Lighthouse Treatment Center
A 111 bed addiction treatment facility in Anaheim CA. Our 7+ year partnership has transformed their digital marketing into a sustained admissions pipeline delivering measurable growth year after year.
Our Services:
Client Case Study
Specialization:
Substance Use Disorder
Levels of Care:
Detox, Residential, IOP, OP
Capacity:
111 Beds
Employees:
150
Age:
25+ Years
Our Results
Total Admits Delivered
Increase in Leads
Increase in VOBs
Decrease in CPA
Campaign Summary
When Lighthouse Treatment Center first engaged Digital Admits, their online admissions were underperforming with fewer than five digital admits per month. Their web presence was under-optimized, leads were unqualified, and significant budget was being lost to ineffective call services. We redesigned their website, created targeted landing pages, implemented a comprehensive SEO strategy, and launched high-intent PPC campaigns supported by $180K monthly ad spend. We integrated advanced attribution reporting and CRM tracking to measure results with precision.
Within 90 days, admissions from digital marketing increased 215%, growing to a sustained 600% increase over two years. Cost per admit dropped from $11.5K to $4.3K, while brand visibility and lead quality improved dramatically. Since the start of our partnership, Digital Admits has contributed 2,723 total admissions to Lighthouse, cementing our role as a core driver of their long-term growth.
Challenges
- Averaging fewer than five online admits monthly, creating severe revenue pressure and threatening long-term sustainability of operations.
- Large volumes of unqualified leads from poor targeting wasted staff time and limited ability to admit patients who truly needed care.
- Excessive spend on ineffective third-party call services drained budgets with minimal returns, reducing available funds for quality marketing.
- Weak search engine visibility and underperforming website meant prospective patients could not easily find or engage with the facility online.
- No accurate attribution or performance tracking, preventing leadership from making informed, data-driven decisions on marketing spend allocation.
Key Opportunities
- Capture high-intent admissions traffic by improving digital targeting and scaling campaigns to reach motivated individuals seeking treatment.
- Redesign and optimize the websites to improve user-experience (UX) speed, and conversion rates across both desktop and mobile devices.
- Develop a robust SEO and content strategy to dominate search rankings for treatment keywords at both local and national levels.
- Launch data-driven paid advertising campaigns with precise targeting to reduce cost per admit and maximize return on ad spend.
- Implement advanced attribution tracking and analytics to measure every marketing channel and guide real-time optimization decisions.
Tyler & his team at Digital Admits have saved our program from closing after 25 years of operating. They provide over 40 admits a month consistently over many years. This team has been a true partner in our growth and success. If you absolutely must succeed with digital, this is the team you want on your side.
- Tim Salye, Lighthouse Treatment
Strategic Solutions
A multi-year, multi-channel transformation combining advanced SEO, high-performance paid ads, precision attribution tracking, and custom website development to deliver sustained admissions growth and market leadership.
Organic Search (SEO)
We executed a comprehensive SEO strategy designed for long-term dominance in addiction treatment search results, with a focus on both local and national reach. Our work included developing robust content clusters and topic silos, publishing semantic-related article libraries, and creating a high-volume blog program enriched with multimedia. We built a drug fact archive to position Lighthouse as an authoritative resource.
Our local SEO campaigns established near-complete dominance in Orange County for drug rehab–related searches, leveraging GMB optimization, NAP consistency, and targeted location pages. We navigated multiple Google algorithm updates including Helpful Content, EEAT, and mobile-first indexing, ensuring Lighthouse’s rankings remained stable and competitive throughout.
Key Metrics:
Pages Published:
354
Backlinks Built:
573
Unique Visitors (Yearly):
76,000+
Organic Calls (Yearly):
980 first-time
Organic Admits (Yearly):
248 (7yr avg)
Paid Ads (PPC)
Our paid media program was designed to capture high-intent leads at scale while navigating a highly regulated and competitive industry landscape. We successfully managed the arrival of LegitScript certification, ensuring compliance while maintaining campaign volume. We optimized spend during periods of increasing industry CPCs, leveraging AI-driven bidding strategies in Google Ads to maximize efficiency.
Our approach expanded beyond Google to include Bing/Microsoft Ads and Yelp Ads, each delivering incremental lead volume. Ad copy, audience targeting, and landing page conversion rates were continually tested to reduce cost per admit. We achieved growth despite escalating competition, producing sustained results across all paid channels.
Key Metrics:
Monthly Ad Spend
$180,000
Campaigns Managed:
12
PPC Calls (Yearly):
1,143 first-time
PPC VOBs (Yearly):
447
PPC Admits (Yearly)
216
Avg Cost-Per-Admit:
$4,302
Website Design & Development
Rebuilt multiple Lighthouse websites with entirely custom WordPress designs tailored for speed, mobile performance, and conversion optimization. Each site incorporated CRO best practices, schema markup, and internal linking structures aligned with SEO strategies. We developed multiple content-focused SEO microsites to capture niche search intent.
Our work also adapted to Google’s mobile-first algorithm, ensuring seamless performance across devices. Beyond web properties, we provided creative design for banners, event materials, and marketing collateral, ensuring brand consistency across digital and physical touchpoints.
Key Metrics:
Custom Sites:
7
Custom LP’s
27 (Service, PPC, etc)
Time on Site:
21 sec → 187 sec
Core Web Vitals:
~ 91%
Conversion Rate
+ 843%
Attribution System
Developed a complete attribution ecosystem integrating all marketing channels into Lighthouse’s Salesforce CRM, enabling true end-to-end tracking from first click to admission. Call Tracking Metrics integration provided granular call source data, while our custom BI environment aggregated metrics from every platform into centralized dashboards.
We automated weekly PDF reports for the management team, making it easy to review performance in board meetings. This infrastructure remains active and in use today, ensuring Lighthouse can make informed, data-driven marketing decisions in real time.
Key Metrics:
CRM Integrations:
7
Custom Dashboards:
11
Lead Source Accuracy:
21 sec → 187 sec
Core Web Vitals:
~ 91%
Conversion Rate
+ 843%
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From Our Team
Seeing their rankings move into the top spots was one of the most satisfying campaigns we’ve managed.
- Jess, SEO Manager
Fixing years of technical issues unlocked huge SEO gains for Lighthouse.
- Aljun, Technical SEO Manager
Our content strategy resonated perfectly with their audience, driving quality leads.
- Jel, Director of Content
Rebuilding the websites was a huge project that was critical to the client’s success. We are still coding!
- Alphy, Senior Web Developer
We published hundreds of pages and built a backlink profile that pushed them ahead of their competitors.
- Earl, SEO Specialist
Dialing in the campaigns to cut CPA by more than half was a major win.
- Arc, Paid Ads Manager
Lighthouse is one of our longest-running and most rewarding client relationships.
- Lea, Business Manager
The redesign gave their site a modern feel and much better usability.
- Mark, Front-end Design