Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I’m Jenny Bristow, and I’m your host. And I’m also the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m here today excited to chat with you about AI and personas. 

I have two of my fabulous team members with me. I have Sarah Zajicek. She’s a Copywriter and Content Editor, and Yenny Rojas, who is an SEO Marketing Specialist. Welcome, ladies. 

Sarah: Thank you. 

Yenny: Thank you.

Jenny: So we created a podcast episode a few weeks ago, I guess a couple of months ago at this point, talking about SEO and how AI is really changing the game. And then I posted a LinkedIn post a few weeks ago talking about the huge strides our team is making and having our content rank well in AI.

So whether that’s an AI overview or showing up as an answer for LLMs, and I’ve received a lot of questions about the behind the scenes of, “How does that work? How are you using AI to create content on the front end, while you’re still able to somehow make high-quality content that people enjoy reading? What are you doing structurally to have it show up all on a website?”

So we wanted to do a follow-up episode. So on today’s episode, we’re going to be digging in more into the power of AI and really supporting the creation of content and how things like personas and structure come into play. 

So I’m going to start with Sarah. Sarah, really excited to chat with you a little bit about the big shift in AI and what is happening and how people are using AI to find content. So talk to us a little bit about that. How are people using AI to find information, and how should that shift to the way that marketers show up on behalf of brands? 

Sarah: Yeah. So there’s actually a study published pretty recently by the creators of ChatGPT that found that up to 49% of searches, or messages, that are being sent into ChatGPT are actually asking questions. So a lot of people are using it more as a research-based tool than a, an action tool, and they’re looking for answers to their questions.

So the way that we have found we can better structure our content is by answering the questions that people are asking ChatGPT, so we can better show up for those users and gain more brand awareness among them.

Jenny: So Sarah, talk to us a little bit about what that actually means in practice, right? So you have both large systems. You have service lines within those systems. And then you also have individual practice offices. So let’s say, a five location orthopedic practice. If I were a marketing strategist and I were trying to think about how people were going to be finding me, what does the study say? How are people using AI to do that research?

Sarah: So on a smaller practice perspective, patients are generally turning to AI to search for questions more about the conditions or procedures that they’re interested in. And having those service-based pages inside of a small practice’s website can really help the user find the information that they’re looking for, while also getting the education that they’re looking for. And from a hospital system perspective, patients are using AI search to find those specialties within their local area.

So having those specialty pages and having them structured well will help them find that information. 

Jenny: Absolutely. And we talked in a prior episode, not only about the importance of AI through the lens of how people are searching, but also the importance of reputation and the influence of AI. So if you—if that idea is new to you, go back and listen to that episode. We talked a lot about how ratings and rankings can really influence the way that you show up in AI. So really important to kind of think about not just content on the site, but also how people are talking about you off the site. 

So let’s talk a little bit about big picture best practices for content and SEO strategy in the AI area. One of the things that we do a lot for our SEO and GEO clients is focus on their blogs, but also their main service line pages, and that feels kind of obvious, right? Like, of course you’re going to put content there. But talk to us a little bit about the specifics. How are we optimizing those pages?

Sarah: So we optimize service pages and blogs fairly similarly. Our service pages, or the main pages on our website, that act sort of as pillars for the rest of our blog content to connect to. And the way we structured these is with bulleted summaries at the beginning of the page. This creates a quick and snappy way for users to find what information they’re going to be seeing on this page, but also a great way for AI to sort of quick sight what is found on your, on your website. 

Also answering commonly asked questions in the form of FAQs or Q&A style copy helps users find the answers that they’re looking for. Again, using bulleted lists to break up copy and large blocks of text. Anything that gets the user to easily scan what they’re going to be read is more likely to be cited in AI search. And implementing those FAQs. So snappy content, answering questions quickly, and an implementation of an FAQ schema, which is just a, a structured snippet of code, helps not only the users, but the AI search itself, crawl the website and gather that information. 

Jenny: So basically what you’re saying is: AI does not have a big attention span either. 

Sarah: No!

Jenny: So we have the write bulleted lists for users to scan. And we gotta write bulleted lists for AI to scan because everybody’s just looking for the headlines. 

Sarah: Exactly. The easier it is to read for the user, the easier it is to read for AI. And everybody is happy in the end. 

Jenny: Absolutely. I think what’s kind of interesting with a lot of things in marketing is a lot of this stuff feels common sense, right? But actually taking that and implementing it whenever you have a massive digital ecosystem is where processes and structure and well-defined schema really comes into play, right? Like nothing that we’re saying I think people will listen to and say, “Oh, that’s a lightbulb idea.” But the thing that’s light bulb is actually taking that and developing a process to scale it across a massive digital ecosystem, so that way then you’re really making, solid steps forward for the users and for, you know, AI platforms to be able to digest the information. 

Sarah: Absolutely.

Jenny: So if somebody were trying to implement this internally and they were trying to create, let’s say, going into next year, a program to implement this within their own organization, what are some practical applications they should be thinking about?

Sarah: The best thing that they can do, really, is just think about how to quickly and concisely answer the questions that people are using. Think in terms of how you would be searching for things online. A great resource is the FAQs section or more questions section in Google. It provides a list of questions that people are commonly asking and searching for, within a specific query, taking those and running with them.

And again, as many bulleted bulleted lists, Q&A-style copy format that you can, that you can fit into a page. 

Jenny: Absolutely, absolutely. How about the integration of AI writing tools into a process? So how should marketers think about that? When is it in your patient’s best interest to use those tools, versus when is it kind of becoming lazy and creating content that they don’t want to read?

Sarah: That’s a great question. I know AI writing tools can be a little controversial in the marketing space, just because if you don’t use them correctly, your copy can sound very robotic, and obviously if it doesn’t sound right, users aren’t going to find interest in it. And AI is not going to rank it very well either, the AI search engines.

So you want to be able to use your AI writing tool to your advantage, but you want to use your best judgment as a human to sort of, intervene when necessary, break up those blocks of text and, really play around with the instructions that you’re giving your AI writing tool to be able to get the best output for yourself.

So, emphasizing, you know, the bulleted lists.

Jenny: Well, in addition to bulleted lists, you can also do, summaries or headlines. Another thing that is really valuable that our team has done is, for example, if you do have an article that’s been written, you can use AI to be able to summarize it.

Okay, Sarah. So let’s talk a little bit about when I can play a role in the creation of content for SEO and GEO versus when it should be a human actually involved in the process. What’s your perspective? 

Sarah: AI writing tools are great for additional support. Although they’re not perfect, they’re not always medically accurate if you’re writing medical content, and they tend to sound a little robotic if used repeatedly. So, having that human intervention there to help in creating more of a natural voice throughout the copy, breaking up large blocks of text, again, with those, bulleted lists or even summaries, really comes into play with, using AI tools to the best of your ability.

Jenny: Absolutely. Think of it as a support member on your team, not the star person. 

Sarah: Exactly.

Jenny: Perfect. Well, let’s shift over talking a little bit about personas and AI search. Yenny, give us your thought about, kind of where we are, how it plays in, and what the future is going to hold. 

Yenny: Sure. Thank you. Jenny. So first, AI is changing the game, right?

So AI doesn’t care just about the keywords. It tries to understand who is behind the question—your role, context and even all the constraints can influence that answer.

So for example, I have two prompts: typing in “best skincare routine.” Or someone might say to ChatGPT, “I am a 35 year old male with sensitive skin and recurring acne. What is the best skincare routine recommended by dermatologists?” You see the difference in the two prompts? One has context and information. So AI tailors the answer to those specific prompts and personas. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to start thinking persona-first when creating content. AI and large language models change how search works.

Prompts don’t just carry what someone wants, but who they are also. Content must respond not only to queries, but to the identity and constraints behind them. In AI search, a persona is defined, is a defined identity or a set of characteristics that guides how the AI responds to process information. So it goes beyond what is being asked and consider who is asking and under what circumstances.

In old search, success mostly came from doing keyword research, finding the right keywords, making sure your content align and match the search intent behind them. And as long as you pick the right keywords and align your content with that intent, you could rank well, right? So now in the AI search prompts, expose not just what but the who is asking—again role content, context and constraints.

So with AI search, a user’s query isn’t just about what they want, it also reveals who they are and the situation they’re in. Also environmental factors like where they live, living in different states have an effect in their responses. 

For example, if a user prompts ChatGPT is something like, “I am a 50 year, 50 year old living in Miami, Florida. I need a yearly physical, but I don’t have health insurance. Can you show me a list of nearby, primary care doctors who offer free physicals and also provide me with a checklist of what to bring to my appointment?”

That was a lot of context, a lot of information. And so with this prompt, ChatGPT has enough background information: They know about the user’s needs, they know their personal situation, their financial constraints, where they live and how they like that information to be presented to them.

So AI systems personalize the summaries and citations around that context. Different personas, don’t just want different information, they also want it delivered in different formats. So AI tools recommend your content into different formats that are most useful for the searcher. 

For example, a person, an executive persona. Right. This person prefers a summary with a bullet list because they wanted to scan the content quickly. As on the other hand, a researcher persona might want a deep-dive narrative with sources and charts and explanations. 

So by anticipating the format preferences of different personas, we make it easier for AI to recommend the content in a way that is very useful and valuable for the user. 

And so what this means for content strategy, we want to start this in ways to incorporate personas into the content. We want to revisit our core pages, our core content, and integrate targeted examples, localized details. We want persona-specific insights to make the content more relevant and engaging, right? If not every content or not, every topic needs a personalized version. Instead, we want to find places where we can speak to the audience naturally and more directly—whether through localized callouts, customer-focused CTAs, or targeted subsections within that existing content.

Also, now that we have talked about tailoring the content to different personas and formats, the next step is making sure we have a strong base persona to work from. And this starts with core demographics. These are things that we already have when we create the content. Things like the age, the gender, the race, locations, education, income. So all of these basics, core demographics are the foundation for layering our context and preferences and constraints when writing the content. 

And it is tools like Google Search Console that come in very handy because it gives you a real world insight into what, who is finding your content, what they’re typing in, what are they searching for? So by analyzing these types of questions and queries, from your visitors, you can infer what problems or goals they have. And this helps you in building the persona for writing your content. 

Jenny: That’s super helpful. I think a lot of folks are thinking about personas when they’re doing social media content, but that hasn’t necessarily translated over to SEO and on-site content as much.

So hopefully for our listeners, this is really good food for thought and really helps you think about how persona-based marketing really extends into all of these other tactics and ways that you’re creating content for your patients online. So Jenny and Sarah, thank you so much for all of the information you’re sharing today. 

This whole world is shifting so quickly. So we’re going to continue creating episodes on SEO and the impact AI is having it, on it, every couple of months to be able to continue to give people some food for thought in context as they are refining their strategy. 

So thank you, both of you. 

Yenny: Thank you. 

Sarah: Thank you.

Jenny: And for our listeners, thank you for tuning in today. Hopefully, both Sarah and Yenny gave you some additional ways that you can think about content strategy, content creation and the way that AI and AI overviews are digesting and using your information on behalf of your patients. So the way that you will continue to create content will shift over time, and you’ll continue to do better and better to show up in those places that your patients are looking for you.

If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to reach out. We would love to chat more. Otherwise, please share this episode with a colleague who may find the information helpful. Subscribe to this podcast. We drop new episodes almost every Friday, and like us on social media. You need to get updates on the new information that we’re sharing.

And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We will see you on next week’s episode. Have a great day! Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends, welcome to this very special episode of We Are, Marketing Happy –  A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I’m Jenny Bristow, and I am your host and the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am joined today by three Hedy & Hopp team members. We have Mark Brandes, our Director of Data and Technology, Lindsey Brown, our director of activation, and Cassie Haxton, a Marketing Analyst on our team. 

And we are here to talk about the fact that Hedy & Hopp is the first ever marketing agency to begin the Epic certification process. Yay! Such a huge deal. We are so, so excited. 

So we are recording this podcast fresh from getting back from the Epic headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin. We had an amazing three days of in-person training and we wanted to kind of pause, freeze this moment in time and really create a podcast that talks about how we got here, our experiences, and create an opportunity for other marketers in the space to understand the why behind us getting Epic certified, and understand if it’s something that might be valuable for your organization to pursue, as well.

So let’s get right into it. I want to jump first into: How did we get here? I’ve received this message no fewer than about two dozen times through LinkedIn inbox messages, of how and why, Jenny? I need to know more. Well, there’s quite a history around that. So the cliff notes—if you’re old enough to know a cliff notes are—is that three years ago, we met Epic and some representatives from Epic at, about four years ago, actually, at a health care marketing conference.

I believe it was, SHSMD. And we saw them again at HCIC, and we began fostering a relationship. We understood Epic is the largest EHR in the world. And with our passion of improving patients’ access to care, EHRs fit in there somehow. But we didn’t really know what the future would look like. Well, that really has evolved over the last four years as our relationship has deepened with them.

And they began expressing to us their interest in welcoming marketers to the table. So for anybody who is listening to this and you’re an Epic-run system, you may be saying, wait, but I’m a marketer and I’ve never talked to Epic before. That doesn’t feel right. They’re not there yet with you, but they’re working on it. So in general, Epic has figured out that having just IT teams implement Epic is not ideal for the patient experience.

So there’s been a concerted effort within the organization to get marketers to the table. Any new Epic implementations, they’re requiring somebody with a marketing POV to be part of that workgroup. And they are trying to get systems that have been on Epic to add people to those work groups, because they know that, you know, the way that you word a message makes a big difference. And they really see the value in that. 

One quick sidebar they shared an anecdote that a system was implementing Epic, and there was an IT person that was in charge of turning on all of the pre-appointment reminders, and they found out after the fact that each patient was receiving over 40 text message and message notifications because they just turned on all of them.

So that’s a great example, tangibly, of why marketing needs to be at the table. So they began this big transformation a couple of years ago. In April, they welcomed Hedy & Hopp, as well as three other agencies, to the Epic campus to really educate us around all the different tools and functionalities within Epic that they believe could be valuable for marketers.

We’ve had a lot of sidebar conversations with Epic, sharing our POV around the value of adding things like UTM parameters to capture data whenever people actually schedule an appointment or find a doctor using their tools and they’ve been receptive and implemented those solutions. So it’s been a really beautiful back-and-forth relationship where they’re hearing what marketers need, and they’re taking action on it.

So with that, we began talking to our system clients about being their partner in making their, or using epic as a patient acquisition platform. And we kept running into the same roadblock that their teams wanted us to be Epic certified in order to get into their systems, both to implement Cheers campaigns, or to pull data, to be able to do full ROI reporting.

And so it was a natural next step. It was not natural to go through that process to sign up on Epic. They did not have a system in place yet. They made one for us. And now, they are excited to welcome additional marketers, even talking about potentially creating some additional training material specifically for marketers, which we’re sharing our POVs on, to make sure that it is very beneficial for folks to be able to go through the training and then jump in and make it impactful.

So I’d love to chat with the team a little bit. Let’s start with you, Lindsey. Marketing tools. So for anybody who, perhaps, isn’t super familiar with Epic’s technical infrastructure or is just high-level aware, what is your perspective of why and how Epic can be a useful tool in a marketer’s toolbox? 

Lindsey: So I think there’s a few different things. One is, you know, how we are communicating with patients really is part of marketing. It’s absolutely part of how a physician communicates. And anyone on the physician’s team is communicating with patients for medical information, things like that. Super important. But how that is communicated, when that’s communicated, in other ways, to ensure that that patient is getting all of the information that they need and they have it at their fingertips is really important.

I think something that’s really special about the whole MyChart ecosystem is that it really allows the patients to be in full control of the information about their health and allows them to communicate with a variety of people, however they want to communicate with it. So it’s a really important tool from a patient experience, which we can learn a lot from that as marketers, and just how those are being used to better communicate with potential patients and ensure when they do become a patient, that they have an optimal experience and they continue being a patient with us and having a positive experience not only with our communication, but also with the people that they meet in person at their facilities. 

So a couple things that I think marketers could really think about, are things like your KPIs. So something that we learned is there’s a lot there’s a lot of little things that you have to turn on within Epic to make sure things are running smoothly. So as a marketing team, if you’ve set a KPI that you know you want to make sure people are booking appointments, you have to make sure that functionality is available in Epic, it’s been turned on, and that it is, in the correct sequence so that folks are actually, able to do the thing that you need them to do from a marketing perspective, so that you can again show that ROI. But if they can’t even do the thing, you can’t get the, you can’t get any of those kinds of results you have to rely on, on probably less technical ways of measuring those results.

The other thing, I was thinking about just in terms of marketing, is there’s a feature within my chart where there are things like announcements that you can use, which is really cool. And I was thinking about, one of our system clients that was running a cancer screening campaign or colon cancer screening campaign, and it was literally for anyone above a certain age.

And something you can do within Epic is make sure there is some kind of an announcement banner. So as soon as they’re logging into MyChart to get that communication that, you know, they’re getting from their physician or looking at their lab results, what have you, they have that reminder and they can go and get a screening right away.

Again, you want to make sure that that kind of functionality is built in before you have those announcements. But those are the kinds of things that you can use from at least a marketing perspective. And then just other ways to engage with your patients outside of the digital space because so much of what happens in a patient experience happens in person.

Make sure that we’re getting people signed up for a MyChart account. Something I didn’t realize is if you’re a patient, you don’t automatically get a MyChart account. You have the ability to access information, but you don’t automatically get a login and a password like you have to actually do that as a patient and get involved. So something we could do as marketers is just help encourage that so that we can, again improve that communication, improve that patient experience, and allow them to have access to all those great tools, as well.

Jenny: Absolutely. And that the exciting part is really just MyChart scratches, just the tip of the iceberg, right? We have Cheers, Hello World, like, there’s, MyChart Builder, which has landing pages which are available for non-patients. So a lot of—a misnomer I’ve heard quite often is that it’s only available to communicate with patients. That’s not true. You actually can run campaigns and capture prospective patient information and nurture them using Epic tools as well. So, a lot more to come on that information at a later date. 

Mark, share with us a little bit through the lens of marketing analytics. What’s the value for marketers or analysts to get access to that data?

Mark: Yeah, I mean, there is so much data inside of Epic, as I’m sure most of our listeners understand. And I think part of going through this training is we were able to really see where those data connections are, and, oh, we should be able to report on this. To Lindsey’s point, you can make those announcements. 

There’s also ways to say, are people engaging with those announcements? Can we see that information, right? And so there’s ways to make sure you can report on all of it. There’s so much reporting already available, just by default inside of Epic. But I think without, kind of a marketer’s viewpoint on that, some of those reports just kind of go by the wayside. I know we’ve talked to some of our clients and yeah, some of that reporting is available, but sometimes our marketing teams don’t even see it. So they can see right now how many people, how many of their customers are signed up for MyChart, right? How many have accounts? How many have signed up for this? Some of that’s available in just standard reporting and it just doesn’t make its way to marketing. 

So that’s another reason why it’s such a push to get marketers involved. Because while you know IT teams are great. Sometimes those reports come a little utilitarian to them. Right? It’s just kind of the standard stuff that just kind of push out. Whereas I think when a marketer gets that information, there’s a sense of we need to disseminate this, we need to really make this actionable. And there’s just that next step that comes with, with the kind of marketing mindset involved there, which I think is great.

The other big thing is that with what Epic is trying to do now, you can really look at your marketing tactics and look and see, did they turn into customers? Did those customers sign up for appointments? Did they go through with that appointment? You can see all the way down that line to really understand—yeah, my marketing really actually did make a huge impact because look at all these actual patients.

You can even get to an ROI at a certain point because you can say, this appointment brought in this much funds, we can compare that to the amount we kind of used in marketing. So there’s a lot of connectivity there. Some of that’s still being worked on. Epic still have some things in place to make sure that when somebody gets to the site, we can actually track them, but there are ways to do that now.

And I think with our training and our conversations with Epic, we’ve learned some of those ways, which is great. So we can kind of help some customers hopefully get that to happen. And then, yeah, I mean, I think that just unlocks a whole new level of reporting. I think so many marketers are stuck in just being able to look at platform metrics, maybe they look at traffic on their website, but sometimes it stops there, and it’s so tough to kind of say, yeah, our marketing was very impactful because we got this much traffic on the site. You got to go to that next level to really start feeling that impact. And I think this relationship with Epic and what they’re trying to do is going to make that very, available to us and possible.

Jenny: Yeah, such great points, Mark. And I think about all of those systems that got in trouble for putting Google Analytics for tracking in MyChart. Don’t—why? The data is already there, right? You just have to be able to have access to the correct people on your team, have the correct backend reporting set up within Epic to then be able to export it.

So when we think about the lens of like privacy and compliance, all of this data is accessible in an appropriate way. 

Mark: That’s right. Exactly. 

Jenny: Perfect. So let’s talk a little bit about the actual training. So we were there three full days. The first area that we got certified in the beginning of our train track was MyChart. So we went through patient experience training, two days of MyChart, and then we have a few virtual days afterwards that include things like Cheers training, we’re doing, the find a doctor, physician finder training.

There’s a couple of additional badges and training that we’re going to be going through, as well as, Cogito training, as well, for our analytics team, for Mark and Cassie. 

Cassie, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the training. So you come to us, you come into the conversation with kind of a business intelligence, heavy data analyst perspective. Was the training, what you expected? What was your big takeaways? If you were more of a comms- or PR-oriented marketer, how would you have felt about it? I’d love to kind of hear your big takeaway through those lens.

Cassie: Well, when I, when I walked into the text software platform, I was like, oh, God, I’ve stepped back into the 90s.

It’s definitely, you know, the interface is, you know, you think of the doctor’s office and you think of it being a little bit outdated. So it’s a little outdated. The structure behind it is not. And, the depth and you know, that you can get to in granularity with setting up how you set up a patient that’s not either that’s it’s very, structured. And they clearly put it together over many, many decades of figuring out patient experience and doctor experience and how to, you know, stitch it together so that they have a good experience on the front end. I think, it was interesting. 

I think the most valuable part of the training for us was just getting in there and getting our hands wet and our hands dirty, and understanding, okay, this is the interface of Hyperspace, which is what the doctors and the nurses use. And then this is the, text, which is what, you know, the builder or the IT person might use and understanding that there’s a difference and that there’s tons of toggles on the front end and there’s tons of pages to shift through on the back end. And it’s not as easy, it’s not just something you can turn on. I mean, you can, but you have to turn on many layers and many details. And so I think it was really valuable for us just to even understand what we’re dealing with. And I think there’s, there’s more to go and there’s more ways to go for a marketing perspective. And for it to be truly valuable for marketers,

I think there were moments where we were kind of looking at each other like, I don’t know if we need to know this part or, you know, we might not go into this place again. But I think and it sounds like Epic’s kind of working with how can we make this more, you know, package it a little bit differently and, and different, maybe combine certain tracks or, you know, shift them a little bit.

But, I think just getting trained and, and certified in it is valuable to be able to understand what all is in there. And then you likely will have someone on your team that, you know, whether it’s if it’s not you, there will be someone on your team that probably will go in and set up everything. But if you have a better understanding of what they should set up and why, and how and how that might affect, you know, kind of that unrolling of a patient experience, unrolling of a marketing journey. Then I think that, you know, that’s going to help everybody in the end. 

Jenny: That’s such great points, Cassie. I feel like whenever we went into this and when we started, like for ad agency day for Epic, for example, it very much seemed like a bunch of wizzy wigs. They were beautiful drag and drop and it’s so easy and beautiful. That isn’t actually how a lot of it is. And that’s okay, right? But I think it’s really important for marketers, if we’re going to go down this journey, if we’re going to take this hike, right? Using an analogy, I want to know it’s a ten mile hike. So I prepare myself versus thinking it’s a one mile out and back, and I don’t necessarily need to bring a bottle of water with me. Right? It’s a different mindset. So it’s not that it’s not achievable. It’s absolutely achievable. And it’s very, very beneficial. But it is definitely a bigger lift, and understanding that and respecting that within your organization, I think, will result in much more meaningful conversations. 

Sort of like the privacy space, right? It’s so much more layered and intense than you would think just, oh, it’s easy. Just to stop collecting the data. Well, there’s a lot more to it than that. Same thing over here on the epic side. So definitely takes a lot of thought and consideration. And I definitely agree going through training, even if it was components that we may never use again, was really helpful.

And kudos to Cassie! She’s the first one out of our group to actually successfully pass the post-class project build. So, yay, Cassie!

Cassie: A little more time, then you guys.

Jenny: No, you did it though. I’m very proud of you. Very exciting. 

So, we have some big takeaways, lots of exciting things in the future. If you’re listening to this and you’re saying, wow, I want to keep learning more, we have two opportunities for you.

First, we are doing an in-person Learning Lab on Epic and the marketing and marketing analytics opportunities at HCIC. So if you’re going to HCIC, grab a spot. We absolutely anticipate that it’s going to be a full room. I believe you could register your spot in advance. So if you’re going and want to tune in, grab it. 

If you’re not going, we are going to be repeating that session at a virtual environment, shortly after HCIC. So you can go to HedyandHopp.com/EpicWebinar. And go ahead and grab your spot. Now, there’s no cost to this. It will be virtual with some really great Q&A at the end. So we’re going to put both of those links in the show notes so you can follow along. But if you’re interested in this topic, definitely grab your seat on the webinar.

It’s going to be a much more robust where we dig into each of the individual topics, and should be a really great learning opportunity. 

So again, group, thank you so much for joining me and being the first ever marketers to go through Epic certification. It was a really fun hill to climb, and I cannot wait to see all of the fun work we do for systems.

So with that, thank you for tuning in today, on our episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Be sure to share this episode with somebody on your team that you think would value the information and give us a like and a follow to be notified of future episodes. And with that, we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I’m your host, and I’m the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited to introduce you today to Marissa Gurrister. Marissa is our brand new Director of Growth here at Hedy and Hopp, and she joins us with over a decade experience in-house on the system side, coming to us from systems such as Ascension and Duly.

Welcome, Marissa. 

Marissa: Thank you. I’m excited to be here. 

Jenny: Well, you are going to become a familiar face on the podcast. So I’m so excited to kick off the first episode with you. And as we were brainstorming topics to cover, one of the things that we’ve had a lot of folks want to chat with us about, both to understand the technical details of how to do it, but then also talk about the fun strategy side is … influencer marketing. And you have quite a history with influencer marketing. So why don’t we kick off by having you talk a little bit about what influencer marketing is and what it looks like in health care? 

Marissa: Sure, yeah. So I know usually when people hear influencer marketing, they’re thinking of all those social influencers, all the fun folks that we follow online, on Instagram, selling us all of the things, you know, but really in healthcare, I feel like a few ways. We can have patient advocates can be used as influencers. So, like parents or family members of patients. We can use physicians as influencers. So that can be really fun if we’re looking for physicians to share more, in depth, you know, research based, details about particular services that they offer. And then, of course, we have micro influencers, and we can still use our traditional influencers.

So it’s really fun. A few different ways you can do them. But it’s a little bit different obviously, than social influencing. So in healthcare we typically see organizations using influencers to promote health and wellness services or encouraging preventative services. More educational type content and less selling of a product like you would on social influencing.

Jenny: Absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about case studies. Let’s make it real for folks. So what examples do you have? What kind of campaigns have you participated in or you’ve seen in the past? 

Marissa: Yeah, so a few really exciting ones come to mind. We’ve used influencers for a fun children’s hospital out in Texas. This is kind of a tactic that we laid on to a full multichannel campaign that we were rolling out. So it was a smaller tactic in a full campaign. But we used parents and patient advocates of the children at the hospital to share testimonial videos. So we went into the families’ for the kiddos, into the house, and we just had them share what it was like to receive care at the hospital that we were promoting and how it really impacted their life.

And so that was a fun one, because they were well-known influencers and well-known families in the community, and it just brought some, you know, some a humanizing element to the care into the services that the healthcare was providing. It’s always nice to hear about these stories from someone that you might see, like at the grocery store or in the car line pickup at your kid’s school, right? Someone that you know and you can trust. So really having that trusted, authentic voice really helped in that particular campaign.

And then we’ve done other big ones. So we’ve used traditional influencers like you would see selling you something cool from Amazon. We can use them in healthcare as well. So in Tennessee, we did a fun event called Mammos at the Mall. That was like one of my favorite influencer campaigns we’ve done, and we used traditional social influencers, women of the age to be getting mammograms. We contracted them and they took us through their full experience so they would document getting their mammogram, walking us through the steps of scheduling and then going and then the follow up, all of the things.

And it led to a big event at the end of October where we had a mobile mammography bus at the mall, and these influencers invited their followers to come meet them at the mall and get their mammogram same-day. So it was really fun. We had a full event and the influencers were there. They shared like tidbits all leading up through the month of October. And then women could mingle and literally like go get their mammogram same-day, no appointment necessary, which made it extremely convenient as well. 

Jenny: That’s amazing and really takes some of the fear or the hesitancy of self-care away, which is phenomenal. One of my favorite campaigns that we ran here at Hedy & Hopp was actually in collaboration with St. Louis Children’s Hospital. And, what they were trying to do was actually fight back. They did a big consumer study to be able to understand how people perceived the hospital. And overall, people perceived it as, you know, if my child has cancer or they need a transplant, I’m going to Children’s Hospital. Otherwise I’m going to go somewhere else because the parking garage is scary, it’s downtown, all these things. Right? 

So we actually did an influencer campaign with some lead physicians. And so we actually had the physicians, going through and talking about their areas of care. We had one of, actually the marketing person, at the hospital was pregnant. So we followed her through her pregnancy journey, meeting with different physicians.

And it became really interesting because any time there was a new physician or a physician who had openings, we would put them in this series, and within a week their books were full because that’s how much people were really tuning in and engaging with it. So there’s lots of different angles and strategies, whether you’re trying to build consumer trust, trying to really get specific positions or specialty areas name out there, really can be layered with all of these other tactics to have it be a really comprehensive campaign.

But let’s talk about the challenges and the risks of doing influencer marketing, because it’s not exactly the same as on the consumer side, but we have our own set of concerns in health care. 

Marissa: Of course. Yeah. So obviously HIPAA still applies to all of the things that we’re doing, regardless of our campaigns. So generally, if it’s a patient sharing their own testimonial or the parent of a minor sharing their child’s testimonial, as long as you have your consent form and all of your legal paperwork signed, HIPAA is not generally a concern for those particular cases. If we’re having our physicians, like you mentioned, be our influencer, they still have to abide by all of the HIPAA regulations, sharing any sort of patient information or any sort of details like that—no, no. 

And then if they’re being paid. Right. So a lot of the times if we’re using, for instance, Mammos at the Mall, we used traditional influencers who do that for their living. So we did pay them as part of our campaign, as part of our tactic. And that just has to be all documented and disclosed upfront. I would say generally best practices, if it is a patient testimonial or like a, patient advocate testimonial, paid is probably not the best practice there. Like, you want those to be genuine and authentic and you would like them to come provide those without compensation.

So I would just kind of keep that in mind for payment. But yeah, all of those compliance regulations still remain. 

Jenny: Great point. Excellent. Let’s talk a little bit about best practices when you’re developing the strategy or implementing an influencer campaign, what are some of your thoughts? 

Marissa: Well, you know I think like number one best practice to me would be vetting and making sure that we’re selecting influencers that are aligned with our brand’s vision and mission and values. Right. Like you don’t want someone who has posted or is posting on their social feed about things or services that you don’t agree with or align with. And I think that also just kind of kills the reputability of the campaign, right? You want someone who is in line with your brand and your brand voice. So I think that’s important.

I think it’s also important to make sure that they stay authentic, that they’re sharing their own version of the story, or they’re sharing their own version of the services. So for, going back to like the Mammos at the Mall, we of course give them some talking points because at the end of the day, it is still our marketing campaign, right?

Like we still have to have consistent messaging and we have a story that we want to share through them. So we did provide talking points, which I think is fine, but as long as they’re sharing these things through their own voice and through their own filter, I think that that keeps it authentic while still sharing your message that you want to convey.

Jenny: Absolutely. And one other thing that I would share, based off a different influencer campaign that we ran, is we are working with a system, and they had a specific doctor, a physician, an employee physician that they wanted to promote. And a couple of months into the campaign, that physician, two things happened: First, they said some really negative things online on their personal account, but then they ended up leaving the system.

And the system did not diversify and have multiple faces out front. So when you’re thinking about building the strategy and number one, research, and understand, you know, this person’s behind the scenes and then also diversification, it should never be about one face. It should never be about one person. Because then that makes sure that regardless of what happens and what pivots you have to do in the future, you’ll have that ability to do so.

Marissa: Yeah. Totally agree. Great points, great points. 

Jenny: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for tuning in today, folks. We hope that if you are considering an influencer campaign, this gave you a couple of different campaign ideas or ways that you could perhaps structure it for your organization. If you want to talk, shop and brainstorm, give us a call. We’d love to chat. We have lots of other examples of successful things that have been done, both on the patient and on the employer brand side. Influencer marketing is a fabulous thing to layer into a campaign to make sure it’s successful. 

Marissa: Yep, it was great having me. Thank you. 

Jenny: Yeah, thanks so much for tuning in today, everybody. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m very excited today to chat about another topic that is kind of similar to last week’s episode. So last week we talked a little bit about the benefits of focusing on your own professional approach and content strategy on LinkedIn. Why is that worth your energy as a health care marketer? I received so many DMs and messages from folks that really it inspired them to start creating additional content that I wanted to do another content piece that would focus a little bit on how you can continue to build out your own presence as a health care marketer through the lens of building, you know, your own professional credibility.

So first big caveat: If you’re listening to this on Spotify or on another podcast platform and you don’t have video, you’re not going to get the full effect of this episode. I strongly recommend that you watch the YouTube version or the video version that’s available on Spotify. If you have to do audio only, totally fine, but there are going to be quite a few things I’m going to be visually referencing.

So let’s get with it. So today we’re going to be focusing on and talking about how you can show up your best through video conferences. So Zoom, we all spend so many hours on Zoom. A big percentage of our clients on the provider side, whether they are at a large multistate hospital system or, you know, a ten location, ten location orthopedic practice—a lot of folks are still working from home at least multiple days a week, and even when they do go into the office, they’re still having to do quite a few video calls. So I’m going to talk a little bit about the power of your background on Zoom. It’s the number one thing I get comments on, and I want first for you to see the backdrop.

It feels not as exciting as it normally does. Right? For those of you that are used to seeing me, come on here with joy in my background, you can see it feels a little flat right now, right? So I’m really excited to share with you a little before and after. So, here’s before. And here’s after. It feels a lot more alive, right? 

Three small changes: Lights in the background, candle, and of course, the famous neon sign. So I have a brand to represent, right? I own the company. I have the podcast, so I’m recording often. But there’s a brand that you’re developing visually every single time that you hop on a video call. Whether you realize it or not, it’s absolutely happening.

So I have a LinkedIn post that is one of my most popular LinkedIn posts I’ve ever done that provides some tips and tricks to make your backdrop a lot more appealing—regardless of where you are or how much money you have to spend on it. 

So let’s go through a couple of different ideas. First, lighting. Lighting is so important. I’m recording this episode right now and it’s about 4:30 in the afternoon, so light is coming in from different places. But I have my nice fancy little remote. I’m going to play a little bit with the blinds and show you how completely different lighting can look, whenever you’re opening or closing natural light around you. Then I also have a lamp that I can turn on that again, like so orange. So we’re going to kill that right away. That one’s not doing me any favors. And then whenever this blind is up, it just is too much light, right? It’s too much. So wherever you are, spend some time playing with the window coverings, the back lighting. I have a second screen that always has something white on it, so it’s almost like that ring light effect.

So if you are in an office building and you don’t have access to natural light by setting up your second camera or, sorry, second monitor to have something that has white on it, like your email inbox, even—anything that you need, if it’s not distractive, fine. But it’s white so it really can help kind of have that nice lighting effect.

Another thing you’ll notice that I do in my background that I always recommend for people is I have a lot of depth visually. It’s a lot of visual interest. So I have the ability to do this because I’m actually in a sunroom. I have an entire room that I was able to decorate. So I added lights with depth.

I have a candle with depth light, the neon sign. I have plants at different heights and in different sizes, all around me. And that provides quite a bit of depth. You can do the same thing, even if you have a flat wall behind you, by putting frames at different sizes, different height, maybe putting a short table, over to the side and a plant, to be able to provide, additional depth, of visual interest. You know, as you’re on a Zoom. So definitely thinking about how you can play with depth. 

Another thing you really want to focus on is camera location. So I see folks all of the time looking like this when they’re on Zooms. And I’m looking at my second monitor right now. So they must have their video over here, but their actual video that they’re recording that’s actually picking them up for folks that are on the other side of the Zoom or on the other monitor. That’s a pretty bad experience if you’re chatting with somebody like this, because it’s more difficult to read their facial expressions, and it feels less engaging than if I’m actually looking at the camera and chatting with you face to face, right? So you want to make sure that wherever your camera is, that is the screen that you are looking at.

Let’s talk a little bit about camera height. Everybody’s been on a Zoom call where somebody—let me get my monitor, my thing—where somebody was on a video that was like this right way to high, kind of looking down at them. Definitely, difficult or sometimes even, like where it’s down like this and too low. And it’s very difficult.

I have a little stand mine is on, so I have the ability to move it around a little bit if I want. But definitely play around with height because you want it to definitely feel almost like somebody sitting across the table from you and not looking up at you or looking down at you. You want it to be very inviting to be on a call with you and participating in that way.

If you can’t move your laptop, you can actually set up your phone as an alternate camera. Or you can buy one of those little camera plugins that they offer now to be able to, like, drop the line of sight down. If, for example, you need to look over to your second screen for any reason, you can do that and still be engaging with the content.

Another tip is clean your camera! Here, I’m going to go ahead and do it with mine while we’re talking. Clean your camera! So many people—this is the number one tip I give people for photography, as well: Clean your lens. It is crazy how much natural oil gets on your lens. And whenever that happens, it starts being hazy.

The picture isn’t quite as crisp, and when you’re hopping on Zooms and trying to have a professional polished conversation, as a marketer, you want to make sure that your image is crisp and you’re showing up the best. The internet connection is already going to do you dirty by messing up the clearness of your imagery. So at least make sure that your camera is clean.

I usually keep, either I use my hand like I just did, or keep a nice terrycloth or something that won’t scratch your lens in your desk drawer to clean it, at the beginning every day or whenever you touch it accidentally as you’re opening up your laptop. Always important to keep it clean.

A couple of additional things to think about as you’re designing your space is really thinking about color contrast. You can see I have some really bright things and then some dark things, and I really mix it up. I have art over to the side. It’s actually our Artist in Residence. So I get to highlight their work a little bit. So, you don’t want everything to be one color. And I typically see this whenever people are sitting in, like, a spare bedroom and they’re up against a white wall. And everything is one monotone color. So, thinking about ways that you can transform that, whether it is something, you know, inexpensive and easy, like peel and stick wallpaper to add some visual interest, or perhaps some framed art or photos, even some sophisticated looking posters. There’s really a lot of things you can do with creativity. And as marketers, we should excel at this, right?

So thinking how you can turn something—a corner of your house, or an office area that you have to use for Zoom calls—into something that shows a little bit more personality that’s going to be your spot where you’re going to record regularly, it’s worth putting in, you know, a little bit of time to brainstorm that. 

A couple of other things that I wanted to point out is I always have at least a jacket or a blazer or something readily accessible. I am very casual most of the time. People know that. I am a big proponent of always wanting to be yourself, really show up in a way that is genuine to you. But, you know, sometimes you gotta dress up a little bit. So having layers or things that you can throw on, especially whenever you have back to back meetings, can really be helpful.

So, hopefully this was helpful. I definitely know that as marketers we juggle so much, and for many of you, this is probably the last thing that you want to think about. But a lot of you are probably on many meetings and Zooms with people in your organization, with leaders within your organizations, you definitely want to take time to show up as your best self.

So have fun: Make sure that the way you’re showing up represents the brand and the personality that you want them to remember. And I’m always happy to answer any questions. Share your background with me! I’d love on socials, to take a snapshot of your socials and share it with me or—of your background—and share it with me on socials. I’d love to see what you design. 

So until next week, thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. Hopefully you will have fun designing your space. Cheers!https://youtu.be/KfFPqGtLy8I

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a health care marketing podcast. I’m your host Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m so excited to have with me today Nicole Knight. She is the marketing and communications manager at Virginia Heart, and I 1,000% bullied her to be on today’s episode. So thank you, Nicole, for joining me today.

Nicole: Thank you for having me.

Jenny: So Nicole and I connected through SHSMD. We were both posting on the forums and then we connected on LinkedIn, and we’re going to hop on this call just to do a little bit of networking, getting to know other people in the industry. And we started talking a little bit about the value of LinkedIn.

And I told Nicole that to build her professional network, she should start posting regularly on LinkedIn. And she said, “Why? That sounds ridiculous.” And I said, “This is a podcast. We’re going to start recording.” So thank you, Nicole, because people have this question, they want to know, like, why should I post on LinkedIn? Shouldn’t I just post for my employer?

So if you are an employee in house and even wondering if LinkedIn is worth your time as an individual, this episode’s for you. So Nicole, talk to me about your LinkedIn journey so far.

Nicole: I don’t post, but I do connect with people. I read other people’s posts. Sometimes I’ll comment. I do a lot of liking. But no, I am recluse on LinkedIn. So I’m one of those silent watchers.

Jenny: And what I think is amazing about this is you actually are quite successful at building out your, employer’s and clients’ social media accounts. You were telling me that one doctor has over a million views for some of the work that you’ve done.

Nicole: Yeah. And I really, I think that some, you know, social media is huge in building your own business and building your brand and your reputation.

And I think it’s a really powerful way to connect with people on a more casual, you know, face to face level. They feel like they’re actually talking to you, especially if you make those videos and the reels, of a doctor explaining something. So I think it’s really powerful. I just don’t want to do it for myself.

But, I think, you know, makes sense if that’s what you think.

Jenny: You’re open to the idea.

Nicole: Yes.

Jenny: But you hate it.

Nicole: Yes. Hate it, absolutely.

Jenny: I think you’re very representative of most marketers that I chat with that are in house. Most of them think exactly the way that you do. So this is going to be a fun episode.

So let’s step back a little bit. One of the things that I like to tell people, because if you go on my LinkedIn profile, you can see I post all of the time. I comment on other people’s stuff all of the time. I engage with other people all of the time, and I am more of an extrovert, so I get joy and like at the human level by doing it.

But I also do it because that’s the way to stay top of mind and build out my network. So, if you’re an in-house professional, you should be doing this because one of the things like if you look at the studies about how long people stay in their roles in marketing, it’s on average, what, like three years, maybe four years.

So people are changing positions really often and, the job market at this moment is extremely inundated, of people trying to submit for open positions. A lot of positions are filled simply by, networking. And LinkedIn is really the new version of networking. Even if you’re not looking for a new opportunity, right? Just building your network of like-minded individuals can be your own little community to be able to talk shop, so you can talk about and build networks for people that do similar work around the country. You know, idea-share. When you go to a conference, there’s lots of familiar faces. So, definitely a positive across the board.

So, Nicole, let’s chat a little bit about your posting because I challenged you that I think in order to build your personal, professional reputation as a human—not the great work that you’ve done, but just for Nicole—I think you should start posting once a week with a goal of engaging in other people’s posts daily—whether that’s a comment, or whatever on somebody else’s posts.

So tell me, first of all, tell our listeners how you feel about that.

Nicole: I don’t know what I’m going to say. I feel like it’s super uncomfortable. I do think that I am more of an extrovert when I’m talking to people one on one, or if I’m at an event or if I’m somewhere like that. But online where everyone is watching you feels super daunting. And it lives on the internet forever, so …

Jenny: True. Yes, it does.

Nicole: Yeah. So it just feels like a bigger audience. I don’t necessarily want to be on stage, so …

Jenny: All of that is fair. What I recommend marketers do when they’re in your situation, Nicole, is to take a step back and kind of think about the work that you do and what you’re passionate to talk about, like, what are the things that you bug your family about?

You tell them you’re so excited about the work that you’ve done or the results that you’ve done, or something new that you’ve learned. If you’re so excited that you’re talking about it to people outside of your immediate work group, that’s the kind of stuff that you want to talk about.

So, for me, for example, at Hedy & Hopp, I’ve really stepped back, and created kind of my own content strategy and approach about the things that I like talking about and the things that I will not talk about.

So I talk just a little bit about my personal life—only when it’s relevant to work. So if I do a personal trip that bleeds into work, or if I do, like I log off, or something like, something that really impacts like the day-to-day of my work. On my personal life, I’ll chat about it, but I don’t talk too heavily about my personal life on LinkedIn.

Other people talk really heavily about their personal life, and they’re totally comfortable with this. That’s a barometer that you can kind of set yourself. But for content, trends and themes, I have a couple of topics that I think, I’m pretty great at talking about, like compliance, analytics, media strategies, kind of the more technical aspects of marketing are things that I really enjoy talking about.

So you can just kind of look at your own experience and work that you do, and kind of think about all of the things that get you excited to talk about, and that can be where you start building out some of your content, thought-starters.

Nicole: Yeah, no, I know I feel like my brain is moving a million miles a minute. I don’t know where I would start. It’s so daunting.

Jenny: Well, one idea is, as you’re thinking about how you’re creating content, you know, at Virginia Heart and as you’re creating content around for all of these physicians, what are the questions you ask them? You know, what if you created content that would guide marketers that are doing roles similar to yours across the country about how you do what you do, because you’re clearly excellent at it.

Nicole: Oh, thank you. No, I think that’s a great idea. I think the relationships you build with the physicians that you’re representing is so huge. And if you, you know, create those good relationships, I think it helps you do your job better because I’m not the one actually providing the care. To be honest, I don’t know anything about the care that’s being provided if I don’t learn from the doctors, you know? So even if I’m trying to make a media appearance, you know, the doctors need to tell me what’s coming up. Because if I Google something, it’s already in the news, so it has to be something that they know.

Jenny: That is such a great point. And that is your first post right there. That’s an excellent example: the value of building relationships with physicians.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: Right. What that looks like, how you structure it, how you approach it, like that’s really meaningful, helpful content for somebody—like if you think about yourself 5 or 10 years ago in the industry, what are things that you wish somebody would have helped you with or guided you on? And those are great, usually content thought-starters.

Nicole: Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are afraid of doctors, you know, and they’re afraid of working with them. And it’s always, I just don’t feel that way. I don’t know, I just think that they’re humans and really smart people, and I’ve always liked to be around people that are smarter than me.

Jenny: Absolutely. Same. Same.

Nicole: Being in a room with a bunch of people that know way more than you know. I think that’s awesome.

Jenny: I completely agree. I love being the dumbest person in the room because I know I’m going to walk out learning a handful of things every time.

Nicole: Yeah. Me too. I feel that way all the time.

Jenny: Yep, absolutely. One of the things that I have found really valuable in building out my professional network over the last 20 years is whenever I do connect with somebody online and it is, it seems meaningful or it seems like there’s a shared connection, I’ll reach out to them to do a virtual coffee, even just like 15 minutes, or see if they’re going to a conference that I’m going to in the fall and and try to sync up with ZERO expectations.

Right. It’s always about like, how can I help them, not, or provide value to them—not like, how will it ever benefit me? It’s always the long game of just like being a good human and eventually something positive will come back, whether it’s from them or not, just like the universe will pay you back in that. And I can tell you already have that philosophy because you reached out, you know, to chat. So kind of continuing that to build out your professional network is a great direction to go.

Nicole: Yeah. No, I, I love talking to other people who are doing similar things or maybe something different than what I’m doing, because I feel like sometimes I get I get stuck in my own little silo of what I’m doing every single day.

And, it’s nice to hear what other people are doing and what they’re thinking about, because then that kind of helps me take a step back and be like, oh, what if we do something different? You know?

Jenny: Absolutely. It’s phenomenal you view it that way. So many people can get, like, defensive or stuck in their ways. That’s absolutely, you know, a great way to view it.

Nicole: Yeah I feel like I just take the mentality that I’d rather be a lifelong learner, you know, and you could always do something different or better. And I don’t think that there’s any right way to do certain things, you know.

Jenny: That actually is a really good point about one of the reasons I like LinkedIn. So I know quite a few people that hate LinkedIn or like it’s so spammy and it’s like, that’s why you have to curate your feed.

You have to literally go seek out people that you respect in the real world and go follow them on LinkedIn and then unfollow those people that are creating spammy posts.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: Just spend like a week or two every day consistently, like unfollowing people or adding new people to your feed. And then every time you log on to your feed, it’s actually something super inspirational and curated for you.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: So it’s a way more positive experience. Like mine at this point is successful, powerhouse healthcare marketers across the country—in house and agency, and it’s so inspiring to follow them. And a lot of compliance attorneys who write very long, dry posts. But it’s very helpful information.

Nicole: That is definitely my weakness, is compliance. It’s so, you know, technical.

Jenny: It is you definitely have to be, dedicated to learning the craft, so …

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: We’ve put a lot of time and energy and learning and then creating content that I share a lot on LinkedIn. You know, and other people kind of deepen their skill sets and understanding in the area.

Nicole: So do you think it’s not, you can’t just comment on people’s posts—you have to make your own posts too?

Jenny: Yes, you can start by commenting on other people’s posts, like build up a little bit of muscle around there, but you absolutely have to be a content creator.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: I know, I know.

Nicole: And I love to do it under someone else’s name. A ghost Instagram, right?

Jenny: But you’re the one that deserves the credit. In our conversation, all of the really cool things that you’ve done with your career and with your healthcare marketing skills are so impressive. You know, putting those out there for the world to see and building up your own reputation is something that nobody can ever take away from you. Like, I tell this to people younger in their career all of the time, like it does not matter how happy you are at your current position and if you think you want to stay there forever, you have to always be investing in your own reputation in the industry because life changes, everything changes.

And so, at Hedy & Hopp, for example, we invite all of our team members to participate in the podcast. I want their individual reputations to be phenomenal, so they have all the career advancement opportunities, you know, that they may ever want in the future. So you really have to take control over that yourself because regardless of what you want to do, you know, it will help make sure that every door is open for you.

Nicole: Yeah. It’s so daunting. I feel like I, I see people post all the time and even people don’t get that many likes or comments. And I’m just like, that is so scary and I think you’re amazing for doing it. But oh my gosh, I can’t, I don’t know. It’s like, you know, when Instagram first started and you didn’t really care if you got that many likes? Do you remember that?

Jenny: Yes, I do. Girl, I remember MySpace! I’m old, Nicole!

Nicole: I had MySpace, too. But I, you know, you didn’t really care. You would post these things with, like, the weird sepia filter, and it was just like your burger or your fries, and it was like the most ugly picture. And you didn’t care what people wrote or liked. And there were probably five, ten likes.

Now it’s like if you don’t get 100 likes, you’re like, oh, is that bad? Should I have posted that? And I’ve just recently started to not care anymore. I’m like, you know what? Whatever. It’s my life. And I’m also on private, so it’s all just my friends, but I feel like, you know, LinkedIn is so public and it’s to all these professional people and maybe they know more than I do, or they think that what I’m posting is wrong …
Jenny: That’s what’s called imposter syndrome.

Nicole: I know.

Jenny: No, you got to shake that imposter syndrome off. You are in the trenches doing the work. You have valuable things to say. So there will always be people that know more than you, always. But that should not stop you from posting, because they are always going to be way more people that are interested in what you have to say.

And right now is such an interesting time on LinkedIn. Like, you can post content and truly become a thought leader in like less than six months or a year with regular content updates. But to start, it’s progress over perfection. You do not have to worry about the number of likes or comments that you have, but by engaging with other people’s content, that is absolutely how you’ll get more engagement on yours.

Nicole: Right.

Jenny: So it’s like a nice cycle.

Nicole: Yeah. Because the algorithm kind of drives those comments and posts and things to other people’s pages, and then they come back to yours.

Jenny: Absolutely. Yep, yep. And then it keeps you top of mind, as well, because they’ll all see that you commented on their notifications. And so it just is a really nice, like, ecosystem cycle.

Nicole: Yeah. Ugh, I know I read other people’s stuff. It’s just so hard.

Jenny: Well, Nicole, I have faith. I think this podcast is going to be an awesome first post for you when it goes live. And then I really look forward to staying in touch with you and seeing what you do, as far as building your engagement, proactively looking people up on LinkedIn and connecting with them. Like if people are saying smart things in the industry and you see that on like a publication or a forum or whatever, like look them up and follow them and see what they’re saying in other places, and just use it as a platform to continue your own learning within this industry in a way that you can control it.

Nicole: Yeah. No, I think that’s really, really good advice and valuable skill to take forward and kind of force myself out of my shell. And I guess we’ll see what happens. So how long do I do this for? Forever?

Jenny: Forever! So Nicole, what I recommend—do this for six months or even shorter between now and the end of the calendar year.

Make a challenge for yourself between now and the end of 2025 that you’re going to do one post a day, or, sorry, one post a week, and then one engagement a day, or whatever cadence you want to commit to. You set that for yourself. Do it through the end of the calendar year. And then as you go into 2026, take a step back and say, like, what did I get from this?

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: How much time did I put into it? Did I get that amount of value back? And then you can decide for yourself if it’s something you want to continue or not.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: Every year I do that and I always am like, yes, I’m going to do even more because it has been extremely fruitful for me. So I’m excited for you to do it and see what it does.

Nicole: How often do you post?

Jenny: At least weekly, Sometimes multiple times a week.

Nicole: Wow. And do you—do ideas just pop into your head, or do you have to brainstorm and really think about what you’re going to say?

Jenny: So ideas. I am always looking at content, like trying to find content—that’s just the way that my brain works. I am, like an idea generator, so, just ask my team. So always throwing new ideas on top of it. But that’s the way my brain works. So I always, have my phone with my notes app or my notepad with me, and I write ideas down. Then I always have it to go back to, but often the ideas that I spent the least amount of time planning, usually that I literally took the picture, wrote the post and did it on my phone get the highest engagement because people aren’t looking for super polished stuff on LinkedIn.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: They want real stuff. They want something they can relate to.

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: So those are the posts that I always find do the best. So I don’t spend a ton of time doing content strategy—Hedy & Hopp does as a brand …

Nicole: Right.

Jenny: And people at Hedy & Hopp do that. But like for my own personal one, it very much is just like, what are people talking about?

What is trending? What is bothering me in the industry?

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: Or how can I add an interesting POV based off of my own lens of how I see the world.

Nicole: And you don’t always add a photo, right? You just—sometimes it’s just your thoughts.

Jenny: Sometimes it’s just my thoughts. Usually you get way better engagement if you have a photo or a link, something that gives, a visual like enhancement to the post. So I almost always put a photo in.

Nicole: Oh you do? Okay.

Jenny: Almost always. Mmhmm.

Nicole: Wow. Okay.

Jenny: Yep.

Nicole: All right. Well, this will be interesting. I will report back.

Jenny: I love it. Well thank you, Nicole. And thank you for listeners. Hopefully if you are an in-house health care marketer and you’ve been kind of thinking about the pros and cons of spending more of your day on LinkedIn or just generally building your online reputation for your individual professional brand, even if it’s platform agnostic, hopefully this was helpful to you.

We’ve done episodes in the past talking about the value of submitting for and winning awards for your work, as well as the value of speaking at conferences and building out your professional reputation that way. So you can go back and give those episodes a listen. We are going to link to Nicole’s LinkedIn in our show notes, so if you’d like to connect with her and watch her posting journey, she would absolutely love that.

And just thank you so much for tuning in today. We will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am your host. And I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am very excited today to have three of our very own teammates joining us to celebrate the one year anniversary of the acquisition of another agency.

So back on August 1st of 2024, we acquired an agency called iHealthSpot, and we acquired this agency because Hedy & Hopp was really built to service what we call system client. So, statewide or multi-state providers and payors were really the way that we structured and built our organization. But time and time again, we would have smaller organizations that had a smaller geographic footprint, which usually comes with a smaller budget coming in, asking us to do work with them.

And it broke our heart every time we had to choose to not partner, because we just couldn’t come up with a process that would be efficient for them. We began building a second business unit internally, and then, less than a month later, the opportunity to acquire iHealthSpot presented itself and we were thrilled. So I iHealthSpot, the acquisition brought with it, about 450 practice clients.

So clients think like a critical access hospital or a 5 or 6 location orthopedic group that’s physician-owned or private equity backed, perhaps. So they have a lot more autonomy can move. They can move faster than large systems, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun. So today I’m excited to invite three team members that came and joined Hedy & Hopp as part of the acquisition to talk about their individual departments and some of the changes they’ve seen since the acquisition.

So we’re going to get started with, Kristen Wiedman. So, Kristen, one of the exciting things, you are the Project Management Lead. First of all, just to set the stage, you’re the one who makes sure that all of the work is delivered on time and on quality, and everybody knows what their jobs are. So one of the first things that you and I began working on is really evaluating the different packages and ways that we worked with these organizations.

I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about the revision of the practice marketing packages over the last year, and what’s what that has meant for the practice marketing clients. 

Kristin: Thanks, Jenny. Yes. So I think one of the first things we really looked at was how we named our packages. So we originally had things named by services, which can get a little confusing, right?

If you are just a physician that is trying to get new patients, looking at this list of SEO and listings management and paid ads, you don’t really know where to start. So I think you and the sales and marketing team at Hedy & Hopp has worked really well on naming things in a way that they make sense. So, things like a patient volume package or, you know, working on your brand reputation.

And, so I’ve loved those changes. And then from, more an operational and a project management standpoint, I think we’ve done a good job with adding a package that was really needed and really fit, and set the stage for our clients. So it’s called the foundation package. So we saw a lot of, and I think this was kind of a learning from the system side of things of that we may not be able to service, practice with, the full service of a strategy team or the data and analytics team.

But to bring a feel of that over, we have that foundation package. So it’s either you’re working with, the orthopedic group or the critical access care hospital or any of those smaller clients, but you can still work on a messaging and branding strategy for them, and then you can also work with HIPAA-compliant tracking that we do, and analytics.

So just a way for those systems, kind of best practices to still lend themselves to maybe what might be a smaller client. 

Jenny: Yeah, that’s a really great point. I feel like, some of the branding and messaging best practices bringing over has been really fun to see that come to life. On the practice side. 

Kristin: Yeah.

Jenny: For sure. Awesome.

Well, Phil Terry, you are an account manager on the practice side. And I think for me, it’s been really joyful to see the account management teams begin merging best practices. Right. Because when you typically work with either very, very large organizations with lot of stakeholders or smaller organizations with less stakeholders, it’s different. Right? Practices are different. The way you approach it is different.

So I would love to hear your thoughts on, the evolution you’ve seen over the last year. 

Phil: Yeah. So I think it’s nice that, you know, even though we’ve worked with, you know, larger clients or smaller clients, the goal of the account management team is to really dial down what the client wants and the client expectations. So being able to learn how you guys have done it on the and hop side, and how that mixes with the eye health spy side and still being able to be client-focused and intentional on bringing out what the clients essentially want out of out of what we can do of our services.

And then still, being that sort of Swiss Army knife for the client, you know, whether or not they want to, you know, do a quick website update or learn more about SEO or, you know, see what I can do for their business and still being able to bring all of those elements in and, sure, we can do for them.

Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the interesting things is the way that the system side structures, what we call the core team. So we have project managers, account managers, and strategists, and sometimes on the practice side, you’re wearing multiple hats. Right. So we do have project managers, but sometimes you’re also the strategist, and sometimes you’re bringing in a strategist, kind of just depending on the scope and the size.

So I will just say huge kudos to seek out managers on the practice side, you know, Phil and the rest of your team, because it’s really great watching, you know, the skill sets that you all bring to the table for practice clients. 

Phil: Definitely. And doing that sort of proactive learning with the other account managers about what you guys are doing.

As far as, taking in some of the ideas about owning the solve and owning the outcome and really applying that to the clients and giving that full service and having a flexible team behind you has just been, you know, amazing to be able to work with it. 

Jenny: Oh that’s awesome. That’s awesome, Phil. And last but certainly not least, Yenny Rojas, I have to say, the work you have done to incorporate GEO and AI overviews into the SEO, like standing round of applause, kudos, kudos, kudos.

The results you have created for this team are absolutely phenomenal. I would love if you could share just a little bit about the way that you’ve approached it and some of the results that we’ve seen with some of your hard work over the last couple of months. Jenny. 

Yenny: Thank you. Jenny, I want to start by saying SEO is not that I know.

I’ve heard people say, you know, SEO is. Then that’s not true. The classic SEO as we knew it is that, the all rules of search, right? So keyword stuffing, basic meta tags, chasing the rankings just with your generic blog post that has evolved, SEO has evolved right into some different bands and more strategic, especially with AI or videos and AI and large language models, reshaping how information is delivered to clients and patients and, and users.

Right. Air systems and large language models, or LMS like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, etc.. Those aren’t like your traditional search engines. They don’t give you a list of tabular links. They give you answers. Right? And that changes the game as we knew it. The goal is no longer just to be ranking on Google, is to be the source that LLMs pull information from.

They generate answers. The goal is to be recommended by those agents and being cited in AI reviews. So what we have done, what we have implemented here is, structuring the content in a way that can be read by albums. We are writing with both humans and machines in mind. So we start with the answers at the top right.

We use a bulleted lists structure, structure, content number list. We prioritize clarity and scanability. And always have in mind when writing content is the answer at the top. So answer the question first, and then the explanation comes later. And the content. So another thing is the evolution of SEO is a AEO and search engine optimization.

And generative engine optimization. I know that’s a lot of acronyms. You know, but we’re not just writing blogs anymore to rank. So we’re writing content that directly answers the user intent and can be put into AI summaries. Right. And voice assistance. That’s how people are searching now. I just want to say, if you structure content in a way that films can understand, if you don’t do that, you’re is becoming invisible in the future for organic search, your website has to be LLM friendly.

So, just my closing thoughts and a final tip for everyone listening. Focus on clear answers, implement a structure for content, and make sure your site is then. 

Jenny: It’s such, such great advice and a very concise answer. I love that. I did a post last week celebrating some of the successes that you and the team have seen, because you have been continuously testing and rolling out new methodologies.

And the June test in particular that you rolled out resulted in some immediate, AI overview visibility for our clients, which I was really excited to share some screenshots of. So great job. And it’s pretty exciting because what we thought would happen of the system and forming the practice team for some best practices around things like, account management structure and owning the solve, and perhaps the way that packages are structured, it comes the other way too, right?

Y’all are able to move a little bit faster because practice teams typically are like excited to be guinea pigs and test new strategies and test new tactics. They’re like, yeah, let’s go. So then whenever we see it work, we can then roll it over to the system side for the larger, larger folks. With that, you know, real proof point that it works, and then they can get approval to roll it out on their side.

So, I think the, just the evolution of the two sides growing together has been really fruitful. So to three of you, thank you so much, for the joy over the last year. It’s been so fun working with you have the rest of the practice marketing team that has joined. We are very excited that we’ve had nearly 100% retention rate of employees and clients.

So it’s been really phenomenal. I think this is, like best case acquisition that I have ever seen. And it’s definitely due to team members like the three of you. So thank you very much. 

Kristin: Thanks, Jenny.

Phil: Thank you, Jenny. 

Jenny: And with that, we’re going to go ahead and wrap today. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode.

If you have any questions about our practice marketing services, give us a shout. We would love to chat with you and tell you more about how it works and how we can help even smaller healthcare organizations that maybe don’t have as large of a budget still be very competitive in their individual geography against your individual competitive setting. So give us a chat.

We would love to chat with you about your options. And thank you again for tuning in. Join us next week for another episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I’m your host and I’m the founder and owner at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited to have with us our very own Madison Molho. Madison is the Director of Strategy here at Hedy & Hopp, and she joined us last week to talk a little bit about the development of a brand, whether it is a net new brand, if you’re doing a rebrand, if you’re trying to do a brand refinement and the ways that you could make sure that the work you’re doing not only matters to the end patients, but also that you have the necessary components in place so that anybody working on activating your brand understand how to bring it to life correctly. 

 

With messaging and visuals. But that’s not all, Madison. Our team then usually takes that work and turns it into something called an engagement framework. And I think when I talk to people at different organizations, this seems to be one of those missing pieces where organizations really have a gap in between the brand and the activation.

 

So talk a little bit about what an engagement framework is and why it matters. 

 

Madison: Yeah. So essentially, the engagement framework is that bridge from the foundational brand into activation. And it starts to pull in elements from the brand framework, the messaging framework, which we talked about last week into how we would execute in whichever channel or space we’re in.

 

So engagement framework looks at a high-level audience journey with the caveat. Obviously, we all know people do not move through journeys linearly, but for the sake of this, we look at it linearly, and then we look at how somebody will move that journey from their perspective. What do they want to achieve at each stage, what are their challenges, and what are their needs?

 

And then we layer on how that brand interacts with them from a messaging standpoint, from core channels, and then KPIs. So we can start to move our audience in the direction we want them to be and not just meet them where they are, but move them to where we want them to be in a way that, again, is relevant to them and is more organic and not somebody you know coming and pulling them, but really along with them in the journey.

 

Jenny: That’s so helpful. So, for example, for our clients that we do performance marketing for or the agency of record for, we’re often doing large activation campaigns. So give me some examples. How do we make this tangible for our listeners? If we’re creating an engagement framework and then we’re actually doing the activation, what are maybe a couple of different steps in the engagement framework or different ways that you can kind of bring it to life for folks?

 

Madison: Sure. So a lot of times the engagement frameworks are broken up by audiences slash personas depending on where we are, knowing their nuances across audiences, we say patience. That’s a very broad group of people, regardless of who your patients are or where you are. So it’s important to understand the nuances within each of your audience segments. And so really that allows us to have specific messages within each stage that then we can transition into, let’s say, media.

 

If we know that we’re activating media in, let’s say YouTube, for somebody who’s 65, we have a specific message in that part of the journey, knowing where YouTube plays a role in that funnel, plus the message, and then allows us to build that connection from what we know the audience wants, you know, overcome their pain points, hit their objectives, while also delivering that relevant message to them in the proper channel.

 

Jenny: Sure. Because, for example, like let’s say we’re doing a campaign for a payor, if it’s a programmatic campaign, you can’t have a hard sell, right? They aren’t actively searching for a solution. They’re not emotionally maybe ready to make that commitment. So it’s a different step. 

 

Madison: Right. So at that point, you’re probably just making sure your name is out there.

 

They’re aware of you. They start to see, you know, your brand colors. You see an image, you’re like, hey, that’s pretty relevant. But, you know, they may keep scrolling, which is totally fine. That’s the point of where that message is, because that’s where we would layer on another channel, and another tactic with another message to pick up where our programmatic ad left off.

 

Jenny: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And then of course, we have the measurement plan, which we could have someone on our analytics team on to talk about the specificities of it, but that thing could be layered on top of the engagement framework to really say, you know, at each of these steps, how are we defining success? How are we going to build the metrics within our dashboard to be able to make it real for folks, etc.?

 

Madison: Absolutely. So we always try to put a KPI per stage in the journey into the engagement framework. Knowing an entire measurement plan will also come later, but again trying to focus by the objectives stage. What are we trying to measure? What does success look like by stage as we move that person down the journey, making sure we have the right channels and messages, also working together to drive that.

 

Jenny: So let’s talk a little bit about like let’s say it’s a larger system and we’re doing perhaps a brand level campaign, but then also service level campaigns. Do you typically recommend an engagement framework for the service lines as well as the brand, or is it one broader engagement framework that then all of the service line campaigns roll up to?

 

Madison: It depends on what the objectives are. I would say normally, yes, I would split between brand and service line, just because service line tends to have a very specific objective and an even more niche audience that allows you to get more granular and more targeted with how we look at the audience, the messages, and the channels we put them in.

 

So they do work together because of course, they’re one organization and you want to be consistent and cohesive. Obviously, the campaigns that are in-market will be different, and what you’re trying to accomplish with those campaigns are different. So it’s important to understand the audiences from the objective as well. However, they should work together. 

 

Jenny: What advice would you have for marketers, on the provider side, that are thinking about tackling a rebrand or a brand refresh, or maybe they have an existing brand, but they feel like they’re not showing up in the way that the brand should be showing up.

 

When it comes to actual activation, what advice would you give somebody about where to start? 

 

Madison: That’s a great question. Well, as a true happy, and if you will, I would say it starts with the data. And as I like to say, not all data is quantitative. It’s also qualitative. And so perhaps, you know, conducting some preliminary, either internal surveys, some with the audience, understand what’s working and what’s not working and where you need to push the brand.

 

For some instances, I would say sometimes there’s a new, charge within an organization to reposition or, you know, move that company in a new direction. And at that point, it’s okay, let’s take a step back and understand where do you want to be? And now let’s figure out how we get you there. Of course, I will always come also with that sort of data, but in a different, order of operations.

 

Jenny: That’s helpful. Do you think, fun. Would you rather would you rather, try to refine an existing brand where you didn’t have the ability to change the name of the organization and bring it to life more effectively in a way that resonated with the patients? Or would you rather kind of start from scratch and design something where there’s no existing brand equity?

 

Madison: It’s hard. Again, I think it depends on why the name is staying and what challenges that would have to overcome. I do think it’s a little more fun to start from scratch, because I also think it’s fun to work with the clients on that, because everybody starts at the ground floor together, and you really spend a lot of time together working in partnership to build it.

 

And I, I find a lot of joy in doing that. And I have, I think, built really strong client relationships in the past, doing that because you’re in it together. Not that the other way isn’t fun also, it’s just a different way to interact, to engage in different challenges, to overcome. But I do I think if I had to pick in this way to have, I think I would do it from scratch.

 

Jenny: I think it’s so fun. I love that, I think it’s so fun because we work not only with large systems, but sometimes with private equity backed groups where they’re actually or position on groups where they’re buying additional locations. And so I think we’ve seen time and time again as they come in with this big fancy name and they want to swallow up all of these names of the folks that they’re acquiring, but actually had some brand equity within their local communities.

 

And then that goes away whenever they rebrand because it is being rolled out correctly. So I think the nuances of branding are so interesting and really shows why it’s so important to think through the ramifications of each of those journeys versus, you know, just thinking it’ll be super easy to be able to relaunch something. So.

 

Madison: Yeah, I would say off of that to something we haven’t talked about yet, which is important in this example, is also understanding brand architecture and what matters.

 

Where does where do you want your equity to be? Where is it currently? And then how do you have that something that’s scalable, especially if you work, if you are physician-owned, private equity back where you are, if you’ll say a healthcare system with plans to acquire different hospitals, where does that live? That’s a whole other fun thing to tackle as well.

 

Jenny: But part of the overarching branding as well. Absolutely. Well, Madison, this was so helpful and interesting. I love talking about brand strategy with you. You have such interesting insight. So thank you for joining us today. For our listeners, please like and subscribe. If you have a topic you’d like for us to cover in the future, give us a shout.

 

Or if you’d like to chat with us about brand and strategy work, we’d be happy to brainstorm with you and share some insights about situations that we’ve seen that may be similar or complementary to yours. To maybe give you some examples. And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Be sure to tune in next week for a new episode.

 

Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am your host. And I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited today to have our very own Madison Molho join us. She is the Director of Strategy here at Hedy & Hopp, and we’re going to talk about the importance of a brand today. So welcome, Madison.

Madison: Hi. I’m excited to be here.

Jenny: We’re excited to have you many folks that reach out to Hedy & Hopp really views as a performance marketing agency, which is a lot of the work that we do, but we’re full service. We do a lot of brand and strategy work. So I wanted to have you on today to kind of highlight our perspectives and our views when we’re working with an organization to either create a new brand or refine and clarify their brand.

And foundationally, there’s really a couple of key things an organization needs to know about itself for its brand to matter, right? You say all the time, and have some beautiful graphics. A brand needs to be authentic, relevant, and different. So, talk to us a little bit about that. What’s that process of defining those three things for an organization.

Madison: Yeah. So fundamentally brands are multifaceted. There’s a lot going on. I think we all know brands are more than just colors and logos. It’s what’s behind it and what drives not only the brand every day but the people behind it. And so what we like to do is look at three different areas. We talked about authenticity. Something has to be true to the brand.

We as consumers can sniff out inauthentic things pretty easily and like to connect with things that are authentic. So it’s important to establish that within a brand, as well as making sure that it’s different from its competitors. I think that’s probably the most well-known component of branding or brand positioning, because obviously you want to be separate from your competitors, so people reach out to you.

So that’s a second component. And then third is also relevant to the audience. You can be authentic and you can be different. But if you’re not connecting with the right people, who do you want to connect with? Who cares? And while all three of those aspects matter, what we really do is look for that intersection of the three.

So you think about a venn diagram, that perfect overlap of those three elements. And we call that substantively distinctive. And really what we aim for within a brand. So we make sure we were fine all of those areas of being authentic relevant and different and that substantively distinctive brand and that work carries through all the way from our brand positioning, work, messaging work through the creative that the audience would see.

Jenny: Absolutely. Talk to me a little bit about some examples of each of these, because I think for a lot of folks, these branding terms are thrown around a lot. But if you don’t have a background or experience in branding, you might not know what being authentic means. So I’d love some examples because we’ve done a couple of brand, either refinements or rebrands for organizations in the last six months.

And some of the findings, I think were really interesting. So without naming names, let’s talk about some examples. What are some examples, of where organizations are being authentic to the brand or maybe where they’re not?

Madison: Honestly, I think Hedy & Hopp is a great example. We rebranded, and I helped with that effort. And so what we look at is identifying a core value.

And that’s separate than the values that you would put on your website. You know that we talk about every day. I think some everybody probably listeners podcast knows joy, is one of our core values bringing the joy. But it’s really that core value of why do we get up every day? Why do you and I get up every day and work for this organization?

Why does this organization exist? And that’s something that’s intrinsic to the brand and something that has to be, I mean, identified. You can’t really manufacture that. And so that’s what we look to, carve out for brands again, making sure that it’s not, I guess manufactured that it is organic, it is true to who they are and just kind of helps coalesce the organization around that idea.

Jenny: That’s a great call out. And I agree, my favorite part is joy with Hedy & Hopp. I think one example of, when this doesn’t work is when organizations try to be aspirational with it. So for example, when they say, you know, putting the patient first is authentic to us, but then you look at their online views and the terrible patient experience, or their ratings are terrible, right?

So like you said, you can’t manufacture it. It can’t be aspirational. It’s gotta find, you know, what’s truly authentic. How about different? I think, you did as, your team did some work over the last couple of weeks and shared a couple of decks with me, kind of highlighting the difference of different organizations within a specific geography, which I thought was really interesting.

How you did an overlay of the words organizations used. Talk about that a little bit.
Madison: Yeah. So what we did was look at essentially a competitive audit across five different factors that brands and companies bring forth that start to round out how brands show up in the world, how people start to connect with the brand, interact with the brand and internalize that brand to show where our client is compared to their competitors and where their space and where they can actually own space and be different again, in a way that’s authentic to them.

That’s not something again, manufactured. So we looked at everything from who the organizations were at their core, their size, you know, if they had any sort of affiliations. We needed to be aware of, their positioning, their messaging, the services they offered, or SEO volume compared to our, client, their brand tones, photographic style, how all of those elements that come together to really start to coalesce around a brand.

We wanted to find where that space is. But I also think it’s important to understand, especially in healthcare, some things you just kind of have to say, even if your competitors say if they’re quote unquote, any stakes that we as patients need to make sure that companies have like validate, like, yes, I would like to work with you. So I will say there is some gray area when it comes to difference, but we do want to make sure that there’s enough space for the brand that we’re working with to own.

Jenny: Absolutely. And when you take that authentic a different piece together, then when you overlay the relevant component, that’s the why should we care? Right? So give us a little example of that.

Madison: Yeah. So it’s really important to understand the audience at their core, beyond just the superficial parts of the demographics where they live. Even I would say their objectives when it comes to their life or even whichever health care sector we’re working in, it’s really important to understand what their emotional motivators and what’s truly driving them at their core, that they might not even identify with you if you were to ask them.

But if you were to put it in front of those, say, yeah, that does really resonate with me. And it’s important for a brand to understand that, because you are trying to connect with them and provide them something that they can’t get somewhere else, and you want to meet them where they are. I realize that is a cliche at this point, it’s important to understand them so you can meet them there and bring them where you want to go.

But if you cannot connect with your audience, you know what’s the point?

Jenny: Absolutely. I think it’s interesting whenever we are brought into an organization and they’ve done some branding work, but they don’t yet have assets created that allow them to create campaigns that adhere to the work that they’ve created. Right? So it’s all conceptual, and it is not yet at the point where teams can execute against it.

Walk us through kind of at that 10,000ft. Like, what are the steps from taking it to that concept down to the tangible? Okay, here’s what you can give your designers and your copywriters to make sure that the actual creative execution rolls up correctly. Yeah. So of course, it’s always important that we’re always grounded in the fundamentals of the brand.

So something we do is called a brand framework that holds all of those essential elements of the brand. And that also lends itself to the development of what we call the messaging framework, which allows, the brand and everybody who works with the brand to speak cohesively and dial up and dial back different messages depending on who they’re talking to and where they’re talking to.

So you don’t sound robotic, but you sound like you’re coming from the same organization. And then, of course, depending on where we are in the process with whoever we’re working with, we would develop also brand guidelines that help to kind of blow out the visuals, what not to do, what to do. But also there’s a brand tone established in there, as well as a brand narrative that helps to bring this more from the conceptual foundational into the executional and those combined along with more deeper audience work like personas like looking at a journey and engagement framework to help to pull again the foundational conceptual pieces into executional.

Again, like I said earlier, meeting people where they are. But it’s important that each person gets, again, a relevant message that it’s authentic to the brand and depending on where that shows up. So it’s not just hanging out in the theoretical, it really does move from foundational core almost ran all the way through how that company and brand really engages in interacts with their patients or audiences.Jenny: Yeah, that is great. I saw, it was a great little LinkedIn post. Somebody in my network did this morning about how, you know, accountants and CPAs, people don’t think that they can do that job, but everybody thinks they can do marketing’s job because all they’re doing is thinking about that very last fun creative output and not all of these steps leading up to make sure there’s consistency and effectiveness in the content that is being created.

So, thank you for taking the time and walking us through all of that. And hopefully anybody who’s trying to better define their brand or even looking to rebrand this has provided you with a little bit of a roadmap of what that can look like and the different components that you should be thinking about developing to ensure that your new launch is successful.So thanks for joining us, Madison.

Madison: Oh, of course. Thanks.

Jenny: So thank you for tuning in today. Really appreciate the support. If you could give us a like and subscribe, it’d be really appreciated. We are so proud to produce and drop these episodes every Friday and really love hearing from our listeners. So if you have a topic idea you’d love for us to cover in the future, shoot us a note. Or if you have a branding or strategy project you’d like for us to lean in on, shoot us a note at jenny@hedyandhopp.com. Until next time, have a fabulous rest of your day and we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!