Stop Buying Cheap Leads: Deep-Funnel Ad Optimization for Treatment Centers

Most marketing agencies high-five Google when the phone rings. Aaron Nelson analyzed $21 million in ad spend to prove why cheap phone calls are actually draining your treatment center’s profitability.
 Aaron is the Director of Paid Ads at Lever11, bringing 17 years of agency experience to the highly regulated behavioral healthcare landscape. He specializes in reverse-engineering patient admissions by turning raw, down-funnel metrics into predictable digital marketing engines. 

In this episode:
* Why optimizing for cost-per-lead (CPL) is the fastest way to burn out your admissions staff
* The hidden danger of Google's "Max Conversions" bid strategy in addiction recovery marketing
* How to feed down-funnel data like beds filled and VOBs back to Google while staying strictly HIPAA-compliant
* The 3-to-5 day window: How to restructure campaigns to capture high-intent prospects during critical moments of willingness
* How a specialized agency leverages multi-client data patterns to train Google's evolving AI bidding systems
* Why 61% of treatment searches still start on Google, and how to dominate that real estate effectively

Treatment centers scaling efficiently aren't hunting for cheap clicks. They’re bidding on value, capturing immediate intent, and building closed-loop data systems.

 Weekly episodes on what’s working right now in addiction recovery marketing, admissions, and center operations.

01:00 Meet Aaron Nelson
01:59 Analyzing Millions in Ad Spend
03:16 Aaron's Marketing Background
04:26 Why Addiction Recovery Ads Are Different
05:40 Policy Restrictions and Regulations
06:38 Specialized vs General Agencies
08:23 Beyond Lead Volume
10:13 Tracking Conversions Back to Clicks
12:54 The Problem with Standard Optimization
15:34 Importance of Client Communication
16:53 Two Approaches to Ad Campaigns
17:55 Understanding Your Metrics and KPIs
19:31 Understanding Bid Strategies
20:20 Target CPA vs ROAS
21:38 Max Conversions Explained
22:54 Quality Over Quantity
24:03 Cost Per Lead Myths
25:31 Efficiency and Profitability
26:40 High Intent Leads Matter
27:34 AI in Google Ads
29:34 Google Search Still Works
31:47 Creating Holistic Visibility
33:09 Starting with Sponsored Ads
34:04 Budget Concerns Addressed
35:16 Competing Without Big Budgets
37:47 Final Advice for Centers

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Clicks to Recovery, the podcast where we break down how digital marketing actually drives real admissions for addiction recovery centers. I'm your host, Tommy Anderson. And if you're running a treatment center, leading admissions, or responsible for filling beds with the right clients, not just more leads, you're in the right place. Because here's the reality clicks are really easy to buy, but quality patients, that's a different game entirely. On this show, we're diving into what's working right now with Google and meta ads, how to attract high intent prospects, and how to avoid the costly mistakes that flood your pipeline with the wrong people. We'll be talking strategy, sharing real data, and bringing in people from the front lines who are doing this every single day. So whether you're looking to scale, stabilize, or just stop wasting money on bad leads, this podcast is built for you. Let's get into it. All right. Well, today we are joined here with uh Aaron Nelson. Aaron Nelson is our director of paid ads. Um lucky to have him. He's a busy guy. A lot of people in uh in in our in our uh in our company are constantly pulling you to take a look at accounts and try to touch some levers to make things better. So Aaron, um, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, absolutely. You know, as director of paid advertising, I am over all of our products from Google to Meta to YouTube to you know anything else uh that we might be putting money into for our clients. Right? So I'm I'm looking at the strategy for those different clients. I'm looking at our overall um our overall book of business, looking at all of our clients and looking for strategies and um commonalities and things that I can pull out so that I can improve our strategies so that I can move us forward and deliver a better product for everybody that we're servicing.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

You're like you're you're probably the one of the most fun people just to poke when I'm in the office, just to say like it gets quiet. I'm like, Aaron, what are you working on? Like the other day I walked over there and you were analyzing like how many, how much ad spend worth of audience data and exactly what we're looking at again?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

About $21 million worth of ad spend, yeah, for hundreds of different audiences. Um we were just trying to pull out, okay, what can we learn from all of this data that we've collected over you know so many different years and so much different ad spend for so many different companies so that we can pull out uh which audiences are working, which are not, what commonalities do we see or groups of audiences can we just stop targeting? What are not leading to contracts or not leading to bookings for us? Um and yeah, how can we apply that strategy to Meta, to YouTube, to any of our other products as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

And what's so cool is when you're managing that sort of volume, you can really get granular with the data to see what matters and what doesn't matter, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Absolutely. Because we have so many different clients because we have so much different ad spend, there's a lot of data in there that I can look at that I can pull out, and I can create strategies that work across so many different clients.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

And we are jumping into like chapter 10 right now, and this sounds a lot like the conversations I have with you now. It's like Aaron, what are you doing? Right? So let's start from the beginning. Who are you? Talk to me about your experience in marketing, just in general, I'll let you go from there.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, absolutely. No, I've been in marketing for about 17 years. Um, I've been primarily in agencies over that time, um, working with a lot of different um industries, uh, from everywhere from e-commerce to lead gen to healthcare to real estate, um experience across all of it, um, and I've started to specialize more in these specific categories. I mean, especially in healthcare, it's been one of my favorites to work in because you are you're making a difference in people's lives. You know, it's it's a really meaningful work and it's really meaningful to me to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, and it fits our mission, right? I mean, like we we have determined and determined that our our strategy is elite. It works really, really well. So we want to make sure that whatever space we go into, we're using our powers for the right reason, if you will, right? Is that not it, right? I mean, we want to help these treatment centers make sure that their marketing dollars are going towards the right places and it's working. And ultimately the end product is people are changing their lives and getting towards recovery.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Absolutely. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Exactly. Okay, we're here to talk about addiction recovery. So let's dive into it. What what makes running ads for these treatment centers fundamentally different than than any other uh area or or or industry that you've ever been in?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, absolutely. There's there's a lot of reasons. I mean, uh the one of the largest is the the policy restrictions, right? It's a very regulated space, and it needs to be because there were uh a lot of troubles with that early on, um with people getting scammed or with people getting pushed into recovery and in lasting. Um and so it's a highly regulated space. You have to work within Google's policies, within Meta's policies, within whatever platform that you're working. Um, and you need to make sure that you're staying within these privacy laws. So there's a lot of regulation on it. I'd say as well, it's the audience that you're speaking to, because you're not a lot of the time you're not speaking directly to the end customer.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

It's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

You're speaking to their families, you're speaking to people that are worried about them. You know, it's it's a full, wholly different funnel that you're working with and a wholly different um set of values and trusts that you need to build with that person.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Totally. I was just at NATAP uh last week in Amelia Island, uh, and LegitScript was actually, they did a presentation there, which was really interesting, and they kind of talked about their evolution of how they came to be in this space just because there's been so many bad actors and so many people taken advantage of. So, you know, LegitScript is obviously a huge part of what happens in this space.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Absolutely, yeah. They're they're a great partner. They are Google's, you know, third-party watchdog pretty much across the board for them. But they work with a lot of different companies and they're a great partner. And Lover 11 will help sort of, you know, if you're not authorized by LegitScript, we can we can we can help you work through that process, absolutely. The the other thing that I would I would say that's different in this space is the motivations are different, right? If you're working in in e-commerce or you're working in B2B, right, people want this product, so they're they're excited about it. A lot of times it's a like impulse purchase. This is completely different. Um, it's a completely different mindset.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

And that was actually you're you're you're seguing me beautifully to the next question because I think that you you know, especially I I've talked to so many different centers, and it sounds like for the most part, they're kind of with general agencies that are in, they have their hands in multiple different industries. So, one of my questions was is like, how is this different than uh you know, a general agency that's taking on like e-commerce and other things like that? Like, what do we focus on? What's the advantage of going with an agency that specializes in this space?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, so a lot of generalist agencies are going to run with a pretty standard B2B approach, right? They're going to look for, okay, where can I get cheaper clicks that will lead to cheaper leads, that will lead to the phone ringing, right? And get you into that intake funnel or get you into that form, right? Um with addiction recovery, leads, a massive volume of leads is not necessarily going to lead to a lot of bookings. And you also have to deal with a massive volume of leads one-on-one. Within this industry, it's important that you're dealing with people one-on-one. Um, rather than in a lot of industries, you can send them through kind of a very generalized sales funnel. Whereas this, you need a very you need a more specialized and a more personable approach. And so that type of shotgun approach where you're just getting a bunch of leads into the funnel is not effective and it's very time consuming and a very the burnout, it it leads to a lot of burnout within your staff.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Absolutely. And and people underestimate that a lot too, right? They'll come to an agency and say, I need more more leads or more phone calls.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Right. And it's really what we we try to cut through that and say, wait, I know what you're saying. You need more bookings, yeah. You need more admissions, you need more quality ones. And so what you're saying is that is that going with a specialized agency, just to sum this up in simple terms, is is we're going to optimize the things that happen deeper in the funnel, and you can speak about that.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah, and that's incredibly important in an industry like this when you have a volume of people that are going to be doing research, they're going to be looking into these things, but only so many people that are actually going to be booking, and you need to get down to the data on okay, who are the people that are actually ready to take action on that right now? Um, rather than just calling looking for information right now.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

The con the value of the conversion can differ so much.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Oh, yeah, yeah. If you're looking just at leads, there's so much noise out there. And it's hard to cut through that without optimizing towards actual bookings and looking at the data that's further down the funnel so that we can pull that out and say, okay, where did they come from and what was their journey like to get there?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Do you want to touch on like how do you do it, right? Like how do you actually tell? Can you tell Google, like, hey, this was a good conversion or a good phone call?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Eventually, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what we would do is we would track that whole process, right? We are we're looking for uh, you know, down at the bottom of the funnel, we're looking at beds filled, we're looking at bookings that happen, we're looking at people actually going into centers and booking in. Um, once that happens, we can feed that data back into Google and we can say, okay, this person that came to your website at some point is a really good lead, is someone that eventually got to that point. Where did that begin? Um, and Google can tie that back to those. You have to work within certain policies and regulations in this industry to help that happen. But there are ways to do that so that you can track that back to the original click.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Let me get you to nerd out a little bit. Give me an example of like how you would track that back to where it began. Like, like, like what like like okay, this person came through and it was the type of a mission that we want to help. It was the type of person that we're seeking. Talk to me about like what that looks like tracking, all the way back to what? To what they're searching online, to give us some valuable data points.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, so I mean, if we're talking about Google, right? We're top level, they make a click on some keyword that you are targeting, some search term that matched with that keyword, right? So they search.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yep, they search. They search something. Let's start right from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yep, they search that in, your ad pulls up somewhere on that page, and they've decided to click on it. Um so once they click to that, you you get certain identifiers that feed back into Google. Um, and then once they take an action on that page, they can fill out a form, they can make a phone call, um, you have a conversion action set off of whatever that conversion action looks like. And that's what a lot of companies will optimize towards.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So they'll just optimize to, hey, if they clicked on my ad and called me or filled out a form, they're essentially high five in Google. Yeah. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Exactly. And that's what they're telling Google, yep, that's exactly what we want.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Is that informational? Was that transactional? Was that a spam? Right. You know the lead? Was that it? Google doesn't know, but you're sending it a signal saying, hi five, good job, let's get more of that. We want to do that. Interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah. And so once they take that action, they become a lead um within the customer CRM. They are then, you know, the the client has all of their information so that they can then contact them, so that they can then um have them as a lead in their system, and they'll continue to follow up with them and go through the whole process, whether they need they whether they need like intervention services or um whatever you're inpatient, outpatient. Inpatient output treatment. Whatever you're offering, um, that becomes the client then follows up with them. And then once they get to a point where they identify, okay, this is a person that is ready to book, that is a really qualified and um uh ready individual for treatment. Sure. Right? Then they can send us back some of that information. Um, again, within policy, within regulation.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Because there is HIPAA rules and regulations.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

We don't want to c we don't want to get back any personally identifiable information or first party data. Um and but they can feed us back certain information that tells us, okay, that click originated from this certain keyword and search term that you had within Google.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Interesting. So you're essentially now, as opposed, so so what we what we've seen is that there's the majority of agencies that are operating in the behavioral health industry, like for addiction recovery centers and treatment centers, when they run an ads campaign, they're setting a goal of, hey, we want to optimize to them clicking on our ad, filling out a form or phone call. As long as they do that, they'll high-five Google.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yep, and they'll tell them, yep, we we want more of that. Whatever led to that, whether it was a spam, whether it was whatever.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

But at lever 11, we're gonna take the next step and say, hey, we we got the click, we got the form fill, we got the phone call. But before we actually give Google the proverbial high five, we want to see how that dispositions through your font.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Right, and and we use all of that data, right? And there might be multiple steps in there. You might have a verification of benefits um as an intermediary um conversion as well. And so we can use all of that data to track back um how effective that lead was. And then we can we can use all of those data points to paint a picture for Google because Google runs on data, Google runs on that conversion data, and bookings are gonna be kind of they're not gonna be, you're not gonna get a volume enough of can of booking conversions to feed into Google's algorithm to give it enough data to optimize off of it. For most clients, you need a lot of data. And so that's part of why you know we we operate with in this niche um to gather a lot of clients into the same in the same industry so that we can use, we can see those patterns in the world.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

It's almost like sharing a conversion tracking pixel. Is that a it would that be a proper way to say it?

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Maybe? I don't know. Correct me, right? I'm just the the the host.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

You can utilize a lot of the same data. Okay um, but as well, we can utilize one p we can utilize the data, we do still utilize the data from someone um someone made that that form fill, someone made that call, and then someone did a verification of benefits, and then they, you know, they booked or they they became a client or filled a bed. Okay. Um so at that bottom stage of the funnel, we're not only optimizing towards that because we want to feed Google so much data, but we are primarily optimizing off of that. We're giving the most weight to that conversion so that Google knows that is the ultimate goal, and then we're using that data to weight towards ad groups and keywords that lead to that outcome.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

It sounds like, Aaron, then what is crucial in running an effective ads campaign that's consistent and is scalable and is predictable is there there has to be a massive relationship between us, the ads manager, and the actual center because you're talking about collecting data after the phone call or the form fill. We don't know what happened, so how do we how do we get that?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, yeah, no, communication is huge. Um, the first step of that is we get on the phone with clients and we talk with them about okay, this lead came through, how's that looking? Um, what was what was your kind of impression of that? We're making sure that we're communicating with them on okay, what are you seeing from our ads campaigns on your end?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

They're obviously, if I'm working at admissions, I'm getting, I don't know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 calls a day, whatever it might be, depending on the center. They're obviously not gonna tell you, Aaron, like how every single phone call. So how are you collecting the data?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah, so we are still relying on them to feedback in some of that data from their CRM. Okay, right? We're in a HIPAA compliant way, we can still feed some of that bait that data back into Google Ads with offline conversion data and whatnot, so that we can track that down. But that communication and that handshake is is very important.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Awesome. So to tie a bow on all this, there's two different ways you could run an ads campaign, right? You could really focus on that top of funnel uh strategy where it's like, look, my I know my client or my center, they want as many clicks and phone calls and form fills, and you could tell Google, hey, as long as they complete that, we'll say Google, go find that again. Yeah, there's a second way you can do that. When we talk about optimizing to things that happen deeper in the funnel, it's that sort of closed loop communication back to your ads campaign where Google's understanding what sort of users behind which keyword, behind which click, behind which form fill worked. Yeah. And you can make that repeatable and predictable.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Yeah, no, and that way you're not relying on you're not just getting this shotgun approach where occasionally you're getting a lead-in, you might get a bunch one month, or you might not get as many in terms of bookings or that that final end point. You you repeat something that's very scalable and that's more predictable so that you have more consistent bookings.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

And on top of that, so I want to talk about since I I was just at NATAP, and obviously I'm curious, hence why I host a podcast, I could add when we could I keep you here all night asking questions, right? And so I was just curious about metrics and KPIs and how some of these centers were actually like, hey, like what's your cost per click? What's your conversion rate? Which landing pages work right? Do you guys separate it into ad groups? Like what's your cost per admission? What's your fallout? Like all these things. And it was I was really having a hard time getting those answers. So is that a problem that we and that is a problem. Wouldn't you agree? If you don't know exactly how every single dollar is behaving to your funnel, there is a fundamental issue with that because if you don't know it, your agency might be marketing in the dark.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Would you agree? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We again that communication is very important. We need to understand, okay, how much can you spend to fill a bed? How much is it worth to you? You know, what what margins are you kind of operating off of so that we can do the best work that we can, right? We we need to know how many beds you have available so that we can again book towards that and spend towards that when we're when we're managing the campaigns.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

So when your agency is talking to you, those are things that that they need to be asked. Hey, what is a conversion or an admission worth you? Yeah. What are you willing to spend on that? Because your agency should be able to reverse engineer that.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yeah. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Especially if you're digging down to the final action, right? You can you can tell how much you've spent to get that booking.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

If it's not too deep in the weeds, we're kind of going there anyway, right? Let's go there. When we talk about bid strategies, the most common bid strategy I've seen is a max conversions bid strategy. I kind of want you to talk to me about like what we use here at lever 11, why we use that, and and sort of the progression of that, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, yeah. So I'd say the most effective ones, there are kind of a different, a couple of different approaches you could take in this space, right? You you could go with a target CPA bid strategy where you determine how much you want to spend on each lead, and then we also look at which where are those leads coming from that actually lead to bookings. And so we can be more aggressive on those keywords that are leading to bookings and leading to some of these high intent actions that are down the funnel. Um, we can lean into those, we can set a higher target CPA on those specific types of keywords. Um, a step up from that would be a target row as strategy, where we look at each of these different conversion actions that you have, and we assign out a value to them that tells Google how much they're worth to the company. So as I was talking about, with you know, with that final action, with that booking action or bed filled, we can tell it, okay, that's worth $15,000 to the business or whatever. Um whereas a lead is worth $50. Um, and so it's it's leaning into that high funnel, that end-of-funnel action more prominently than it is to these higher funnel actions, but they're all worth something to the bit to the business. We're telling it, yeah, leads are good, but really where the money is is down funnel.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Awesome. So if can you tell me what, just for our listeners out there, too, who might not know what we're talking about, you're talking about some target bid strategies like a target cost per acquisition or action, a target return on ad spend. Those are very, very targeted towards bottom of funnel functions that we that where we like to hang out, but I I see so many agencies hang out and maximize conversions. What's the difference between max conversions and some of these targeted bid strategies?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Yeah, max conversions is set up to get you the most conversions for your budget. And typically you're feeding in leads, right? So we want to get as many phone calls, as many form fills as we can for our budget. Um, and it doesn't matter what type of conversion. So we could we you could just put all of your conversions in that bucket and say, okay, get it. Many as you can, and then Google is going to naturally go towards the higher funnel actions because you're you're valuing them all the same. And so you it's not actually bidding on value. No, not at all. It's it's bidding towards okay, I'm just gonna get the most conversions I can because that's what you're telling it to do. Yeah, I want the most conversions for my budget. I just want to get the most form fills, the most phone calls, whatever it is. Um I want to get all of that in there. But the problem with that is like we talked about, you you burn out your team with really bad leads. You spend your time chasing these leads that don't lead anywhere. Um and you're you're filling up your phone line um the entire time.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I tell this to people all the time it's not that it won't work. It's that we're trying to create an efficient, well-structured, repeatable, predictable business. And that starts within an ads campaign. If you made it this far, you already know most centers aren't struggling with traffic. They're struggling with getting the right patients. If you want to see what that looks like for your center, click the link below and we'll walk you through exactly what's working right now. So that max conversions bid strategy, it absolutely can work if your business is structured to take on as many phone calls, no matter what, people that are, you know, not that high intent or informational spam, wrong number, and also some qualifying. If your team is set up for that max conversions, it can work, right? But if you want a team that is structured or a marketing channel ads campaign that's bringing in structured, high-intent, repeatable, predictable leads, you have to go with those target bid strategies. Do you agree? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Okay, yeah. Yeah, and there's just there's so much noise out there that you are always gonna be getting so many of those leads coming in, and it looks great from your agency's perspective, right? I'm generating tons of leads at a really low cost, um, and they're gonna feel good about themselves, but they don't know that on the back end they're failing to get you anything on the bottom line.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

I hate to say it, but clients have sort of formed this in this in the in the digital marketing space where I want a cheap cost per lead, I want a cheap cost per lead, but we have ran so many studies that like you know, the extra higher cost per lead you pay, the more efficient you are, the more profitable you are, even if the cost per acquisition is the same versus a ton of leads at cheap versus a small amount of leads at expensive, your business can be more profitable by being more efficient. So clients have had definitely conditioned agencies to focus on that top of funnel where it's like, give me the cheapest cost per lead per possible. And audience out there, you might not like to hear it, but our goal is not to get you the cheapest cost per lead.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Right? We we want if we could get a one-to-one ratio, that'd be the greatest thing ever. Obviously, that's never gonna happen. But we want to get you high valued leads.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, every lead that comes in is gonna cost you something to follow up on it, to have someone on the phone with it, right? So, you know, if you are if you have 150 leads to a a booking or to a bed filled, every one of those is costing you. You if you have qualified leads, you have to follow up less. You have you can have fewer people on the phones and more people um doing other things for your business. It's a more strategic approach so that you don't have to use as many resources and so that we can get you the most targeted and highest efficient cost per booking rather than lead.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

And I I hate to try to be like salesy here, but like that is the fundamental difference between what we're doing here and what every other agency we're doing in this space is is we're trying to create an efficient and a lean, high-intent ads campaign. It's just it's gonna protect your team, it's gonna create a ton of efficiency, and ultimately, look, you hate to talk about profitability in the behavioral health industry, but you guys have to be profit, profitable to help people. It's a real thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I mean, it's we're always kind of walking that line, right? It's like it's like you know, these are businesses, right? We understand why these centers are open and the purpose behind them, but they are ultimately businesses, right? Like we have to talk dollars and cents and profitability at some point.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

The more successful you are as a business, the more people you can help.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

I mean, bottom line, if you're if you're not, if you're not profitable, you can't expand, you can't uh move into other types of treatment, you can't expand into um more beds, you can't do any of this growth without first being successful. Now, the reason that we're going for these really high-intent um leads are that those are the people that are ready for treatment right now. Those are the people that you can help right now, right? And if you're tying up your resources and you're not getting on the phone with them, um, you are missing out on those opportunities. Those people, typically, your your window of opportunity is very short. Um from the the first search that they do for help to going into a center for treatment is typically three to five days. Um, and that window of opportunity where they're open to treatment and where they are willing to get help is very short. If you're not able to communicate with them and work with them during that period, you might lose that opportunity. And so having these more high-intent leads for people that are really ready for treatment now can both help your business and help them on this side.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

You know, a a big part of when I was at NATAP last week, there was just a lot of AI buzz, a lot of people there that were talking about AI applications and AI in EMR, like the medical records and AI and their CRMs. Nobody there was talking about AI within their ads campaigns. Let's talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, no, it's it's interesting because Google is moving more away from granular, um more away from granular control and into more AI automated bid strategies and tactics, right? And in order to do, in order to get the best out of Google with that AI, you have to have the best data. You have to be feeding it the right information. So this tactic where we are optimizing towards lower funnel um like bookings and things, feeding that data back into AI is incredibly effective because you in order to get good out of AI, you have to put good in.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

So the the better your data is, the more effective it's going to be into the future. As these AI tools evolve and as they become more intelligent, the better data you can give to them to work with, the better outputs you're going to get from them.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Cool. So the more granular data that you can collect on what exactly we're looking for, the better the this the AI can make predictions.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Exactly, yeah. I mean, and it's it's also the more data that you have, the more that it can analyze, the better it can do. Which is one reason that it's good to work with a specialized agency because we have data from so many different data points that we can feed into different models and algorithms, and we can see where those patterns lie and where the future is, um, so that we can implement those strategies and tactics within your business.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

You know, there's that obvious talk out there. It's like, well, I just use Chat GPT for everything, or Claude, or Copilot for everything. So answer me this. Like, does Google search sponsored ads? And that's what does that still hold a place in this industry?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Oh, absolutely. I mean, even today, it's still 61% of searches where people are looking for a treatment center start on a search engine.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah. And so you you absolutely still need to be there because that's the moment when people need help. It's when they're looking for a solution, it's when they're crying for help.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

People still trust Google for big life. I tell this to people all the time people trust Google for big life decisions, whether it's insurance, childcare, attorneys, automobiles, real estate, treatment centers, health centers, like they trust Google.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Exactly, and trust is a big thing. It's a huge thing in the age of AI, right? And Google is still a very a place that people trust a lot and they want to do a lot of research around this decision, right? And so they go to they they trust a search engine like that where they can get multiple different answers and and opportunities and do their own kind of thinking rather than just trusting AI.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And it sounds to say that's it is extremely important to make sure you have AI authority and AI visibility, and you're gonna do that through SEO, which is obviously something that we we do for our clients and offer for our clients, which we'll get into in a whole nother episode. We're here to talk paid ads with you. But I just want to make sure that you know I get that question all the time. Do people still click on sponsored ads in this industry and click on, you know, the organic blue listings and Google business profiles? And the answer, it sounds like is overwhelmingly yes. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Abs, yeah, yeah. All the time. You're you're still getting a huge amount of volume through on Google search. It's important to be present on both, really. You want to make sure that everyone who is looking for help, you're you're present as long as they are ready to take action. And so it's it's important on the SEO side that you have that domain authority, that you have all those pieces, but also that you understand what's gonna lead to that final action. And that's where those two can go hand in hand, is where we can see all of this data on what is working on the Google Ads side, and we can feed that into our SEO and AI strategy so that you can be targeting the right things.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

And I get the question all the time of what are your best clients or what are your best centers doing? And it's they're creating that holistic view online, they're moving horizontally in their market across multiple marketing channels. Imagine if if you really are dominating Google's real estate in that space and that that search space, you know, you can show up under sponsored ad, under Google Business Profile, under the Map Pack, and underneath uh organic listing, right? Underneath the like the organic blue links. Yeah, that's that's four times. Then you could start talking about, well, also if you have a good authority score, you're gonna show up on ChatGPT and Claude and Copilot and Gemini, and then you're also running Facebook ads and meta-ads and you know on Instagram and on YouTube, right? These are all things that Lever 11 does for that reason. We are creating an authority in your space. So we're capturing intent through Google, but we're also being informational through YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and showing up on AI platforms. Would you agree with that? Creating a holistic view across multiple channels.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah. Oh yeah. And I mean, as we talked about earlier, you're not just hitting the people that need treatment, right? You are looking, you're building a brand to their families, to the people that care about them. And so by not only focusing on one channel and being present in different places, you can create a network and um you can create a network that works so that people who are looking to help their loved ones are aware of you and and you have a trust in this space before they make that decision.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Could you theoretically just run sponsored ads? Like I have a website, I just built it, it doesn't have an SEO score, like it doesn't have a good authority score. Um AI doesn't know who I am, I don't have to really have a Google business profile. Could I just let's say I'm a smaller center, right? Could I literally just get admissions just running a sponsored ad campaign, a PPC campaign?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

You could, yeah. I I would say in that situation where you're a smaller center and you don't have the the budget or the resources to build out all of these things, I would look for where do you specialize? Um, what is your kind of niche treatment that really works that we can really narrow down into and um find the people that are looking specifically for what you offer. Um those can work. We we just need to narrow our focus so that we can spend your budget wisely and get to the people that are really high intent for your type of treatment.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

How do you so let me ask you like this? You know, budget is budget is a question that always comes up, and it is so important. Um, and there is a perception out there that's like, well, I know somebody in my space that's spending book bucks, right? Like five, maybe even six figures uh in my market. So how could I possibly compete with them?

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Right. No, you don't need to be spending up to that. Like like we talked about, you identify what works for you and where you can really help people. What type of treatment do you offer? Are you trauma-informed? Are you like a tough love type of center, right? What really works for you? What kind of um people are you looking for? Let's narrow that down, let's determine who your your target market really is, who we can help, and let's spend in that category. You don't have to be spending $100,000. You can spend a few thousand dollars to reach that very high intent market and get the bookings that that you're really going to be able to help.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

And and I understand when centers approach me about budget, they feel like, hey, well, this is an auction-based platform, therefore, whoever has the highest budget is always going to win. That's just not the case.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah, no, it's it's true because there's there are a lot of different factors within within any type of advertising, there's a lot of different factors. Um, it comes down to can you establish trust with those people? What types of services do you offer that maybe differentiate you? What can we say in your ads to pull in the people that really are your target intent um that are really in your um target market that you can really help?

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Thank you, because it is always a tough question to answer. Because I do understand where they're coming from. They feel like I know somebody who spends 40 grand in my market, and like I if I don't have that budget, I'm just never gonna compete. Therefore, I'm gonna stay out of it. It's like, no, let's get you in this auction. There are ways that we can we can use any sort of budget, even if that is a relatively small budget to help make your your company visible.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Yeah. No, so when we focus on one single area, we can bid higher than a lot of your competitors can because you are more competitive in that market. Um, they are spreading their budget out across hundreds of different searches. Whereas if we focus down on one, you could be, you could show up above them, or we could just make your ads so compelling that people are instead working towards you because you're offering exactly what they need.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah, and thank you so much for commenting on that because I I know that there are a lot of centers out there that need sponsored ads to help their business that are staying on the sidelines because they feel like they don't have enough budget. Yeah. And it's tough because then the agency is like, no, come on board, you know, and then they feel like, well, that's it. Am I getting tricked here? And we're here to tell you we have a lot of clients that spend relatively small budgets that do very, very well.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Yeah. No, it's it's not top billing that gets you client. Well, that it's not top billing that gets you bookings that fills beds. Um, it's not that top position on Google that is always going to be the end-all of performance. If you can craft your messaging, if you if you deliver a better service for those people, we can draw them in, we can, we can get those people to click on your ads and to interact with you. You're you're much more likely to get that booking than someone that's just much more general.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Aaron, we're gonna have to have you back on because I think we this is like the tip of the iceberg. I mean, there is so much we could go into and and we can go a lot deeper, and we could talk about other marketing channels and strategies and budgets and so forth. Signing off here, like what's one thing you could tell any treatment center out there, either running ads or looking to run ads?

SPEAKER_00 37:56

I'd say if you are thinking about running ads, it is definitely worth testing. There are people out there that you can help that are looking for your services, and it is worth looking into if you can find them through advertising. If you are running ads, I would say look for ways that you can cut through the noise. You don't just optimize towards that top of funnel that you know, just the lead, because those are leading to burnout on your teams, they are leading to uh missed bookings with people that are really high intent that are looking for your services.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Awesome. That was powerful. Aaron, thanks so much for coming on the show. I know you're a busy guy. We're so happy to have you. Hopefully, you can make time in the future uh to continue this conversation. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

No, happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Thanks, Aaron. Thanks. Thanks for watching the Clicks to Recovery podcast. If something you heard today makes you question your current marketing, don't ignore that. Click the link below and we'll run a full marketing audit. Free of cost. We'll show you exactly where your leads are breaking down, where you're wasting spend, and what to fix to start bringing in the right patients.