Did you know that over 21 million Americans suffer from some sort of substance abuse disorder?
Out of those people, only 10% will ever get the help they need. But, by opening up more centers for care and providing the right support for people who need it, that 10% can go up and people can recover.
If you’re thinking of how to start a sober living home, that’s fantastic news! The more places people can go to, the better. But how do you let people know about your sober living house?
Get started advertising your place with these marketing plan strategies.
How to Start a Sober Living Home With the Right Marketing
As with any new business, brand, or non-profit, you need a stellar marketing strategy to get started. Without marketing, no one will know you exist, which is definitely a problem. But with great marketing, not only will they know you exist, but also why they should choose to get care and treatment with you.
Good marketing can do many things, including:
- Building interest in your sober living home
- Making people aware of your areas of specialty
- Creating a positive reputation
- Building trust with your audience to help them ask for help
- Teaching you what works and what doesn’t when advertising
That’s just the start! But, to get all these benefits, you need to know what to do. Let’s take a look at some top-tier marketing tips to help you get started on your plan.
Start With a Website
When it comes to sober living home marketing, you must start with a website. Your website will be the point where your other marketing leads. It’s the place where your audience can gain information about your house and how you can help them.
Think of your website as the hub of information for your entire strategy: your focal point.
But, a bad website can do as much damage as a great website can do you good. Take time to learn about how to build one, or hire a professional if you think it’s beyond your capabilities. You need a site that’s sleek, easy to navigate, and focuses on user experience.
Don’t Forget the Power of SEO
SEO is one of the most prominent marketing tactics of the modern day. In the digital marketing world, it’s the king of marketing, and you definitely shouldn’t ignore it.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is basically the practice of optimizing your website to appear higher up the search rankings.
So, let’s say your target audience searches sober house near me. You’ll want your website to be geared towards that key phrase so that you’re one of the first websites to pop up. As over 25% of search engine users click on the first result, with the second and third getting around 15% and 11% respectively, you can see why it’s important!
There are lots of ways you can start incorporating SEO into your website, including:
- Using keywords that your users are searching in your content
- Adding alt tags to your images with keywords
- Optimizing metadata with keywords
- Improving load speeds
- Setting your sober house up on Google My Business
All of these things – and more – are favored by search engines like Google. When they assess (or crawl) your website, they look at all of these factors to rank you properly for different searches. Be sure to learn more about SEO to kick-start your marketing!
List Your Website
There are different places online where you can list your sober living home. Online directories make a fantastic place to help those already looking for homes find them with ease, which is exactly what those looking for help need.
At Taste Recovery, we have a comprehensive directory of quality treatment centers across the US, so take a look and see if we’re the right place to show the world who you are.
Social Media Is a Must
Social media is a hive of user activity. Think about it – how many people do you know how have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn? It’s almost everyone, right?
With such a huge audience to reach out to, it makes sense that you should set up pages for your business on social media platforms. It can have tons of benefits, including:
- Allowing people who need help to reach out quickly via messaging
- Letting you communicate back with ease
- Providing a channel to release content about your business
- Giving you social media tools (e.g. hashtags) to grow your audience
That said, social media isn’t easy as a marketing tool. With so many other competitors doing the same thing, it’s difficult to make sure you’re heard over all the noise. With that in mind, here are some tips to help you get a headstart.
Keep Your Content Consistent
If people follow you, it’s because they like your content and what you’re talking about.
Try to keep content consistent to create a clear brand and keep your followers around. Find a tone of voice for your captions/posts, a color theme and font for your images with words, and stick with your topic of helping people recover from addiction.
Having Said That…
It doesn’t hurt to vary your content a little, as long as your branding is consistent. People enjoy a mix of videos, images, blog posts, etc., so play around to keep your audience engaged and provide as much help as you can.
Don’t Post Too Much or Too Little
There’s a fine balance in how much you post. Sending out five tweets a day or three Instagram posts can be annoying; but if you don’t post enough, your social media marketing isn’t going to work.
Research how often you should be posting on the platform you choose before you start.
Engage and Interact
One of the brilliant things about social media is that you can talk directly to your audience. Encourage this by asking questions, like what do you do to cope when you’re having a bad day? or do you have any advice for someone struggling with addiction? on your posts and encourage people to talk to one another. You can create fantastic, helpful communities of recovering addicts and people trying to beat addiction.
If people comment on your posts, always reply! This builds up a comforting and friendly rapport that may help someone in need reach out.
Hire a Social Media Manager
Social media marketing can be a full-time job in itself. If you want to focus on your sober living house or are still in recovery yourself, hire a social media manager. They know what they’re doing and have the time to do it, taking the stress from your shoulders.
Networking Can Help Build an Audience
If you’re in recovery, you probably have a wide network of other people who have gone through recovery or who have substance abuse issues. This gives you a wide range of people to start helping – if they’re willing, of course. This is your network, and you shouldn’t underestimate it.
If you go to meetings or events with people in recovery, let them know about your new sober living home. Talk about what you’re doing, hand out information (to those who want it), and encourage people to ask you questions if they have any.
Networking is one of the age-old promotion tips that has been tried and tested. So, if you feel you have a safe space to network your sober living home, do so!
There’s Still a Place for Print Media
In one survey, 82% of US respondents said they trust printed adverts in newspapers/magazines when they’re making a purchase. To anyone who thinks print media doesn’t have a place in the world of modern marketing, that should prove otherwise.
Print media is anything from business cards to leaflets, anything that is physically printed.
You can hand out print media in person, letting you market your sober living home the old-fashioned way. This is fantastic for building your brand in the local community. This strategy can feel more appealing and friendly to people who need help than an email or an online ad.
If you can, leave flyers about your sober living home in spots that you think will be beneficial, like recovery centers and hospitals. You never know when someone might pick it up, exactly when they need it the most.
Try and keep any print media short, to the point, and consistent with your branding. Highlight the benefits of your sober living home and always – always – include contact information that the recipient can use to follow up on the information. If you can, leave a few different points they can go to, like a phone number, an email address, and a website URL.
Let’s List Your Sober Living Home
If you’re looking at how to start a sober living home, that’s brilliant! We always applaud anyone trying to help others, and we want to help you get your name out there. At Taste Recovery, you can list your sober living house easily, helping thousands of Americans get the addiction help they need.
To find out more, feel free to get in touch with our team today!
