This is an exclusive BHB+ story.
Generative artificial intelligence’s incursion into nearly every digital space is profoundly altering the addiction treatment sector’s approach to marketing and ads. AI search practices might be just as impactful as the arrival of the internet itself in American life.
Providers and those that support them find themselves rewiring once common practices to maintain highly coveted rankings in search engine results, chatbot output, ad placements and industry-specific directory listings.
The impact that AI’s proliferation has had on business is profound. Behavioral health is no exception: 77% of psychologists report speaking with patients who rely on AI for support, search or engagement with mental healthcare. On the provider side, around 16% of providers use AI for scheduling and billing tasks. Around 26% use it for clinical notes and documentation support.
The addiction treatment industry is now facing a profound shift in how people seek information online. Presently, around 92% of AI-driven web traffic is now sent from ChatGPT.
Broadly, 34% of U.S. adults report using AI for health-related inquiries. On top of that, 88% of all health-related Google searches now generate a web AI overview, rather than immediately surfacing links to resources.
“Out of seven people suffering from addiction or mental health issues, only three have access to clinics. The other four are turning to AI chatbots to consult them and explore treatment options,” Kashif Riaz, an independent SEO consultant and search strategist for recovery and addiction treatment centers, told Behavioral Health Business. “Families even bring us transcripts from ChatGPT and ask, ‘This is what it told me. What do you recommend?’ That’s why, in marketing, I talk less about an ‘ideal customer profile’ and more about an ‘ideal patient profile’ for addiction treatment centers.”
Online advertising for addiction treatment care took off in the early 2000s when Google rose as the dominant search engine. As the substance use disorder (SUD) sector became immersed in the internet ecosystem of paid ads, pay-per-click search, review websites and lead-generation a wave of deceptive experiences, predatory referrals and misleading information was also building. That ultimately led to Google suppressing many paid ads for addiction treatment providers before it reopened the practice for providers as long as they passed a LegitScript certification.
Much of the conversations surrounding AI in behavioral health thus far have centered around its extreme potential harms, observed benefits and how to build safeguards. Consumer adoption isn’t slowing anytime soon, and the suite of AI-powered tools is guaranteed to keep expanding.
“The question becomes: How can we elevate providers who are doing the right thing and who are making a difference?” Jeremiah Calvino, co-founder of the addiction treatment directory Recovery.com, told BHB.
Calvino has been a vocal advocate for ethical addiction treatment marketing practices since founding Recovery.com in 2017. Today, the directory giant receives referrals from ChatGPT but also incorporates its own AI capabilities into on-site search, allowing users to use normal language searches to guide them to a result that is closely tailored to their needs.
Still, as powerful as the AI referrals and enhancements in its own directory search have been, Calvino cautions that “the story is very much still being written” when it comes to AI’s impact on SUD treatment and ad marketing.
AI rewards credibility, punishes sloppiness
The major change for addiction treatment marketers with the rise of AI-powered search is that search engines, like Google, more heavily weigh structured signals, data, sentiment and credibility as markers for authority. The traditional SEO keyword-stuffing practices of the past won’t help.
“Addiction treatment centers have to stop just trusting tools and actually check what AI bots are telling people about them and fix those things,” Riaz said. “Go to any AI search engine — ChatGPT, Claude — and put in a certain query and see what is being quoted. If your clinic is being quoted or your competitor is being quoted, you pull those references and see what the sources are: is it coming from third-party citations or from your own website?”
While web visibility scores used to be a core metric to focus on for SUD C-suite executives in marketing, Riaz said what matters more now is sentiment. New ad tools and practices have also introduced a new layer of risk that providers need to be mindful of, too, Riaz reiterated.
“The problem with tools like ChatGPT and Claude is that some chats have been unintentionally indexed and exposed on Google — anyone can read them,” said Riaz. “Security and privacy are at stake all the time if you’re using these bots. One solution is to host AI systems locally on your own servers, so you can use your data, train your own models and keep everything inside your own database. That’s much better for security, privacy and preventing leaks.”
While that might not be feasible for every provider group, it is clear that SUD care’s front door has changed and data is more at risk than in years prior. Especially with intensifying cyberattacks.
Executives at Terra Behavioral Health, a sourthern California-based addiction treatment and mental health provider, and at Phoenix-based Meadows Behavioral Healthcare both told BHB they hope AI’s use in marketing will ultimately help the industry get the right patients in the door more quickly and effectively. Both providers have begun to rework their marketing strategies and tailor it for AI-optimization, using blog posts, data and other tactics that draw on organizational credibility and intent over search volume.
“What we’ve done with AI is to really ensure that our messaging is tight, our messaging is clear We’ve done a bit of a shift in terms of our content, in terms of snippets and videos, and also to be sure that our reviews are in good shape,” Jaime Vinck, president of Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, told BHB. “It has really allowed us to even be better with what the Meadows has always been known for in terms of brand and brand authority.”
Meadows has noticed that patient referrals from AI search tools or marketing tend to be stickier when it comes to engagement, too, since consumers can be more precise with how they’re searching.
“I love when they utilize AI to get to the site to really do that deeper dive on what’s going to be a fit for them or their loved one and what isn’t, and then to be able to ask the right questions when they do pick up that 1000-pound phone,” Vinck said.
Andie Hollowell, CEO at Terra Behavioral Health, is actively working with her team to understand how these changes might translate into how Terra will position itself to continue on as a trusted resource in an even more hyper-connected, intelligence-powered internet ecosystem.
“The front door to how people get to us is changing,” Hollowell said. “In the past, it was built around Google key terms — someone would type in ‘rehab near me.’ What’s shifted now with the ChatGPTs of the world is that you’re not just getting key-term searches. The searches are actually more robust. We need to optimize for the learning platforms to understand who we are, what we provide, and whether we’re a trusted resource, because they’re searching more than just the terms now.”
Companies featured in this article:
Kashif Raiz Consulting, Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, recovery.com, Terra Behavioral Health
