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Episode 26: Marketing in the Industry with Nick Jaworski
32 Plays2 hours ago
Nick Jaworski is an internationally recognized executive in the field of behavioral health marketing and operational consulting with experience building organizations across four continents. As the owner of Circle Social Inc., he has helped healthcare organizations ranging in revenue from $10 million to $300 million a year perform turn-rounds and accelerate growth.
He is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Award for his work in mental health, is an adviser to the board for the National Behavioral Health Association of Providers, and is also on the board for one of the most innovative treatment programs in the country – Above and Beyond Recovery in Chicago. When he's not online, he can be found spending time with his favorite person in the whole world, his daughter.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Destination Change'
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, a podcast where we talk recovery, treatment, and more. I'm your host, Andy Feather-Sutton, with the National Behavioral Health Association providers, and I use she, her pronouns.
Meet Nick Joroski
00:00:22
Speaker
My guest today is Nick Joroski.
00:00:24
Speaker
Nick is an internationally recognized executive in the field of behavior health marketing and operational consulting with experience building organizations across four continents. As the owner of Circle Social Inc., he has helped healthcare care organizations ranging in revenue from $10 million to $300 million a year perform turnarounds and accelerate growth.
00:00:42
Speaker
He is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Award for his work in mental health, is an advisor to the board to NBHAP, and is also on the board to one of the most innovative treatment programs in the country, Above and Beyond Recovery in Chicago.
00:00:54
Speaker
When he's not online, he can be found spending time with his favorite person in the whole world, his daughter. Thank you very much for joining us today, Nick. yeah Angie, thanks for having me.
Transition to Healthcare Marketing
00:01:03
Speaker
i really appreciate it Now, I always like to start the podcast with kind of what I've called origin stories. Basically, what got you into the industry? Why mental health, behavior health versus all the other industries? And for you specifically, the dual one, why marketing versus, you know, accounting or something like that?
00:01:21
Speaker
and Sure. That's a pretty long story. I'll try to give a short version. Start maybe with the marketing piece because that's easier. so I actually lived abroad, as it said, in that nice bio you gave me there, international. So I've done about 10 years of work abroad in China, Turkey, Vietnam, obviously the U.S.,
00:01:39
Speaker
other places. And through my work ah internationally, I ended up building and a couple personal profiles as well as companies through online media and marketing.
00:01:51
Speaker
And then that got me into a lot of training situations and then startups and then turnarounds. kind of through the awareness that was built and in my work in those areas.
00:02:01
Speaker
And so I became known as ah turnaround specialist from an operations standpoint. And a lot of what I had to do, both internationally and here in the U.S., was marketing work. So I became very adept at marketing. And back then, I was more educational institutions.
00:02:16
Speaker
Coming into the U.S., eventually, when was that, man? Back in 2014, I think I came back to the U.S., I then stayed in education for a little while and eventually decided to branch out on my own.
00:02:28
Speaker
So that was kind of marketing piece, just lots of experience and in a variety of settings on different platforms and different languages and cultures and just really understand how marketing works. And then being very effective at it, I found the opportunity to obviously...
00:02:42
Speaker
branch out on my own rather than doing it for other people. So that's what I did.
Circle Social's Focus on Behavioral Health
00:02:46
Speaker
And then when we started the company, when I started Circle Social, we were kind of a jack of all trades, like a lot of marketing agencies are. i a lot of agencies stay that way.
00:02:56
Speaker
Very quickly in the history of Circle Social, I didn't want to stay that way. It's very hard to become good at other industries. Sometimes people think marketing is marketing. That's absolutely not true. That's like saying a doctor is a doctor or a teacher is a teacher.
00:03:11
Speaker
You know, my shop class teacher can't teach my chemistry class. My heart surgery can't act as a dentist or provide podiatry services. Right. Right. So marketing is very similar. Just because you can market car dealership or a roofing company doesn't mean that you can market healthcare. care And even within healthcare, care marketing for hospitals is radically different than marketinging marketing for dental organizations, which is different than marketing for behavioral health providers.
00:03:38
Speaker
MAT marketing is radically different from residential and IOP marketing. and Lots and lots of differences. So I wanted us to become really good at what we were doing. We had started working with a couple rehab providers early on, good people. And then just part of my personal backstory, I went through treatment when I was like 18, 19, something like that.
00:03:58
Speaker
And so I had a personal passion around it. And i also recognized there was an opportunity to improve the space and make it better. I had a certain professional background that I was bringing to the table. And a lot of people, especially back then when we first got involved, a lot of people with really good hearts that maybe had gone through a recovery themselves and decided to open a treatment center, but without a lot of experience in the business world, in the world of marketing, etc.
00:04:22
Speaker
And that was also back when there was a lot of negativity in the marketing space. so a lot of people engaging in very shady practices, which... As we just saw, the FTC just came down on Evoke Wellness for some shady marketing practices. So it's still continuing, but it was rampant back then and almost blatant. People were doing it out in the open.
00:04:41
Speaker
So that really upset me. You know, someone that went through treatment myself and won people to find quality care. So we decided to go all in on behavioral health, just out of that personal passion.
Building Trust in Marketing
00:04:51
Speaker
There's rewards and getting up in the morning. Yeah, we can market e-commerce or we could figure out roofing companies or whatever.
00:04:57
Speaker
But that's just not as motivating personally to me and to the entire team that we've built here at Circle Social. The reason people stay with us, by and large, is not because we support them and they learn a lot. That's part of it. But they really love the work that we do. There's a lot of passion around it.
00:05:12
Speaker
And so that that's what really brought me into the space kind of full time. Why the name Circle Social? What's the origin of that? Out of curiosity. Yeah. I do get asked that quite a bit.
00:05:24
Speaker
it's It's just really two aspects, social, social media. So marketing is very driven by building trust. you know at Your core of what you're trying to do from a marketing campaign is to get people to trust you and your organization to deliver them the thing that they want or the thing that they need.
00:05:40
Speaker
It's not just about awareness. It's not about eyeballs. right I need to build trust. So that person says... you're the organization I want to go to for X, whether that's treatment or mental health services or MAT or dental work. it's's It's a trust-based platform. So that social aspect is key to everything that we do.
00:05:59
Speaker
And then the circle is just yuka unity and yeah it all kind of flows together. My marketing doesn't work if my call team doesn't support what the marketing team is doing. BD doesn't work if they don't have marketing support. None of it works if they don't understand clinical, right? So that the concept of how wholeness within a circle was part of the thought process.
00:06:18
Speaker
Now, I know that the ethical marketing is actually one of the core points of why NBHAP was created. And we developed the Certificate Addiction Treatment Marketing, which is now the CAMHS, which is Certified Admissions and Marketing Specialist Program.
Ethical Marketing Practices
00:06:33
Speaker
ah Let's talk a little bit more about what you know what does it mean to market ethically in the behavioral health world? but but What are you trying to achieve? what why Why is that a problem? That kind of stuff.
00:06:44
Speaker
So think first and foremost, we want patients connected to quality care that's right for them. And so that's really the heart of everything. And that's that's what we've built at Circle Social. And that's why a lot of people work with us because they've seen that focus on connection to quality care.
00:07:02
Speaker
And so without even getting into like the blatant shady practices that happen, at the end the day, if I can find a program that works for them, you know, a program that's doing just teen girls,
00:07:14
Speaker
is going often to be a better of fit, if that makes sense from ah a geographic standpoint, the cost standpoint, etc., than maybe a program that's a mix. But for some people, a co-ed mix is a better fit for them. They're more comfortable a co-ed setting and than they would be in a girls-only setting because...
00:07:31
Speaker
We've heard this from patients, you know, girls can get catty and it can be difficult. Yeah. But that depends on the patient. Right. So patients have preferences. They have needs. And so first and foremost, it it's getting people to the right care.
00:07:44
Speaker
And what was happening and what still happens sometimes, even in the Evoke case with the FTC right now, is you were calling a generic treatment center and they weren't being referred to a program because it was the best fit for them.
00:07:56
Speaker
They were being referred to a program because it was the most money that they were getting when selling that lead, or it was the most money they were getting from a reimbursement standpoint. So rather than giving them care in Massachusetts, maybe they're flying them to Florida because Florida is giving them better reimbursement rates.
00:08:12
Speaker
That is not ethical marketing. Even if you're running a ah legitimate Google Ads campaign, but you're moving people around based on the financing that you're going to get rather than the screen and the assessment that tells you what the best fit for them is going to be.
00:08:28
Speaker
You know, i would also consider that not to be, you know, fully ethical. So that's the starting point. yeah Are we sending people to the place that's going to get them the best fit for them?
00:08:39
Speaker
And there's lots, again, like that. It could be the clinical approach. It could be cost. It could be the insurances that are accepted. It could be location-based. So family can visit or it's easy for them to get to. There's lots of different factors that drive that, but that's number one. And then obviously, yeah, don't do the shady stuff.
00:08:54
Speaker
I mean, people get away with it for a while. And so then, you know, they think it's okay. And just because you're getting away with it doesn't mean it's okay. I'm really happy to see the progress we made in the space.
00:09:05
Speaker
As painful as legit script is to get and annoying as that process can be, sometimes it was great. It was great for the field. It really cleaned up the field significantly. and think as these FTC cases come in, that'll clean up the field more.
00:09:17
Speaker
The laws passed around patient brokering. I mean, we know patient brokering still happens, but it's significantly reduced and it's much more, at least it's forced under the table. at least it's not.
00:09:29
Speaker
you know, so, so rampant. So all those things. Yeah. Now, know, I don't want you to give away all your secrets, but I do know that your website offers resources as well as like a blog and whatnot. So kind of what are some of the things that you've written about that are on there that you would give as suggestions for someone who wants ah to do some marketing?
Sharing Marketing Knowledge
00:09:49
Speaker
You know, I mean, we're very open with what works and what doesn't work in the field. i think people value that from us. We're very willing to share what KPIs and benchmarks, what good content looks like.
00:10:02
Speaker
And part of the reason that we're willing to do that because there's a massive difference between knowing something and being able to do it well, right? I could read a book on heart surgery, but that doesn't mean that I should be going and giving people open heart surgery, right?
00:10:17
Speaker
nor would you want me to give you open heart surgery. um It's very, very hard to do marketing well. And the bigger you get, the more complex it is. I mean, making sure that the SEO team is aligned with the web development, is aligned with copywriting, is aligned with paid media campaigns.
00:10:33
Speaker
There's massive workflows and project management that has to go into that on top of staying aligned with the client's goals and their particular reputation and their brand and the story that they're trying to tell.
00:10:46
Speaker
So it's very, very hard to do. So I'm not really worried with people copying us. Many people have tried. It's all in the execution. And then really important, I think, for listeners to understand is lot of people think that marketing is some kind of like independent siloed entity that just gets results by magic on its own if you do it well.
00:11:05
Speaker
And that's 100% inaccurate. inaccurate I can't copy a campaign. And so but let's use something that's a little bit more familiar maybe to everyone. Let's use Starbucks.
00:11:15
Speaker
If I take a Starbucks ad, copy paste the entire ad, and then switch out the logo and run it for Joe's Coffee Shop down the street, it's not going to work. I mean, think about you looking at two ads. You see two ads.
00:11:27
Speaker
It's exactly the same, but one is for Starbucks and one's for Joe's Coffee Shop. Which one are you going to go to? You're going to go the Starbucks one because you trust them, right? It's it's already established. You know the service you're going to get, you know the quality of coffee, you know the costs that are going to be there. There's consistency in their execution.
00:11:44
Speaker
They execute consistently the same way, and so you have a lot of trust in in the value of that brand. Brand is just reputation at the end of the day. So really good marketing is about understanding what your client's differentiator is,
00:11:59
Speaker
And then telling that story, effectively allocating capital to the right channels that are can convert in the right way. And you need a whole journey there, right? can't just run a Google ads campaign. I need my business development outreach connected with my collateral, connected with my Facebook
Long-term Marketing Strategy
00:12:15
Speaker
campaigns, connected with my Google ads campaigns, connected my SEO.
00:12:18
Speaker
All of that has to be aligned for there to be a cumulative effect. And all of it is ultimately driven by the differentiation. So in that sense, marketing is significantly dependent.
00:12:29
Speaker
We see it very much in our campaigns. We can take a similar approach. Let's say we've got two clients that really focus on trauma and they're very good at it. But one client has only been in the market for two months. They just opened up shop.
00:12:41
Speaker
Another client's been established in their market for four years. Our campaigns with the client that's been running for four years are significantly more effective. Why? Because people already know and trust that provider, where the new client, nobody knows them. Nobody knows if they can be trusted yet.
00:12:59
Speaker
So again, marketing is very dependent, and it's dependent based on what's different about a provider, not the commodity of treatment. and Just because you do addiction treatment services doesn't mean marketing can sell it, let's say. There's a whole process that is very much a virtuous loop, feedback loop between the reputation that you have in the community, the execution of the care that you give, and the marketing message that's sent out.
00:13:25
Speaker
Now, this might be one of your marketing secrets, so by all means, tell me that and don't answer. But what do you do with the catch-22 of you can't have people trust you unless you get services, but you can't get services unless people trust you, that kind of thing?
00:13:40
Speaker
It's a great question. And the reality that we always tell clients is it's expensive. You've got to be willing to spend a lot more money. As I just said, the established trauma treatment provider, our campaigns are going to be two to three times more effective than a new treatment provider's campaigns.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, was just talking to, interestingly enough, we had a treatment group in India. They've got about seven facilities in India. They're trying to expand. They want to do some more international expansions. And same situation there. They want to go into new markets.
00:14:08
Speaker
The only way to do that is to spend a ton of money. And I'm very upfront. Oftentimes, that is money spent at a loss. You're not actually going to make money on your initial marketing spends.
00:14:19
Speaker
You're just spending to really try and convince people to get in the door. Now, normally not in a normal marketing campaign, if you introduce a new product, it's the same thing. You often run marketing at a loss.
00:14:30
Speaker
Because not only you paying for the marketing, but you run at a discount. And say, hey, look, you want to try us. You know the competitor. You know the competitor is good. You trust I want you to give us a try. So here's a 20% off coupon.
00:14:41
Speaker
Why not give us a shot? And then when they try you, they're like, oh this is great. I will totally switch by my preference. You can't do that in healthcare, care right? There's laws around kickbacks and discounts and all these things, insurance contracts.
00:14:56
Speaker
We can't offer discounted treatment. So what we have to do is really focus on the differentiation piece and then just really push it out there to make sure we're getting in front of people as much as possible, be willing to give them ah or have them give our clients a try.
00:15:11
Speaker
Then once we start to get people in the door, then our overall cost per admission is going to come down because we're starting to build that reputation. We're going to get good Google reviews. We're going to get more referrals.
00:15:23
Speaker
And so that's how you have to think about marketing. At first, it's always more expensive. And so based in your pro forma and your business plan is the assumption that marketing is going to be a losing cost.
00:15:34
Speaker
to get a return later. And then once you've got an established organization, then obviously you have to make sure that your marketing campaigns are profitable and there's a clear ROI there. But in the beginning, it's often not the case.
00:15:44
Speaker
Now, what ah i'm I'm in marketing myself somewhat. I've had marketing experience. I know that especially nowadays, social media is kind of going through a big change. What with X kind of back you know backing off and Facebook's changing their their privacy things. We've got new blue you know Blue Sky and Mastodon, all these new ones coming out trying to compete.
00:16:06
Speaker
What are your so some of your suggestions for you know how important is social media to marketing and and how to kind of keep keep ah abreast of that?
Multi-channel Marketing Strategy
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah. So think the simplest answer there is you need to be where your audience is.
00:16:22
Speaker
And so that determines your channel strategy and then obviously budget on top of that. So sometimes you'll hear things from people like Facebook doesn't work or TV doesn't work or Google ads don't work for us.
00:16:33
Speaker
There's no such thing. If your audience is there, then that is a channel that you need to be on. Maybe you don't understand that channel. Maybe you're not messaging on that channel appropriately. Maybe you're not reaching the right people on that channel. Right. So there are many things you can be doing wrong to get a bad result.
00:16:50
Speaker
But at the end of the day, if your audience is there, it's going to work. And so in behavioral health, our audience is almost everywhere. Now, you can tier that strategy, right?
00:17:00
Speaker
So what's one place where a lot of people with substance use and behavioral health issues end up? The hospital. And so that's a really good place for our outreach teams to go and for us to market to that staff on LinkedIn campaigns.
00:17:14
Speaker
Very effective because we know that there's a lot of people that go there. Google is the same thing. but So when we can target by keyword, if we target by someone searching for addiction treatment near me or counseling services near me,
00:17:29
Speaker
Google is basically feeding us the people that are looking specifically for our services. So they've done the work for us of kind of sorting through that. But there's a cost benefit analysis there.
00:17:40
Speaker
Google charges through the nose for that high focused, high intent targeting. Whereas if you go on Facebook or X, I can pay a $10 CPM. I can reach a thousand people for 10 bucks.
00:17:54
Speaker
That's insanely cheap. So even if I only get you know one or two people converting to a call off of a Facebook campaign, I'm not paying anything for it. So I pay through the nose for Google for a high intent call.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then on something like Facebook, I'm paying for a lot of impressions and a small number of individual calls. But the cost comparison is Facebook's actually cheaper at the end of the day.
00:18:18
Speaker
So it it really comes down to audience and understanding where they are and then just making sure that you have the right message and the right targeting in place on those platforms and the right expectations.
00:18:29
Speaker
So like one thing we'll see with Facebook, for example, when we take over campaigns is they were running like some direct response campaign. Like, call us now. Who the heck is on Facebook? Being like, oh, yeah, i'm just going stop what I'm doing and call for addiction treatment. man That's like seeing a car ad, stopping what you're doing, going to dealership and buying a car. Nobody does that. That's not how marketing is supposed to work on those platforms.
00:18:48
Speaker
So you have to understand the function of the platform. And the function of a platform like Facebook is to nurture awareness and build reputation over time. So that as people decide tomorrow and next week and next month that they need treatment,
00:19:01
Speaker
that they're going to be going to you rather than going to Google and potentially coming across your competitors, Google ads campaigns and calling them, you know. So all of these channels work together and but they work together strategically. You have to understand what each channel does, how it operates, what a successful campaign looks like and what the metrics are.
00:19:20
Speaker
And those metrics are not always calls. They're often not calls, actually. i mean Google and your SEO work are the only thing where you can really kind of generate direct calls. Even with SEO,
00:19:31
Speaker
where the calls come from. They heard about you somewhere. Part of it's coming from your rankings. If you're doing really well and ranking on Google, that's go get you a certain amount of volume. But then a lot of it, it's coming from your reputation in the community. It's coming from word of mouth referrals. It's coming from your Facebook campaigns. It's coming from your TV campaigns.
00:19:46
Speaker
you know So separating out what your SEO is doing versus your Facebook versus your TV, it's just kind of a fool's errand. People get really obsessed about that stuff. But At the end of the day, if I'm getting calls and people are coming into our care at a out rate that is affordable in terms of our overall marketing spend, then that's how it works. Right. Coca-Cola didn't build their company off Google Ads.
00:20:07
Speaker
Starbucks, the Mayo Clinic, Pfizer. Right. you know, all these massive multinational Fortune 500 companies. Don't sit there and look at their Google ads call volume. They push out TV campaigns, Facebook campaigns, X campaigns, because they know that that's what drives their long-term sustainability, even if they can't get a 100% read on it.
00:20:27
Speaker
And then the last thing I would say is you you really need to be running paid ads. So like when you look at social media, it's free, right? Posting to Facebook is free. Posting to TikTok is free.
00:20:38
Speaker
But how do these platforms make their money? They make it by selling ads. So they purposely throttle your reach on a social media platform. They're only going to give you three to maybe 5% reach of your total followers.
00:20:52
Speaker
So you're not getting much bang for the effort that you put into that. And then there's no restriction on it. So if I post a TikTok video and I'm a treatment provider in Nashville, Tennessee, well, who's going to see that TikTok video?
00:21:07
Speaker
People are kind of interested in it. That's how the algorithm runs it. Right. So you get people in New York, you get people in Canada, gonna have people in China seeing your TikTok video. None of those people are really potential patients for you. Your patients are going to come from most often the Nashville area.
00:21:21
Speaker
So when you run an ad campaign, you can put in geofencing and targeting and there and say, I'd only want to advertise to Nashville. Right. I can't do that when I make an organic TikTok or Facebook post.
00:21:32
Speaker
So organic posting is, you want to have a presence, you know, when people see your page and it gives you a little something, but it's not effective from a return on time investment standpoint.
00:21:45
Speaker
You know, you want a minimum amount of time spent on your social media, organic posting, and you want more effort on your paid media campaigns. Now, you've been doing this for a while. And I, like I said, I have a marketing background too. I remember back when you still had to convince people that, when you know, having a website was, was a good idea back when, back when those were still new.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah. Kind of on the tail of that last question, would you say marketing is harder now just different than it was back when you just did eight radio ads, TV ads and newspaper ads kind of thing?
00:22:18
Speaker
yeah That's a great question. i would say it's just different. you know i We have the same issue. i mean I remember talking to CEOs when we first started. and they're like what do you mean marketing on Facebook? like you know I don't understand that.
00:22:32
Speaker
That's the stuff for the millennials. i you know I'll like hire like a college intern who will do our Facebook for us. No thanks. We're good. which was just shocking to me because the results that we got on it back in the day were phenomenal.
00:22:45
Speaker
But why did we get such phenomenal results originally? It's because no one else was playing there and you had a lot of attention. So I can't get anyone to move forward and build trust or take action unless they're paying attention to us, right? So they have to pay attention to the ad first and then we can hopefully get them to take continuing steps.
00:23:05
Speaker
Well, because no one was advertising on Facebook early on, when you saw a Facebook ad, you were like, oh, that's kind of interesting. What's going on there? You had people's attention to a much more significant degree.
00:23:16
Speaker
The same thing happened with email. you know When you first started running email campaigns, everyone checked their email and all emails were important. It wasn't like today where we we're bombarded by spam email. so email is a burden rather than a benefit.
00:23:30
Speaker
um So because you had focused attention, email campaigns were insanely effective when it first came out, just like Facebook was insanely effective. Plus, it was cheap. I mean, we used to have CPMs. that They were about like $2 CPMs when I first started on Facebook campaigns.
00:23:44
Speaker
We even got individual Facebook reps. Like now you can't get a live person at Facebook for the life of You got to be spending a million dollars a month minimum to get a real Facebook rep. It's not like those reps that contact you. Those are all like contractors and they're actually more salespeople than reps.
00:23:57
Speaker
A real rep is a million dollars a month for for you to get that. But back in the day, we could spend a thousand dollars a month and get rep. It was great. So anyway, yeah that's really my perspective on on the social media piece and you know how you how you should be thinking about it.
00:24:11
Speaker
Now, your company also has a podcast, the Recovery Executive Podcast. ah Talk a little bit about kind of what was
The Recovery Executive Podcast
00:24:18
Speaker
the origin of that? why Why do you do it? And give me the elevator pitch about what it's about.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, so pretty much in the name, it's really the executive podcast for for people that are trying to build and run treatment programs. And i think it's better described by people I've talked to. They consider it almost a de facto college course on the industry at this point.
00:24:40
Speaker
We cover everything from clinical care to building curriculums to business development and outreach to financial projections to modeling to mergers and acquisitions. So everything is kind of covered in the podcast at this point.
00:24:52
Speaker
Why did I start it? i started it just because it was interesting to me and it was something that i noticed was missing in the field. So there was a lot of information on, you you can go to conferences and go to clinical therapy presentations you on how to deliver care, what care looks like, et cetera.
00:25:10
Speaker
No one was giving presentations on what good business development looked like. No one was giving presentations on what a good Google ads campaign was or or what good performers were for new business models.
00:25:21
Speaker
And so I recognize that gap. And so I just wanted to fill it. And the way that I run Circle Social and the way that we think about business in general is everything's about adding value. The more value that we create for other people, better that we're going to do.
00:25:36
Speaker
but Why do you pay for anything? I'm going buy a candy bar because I'm happy with the dollar I spent for the wonderful taste that I get. I'm buy that video game because I love it. You get the money back, right? Good business creates value that people are willing to pay for.
00:25:50
Speaker
And so on our end, we just create a ton of value through our blogs, through our research, through things like the podcast, And people see how good we are at what we do. And and then that makes them want to work with us.
00:26:03
Speaker
So it ends up serving a business function on top of just the personal interest piece. so Now, you said yeah and you've gone through recovery yourself, correct? Obviously, that that influences how you how you approach your marketing position. But one of the things we talk about in Destination Change is that and recovery and is a journey, not not a straight line that you can go all over the place.
00:26:25
Speaker
So I like to ask people who've gone through recovery, kind of what does it mean to you to go through treatment recovery and how does that impact the industry? So on my end, I think it's maybe potentially a loaded question.
00:26:36
Speaker
So I've always believed that there's multiple pathways to recovery, which was unique back when I went through. Right. It was 12 step or nothing. Right. 12 step or the highway was kind of the the mentality really for the entire industry through almost 2018. 2018, we started to see small shifts and in terms of multiple pathways to recovery. Right.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I've always approached it as, you know, recovery is how people define it for themselves and what works for them in their lives. And that's why I think good counseling, good behavioral health care is, whether it's addiction or for for other disorders.
00:27:12
Speaker
And also, like my experience going through treatment was not overly positive. It was... fairly poorly run from a program standpoint. i didn't really see the people getting the help that they needed. And so I think there's continues to be opportunities in our space to really focus on the quality of our program. And that's why you hear me talk about quality all the time. Not only is it really important from a marketing standpoint, know, I can't market thin air. The better your program is, as I've said, the easier it is for us to market and the more results we're going to get together.
00:27:45
Speaker
But if you don't have much there, then it's much harder for us to do that. And then obviously doesn't have as positive of an impact on the patients. You know, ah stat I often like to share is like, if you look at the pharmaceutical research on the efficacy of things like SSRIs,
00:28:01
Speaker
you know your placebo effect is about 30%. Even a lot of the research that like William Miller conducted for motivational interviewing often found that if you put people on a wait list, about 50% of them will show a significant improvement.
00:28:13
Speaker
So that means one in three, sometimes even one in two, People are going to get better just from a placebo, just by the fact that they've taken some action, started to make positive steps in their life.
00:28:24
Speaker
This creates this positive feedback loop of like, OK, I've taken a positive action. So people respond to me positively. Good things happen. I feel better. I take more positive action. People are respond more. positive like You know, there's positive cycle that can just one step can kind of get you moving in the right direction.
00:28:40
Speaker
And so that contributes to that placebo effect. But oftentimes we get overconfident in the field and we say, well, look, I talked to a bunch of my patients and they're doing wonderful. right Well, right. 30 to sometimes 50% of them would be doing great, even if you had never talked to them, even if you had just given them a sugar pill and say, hey, take this, go home, you'll feel better.
00:29:00
Speaker
So we really have to kind raise the bar in the way that we look at our outcomes and deliver care and say, we have to create ah more than one in three, ideally more than one in two. And that really shows efficacy from a programming standpoint.
00:29:14
Speaker
So that's that's how I think about kind of recovery. We need these multiple pathways. We have to think more about and just anecdotal kind of feedback, but we're really looking at the data, understanding feeding placebo effects and and basic recovery rates and waiting list rates.
00:29:30
Speaker
And how do we meet people where they are? Because like I said, when I went through treatment, it did not meet my needs in any way, shape or form. It just wasn't a good fit for me in the way that I was approached and the tools that I was provided doesn't mean it won't help other people. But, you know, for me, it wasn't there. So that multiple pathways piece and working together with the patients to find what their treatment goals are versus imposing them from the outside.
00:29:54
Speaker
you know, that's a big thing, I think. Right. Now, this is kind of a simple question, but not if that makes sense. One of the things we talked we've talked about in prior podcasts are the various barriers to move forward in treatment. And the ones that keep popping up, obviously, are the stigma and, you know, the the the price of of recovery.
00:30:13
Speaker
How would you recommend, you know, would you incorporate, how it incorporate that into your marketing? Incorporate in the marketing. Or would you?
00:30:25
Speaker
but Yeah. You know what? I guess I would answer that but people are pretty familiar with the cost and the costs are also comparable across the board.
00:30:35
Speaker
So whether you have the income level to do private pay or you're you're just going to pay your deductible off of your end network policy, that's That's the same across the board. So you don't really have to worry about competing with that. And again, you can't. You can't offer discounts. It's illegal. You know you can't waive deductibles.
00:30:54
Speaker
So that's not a potential differentiator. It's not a lever that you can pull. Everyone's in network with insurance these days. you know i mean So that's not really differentiated for anyone. We've run a lot of campaigns. I mean, clients will ask us, i like, you know, we just we just got a network with BCBS. So can we run campaigns for BCBS?
00:31:13
Speaker
There is almost no search volume across the country for people typing in counseling services with BCBS or addiction treatment with BCBS. That's not a thing. I mean, you can just run the Google Trends data. It's not there.
00:31:25
Speaker
you know So there's not real a lot of value in in terms of marketing specific insurance policies. You should just be in network with most people most of the time. And your cost structure should be set up to be appropriately profitable within the reimbursement rates that are common in your area. That's a much easier way to do things right rather than trying to like cherry pick high paying policies. That's not a sustainable business model as as we've seen again and again.
00:31:50
Speaker
So we don't really focus on the price piece. you know Even the the free assessment and stuff like that, you know people used to run that stuff all the time. like Oh, you know your treatment could be free with insurance or free assessment.
00:32:01
Speaker
We have not seen anything in the data. We've tested that and tested that. And we do not get better click-through rates. We do not get cheaper cost per call costs by running those campaigns because people are pretty familiar with the cost of care. And again, it's it's's not a differentiator. It's going to same everywhere they call.
00:32:17
Speaker
So what really differentiates your program is your ability to provide recovery outcomes. And that's what most people want to hear. Sometimes it's differentiation on amenities and luxury treatment and things like that. There's a certain demographic that's going to move towards that or you know being able to use their laptop. That's important to them.
00:32:34
Speaker
It's a small portion of the market. So you'll get some conversions by offering that kind of differentiation and then obviously making sure it's messaged in your marketing campaigns. But mostly it comes down to the quality of the client go there. I want to know, is my family member or am I actually going to get better? Is this going to work for me?
00:32:53
Speaker
And oftentimes, like said, there's a really strong subjective component. You know, for some people, 12-step modalities, faith-based modalities work incredibly well. For other people, they don't work. For some people, MAT is a really important part of a recovery. For some people, it's not.
00:33:07
Speaker
And so by messaging appropriately, you attract the right people to call in the first place, which is going to make you more effective clinically because you're getting the right people in the right programs.
00:33:20
Speaker
And it actually also good marketing always actually pushes away people that aren't a good fit. So yeah, at the end of the day, it's market your program rather than ah the cost. Excuse
Industry Shifts and MAT Acceptance
00:33:31
Speaker
me.
00:33:31
Speaker
Now, we already kind of touched on this, but I always like to ask, what is the biggest change you've seen in the industry? And where do you see it going in the next few years? but Good question. I'd say the two biggest quick changes I've seen, one was a legit script in the first place. That was a big change. Actually, I guess three.
00:33:48
Speaker
Another one, another big one that happened like a year later was the acceptance or at least the tolerance of MAT. That was a massive paradigm shift for the industry. And I'd say the last one is just the saturation in the space.
00:34:00
Speaker
So I was just at lunch today with a bunch of different treatment providers that meet on a monthly basis here in the Annapolis area. There are more people that want to come to that lunch than we have seats available.
00:34:11
Speaker
There are so many treatment providers in any metropolitan area, even most smaller areas. suburban areas in the country. So what's really happened then is this significant need for, like I talked about, niching down or differentiating your program and standing out.
00:34:28
Speaker
yeah Because treatment from a marketing standpoint has become almost a commodity. There is so much addiction treatment offered. There are so many counseling services available. I can pull up Google Maps and within 10 miles of my house, which is a quick drive, I can go to 15 different places.
00:34:45
Speaker
So you have to be able to talk to your prospective patient tell them why they're going to come to you rather than the other 14 people that are literally a six minute drive away. That's it's a significant change that a lot of people are dealing with now.
00:34:59
Speaker
And on top of that, Google has really started restricting from an SEO standpoint. It's much, much harder to rank. So back in the day, we could rank nationally. I could have a treatment provided in Florida. We could get them ranking in New York.
00:35:10
Speaker
You can't do that anymore. um Even trying to rank across the state of Florida is almost impossible these days from an SEO standpoint. So that means that we have to push out more campaigns and get in front of people in ways that are not search driven, unless we want to pay through the nose for Google ads, which we're not always a big fan of.
00:35:29
Speaker
So those are so some of the biggest shifts. What are your thoughts on AI and its being used through for like marketing and and whatnot?
AI in Marketing
00:35:39
Speaker
I'm not huge on AI yet. It's great for systems optimizations. Like our team uses it to source research, you know, so we'll just use chat GBT and say, hey, go find me five articles on depression and addiction. Right.
00:35:54
Speaker
And so it speeds up the the process sometimes really good for things like spelling and grammar correction. But at the end of the day, AI from a production standpoint is derivative.
00:36:06
Speaker
At best, all it's doing is it's taking the five top search results from Google and then re-spinning them and reworking them and spitting out the exact same thing said in a different way. That's not valuable from a Google standpoint. Google doesn't want to see spun content.
00:36:22
Speaker
And it's not valuable in like what I'm talking about here in this differentiation. So if I read your blog on depression and addiction, and then I read your competitor's blog on depression and addiction, if they're exactly the same thing, then it still doesn't help me choose you.
00:36:36
Speaker
So not really a big fan and in terms of how that's operated. And then from a search standpoint, same same thing. So people are using AI search a lot more, which is... reducing the amount of traffic going to people's websites.
00:36:48
Speaker
So this is causing challenges in terms of the way that people traditionally look at their marketing metrics because traffic is, you know, an important leading indicator. or If I get more traffic, then I should get more calls and I should get more people coming into the program.
00:37:01
Speaker
We're seeing drops in traffic, and it's not necessarily because they're not doing as good in the rankings from an SEO standpoint. It's the fact that Google shows a lot of results without going to the website. You have your knowledge panel that shows the phone number, shows the address, shows basic information. you have little rich snippets that answer questions for you from f FAQs where you don't even have to click to the website.
00:37:21
Speaker
And you have AI doing summaries and giving that information to people. All without them ever having to go to the website. So you're seeing a lot less web traffic across the board than you used to.
00:37:33
Speaker
And again, this goes back to why your display campaigns, your Facebook, your TV, your X, your TikTok, like those campaigns have become more and more important because it's channels to ensure that you're getting in front of people. Whereas with SEO, it's actually becoming harder and harder.
00:37:48
Speaker
So at the end of the day, ai is a tool. It can be useful for speeding things up, but it doesn't create anything different, which is problematic from a marketing standpoint. It doesn't help you separate your business.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah. I always like to ask somebody if you could go back in time to when you were first starting out, what would be some of the piece of advice, industry advice you'd give yourself? What's, you know, what's the lesson learned kind of thing?
00:38:15
Speaker
I'll answer this. and When I first got involved in the space, I was obsessed with performance and data. That was actually ah differentiation component for us back then because so many marketing companies and agencies and even companies in general, again, they didn't understand social media like we talked about.
00:38:34
Speaker
And so didn't understand how to measure it or or get results. And so the fact that I could track a click to a call to an admission, the fact that I could see how much time people are spending on a page, what parts of the page they are, like all this insane data that we have these days was a differentiator versus traditional marketers who talk a lot about brand colors and logos and fonts and stuff like that.
00:38:57
Speaker
so So I was real obsessed with the data. And I would say nowadays, almost everyone's obsessed with the data. Everyone wants to know what the ah ROI is going to be for X campaign, and they want to see it tomorrow.
00:39:10
Speaker
So what I've actually changed, and how I would go back and look at it's changing, is understanding the importance of committing to intelligent strategies. So like I said, if my audience is on a platform, I should be there.
00:39:25
Speaker
If I'm not getting in the results I want, that's because I'm doing something wrong on the platform. It's not because that platform's a bad strategy. But there's no way for me to tell that in the data, right? So what people are saying is, they they okay, I ran a Facebook campaign for two weeks, and I can't see any admissions that we got off the Facebook campaign.
00:39:44
Speaker
That's misunderstanding how to use data because you're not. They're not going to click a Facebook ad and then call. They're going to think about you a week later, do a Google search, check out your online reviews, and then call through the website so it looks like it was an SEO search. right So my data can't give me a granular perspective on bottom line efficacy for a Facebook campaign. i have to measure overall lift.
00:40:07
Speaker
In the same way, let's take, say I've got a Google Ads campaign. That's what I've run forever. So a lot of providers, when you first go in, all they run is Google Ads because, again, they're obsessed with the data. And so they're like, well, this is this we've seen get calls and admissions, but we haven't seen it from Facebook.
00:40:23
Speaker
All right. So you have no data on how to run a good Facebook campaign. You have nothing that's going to tell you what works in that space. So, you know we've got data there, but you don't. So you've got nothing for it to help you.
00:40:36
Speaker
But then also we think about it from expansion standpoint. So but let's say we're taking up just to use Nashville again. There are only so many treatment searches in Nashville on a given day.
00:40:47
Speaker
Right. There's only so many people that go to Google and search for treatment. for high intent terms like drug rehab near me, counseling services near me, whatever. Once you max that out, there is no more.
00:40:57
Speaker
And so the only way to get more calls is to from Google ads, if we just stay with that platform is to expand your keyword set. And so now I'm getting into softer terms, like maybe things like, you know, how to manage withdrawal, right?
00:41:11
Speaker
I'm not looking for treatment, but I'm getting in front of someone looking to manage withdrawal that I can maybe convince that might need treatment. Now, that could be a different conversion rate and a different way I need to engage with the patient.
00:41:23
Speaker
Because the patient's with high intent. I just need to call. They're looking for a bed. Do you take my insurance? It's a really easy call to handle. But these patients that called because they saw like a managing withdrawals campaign, they're pretty ambivalent about treatment. They're just kind of looking around. So now I need to be able to convince them.
00:41:41
Speaker
why they need to get into care, and then why our care is the best for them. That's a completely different way of interacting as a call center rep than the first set. But the call center has no data on how to do that, right? They can't look at their data and say, oh, because they'll look at their data and say, look well, look, you know, we were usually converting at 30% of our qualified calls.
00:42:01
Speaker
Now we're converting at 15%. fifteen percent These calls aren't good. Wrong. The calls are good, but you need to interact with that patient in a very different way. and again, your historical data is not going to tell you how to do that.
00:42:14
Speaker
so So, you know, kind of long answer, but I think helpful for people to realize is strategy and good strategy is not always based in data that you have.
00:42:26
Speaker
You've got to think strategically and smartly and intelligently about what should work. And then if if your approach isn't working, it's probably because you're doing something wrong. So then change it up and figure it out until you get it working. and Maybe you need to give it more time.
00:42:41
Speaker
Maybe you need more frequency. Maybe you need better targeting. Maybe need different messaging. and Maybe your call center team needs to be retrained to handle a completely different kind of inquiry than they were handling before. You know, all these things.
00:42:52
Speaker
Now our audiences is wide range there from people from, you know, that are actually in marketing as well as up to CEOs. i always like to ask a similar question, but if someone was fresh out of new marketing school or they, you know, they're inspired by this podcast, they want to go into marketing.
00:43:10
Speaker
What would be the one thing you'd want to tell them to kind of prepare them? Hmm. a I guess I would answer your question in terms of like what what would make them successful, which is probably what they want to know.
00:43:23
Speaker
And so my answer would be provide value, right? What is considered valuable in in the role that you're in, whether it's graphic design, business development outreach, PPC manager, et cetera.
00:43:36
Speaker
How do you provide value, not just within the organization, but obviously to the people that you're interacting with, whether that's community referral partners or patients? So many people that I see focus on, like I said, trying trying to get the conversion through clever wordplay that gets more clicks.
00:43:55
Speaker
That doesn't really drive long-term results. You to think, what can I get? What is this patient searching for? Or what's this community referral partner need? How can I help them achieve that goal?
00:44:07
Speaker
That's what's going to drive bottom line results for the organization. it's go to and then ah that's what's going to drive your your success in a role. Now, based off my own past experience, as we've discussed, marketing is is kind of nebulous. there's it's There's no instant turnaround. There's no, you know, the next day you get 500 more customers kind of thing.
Consistency in Marketing Strategy
00:44:28
Speaker
it's It's a long play. And sometimes you don't even know why you're getting the increase. You can't nail it down.
00:44:34
Speaker
So how do you kind of explain the importance of marketing to the powers that be that think it's just, you know, throwing something up on social media? Yeah. And that's just a constant struggle, right? Because again, we have ah a very data-processed world. We have a very short-term ROI world. i think a lot, a lack of strategy, unrealistic expectations.
00:44:55
Speaker
And you the just one of the potential clients I was talking with yesterday, you're like, well, they always say this, right? You always get, well, you know, like when it works, we'll just keep investing more in it. Well, yeah, of course.
00:45:07
Speaker
Right. I mean, if I give you a dollar and you gave me $2 back, I would do that all day, every day. and If it was that easy to build a successful business, we'd all be billionaires because we were just like, oh, you know, you just tweak these marketing campaigns. I get $2 for every dollar I spend.
00:45:23
Speaker
right It's not that easy. 80% of businesses fail, including 80% of behavioral health businesses. right They're are not very successful. The vast majority of businesses in the US, s I think it's 90%, if I remember right, don't make more than a million dollars a year.
00:45:38
Speaker
like The ability to create a successful business or high income for yourself as individual is incredibly, incredibly hard. There are super high failure rates because business is not easy and marketing is not some magic, as you said.
00:45:53
Speaker
So I try to explain that to individuals. And then that component of, well, you have to be willing to commit. And so when you really think about smart marketing, it's a fixed kind of budget spend.
00:46:06
Speaker
Depends on your business model, but on average, 7% to 8% of revenue is a pretty good marketing budget. And so what you want to do is you just want to deliver that marketing budget and figure it out.
00:46:17
Speaker
So if it's not working for you three months in, then you keep that spend where it is, but then you tweak it, right? Maybe I need different messaging. Maybe my product's not good enough. Maybe our care isn't good enough or it's not different enough, right?
00:46:31
Speaker
It's not always the marketing. it's It's related pieces. Maybe my call center is not trained well enough to convert the leads that we're bringing in. There's a million different things that you have to troubleshoot, but you need to keep that spend fixed so that you can figure out what it is and and do the tweaking and do the testing until things start to work.
00:46:49
Speaker
So that's you know kind of my main piece of advice is there is no immediate return. If it was that easy, we'd all do it. And it's so dependent. Again, it's it's not an independent entity. Marketing is dependent on the reputation of the organization that you're marketing for and its ability to differentiate itself versus established competitors in the same marketplace.
00:47:09
Speaker
So keep the spend, figure it out, make it work, and stop obsessing about short-term ROI. And, you know, if it was easy, they wouldn't be needing to hire organizations such as Circle Social.
00:47:24
Speaker
I was like, ah though we're getting close to the end, but I was like, when all is sudden done, why do you do it? Why do you do what you do? It really goes back to what i talked about in the beginning. i absolutely love the work that we do. I find it so incredibly valuable.
00:47:37
Speaker
in in our role, because we're so ingrained with with our clients, where we offer we yeah operate much more as a partner than a vendor. i mean, we hear their calls, we talk to patients, we manage reviews.
00:47:50
Speaker
And so through that, we get a lot of feedback from the work that our clients are doing in their communities and the value that they're providing to patients. And then on top of that, you know I have ah role that is can be fairly influential. you know i have pretty good relationships with the heads of the payers at some of the larger payer organizations. yeah I have the phone number of a lot of the CEOs in the country.
00:48:13
Speaker
and so we collaborate and we work together on things and we move the needle and try to improve patient care and improve access. And so that gets me up and that makes me excited every day is just the the impact I've seen in the industry overall through the work that everyone does, as well as the collaborations I've had with other great people in the space that I've seen improve the care for patients.
00:48:36
Speaker
That is great. What kind of resources do you use on a regular basis to kind of keep up to date with what's happening in the industry? I am a voracious reader. So I read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of podcasts.
00:48:53
Speaker
I watch YouTube videos. I talk to people. i mean, just talking to other people in the space is incredibly important. And so that's my way of you know staying abreast of everything. the i just I consume a lot of but of media.
00:49:05
Speaker
you know Some of it's behavioral health related, some of it's research oriented, some of it's marketing related. you know bounce around in terms of my focus on any given week, but just spend a lot of time talking to people, reading things and listening to things.
00:49:17
Speaker
Is there like the book or the website that is like, if you could only do one ah that you would encourage people to go to? Just got think of things recently.
00:49:29
Speaker
so the Better Therapy podcast by Bruce Wampold, phenomenal. Phenomenal. He doesn't produce a ton of stuff, but when he does, it's really, really good.
00:49:39
Speaker
Anything by Scott Miller is really good. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. She does a lot of ah work around emotions and trauma and things like that now. So I'm a huge fan her work.
00:49:53
Speaker
Those were probably the big ones from the behavioral health side of things. On the marketing side, trying to remember his last name, but he's like the head of he's one of the VPs over at Ogilvy, Rory something. He's phenomenal. He does a lot of really good marketing work.
00:50:09
Speaker
Otherwise, on the marketing side, i know i'll listen to various random podcasts on SEO or paid media or whatever, but i ah little arrogant, but I find that they're not as good as, as our team and kind of the way that we approach things. And so I often find I'm not actually learning a lot from, from those other people.
00:50:27
Speaker
organizations, but I do like the strategy approach. So like the stuff that Rory puts out is is really, really good because he's very strategic rather than this, you know, here's how we tweak my Google ad campaign. Well, I mean, we're really good at Google ads optimization, but I don't care how well you optimize those campaigns. If the business isn't good, you know, the business has to be, again, connected to the quality of the marketing campaigns that you're running to be effective.
00:50:51
Speaker
Right. Now I could probably talk to you for another couple of hours, at least as a marketing nerd myself, but unfortunately we are out of time.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:51:00
Speaker
If somebody wants to get ahold of you or learn more about you, where would they go?
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So just Nick Jaworski, CEO of Circle Social on LinkedIn. A lot of people engage with me there. Or I'm always happy that people reach out directly. I love to talk shop, see what's on in the industry in different places.
00:51:16
Speaker
So you can email me at nick at circlesocialinc.com. And then our website is circlesocialinc.com, where you can find our podcasts, and our our blogs and industry research and everything as well.
00:51:28
Speaker
And for those who aren't reading the show notes, that is Jorski, J-A-W-O-R-S-K-I. So that way they can find you easily on LinkedIn. Thank you very much. You've been listening to Destination Change. Our guest today was Nick Jorski. Thank you for being here.
00:51:43
Speaker
Our theme song is Sun Nation by Kitsa and used via Creative Commons license by the Free Music Archive. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can get more listeners. In the meantime, you can always see more about the podcast, including show notes and where else to listen, on our website, www.nbhap.org. If you have questions for the podcast, please email us at info at nbhap.org. Thanks for listening.
00:52:08
Speaker
Thank you so much, Angie.