Learn your goals
A kickoff on your programs, goals, budget, and past results. We review what’s been tried, where it went wrong, and agree on what success looks like for your census.
The Problem
Ad platforms find more of whatever you count as a conversion. Count spam calls, bot forms, and out-of-network inquiries, and they’ll bring you more of the same.
- Bidding only on the obvious, high-volume searches means crowded auctions and a cost per admit that keeps climbing.
- Clicks are easy to report. Admissions are what pay for the ad budget.
$120per paid-search leadAddiction recovery average, up 77% in a year; mental health is $141LocaliQ healthcare benchmarks, Oct 2024–Sep 2025
What's Included
What our behavioral health PPC management includes.
Paid search built around the whole path, from the search a family types to the admission.
- Keyword-by-keyword controlTight campaign structures, so you know exactly which searches trigger your ads, and which ones produce admissions.
- Demand your competitors missGoogle’s Keyword Planner often hides or restricts behavioral health searches. We find the high-intent searches others overlook, in less crowded auctions.
- Ads, landing pages, and intake, alignedEach search is matched with a page that answers it, shows the trust signals families look for, and makes calling easy.
- Clean data that trains the platformsCall tracking, GA4, and your CRM (KIPU, Salesforce, Dazos, HubSpot, CallRail, and CallTrackingMetrics) filter out junk and teach Google and Meta what a real admission looks like.
- Every platform that fitsGoogle Search first, with Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, LinkedIn, Reddit, X, and Bing when they make sense for your program.
- Lessons that help organic tooWhat paid search teaches us about which messages make people call goes straight into your SEO and AI search content.
2.5×more patient inquiriesAverage across our team’s clients
Cost Per Admit
Rapid census growth, without burning budget on junk traffic.
Organic search builds over time. Paid search puts your program in front of families who need care this week. With tight keyword targeting and a landing page built for each search, qualified inquiries reach your intake team from month one, and because junk calls and spam forms are filtered out before the ad platforms see them, your budget keeps finding real people looking for care.
- No more budget wasted on bot clicks, spam forms, and out-of-network callers
- A lower cost per admit from less crowded auctions
- Every dollar tied to a verified admission and its revenue
The Process
How we take over a paid search account.
Nine steps from the first call to a stable, well-trained account. Nothing changes drastically in the first 90 days, on purpose. Click through to see each step.
Check your tracking
Before we touch a campaign, we check whether your past conversions were real, qualified inquiries, or spam and out-of-network calls that taught the ad platforms the wrong lessons.
Study your data
We review your ad accounts, Google Analytics, Search Console, call recordings, and what your admissions team hears, for an honest picture of what’s working and what isn’t.
Review the family’s experience
We look at your website and landing pages the way a family in crisis would: Is it clear? Is it trustworthy? Is it easy to call? Anything that makes people leave gets fixed.
Find the right searches
We build your keyword list from the research, including high-intent searches your competitors overlook, so you compete in less crowded auctions and pay less per admit.
Build the account
Campaigns organized around how you run your business, by location, program, level of care, and budget, so you always know what each one produces.
Feed the platforms clean data
We rebuild your conversion tracking so Google and Meta learn from real admissions, not raw form fills, and give more weight to the people who move furthest toward admission.
Launch side by side
If you have an account running, the new campaigns launch alongside it and the old ones are phased out gradually, so your results never drop off a cliff.
Let it learn, then improve
We keep the account steady for the first 90 days so the platforms can learn from clean data. Then we test, shift budget toward what admits, and keep improving cost per admit.
Results
Proof, not promises.
$1.2MRevenueAdmit revenue added in two months, same spend
0–1 → 6AdmitsPer month, within four months
4×ROASAverage return on ad spend
Case study · PPC
Treatment provider, our team’s previous agency
Growth had been flat for years under a generalist agency that reported calls and clicks but couldn’t name an admission. We rebuilt the account around tight keywords, clean CRM data, and landing pages matched to each search.
- Admit revenue grew by $1.2 million in the first two months on the same PPC spend
- A separate account went from 0–1 admits a month to 6 a month in four months
- Every admit traced to its keyword, campaign, and landing page
Admits per month from paid searchClient result
A PPC account producing 0–1 admits a month grew to 6 admits a month in four months (a previous-agency client of our team).
Results shown were achieved for specific clients, including results achieved by our team at their previous agencies. They are not typical and depend on budget, market, clinical offering, and intake execution. Oluna does not guarantee census, cost per admit, or rankings.
“Nine times out of ten, reactionary budget changes end up in worse performance. Good structure, clean data, and time let the algorithms find your best admits.”How we manage paid media, from our Chief Technology Officer
Who This Is For
This is for you if…
A quick read on fit. If most of these describe your program, we should talk.
- You have beds or slots open now and need qualified inquiries this quarter.
- You have run ads before and are tired of paying for calls your admissions team cannot use.
- You want to know exactly which dollar produced which admission.
- You are willing to give a well-built account a stable 90 days to train on clean data.
The kinds of care we market
Every engagement is built around how families choose your kind of care.
Addiction treatmentDetox, residential, PHP, IOP, outpatient, sober living
Mental healthTreatment centers, organizations, and group practices
Teen therapyAdolescent programs and the parents searching for them
ABA & autismABA organizations and autism service providers
Senior livingAssisted, independent, and senior care communitiesThe full continuum of care
Every level of care, marketed on its own terms.
Families search differently for detox than for IOP. Each level gets its own page and campaign, so the right family lands on the right program.
Plus group practices, teen programs, ABA clinics, and senior care communities
In Depth
Behavioral health PPC, in depth.
What you get
Delivered in every PPC engagement.
- Keyword-by-keyword control, including searches others miss
- Campaigns organized by location, program, and budget
- Tracking that teaches the platforms what an admit looks like
- Spend reported as cost per admit and return on ad spend
Spots in our program are limited. We cap our roster, so if you are interested it is best to get included sooner rather than later.
01
Why tight control beats autopilot in this industry
Google’s automated campaign types have their place, but behavioral health auctions punish loose targeting. We control campaigns keyword by keyword, so we know exactly which searches trigger your ads, and match each one with a landing page built to answer it. When Google’s Keyword Planner hides or restricts high-intent searches, we find that demand anyway, often in auctions your competitors aren’t bidding in.
02
Rehab advertising and senior care advertising
Paid search works differently for each kind of care. Our rehab advertising campaigns are built for the urgent searches families make for detox, residential, and outpatient care. Our senior care advertising reaches adult children researching assisted and independent living, where the decision takes longer and the landing page has to do more of the work.
03
Paid search that makes everything else smarter
Paid campaigns show us quickly which messages make families call. We feed those lessons into your organic search and AI search content, and our web team builds the landing pages, so the click and the call are designed together. Many clients run paid search inside a full marketing package.
Common Questions
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers to what program leaders ask us most.
Still have questions?Ask on the first call. Straight answers, no pitch.
Ask a PPC questionHow much should we budget for ads?
It depends on your market, levels of care, and census goals. Our account audit ends with a specific recommendation for your situation, and the campaigns are built around the budget you choose, not the other way around.
What if our past ads brought in mostly junk calls?
That’s the most common problem we see, and it’s fixable. It usually means the ad platforms were taught to count spam, bots, and out-of-network calls as wins. We clean up your tracking so they learn from real admissions instead, and then they start finding more people like the ones you admit.
How do you find the right clients for our specific commercial insurances?
We target the searches people make when they’re checking coverage, build pages that answer insurance questions before the call, and feed your ad platforms clean intake data, so they find callers who match your programs and payers instead of out-of-network volume.
How do you tie spend to actual admits?
We connect your marketing to the systems you already use, including KIPU, Salesforce, Dazos, HubSpot, CallRail, and CallTrackingMetrics, and follow each inquiry from the first search or click to the signed intake. Then we filter out spam and out-of-network calls, so your reports, and your ad platforms, only count the inquiries that matter.
How fast can marketing impact our census?
Paid search can bring in qualified inquiries within weeks; one account went from 0–1 admits a month to 6 a month in four months. Organic search and AI visibility build over quarters and keep working after the spend stops. We’ll set honest expectations for your market on the first call, and we judge results by the quarter and year over year so one slow month never drives the strategy.
Do I have to sign a long-term contract? What happens if the census doesn’t move?
No. We offer month-to-month contracts, so you are never locked into a long commitment. If you are not happy with the work, you can cancel anytime. Clients from our team’s previous agencies have stayed on for more than 10 years on month-to-month terms. If census isn’t moving, you’ll see it in the same report we do, and we’ll show you what we’re changing before you ever have to ask.
From the blog
All articles Further reading
Behavioral HealthDigital MarketingHow to Measure Marketing ROI in Behavioral Health: From Click to AdmitA conversation with Oluna CMO Megan Pitcher on tracking marketing from the first click to a confirmed admit, and the one number that shows whether it is working.
Alex Vere Nicollwith Megan Pitcher
Behavioral HealthGEO / AEOSEO vs. GEO vs. AEO: How AI Search Is Changing Behavioral Health MarketingWhat each acronym means, how they differ, what the research says actually works, and a plan a treatment center can start this quarter.Alex Vere Nicollwith Megan Pitcher
RehabDigital MarketingHow Do Families Choose a Treatment Center? What It Means for Your MarketingWho is really searching, what tips their decision, how much reviews matter, and what each answer means for marketing a treatment center.Alex Vere Nicollwith Megan Pitcher