CMO Perspectives: Frank Severino Of Sycamore Behavioral Health On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Know your audience and demographics and you can do this by surveying and keeping track with an EMR/CRM.
In an age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Frank Severino.
Frank Severino brings over 30 years of marketing experience as the Chief Marketing Officer at Sycamore Behavioral Health. He has managed millions of dollars in advertising spend and knows what works. Frank leads the marketing and advertising for Sycamore Behavioral Health’s companies which include Magnolia City Detox and First City Recovery Center. Frank holds a BS in Business Management from Western Illinois University, where he played football, giving him an early start for success by building character, leadership, teamwork, and resilience. In addition, Frank attended American University in Washington, DC and received a certification in Executive Management and Leadership. Prior to joining SBH, Frank worked in strategic business development and is a notable industry leader having grown operations and revenue for multiple, nationwide treatment centers. Frank is a servant leader, dedicated to helping individuals achieve success and reach their full potential. His greatest strengths are his keen sense of operations and his knowledge of the ins and outs of the treatment industry including compliance, the latest policies, insurance carriers, accreditation, and ethical procedures. Frank possesses a strong business acumen with proven solution-based marketing and business development methods that expand the company’s reach and success. Frank’s expertise, positive attitude, and genuine passion for behavioral health, makes him a valuable asset to the SBH and several non-profits’ organizations he is proud to be a part of. He currently resides in Sarasota, Florida with his wife and three sons. In his spare time, Frank enjoys boating, golf, travel and networking with fellow leaders and industry peers at various conferences around the country.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Prior to joining the mental health and addiction field, I worked in staffing. In 2008 I sold my small professional RPO/Full Cycle Recruiting agency to a large regional staffing company, they were looking to add a professional component to their portfolio. After the sale I opened a healthcare staffing firm that focused on smaller healthcare organizations. There was some perceived conflict with the purchaser of my previous company, so I decided to take a one-year consulting contract with a not-for-profit Substance Abuse treatment center in Chicago, IL. That contract evolved into a 4-year assignment that I ultimately left in 2014 to become part of a National Provider startup. During that time, I remained involved in my Healthcare staffing firm and consulting with other organizations patient acquisition strategies, I had a niche for building business development teams, identifying value propositions and building high performance admissions teams, that ultimately drives down cost per patient acquisition.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake when I first got started in behavioral health and addiction, was not understanding traditional business to business referral strategies. Like anyone who starts in a particular field, it takes time to learn about the specifics and since I was building a boot on the ground business development team within an organization that had never had a go to market strategy due to, they were always grant funded and Medicaid funded. With the addition of insurance funding, they needed to expand their brand to main street America. Because I was unaware and didn’t realize that other treatment centers refer to each other. I built a strategy to market direct to the consumer through small and medium sized business, which turned out to be very successful and still employ that strategy in my work today. Once I understood that all facilities work together, I was able to build a business development team and implement my strategy to include working with other treatment providers.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are working on expanding our facilities in our current markets in Indiana and Texas. Right now we operate an addiction and mental health treatment center in Kokomo, Indiana and one in Houston, Texas. In addition, we are looking at new locations in other parts of the country to expand our footprint in the addiction and mental health space, particularly in the Midwest and Texas areas. Additionally, we are working on nontraditional payor sources for people to access care in their community.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
Social media has really helped in unexpected ways. The ROI has exceeded my expectations for the money we spend on it.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
I’m traditional with the ways that are proven to work. However, I do consider new and emerging marketing trends from time to time. But I tend to stick with boots on the ground and marketing in the areas we have success in. I am starting to invest more in digital strategy. My focus is on quality, not always quantity.
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
I evaluate every dollar spent and every campaign on an ongoing basis. I have a number, what I call a CPA, which is a cost per acquisition that I know I can achieve. If there’s anything I’m doing that falls outside of that goal, then I cut it off and move those dollars to other areas that perform better or search for new emerging startegies.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
Through various tracking mechanisms like unique landing pages, unique call tracking numbers, etc. We can see what calls and clicks come through and the conversion rate, so we know the ROI on all campaign sources.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
1 . Know your audience and demographics and you can do this by surveying and keeping track with an EMR/CRM.
2 . Have a thorough market analysis. Will the market support your vision and where you want to be?
3 . How are people insured in that market? Do most people have commercial insurance? Are they a Medicaid driven population?
4 . Look at the competitors, what do they look like?
5 . From a staffing perspective, is there a pool of talent in that market that you can staff your facility with?
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
I terminated an overspend of $2 million for a previous company. At first, several leaders didn’t agree to pull the plug so abruptly on a pay-per-click campaign. It ended up saving the company millions and created a baseline so we can properly continue advertising with accurate tracking metrics.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This is a great question. If the behavioral, addiction and eating disorder community want to be considered healthcare, then we have to provide access to everyone. In other words, if I have an emergency and I go to a hospital, they must treat me. However, to get into an addiction or mental health treatment facility, I must call 4 or 5 places and determine if I am a fit based on the financial needs, not the clinical. How do I eliminate that barrier? This would be the movement.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Visit www.firstcitymentalhealthcenter.com
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
CMO Perspectives: Frank Severino Of Sycamore Behavioral Health On Where to Assign Your Marketing… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.