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In a previous incarnation, Howard Brown was a real estate
developer in the Los Angeles area, a pursuit that ultimately
left him dissatisfied and wanting more.
Brown became a family and marriage counselor, eventually
turning his attention to behavioral health opportunities on the
Internet. He ultimately created 4therapy.com, a network of
hundreds of behavioral health and addiction web sites. With
over 200,000 pages of content, 4therapy has emerged as
probably the most sophisticated Internet marketing operation
in the treatment and mental health arenas.
Late last year, CRC Health Group, already 4therapy’s
largest advertising client, bought the Internet operation from
Brown. CRC had also been looking at other addiction
marketing sites, including SoberRecovery.com, according to
SoberRecovery founder Jon Heller. Last year, Heller outsourced
significant parts of his operation in a move that left
him more time to focus on the creative aspects of the business.
CRC CEO Barry Karlin says that it is not his intent to make
4therapy over into an in-house Internet marketing arm for
CRC’s far flung treatment operations. But observers believe
that in the end that is what may occur, at least for the
addiction Internet marketing part of the operation, because
CRC’s competitors might be unwilling to continue to advertise
on 4therapy. So far, though, Brown says that interest remains
quite strong and that most existing advertisers have elected to
remain with 4therapy, being very satisfied with call volumes.
Over the last several years, the Internet has grown tremendously
in importance as a patient acquisition channel for CRC,
accounting now for just under 10 percent of the company’s
census, Karlin says. For some other treatment operations,
especially smaller boutique type facilities, the Internet is even
more important for patient acquisition, responsible many times
for more than half their census. “We get about 50 percent of
our clients from the Internet,” says Chris Prentiss, co-founder
of Malibu-based Passages. A high-end operation that is a
prolific Internet marketer, Passages spends big bucks on payper-
click and for optimization services that yield high
“natural” search engine rankings. To a large extent, it is
high-end boutiques like Passages that are responsible for the
bidding battles that have erupted for some of the more avidly
sought after addiction and treatment search terms, sending
industry pay-per-click rates through the roof. The treatment
business pays some of the highest pay-per-click rates of any
industry, driven largely as they are by the fat profit margins at
the high-end of the business. Prentiss says it’s not uncommon
for him to have to pay $25 per click and more at certain times
for certain search terms, a level that is putting often intense
pressure on other more affordable centers whose profit margins
don’t even begin to approach those of high-end facilities.
“It’s certainly getting very expensive for us,” says Paula
Zoss, CEO and founder of Southern California-based Essence
Treatment Options. “But I have to do this, it’s the only way to
generate calls.”
But the high-end treatment centers’ big spending is also
generating substantial referrals to other more low cost
centers, at no cost to them. That’s because few of the leads
from pay-per-click click can afford high-end care. “Only
about five percent of our callers from the Internet can afford
to get treated here,” says Prentiss. “We refer the rest out.”
And it is not just nimble boutiques that are focusing on the
Internet for patient acquisition, but also highly established
players with deep industry and commercial insurance referral
relationships. Having redesigned its web site last fall,
South Florida-based Hanley Center has seen an uptick in the
patients it gets from the Internet. The non-profit has also been
experimenting with pay-per-click, from which it says it is getting
good results. Google recently approached the center with
a proposal that would result in a big boost in click throughs
for Hanley. The deal with Google, if Hanley decides to go
with it, would cost at least $1,000 per week to implement. PD
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