It’s September! In the addiction treatment and recovery community, you know that only means one thing: National Recovery Month!
National Recovery Month isn’t just a holiday, it is an opportunity to promote your business and to make connections with other key players in your local recovery community.
Are you taking full advantage of National Recovery Month?
Today, we’ll talk about 4 critical steps you can take today to leverage National Recovery Month in marketing and relationship building activities for your addiction treatment center.
#1 - Make a Plan (AKA Content Calendar) for Your Addiction Treatment Center’s National Recovery Month Marketing Plan
Your efforts to bank on National Recovery Month won’t go well unless you have a plan going in. Plan ahead of time what your goals are and what messaging you need to get there. Where will you share your message? Who will you share it with? Why? Know the answers to these questions going in.
A content calendar can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Many treatment centers use an actual calendar format to plan what social media posts, blog posts, email messages or in-person efforts they’ll undertake during National Recovery Month.
Common targets include:
Potential patients
Family and friends of potential patients
Referral partners
Alumni
Each of these audiences needs a different message to catch and hold their attention. Don’t try to speak to all of these folks at once too often or you’ll miss out on the opportunity to “hook” each audience directly.
#2 - Know Your Hashtags
If social media is a part of your messaging plan for National Recovery Month (hint: it should be!) then it pays to know your hashtags. Posting on social media is great, but it has very limited reach if you don’t use hashtags to give your post a broader audience.
But what are the best hashtags to use for National Recovery Month?
Look no further than SAMHSA for the answer to these questions. SAHMSA invented National Recovery Month in 1989 to promote evidence-based recovery and treatment and celebrate the recovery community in the United States. According to SAMHSA, the official hashtags for National Recovery Month are:
#RecoveryMonth
#RecoveryIsPossible
#RecoveryJourney
In addition to these hashtags, it is ALWAYS advisable to use a geographic hashtag for physical businesses that cater to a specific geographic area. If your treatment center is in Florida, throw in a #Florida hashtag to reach the people you’re looking to message. There’s no point in reaching thousands of people in Idaho if they’ll never become patients.
#3 - Run a Promotion
National Recovery Month can generate a buzz around recovery. It puts treatment at the top of mind for the general public, which means that more people will be looking for addiction treatment services in this month than usual. September may not bring as many potential patients as January, which tends to be the busiest time at addiction treatment centers, but it does have the potential to boost admissions.
Another idea that can really boost admissions? A promotion in celebration of National Recovery Month.
Your promotion can be anything: a free workshop, a free consultation, a coupon for 10% off or a gift card contest. Use your imagination and determine the best promotional fit for your market. Teaming up the promotion in honor of National Recovery Month gives your promotion a boost and a sense of urgency and timeliness that it wouldn’t have on it’s own.
#4 - Celebrate Referral Partners
Where do most of your patients come from? If you’re like most addiction treatment organizations the answer to that question is typically: referral partners!
Referral partners, like community based organizations, social workers, medical professionals, clergy people, and other respected advisors in the community are so often responsible for helping those in trouble with addiction to find a path towards recovery. These individuals often make recommendations for where patients should seek help and you want your organization to be on their radar. It’s important that they have first-hand experience with your organization.
National Recovery Month is a great time of year to reach out to them and remind them about the great work you do. Consider email messaging, thank you cards or truly nominal tokens of appreciation like branded calendars, pens. An invitation to a free tour or workshop is a good option, as well. Just be sure that these genuine gestures of appreciation and education cannot be mistaken for bribery, as you do not want to run afoul of anti-kickback laws.
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