How to Turn Leads Into New Patients Like a Pro with Recovery.com and Key Performance Consultants

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: What’s up, everybody? I’m so pumped to have you guys on Ignite today. Thank you to our three listeners for joining in. This is going to be fun. Speaking of three, we’re going to have a three-person panel today. We’re going to be talking a lot about not only addiction marketing, but converting leads into patients through improved admissions. It’s really cool. Guys, if you’re not in addiction, I promise the whole conversation will be applicable to all healthcare services, verticals.

We’re going to learn a lot. It’s not just driving more leads. It’s about converting more leads into patients so we can connect them with care. Jeremiah and Samantha, welcome to Ignite. Samantha, tell them where do you hail from, what do you do, where do you do it?

Samantha Metcoff: I hail from originally Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, came down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida 21 years ago. I’ve been in the addiction treatment space for about 18 years now. I am in long-term recovery as well. I am always doing what I love here. Right now, I recently joined Growth Sherpa Consulting Firm as the Senior Director of Admissions. What that means is not particularly like a role at a treatment facility. With my consulting, I build call centers, I optimize call centers, I boost revenue. I train admissions teams on quality and compliance. Everyone has the sticking point of how to get the admins in and then also do closing with compassion. That’s always the best way. The numbers show for themselves. It’s absolutely what I love.

Alex: Yes, that’s cool. That’s something I love about the addiction space is that there’s so many people that are mission driven because they have lived it and are living it and they’re trying to help more people that were going through the same thing. I think that’s the coolest part about this space. Thank you. I can’t wait to dive into how you do get more leads to convert into care with compassion because whether it’s addiction or any other healthcare vertical, we get blamed for not a lot of leads quite often– not that often. It’s not just us.

Universal problem. Agency not sending enough leads. It’s actually not the agency or the marketing director’s fault. It is call centers not converting, not enough appointments. We got it. I can’t wait to dive in. Jeremiah, what’s up in Wisconsin? Tell us a little bit about you.

Jeremiah Calvino: I used to be you, Alex. [unintelligible 00:02:23] marketing for healthcare companies, but got specialized into the behavioral healthcare space. Over time, just saw how challenging care navigation was and how many problems there were with people finding the right care, how hard admissions was. Co-founded Recovery.com, which is a platform people can use to find the right treatment for them.

Chief product officer here. Love working with Growth Sherpa, love helping marketers think about how can they better serve patients. One of the things that I talk about a lot is basically everyone who breaks their arm goes to the doctor, goes to the hospital and gets treatment. Whereas in our space, all of the surveys show that upwards of 80% to 90% of people who need care don’t get it. It’s not so much like, how can I grab more for my competitor, but how can we help people break down those barriers to care stigma? There’s a lot of different issues, but just help people get the care that they need.

Alex: Then with that, I bet you believe in educational, full-funnel content marketing, advertising.

Jeremiah: Sounds good.

Alex: I walked you right into it. Is that a big– We’re not trying to take from competitors, and it’s not like Verizon trying to take from Sprint. There’s only so many cell phone users. This is a lot of us don’t know we can find care. What care? Is that a big part of the addiction treatment marketing funnels to make sure we’re educating and advising like, “Hey, you can get treatment in these ways”?

Jeremiah: Yes. One of the things is if you break your arm, you probably know it’s broken or something is wrong. A lot of people don’t even know we’ve normalized a lot of substance use disorder so that waking up with a hangover every morning is you don’t think that you even have a problem. Denial is part of it. Yes, there’s so much education that has to happen. Then with care, I think a lot of times people have this sort of movie, 28 days, go check yourself into some–

While that is a point on the continuum, there’s virtual care, there’s apps, there’s outpatient programs. There’s so many different types of care and educating people. A lot of people are like, “Oh, I can go to rehab for a month.” It’s like, “Well, you could do this three times a week at the place.” They just don’t even know what’s available. Yes, education is definitely a major part of what we do and, I think, what providers need to do to be able to serve their community.

Alex: I love it. Samantha, is that a big issue that call centers deal with is people are calling in, and they have no idea the right questions asked and the types of care, and maybe they’re even calling the wrong place that doesn’t– Where do you start with making sure call center and admissions is educating and the correct– What are the biggest gaps you see? Is it that, or is it something else?

Samantha: It all ties together. There are many pieces that tie together to do a good, not so much pitch, but connect with the client and build rapport, basically because they’re all different outlets now. It’s not just a business development. Now it’s the digital marketing. It’s the social media. My thing is information is power. Back in the day when they used to qualify clients, and then just push them through because of insurance. Now it’s not like that today.

Now it’s about building rapport. Some people know what they’re walking into. Some people say, “Hey, I know I want to go to treatment. I know what it’s about.” Then I have families calling in, have no idea, and their child is suffering from drug or alcohol addiction or mental health. They don’t know where to start. Information is power. Starting with the call center representative, they say, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Then also as you’re building the rapport, you’re able to find out what exactly they’re struggling with. You’re able to give information on the facility, whether it’s trauma-informed, whether they do CBT, DBT, EMDR. You can walk someone through that entire process. It’s not just the intervention or the 28 days that people see on TV or the movies. It’s more about getting in there and saying, “Hey, listen, your loved one needs help or you need help. Let’s try to give you as much information as possible to make an informed decision.”

Alex: I love it. There’s a lot there. Man, you’d have to be highly trained, skilled. Do you find that the call center colleagues are also in recovery? Do they know the space well, and they also believe in, or it’s less so, and they need a lot more training? That’s just curiosity.

Samantha: I would honestly say it’s probably half and half or 75/25. Most people that are in recovery, when I started in admissions a number of years ago, having multiple years clean, I knew how to connect. There’s a different way to go about building rapport with clients and being able to say, “Hey, listen, you need help. Here’s what you’re going to do to start believing in it and believing in yourself.”

It’s like with that training, some people are natural. Some people need the training. Some people come in as never having an admissions job, but also have gone back to behavioral health tech. Just having that appropriate training with the policies and procedures in the training manual is of the utmost importance.

Alex: Yes, I love it. Structure, process, and then passion. Yes, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah: One of the things, too, that’s really challenging is a lot of providers have diversified their programs. You might have one center that has a depression PHP program and a detox center and an adolescent IOP. They got 14 different programs, eating disorders. If you have a centralized call center and people are calling for one of those 14 programs, the person, to Samantha’s point, again, the phone may have personal experience, may understand the patient journey for one or two of those things, but a lot of times they have no idea, somebody with substance use disorder in recovery and background in that might have no idea how to talk to somebody whose daughter is struggling with an eating disorder.

Understanding the personalization, and that everybody’s journey and story is different. I think even between levels of care. I was just talking to a provider that’s a methadone clinic, and they’re like, “When people call us looking for residential treatment, we don’t know what to tell.” They know what they do really well. Some of the people calling just Googled rehab near me, call it, and they’re like, “I don’t know.” It’s very hard. The amount of training, I think, that is done in most, and Growth Sherpa is working to change this, they’re amazing, but is borderline criminal, in my opinion, at a lot of centers.

Alex: I love the insight. It’s something a lot of us wouldn’t have any clue into. That’s probably part of the passion and building Recovery.com is the amount of education and care. Just Googling stuff doesn’t really help inform you. You got to click on 10 different links. ChatGPT will eventually tell you some basic that it’s just cobbling from Google. I see where you’re going with it. Let’s stay on the admissions track, and then we’re going to back up into best way to get leads because that’s what our five listeners like learning about.

All right. It sounds like, not every time, is it a one call close, if you will, because Samantha you talked about closing with compassion. I’m assuming it’s your nurture and some instances and stuff like that. Jeremiah, you had mentioned that your passion is making sure that everything is tracked. What are the best instances you’ve seen the best group that are succeeding the most, and closing the most, helping the most patients connect with care? What are they doing from a technology stack and integration and stuff like that?

Jeremiah: I think there’s been sort of this yo-yo. A lot of people had Google Analytics. They had Colorado call tracking metrics, whatever, call systems, integrations into CRM. These are the people that are doing it more at scale. There’s a lot of mom-and-pop places that have a notebook. There’s no tracking. With pixels and with cookies and everything like that, there was a fair amount of tracking that was able to be done with remarketing and things like that. Some of that data has been lost through either policy changes or government policy changes or technical changes with loss of cookies and things like that.

I think that what’s really important for people to do now is tracking that first-party data at the initial point of contact. One of the biggest mistakes that I see providers making is only having a phone number. That’s the only way that you can get a hold of me. They don’t have an online verification of insurance. They don’t have chat. They don’t have text. A lot of these lower barrier to entry ways of connecting with the center, if you don’t have those, people aren’t ready to make the call, and they’re hidden from you.

You don’t know that they exist until they call, which is a problem if you’re trying to do attribution, if you’re trying to figure out how to spend your resources. You’ve got to be able to collect that first-party data. Oftentimes there’s many people involved in the purchasing process. Mom calls, dad calls, kid calls. In CRM, data hygiene is just a big problem of making sure that all of these different touch points are connected together to a single case.

Then I think the best people are tracking this all the way through to admissions, into their EHR, connecting it with their revenue. Understanding what’s the lifetime value of this customer. Obviously, different reimbursement rates at different insurances, different levels of care. If you are running a program, like I was talking about before with a 30-day residential and a family aftercare program, you want to help all those people, but you don’t want to spend the same amount of money on a lead for somebody doing family aftercare as somebody doing–

A lot of times the evolution that people are going through is instead of just CPL. It’s like, oh, a call cost us $100. Really understanding all the way through that customer journey, what is your ROI on however you’re investing your marketing dollars, your business development dollars. Frankly, I think probably less than 5% of providers have that full data story. A lot of people are really struggling because it’s gotten much more challenging from a technical standpoint to knit all of that together.

Alex: That’s why they got to call Samantha and Growth Sherpa, I assume. Samantha, anything to layer on top of that? Favorite technologies you’ve seen, or a way to get that 5% to 20% to 30%, any keys there to track more campaigns all the way through? I know you’re passionate about that tracking all the way back.

Samantha: Yes, I am. I’ve done some specific training with SAS platforms, specifically Dazos, Salesforce, call tracking metrics. I’ve done trainings with the senior trainers there. For me, it’s so important to capture the data. Also, now that when you bring the digital marketing piece in, you want to know how much you’re spending, what your CPL is, what your CPA is, if your reps are doing a good job. Everything is tracked.

I’ve worked with many different centers that haven’t tracked their calls, that don’t track their data, and then, basically burning money and setting it on fire. The best part of tracking the data is just to see where everything has come from and where it’s going and what works and what doesn’t work. The CRMs are huge. Anyone that is starting a call center, or even not starting a call center, just with an admissions department, you want to at least have the call tracking software, and also the CRM as well.

Alex: The call tracking software and lead tracking, in general, because it needs to be able to monitor lead forms that are coming in, I assume, needs to track back keyword, campaign. Not everything is last touch anymore, but I generally get it. Then I think Jeremiah was saying, track all the way to lifetime values so that you know which campaigns this keyword is driving or these campaigns are driving very short-term stays, not worthwhile, and stuff like that.

I’m with you. Dazos, Salesforce. Got it. Let’s go into the marketing sphere of driving more leads into the call centers. What trends are you guys seeing? Samantha, we’ll start with you. What are you seeing being really effective? I know, somewhat of the outside looking in, addiction marketing got really tough. Everybody was doing PPC. Clicks are 150% now. You just see everybody dropping out. LegitScript made things more honest. It’s like it’s gotten more difficult. Samantha, what works?

Samantha: Honestly, there are many different things, because back in the day, it was the Google ads. Everybody did the PPC, no LegitScript. Everybody was going rogue with that. Then they tightened up with the LegitScript and some of the other laws. Today, there are a lot of different techniques. The SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is huge. Keywords and organic. I’m finding that there’s a new wave of Facebook Meta marketing, Meta advertising for different pages for different sites. That’s all HIPAA compliant.

The PPC is still there. The digital marketing piece, the SEO, is huge. Alumni and family engagement. There’s also a huge trend in the virtual intensive outpatient, now that they’re scaling around the country for that, the nationwide.

Alex: Yes, we’ve got a client around that. Yes, that’s interesting and very helpful to people. Talk to me more about the focus on alumni. It’s like, don’t just try to get net new all of the time. Focus on the alumni because they’re going to be the quickest one to tell their friends and family member. Is that way just sending out email newsletters? What do you do for alumni that you’ve seen work?

Samantha: I’ve developed alumni programs. Alumni programs and alumni are actually 30% of the readmit rate for treatment facilities. Think about it like the money that you have spent already on the campaigns or digital marketing or SEO or anything that you’ve done for a campaign-wise, that’s already paid for. It’s basically the client doesn’t admit or the client eventually admits. Then you keep in contact through the EHR, through Kipu, through whatever EMR you’re using.

You’re able to develop alumni program. You’re able to do email marketing. You’re able to do the tracking through text messages and clean time and meetings. You stay in contact. The CRMs have automated emails going out to check in with the client. They’re also the admissions teams that are trained, even alumni departments, in order to connect with people that are still struggling. That is a huge piece to capture because, again, money already spent.

Alex: Money already spent. Might as well spend a little more time and reactivate and educate. I know you believe in educating, too, to make sure people understand the link between mental health and addiction. Jeremiah, we talked a little bit about different forms of advertising. Samantha says PVC still works, Meta works, SEO works, TikTok works. Everything can work. I know you believe heavily in the messaging matters, too, and talking in simple terms matters. Tell us a little bit more about what that is and what it means to you.

Jeremiah: Behavioral healthcare companies, care is delivered by clinicians. A lot of times we let those people get too close to our website. Now, the funny thing is, you’ll send a clinician or the clinical director or whatever, “Hey, we need an explanation of the DBT therapy, how that works.” They’ll send you this sort of gobbledygook thing. It looks like they were writing a term paper for their master’s program or something.

Alex: [unintelligible 00:17:06]

Jeremiah: What’s weird is that if you actually walk over to that person’s office, and you’re like, “Jill, what is DBT?” She’ll actually give you a really normal-sounding person explanation. For some reason, when people sit down to write the copy on their website, or whatever, they end up coming up with this jargony. The curse of knowledge. We know all the things that we know. We know what DBT is. We know what CBT is. We know what EMDR is. We know what PHP is. We know what IOP is. We know what co-occurring disorders are. The people that we’re talking to have no clue.

Alex: It’s a scared mom. She’s scared when someone is not in the right state of mind. They have no idea.

Jeremiah: I think a lot of the language is just, on its face, confusing. Wait, what’s the difference between inpatient and residential? Intensive outpatient sounds really scary. What’s intensive about it? It’s just the language is, on its face, confusing. Obviously, everyone gets confused by insurance stuff and PPOs and HMOs. One of the things that we do a lot is user research where we’re actually just watching videos of random people on the internet trying to find treatment.

We’re asking them these questions of, what don’t you understand? It’s so eye-opening to see the– I remember looking at a site where they had the length of stay listed. Somebody was like, “Oh, that’s the wait time to get into the program.” I’m like, ah. Any little thing can trip people up. It’s just really important. I think a great test is grab one of your kids, highschool classmates, or something, and be like, “Hey, if you’re looking for treatment for one of your friends, and you came to our website, what here would make sense to you? What doesn’t make sense? What’s missing?”

Go talk to real people, not who are actually in crisis. Look at your marketing through that lens of, wait, if I didn’t know anything, there’s a lot to where we– you know that thing where you put the pee under the cup? We’re hiding the real thing. People say, “Oh, we have this rigorous program that’s highly scheduled.” It’s like, “Well, just show it to me. What does the schedule look like? What does the day look like?” Even better, make a TikTok where it’s one minute long that walks me through what does the day look like?

Just show people what actually happens in treatment because most people are just going off of what they saw Sandra Bullock in a movie or something and just don’t really have any idea what treatment even means or looks like.

Alex: I like that simple term, simple message, dumb it down because people– Jeremiah, my favorite part of that is focus groups and user journey tours and evaluating how people are finding care, that applies to every healthcare vertical out there. Actually, I like that a lot. Go ask your friends, tell them to navigate. Does this place make sense? Are we using too many clinical terms? Everybody knows what general cleaning for a dentist is, but outside of dentistry, I think we can get too complicated sometimes. Samantha, I’m curious, from your perspective, when you dive in and check out call center and the way people are converting, what is the number one screw up you see happening? What is the biggest red flag that you see often?

Samantha: Lack of follow up.

Alex: Really?

Samantha: Yes.

Alex: What is the average time from initial contact to close in the addiction space?

Samantha: I would say two to three days. The one call close is something of an enigma. That doesn’t really happen much. The initial contact is between one and three days. That is consistent follow up. People are left, and they’re gone. They go to other centers because of the lack of follow up.

Alex: What do you suggest? Hey, they called at night, call in the morning, call twice the next day. What’s fair and not annoying?

Samantha: When you understand who’s calling in, whether it’s the family member, or it’s the individual, whether they’re in crisis or not in crisis, they could have stopped drinking at that moment and called in, and then they’re uninterested in the next hour or the next five minutes. You constantly have to follow up and check in and say, “Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet?” Just keep it on the forefront of their minds. Because if they’re not ready at that moment, they will be ready again. Like I said, between that one and three days for the short-term pendings, as they call it, that’s the time to strike while the iron is hot.

Alex: I love it. That’s smart. Lack of follow up, guys. It’s not just get more leads. It’s do more with what you’re getting. There’s some sketchy players in the addiction space. How do these families tell the good ones from the not so good ones? LegitScript helped root out some, but we’re not all the way there, I would think. Jeremiah, what helps not pass the sniff test, or does pass the sniff test? What do you look at when you’re trying to determine if this is a money grab, or if these people are actually helping people rehabilitate?

Jeremiah: One of the reasons why there has been some bad behavior is because people are in crisis. I remember my dad telling me, “You’re going to buy a car, you have to be willing to walk out.” Yes, there is urgency, family should have urgency, but the one call close, you don’t need that. You don’t need to be pressured into making a decision in the next three minutes. I think part of it is just taking a little bit of time, it could happen over a 24-hour period, whatever, but don’t do something irrationally because of some high-pressure salesperson.

I think that if you feel like you’re getting sold, that’s probably a warning sign. I think that looking at accreditation is a good first step. I think that Joint Commission, CARF, those kinds of things are nice to have. If somebody doesn’t have that, definitely is something that I would investigate a lot more thoroughly. Obviously, reviews, I think everyone’s doing that, but reading reviews critically is super helpful and understanding what is the reputation of that center.

Then I think it’s asking questions. You want to make sure that they can answer the questions that you have thoroughly, not evasively, that costs are clear. If they’re like, this happens a lot, “Hey, just get on an airplane, come out, we’ll figure out the insurance later.” It’s like, “No.” If you can’t tell me what my copay is, what my deductible, give me a clear picture of costs, those kinds of things, I would say, run away.

I think too that there is, really, going back to education, understanding fit, because, yes, there’s places that are just super terrible and nobody should ever go there. I think what happens more often is people just end up at a place that’s not the right fit for them. It’s not a bad place, but it’s not the right place for them. You’re figuring out what do you need, what does your loved one need? Making sure that a center aligns to– If you’re a trauma survivor and you’re looking for a trauma-informed care program, then really asking a bunch of questions around how is your– and not just taking the fluff answer is really important.

This is across all healthcare. You have to advocate for yourself. No one is going to save you. Obviously, if you have family or friends that have been through this journey to support you, that’s great, too.

Alex: You got to fight for yourself. The squeakiest wheel gets the best care, unfortunately. Yes, I’m with you. The accreditations can help. Feeling like you’re sold, don’t go with that. Make sure you’re really clear. Samantha, I know you believe in showing the facility to our provider, patient testimony, all that fun stuff, quit hiding behind the thing. One more question for you guys. I promise to get you out in time. We didn’t.

I have one more question. Samantha, what trends this year, it’s 2025, are you most excited about in the substance use space? What do you see that’s really going well and you’re excited, whether it’s marketing or admissions or just general industry information? What are you excited about this year?

Samantha: I think there’s more access to mental health treatment. Through the digital marketing, there are really good directories like Recovery.com, and being able to put it out nationwide. Also, social media, their mental health, and also being able to help the Medicaid population and the different Medicare, and they’re expanding care. I really think there’s a lot of good with the digital marketing. Boots on the ground marketing has always been around. I do think that there is a huge benefit to the digital space, and then also the admissions team to be able to feel the calls, and track the data, and to do all the things that push client acquisition.

Alex: Yes, and make it more informed so more people can access care. I like that. That is really true that the access to care and the stigma has really been reduced since 2020. That’s really cool. I’ve been going to therapy since it was not cool at all. I was in rehab before it was cool. Now, it’s cool. This is good. I’m with you. I think that was a perfect answer. Jeremiah, you won’t be able to give the perfect answer. She just did, but what are you most excited about 2025, sir? She gave you a shout out. That’s very nice.

Samantha: I sure did.

Jeremiah: Really excited about companies doing the real work of building multi-channel in real life paired with digital marketing and education channels, and then pairing it up with great admissions and great alumni. Staying with people. Google Ads and the heyday of that allowed was people could all of the things that really make a brand real and a company be great. It just juiced it by spending a lot of money at Google Ads.

As that’s gotten more competitive and everything has changed there, I think companies have to do real work and show up in their community, show up on the phone, and diversify their strategy. I think that that is good for patients. It’s good for the industry. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.

Alex: Yes, it’s cool. I see that outside of the addiction space too, Jeremiah. Nearly perfect answer, by the way, is that now you have to be a good business. The digital stuff can’t be fake. It can’t be fake anymore. You can’t throw up a landing page in a PPC ad and just generate patients ad nauseam. There’s a ton more competition. Reviews have to be good, facility tours, providers, ratings, vitals, all of these things have to be legit, and referrals, and social media, and when they go to Reddit, and Facebook groups, and oh my gosh.

Yes, you have to be a really good business. It’s merging IRL with the digital marketing. You can’t fake it until you make it anymore. That’s important in the addiction space. Samantha, Jeremiah, I learned a ton from you. Thank you for joining us on Ignite. This wasn’t our typical digital marketing focused interview session, but I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about not only addiction marketing, but how to convert, and it’s applicable to all healthcare services vertical. Thank you guys for the education today.

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