What should it cost to grow your census?
Put in where you are and where you want to be. The model shows the revenue that growth adds, what a 5 to 7% marketing budget looks like on your numbers, and how many extra patients it takes for the whole plan to pay for itself.
What is one patient worth? Build it up
These feed the two fields below while this panel is open. Gross revenue, not margin.
Recommended ad spend keeps the plan near 6% of today’s revenue. Figures are your inputs, not guarantees.
The spend stays flat while revenue grows, so the share falls every month. Green bars are months at goal.
See the numbers as a table
Scroll sideways to see every column
| Month | Census | Revenue | Marketing share |
|---|
How the model works.
One patient. Open the build-up panel and it does the arithmetic out loud: rate times hours or days times weeks gives value per month, times how long they stay gives lifetime value. Those two numbers drive everything else.
Revenue. Census times revenue per patient per month. Growing from today to your goal adds the difference, every month, once you get there.
The budget. We size a budget at 5 to 7% of revenue, all in; for reference, Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey put the average across industries at 7.7%. The meter shows where the plan lands on today’s revenue and on revenue at your goal. The spend stays the same while revenue rises, so the share falls month by month.
Admissions. Census only grows if new admissions outpace discharges. With an average stay of three months, about a third of census turns over every month. The model adds the growth you want on top of that replacement and shows the average extra admissions per month it takes.
Break-even. The plan’s monthly cost divided by what one patient brings in a month. If that number is one or two patients, the question stops being whether the retainer is too high and becomes whether we can add one or two patients. That’s the conversation we want to have.
Cost per admission. The same definition as the portal and every other page: retainer plus ad spend, divided by admissions. Here the admissions are the extra ones the plan has to deliver each month to reach your goal.
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Questions about marketing budgets
How much should a treatment center spend on marketing?
We size a budget at 5 to 7% of revenue, all-in, retainer and ad spend together; for reference, Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey put the average across industries at 7.7% of revenue. For a PHP/IOP program at 20 patients and about $10,000 per patient per month, that is $10,000 to $14,000 a month covering both the agency retainer and ad spend.
What percentage of revenue should an ABA provider spend on marketing?
The same 5 to 7% band applies. A provider with 40 active clients at about $5,500 per client per month brings in $220,000 a month, so a 5 to 7% budget is $11,000 to $15,400 a month, retainer and ads together.
Is a $3,500 or $5,000 a month marketing retainer worth it?
It depends entirely on what one patient is worth to you. If one patient in census brings in $10,000 a month, a $3,500 retainer plus ad spend pays for itself with one or two extra patients. The calculator shows the exact break-even for your numbers.
Why measure marketing as a share of revenue instead of cost per lead?
Because cost per lead says nothing about whether the business grew. Share of revenue and cost per admission tie the spend to census, which is the number an owner actually manages.
How many admissions do we need to grow census?
Enough to replace patients who discharge plus the growth you want. A program with an average stay of three months needs about one-third of its census in new admissions every month just to stay level; growing from 20 to 40 in a year adds roughly 1.7 a month on top of that, rising as census grows.
Want us to build this plan for you?
Send the model with your numbers. We will look at your market, your intake and your payer mix, and tell you whether the plan above is realistic.
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