A short “SEO” story, that really wasn’t an SEO story about a Plastic Surgeon’s request for SEO and generating leads for his medical practice..
I got a call last week from another marketing consultant. He was seeking advice on “how to evaluate SEO companies” and can they deliver on their “promise.”
Addiction treatment marketing is part art, part science mixed in with pure brute force (brute force = cash). I’m sure there is more than one of you (addiction treatment centers and drug rehabs) that have stories to tell about hiring SEO companies that didn’t perform for you as you expected. Several years ago it’s happened to me 3 times where I hired 3 different SEO companies on my small business information site that I had to go figure it out myself if I was going to get it done right. The site is now dormant and real optimization never really materialized however I chalk it up to “marketing education.”
The story goes like this. A consultant friend of mine is doing a favor for a plastic surgeon friend in helping him identify an SEO company for the plastic surgeon. (I didn’t find out until the second call how much revenue the plastic surgeon was generating per year).
Consultant said that the plastic surgeon had a budget of $1,500 per month for SEO and all marketing for his centers leads. (SEO is content creation, article writing, photography, social media, link building, Fan Pages, Tweets etc…..etc..)
This is how I generally remember the conversation….or how my listening was to the conversation…I asked him how many leads was he getting today? Answer: Not sure. Next question, what are your current cost per leads? Answer: Not sure. I asked him what is his cost per patient under the knife? Answer: Not sure.
But these answers can be estimated relatively easily if we go back over the phone bills and the web logs and patient records. But not having this information I really can’t help the consultant help his client. Either he needs to get this information or I would have to speak directly with the client otherwise I was wasting time and the consultant’s time.
I dug a little deeper on the second call. I asked for revenue. I was told $5 million per year. Then I confirmed his marketing budget of $1,500 per month.
I asked him how many people do you think you can reach for $1,500 that want/need plastic surgery that will sustain a $5 Million business in your local market? The answer was “I don’t know.” (I bet most patients don’t fly in from out of state either).
My answer to him is “not a lot.” And SEO is a slow way to go, so his expectations of getting any types of results for SEO in the first or second year are probably going to be fantasy land. Even if the SEO Company does everything correctly they need to set client expectations so that the client can make an informed decision in this case up the budget or do something else.
Based on my several years of experience in addiction treatment lead generation I had to inform the consultant that he needed to walk away from this project since there were going to be no winners (he was doing the Plastic Surgeon a favor and I don’t know if he was getting paid or not….but it really doesn’t matter because a friendship could be compromised) because the expectations were too high and the resources weren’t there from the Plastic Surgeon, for the consultant and the SEO Company. He really needed something more like $5-$8K per month to see any real results which is still below my 20% rule.
My 20% rule is to take 20% of the monthly revenue of a business let’s say it is $1 Million per month to keep it simple and put the 20% or $200,000 per month towards marketing. I have others on my PPC Advertising team who suggest 50% on all income earned should be rei9nvested back into marketing.
The point of this whole article is: like the plastic surgery space, in the addiction treatment marketing we have similar business models being in rehab. Usually we see clients on a one off basis and the healthcare costs often can be out of pocket at a big ticket price. I recommend to clients that if they aren’t meeting their numbers (heads in beds) they need to spend 20% of their monthly revenue (use their 100% full bed model) in marketing. Anything less usually is an uphill battle. We can always scale it back if we have too many addiction treatment leads coming in.
If you give me a call at 781-990-8844 I will make available 3 free hours of recorded PR training and if you want help with SEO link building and addiction treatment marketing in general. You can always visit my addiction treatment marketing services site and fill out the form and make a request as well.
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