seen you in action enough to believe in your ability to deliver the goods. Or it could mean that you've been around long enough to be more visible to the work-at-home team that you’ve been charged with leading and to the folks that you must now convince in heated budget meetings that your work is worth funding.
SEM aims to boost a site's ranking on SERPs, rendering it highly visible to potential customers. A major part of that visibility is its position on the page of search results. The space at the top, useful for both legitimate and less honest websites, is a valuable place to appear. When people search for a certain term—let's use "addiction treatment"—a treatment center appearing at the top of the page is likely to be more highly considered by the searcher. Being on the first page is great, but being at the top of the first page is ideal.
Ads based on preferences
The holy grail of advertising is to present someone with exactly the right ad at exactly the right time. On the Internet, this is possible, and the different companies that collect data on consumers put it to use in several ways. Companies can find out a lot about a person by tracking them across different websites they visit. A person may use an email address or a device for one site and a different email address or device for another. However, by making use of tracking techniques, digital advertising relies on quite a few very powerful forms of surveillance to figure out what a person likes and doesn't like to see in ads.
The SEM (Search Engine Marketing) method enables a very precise type of advertising. When treatment centers elect to use this method, they can create advertisements that only appear to individuals who are searching for very specific types of help (such as "rehab centers near me" or "types of drug treatment programs"). This means that the facilities do not have to waste their advertising budgets by showing their ads to everybody, but rather, they can display their ads to the people who matter, who are closer to making a decision, and who are more likely to reach out and get help from the for-profit treatment centers.
How do you get your money’s worth in advertising?
That’s the question answered by this chapter. Here you’ll learn how to keep the cost of your ad and promotion efforts down, the advertising media you can use, the top methods of direct marketing, the most cost-effective ways to exhibit your products and services on the trade show floor, how to make the most of your public relations campaign, what to look for in a sales representative, why online marketing works and how to do it, the secret to using Google AdWords, and how to get your email marketing into a customer’s inbox and keep it from being marked as spam.
Although using traditional ways to advertise might be expensive and less directed toward the correct audience, SEM serves as a more affordable and direct option. Within SEM, using PPC advertising has the benefit of cost control—specifically, a Marketing Team only pays when their ad is clicked on. This ensures that a team's hard-earned, possibly even donation-driven revenue is used effectively and not for a good-for-nothing result. Another strategy to use within the SEM realm is SEO, which doesn't control costs anytime soon but does constantly pull in good leads due to basic audience roadmap algorithms.
Results that can be measured
SEM has a notable edge in tracking and measuring accurate results online. Google Analytics, for instance, reveals intricate performance data for SEM campaigns. This is a level of detail not easily come by with other advertising mediums. Impressions, clicks, and conversions may be only a few of the finer performance metrics available to determine how well a campaign is performing. This almost instantaneous feedback allows centers to make changes in real-time to their online strategies, which can result in additional leads and, if the tactics are truly inspired, even more conversions.
Number 5, Creating Trust and Credibility
Appearing at the top of search engine results doesn't just make a website more visible—it also makes it more credible. When users search for a particular term, they're more likely to trust websites that appear at the top of the results. From the perspective of SEO, this is for several good reasons. Most importantly, the appearance at the top of the SERP (search engine results page) is unimpeachable and, to most, connotes the idea that the website and its operators are in some way esteemed.
Executing Powerful SEM Strategies
For addiction treatment centers to truly benefit from search engine optimization (SEO), they need to concentrate on both pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO procedures. Centers can use them for keyword research, which is the backbone of web visibility and audience targeting. Centers can get results (though not always at the desired price) with PPC ads even while they wait for their SEO efforts to take effect.
However, centers should remember to use PPC strategically. If there is a "war" between centers for PPC ad space, it is not always in the best interest of centers to outbid other centers. You always want to make sure that you are using your bids strategically.
In summary, recent research supports the idea that violent video games do not cause increased aggression or violence in players. It seems that all people have their own personal, unique responses to video game violence, whether it be increased aggression or desensitization to violence. Many gamers themselves aren't even violent, and yet they are pursuing careers in the criminal justice field.
This all didn't happen without reason as leading research shows that video game violence in no way turns an otherwise peaceful person into a violent criminal.
Search engine marketing in addiction treatment is an advantageous ploy that affects contact with individuals whose countenance it seeks. Over good old-fashioned marketing channels, SEM has the power to reach today’s vulnerable segment, which is suffering from the most dangerous recreation of chasing our shadows.
Using search engine marketing (SEM), treatment facilities can speak to an audience that might otherwise not know about a solution they desperately need. The time spent on SEM pays serious dividends. For one, it creates visibility for an audience that is searching for answers; the center’s solution now appears in the search results.