How to Choose a Treatment Center Marketing Agency: 10 Questions and the Red Flags

The right treatment center marketing agency fills beds without putting your license, your ad accounts or your freedom at risk. Treatment marketing has rules most industries do not, so ask these ten questions before you sign, and walk away from the red flags below.

The 10 questions to ask

1. How do you get paid? The only safe answer is for the work: a flat fee, or media and management at set rates. See the red flags below for why.
2. Are you set up for LegitScript? Google and Meta addiction ads require it (Google, Meta), and so does Microsoft Advertising for US addiction recovery advertisers. The agency should know the process cold (our LegitScript guide).
3. Who owns the accounts and the phone numbers? You should own your ad accounts, analytics, call-tracking numbers and website.
4. Do you report cost per admission? Clicks and calls are steps. Ask how they will tie spend to admissions (how to calculate it).
5. How do you track without exposing patient data? The right answer keeps pixels off intake pages and portals, per HHS guidance.
6. Will you ever use another center's name in our ads? The answer must be no.
7. Do you run a call center or "helpline" for us? If so, whose name does it answer in, and does it ever send callers to another program?
8. Which channels, and why? Search alone rarely fills a residential program. Ask how they would use search, in-market email, display with retargeting and social for your level of care (what changes by level of care).
9. Do you geofence? For treatment centers the answer should be no: several states restrict location targeting near health care facilities.
10. What results can you show, and what do they actually measure? Ask for real numbers with their caveats. A tagged call is not an admission.

Red flag 1: paying per admission, call or lead

EKRA makes it a federal crime to pay for referrals to a clinical treatment facility when insurance covers the care, and its exception for contractors applies only when pay does not vary with the number of people referred. Courts are still drawing the edges: in 2025 the Ninth Circuit upheld a conviction involving paid marketers while saying percentage pay is not automatically illegal; intent is what makes it a crime. States add their own felonies, such as Florida's patient brokering act.

Do not test where the line is. An agency whose price rises with each admission is asking you to.

Red flag 2: leads from somewhere they will not name

NAATP's ethics code bars members from buying or selling patient leads, including phone calls, and LegitScript bars certified providers from lead-generator ties (certification rules). If an agency sells you "exclusive leads" from a network of sites, ask whose sites, and how callers are told where they are being sent.

Red flag 3: competitor names and impersonation

In 2025 the FTC settled with a treatment provider whose Google ads bid on other clinics' names and routed callers to its own call center, which posed as a central admissions hotline: a $7 million penalty, suspended to $1.9 million, and a ban on impersonating other businesses. Any agency that offers to "conquest" competitor names in this category is offering you that risk.

Red flag 4: pixels on intake forms

Tracking pixels on intake forms, portals or booking pages can send protected health information to ad platforms. HHS says vendors receiving it need a business associate agreement or patient authorization. Ask exactly which pages carry which tags.

Red flag 5: no admissions numbers

An agency that reports impressions and clicks but never admissions cannot tell you whether it is filling beds. Ask for cost per admission, monthly, by channel, and for the call data behind it: answered, missed and abandoned calls. Our admissions funnel guide shows what that report should cover.

How we work

Jarrett Phillips runs every campaign himself: search, in-market email, display with retargeting and social, at set rates, with every dollar reported and nothing charged per admission, call or lead. See what one residential center's campaign delivered, or get a free plan for your program.