Marketing a ketamine clinic is one of the hardest marketing challenges around. Here’s four reasons why marketing a ketamine clinic is one of the hardest marketing challenges, and three ways to address the problem.
Constant need for new patients
Some medical specialties, such as dermatology or primary care, have an expectation that patients will continue to come back for repeat encounters over multiple months or years. This makes it much easier to fill a provider schedule and keep it full. Once the desired number of patients is met, the practice only needs to replace patients who leave with new patients.
Not so with ketamine. Six treatments over 2 weeks is the standard protocol, meaning patients have an average lifespan with the practice of a mere 14 days. This creates a voracious appetite for new patients. Almost as soon as the practice attracts a new patient it must immediately set about trying to find a new patient to replace that patient in two weeks. Ketamine clinics must constantly attract new patients or they will wither and die.
This constant need for new patients makes ketamine clincs one of the hardest marketing challenges in healthcare.
Banned content on Google
To make things worse, “ketamine” is a banned advertising term on Google. If you’ve tried running PPC ads on Google, there’s a good chance the ads were disallowed or flagged for banned content.
Unfortunately, the prohibition isn’t limited just to the wording of your ad. Even if you don’t use the word “ketamine” directly in your ad copy, Google crawls your practice website as part of its ad approval process. Undoubtedly, you use the word “ketamine” on your own website (and if you’re running a ketamine clinic, it would be highly unusual – not to mention very poor SEO practice – not to use the word “ketamine” at all on your site). Simply using the word “ketamine” on your own website will cause your ads to be flagged.
How’s that for a marketing challenge? You can’t even say what you offer on the biggest ad platform on the internet.
Unfamiliar Procedure
While ketamine is growing in recognition, it still lacks awareness among the majority of patients who could benefit from ketamine treatment (the target audience). And if patients have heard of ketamine they likely have a negative connotation as either a party drug, animal tranquilizer, or anesthetic – certainly nothing positive related to depression treatment or mental health.
Having to educate a target market on a treatment they’ve either never heard of or have a negative impression of makes ketamine marketing a significant challenge.
Out of pocket expense
As if it weren’t already hard enough to attract new leads, converting those leads to patients is a different matter altogether. Because ketamine has not received FDA approval as a depression treatment, it is not covered by insurance. Almost all ketamine treatment today is an out-of-pocket medical expense. Patients have been conditioned to avoid out-of-pocket expenses and prefer treatments covered by insurance. Many patients will refuse treatments not covered by insurance, even if it is the right treatment for them.
Marketing a healthcare treatment that is not covered by insurance is always an uphill battle and certainly adds to the difficulty of ketamine marketing.
Three Ways To Make Ketamine Marketing Easier
Build a wide online net
Because of the constant need for new patients, ketamine clinics need to pull every lever of online marketing. PPC ads (yes, there is a way!), social media ads, SEO, local SEO, and content marketing create a consistent mechanism to deliver new leads.
“How can I afford all that?” you ask. Clearly the ROI must be there since the need for new patients is so high. Working with a marketing firm experienced in marketing for ketamine clinics (like Mindhealth Media) can help ensure the ROI is there for online campaigns.
You can begin the conversation by scheduling a 15-minute intro call
Add additional services
One way to solve the patient churn problem is to turn one-time patients into repeat patients. Many ketamine clinics are adding additional services, such as life coaching or ongoing booster treatments, to give patients options to continue with additional services after the initial ketamine treatment has ended. This creates a higher patient lifetime value, which has a big impact on the up front ROI for marketing efforts.
Shift the insurance conversation
To overcome hesitation around out-of-pocket expenses, you need to make patients an offer so compelling they can’t refuse. For example: “What is it worth to put depression behind you forever? What is depression costing you today in terms of quality of life and missed opportunities?”
Second, insurance coverage is only part of the payment discussion. Patients with FSA or HSA plans can use tax-free money to pay for ketamine treatments – no insurance approval required. And in the case of FSA plans, the money is “use it or lose it” each year – adding urgency to spend down an FSA account before the end of the plan year. Getting ketamine treatments is a great way to spend down the FSA money and receive a great health benefit in return.
Bonus tip: Many FSA plans allow account holders to spend the *entire* planned contribution balance at any time during the year, even if the money hasn’t actually been contributed yet. Using FSA money isn’t just an end-of-year strategy.
Next Steps
If you are running into these same challenges while marketing your ketamine clinic, try one of the proposed remedies. Or, if you’d like to bring someone else on to do the heavy lifting, book an intro call with Mindhealth Media today to turn things around.