Digital Marketing: Unmasking Deceptive Practices

In this episode, we delve into the dark side of digital marketing within the behavioral health industry. Join us as we explore the predatory practices that exploit vulnerable individuals seeking care, and discuss how our organization strives to align marketing strategies with our core values of integrity and patient-centered care. Learn about the challenges we face, the ethical dilemmas in the marketing landscape, and the steps we are taking to ensure our digital presence genuinely serves those in need. Tune in for an eye-opening conversation that sheds light on the importance of ethical marketing in behavioral health.

Key Points:

• Introduction to predatory marketing practices in behavioral health
• The role of search engine optimization (SEO) in behavioral health marketing
• The dangers of misleading advertisements and sales funnels
• Aligning marketing strategies with ethical practices and patient needs
• The challenges and benefits of handling digital marketing in-house
• The future of digital marketing with AI and evolving Google algorithms
• Advice for other behavioral health marketers

Resources Mentioned:

• Google's LegitScript certification for substance use treatment ads
• Tools for understanding and improving SEO
• HubSpot and YouTube for digital marketing learning
• ChatGPT for content generation and research

Timestamps: 
00:00 - Introduction 
00:23 - Discussion on low-profit margins and ethical challenges 
01:26 - SEO and predatory marketing practices 
03:00 - The impact of misleading ads on vulnerable individuals 
05:00 - Ethical marketing and aligning with patient needs 
07:00 - Handling digital marketing in-house 
09:00 - The future of digital marketing with AI 
11:00 - Advice for other behavioral health marketers 

Find us on the web:

• Advaita Integrated Medicine
• Green Hill Recovery

Transcript

00:12.22

jeulanjohnson

All right, enough of that for today. We got things to talk about, things to do. um We're going to talk about the predatory marketing practices and behavioral health today.

00:23.94

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, I'm all about it.

00:24.49

jeulanjohnson

Intro. What do you want to start with? do You want to start with business development type stuff, or do you want to start with digital marketing?

00:33.49

Marcus Shumate

Let me, I'm going to start one step below that and lay a foundation because it's something we've talked about a lot that I think is kind of important. Actually, and I think it'll actually set context for maybe some of the other stuff, right? So I think one of the things that we talked about when we pivoted out of just a strict private pay sort of entity, and we met where like market demand is, right? Like people want psychiatry. They want individual therapy. They want an N network. They want IOP, PHP services, community-based services that are in-network. There's alignment there. They can afford them. There's accessibility. It's a win for all. um And one of the things that's been interesting is that takes away some of the pressure, I think, from us to have to engage in some sort of practices that don't feel congruent with our values, right? and So I think oftentimes what happens in,

01:26.26

Marcus Shumate

Healthcare has become blended with this sales funnel, and how do you sort of generate more clients and pull more people in and do that sort of thing? And oftentimes, I think the reason for that is people are working on really small profit margins. You're trying to pull people in. You have a service that you're trying to sell that maybe doesn't exactly mind line with like market need and market value and what you know what the generally like with the market is looking after. her And so people, I think, often what happens instead of like figuring out what it is that's going to marry those things together, what ends up happening is people will be busy trying to appear to be something rather than actually being something, right? Like be the thing that people kind of need and want. And so I think one of the things that's been really illuminating to me in this process is we've sort of expanded and changed and grown more in that direction. And we're trying to move towards offering a greater,

02:24.75

Marcus Shumate

offerings in terms of community-based services. i I'm in large part responsible for the digital marketing efforts and learning about those and trying to make sense of them. And I don't have a background in that sort of stuff. And so I'm learning it as i as I go. And one of the things that I've really stumbled on is that I find pretty offensive and egregious to a lot of sensibilities is that what I would describe as pretty predatory digital practices. um And so I can keep going or you can like hold my feet to the fire, drill into that more, do whatever.

03:00.18

jeulanjohnson

Yeah, i mean i would i think i I think the first thing I would agree with is you know we were really intentional about wanting to move and align like align stakeholder incentives between our team, you know patients, providers. And for us, that was largely around this in-network push, also offering like this recovery-oriented system of care where There were a lot of low stakes entry points for psychiatry and therapy. um I think the the piece I would push back on with, I feel like you were giving people a little out was the thin profit margins.

03:37.10

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

03:40.10

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

03:40.18

jeulanjohnson

I mean, quite frankly, like I think that you know behavioral health, unfortunately, like there are so many well-intentioned people who get into it.

03:48.37

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

03:48.72

jeulanjohnson

um But the profit margins are are pretty significant. That's why there's so much private equity investment because it's ah it's a pretty loosely regulated field.

03:53.40

Marcus Shumate

yeah

03:58.60

jeulanjohnson

um So I think there are actually pretty high profit margins historically. I think they're being compressed some now.

04:03.93

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

04:07.06

jeulanjohnson

um But I think you know marketers are going to market. We shouldn't expect um great you know like businesses are going to try and make money so what we need to control the profit motive on certain areas whether they're public utilities or health care is we need good regulation and I think like when we as we drill into this discussion around digital marketing I think the the first thing I want to call out is like there's a lot of pseudo regulation and in terms of

04:26.10

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

04:36.59

jeulanjohnson

You know, paid advertising, you know, we could talk about the fact that if you're doing substance use treatment, you have to get a legit script certification to run ads, but everybody just gets the legit script certification.

04:47.60

Marcus Shumate

It's just paperwork and a bank.

04:48.43

jeulanjohnson

Like it's just paperwork. um oh

04:52.34

Marcus Shumate

and i

04:52.58

jeulanjohnson

yeah

04:53.07

Marcus Shumate

like Yeah.

04:53.98

jeulanjohnson

You pay the mafia tax and then you can run ads on Google and you know, that's, that's fine.

04:56.20

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

05:00.50

jeulanjohnson

So I don't, I don't necessarily think like we can expect too much more, but I think what you want to get into that I agree with is this, you know, these, these left.

05:00.62

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

05:10.62

jeulanjohnson

less ethical practices that are not about promoting your practice um responsibly or your your program responsibly, but instead kind of these more black hat type, um you know, tactics. So maybe you want to hang a a little meat on that because, you know, and last thing, I want to say one last thing on the the paid advertising.

05:26.89

Marcus Shumate

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

05:33.35

jeulanjohnson

I was like super against paid advertising for some reason early on. um We still have never done any. But I'm much less interested in that as like paid bad, ah you know, business development or community liaison or behavioral health advisor.

05:45.50

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

05:51.23

jeulanjohnson

That's the new term we are good.

05:52.73

Marcus Shumate

ah yeah

05:53.57

jeulanjohnson

Anyway, so go go for it on the digital. I know this is where you've been really getting into lately.

05:59.06

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, one of, for anybody who's listening that doesn't know this, generally like the way stuff shows up in your Google searches through a practice called search engine optimization, right? So you take commonly searched words or phrases that people may use and you try to sort of guess at what people are looking for, right? So you're trying to find what their intent is. And then what you will do is you can use various software to kind of analyze how how many people are searching for that, what that, you know the phrases they're looking for, trying to figure out that kind of intent. And so it's a very sort of linear

06:35.66

Marcus Shumate

process in in some ways, right? Like it it has a system to it that you can sort of do. And in behavioral health, a lot of what you've seen is this gamification of that search engine and of like Google search algorithm. And so essentially what people will try to do is they'll do what's you know something like keyword stuffing. And so they may just shove a bunch of like poorly written crap that has no real utility or value to anyone. And they, you know, I would say that's like the least of the worst, right? Like they just shove keywords into a document or blogs and they just pump it onto their website, right? It's not great. It's not a great user experience, but it's a cheap way that people will do to generate web traffic and eyes on their services so that they can try to craft someone to pull them into a sales funnel. And so I would say in terms of like rank order, that's crappy, but it's not like, you know, like whatever, right? It's probably not the most effective, but it's not ineffective.

07:30.58

Marcus Shumate

But the stuff that really gets me, and I find like just frankly, a really, really predatory. are these digital marketing companies that will go on websites ad for behavioral health, and what they'll do is you'll have a program in Montana or California or somewhere across the freaking country, right? And then someone Google searches like addiction treatment in Cary, North Carolina, and you all of a sudden the top three ads or whatever that pop up are something like programs thousands of miles away.

08:04.41

Marcus Shumate

and Someone may say, well, like, man, nobody's going to really do that. like you know Like no one's going to leave the state to go do that. Like it's just white noise. It sucks, but whatever. But I have two main issues with it. One, you're preying on someone that's in a crisis, right? Nobody's freaking searching addiction treatment, carry North Carolina. or something, some version of that, if they're not in some sort of crisis or looking for some sort of help, and cool, you just put another barrier in their way. Because if they do click on that, right, like if a certain percentage of people click on that and they're in that state of mind, now they're getting funneled into your your sales funnel. And so the object now becomes, I have someone talking to me, I don't care where they're from, and you have an admissions director, admissions person, coordinator, whatever theyre the hell it is you want to call the person,

08:54.33

Marcus Shumate

And now they're giving this family a pitch, right? Like that's all they're doing is pay. Like they've created this SEO to grab attention so that they can push someone into a sales funnel. And the thing is they're more often than not, they're not actually interested in what's the right level of care. Is this the right fit is, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What they're interested in is now you're now talking to a car salesman and their job is to sell you the undercoating on the car, right? They're trying to upsell you on stuff. And so, You know, this may be kind of a niche thing, but like the the TTI, the troubled teen industry, you know, Reddit thread and some of the pushback that's come from that, a lot of the pushback is on predatory marketing. And listen, they're like, they're not entirely wrong on that stuff.

09:39.37

Marcus Shumate

And I think that's a good example is that the incentive structures for a lot of these programs is pushing people into a sales funnel and trying to sell something that's not needed, right? And on top of that, it's diverting from what the actual user intent is. The user intent is to find local resources and somehow they're entering a sales funnel that could potentially pull them or their child or their loved one a thousand miles away. all because they have insurance, because whatever, you know like all that sort of stuff. So I find it really egregious and pretty sickening right like for for as a healthcare practice.

10:11.60

jeulanjohnson

Yeah.

10:11.88

Marcus Shumate

um And I'd love to see more of that rooted out in us as an industry.

10:12.01

jeulanjohnson

Let's, let's, let's hang a little bit more. but

10:17.58

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

10:19.72

jeulanjohnson

Yeah. like Like here, I put addiction treatment near me and I get paid ads for two programs in Asheville and one in California.

10:35.42

jeulanjohnson

So I'm, I'm here at local in Raleigh. I need addiction treatment near me. I got two kids and a wife at home. I'm working full-time and you're sending me to Asheville and Malibu.

10:49.22

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

10:49.76

jeulanjohnson

That's not what I was looking for.

10:51.49

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

10:54.30

jeulanjohnson

Yeah. And so, and then you get people who, you know, they, again, because oh, go ahead.

10:56.97

Marcus Shumate

And what I would say with this,

11:10.33

jeulanjohnson

You can go.

11:10.81

Marcus Shumate

go for it. you're You're freezing.

11:11.55

jeulanjohnson

Yeah, you can talk.

11:13.11

Marcus Shumate

All right.

11:14.60

jeulanjohnson

ah You're freezing.

11:15.50

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, this is great.

11:19.08

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, so when I think about that, like some of the pushback I hear about that stuff is like, listen, people aren't wanting to go to California if they don't if they can don't need to. when the Then the question becomes, why is it that you're trying to market to someone in North Carolina if you don't think they're going to go? And so the the answer is like, no, you just want a shot at getting them to show up to your program because it's revenue generating. And so in the other thing I would say is like, listen, anybody ever bought something

11:43.66

jeulanjohnson

Yeah, ken before you do that, because I think you taught you were hit.

11:50.68

jeulanjohnson

you were You were hitting on something that I think is really, you know, an important piece. And I think where the, um you know, talking about, talk about the sales funnel specifically and why, if you've got a lot of money to dump into ah SEO or digital marketing in general, because I think like we should just lump it all into digital marketing.

12:05.61

Marcus Shumate

Mm.

12:11.14

jeulanjohnson

What you're mainly talking about is really pay-per-click advertising right now in terms of the ads and where that's popping up. as opposed to the onsite SEO, but why like explain the sales funnel, right? Like it, because it's just a math equation, right? what Like walk through, I mean, to be clear, like we have a, you know, quote sales funnel as well.

12:30.83

Marcus Shumate

yeah

12:34.68

jeulanjohnson

And it's, that's not wrong. Like it provides predictability into how many patients you're going to be able to work with at whatever level of care, but maybe kind of walk through what that means for some people.

12:49.41

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, so sales funnels generally this idea that you're going to start off with something that captures a bunch of what would be called like leads or Prospects or however you like generally people searching your service, right? So that's like traditional sales stuff and behavioral health you'd call it, you know bleeds potential clients that sort of thing a certain percentage of those are never going to call. They're going to be exposed to your services through some sort of passive means, but maybe they never call. Of that percentage, a certain percentage will call and they may or may not be qualified. They may be able to afford your services. They may actually want your services. So you start funneling down and you're losing people along the way, but ideally what people are thinking about is they're trying to get to a more narrow sort of ah someone that will actually admit

13:37.03

Marcus Shumate

But knowing that you're going to have drop-offs at each stage of that funnel, you try to gather as much as you can at the top because you know that you're going to lose some as you go down. Yes.

13:47.68

jeulanjohnson

So yeah, walking through that, you know, like you said, we would have, um, maybe there's a goal of, uh, a thousand people land on the page. Uh, you know, those are leads or prospects. 10% of those fill out a form. Maybe those are now leads. ah And then from those leads come sales qualified leads that we say, hey, they've got insurance we can take, or they can pay cash.

14:06.97

Marcus Shumate

Yes.

14:15.57

jeulanjohnson

And of those sales qualified leads, you know, we may have like an opportunity to sell being an admissions call. um And then finally, at the bottom of that funnel, it gets us into, um you know, how many people become patients or actual conversions for us.

14:34.95

Marcus Shumate

Yes.

14:34.92

jeulanjohnson

So then you can just turn the entire process into a math equation. So even if you're only you know taking 10% from each stage of the funnel, you can still get to the number of patients you need running really shitty tactics if you just put enough potential patients at the top of the funnel.

14:50.92

Marcus Shumate

Right.

14:55.95

Marcus Shumate

Cool. Yes. Yeah. And that's, it's pretty like standard basic math. I think the, the conversion percentage I often hear in substance use treatment is about 20% of sales qualified leads turn into conversions, meaning they admit into treatment. So you just reverse engineer from that. and And so what that would mean is like of that percentage just below the top of the funnel, where you get into what's called the sales qualified people that can afford your service, want your service of that certain number, about 20% of those will, you know, between 20 and 30% look to will convert into your services. And so that's probably different depending on the different types of services. But even if you just take that number that the point still stands,

15:40.55

Marcus Shumate

And so in order to hit those numbers that you need to keep your you know your programs or business or whatever provider like full, you got to have a bigger net up at the top because you're going to lose stuff all along the way.

15:53.98

jeulanjohnson

And I think like one of the things that's been interesting for us is more recently, like that 20% for us is probably like 50 or 60% of sales qualified leads, because we've really tried to match what we're, you know, even though we're not advertising, but like what we're putting out there into the world to create awareness of our services is very aligned with what the people are searching for right now, both in on Google, or if you meet, you know, our,

16:02.93

Marcus Shumate

Yes.

16:17.03

Marcus Shumate

yeah

16:21.75

jeulanjohnson

business development director Pete like if you meet him he's gonna tell you what we offer and if you need what we offer it's very likely you're gonna sign up.

16:29.54

Marcus Shumate

Right, yes.

16:29.62

jeulanjohnson

ah Which to me just feels good like I would rather and we're also not competing with the same like across the country for the same patients.

16:29.78

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

16:32.68

Marcus Shumate

yeah

16:39.68

Marcus Shumate

Right. so Yeah, I agree. that That's stuff that sits and feels a lot better to me than what than what I've seen or been accustomed to or or you know other sort of sales tactics. honestly feel Because essentially you're offering something that someone wants right like and you ah and they they need and desire and can afford and you're not bankrupting them for it or you're not upselling them on something. you're you're you're bringing a lot of things into what you would call like stakeholder alignment. Like it works for us, it works for them.

17:10.86

Marcus Shumate

Everybody wants it. Perfect. We got in this cause we liked it. You know, we want to provide services with the help. We want to do that sort of stuff. It's interesting problems to solve. And then that allows us to meet some people for need. Um, I think like, uh, you know, I think that's what you're shooting for, right? Like that's, that's perfect.

17:31.14

jeulanjohnson

Yeah. I think like, you know, my experience, which I know now you've got, you know, you've stacked a lot more experience in the last few months than I have in the digital marketing learning. But, you know, I think it's pretty standard practice out there in behavioral health that, you know, you build your website at first, you get a business development person, then you're like, hey, we really need to work on our, you know, digital leads.

17:50.87

Marcus Shumate

yeah

17:54.82

jeulanjohnson

We We need more from Google type thing.

17:57.62

Marcus Shumate

much.

17:58.12

jeulanjohnson

And so then you call an agency that has experience in behavioral health and they tell you, oh, look, we've got all these case studies. We'll tell you how to do this. And then you you get on some you know contract with them where you're paying, I don't know, anywhere from $3,000 to $50,000 a month. for some combination of on-site SEO, which is pretty much writing regurgitated blog posts about services that are stuffed with keywords.

18:22.58

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

18:28.98

Marcus Shumate

Right.

18:29.76

jeulanjohnson

or running paid advertising where, again, there's a cost for advertising certain words and you know you build that funnel from the search term all the way down to you know how many people you're going to need in the program and you just spend enough to put enough people in the program. and And it's, it's, it feels pretty, you know, in some ways it feels just pretty gross to me overall. And I mean, I've talked to a few of these agencies.

18:57.42

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

18:59.83

jeulanjohnson

Look, I don't, uh, I'm just going to say it. Like, I just don't think that people who are behavioral health, substance use treatment, mental health marketers, like this is just a slimy game because these are people who are vulnerable And they need good information.

19:18.98

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

19:18.95

jeulanjohnson

And you know Google's ability to actually understand what is good information isn't really there. it's all It's all hacked together, right? You get backlinks to other sites that have high domain rating.

19:27.40

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:33.24

jeulanjohnson

And it it's just this it's the game of creating an online reputation. I always think of like that that SEO as kind of like real estate, like your curbside appeal.

19:38.96

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

19:43.46

Marcus Shumate

Right, yeah, yeah.

19:43.50

jeulanjohnson

And, you know, it's like if you're in a good neighborhood and you got, everyone's got a good yard, like that's kind of like getting your backlinks to other websites.

19:52.27

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

19:52.20

jeulanjohnson

And then, you know, you build all this content on your website with blogs and everything else. And that's kind of like the the house you're building or something.

20:00.91

Marcus Shumate

Yeah. Yeah.

20:01.24

jeulanjohnson

And so you have all of these like little tools and tactics to increase the value of your online real estate. But the truth is that like it's they're a proxy for you know usefulness to the the user who is searching. But the the proxy itself is not very good.

20:17.37

Marcus Shumate

yeah Right.

20:20.94

jeulanjohnson

ah So I don't know. it's just ah it's a it's a pretty yes To me, it's just a pretty gross world. so My question would be, but like we've tried this, it kind of works. you know like To some extent, like we you know you start a website, a year later, you know you you pay this $8,000 a month.

20:34.18

Marcus Shumate

I will.

20:39.15

jeulanjohnson

I think it was for us last year. We entered into a one-year contract. It was abysmal. I will not put that company on blast. um They're out of Michigan. ah

20:52.43

jeulanjohnson

and and And our domain rating was up, our leads went up, the traffic to our site went up, but it wasn't anything that impressive. And so I guess what I would say is like what, since we focus primarily on digital marketing, what are we doing?

21:01.58

Marcus Shumate

yeah

21:07.82

jeulanjohnson

Because we kind of know the game and we've decided not to hire an agency, but instead Marcus, who's like a a goddamn therapist is running digital marketing.

21:19.36

Marcus Shumate

yeah not even a

21:19.76

jeulanjohnson

And so why do you think you're going to be able to produce results for us while also you know being more in alignment with our values?

21:20.37

Marcus Shumate

and but

21:31.26

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, no that's a great question. So I think there's a ah couple of answers to that. One, we're playing with I'm playing with table stakes right now. And the reason is like we've built something that people want, right? People want psychiatry, they want therapy, they want iop they want outpatient community-based services that are accessible and affordable. Cool. So now you built a product that people actually freakin' want. And so that's that's like that raises your your your floor already, right? like To your point, we kind of got results with someone we're paying $8,000 to $10,000 a month to.

22:06.91

Marcus Shumate

and Like you got some numbers, right? Like our search domain, like our our ranking website, all this sort of stuff is is better and like you, you know, that that's cool. That's good. Uh, but that's still just a proxy for generation of leads, right? Like you, like that's good. It looks good curbside appeal, yada, yada, yada, but that isn't necessarily translate to to anything else. Cause at the end of the day, if you don't have a good product, then you're just going to have to generate more leads because you lose more people along the sales funnel because they don't want what you have.

22:37.86

Marcus Shumate

ah And I'm much more the build in the inverse I think we spent an inordinate amount of time getting our operations our value proposition figuring out what the hell it is that we're trying to be that we want to be how to do that to the best of our ability and give the best experience to a client possible So from there Like we were doing pretty well, right? And so now it just becomes all right. We're gonna save $10,000 a month Not spending on digital. We've got the time to learn it figure it out in-house and also It's not a big freaking mystery. It gets complicated, kind of. but

23:13.93

Marcus Shumate

yeah jump

23:14.91

jeulanjohnson

but let's Let's walk through, like, I'll kind of lead us down this path. So, like, as we as we started this process a few months ago, we basically said, hey, Marcus, like this business development, we're kind of getting out of the conference culture where we just fly around to build relationships and hope people will refer to us.

23:33.39

Marcus Shumate

right

23:34.16

jeulanjohnson

Instead, because we do have that kind of service market fit, all, what we really need is we need awareness and we need to, we need people to know we exist when they're looking for our services.

23:45.09

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

23:45.64

jeulanjohnson

And so from that, you know, we went through a process of defining, you know, kind of the personas of who would look after, who would be looking for our services. So, you know, we put, you know, our, you know, we had stuff like, uh, you know, young adults struggling with substance use who's in college. We had, uh, you know a parent looking for treatment for their kid. We had a blue collar worker who's on the state health plan.

24:11.03

Marcus Shumate

one.

24:11.76

jeulanjohnson

We had a teacher. you know we We built these personas and then we looked at what problems they were trying to solve, which is usually like they need a psychiatrist for medication management who has availability soon. and We then tried to tailor and build some useful content for that persona. Um, I think it was like broadly how we're doing it. And then, you know, you were putting yourself in the search, the searchers, um, shoes in terms of trying to think through like, Hey, this person's probably not a therapist or a psychiatrist.

24:41.66

Marcus Shumate

Yeah. Right.

24:48.87

jeulanjohnson

And so they may not know exactly what they're looking for, right? But they may have some general understanding that they either have anxiety or depression.

24:54.58

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

24:58.46

jeulanjohnson

So thinking about what terms they may be looking for, and then how we can show them that we we might be a good fit for solving their problem, essentially.

25:08.78

Marcus Shumate

yeah

25:08.83

jeulanjohnson

Right. And so how does this, how in in your mind, how does it differ from us doing this with an agency? Because that's kind of the agency process as well.

25:18.11

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

25:20.27

jeulanjohnson

Right.

25:21.46

Marcus Shumate

Yeah. So the way this differs in my mind than doing it with an agency is an agency is never going to know your unique value proposition. They never will. They're not part of the culture. They've not had the blood, sweat and tears invested in what you've done. They've not seen the people involved. They've not seen the infrastructure and any number of things, right? So it's always going to be, some exploratory sort of stuff, we kind of get what you guys are about, and they'll pitch you on it, they'll sell you on it, they'll try to like, and then they're just gonna generate content that is pretty canned stuff, right? Like they it's they'll run it through an SEO filter, they'll see what the score is, and they'll just pump that crap on your website. And like you said, you'll get some marginal returns on it. ah But again, I think the the important thing is in marketing, business development,

26:13.66

Marcus Shumate

you have to marry You have to have this alignment, and the alignment has to go from what is your actual product, what is the propositional value, and then how do you best represent that in terms of your outward facing optics. Because that's what you want people to find. You don't want people to find something that you're not. You want them to find exactly what you are. So the best thing that you can do is focus on being the best version and have the most clarity around what you are. Be what you're claiming to be. And be the best possible version of that you can. Invest all your resources in that. Do whatever you can to be the best version of that. And then anything that's forward facing that draws eyes to that, good. Now you have alignment because people are going to land on what it is that they actually want.

26:55.31

Marcus Shumate

They're not going to land on something and then you have to sell it, sell them on it, right? and So for one, I think a lot of these digital marketing companies that come in and make these big promises, they're never going to be able to do that nimbly enough. ah Secondly, whatever the price point is that you're paying for a lot of this stuff, unless you're just a giant freaking company, they're going to afford that and it's not that big of a deal. Like, fine, maybe maybe hire the best out there and there's there's you know potential value in that. but I think for most people, you can probably do it in house or figure out how to do it in house with a couple of tools, some wherewithal, some ability to learn and take time. And then you're talking about we've saved $120,000 a year off not doing off off getting but at best kind of good returns, marginal returns. we can probably If all we ever do is get to like 70% of what we were doing with that other company,

27:52.94

Marcus Shumate

And I think we'll do a lot better than that. But let's just say that we only get to 70% of what they were doing. Cool. We did it and we still saved $100,000 a year. um And ultimately at the end of the day, it aligns more with what we are and what we want to be.

28:06.55

jeulanjohnson

Yeah, I think like, you know, yeah, I think like one of the things that will be interesting longer term, because I think like when you boil our strategy, both on patient care, but also just like kind of the corporate strategy overall, is like it really is all about integration.

28:07.22

Marcus Shumate

Whatever content we're putting on. um

28:24.61

jeulanjohnson

Like that, that's where we think there's an opportunity As opposed to outsourcing a lot of different elements to bring it into our offering so like because it would be cheaper in some ways to just outsource this to an agency because there's a learning curve for you in this we don't really know what we're doing there's a lot of figuring it out.

28:35.45

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

28:44.85

jeulanjohnson

But I think like that bet is if we can create institutional knowledge, bring other understanding into the organization, that we're going to be better off in the long run.

28:46.13

Marcus Shumate

Mm-hmm.

28:55.99

jeulanjohnson

So maybe not this year.

28:56.53

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

28:57.54

jeulanjohnson

like I would actually push back and say, you know I think we're actually going to be worse off in a 12 month period than we would if we had just engaged with an agency. But I think when we look at this at like a two or three year time horizon, we're like, but We're gonna be better than the agency at promoting us. It's just gonna take us some time to build the competence.

29:17.79

Marcus Shumate

I think you're right. One thing that I will be curious about, and I know we're running a little short on time, so I'll try to sink this point pretty quick, but like

29:28.42

Marcus Shumate

The SEO companies, digital marketing people that I've talked to, especially in the behavioral health space, seem fundamentally unaware of what Google's up to with their algorithm updates, their AI-generated content. And I mean, so there's people right now that are probably locked into a contract with a company that's not even considered AI beyond having chat write them a blog post. They're not thinking in terms of like, Google's Really putting a concentrated effort at this point and to produce like Opt of like for having people that produce good content show up first

30:06.68

jeulanjohnson

Well, and i think and I think what's changing right now, you know yeah all this stuff with AI, number one. Number two, the other really big thing that I think is is changing is we talked about how um Google has this proxy for usefulness. like They're driving you to what they think is you know going to be useful content. I think that's going to get a lot better. so ah bad it's It's no longer going to work nearly as well to have the same regurgitated content. like It is going to need to feel authentic and actually engage with people you know more deeply.

30:36.61

Marcus Shumate

like

30:42.64

jeulanjohnson

So I think some of those like tactics aren't going to be available.

30:45.35

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

30:46.49

jeulanjohnson

And I do think, I mean, I totally agree with you.

30:46.63

Marcus Shumate

Yeah.

30:49.05

jeulanjohnson

like I think that was the the most shocking thing that you discovered a couple, like a month or two ago, was you started talking to people about like their digital marketing strategies and how they're factoring in some of the algorithm changes to the Google search. And basically, it was crickets.

31:09.54

Marcus Shumate

like

31:09.71

jeulanjohnson

No one had an answer for you. And you're like, am I am i crazy? are ya like and And the truth is, like you're not. You're just actually well you're well-informed, and you're trying to learn, whereas other people are just trying to you know sell a ah process that they've already developed.

31:16.94

Marcus Shumate

but

31:25.60

jeulanjohnson

And it's going to require a lot of re-engineering in the future.

31:26.68

Marcus Shumate

Yeah Yeah, it is

31:31.23

jeulanjohnson

So hey, I got to go though. Any, what are, like, I guess we I would ask this, like one last question if, you know, because I know this happens for you sometimes, like if another marketer at a, you know, at an outpatient practice or at a residential treatment program um were coming to you and they were like, Hey, you know, what should I do?

31:41.92

Marcus Shumate

what

31:52.02

jeulanjohnson

Like, I know we need to have a better digital marketing strategy or I want to learn about digital marketing. You know, what would you recommend that they do?

32:00.31

Marcus Shumate

um Understand who they are as a person and how it is that they learn, right? Like we all learn differently, we approach things differently, but at the end of the day, fundamentally learning is always the same. It's rep it's exposure, application, failure, ah adjust, repeat. And you just keep doing that over and over and over. You'll never beat, that's how we are assuming we're stimulus response. You're never going to beat that. So now it just becomes create the space for yourself to experiment, tinker and learn. And that's it. And just do that a lot.

32:35.51

jeulanjohnson

And so some of the top resources might be obviously just YouTube, HubSpot has a great content, talk to chat GPT and ask questions, you know, and and go through, you know, go through a process, but give yourself give yourself the time and space to

32:39.74

Marcus Shumate

Yeah. Yeah.

32:46.71

Marcus Shumate

in.

32:53.02

jeulanjohnson

play around, fail, learn, and you know and I think like the the piece we haven't gotten to yet but we'll get to maybe next time or in a future episode is is talking about the metrics that we're going to track because we've got a new website coming out and now we're taking over, Marcus is taking over all of the digital marketing for us. So we'll, we can look at maybe a baseline where we are, you know, in a future episode, this is kind of where we are as a benchmark.

33:17.51

Marcus Shumate

No.

33:20.17

jeulanjohnson

And then we can check in in a few months and see, you know, look at some of the results and see how it's going.

33:25.59

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, let's see how bad it sucked.

33:27.22

jeulanjohnson

Yeah, why not?

33:28.16

Marcus Shumate

Yeah, why not?

33:29.06

jeulanjohnson

All right. Well, I got to go do, you know, there's some business development stuff that makes me feel really grimy.

33:30.49

Marcus Shumate

All right.

33:36.22

jeulanjohnson

I got to go do now or some South Florida program. ah