Marketing teen therapy and treatment is unlike marketing for adult therapy and treatment, whether that’s for addiction or mental health issues.
This can primarily be seen in the Google search volume for related terms. The search term “therapy for depression” has around 2,500 monthly searches.
But change that to “therapy for teen depression” and there is so little search volume that Google barely has any data. (Note that “therapy for adolescent depression” is the same).
Let’s look at searches for “drug rehab”. This has about 3,700 searches a month.
Searching “drug rehab for teens” and total monthly searches plummets to only 500.
There is actually more volume for “residential treatment for teens” than there is “drug rehab for teens.”
Even for the incredibly generic term “depression”, we have 100 times more search volume for general depression than we do for “teen depression.”
Interestingly, “residential treatment for teens” has higher search volume than other teen treatment related terms.
Other terms:
Addiction: 55,000 searches per month
Teen Addiction: 250
Drug Use: 3,700
Teen Drug Use; 450
What does all of this mean?
First and foremost, it means that the market for teen/adolescent behavioral health treatment is significantly smaller than that for adults.
Partly, this is a function of population. While there are 258 million adults in the US, only 21 million of them fall between the ages of 15 and 19. Only 6% of the population falls into the teen/adolescent range.
The second most important factor is largely cultural. Growing up, you may have been aware of some troubled children from troubled homes that got sent away to juvie, but how many people know someone that was sent away to a mental health or addiction treatment facility while in middle or high school?
While awareness of mental health issues among teens has grown, what do you see as the standard course of action? What would you do for your own child? If you’re like most parents, you would try to support your child at home and potentially take them to see a therapist once a week. Most parents are not even aware that residential or intensive outpatient programs exist. Even if they do, they’re probably going to seek standard outpatient counseling first before exploring higher levels of care.
The reality is that most parents do not even think of intensive treatment as an option. It’s not that they’re aware of it and dismiss it as a bad fit, they don’t even know it exists. So, for teen treatment marketing, awareness and education are critical pieces of campaigns.
There is a small exception to this, it’s very upper-class parents. Historically, the teen treatment space has been dominated by wilderness programs. These programs cost upward of $70,000 with the teens in question sent away for months at a time.
For high networth families where boarding schools and three-month-summer sleepaway camps are par for the course, this is something they’re familiar with. They are used to and comfortable with their children being gone for extended periods of time with high price tags on such arrangements.
Culturally, this is also very common in the Northeast and, to a lesser extent, along the West Coast. For most other areas of the country, parents may send their children to private school or a 1-to-2-week summer camp, but sending them away for extended periods is not the norm.
From a marketing perspective, this means that geographic targeting is an essential component of the overall marketing strategy. As we always like to say, it’s easiest to market the soft middle, which are the audiences that are already open to and interested in the services you offer.
In the teen treatment space, these numbers are small though. So this means that most providers have to target audiences of parents that are much less familiar with or comfortable with residential and intensive treatment options. This also means sequential marketing that drives awareness, then educates, then converts.
In teen treatment, this has historically been accomplished through a clinical thought leader, usually the owner of the program. This person had written books, appeared on TV as a subject matter expert, or built an audience on a channel like YouTube.
Many parents are looking for answers related to their teens behavior, whether that’s extensive social media use, school avoidance, depression, anxiety, substance use, oppositional defiance, etc. The clinical thought leaders role is to then educate parents on the underlying issues their teens are struggling with and also to present intensive levels of care as an option. Check out Quenby Gallahan’s YouTube channel for a great example of this.
Since teen treatment programs across the country have been few and far between, and because most teen treatment programs are small with around 30 “beds”, it was easy to keep such programs full with a single person acting as the face of the organization and doing limited PR. Then, like any healthcare provider, referrals from alumni families ends up driving the majority of admissions as tenure in the space matures.
The landscape for teen treatment is different now though. Like most of healthcare, private equity has entered the space and owner-operators are looking at scaling their organizations across the country rather than being content with one program and a lifestyle business.
This increased competition with its arsenal of sophisticated marketing approaches has changed the landscape.
What Works in Teen Treatment Marketing?
With that background, what works in marketing for this space?
High Search Intent at the Bottom of the Funnel
Just like other areas of healthcare, the bottom of the funnel should always be a primary target. As we’ve discussed, this search volume is very small, but we obviously still want to be marketing towards the people actively seeking care for their teens. This means Google Ads, to a lesser extent, Bing Ads, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This strategy can be run nationwide, with special emphasis paid to the Northeast and West Coast.
There is also an educational component to bottom-of-funnel marketing that isn’t present with adults. While the search volume is still small, some parents will search for things such as “troubled teen,” “out of control teen,” “how to deal with a defiant teen,” etc. These searchers are not looking for treatment, they’re looking for answers. Here, the job of a pay-per-click (PPC) or SEO campaign is to catch their attention, then educate them on the landing page, then convert them to an inquiry. We want to be thinking middle of funnel searches as well as bottom of funnel when running teen PPC and SEO campaigns.
Landing pages for middle of funnel terms are different from landing pages for those looking for treatment as they require more education. The parent was not necessarily considering a treatment program, they were looking for strategies as to how to deal with their teen. This means that the landing page needs to provide those strategies, then also detail how one of those strategies is intensive treatment, including the signs that indicate intensive treatment may be the best option.
Terms such as “wilderness therapy” and “teen boot camp” are similar. Many parents may have heard of such programs, so it’s the only thing they know to search for. Good PPC and SEO campaigns targeting those terms need an educational strategy on their landing pages. The landing page content needs to help the parent through both the consideration AND conversion phases of the decision-making process.
Unlike adult treatment, where individuals and families are calling in immediate crisis, those calling for teens are often still searching around to consider the best option. With adult crisis calls, many times they won’t have spent more than 30 seconds on the landing page before calling. With teens, they will read the landing page and often explore other areas of the site, carefully evaluating if this is the right place for their son or daughter, after which they’ll call.
The Parent Evaluation Journey: From Awareness to Conversion
With a rise in awareness around teen mental health, we are starting to see more middle-class and upper-middle class parents seek treatment. As discussed, this generally means starting with run-of-the-mill, once-a-week therapy.
The audience of parents who are struggling with parenting their teens is much, much larger than the volume of those actively searching for treatment solutions. So, in teen marketing, the budget for top and middle of funnel channels should be larger than that for bottom of funnel.
The best channels to reach parents are the ones they use the most. First and foremost, this is Facebook. Secondary channels are Pinterest (especially for moms), Twitter, and Snapchat (TikTok does not allow marketing for behavioral health, so isn’t an option).
Campaigns on these channels work best using a standard direct marketing messaging approach.
1) Call out a pain point
2) Educate the audience on solutions to that pain point
3) Pitch your solution
What’s important here is that these three steps should rarely be presented in a single campaign. Instead, campaigns need to be structured through retargeting funnels (not allowed on Facebook or Google) or distributed sequentially.
Ideally, a key clinical leader becomes the face of the program and is used in much of the marketing as parents look more closely at the individuals running the program than they do the general program structure. If there is not a clinical leader that is comfortable or good on camera, then high quality content is the next best thing.
Here’s an example of what high quality teen content looks like that can be used for top of funnel campaigns.
Who Are the Key Community Referrants for Teens?
Like any healthcare provider, community referrals are the life’s blood of the organization. Direct to consumer marketing, due to its high costs, should always come second in terms of marketing channel mix.
For teen marketing, there are two primary referral sources - educational institutions and family therapists.
Teachers, school principals, and guidance counselors are on the front lines of working with teens and recognizing signs of distress or self-destructive behavior. Educational professionals often have better insights than even the parents themselves since teens spend more time at school than they do at home. Keep in mind, educational professionals also include after school organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brother Big Sister Programs, and YMCA After School Programs.
Building relationships with educational professionals in the area is the first step to effective community outreach.
Once parents become aware of or cognizant of a problem with their teen, going to a private therapist is usually the next step. Even if the teen’s problems are significant, most parents will try individual therapy first. So individual teen and family therapists will be the next highest referral source after schools.
Other providers, such as adult treatment programs or hospitals are still worth building relationships with, but these will send a lower volume of referrals compared to what’s seen at adult programs.
The entire purpose here is to become an authority and resource to the community on teen treatment. More than maxing out bottom-of-funnel marketing, the right content and strategy here will ultimately make or break the long-term sustainability of your program.
See here for an example of content we created for a client to support educational professionals around teen suicide..
This kind of content goes a long way in establishing your program as a community partner and resource, which ultimately drives referrals.
It’s All About Alumni
Finally, like any treatment program, alumni can be one of the largest referral sources over time. Parents talk to other parents and, as more parents in an area send their children to your program, the larger your network of word-of-mouth referrals grows. Parents are always asking each other for advice and, unlike adult addiction or mental health, there is much less stigma surrounding discussing trouble with children when speaking to other families.
Every teen program needs a strong alumni programming and communication schedule.
1) Annual or bi-annual get-togethers
2) Free, weekly parent support and education groups (usually online)
3) Monthly newsletters
4) Personal outreach and check-ins
When done right, we’ve seen entire programs stay full through alumni referrals alone after many years in business.
Putting Ourselves in Their Shoes
Like all marketing, the best campaigns come from putting ourselves in the shoes of the parents and community referral partners directly interacting with the teens who need help. When we think through what channels they use, what information they need, and what solutions they’re looking for, we can create effective multi-channel strategies that support our communities and connect patients into our care at the same time.
