Addiction Professional Referral Groups connects 14,000 Addiction Treatment Specialists
The Addiction Professional Referral Group is the most popular and active behavioral health group on Facebook. This group connects over 14,000 addiction professional nationwide and it averages 1,500-2,000 posts and remarks per month. This month we are honoring a group member for stimulating controversial conversation on medication-assisted treatment. This post produced the most remarks and activity over any other post for the month of October. You can join the Addiction Professional Referral Group here.
Connecting Addiction Professionals Nationwide with Resources, Strategies, Ideas, Drug Rehab Marketing, Networking, and Addiction Conferences
Our goal is to educate addiction professionals on ethical business practices, provide useful resources, assist in connecting for new relationships, educate on evidenced-based treatment, fight against patient brokering, educate on ethical marketing practices (in this group, with our marketing and at our addiction conferences), and use our large voice to encourage industry self-regulation. This group has consumed a large amount of our time to build and maintain. We hope you will mutually support us by getting educated here and attending one of our Addiction Professional EMP conferences. Our next addiction conferences series event is on 1/22/19 in Costa Mesa, California.
Here is some of the work that your mutual support has assisted us in;
- We have spent 1000’s of hours building this group and 10-15 hours per week maintaining it.
- We need mutual support from our group members to continue to be a large voice in the community.
- Raised $400,000 worth of addiction treatment scholarships for the Riviera Beach Civil Drug Court
- Raised $250,000 worth of addiction treatment scholarships for the Addicts Mom
- Radio personality educating on the ethical business side of addiction, and fight patient brokering with national radio station Recovery Radio Raw
- Spent 1,000 hours building the Addiction Professional Referral Group to provide an unprecedented Facebook group that is a trusted source for professionals.
- Maintained 14 LinkedIn Addiction professional groups, and 45 Facebook Groups with over 210,000 members
- Educated on proven business operating strategies
- Educated on proven drug rehab marketing strategies
- Provided 14 Addiction Conferences for CEO’s, Executives, Directors and Outreach bringing Executive Thought Leader Panelists educating on proven business and marketing strategies to survive the new and difficult landscape.
Addiction Professional Referral Group Member of the Month
The addiction professional of the month is Steve Wize, CEO of Mental Fitness. Steve’s post was not only the most active but also, addresses one of the most controversial topics in our industry.
So crazy idea, but I’d like to hear some other addiction professional opinions: Create a standing order for Suboxone- no prescription necessary. Make it as easy to get as Narcan…. any thoughts?
Steve Wize is an author, speaker, and corporate wellness trainer who specializes in helping companies and individuals reach their full potential. After graduating with his Master’s degree from Pitt, Steve went on to become a licensed clinical social worker and has spent the past five years working in private practice. During this time, Steve designed his own unique curriculum in which he has used to create his book, and his business, Mental Fitness, LLC.
In addition, to being the founder and president of Mental Fitness, LLC, Steve also works as a life coach in the Western Pennsylvania Area. Steve has always considered Pittsburgh his home. He is married, has five adopted dogs, and is also the author of “The Amazing Chase” series which promotes dog rescue and adoption efforts.
Steve graduated from Penn State Erie – Ehrenberg College with a degree in Psychology, and from the University of Pittsburgh with a Master’s Degree in Social Work—Mental Health, with a concentration on Direct Practice. He has been working in dual diagnosis and substance abuse counseling since 2010. Steve’s passion to help others struggling with substance abuse or mental health issues is fueled by his own loss growing up of a loved one to a drug overdose.
In addition to offering extensive experience in opiate addiction, Steve has expanded his clientele to include adolescent, family therapy and couples counseling. Along with group and individual drug and alcohol counseling, Steve specializes in smoking cessation therapy, gambling addiction, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, stress and anger management, and overcoming grief and loss.
Steve believes that every person has the potential for improvement in their lives, regardless of their backgrounds or current circumstances. By utilizing a non-judgmental, solution-focused approach, Steve helps clients to master their mental fitness achieve their full potential.
“Smile on your face, song in your heart.”
Resources for Business and Drug Rehab Marketing Strategies
The addiction professional referral group is a trusted resource for business, drug rehab marketing, and administrative operating strategies. Our industry is experiencing unprecedented changes affecting the administration, business, and marketing operating procedures. Laissez-faire business strategies are no longer effective. Using the old business and marketing strategies puts organizations in our industry at great risk of closing their doors. We are seeing many addiction treatment centers and opiate detox and sober livings closing their doors. The organizations that are closing all have one thing in common. They stayed with business as usual tactics including boots on the ground marketing, call centers, and Adwords as their main strategies. They all suffered from Digital Darwinism.
The Internet is the #1 Source for Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment Centers
The web is the absolute #1 resource to reach potential clients in any business. The number of people using the internet is growing astronomically every day. The light speed growth has caused severe marketing problems for almost every industry. Understanding how to effectively utilize the web to generate clients or customers is an overwhelming task. Almost all treatment centers and ancillary service providers in the substance abuse industry do not understand web marketing. Our industry has traditionally resorted to short-term solutions to their long-term problem of maintaining a census. They, almost always are looking for an instant return (30 days) on their marketing.
Over 90% of our industry suffers from digital Darwinism. Digital Darwinism is when technology moves faster than industries can adapt. Why does web drug rehab marketing outperform all other marketing combined?
- Currently, the average person spends nearly 10 hours a day online. Unbelievably, we now spend more time on the Internet than we do sleeping (8.4 hours).
- Today there are approximately 7.4 billion people living on the planet, and ~ 23 billion internet of things (IoT) connected devices, which is an average of 3 devices per person. By 2025 it is estimated that there will be over 75 billion IoT connected devices worldwide.
- There will be at least 3.5 billion Google searches performed every day. Google also processes over 40K search queries every second. That translates to 1.2 trillion Google searches per year.
- Google.com is the most popular website in the world. www.Youtube.com is second and Facebook.com is third.
- Internet users have an average of 7.6 social media accounts
- The average daily time spent on social is 116 minutes a day
- There is a new social media user every 15 seconds.
- Facebook Messenger and Whats app handle 60 billion messages a day
- Facebook: 2.072 billion users
- Youtube: 1.5 billion users
- Wechat: 1.12 billion users
- WhatsApp: 900 million users
- Instagram: 800 million users
- Weibo: 600 million users
- LinkedIn: 500 million users
- Twitter: 330 million users
- Reddit: 234 million users
- Pinterest: 200 million users
- Snapchat: 178 million daily users
- Google+: 111 million users
Understanding Drug Rehab Marketing Like You Understand Addiction Treatment
Almost every addiction treatment center owner understands addiction treatment and has an extreme passion to help others. However, this is only 1/3 of what is needed to run a successful drug and alcohol addiction treatment center. Owners of treatment centers and sober livings also need to completely understand the business and marketing components. They have to be extremely educated in these two areas. Relying upon a drug rehab marketing agency and drug rehab business consultants is extremely risky if they are not educated in these areas. Having a solid education in these areas is paramount for owners and operators. With this key knowledge, operators will be able to tell if these professionals are performing for their organization.
For example, over 90% of substance abuse provider websites are not structurally correct. Poor website development is the #1 and most costly mistake made in web marketing. If a website is not structurally correct, you are leaking Google juice. Every marketing dollar you are putting into web marketing, without having a structurally correct website, is being wasted by leaking Google juice and the opportunity to get on page one of Google organically. It is extremely easy to tell if a treatment center understands web marketing by looking at their website. A website is the foundation of web marketing. If your website is not structurally correct, you are wasting every marketing dollar you put into web marketing.
The top 3 organic slots and Google maps account for 70% of page one clicks. To put into perspective, AdWords or PPC only accounts for 2% of the clicks. While AdWords does produce calls, many of these calls are poor with many asking for Medicaid and Medicare. The top 3 organic leads are much more qualified for the services and insurance provided.
Why is a Website the #1 Mistake in Drug Rehab Marketing?
The # mistake in drug rehab marketing is website development. When you build a house, you build it on concrete. Almost all drug rehab websites are built on sand. Almost all websites in our industry are built by website designers, not website developers. This critical and costly error is the fault of the treatment center owner and the marketing agencies they have used. As an owner, if you understood what needs to be done for proper website structure and drug rehab SEO, you would be able to tell if the professionals you hired are doing their job.
The important difference is a designer will build a beautiful, aesthetically appealing website. A website developer opens the golden Google doors for Google to effectively communicate with google’s searcher. Many addiction treatment centers websites are ascetically beautiful. While this is somewhat useful for the target market, it is not very useful in Google ranking your website on page one. The first part of getting on page one of Google is to have a website that communicates to Google that you can answer the terms that are searched. Here are some of the common mistakes made substance abuse websites;
- Is the hierarchy of our website good for Google?
- Do we have schema (Sign Posts for Google) incorporated into our website?
- Does our website have a sitemap and have we told Google it’s there?
- Is our website fast enough on mobile for the new speed update released on July 9, 2018?
- Are we using Yoast to check the bare minimum for our drug rehab SEO?
- Are the URL’s for our website correct for SEO?
- Does our website have an SSL certificate?
- Does our blog have SEO for our keywords? If so, what are those keywords and how many of the blog posts have made it to page one of Google?
- Do the main pages of our website have SEO for these keywords?
- Have we done an H-Tag audit on our website
- Do our pics have ALT tags and are they geo-coded?
- Have we done a hyper-local page?
- Do we have a skyscraper article?
- Are our Google maps properly coded and placed on our website?
- How are we building quality back-links?
- How many citations do we have?
- Do we understand and utilize your Google Analytics?
- Do we understand and use call tracking metrics?
- What is our list of keywords based on our organization’s services? And, out of those keywords which ones can, we easily rank for on the first page of Google?
- Do we understand Google analytics and how to use it to build our marketing campaign?
- What posts are producing the most calls from our call tracking metrics?
- When was the last time we posted in our Google My Business?
- When was the last time we uploaded pictures in our Google My Business?
- Are our pictures on the website optimized (GEO and Keywords)?
- Is our blog attracting and engaging for our target audience?
- Are we building a targeted and captured social media audience (from SEO visits) of professionals and individuals seeking treatment with our drug rehab marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn?
- Does our current drug rehab marketing agency provide SEO training?
How Does Boots on the Ground Compare to Web Marketing
The industry trend has been traditionally relying upon boots on the ground marketing. While this should be a part of your marketing mix, it should only be one piece. Above you see the astronomical numbers of people using the web and the amazing activity that is produced every day. It is impossible for outreach to obtain even 1% of these numbers. The small to medium players consensus is that we cannot compete with the big players because they are spending too much on web marketing. This is a huge misconception in our industry. The small to medium players can outperform the big players in some areas if they have;
- Proper website structure
- On page and off page SEO
- Use of key long tail keywords
- Knowing where and how to get PR7, PR8 and PR9 back links
Understanding the Business Side of Addiction Treatment
Our industry is experiencing many paradigm shifts. It is critical that operators of drug rehabilitation centers, opiate detox West Palm Beach and sober homes get educated on proven business strategies. The conversations on the business and operation side of our industry are much different than the conversations that outreach professionals have. Only the best-educated CEO’s, Executives and Directors will survive the extreme competition in our 40 billion dollars a year industry. These leaders need to completely understand many different areas;
- Marketing
- Billing
- Insurance Reimbursements
- Laws and Regulations
- Electronic Medical Records
- CRM
- Licensing
- Accreditation and Certifications
Addiction Professional Referral Group Helping Addiction Professionals Nationwide
We will continue to be a trusted resource for every addiction professional by educating on ethical business practices, provide useful resources, assist in connecting for new relationships, educate on evidenced-based treatment, fight against patient brokering, educate on ethical substance abuse marketing practices (in this group, with our marketing and at our addiction conferences), and use our large voice to encourage industry self-regulation.
Executive education is key for owners and operators. Behavioral Health Network Resources also provides Addiction Executive conferences educating on these key areas. Our addiction conferences each have 5 proven Executive Thought Leaders presenting at each conference. These one-day conferences focus on the business and marketing side of our industry. We have hosted 14 conferences and the success has been the valuable content and the talk show host, town forum format. These conferences put together the minds of the 125-200 attendees in an open forum. We hope you will attend our next addiction conferences EMP Series on 5/21/19 in Florida.
In any job, position or role getting out of your comfort zone enables you to grow personally and professionally. This can be difficult because human nature gravitates us towards our comfortable circles. At many substance abuse conferences, you see the same professionals forming in the same groups. Yes, it’s wonderful to chat with our familiar circles, however, it should not dominate your time at these events. Getting outside of the comfort zone, obtaining new tools, business education and forcing yourself to meet everyone in the room is paramount in the state of our industry.
One of the best ways for addiction conferences preparation is to connect prior to the event. Most professionals in our industry do not do this. You should at least reach out to your A’s and B’s through LinkedIn prior to the event. Say you want to visit their booth or meet with them at the conference. This soft introduction says you are a professional and you are interested in meeting them. You will also get an idea of who this new potential referral source is and have some background information to reference when you chat at the event.
Behavioral Health Network resources have been an addiction conferences provider for the last four years. In that time we have put on over 14 conferences attracting 150-200 at each event. They have gained the attention of CEO’s and Executives with over 150-200 attending each conference. This unique talk show host, town hall forum has become extremely popular. These addiction professional conferences cover “HOT” topics and provide attendees a chance to “ask the experts” any questions on better business practices, billing, drug testing, licensing, DCF, Accreditation, treatment, sales, marketing, and any other aspect of the addiction and behavioral health industry.
Halfway houses, sober homes in West Palm Beach, drug addiction treatment centers have been under great scrutiny for over a year. The Sober Homes Task Force has brought regulations and investigations. The main focus has been to help protect the vulnerable using legal prosecution, heavy fines, felony charges and jail time.
Interpretation of any law should be made by a specialized attorney especially concerning sober homes in West Palm Beach. Relying on second-hand information or information from your peers could cost you dearly. In light of the misinformed emails, we decided to speak with Florida Healthcare Law Firm, a popular panelist at Behavioral Health Network Resources Ethical Marketing Practices conferences. This what they had to say prior to 6/27/18;
This is only one piece of the 
That much is clear. What is less clear for sober homes West Palm Beach and drug rehabilitation centers is whether the FARR position will be used as another way for insurers to drive providers out of business. The sober homes regulation is just one piece of the many business changes for operators. 
We invited Florida Healthcare Law Firm to speak at our addiction conference on June 27, 2108, in the sober homes in West Palm Beach FARR controversy. They took a highly respected stance to clarify the FARR controversy in front of our 150+ attendees. They have accepted our invitation to our addiction conferences EMP Series events on 10/23/18. They will be updating on the new ruling and educating CEO’s and executives on where this ruling will be taking our industry in the coming months.
If your 
There are several reasons why addiction treatment centers do not understand or utilize drug rehab social media marketing correctly for rehab advertising. It is partly due to the many marketing companies that say they offer drug rehab social media marketing. Many just take your marketing dollars and do very little. This is often done by the large 
With 
Behavioral Health Network Resources does more than say we do social media. We have dominated Facebook and LinkedIn by example for over four years. We founded our company because of social media. We took the time to intimately learn Facebook and LinkedIn. On Facebook, we have five profiles with 25,000 addiction-related friends and own over 60 addiction-related groups with over 200,000 members. This is the best resources for 
Big brother is watching the drug and alcohol addiction treatment industry on many different levels affecting treatment calls. The strict patient brokering laws that were passed on July 1, 2017, for 
For 2020 many addiction treatment centers think they cannot compete with the big players in the sandbox due to their lack of education on proven drug rehab marketing strategies. They see the bigger players spending over six figures a month on addiction treatment marketing and resort to a quick fix . The quick fixes for their drug rehab lead generation include a buy rehab leads strategy from drug rehab call centers, soon to come again Google Ad Words and the 
If the small to medium treatment centers did not waste their time and money on the short-term solutions but instead invested in a long-term organic strategy they would be much better off. It’s an interesting situation if you consider that many of the leads generated from call centers are not a good fit for the treatment centers. In addition, some shady drug rehab call centers sell the same rehabilitation lead to many centers. Once the center starts to complain they are not receiving treatment leads, the drug rehab call centers concentrate on sending a few well-qualified leads. And now in Florida, it is illegal to sell the well-qualified calls which are verification of benefits (VOB Calls.) If you are an addiction treatment center in Florida and are buying VOB (verification of benefits) calls, or if you are buying calls from a call center based in Florida you are at great risk including legal problems, felony charges, high fines and jail time.
It’s unfortunate that the small to medium size treatment centers revert to using AdWords and a buy rehab leads strategy. Consider this, pay per click accounts for 1.91% of the addiction treatment calls from page one of Google. Many of these calls are not a good fit for the drug and alcohol rehabilitation treatment centers. The first three organic listings on page one of Google account for almost 70% of the page one clicks. In addition, they need to be ranking in the Google 3-pack on page one. It takes time and knowledge to rank on page one of Google. Many of the large one trick pony marketing agencies who have a hard time retaining the best marketing talent gloss over these critical elements.
This is a place for behaviora
We have hosted 14 addiction conferences in Florida on ethical business and marketing. These conferences assisted many treatment centers in Florida from closing their doors due to the new laws. California drug rehabs marketing laws were passed on September 27, 2018, with 
Social media has changed the marketing world forever. If you can learn one thing from this post (content is KING) it will put you down the correct path to ensure social media marketing is a big component of your marketing mix. Your business should have a social reach in the millions with your drug rehab marketing strategy. It takes big numbers to generate leads. Many industry organizations do not include social media in their marketing mix making it one of the 
Industry organization’s need to take the reins on these social media platforms and include their own staff to build an audience. If you’re paying an agency to market for you, chances are extremely high they do not have the organic audience in our industry (professionals, or individuals seeking treatment.) Ask them to show you their audience that they have grown for their business. This will show if they are leading by example and truly understand how to perform social media marketing. If you are paying an agency, you better make sure they are growing an audience for you that is yours, otherwise, once you stop paying for paid advertising you will have nothing to show for your marketing dollars.
Drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers expect instant results that they are used to getting from pay per click and call center lead generation. Their addiction center treatment marketing is dependent on the instant calls from these two short-term solutions that they have to pay for over and over again. Before the Google restrictions in our industry, there were about 75 big time players spending $500,000-$1,500,000 a month in that big boy sandbox.
Treatment centers eventually realize the large cookie cutter 
