Pay-per-click is very competitive in the addiction treatment industry. In 2012, costs for addiction-related keywords rose 70%. Because of this, it’s imperative to maximize the amount of calls your facility receives for the amount you spend.

By utilizing ad extensions, in-ad phone numbers, well-designed landing pages, and specific ad text, it’s possible to increase the amount of phone calls you receive without spending more in your pay-per-click account.

Step 1: Make Use of Call & Location Extensions

There are many ad extensions you can take advantage of to improve the number of calls, and this includes more than adding just a call extension. Location extensions can also improve the rate of calls by making your ads bigger and improving the trust level of your facility.

Ad Extensions
Location Extensions:

Location extensions improve call rates because the location of your facility is very important to many of your visitors. A large amount of addiction treatment searches involve location-based indicators, such as “rehab in Florida” or “addiction treatment in San Francisco”. Visitors are also more likely to trust that you’re a legitimate facility if they can find you on a map.

Call Extensions:

Be sure your call-to-action emphasizes that you want visitors to make use of the call extension. The call extension won’t be as effective if you don’t tell your visitors that calling is how they’re going to get help.

According to Moz, ad extensions can improve your click-through rate by 30%. If a particular keyword is competitive, you can bid lower for it, and use ad extensions to help improve calls instead of trying to get the top spot.

Step 2: Use In-Ad Phone Numbers and Alternative PPC Avenues

For any Pay-per-click service besides Google AdWords, using phone numbers in the ad is possible and is a way to garner calls without the cost of a click. For addiction treatment, both Bing Ads and 7Search have proven to be viable and cheaper alternatives to AdWords.

Bing and 7Search have a very similar ad layout to Google AdWords, but offer several advantages:

  1. Cheaper cost-per-clicks
  2. Less competition for similar keywords
  3. In-Ad Phone numbers

In-ad phone number are extremely beneficial because they allow you to insert the phone number naturally in your call-to-action, rather than being clumsily tacked onto the ad.

bing ads

Addictionally, they are free. AdWords call-extensions come with a fee, especially if you want to track the number of calls within AdWords itself. By using external call tracking software (which is generally more cost-efficient than the dollar-per-call fee in AdWords) you can track the number of calls received directly.

Learn more about call tracking here.

Step 3: Line up Your Call-To-Action with Your Facility Benefits

The message of your ads and your overall goal should line up – if your purpose is to get them to call, let them know. Your target audience will be more likely to do what you want, and those who never intend on calling will be less likely to click.

Essentially, the purpose of your ad is to:

  1. Tell your visitors why they should call
  2. Why they should call now
  3. Directly ask them call

This isn’t the spot to talk about what your facility does – it’s not persuasive enough, and can be covered by the salesman after your visitor calls.

Be Direct.

“Call now” is the most straightforward call-to-action and often the most appropriate. Steer away from generic phrases like “Contact us today” even if you do offer alternative contact methods. By emphasizing calls, you’re not overwhelming them with options (even if there are only two!).

Focusing on a single call-to-action can improve response not just in the ads, but in the landing pages as well.

Step 4: Create Call-Focused Landing Pages

Your landing page should emphasize calling immediately is of dire importance. Although it can be tempting to educate and give help on the page, this will more likely result in a bounce, costing you a click.

Even outside addiction treatment, the emotion-based appeal is often the most effective. Focus on why calling your facility will improve their well-being and why they shouldn’t wait to call you.

landing page

Your phone number and call-to-action should be large and naturally flow with the rest of your page. If you only place your number at the very top of the page, it can sometimes get missed because the eyes naturally go towards the headline (usually about 1/3 from the top of the page) and go down from there.

To learn more about creating a great landing page, click here.

Step 5: Test Everything

You may think your current ads and landing pages are doing well, but it’s impossible to know if they’re the best you can do without A/B testing. By testing 2-3 different ad and landing page variations, you can determine which one gets more calls.

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By sending some of your traffic to your current page and some to your variation (usually an 80-20 split in favor of the control is best), you’ll be able to see which one generates the most calls for the amount of traffic it gets. The better performing variation is the “winner” and will run in place of the old page.

It’s important to change only one or two aspects of the page, like the call-to-action or the image – this way, you’ll know why that page did better than the other. You can then repeat the test to see if you can develop an even better variation. All of this is done without changing the spend of your advertising.

Click here to learn more about A/B testing for calls.

Finding a Balance between Education and Pitch

For addiction treatment pay-per-click, there is a balance between being a counselor and a salesperson. It can seem like asking for calls seems too sales-y, but emphasizing that calling is the best way to get help encourages them to reach out.

Through promoting calls in your ads, ad extensions, and landing pages, you can increase the amount of calls to your facility without the need to increase spend. Because addiction treatment bids are highly sought after, maximizing the amount of calls you get from your investment is a necessity.