In this episode, Miranda Ochsner, Director of Paid Media at Hedy & Hopp, joins Jenny to discuss how to determine the optimal media mix for your organization. At H&H, we frequently work with clients across a wide range of budgets—from under $10,000 to over $1,000,000. Our recommendations for media channels vary depending on several factors, and Miranda breaks down the key considerations and decision-making processes involved.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Budget Considerations: Budget size directly influences the choice of media channels. Smaller budgets may limit traditional media opportunities, while larger budgets allow for a more comprehensive digital and traditional mix.
- Bottom Funnel Tactics: To identify these tactics, we start by researching and understanding where you can find the audience who is proactively looking for what your organization is offering.
- Traditional vs. Digital Media: Traditional media options, such as billboards or TV, can be costly and vary based on market and timing. We evaluate whether these channels are suitable based on the client’s goals and market conditions.
- Hybrid Channels: Options such as Connected TV and digital radio can offer a blend of traditional and digital media, providing flexibility and precise targeting while staying HIPAA compliant.
- Audience Targeting: We rely on data and research to ensure we reach the right audience, challenging assumptions about where and who they are. This approach is especially important when clients assume that traditional media is the only option for reaching rural audiences.
Connect with Miranda:
Connect with Jenny:
- Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
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Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host, and I’m also the CEO at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And I’m super jazzed today to have our very own Miranda Oschner with us. She is the Director of Paid Media here at Hedy & Hopp. Welcome Miranda.
Miranda: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Jenny: Yeah, so I’m excited to have you on today because we have a really robust media capability here at Hedy & Hopp, and so that means we’re having conversations with organizations every day, every other day about what they’re perfect media mix looks like right.
And sometimes we talk with folks who have smaller budgets, say under ten thousand a month to spend and some of our clients have over a million dollars a month to spend. And so our recommendations vary wildly based off of the budget size, as well as [00:01:00] some other considerations. So. I first want to set a disclaimer that for anyone listening, this is not a roadmap of what your individual media plan should look like.
Right? Like, do not copy paste the things we’re talking about today. I just really wanted to talk about some different considerations and the decision matrix we use whenever we’re putting together different channels. So, Miranda, I would love it if you could start by just giving us an understanding of first, budget size, right?
If somebody has a smaller budget versus a super large budget, how does that change your approach to determining the media mix?
Miranda: Yeah. Great question. So I mean, budget’s really going to drive from a, you know, from a channel recommendation, you know what we’re pushing forward with, right? If it’s a 10K a month budget versus a million dollar, that’s gonna vary what that recommendation looks like.
You know, we’re not gonna wanna stretch $10,000 a month over five different channels and three different tactics in each one. ’cause you, you know, you really wanna invest in those channels that are gonna work best. But if you’re looking [00:02:00] at a million dollar a month spend. You’re going to be looking at a lot of different channels, but it’s also going to come down to what the, you know, what the core goals are, you know, is a goal awareness, or is it going to be a deep funnel conversion that we’re, you know, that we’re looking at?
And that’s really how, where we start to make those recommendations.
Jenny: That’s a great point. Let’s talk about let’s start with deep funnel. You know, really that patient or consumer acquisition tactics. I mean, one of the things that whenever I’m starting a conversation with folks and then I loop y’all in the next round to have those deeper, more robust conversations is talking about.
I call it like the media funnel, right? At the very bottom of the funnel is tactics where people are actively and proactively trying to find what you’re offering, whether it is a service line offering an insurance plan that they are in need of purchasing today, they are proactively finding it. So.
What are some of the things that you start with? Whenever we’re more that lower in the funnel where people are proactively researching solutions.
Miranda: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you know, before we make any kind of channel [00:03:00] recommendation, we’re always wanting to look at what that research is, whether it’s the patient side or the HCI side.
We really want to look at it from a media consumption standpoint, but then we’re also looking at it from a social listening standpoint, as well as, you know, doing our keyword research. Like, what are folks searching? Are there discrepancies between this county versus that county? And really, truly understanding the, you know, the differences between all of the different channels of where they’re really spending their time.
So we can pinpoint what keywords do we want to bid on, you know, put a little bit more behind when we bid or what’s an area we really probably should avoid from paid search that we’re not seeing. So, you know, seeing any attraction from so really understanding the nuances from the research standpoint are going to fuel that recommendation.
You know, if we’re deep funnel and they are actively looking. I mean, we’re always going to be looking at it from a paid search component. And again, budgets going to come down to how we split that up, whether it’s more branded focused words or more service line focused words and what kind of reach we’re looking at specific on the location.
Are we looking [00:04:00] at a 10 mile radius around a facility? Are we looking around a hundred miles? So it all really plays into that on what that, that core goal is, but also how, you know, how the patient and target audience is engaging with media and they’re trying to understand their steps, right.
But also maintaining their privacy at the same time.
Jenny: Yeah, great point. So I have conversations often with folks who have really relied primarily on digital and they’re wanting to kind of dip their toe into the more traditional like radio billboards, et cetera. Is there a general budget range or a tier where you start having the team start exploring more traditional tactics and channels to be able to add to the strategy or how do you make that consideration of when it’s time or appropriate to do that?
Miranda: Yeah, that’s a tricky question, Jenny. Traditional is very expensive as we know especially right now it’s, you know, it’s political season and we are seeing traditional costs I think they’re about 45 to 50 [00:05:00] percent higher than they normally are, which is just crazy. It’s crazy. You know, so when we’re looking at it from, does this make sense for the best use of our funds in this given moment, we have to take all of that into consideration.
You know, the Olympics push prices up a little bit and you know what, not in political, you know, got to keep all of those things, but also the seasonality, like holiday time, not a great time to be on TV because like there’s so much going on with the holiday. So really, truly understanding what the best weeks are, what the best quarters are to understand how to make that recommendation.
But also, you know, depending on the market you’re in, right? For example, Springfield, Missouri might be very different than Austin, Texas, or Atlanta. It’s really dependent on the geography size as well as what you can do from a budget standpoint. You know, since we’re in St. Louis, to use that as an example, out of home boards for one four week cycle can go anywhere from 4, 000 for a month to, you know, [00:06:00] 10 a month.
So it’s like, is that the best use of our funds? If we are trying to do a lower funnel conversion metric from a KPI standpoint, we probably shouldn’t invest 80,000 in billboards straight out the gate. Let’s really focus on what that core goal is and then build upon that.
Jenny: Absolutely. And an interesting thing that we’ve seen over like the five last five ish years or so is that kind of in between, right, with like connected TV and then digital radio, where you’re kind of tiptoeing into that traditional space, but it’s still managed digitally and some ways you have more flexibility with budget.
So how do you take that into consideration? Is that market based? Is that demographic based? How is that incorporated?
MIranda: You know, it’s all of the above. We really, you know, when you’re looking at it from a digital standpoint we still have the luxury of looking at it from a traditional viewpoint of, okay, we can understand what these kind of come back is from like a ratings.
And then we can compare it to, you know, what we’re looking at it from a traditional, but then we look at it from a CPM [00:07:00] standpoint versus how we’re looking at TV, which is a cost per point standpoint. So really trying to understand those nuances. You know, at the end of the day, if the goal is just mass awareness, we’re going to focus on in a very efficient CPM.
So that’s really how we want to buy any kind of digital component. So really understanding, you know, how we can buy those different platforms. Sometimes we can go direct to platforms, whether you know, it’s a Spotify or a Pandora or a Hulu. We can go to them direct, but we also have these capabilities to kind of buy inventory across all of them based on who the audience is.
And it’s not so much if you’re a female living in St. Louis or a female living in New York, it’s more of like, they’re a mom and we can tell by their use they’ve got two children who are actively in St. Louis with kids in sports or extracurriculars and really hone in on who they are without digging too much into that PHI really keeping that we have to stay HIPAA compliant, right?
So, there are ways that we’re working with these partners to [00:08:00] make sure we’re utilizing those tactics at an efficient cost while remaining compliant. And then we’re on the channels that they’re on and not where we think they’re at. Right? Like 10, 15, 20 years ago, it was like, we have to be on this station or on, you know, in this print publication or this billboard, because that’s where everyone drives by that.
And it’s like, that’s great. Now we can track all this stuff. And it’s more about where the person actually is, not where we think they are.
Jenny: Yeah, I love that. I think all of us healthcare marketers kind of collectively mourned the fact that retargeting is really taken away from us as a target and we’re still mourning it.
Right. But I think you bring up a great point that you still can do a lot of smart demographic and sociographic targeting within these platforms based off the data that they have. They have, so it’s not your data. It’s the data that they have, and even in platform retargeting is still allowed. So for example, if somebody interacts with your ad on Facebook, you can still retarget them on Facebook within face the Facebook ecosystem.
You’re not incorporating your own site or your own [00:09:00] data. So again, like a smart media team can create a platform, a strategy that doesn’t incorporate that. Right. In a compliant fashion.
Miranda: Yes, 100%. You have to be strategic. You know, there the digital space is changing every day. I think I just saw like two new updates on Google and I’m like, oh gosh, I mean, it’s just constantly changing.
So keeping, you know, keeping aligned with all of those changes in addition to making sure we’re staying compliant is a constant thing that this team is educating themselves on. Like, you know, there, there are really Minor things that, you know, larger agencies that aren’t healthcare focused are like, oh, that’s no big deal where we’re over here.
Like that’s a big deal.
Jenny: Exactly. Sometimes it’s like, oh my gosh, a big enough deal that we can’t use this partner anymore. Right. Totally shift because what they’re doing, you know, it could get our client into legal trouble. And so definitely having healthcare expertise and understanding all the privacy stuff is really important.
MIranda: Yeah. Yeah. It’s. It’s a constant shift in how you have to think and whatnot. And it’s at the same time, it also makes your [00:10:00] internal teams be a little bit more strategic and ask a little bit deeper questions and, you know, really focus on that persona building of what that patient looks like. So it makes, you know, it makes those internal conversations more strategic, but also having those conversations with your potential clients or your client of, hey, this is how we have to look at it.
Let’s think about how we approach this or this goal for this audience instead of just like, Everyone. So really, it really gives you an opportunity to be super strategic and putting that puzzle together.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. Last question I have for you is when we’re thinking about again, like the decision maker matrix, and you were talking about this a little bit, but I’d love just a little bit more detail.
Like we have clients come to us and they say like, oh, all of our patients are rural. So we only want to do traditional, we don’t want to do digital at all, or all of our clients, all of our you know, patients for this service line are all over the age of 65. So we only want to do X tactic. So how do you push back with data and research to really make sure that we are reaching them where they are not where people assume [00:11:00] that they are?
MIranda: Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s a great question. Cause every audience is different. Different, right? Like at the end of the day, we have a lot in common, you know, but we also have a lot of differences and it’s, we’re not going to have the same journey. And it’s the same with, you know, the audience spaces of an 18 to 34 or 35 to 54 or 65 plus, there are so many different experiences between those different age groups and individual ages that it can’t just be a one size fits all model, you know, through research, it’s like, we’re looking okay.
You know, the 40 plus really vibes with Facebook really well. And then it’s like, oh, they kind of dabble in Instagram and they kind of dabble in TikTok. But really like, we know when we’re laying out our budgeting, we have to give a little bit extra certain audiences in that channel versus another. So as we’re laying out those strategies, we’re constantly looking at how our audiences are indexing with the different channels, and we’re looking at it from a heavy consumption tact, you know, a heavy consumption approach to very light, minimal to none. So really understanding [00:12:00] how and when they’re consuming media. Also, how many times are they reading the newspaper? We can get that, you know, we can get that granular through our research tools and through different platforms that really kind of fuel those conversations.
Like. We hear you, but let’s chat about what we found and see where we go from there. Just, you always have to have that research to back those conversations because if not, you’re just making assumptions and nobody wants assumptions.
Jenny: Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Miranda. This was really helpful and insightful.
And I hope for all of our listeners, if you’re in the middle of media planning, or if you’re really making considerations about perhaps shaking your world upside down and revisiting the way that you’re structured, give us a shout. We’d love to have a conversation with you. Happy to hop on a complimentary hour long call and just share some thoughts and insights around what we’re seeing working right now both in the provider and payer space, regardless of your budget size. You can shoot me an email jenny@hedyandhopp. And again, thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode, please like, and subscribe, and we will see you on a [00:13:00] future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Have a great day, friends.
