In this special episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, Jenny dives into a critical update for healthcare marketers. Google is requiring advertisers to opt into call recording for its Click-to-Call feature, creating potential HIPAA compliance risks. Jenny explains the changes, why they’re a concern, and what steps you need to take to protect your organization.
Key Points:
•Google’s new terms for Click-to-Call could result in PHI or PII being recorded, violating HIPAA.
•The rollout is inconsistent, so accounts must be monitored closely.
•You can contact Google support to opt out of call recording.
Action Items:
•Check if the terms were accepted for your account.
•Share this episode with your team or agency to ensure awareness.
More Information
•Search Engine Journal Article
Connect with Jenny:
•Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. We specialize in working with payors and providers across the country.
I am not so thrilled to be here with you today, because I’m going to complain a little bit about Google. I had to hop on immediately to record this podcast so we could get it live this week. Today I’m recording, it is Tuesday, December 17th, 2024, and I wanted to record and get this live immediately because this is a huge potential compliance and HIPAA concern for all of us healthcare marketers who are running Google ads.
So if you run Google ads for your healthcare organization, you need to be very careful about any new terms that [00:01:00] you accept within your Google ads account. Google has begun randomly creating notifications within accounts, kind of similar to account verifications, where it’s like no rhyme and reason about when you’re prompted for account verification, we had some clients prompted months and months ago, and some prompted yesterday, right?
So it’s not like it’s being done on the 15th of each month or based on budget or size, you’re just prompted and you have 30 days to do it. They’re doing the same thing. This one is specifically around call extensions. So if you’re doing a text ad within Google ads, you likely have called extensions activated, right?
It is a great way to allow patients or potential clients to click to call in to immediately speak with your team to schedule an appointment, book a service, et cetera. Right? Everybody uses it. Well, these new terms that you’re receiving under the notifications. What it’s trying to do is to force you to accept [00:02:00] call recording in order to continue using the call extension feature.
And why is that a bad idea? Well, we’ve been talking about HIPAA for a very long time. The last thing you want to do is share any potential PHI or PII with a third party such as Google. We’ve done all of this work getting our marketing analytics tech stack set up and now Google is trying to record those inbound calls from call extensions.
So let’s back up a little bit and talk about the history of this. We did a little bit of digging because we didn’t know Google had ever really done this. Turns out, a Search Engine Journal posted an article in 2018 that said they were starting random call recording in order to reduce fraud and spam. So it was not a system-wide thing.
It was not something they did regularly. It was just to try to improve the user experience. There was another search engine journal article in mid-2020 where they [00:03:00] said that within Google ads, it became a feature that you could turn on not turn off, but turn on. So it was off by default is our understanding.
Well, now, what they are doing is they are actually saying that they want you to opt into it being turned on all of the time. And whenever it specifically says about call recording Google monitors and records a small percentage of phone calls that are initiated by call-only ads or call assets for some advertisers in the United States, allowing us to improve call quality for both users and advertisers alike.
Evaluating call quality ensures that advertisers are providing a positive call experience and prevents caller spam and business fraud. So according to that, it sounds like it is not 100 percent of the calls, but is it 1%? Is it 80%? Does it vary by the day? We don’t know. Even one call recorded by Google, if you’re a healthcare organization, is too many.
Because from a privacy perspective, [00:04:00] we don’t want to do that. So where are you? What’s going to happen? Well, just like the Google ad verification, the account verification process, you actually can contact Google support and you can actually opt-out of this if you click on the terms themselves, it specifically has a section around HIPAA disclaimer, and it reads like this, unless otherwise specified in writing by Google, Google does not intend use of the communication features to create obligations under the health insurance portability and accountability act as amended and makes no representation of the communication features satisfy HIPAA requirements.
You and any third party that is advertising on your behalf are so for applicable compliance with HIPAA. So what does that mean? That means you have the ability to actually opt-out and tell Google Hey, we do not want you to do any call recording on our account. What is the concern? The concern and the [00:05:00] reason why I had to publish this podcast episode immediately, we modified our publishing schedule in order to get this out.
If you have an agency or a third party that is managing your Google ads on your behalf, they likely will receive this notification of change of terms and just accept it without understanding what they are accepting that will be opting you into this. And then again, we’ll be creating additional compliance issues and concerns for your organization.
So we’re going to have a variety of links that we’re going to share in the call notes or in the show notes for today’s episode. And what you need to do is if you have a third party managing your Google ads, number one. See if they’ve received a notification and opted into anything within your account, but number two, send them this episode, have them listen to it, and make sure that they are not accidentally opting you into this and creating additional compliance consideration.
Again, these are at the account level. So for example, heavy and hot, we have [00:06:00] hundreds of accounts that we manage. Every single one of them has begun to receive this notification. We received two yesterday. And so, again, just like account verification, it’s going to be a slow roll. You may receive 80 tomorrow, who knows but you need to know about this and make sure that you are not accidentally opting into it.
As always, this should be a great reminder that if you are not working with a healthcare-specific marketing agency to manage your media strategy, this is a great reminder that maybe it’s time to start shopping around. This is a kind of situation where somebody could accidentally opt into something without realizing the potential implications to your organization.
So just a little pitch to wrap up this episode. If you’re currently working with an agency that has not yet brought this to your attention, or perhaps even accidentally already accepted the new terms without realizing what they were doing, call me. You can shoot me an email, at jenny@hedyandhopp.com.
I’d be happy to chat with you about our [00:07:00] media and marketing services. But otherwise please share this episode with anybody who’s managing it, whether it’s an internal team or a third-party team, and make sure you don’t accidentally accept these new click-to-call terms. With that, I will wrap up today’s episode.
Thank you so much for tuning in, please like, and subscribe. We really appreciate all of our followers across all of the various podcasting platforms. And I will be with you again next Friday for a new episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
Jenny is joined by Hedy & Hopp’s Director of Paid Media, Miranda Ochsner, to break down the top paid media trends for 2025. They discuss insights from the 2024 Nielsen Annual Marketing Report, including why 72% of marketers plan to boost their ad budgets despite economic uncertainty and the importance of balancing performance marketing with long-term brand building. TikTok’s growing role in healthcare marketing and its impact on cross-platform ad strategies also takes center stage.
They also share some reminders when it comes to remarketing and retargeting strategies including the shift away from website pixel-based retargeting, as well as Meta’s restrictions on healthcare advertising and Google’s new AI-driven bidding tools.
Connect with Miranda:
•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandamochsner/
Connect with Jenny:
•Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am the host and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency, and we’re very proud to be the producers of this podcast.
Today, I am joined by our very own director of paid media, Miranda Ochsner, and we’re going to be talking about some of the paid media trends that are happening in healthcare right now, especially as we’re going into 2025. There’s a lot of moving pieces, new platforms, and lots of changes to existing platforms.
So let’s jump right in. Miranda, to get started, I know that Nielsen released their annual marketing report on the 2024 report. I’d love if you could walk through some of the key insights and trends that Nielsen shared.
Miranda: So, every year, Nielsen releases these reports at the end of the year, just kind of what they’ve [00:01:00] seen over the course of this past year.
But as we’re looking into the future, and it really, helps paid media teams just truly understand what to kind of look out for, especially in our very fragmented media landscape things to your point are constantly changing. So we, you know, we want to make sure we’re staying abreast of all of the topics.
So, there were 4 key insights that we really pulled from that. Really the 1st 1 being an increase in spending. I know there’s been. Some pullback over the last couple of years on paid media budgets and how we’re dispersing those funds and whatnot. But based on this report, about 70, a little over 70 percent of marketers are planning to increase their budgets and a majority of that really being prioritized in digital channels specifically social, but also the retail media network space just from an effectiveness standpoint, really maximizing.
All levels of the funnel with that, whether you’re in the awareness, you’re in that interest phase, or if you’re in the conversion phase speaking of conversion, the 2nd key insight was really focused around performance marketing versus brand building. You [00:02:00] know, we, as marketers always want to aim for that holistic ROI.
But many have been prioritizing those short-term performances which, you know, really leaves this opportunity and potentially miss, you know, this is for brands to do those brand building initiatives. So we really need to make sure we’re focusing on both in that full funnel because we don’t want to risk that.
Really don’t want to risk that long-term brand equity that brands take so long to build up, right? We can’t, we don’t want to, we don’t want to miss those opportunities. And third, the insight we found was just some media strategy challenges. To your point, the channels are constantly changing, targeting, especially in healthcare. You know, the healthcare space, we’re really having to find this balance of traditional and digital media, but we need to truly understand that optimal reach.
What should we, you know, what should we be under investing in and really truly understanding what that balance is. And that all [00:03:00] comes down to audiences and goals and how we’re measuring them across the board. Which leads into the fact that fit, or excuse me, the fourth insight measurement gaps, you know, there are a ton of tools out there.
And marketers really aren’t utilizing tools that are evaluating both traditional and digital channels at the same time. It’s very siloed of looking at the traditional very upper funnel, but knowing that they can trickle down into that lower funnel. And same on the, you know, on the digital side, really focusing on the more bottom-funnel.
And that’s really missing holistic insights. And, you know, when you’re looking at these effective media campaigns and strategies. Especially around messaging and channel placement. You want to make sure you’re looking at everything holistically and how everything is affecting one another.
Jenny: Yeah, I will say those last two points. I feel we saw really strongly with a lot of our new clients coming over from working with other agencies. Over-reliance on digital and not really having a strong traditional. Media strategy in place, which at heady and hop, we do both traditional and [00:04:00] digital. So we’re able to really provide that holistic strategy for them.
And then the lack of measurements and effective reporting is still something we’re seeing every single day. Folks just aren’t really receiving those comprehensive ROI reports to understand what impact their media is having on them.
Miranda: Right. And with those reports, Jenny, you really, you don’t want to just do a data dump. You want to provide some actionable insights and recommendations of what we’re seeing. Because, you know, paid is only one piece of the puzzle, right? There’s it can affect very many different things, right? So we want to make sure that we’re using those advanced analytics, but also Continuing forward with a diverse media mix and not just relying so heavy in one channel or the other.
Jenny: Yep, absolutely. The next topic I would love to talk about is TikTok. So, a lot of our clients and just in general, we, you know, we were at SHSMD and HCIC and we were just lots of chatter around folks beginning to use TikTok through the lens [00:05:00] of course, organic, you know, content creation and posting, but really starting to start looking at the paid opportunities within TikTok.
So I’d love if you could chat a little bit about the platform in general, and then also about their new partnership with Nielsen to enhance the cross-media ad tracking capabilities.
Miranda: Yeah. So, you know, TikTok is still relatively new in this, the social space, if you want to call it that that they, you know, they are listening to they are listening to the folks that are utilizing their platform, whether they’re just scrolling for hours, engaging with content or from the paid advertising side of it, you know, depending on kind of what video you want to put out there.
And you know, you have the option to have a six-second video. You have the option to have a three-minute video. You have the option to have a 10-minute video. So it’s really kind of dependent on from an organic as well as paid, what kind of campaign you’re going after and what kind of audience you’re going after.
Really love the adaptability of the platform as it continues to grow. [00:06:00] Now there are still some limitations specifically around targeting, especially in the healthcare space. But. You know, just there’s the overall privacy concern with TikTok as well as there’s still a new platform and trying to figure out those balances to remain compliant and whatnot.
So, specific and, you know, specific and healthcare you know, TikTok does have a role in health education you know, that the hashtag healthtalk is a big one. I know that there’s hundreds of millions, if not billions of views with that hashtag in place you know, so TikTok, you know, TikTok does trust influencers over medical professionals a little bit more, but, you know, that opens up that misinformation and we really want to be mindful of that if you are a brand that wants to move forward within the TikTok platform you know, healthcare providers, so HCPs in their specialties, as well as pharmaceutical companies, are really leveraging TikTok because TikTok Thinking of it potentially a little bit more, a little bit more upper funnel with that, just from the standpoint of educating and engaging audiences you know, [00:07:00] they’re making leaps, you know, they’re making giant leaps and how they do this targeting and whatnot, but from a healthcare standpoint and from a literacy standpoint in healthcare, we have to be really careful about the management to make sure it is that reliable information.
So there’s still this kind of a balance of, you know, yeah, TikTok’s a great platform, especially for millennial and Gen Z audiences but also understanding to have a trusted professional and make sure that we’re not pushing out misinformation.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. And A couple of just general things.
I feel like we have to acknowledge TikTok is still facing a potential ban in the United States in January. Everything that I have read basically indicates that it won’t be an overnight shutdown. But in general, our advice to clients has been. To really leverage more bottom-funnel tactics before you begin spending money on TikTok.
So TikTok definitely can have a place in a strategy, but you need to make sure that you’re really capturing folks who are looking actively, you know, for [00:08:00] the services, the procedures your specialty and the areas that you provide before we start, you know, digging into TikTok. And really also, we generally recommend that you need to have a strong content marketing strategy in place holistically, and then paid on TikTok can support that versus just moving forward with TikTok ads.
Miranda: Right. And with TikTok you know, from what we’re seeing, audiences don’t want to see an overproduced message. They want it to feel very, organic and just very natural, just not so overproduced, which is very different than what we see on CTV and Linear and whatnot. So truly understand that platform and those nuances.
I would recommend before any kind of investment in TikTok, really having a clear content plan in place because it’s not just one video you have to put out there. It’s multiple different videos because with how consumers are consuming media, especially in TikTok and engaging with it, they want fresh messaging all of the time, which then goes into production.
So it has a, you know, it has a trickling effect when it comes to those ad budgets.
Jenny: Absolutely. [00:09:00] I’d love to move now to Google. So Google is constantly evolving, constantly rolling out new products to be able to get all of us to spend more. I saw that for the first time their search share of search ads is going to be dipping.
I think it was below 50%. And let me pull this article up real quick. I want to make sure that I am referencing it correctly. But it’s really going to be dropping. So what they’re actively trying to do is yep. So, let’s see, it was AdWeek launched an article and they said that Google is going to be dipping below 50 percent as far as their share of the search advertising market in the US by 2025 for the first time in a decade.
So they’re kind of in hustle mode, right? Like, what can we do to innovate? What can we do to kind of get some of that market share back? I think it’s interesting. Some of their AI-powered results are beginning to compete with their search results. So the innovation they’re doing for consumers is also [00:10:00] hurting them on the search side, because they’re actually providing zero-click content.
So you can get that information without clicking through to the person’s website who provided that content. So one of the things that they announced was an AI power tool called search bidding exploration as part of its smart bidding suite. And I’d love for you to tell us a little more about what we know about that so far.
Miranda: Sure. So it’s still, you know, it’s still in the testing phase, but you know, it’s interesting. AI is just really you never know what you’re going to get with all of these new AI tools coming in. So, with this specific tool, it’s part of their bidding suite, their smart bidding suite. So it’s, this is really designed to help those larger advertisers optimize campaigns towards TROAS.
So, obviously our return on ad spend, but specifically, there’s this new phrase with the T in front of it. So that’s adding the target return on ad spend as well as those broad match keywords. So, you know, the tool will identify low traffic yet very [00:11:00] valuable search queries and then it adjusts that target row as anywhere 10%.
And then it just kind of expands that reach beyond those traditional search terms. So it’s opening an opportunity of things. You know, we potentially missed in a stride. Your agencies have potentially missed whether it’s content strategy, keywords social listing, are there certain things that folks are talking about that we might not have in messaging, just really, truly understanding how it gives that opportunity to expand what’s currently being searched for.
Jenny: Yeah, and this is a trend that we’ve seen not only with our clients but then also we heard lots of buzz about it at SHSMD and HCIC is agencies seeing traffic volumes changing for their search campaigns. So, for example, those bigger, broader buckets that are more educational and more upper funnel, less traffic coming in there because folks don’t have to click through to understand what a knee replacement surgery is.
Miranda: It’s right there in front of them.
Jenny: And so, I think this is a great [00:12:00] reminder for folks that as they’re thinking about their strategy for 2025, really make sure that you’re beginning to incorporate some AIO so an I optimization and old kind of thing and SEO that an I O and your overall strategy to really compliment that media strategy because, as we all know, everything works in cohesion together.
Miranda: Yeah, it’s just not a set it and forget it anymore. You constantly have to be shifting and pivoting to see kind of what your consumers and whatnot are really going to get, you know, going for when they’re doing their searches what they’re sharing what they’re engaging with.
There are some concerns with this. You know, it’s just it’s restricted to advertisers with very large budgets. So if you have a 5,000 or 10,000 a month budget, this might not be an option for you. But this is definitely some of those bigger ones. Those bigger ad spends as well as the concern just around transparency.
As well as those very granular insights. To your point, folks are seeing performance dip, which goes into that larger concern [00:13:00] of like, how can we optimize? How can we do X, Y and Z? So really what is that balance as we implement this tool?
Jenny: Absolutely. I’m going, I’m saving our favorite. For last, the one that everybody’s freaking out about—Meta.
But I have one other topic that I want to throw into the mix and that’s retargeting. And I’ve talked about retargeting and through the lens of privacy, but for folks that have been ignoring those podcasts because they don’t want to think about privacy, I’m going to mix it into this media conversation.
So you’re going to hear it a general reminder that you can no longer do retargeting or remarketing based off of your website visitors. So we can do in platform retargeting. If somebody has engaged with your ad within Google, you can retarget them in Google or within Facebook. You could retarget them using Facebook’s own targeting platforms or targeting capabilities, but you can no longer put pixels on your website to target them if they visited your site and did not convert.
Miranda: Yes, just remarketing hurts a little bit, but you know, just stay compliant. It’s what you have [00:14:00] to do.
Jenny: Yeah, exactly. So if you’re still doing retargeting or remarketing, you need to cut it out. Stop uploading lists, stop using retargeting pixels. If you’re in healthcare, general reminder. Yeah, now I’d love to end talking about some shifts that we have seen with Meta.
They’re constantly changing. They were one of the main reasons all of this, all of the class action lawsuits happened around pixels and folks being accused of sharing data through the lens of considerations to the sharing user data with Facebook and in return for receiving conversion information, lots of podcasts on that.
But made an announcement that they are going to be really restricting a lot of data specifically for healthcare organizations starting in January. 2025. Now we are really excited about this because our clients aren’t really going to be affected based off the way that we set up campaigns. I’d love if you could give a general overview of what the announcement was and then why our [00:15:00] clients don’t really have anything to worry about.
Miranda: Yeah. So Meta, you know, I believe that came out about two weeks ago, a week and a half ago. It’s still very fresh. And I think to your point, folks are like, What are we doing? What is going on? What do we need to shift and whatnot? You know, so these, I believe these restrictions are going to start January 2025.
So 3 weeks. So it’s coming quick. These you know, these changes are really going to include the data sharing for specific. Healthcare related websites and apps. So, fully restricted properties like condition-specific sites will lose access to conversion campaigns. Mid restricted properties, you know, are really facing limited optimization for those lower funnel activities.
So really anything that is mid low to low. we, you know, recommend rethinking. Like, how are we going to utilize Meta within our strategy? Because it really needs to be a little bit more. It doesn’t need to be. It has to be a more upper funnel. You know, really [00:16:00] recommending as we move into 2025, those healthcare advertisers.
Whether it’s the agency you work with, whether you’re in-house, whatever that looks like, really advise to audit those data sources. You know, we want to make sure that we’re doing our checks and balances to make sure there are no pixels in place, none of, you know, nothing of that lives on the site to remain compliant and really adapting those strategies to focus on those private, you know, those privacy-friendly methods.
Jenny: Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about the changes we made. What a year ago, the way that we set up campaigns with Meta and why we’re pretty confident that our clients in a great place going into 2025.
Miranda: Yeah. So we, you know, you never know what you’re going to get thrown with some of these platforms.
So, you know, Hedy & Hopp really took a proactive way of approaching how we’re utilizing Metta, both Facebook and Instagram in our strategies. And it is really focused on those upper funnel engagement metrics versus the lower funnel. We’re really [00:17:00] thinking awareness, really thinking engagement when we are utilizing those placements.
So making sure we’re tracking those metrics properly while completely having nothing to do with pixel placements on the website and whatnot. And if we see those through our audits, we’re raising the flag of like, nope, we don’t recommend using this. We’re going to shift our focus here and really outline those as we go through the media strategy as we’re walking through benchmarks, whether it is more a very upper CTR metric, whether it’s a video view, or if it’s just some kind of engagement within the ad itself.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. And some of the things they specifically call out is you can no longer do audience creations for retargeting or lookalike audiences. Thank goodness we’ve been reaching this for so long. Like we shouldn’t be doing this in healthcare friends. Right? So I think the general summary is if you’re using meta and you haven’t really thought about how you’re using it, how you’re tracking conversions, and you’ve kind of been on autopilot now is the time that you need to really take a good look at [00:18:00] your campaigns, the structure, how you’re tracking conversions the kinds of functionality that Facebook offers that you are or are not using to really make sure that you’re going to be in a good place.
Miranda: They’re either going to shut your campaigns down or not let you set them up at all. So it’s better to be proactive. But I know we’re three weeks out till the new year, but really start thinking through that, you know, immediately as these are part of larger, you know, strategy conversations that are starting in January.
Jenny: And even thinking about worst case scenario, if you need to turn meta off or plan on massively restricted spending for the first month or two as you really clean everything up in your account and set to get into a good place. It’s better to be proactive and know that you’re likely going to see massively reduced volume in Meta, you know, then be midway through the month and start looking at reports and, you know, then be just like, what is going on?
Miranda: You know? Let’s be four steps ahead and not six behind.
Jenny: Exactly. Exactly. Well, Miranda, thank you for coming [00:19:00] on today. I think it has been every year in healthcare. 1 of our core values that Hedy & Hopp is pivot with positivity because we’re constantly thrown new things, which all of us find really fun.
It’s fun to find ways to continuously allow our clients to evolve effectively reach folks that need that care. And help them, you know, find the resources that they need to be able to schedule that appointment. So thank you for coming on today to be able to provide a summary of what folks can expect as far as 2025 media strategies for listeners.
If you are kind of unsure. The things you heard today are new to you. Your internal team hasn’t been talking about them. Your agency hasn’t been proactively bringing them to you. Give us a call. Our media capabilities are one of our strongest within our organization, and we work with providers and payors all across the country to help them reach their acquisition goals.We’d love to chat with you. So with [00:20:00] that, thank you so much for tuning in. In please like, and subscribe this episode, send it future episode ideas my way. If you have any, and we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
In this episode, Jenny is joined by Hedy & Hopp’s Account Manager, Shelby Auer, and Marketing Manager, Taylor Fedderke, to recap their time at HCIC24 in Austin. With its walkable venue downtown and amazing food, the conference provided a great setting to reconnect with peers and explore the latest industry trends.
They dive into key themes from the event, including the growing role of AI, how SEO continues to be a game-changer, and fresh approaches to reputation management. They also discuss how organizations are using data to improve provider finders, enhance consumer engagement, and streamline digital strategies, as well as the importance of building authentic brands and maximizing social media with AI tools.
Connect with Shelby: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelby-wanne/
Connect with Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorfedderke/
Connect with Jenny:
•Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
HCIC24 Speakers Mentioned:
•Mike Canonig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcanonigo/
•Jamie Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-ryan-mha-79690521/
•Angela Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angie-taylor-34ab3a173/
•Amy Muehlbauer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-muehlbauer/
•Elizabeth McGonigal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-mcgonigal-999bb739/
•Elise Horst: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-kogelnik/
•Emily Mangini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-mangini/
•Nolan Perry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolanjperry/
•Amy Stevens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amydickesonstevens/
•Ryan Donahue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandonohue/
•Max Freund: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-freund-b4231a2a/
•Adriane Bradberry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianebradberry/
•Chloe A. Politis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloepolitis/
•David A. Feinberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-a-feinberg-57746a5/
•Sebastien Leon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastienleon2/
•Carla Rivera: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-rivera/
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi, friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing, Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO of Hedy & Hopp, which is a full-service marketing agency that specializes in the healthcare space. We are your hosts for this podcast. I am very excited to have with me today, Taylor Fedderke and Shelby Auer, two teammates of mine at Hedy & Hopp.
We just got back last night from HCIC, which is the Healthcare Internet Conference for 2024. It was in Austin this year, and we wanted to hop on this morning and record a fun little recap for those of you who were perhaps unable to attend, usually attend in the past, or perhaps you’re thinking and wondering what HCIC is all about.
And should I attend in the future? So that’s the purpose of today’s show. Good morning, ladies. Welcome. So we’re going to break today’s podcast down into [00:01:00] 3 distinct areas. The 1st is going to be our experience. So, the H&H team, what did we experience going to a couple of key callouts of things that perhaps are different from other events, et cetera?
We’re going to talk about key themes. That we saw, and then we’re going to do a few session callouts. So if you were unable to attend and you want to kind of understand what were the topical themes, what were the educational themes and what was kind of hip from a session perspective we’re going to cover a handful of those.
So I will actually kick us off. I’d love to chat a little bit about our experience. As all of our regular listeners know, last month, we were at SHSMD. Which was another fabulous conference. If you only had to pick two a year to go to those right now are our two favorites and have been going for quite some time.
But HCIC, there were a couple of interesting things. I have 2 in particular that I want to call out. I think the location and venue for this event were fabulous. It was in downtown [00:02:00] Austin at the JW Marriott. So walkable. It was right on 2nd. At the end of every day, or even if there was like a couple of hour break, we constantly saw people rushing downstairs to try to get outside and go for a walk, and we did the same thing.
It was fabulous. And it was also really awesome because you could in the evening if you wanted to kind of network with other folks, just walk up and down second, and you would run into a handful of people kind of at every other restaurant. So it was very easy to do networking outside of the conference-sponsored events.
So kudos to the event organizers for that. And then I am a food-driven human. I know this about myself. If you ever want a good meeting with Jenny, just bring good snacks. But the conference had fabulous food. One morning there was a Belgian waffle bar friends, a Belgian waffle bar at a conference. I was blown away.
So I know all of us kept just looking at each other and laughing when we saw the food, like what this is phenomenal. So I [00:03:00] just have to give a shout-out to the sponsors. I know I’ve hosted many events. I know how exciting it is to be able to offer food of that caliber. So they really were showing up and trying to use it as a differentiator.
So I know we don’t go for the food, but it absolutely was the icing on the cake.
Taylor: Yeah. Completely agree with you there, Jenny. Some other callouts too. So we had our privacy session with Jenifer Warrell with Quartz Health Benefits. And then of course Jenny as well. And so this was kind of the updated what’s going on in all things, privacy, FTC, state laws, everything like that.
Great session. And it was really fun to talk to people afterward that had been to the 2023 version last year and kind of get their thoughts on, you know, what they’ve been working on and then them coming back this year and wanting to kind of hear about, okay, what’s changed.
They’re really trying to educate themselves. And so it’s a really great conversation after the session. I think all three of us said so that was really another fun little experience we had there too.
Jenny: Yeah, that’s a great point. I [00:04:00] think it was kind of interesting to me. Two things. First of all, the number of systems and providers that still haven’t really done much that had a lot of tactical questions, which, hey, we’re here for this.
Like we are here to be your friends and hold your hands through the process. Do we get it? But the other thing that kind of shocked masterclass was that they still didn’t know what the heck was going on. So another shout-out, like another clarifying point. If you’re working with an agency or a website vendor, you need to be asking them some hard questions because the number of folks that came up after our session, and then at our booth that were asking very basic tactical questions, cause they just still didn’t get it was really high.
It really, honestly, was that kind of concerning for me, for providers that maybe don’t know, and they just assume their partner has it covered. So, time to start asking some hard questions, friends.
Taylor: Yeah.
Jenny: So let’s pivot and talk a little bit about the themes. So at each event, I think you can kind of see a little bit of trends and themes like topical [00:05:00] shifts folks are happening.
I have one I’d like to start with the number of people who came up to me and said, this was the first conference they have attended post-COVID was staggering. I mean, we have, we jumped back in, in 2020. Let’s see 432 2022 was when we started doing in-person conferences again. So for me, it’s old hat, right?
Like I’m back at it, whatever. A lot of organizations are just now kind of getting their feet under them and comfortable doing that. So I’m really excited to see what 2025 is. I think it’s just going to continue building on that momentum of comfortability of being back in person.
Shelby: Definitely. And though people are still discussing AI, of course, and privacy, those were two key kinds of themes across the board still, but there were a couple of additional focuses that we saw across the board.
Reputation management, what you’re doing with your Google reviews. How are you handling that information and how could you really [00:06:00] use it to your advantage and SEO kind of going back to those fundamentals that I think we’ve. Maybe shifted the past couple of years, focusing on what’s going on with privacy AI.
We need to be on top of this technology. Understand what’s going on. There was a lot of great conversation about just very specific tactical strategies around SEO content strategy across the board.
Jenny: Completely agree, Shelby. I think we’re going to talk about it. I have a couple of sessions that I want to call out.
They’re exactly in that vein, meaning people are getting back to the fundamentals for content strategy and media optimize it like all of these areas. Kind of the shiny object syndrome, we saw a little bit of it at this conference, but a lot of it was like back to basics friends, like, let’s not think that we’re so advanced because first of all, in healthcare, we know we’re not as an overall industry, right?
Because of a variety of things we won’t get into today. But it very much was proudly saying [00:07:00] like, hey, let’s talk about content strategies again, right? Here’s some tips and tricks. And it was very well done. So on that note, let’s talk about key session callouts. One that I would love to highlight was a session specifically about provider finders.
So we’re talking about getting back to basics, right? Like one on one help. Patients find a provider on your website and help them schedule an appointment and the session that I want to call out. There are quite a few on this topic actually. But the 1 I want to call out was a new front door, exploring the next-generation provider finder.
And there were 3 providers that presented. Mike Canonigo with Advocate Health, Jamie Ryan was Scripps Health, and Angela Taylor with Atrium Health. And while this was like a low-key marketing play by Sparkle, cause all three of the providers were highlighting the Sparkle platform, right? It was actually extremely well done.
It did not feel like a sales pitch for Sparkle for most of the presentation [00:08:00] and what these three. Presenters did is they really talked about what the data is telling them about how to provide or how patients actually want to find a provider. So, for example, I think it was Jamie’s talk specifically about really highlighting what insurance folks, expect and really having that be a top-level search functionality, which I thought was really important.
And then they also talked about the ability on the back end and the importance of really creating your own best match algorithm and really making sure. Hey, what is the data saying people are actually selecting or using? Like, are they really filtering the data? By gender for a provider, or are they really only focused on insurance like insurance is stable table stakes, right?
Nobody’s going to select somebody that doesn’t have their insurance, but like, how are they interacting with that and the ability and the thought process of really only showing people that have available appointments 1st? And really maximizing the patient experience. So this was one [00:09:00] of those, like back to basics, let’s get the fundamentals, right?
And really think about how users want to find a provider and make sure that our experience matches that. So kudos to the three of them for a very well-done presentation.
Taylor: Yeah. And I have another session that again kind of ties into that consumer journey. This one in particular, the title of it was Enhancing the Consumer Journey with a Data-Driven Digital Content Strategy.
This is with Amy Muehlbauer with Advocate Health. Really kind of just talking about where they’ve gone in terms of creating this full content strategy. One 14 Google searches are now health-related. I mean, if you think about it all the Google searches that are taking place on a daily basis, like millions, billions, so many out there thinking how they all are related.
Knowing a lot of them are related to health. I just, it’s a huge piece of that. And so with that, they really talked about how they want to capture this opportunity with consumer data research. And so kind of that’s the foundation piece for their web content, SEO, content, marketing [00:10:00] efforts. And another kind of tidbit they through, and I really enjoy that they mentioned this and talk about this a lot, I guess, within their organization is that, you know, SEO needs to be a main ingredient, not just sprinkles on top of a cupcake.
And it’s so true to kind of think about that as you’re going through these you know, taking the opportunity to revisit content, all these pieces, making sure that’s at the forefront.
And I think Shelby was in this session as well. And I think you found this one pretty interesting too.
Shelby: Yeah. No, they did a wonderful job really walking through the details of what they’ve done to build their content strategy. I mean, getting down to talking about this kind of content hub approach to all of their service-specific pages and using the most asked questions about those specific.
Services or conditions to build out separate sub-pages that answer those questions specifically. They also are utilizing posts on Google business profiles as a [00:11:00] key way to boost impressions and page clicks, and it’s not. something you have to pay for, but it does look like an ad. So they really talked about being able to make sure that you’re utilizing all of those different options within the Google My Business profile and to advocate for making sure that, hey, we want to put efforts into SEO, but oftentimes leadership is like, okay, well, what is that really getting us?
They calculated how much it would have cost them. Through paid search efforts to boost their rankings like they have done with some of this SEO work which I think is a super key detail that any of us can take away when talking about how do we make sure that this is prioritized as an organization.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. ROI can be really difficult to calculate in some situations. So I think that lens of like what would have paid search costs to do the same thing is a great way to kind of show the value. So a cool call out. One that I’d love to highlight [00:12:00] was An AI session. I sat through many AI sessions.
The 1 that I thought was the most interesting was artificial intelligence and action leveraging AI for enhanced patient engagement. And the reason why I think this 1 was the most interesting to me is the number of people I saw scribbling down notes. So for me, if I’m in a session and I’m like, oh yeah, we do all of this stuff at heady and hot, right?
Like maybe I personally am not writing things down because I feel like our organization is pretty great in that area. Instead, what did I do I look around and I say, what’s that? How is everybody else responding to this? There was a lot of note-taking. So, I will say kudos to Liz McGonigal with Penn Medicine and Elise Horst with Fathom.
They did a great job really highlighting actionable ways that you can take specifically large data sets and use AI to be able to identify trends. So again, it’s not using AI to write content for you, which was the big theme of the no throughout the entire [00:13:00] session. But it was really. Using AI to do a lot of data calculation, and identify abnormalities with your campaigns.
And there was a tool that they called out. It’s actually called Akio, which we had never used at Hedy & Hopp. We actually use a variety of other platforms. And I looked it up and it actually looks like it is a tool specifically for agencies. So I’m not totally sure. I haven’t played with it yet to see how much value it would have for a provider in an in-house team.
But I will say that is one that we’re planning on checking out to see if it has any functionality that’s better than all of the other AI tools we’re currently using. So good job.
Taylor: Yeah. And I had another session here to kind of tie it back to what Shelby had mentioned at the start of this podcast episode about Google reviews being a bit of a hot topic and just like kind of that reputation management piece.
And so the title of the session was How to Request Reviews: The Importance of Google Reviews and Why You Should Ask for Them. Presenting this session was Emily Mangini and [00:14:00] Nolan Perry with Sutter Health and they’ve really implemented and have a strategy at their organization of finding ways, you know, to really build a really robust reputation management plan here.
And so with that, they kind of walked through their experience with implementing this and really growing that and kind of seeing the fruits of their labor. And one thing they had mentioned here too, just again, kind of at the beginning of the session was that of the 200 plus factors, Google considers reviews to rank number three which again ties into kind of that SEO piece.
So all these things are kind of tying into each other. And with that too, kind of talking about, for example, you know, a lot of time with these organizations looking at Google Maps, people trying to find that local care maybe for urgent care as one, they kind of threw out as an example and really where they did some testing with gathering reviews and kind of seeing how that would help with you know, getting them higher up on that map in terms of kind of that review placement there.
But for that, if you think about the map breakdown, there are really only 3 things that are showing us. People are kind of poking around and looking at maps and looking for where they’re going to go. And so [00:15:00] that’s the name of the organization and then also how many reviews they have shown up there too, along with that placement on the map.
And so, you know, Just showing the importance of reviews, which we’re all very aware of at this point, but I think just kind of reminding us of that. And then they kind of walked us through again, how they kind of implemented this in their process through that. But as a whole, I think it was a really great session to kind of just again, remind everybody and then also kind of put some next steps out there in terms of.
Working with your teams, making sure, for example, your responses are you’ve spoken with legal to make sure those responses make sense. And so this can be very different depending on the organization and how they want to tackle that piece. But as a whole, just making sure that you’re, you know, it can really help boost your brand and provide that visibility.
And again, just ties into the reputation of your brand there too. So it was a great session overall.
Shelby: Really interesting and piggybacking off of that, a session that I sat in on was called Consumers as Allies: Utilizing Market Feedback as a Strategic Tool [00:16:00], and Amy Stevens over at Tidelands Health presented with Ryan Donahue with NRC Health.
We work with a lot of organizations that partner with NRC and this specific session really dove into Tidelands Health and how they are. In an area that has grown exponentially over the last few years and how hard that can be to scale your internal processes to be able to keep up with all of that change their local population has become incredibly diverse in comparison to where it was a few years ago.
And they had been inundated with phone calls that they were not built to be able to answer. So they started getting reviews all over the place. I can’t even talk to anybody. Nobody will answer my calls. And instead of you know, there probably was a little panic, [00:17:00] but instead of just leaning into the panic, they really took that as an opportunity to kind of rebuild their internal processes.
They audited every phone tree across their health system to be able to streamline that process. And I know I’ve had conversations with clients of mine that want to start that process. But they kind of started there and then ended up really implementing larger changes, like creating a better patient and family advisory council that was virtual and allowed them to capture more of their growing diverse market than what they had previously.
And I just wanted to shout out Amy and her team because convenience ease coordination and availability were all places they were not ranking well. And those ratings moved from worst in their market to first in their market.
Jenny: Wow.
Shelby: Went through all of these changes. They developed [00:18:00] an app. I mean, again, they really took that feedback as The catalyst to let’s look at our strategic plan.
What can we modify and change to really make sure that we are taking this feedback and even going beyond what we need to do to make the experience better?
Jenny: Yeah, that’s phenomenal. What amazing results for something that feels so tactical, right? But truely has a huge impact. This is another example of going back to the basics and not focusing on the shiny objects.
Let’s make sure the basics are right first. So, one that I would love, and we just have a couple more or a few more sessions but one that I would love to call out was again, back to the basics. So it was a session called Integrating Clinical Content Strategy with Website Design Through a Repeatable Process.
And it was Max Freund with the University of Iowa Health Care and Adriane Bradberry with Unlock and Max did a really great job talking about their organization’s focus on clinical content on their website, what they do, and what [00:19:00] they don’t do. So he shared about 8 percent of the pages on their website are clinical content.
And at first, the crowd was oh, that’s a small percentage. And then he sat back and said, is it like, we don’t want to be top line or people are doing symptom checks, right? A lot of organizations focus really heavily, too high in the funnel, or people across the country or even the world may come to your website because they’re doing high-level research on like, what is type two diabetes?
Right. You’re not going to be the definitive source for what is type 2 diabetes, but you may end up being a great source locally for folks to come in to understand what are the treatment options. What are the different options that they have? So it was really a reframing of how to think about clinical content.
And a great point was the emergence of AI in Google search results, a lot of that super top of [00:20:00] the funnel content is going to be served up in search results as that top AI answer, right? So if you’re going to be spending a lot of energy to build out content, to get people to your site, you have to be a lot more thoughtful about the way that you’re tackling content and where you’re spending your energy.
I can speak to this personally with some content strategies we’ve done for clients going in and looking at. Oh, my gosh, this content piece has gone, you know, viral, which in health care, like viral, it’s thousands of visitors, right? Are visiting this, but then you look at the geography when people are coming in from around the world, and you’re like, they’re never going to come in for an appointment.
So what’s the value of that? And so stepping back and really forcing yourself to have discipline. And the kinds of content are helpful. They specifically shared an 8-step process to incorporate clinical content, and they actually went and talked to subject matter experts or identified me as that clinical expert multiple times in the process.
So, getting with them early and often, and then having them [00:21:00] review it. So he had a very detailed explanation around. creating templates and approval processes and making sure it’s signed off on. And that has allowed his team to be able to get really nitty gritty with the level of clinical information they have and ensure the level of accuracy is there without you know, having to have marketers that can create that level of technical content because if SMEs are involved and they are the ones that can do that.
So, kudos to Max. You did an awesome job on that session.
Shelby: Amazing. Now, when it comes to content and what some of these organizations are doing what I thought was really unique in the space, was David and Chloe over at Mount Sinai Health System shared a session that was titled The Social CEO, and I work and talk to a lot of people in the space who, you know, their leadership, their higher executive leadership want to be involved with marketing, especially when they’re new to a system. [00:22:00]
And I mean, that’s huge for the local community. And so David and Chloe and their team ended up partnering with their new CEO to build a social media strategy for him to be able to push out content to the community. Re-share things that the health system is sharing out on their socials to be able to really kind of grow eyes on their content, but such a special session.
And this is kind of new for them. This is their 1st year doing this. So I’m excited to hopefully hear a follow-up session in the future about how that potential potentially extends beyond just their CEOs. Social profiles, but they really walked through that process of creating manageable workflows between their social team and the CEO.
But I think this is such a great way if you have leadership who want to be involved, but you know, putting their face on a print ad or a billboard might not make the most sense to really [00:23:00] connect with the community. I think doing a strategy like this, that’s more personal on social media would be a great way forward for a lot of systems.
Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And to tie in with that to the content side of things, I had one last session that I wanted to make sure to call out. And this was maximizing social media impacts with AI strategies from Broward Health. So with Broward Health, this was a Sebastian Leon and Carla Rivera. And they mentioned several AI platforms that I had not heard of in terms of just what has worked with them or worked for them on the content side of things.
And so a few ones I wanted to just point out call out was what the first one was Jasper. And so they use this one for a variety of things on the content side. But their biggest help for that is the SEO optimization role plays. And so a lot of times they’ll have it they’ll create some type of content.
And then with that, they’ll have it created for multiple channels so they can really push it out and kind of maximize their time there. You know, but they’re still again, creating that content and writing that in the [00:24:00] first place and then allowing it to create all these different forms. So again, just kind of implemented it in terms of workflow to quicken the process there.
Another one, and then this one that was very interesting to me was Devi. They use it to monitor Facebook groups. And for example, one that kind of mentioned was like maternity side of things to see if there’s these buzzwords that people are talking about for these like mother Facebook groups to where people are, you know, sharing experiences and things like that.
So they’re using Devi to kind of monitor that. And then using those buzzwords and their content to kind of pull it in and really relate to them and connect there. And then another fun one too, which is on the video side. So as we know on the content piece, a lot of times it’s hard to, you know, sit down with physicians and get these videos that are really great and engaging with the eye contact piece that a lot of people struggle with.
They, for this, they use a platform called VEED. And so you’ll be looking like, say, if I was recording and I was looking off to the side here they can plug it into VEED and it will have AI go and create it to where eyes are looking directly at the camera, [00:25:00] whether they’re looking at our script or something else.
And so something very new on the video side that I thought was cool. And then lastly, there were a couple of two, just more on the competitor insight side that they dove into Pathmatic and Nielsen. And they just can get really nitty gritty into just all the competitor research. And those were two I hadn’t really heard of.
But with all this, one person had a really great question at the end of the session. It was like, you know, how do you get the chance to try out all these different platforms? Cause I think that is a struggle a lot of times. How do you get the funding for it? And they’re like, think about all these free trials that are out there.
A lot of them. You can get the opportunity to try that out and see if it works for you. See if it’s something that, you know, has been helpful in your content creation process. And so I thought that was really great to think about because I think as a whole, it can be a little overwhelming to be like, how can I get the funding to try out all these new platforms constantly to see what will work for us?
And so I thought that was just really cool on their end to mention what has worked for them there.
Jenny: Yeah, two quick callouts. We clearly have heard of Nielsen, just not specifically the AI capabilities. So, yes. So just for anyone who’s listening, [00:26:00] like, of course, Nielsen. But that’s interesting.
And then the other thing I will just say as a general reminder for AI. Remember privacy, so do not put things in any of these tools that you are not willing to put on a billboard outside. So, within all of these sessions, I sat in on, they all did a really great job reminding folks about that.
So kudos to presenters for keeping privacy top of mind. I think it can be really easy whenever you create an account with a tool to think like, oh, this is a safe space. No, it’s not. So just a general reminder. If you do start doing all these free trials, do keep in mind that you have to be very careful with any information that you upload.
So, thank you for joining us for today’s recap. We had so much fun. We are all, I think, pretty ready to sit and be in silence for a couple of days after all of the conversations and talks that we had. But so much fun. We’re already looking forward to 2025. So for anyone who is interested in learning more about any of these sessions, note that we are [00:27:00] going to put links to all of the people that we mentioned. We will put their LinkedIn links in the show notes. So if you want to reach out and ask them more about their sessions, I’m sure they’d be more than happy to engage with you. Everybody is just so welcome welcoming and willing to be able to share information with others in the industry.
And on that note, thank you for joining us for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We really appreciate and value your time. We would love it if you could like, and subscribe. New episodes drop almost every Friday and we’ll continue to cover topics that we think are helpful for folks in the provider and payor space.
So, with that have a fabulous weekend, thanks for tuning in and we’ll talk to you soon.
In this episode, Jenny Bristow, CEO of Hedy & Hopp, speaks with Drew Hardesty, CEO of Wonder Boy Media, about how AI is transforming video and image editing in healthcare marketing. They explore the innovative ways AI is helping marketers save time, enhance creativity, and improve efficiency in editing tasks.
Episode Highlights:
If you’re a marketer looking to make the most of AI in your editing process, this episode offers information on how to use these tools effectively—without compromising creativity or privacy.
Connect with Drew:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are the proud producers of this weekly podcast. I am so excited today to have Drew Hardesty with me.
He is the CEO and founder at Wonder Boy Media, which is a full service video production company based out of Owensboro, Kentucky. Welcome, Drew.
Drew: Thanks for having me.
Jenny: Yeah, we actually met at SHSMD a couple of weeks ago. We were in what we like to call the quirky corner area, but we had so much fun talking about all things content generation for providers.
And so I invited you on the podcast today to talk about one specific area of topic that we dug into quite a bit, which is the emergence of AI in both photo [00:01:00] and video editing. Mark Brandes, who is the Director of Technology and Analytics at Hedy & Hopp. He and I did a masterclass at SHSMD about AI and the immediate applications that marketers can use in their day to day workflows.
To improve efficiencies consider things from different perspectives, et cetera. And you and I had a really great conversation about how that applies to video and imagery. So to kick the show off today, I think what I’d love to do is have you really explain the difference to listeners about AI art generation versus AI image and video editing and what we’re going to focus on today.
Drew: Okay. Absolutely. So when it comes to art generation these tools like Dolly. Dolly’s the one I use the most, but Canva does it as well. It’s really using a text prompt but being fairly specific and concise with that and having these machines just generate sometimes [00:02:00] perfect art, sometimes a little off, but for the most part, it does a really good job.
So art generation is based on text prompts. Whereas AI and when it comes to editing is based off of, you know, something that’s already been created a video that’s already been shot an image that’s already been shot or captured. And then using that and some of the surrounding aspects of the image to, you know, generative fill or expand or all these things that we’re starting to hear more and more about.
Jenny: Excellent. That is a really great example. And when, and during the class, some of the folks that were participants, we had a fun workshop area and one of the people actually like said, do a dog looking at a laptop, like this really quirky prompt. Right. And like, it’s really cool to see what AI can do as far as creating that imagery through the lines of art, but it is rarely applicable in our day to day lives as marketers in the healthcare space.
So I’m excited to focus more on the AI through the lens of like editing and process improvement. So, let’s start first talking specifically about [00:03:00] photos. I’m going to chat about photos first. Then I’ll chat about the video second. So talk to me a little bit about marketers when they’re thinking about photography or any sort of static image assets, and what sort of applications there are for AI to improve their workflows or editing processes.
Drew: Yeah. So we exclusively use the Adobe suite. So we’ve got, you know, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, all these famous programs people have heard of. Those can have a little bit of a learning curve. And so for those marketers out there who don’t have that experience or don’t have that time to learn these programs, Canva does a great job with it as well.
I’ve taken images into Canva, their background remover is really good. Their duo tone tool, you know, all these different things that you can edit an image that’s already been shot, you know, maybe it’s a headshot of a physician, but it was kind of a weird background.
You want to take that out and put them in front of the hospital. So, you know, Canva does a really good job of removing [00:04:00] backgrounds and things like that where we would get more into kind of the professional realm would be in Adobe and the AI in Adobe is just taking leaps and bounds like every day.
It blows me away how good it is. Their denoiser, we’ve got a camera that, you know, we’ll shoot some pretty good megapixels, but it typically has some noise there. AI denoiser is unreal. Their generative fill. If there’s you know, a space that you want to expand. You know, put something in like a, hey, put a tree here next to this person, you know, they can, it does a really good job of that.
We’ve used it for expansion. So if you needed just a little more headroom on a shot, or if you needed a little more of a wall in the background, their generative fill and generative expand are just light years ahead of things. Most people would have access to you.
Jenny: That is a great summary.
I was reading an article last week, a little bit about Adobe’s AI functionality, and the person said, I tried to create a list of all the things that don’t do, and I literally [00:05:00] couldn’t come up with anything because it’s expanded so much in the last couple of years. That’s really exciting. So one of the examples that I hear over and you spoke on it, is marketers that have to get a physician’s headshot for the directory and they used to drive or send a photographer that they hired a contract or on staff for hours out to a remote, a rural clinic to get a headshot of that physician. And it was a whole day’s contractors expense. And now, like you said, you can literally take just a photo of them that they submit and then generate it into a standardized headshot imagery.
So I think. Just like you said, whenever I’m thinking about ways that marketers can be smart about it, it’s not so much about getting super creative and doing fancy art. It’s more about how can I clean up processes, reduce the noise or the budget, unnecessary budget of travel and whatnot, just to be [00:06:00] smarter with my budget allocation.
Drew: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s where AI is really well used in the workflow process. So if you have an image of a doctor already, and you just want to polish it up, make it look more professional, you know, there are apps out there that will take just the face and then put them on this, you know, Clean looking professional looking headshot, you know, it’s just, it’s more of a workflow thing.
I think then getting to create right now, the creative side of it is a little wonky, but workflow is where it really is powerful.
Jenny: I love that. Let’s transition over to video. Cause I think we’re going to talk about the exact same thing on video, right? It’s not about generative creating it from scratch.
It’s more about being smarter with your workflow. So what are some ways that folks like yourself, your organization, or marketers within organizations that focus on video editing, what are some ways they can look at integrating AI into their video editing processes?
Drew: The biggest thing right now, at least in our world where we are here in Owensboro, we’re starting video podcast [00:07:00] studios.
I’m actually in one now. And so those podcasts, video podcasts could be an hour and a half, it could go Joe Rogan and be three or four hours long. And where AI really helps there is these plugins that have that Adobe has that will take multi camera angles and edit them in minutes. And just the amount of time that would save me as an editor from basically having to rewatch the whole video that I already saw live in person.
Taking that and editing it within minutes is just. A huge time saver. And I think that’s where, as when it comes to video AI is going to, as is really helping us with time saving just helping that workflow speed it up, get projects out the door faster and accurately. And it does a really good job.
Jenny: Yeah. So thinking specifically about this podcast, for example, thinking about like removing pauses, removing ums and other filler words, right. I think it’s really [00:08:00] important to clarify that there’s nothing creative being done with this editing with AI, right? That’s where the human touch is still so important.
So for a podcast, it’s not as big of a deal because we do a straight shoot here, but if you’re doing, for example, a commercial video you know, for your organization, that’s not something that AI can edit. For you, right? Like that still takes, you know, a person like yourself or a member of your team to be creative, right?
Drew: Yeah. That is. And I mentioned that we talked earlier about some posting I had made on LinkedIn, Instagram, and it’s that human touch. That was, you know, what I liked about that post is that it’s so important especially, you know, in healthcare marketing, when we’re trying to focus on storytelling and the human condition.
It takes that human touch to really make something creative and to tug on heartstrings and to connect with people. Whereas AI isn’t quite there yet. It’s still, you know, I’m not out of a job yet, put it that way. I’m not worried about my job. AI has not taken over my job. You know, there’s still a place for that [00:09:00] human touch.
Jenny: I think it’s just probably letting you focus on the more fun parts of your job.
Drew: Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s. Taking over the tedious work and allowing us to be a little more creative.
Jenny: I love it. So if I were an in house marketer and I were thinking about doing either a video or a image job of some kind with an outsourced organization, what are some questions or things I should ask them to understand if they’re using AI effectively?
Cause I would think that probably would mean that from a budget and timing perspective, they’re likely going to be a better partner.
Drew: Absolutely. I mean, Open AI is, you know, free and, you know, you can use Dolly, Chat GPT. I was doing it earlier. I was trying to come up with some tattoo designs of all things.
And it just spits out, you know, 10 designs right then and there. So that’s completely free. Most, I would say marketers probably have a Canva subscription. And if you have the pro version, then, you know, you have their AI tools as well, that are a part of that. Yeah. You know, Adobe, again, we talked about that can get a little more expensive depending on, you know, your, the learning [00:10:00] curve, how much you know about it.
But once, once you have access to those programs, it’s completely free. I think it really just goes back to creativity. When to use something that’s free and when to partner with someone is when you need to be creative and AI is, you know, going to kind of get you halfway there, but that human touch is what’s really going to set it off.
So if you need to be, you know, spitting out graphics on brand for social media posts, I think AI is great for that. They’re going to get the tone, right. As long as you’re prompting, well, they’ll get the tone, the colors, the brand, all the things, right. But when you need to do something really creative and outside of the box, partnering with someone getting that human touch would really help.
Jenny: Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And one last disclaimer as the self proclaimed queen of privacy, I have to remind everyone to not upload anything into any of these AI platforms that is considered private. So if you’re not willing to put it on a billboard, [00:11:00] outside of your office for your competitors to see, or for the general public to see, do not upload it.
That includes anything specific to patients any sort of financials or positioning information about your organization. You just gotta be really smart about that.
Drew: Yeah, that’s a good disclaimer.
Jenny: Absolutely. Well, Drew, thank you so much for being on. For our listeners, Drew’s organization, we’re huge fans of Wonder Boy and all of the work that they’ve done.
I’m going to include a link to his LinkedIn in the show notes. So if you’d like to reach out to him to chat more about his work or his use of AI in this space, I’m sure he’d be happy to chat.
Drew: Absolutely.
Jenny: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Please, as my kids would say, like and subscribe, and share us with a colleague who may appreciate this content. We will see you on a future episode.
In this episode, Jenny Bristow, CEO of Hedy & Hopp, is joined by Suzie Schmitt, Senior Digital Producer, to chat about creative solutions for data integration in marketing dashboards. Building on recent discussions about privacy and analytics at industry conferences, they discuss a workaround that enhances the reporting capabilities of data—while staying HIPAA compliant.
Additional Episode Highlights:
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If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I’m the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are very proud to be the creators and hosts of this podcast. I’m jazzed to be here today with Suzie Schmitt.
She is our Senior Digital Producer here at Hedy & Hopp. And I invited Suzie on because as we’ve covered in recent podcasts, I was at SHSMD a couple of weeks ago talking about privacy and I’m going to be at HCIC in a couple of weeks talking about privacy, and though our agency does so many things beyond privacy we’ve definitely become known as privacy gurus in this space, which is a hat we’re proud to wear.
But the questions keep coming up about workarounds, like even once you get sGTM or some other analytics solution in place, and you’re really comfortable with the way that you’re marketing analytics or your website data is being collected, [00:01:00] used and stored.
What about those third-party tools that you’re using? And so I was having a fun offline conversation with Suzie and I invited her on to talk about a workaround that our team has created that I thought could be interesting to some of our users or some of our listeners today. So, Suzie, I’d love for you to just give us a little bit of the lay of the land.
How did this technology solution, this process even come about?
Suzie: Sure. So we were looking into call tracking options for one of our clients to track campaign performance and we found that CallRail has a great HIPAA-compliant product, but that reporting on it once you leave the CallRail ecosystem can be kind of difficult.
So when we’re trying to tie everything back into all of our marketing efforts to get a holistic picture, we weren’t able to get all of the data we needed just from the out-of-the-box connector. So what we did is we created an API call that [00:02:00] only calls non-sensitive information. So it all gets written to a Google Sheet that has no PII at any time.
So it’s completely clean and kosher from a privacy standpoint. And it runs on a time base every 12 hours and updates our dashboard automatically. And that was a way for the client to get those specific numbers tied to campaigns and tactics into their dashboard where they could see it combined with all of their other tracking metrics.
And we did that through Google Apps Script, which let us connect that API using JavaScript just to a Google Sheet.
Jenny: Excellent. And I love that. And we’ve been long-time recommenders and users of CallRail. Their HIPAA-compliant version is great. And VOCA is another tool that a lot of our clients use.
Again, they have a HIPAA-compliant version, but what we’re talking about here is that with the HIPAA-compliant version, while the tool itself then becomes HIPAA compliant, it can then kind of be [00:03:00] difficult to get all the data you need into your reporting interface to actually report on campaign efficacy.
So for example, with our clients, most of them use Looker dashboards, and we are the ones that set them up from a campaign reporting perspective. And so if we’re trying to do, you know, soup to nuts from spend to final conversion you know, we got to get that data in. And so what you were able to do then with the call reel data is export it.
Only the data that is non-PHI, and then pull it back into Looker and then associate it with the correct campaign information. So we could accurately report on the number of phone calls and conversions that came in, right?
Suzie: Correct. Yeah. It’s kind of like a little custom Looker connector.
Jenny: Absolutely.
And this can be done really with any platform that has API availability, right? Walk us through, like if a marketer on this call is thinking like, Oh, I want to make my dashboard more robust in the third-party tools that I pull in. How can they [00:04:00] think through what tools this could be applicable for?
Suzie: Really, anything that has an API is an option. But as you go through it, think about the fields you do and you don’t need. So for example, for the calls, we needed the number of calls. We needed the average duration. We needed the time of day that the calls were coming through so we could make sure all of our campaigns were running smoothly, but we did not need any of that sensitive data that CallRail needed. And so once we had identified what we did need, we went to the documentation for the API and matched it up. And if you can see that the documentation has it, the ability to get granular enough so that you can get what you need and not what you don’t, it’s probably going to be a pretty good option for a pretty simple JavaScript API call.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done it may feel a little manual, but in the end, it’s not manual. We’ve done Google Sheets to feed data into reporting dashboards for lots of different use cases. So this is just another example of creatively pulling data in to customize it for our needs. [00:05:00]
Suzie: That’s correct.
And since most APIs are pretty static and don’t change very often, we have a really low level of maintenance to do with these. And Google also has a built-in way to handle secrets so we’re able to handle API keys securely as well. So it’s been a really great, low-maintenance way to keep our dashboards up to date and make sure that all that data is tying in together and we can tag everything appropriately.
Jenny: Absolutely. So for those on the call, if you’re trying to build out your reporting dashboard for additional data sets or information from other platforms that you use, and there isn’t an immediate way to do it, this is a great way to kind of think outside of the box and kind of problem solve a way to be able to get the data.
Another thing that came to mind for me, whenever you were talking about a solution like this is if you’re an in-house marketer and you create these reporting dashboards and you share them with people outside of your organization, especially people you don’t have a BAA with, this is just another level of [00:06:00] safety to make sure there isn’t any data accidentally being put into those dashboards that you shouldn’t be sharing with third parties.
Suzie: It’s a great clean data source to keep things entirely separate so that you have, if you need to, you can go into CallRail and you could even match that call ID and see those granular details on each one if you need it. But if you want to report and not worry about any of that, it is ready to go. And if it doesn’t have anything sensitive.
So it’s great for reporting, whether it be for a presentation, like it’s something like SHSMD or whether it be to a larger internal team anything where you just wouldn’t want that sensitive data around.
Jenny: Oh, that’s awesome. So what are some watchouts? I know, for example, we were talking through, like, you shouldn’t just go and set this up on your, like, personal Google workspace. So if somebody’s going to pursue the creativity of a solution like this, what should they look out for?
Suzie: Well, the first thing is that we have two BAAs with Google here at Hedy & Hopp. We have one for Google Cloud platform and we have one for our workspace instance, which means that all of [00:07:00] our Google apps for workspace for business are all covered by their BAA.
So this was done on my, on the Hedy & Hopp accounts and not on a personal Google. You can never get a BAA with a personal Gmail account. So you want to make sure that you’re doing this in a secure environment. Anytime you’re dealing with an API, you’re also probably going to have an account number and API key.
And you’re going to want to make sure that you take care of those by using Google’s secrets manager to properly hide those variables. They’re not just exposed and flying out there because that’s kind of just leaving the key to your house in the lock. And then finally, you just want to be really careful about the fields that you pull because you just want to make sure that you’re referring to that documentation and lining it up and making sure that you really are creating what you think you’re creating and that everything that you want to make sure that you’re not just relying on what you think a field name might be.
So those are really my big watch ads for keeping these compliance safe and useful.
Jenny: I love it, Susie. Thank you [00:08:00] so much. And for our listeners, I hope this had you look at the opportunities for data integration to dashboards in a slightly different, perhaps more creative light. I know this is a pretty technical topic to talk about on our podcast, but I like throwing those in every once in a while to kind of encourage some technical thinking and brainstorming, especially because I know based off my conversations over the last few weeks, so many organizations are still focusing on building appropriate reporting dashboards and incorporating as many data sources as possible to have them be holistic.
So hopefully this episode was useful. Please know that if you have specific questions about platform compliance, or even opportunities for what a dashboard could look like please reach out to us. We love talking about this stuff and we’d be happy to hop on a call and talk with you and even brainstorm about specific platforms or tools you’re trying to integrate and see if we can help you problem-solve. So, thank you so much for joining us on today’s episode, Suzie.
And thank you listeners for tuning in. [00:09:00] We will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
At Hedy & Hopp, we value creativity for its power to connect and shift perspectives. For our 2024 conference season, we’ve partnered with incredible independent artists whose work inspires us to see the world differently, react emotionally, and bring vibrant energy to our brand and booth.
Katie Mertz | 2024 Hedy & Hopp Artist in Residence
Katie Mertz, a Rochester-based abstract artist, is known for her vibrant, bold artwork that balances chaos with beauty. Her colorful compositions reflect her personal journey with ADHD and major depressive disorder, making each piece an emotional escape. This year, her art is featured prominently in our booth and integrated into Hedy & Hopp’s 2024 brand. Booth visitors can take home exclusive prints of her work.
Jessica Hitchcock | 2022 Hedy & Hopp Artist in Residence
St. Louis artist Jessica Hitchcock is celebrated for her joyful, colorful paintings that spread positivity. Her work has brightened healthcare spaces and corporate offices. For this year’s conferences, Jessica hand-painted a custom backdrop, bringing her signature energy to our booth. Check out this behind-the-scenes look at how it was created.
Trent Colquitt | Founder of ColtreKicks
Blending streetwear with fine art, Trent Colquitt is the creative mind behind ColtreKicks, a company specializing in custom hand-painted sneakers. For our upcoming conferences, Trent painted Nike shoes for Hedy & Hopp, blending our branding with his unique style.
About Our Artist in Residence Program
Through our Artist in Residence program, we provide a platform for artists to showcase their creativity across our brand channels. Each year, we select an artist whose work is featured throughout our marketing and branding, helping us build connections through art. Learn more about the program and our commitment to fostering creativity.
Back from SHSMD Connections 2024 in Denver, CO, Jenny Bristow, Shelby Auer, Mark Brandes, and Taylor Fedderke from Hedy & Hopp share their key takeaways. They discuss the latest trends in AI and privacy, the strong audience engagement in Q&As, and why using data effectively remains a top priority in healthcare marketing.
They also highlight sessions on recruitment-focused marketing strategies, a basketball-themed initiative that improved KPIs like reducing harm events and patient stay times, and a creative healthcare heroes social media program.
From first-time attendees to catching up with old friends—and handing out fan favorite friendship bracelets and art prints at H&H’s booth—the team shares their favorite moments and insights from a successful conference!
Connect with Jenny:
Connect with Mark:
Connect with Shelby:
Connect with Taylor:
SHSMD24 Speakers Mentioned:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. We are very jazzed to come to you today to chat more about SHSMD24. My fabulous team that I have on the podcast with me today traveled out to Denver on Sunday, and we attended three awesome days of SHSMD.
It was an amazing conference, so many highlights. And so we thought we would hop on and just record a summary of some of the key takeaways for any of you that were unable to attend. So you can get a feel for what the vibe is at these industry events. So if you’re thinking about adding sessions or conferences to your budget for next year, you’ll have an idea of the benefit that you’ll receive.
So we’re going to jump right into it. Again I’m going to do a [00:01:00] brief highlight of my team that attended with me. Taylor is Hedy & Hopp’s Marketing Manager. Shelby is a fabulous Account Manager and Mark is the Director of Data and Technology. So first I want to talk a little bit about our overall experience.
At the conference, we spoke at two sessions, which we’re super proud of. We started with a pre conference workshop around AI. It was two and a half hours, which at first we were a little like, Ooh, how are we going to make something engaging for two and a half hours? Well, we did it. People stayed like 15 minutes after for Q&A. Mark tell everybody about our workshop.
Mark: Yeah, it went really well. You know, I think people really liked it because it was so engaging. So we not only kind of talked about AI and different tools, we kind of had more of a lecture style, the first half of it but then at the end, we really got into, hey, open up your laptops, bring out your phone, and we kind of had them go through prompts or Jenny, you had [00:02:00] them kind of, you know, take pictures of their notes and had those be transcribed, right?
Showing them some cool stuff that AI can help them with in their daily work. The other thing I liked is that we kind of went through how different tools, whether you have to log into them, whether you can use them kind of in your personal life to help them understand that, hey, it’s not just a tool to say, go write me an email or make me a, you know, a generative piece of content.
It was more about how can these tools actually help you in your daily work? How can you talk to your leadership team? So we gave them a list of tenants, right? So we have these six tenants and we pass those along to the users to kind of say, hey, these are things you can approach your leadership with to say, hey, we’re not going to use this to make deliverables, right?
We are going to make sure we stay skeptical about these things. And so you can have kind of, that conversation to help you maybe get that ChatGTP unblocked, right? Or get access to something like Copilot so that you don’t have to kind of [00:03:00] fight them because we gave them a stat that, you know, like, a lot of people, even though it’s blocked, they’re still going to be using, they’re going to be on their personal device or find another way to use it.
So, you know, it’s better to sometimes embrace these technologies and find ways to kind of put some safeguards in place. And that’s what our tenants are all about. So we had that conversation. I think people really appreciated that because that gave them a takeaway to really take home. And then, you know, they’ve already used the tool now, right?
They’ve already used the technology, the ChatGPT app on their phone, they’ve already gone into Copilot and done a prompt, they’ve already used Perplexity. And so having them already do that, I think really was made it impactful. And I think that’s why people thought it was a really good session.
Jenny: I totally agree. It was really fun hearing the buzz, the whole session about people that wish that they were able to attend that pre conference session. And then the other session that we did was actually one of the last sessions of the whole event. It was at 11 a. m. on the last day. Right before the closing keynote, and we did a 2024 version of [00:04:00] our HIPAA, FTC and state law, but this time we actually brought one of our clients Jenny Bradley from Quartz Health Benefits attended with us, and we talked about a client’s perspective of what it’s like to switch over to server-side Google Tag Manager right before Open Enrollment campaigns launched.
So it was super fun to have a client share their perspective and point of view on something technical like analytics. And she did such a great job. So it was really fun to have her presenting alongside us. Taylor, talk to us a little bit about our booth and what we did this year.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Very exciting.
So as a lot of people know, typically when we show up, when Hedy & Hopp shows up to a conference, we have a very colorful booth. Easy to see. This year we did something a little bit more special even so usually we have an artist in residence, you know, each year that we’re bringing art prints to hand out, which is always really fun and people enjoy receiving those.
So, of course, we brought our 2024 Artist in Residence, Katie Mertz, art prints to bring and pass out, so that was great. But we also partnered with [00:05:00] two other artists. So for our backdrop this year we worked with our 2022 Artist in Residence, Jessica Hitchcock, and she created this beautiful backdrop, nice and colorful, kind of tying in our brand colors, and we had a perfect spot on there for our Hedy & Hopp sign, which actually, yes, behind Jenny, if you’re watching, we tied in there too.
And then also for our, outfits, we worked with an artist named Trent Colquitt. He customized our Nikes, painted them. They were super fun. And so kind of did a variety of things to make us stand out a bit more and have the color scheme that really goes with our brand. And then also of course had the friendship bracelets there too, to pass out.
And it’s always fun seeing people walk around having them on. Everybody’s kind of matching if they stop by our booth. And with that art piece there, a lot of systems, as we were talking to them at the booth mentioned that they are building art programs, which was really cool to have those conversations.
I know that’s kind of a separate piece to, you know, from the marketing that we’re usually chatting about. But it was really cool to kind of hear that side and further discuss, you know, the different artists we worked [00:06:00] with for the conference.
Jenny: Absolutely. Yeah. It was like you said, super fun to see our friendship bracelets all over the conference facility.
So let’s pivot and talk a little bit about some of the themes we saw at SHSMD this year. So one of the things that we did the week before SHSMD is we shared the 2023 podcast recording we did. So anybody could listen to it on the plane or on the way there to kind of remind themselves of what some of the topic themes were, because I find it very interesting to kind of pull up to that 10,000 foot view when you’re looking at annual conferences and kind of look at the pivoting and the shifting of topics.
What’s nobody talking about anymore? What is the trend? So let’s talk a little bit about that. Shelby, talk to me a little bit about some of the topic themes that we saw in 2024.
Shelby: Yes. So to no one’s surprise and goes right along with the sessions that we ran this year, AI just continues to be top of mind across the board.
There were many different sessions that focused on different ways that [00:07:00] organizations have been or can be using AI, whether it’s in their day to day or whether it’s larger opportunities to utilize that in their organization. So, it’s really interesting to see kind of year over year. I feel like the last couple of years.
That’s been a key theme, but that just continues to pop up honestly, even more and more. And privacy, it was really interesting. To see last year, compared to this year, how privacy is still being talked about in almost every session, whether it was really privacy focused or not, but really focusing and honing in on what organizations have been doing this last year because last year was a lot of here are all the different opportunities, things you can be doing to help in the privacy space and then.
Organizations were really sharing and talking amongst themselves about what they’ve been considering, what they’ve done, what they’re not sure about. So we just continue to see privacy be a huge theme going forward. And I [00:08:00] think we all know that’s likely not going to change in the years ahead and just a lot of organizations are talking about how they’re using data effectively.
Right? Kind of hand in hand with privacy. Okay. Based on what you’re doing in that space, what, how does that affect the data that you’re able to see and utilize and how are you usually using that to its fullest potential? So it was really interesting to see how organizations are taking advantage.
Mark: Yeah, as the resident data guy, I definitely jumped into a few of those, right? So there were some they were talking about using GIS right? Effectively. There was a lot of talk around some of those more locational data and using kind of 3D kind of views of data to help you understand your region and what the nation looks like, which is really cool.
There was also some talk about propensity models, which was kind of fun. That was super interesting. From a group at CAC at USC, it was very nice. And then in general, like I really enjoyed how people were talking about, you know, how they’re really developing [00:09:00] certain KPIs that are very effective.
It wasn’t just, hey, the standard KPIs. There was some conversation about, hey, how do we actually turn this KPI into something that’s meaningful? It’s something that drives our organization. Not just something we, a number we look at or something we track, but actually make it something impactful. And so there was a lot of discussion around that, which I personally appreciate it.
Jenny: Absolutely. I completely agree with you, Taylor. Talk to me about trends that we saw as far as the humans that attended the event.
Taylor: Yeah. So really a super interesting piece of this as people were coming up to the booth or just us making conversation at different sessions. A lot of them had mentioned that they were first year attendees at SHSMD which is very cool.
And kind of with that, even this one woman had mentioned she goes to a lot of local conferences in her state, but this is her 1st time really branching out and going to a larger conference. You know, that’s further away. And, you know, especially a bigger one at that, you know, there’s a very large event and you can get a lot about a lot out of it.
And so their [00:10:00] overall feedback or kind of thing I was hearing over and over again was that there’s a lot of first years, which is great to see. And then also kind of tying into that, a lot of people were new to healthcare as well. And so just trying to really understand, you know, privacy here. That was something very new to them. They haven’t really spoke too much with their team about. And so just by them attending to getting to hear more about what’s kind of going on in the space and learn about it, which was great.
Jenny: Absolutely. And then 2 other things I’ll add that I thought were really interesting is that every single session I was in had extremely strong Q and A. So people really participated and asked very meaty and sometimes difficult questions for the presenters, and they were handled very well by the presenters. So, there was, I was not in a single session where they said, are there questions and no one raised their hand.
So I think it was a great discussion. Just extremely impactful and really added to the overall experience for attendees. And then it was a busy last day. Like so often you see that the last day is kind of dead because people are catching their flights home. People go [00:11:00] hard day one and day two and day three, they’re like, meh, session attendance is pretty light.
That was not the case. At this year’s event, we did our, like I said, the last real session of the last day. And it was packed. Almost every chair was full in a lot, like probably a hundred or so attendees in this one session, which normally last session of the last day, I’ve been there in prior conferences and like eight people show up because everyone’s already at the airport.
And so, I will say that’s really strong. If you’re planning on attending this event in 2025, do not fly out early. Unless of course you have to for personal reasons, but like the content is strong all the way through the closing keynote on that note, let’s talk about actual sessions. We love attending sessions in order to call out people that are doing really cool things.
I think that’s one of my personal favorite reasons for going to these conferences is hearing about case studies and advancements happening. With providers and payers across the country that they perhaps aren’t like blasting out on the internet and sharing publicly, but they’re willing to talk about it, [00:12:00] conferences and share an inside peek around their processes and their strategy and their outcomes.
So let’s highlight a few of them. Shelby one session that you attended was beat the workforce blues, how to tackle your health systems. Biggest problem. Tell us about it.
Shelby: Yes. So Maria and Christina over at Shepherd Pratt, were sharing a little bit about how they tackled the issue of recruitment, right?
Organizations. Since even before COVID, but COVID and beyond are just struggling to recruit talent. So it was really interesting to hear how Shepard Pratt has tackled this difficulty. I loved one of the nuggets that they talked about was, you know, while recruitment isn’t necessarily marketing’s problem, when recruitment and marketing really joined forces, that’s really where you’re going to see.
A lot of benefit to those efforts. So, for example, they did this and they ended up creating templates for the recruitment team to use and [00:13:00] personalize when communicating to prospects to make sure things are more standard and used the same kind of language across the board. And they really focused on building.
A strong employer brand. So beyond even their own external branding, they work to create an employer brand with personas about their own employees to help them figure out. How should we be messaging? How should we be pushing this out? And they really trained their team on LinkedIn posts when they’re sharing about a new job opportunity, kind of key tips and things they should be including in those posts in order to really make the most of it.
And it was really amazing because they shared with us some stats that their vacancy volume has been at a year over year decrease of nearly 25%, which is huge. They were talking about the organization really hadn’t seen this in years. So shout out to them because it was really amazing to hear the great work that they’ve been doing in that space.
Jenny: Absolutely. We are big fans of Christina and [00:14:00] Maria and Shepherd Pratt overall as an organization. So, we will be sure and put their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes if anybody wants to connect with them. Mark, a session you attended was called Engaging Physicians and Leaders, Data Driven Specific Initiatives.
Tell us about it.
Mark: Yeah, I really enjoyed that one. It was run by Allison Vance and Jani Radhakrishhnan from Regional One Health. And it was great. So they had started talking about, you know, they have been trying to put certain strategic plans in place over the years. They’ve had certain metrics. They’re following what I talked about before.
They had not been seeing a whole lot of movement with those metrics, right? So they were tracking them. They were following them, but they weren’t really seeing anything effective. And so really, they started saying, well, how can we do this? And so I think when Allison and Jenny both kind of started, they were kind of tasked with, hey, let’s make this happen.
And so really, to get at the heart of this, they kind of had to rethink how they were doing their strategic planning. And so what they did is they got physicians involved. 1st of all, [00:15:00] they had administrative people and then they had, you know, the day to day workers, right? The nurses, the people from the food staff, right?
So, like, they would get multiple people from around and they made these kinds of cross functional teams. And then what they were going to do is basically have a break down all these different areas where they want to kind of address and they had certain KPIs tied to that. And then the best thing about this was they made it fun.
They turned it into a basketball theme. And so to get people on their team to go after these certain issues, they had a big draft. And so they had people up on stage and they called them up and there was high fiving. It was very cool. Right? They made some height videos with their clinicians.
Right? And so they had them in basketball gear and. Playing basketball and doing stuff, which is so cool. And then really, you know, they not only did they do that and kind of build the hype around that and have a lot of buy in, but they also then made these cool dashboards in Domo that actually made sure that it was aligned with what this team was trying to [00:16:00] accomplish.
And they realized that, hey, some of these people get this data every once in a while, or maybe somebody gets a monthly, somebody gets a daily, somebody else that gets it, you know, weekly. And so they realized, hey, we can’t have this because that’s really not leading to that change we want to see. And so they kind of identified some of those problems.
Then they turn these dashboards into daily dashboards, right? And now they get feedback when those things aren’t updated every day. They get feedback that it’s not updated, which is a good problem to have. Right. And so what was so great is that not only when they have these dashboards, they were actually able to show us data that, you know, harm events and we’re way down now that they have this in place, right?
Or they were looking at, you know, time of stay at the hospital that was way down, right? So they really, after doing this and getting so much buy in from people around, around the hospital, and then having data to back that up, they really saw some effect. And then the coolest thing was they had big celebrations, right?
So, when they had these wins, they really celebrated him [00:17:00] and then they gave out awards like buzzer beaters, right? Or they gave out the best assist, you know, or highest score, things like that. So staying in that basketball theme which was so cool. It seemed like a lot of fun and it was very effective.
So it was a great kind of session to attend.
Jenny: Yeah, I think that by far is the most engaging implementation of a data improvement strategy that I’ve ever heard of within an organization. So kudos to them. Regional One Health. Great job. Taylor. Tell me about the session you attended, Social Media + Healthcare Heroes, a Dynamic Duo.
Taylor: Yeah. So this was with Carly Cori. She’s the Director of Social Media and Creative Services at Stony Brook Medicine. I will say when I walked in that room was full, it was full to the gills, which was awesome to see. I was really excited for this session just to kind of hear some of their strategies around really working with their healthcare heroes and really promoting them on social media and telling their stories.
So yeah, tou know, showcasing those inspiring stories and how hard their staff is working. And I feel like with this, you know, while we’ve kind of heard some of this before, some organizations [00:18:00] already doing this, I feel like their approach was pretty innovative, which is why I wanted to share this.
But to just help determine who, when, and why they feature a hero, they really tap into their marketing team, SEO, social team, internal communication teams. It’s very collaborative, which is always great, no matter what you’re doing, but I feel like, especially in this space and in social media to kind of hear everybody’s strategy there and recommendations there to really highlight is great. But they create a variety of things. So written vignettes and photos, but they also have social first video clips, you know, which can be a bit more casual and longer form expert videos. And one thing I wanted to highlight here too, they had this like emotional, grateful patient video about his patient or this patient had an experience.
At Stony Brook’s Cancer Center and I could tell everybody was very impacted there in the room. It was very emotional. The patient was very emotional. So it was great that they had some, you know, examples included there too to kind of give people an idea to make you know, more of these social posts more impactful.
But really showcasing those patient outcomes, having everyday recognition programs is something they’re [00:19:00] doing to kind of tie into this strategy. But I really like that they also touched on the more challenging piece, a piece of this, which is getting your employees to really buy in and be willing to share this information.
And so a lot of times, you know, employees aren’t necessarily comfortable being on camera. You know, always that just limited in time piece to where, you know, maybe they can’t sit down to have this video created for a half day or whatever that looks like. And so they had some solutions there. You know, offering and creating a variety of content.
So whether they prefer to do a video or just take some images and do more of a written story and giving them also examples. So they know what to expect some. So from previous videos or anything like that to where they felt comfortable and, you know, kind of ready for whatever it was there or felt or to determine if they felt comfortable to do that.
You know, actually take care of that piece and help out there. Or also I think they kind of threw up this example as well, where one of their physicians didn’t necessarily know if she wanted to do this or was kind of feeling more uncomfortable, but they said, you know what let’s just try it out.
If you aren’t comfortable, we scrap it. But at least maybe we just give it a shot. And so I think that helped out knowing that like, hey, if it, maybe I’m not [00:20:00] feeling it as I’m actually doing it. We don’t necessarily have to move forward with it. And so throwing out some good options there.
Overall, I feel like it was a really great presentation, whith some really great, like actionable takeaways from it and a really great Q&A afterwards with marketers that I could tell were really focusing on like, okay, how do I implement this?
Jenny: Awesome. That’s awesome. It definitely sounds like a strong session.
And then last but not least, Shelby, talk to us about the session opportunities for child mental health within your integrated mark home strategy.
Shelby: Yes, talk about a session that was really special. Everyone that attended this session seem super passionate about children’s mental health. But Donna Teach, who’s the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Nationwide Children’s as well as Breanne Taylor, who’s the Administrative Director for Kids Mental Health Foundation, really talked about how as an organization at Nationwide they realized about 8 to 10 years ago, this looming crisis [00:21:00] that was on the rise. Right?
And they shared a lot of startling statistics about, you know, 1 in 5 kids having a mental health disorder before the age of 14 and how many teachers feel like they are ill equipped and how that impacts those students in the classroom.
And so. Nationwide Children’s ended up kind of making a five year commitment in their strategic plan that we want to focus on behavioral health. We see that this is a need not only in our community, but nationally. So let’s figure out how we kind of combat this. They wanted to partner with a national group that already existed to do this, but they couldn’t find one that was really focused on prevention and stigma breaking.
They found some that were very focused on kind of niche aspects. Specs, but not a little bit more higher level. So they talked to leadership and ended up deciding that, hey, this was something they were going to create. So they kind of started small with a local kind of call to action campaign. That was, [00:22:00] it was called on your on our sleeves and it was talking about how kids there’s a lot.
of stuff behind the surface that you can’t see that it’s not on their sleeves. The creative was really special. They put that out in the local marketplace and then COVID hit and they were like, oh, talk about a mental health crisis. Wow. What did we get ourselves into? So they had to pivot and really focus not only on kids, but the caregivers of the kids at this point. How do you help kids through this thing that we’re also trying to figure out ourselves? So they ended up pivoting by 2023 to a national cause organization called the Kids Mental Health Foundation. And they, guys, it’s been, it was so special to learn in this session, all of the partnerships that they’ve created and all of the material and content they’ve created.
And they’re able to have other organizations license some of that content and be able to co-brand and share it [00:23:00] to their patients and folks in their community. So they now have resources in all 50 states, and more than 18M people have interacted with their content. Huge. That rolled out in 2023, the National Cause Organization.
So, crazy stats of what they’ve been doing and the impact they’ve been able to have. So, spreading the word as much as I can to other children’s hospitals, organizations that want to get involved and partner with them. They’re doing some amazing work in that space.
Jenny: It’s a great case study about thinking about the bigger impact your content can have, right?
Because it’s one thing and it’s very impactful to create things for your local organization, but then licensing it for other hospitals that are like yours to leverage. Not only it gives you the monetization to then be able to perhaps create more content and feed that machine, but then also it spreads your impact.
So it’s a beautiful case study and a great job. Great job by the presenters. So, well, we had such a blast at this year’s SHSMD, we’re already looking forward [00:24:00] to 2025. I think it’s going to be in Dallas next October. So super jazzed about that for all of you that we saw again, this year, face to face our longtime friends.
It was great seeing you and it was fabulous meeting all of the first timers. Hopefully this recap was helpful if you’re thinking about attending SHSMD next year for the kinds of sessions that you can look forward to. And thanks for tuning in. Thanks for just being loyalists. It was really fun.
To be able to hear so many people approach us and say that they really look forward to each episode of this podcast and it made us feel really good that we’re doing a small part here at Hedy & Hopp to drive education throughout healthcare marketers across the country. So, thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy and we’ll see you soon.
Take care.
Epic is one of the leading electronic health record platforms, but did you know it can also help healthcare marketers gain deeper insights into their marketing efforts? In this episode, Jenny chats with Sam Seering, Product Manager of Cheers at Epic, about how healthcare organizations can use Epic’s CRM solution, Cheers, to better understand marketing impact and improve key performance indicators (KPIs).
What’s Discussed:
This conversation highlights the potential for healthcare systems to move beyond basic marketing metrics and understand the full ROI of their services through advanced technology.
Connect with Sam:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, and we are also the organization that produces this podcast. I am very excited to be here with you today to do an episode where we’re going to dig in and talk about how you can get into more in depth marketing measurements and KPIs and what that looks like.
So with me today, I have Sam Seering. He’s the product manager of their suite Cheers and I am very excited to dig in because Epic, as all of our listeners know is the gorilla of the electronic health record space, if you are a provider, a hospital system, many of you listening have Epic and use Epic.
And there’s lots of really cool ways that you can integrate your data into your marketing [00:01:00] tactics and get a better idea of how your marketing is actually impacting outcomes. So welcome, Sam. I’m excited to have you here today.
Sam: Thanks for having me, Jenny. Glad we were able finally to make it work and get me on the podcast.
Jenny: Yes, Sam and I have been emailing about this for, I think, two years.
Sam: Something about like that now.
Jenny: Yeah, so it’s great to have you. And I think there have been a lot of exciting developments on the Epic side in that time period. So I’m excited to bring the most up to date information to our listeners.
So I would love it to get started. If you could just give a little bit of an overview about what marketing measurement is possible what functionality and tools exist for our listeners that work at an organization that leverage Epic.
Sam: Absolutely, Jenny. So there’s a few different options, whether you’re using Epic, dedicated marketing automation capabilities through cheers, or maybe if you’re using other technologies, but you want to be able to [00:02:00] track data into Epic.
I think there’s pathways for marketers to take advantage of that. They might not be might not be aware of. So for as a baseline understanding for organizations that are just using Epic more holistically, not using the cheer suite of tools. Important thing that I would encourage you to start turning on is that if you are using online scheduling capabilities for your patient acquisition efforts, so showing your provider profiles and then linking to their available scheduling slots.
That component that goes on your website is able to ingest parameters coming from the website so that if you’re driving folks there from social media advertisings or display ads, you could actually understand for the folks that booked the appointment on that page, where did they actually come from?
And the nice piece is that information is then stamped on that new patient [00:03:00] record and that encounter. So that you can do back end analytics with that information to be able to tie that appointment schedule to your actual advertising work that you’re doing online. Now that’s something that I would encourage every organization to do because every organization has that as part of their toolbox.
When we start talking about, though, some of the more advanced capabilities that comes with Cheers campaigns, our marketing automation solution, this is where we can get that full end to end journey for that direct engagement. Of course, this is going to cover your more traditional marketing metrics.
Jenny, I think you did a great job of measuring this as part of your KPI 101 podcast that you did recently. And so you could include things like how many folks are you reaching out to? What communications are you sending them? Are they opening the emails or the MyChart messages? Are they clicking the links in the text message?
Your more traditional [00:04:00] marketing KPIs for your outreach campaigns. But because we then have an integrated longitudinal data set about the individuals that you’re engaging, we also can track what were outcomes that occurred before a conversion, a true conversion for the organization. And then what happened afterwards?
And I think an easy way to put this into context, Jenny, is with a real world example where an organization may be doing outreach as part of breast cancer screening initiatives, whether it’s part of a broader population health work, or maybe it’s a cancer awareness campaign that folks are doing.
What you would be able to do as a marketer is be able to understand not only how many folks did you send messages to that needed to get that breast cancer screening completed. But then also, how many folks scheduled a mammogram, how many folks completed it, and then finally, how many of those individuals had a clinical [00:05:00] diagnosis of a malignant neoplasm of breast because of that outreach.
And this is where marketers can start showing their true value to the organization and the clinical impact that their operations are having.
Jenny: Yeah. I mean, when I talk to, it’s one of the reasons I love being in healthcare marketing so much is whenever you go to conferences and talk to all of the marketing directors, managers, CMOs, whatever position they’re in for providers across the country, their number one passion is helping patients access care and helping their community and giving back, being able to access the number of people that actually were diagnosed or receive treatment as a result of your marketing campaign.
I mean, talk about making it real.
Sam: Oh yeah.
Jenny: Right. Right. I mean, that’s where it really becomes emotional. Yeah. So one of the things that I think is interesting whenever we were kind of doing some pre work about this, you’re breaking down all the different ways that marketing attribution can work within your platform is you talk about two different ways to create attribution, right?
So there’s different [00:06:00] ways that you can integrate the data to be able to get it. Analytics as an output. One you said was standard analytics. What was the data extraction suite? Can you talk a little bit about those different pathways so that way marketers could really understand based off of their Epic implementation of the package they have?
Kind of what, how they would access that?
Sam: Absolutely. So in some instances, there is going to be direct analytics that is out of the box ready to go. So when I was talking through each of those touch points of that mammography journey that we were that I was just chatting about, every one of those is a discrete metric that shows up on a dashboard that you can go and look at every single day and drill into the details.
We’ve had organizations that then pull out actual individuals that had that full journey. And then they reach out to them to say, Hey, would you be willing to be part of all their marketing initiatives that we have? So that they can help really promote that brand and that more broader [00:07:00] identity of the organization.
However, there’s definitely instances where you may want to merge the data that you’re seeing through the Epic capabilities with other data. I think a great example of this is if you are doing a search engine marketing campaign, being able to see how many impressions occurred and what was your actual spend then linked to the number of appointments.
And so that’s where, for my example earlier of scheduling an appointment online, you can take that data, which is extracted out to a SQL database, getting a little bit technical, but being able to take that data, and then marry that either in an Epic native warehouse solution, or if you want to bring that into another business intelligence tool, you would have that capability to do so.
So all of the information that we are calculating, both the appointments as well as the campaign activity, is then available in that raw format that you can then take and merge [00:08:00] that with other information as necessary.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of systems that we have worked with, for example, that have their own data warehouses and they have their own in house data teams.
And so knowing that data is extractable and able to live in their own warehouses is extremely helpful. And one thing that I’ll point out here for all of our listeners, when they know that I am the queen that doesn’t want to be the queen of data privacy of marketing, is that the good news about this is that Epic is an organization you already have a BAA with.
So all of this data sharing back and forth is absolutely allowed. And it is absolutely in the best interest of the patient. So just to make sure that we state that everything is done in a safe and compliant fashion.
Sam: Yes, absolutely. And we’re more than happy to talk with organizations that we’ve seen about best practices around that message personalization and segmentation because that’s a powerful thing of having your marketing technology natively integrated with your core electronic health record with an Epic.
That [00:09:00] you have a massive opportunity to get hyper personalized in your messaging. But because of that hyper personalization, you want to make sure that you’re doing it in an appropriate fashion and not exposing information through unsecure channels.
Jenny: Absolutely. Or coming across as creepy because you’re sharing it at an inappropriate time.
I think that’s a fine line that we all have to walk as marketers. How am I helpful, but not making, you know, somebody feel as though I know too much about them, which again, luckily, since hopefully you’ve fostered a positive relationship with your patient you have kind of the benefit of the doubt based on the channel that you’re using.
So. So that’s good. You know, one thing I’d love to hear about is you guys are continuously improving, developing new ways to be able to help marketers and the way that they are able to leverage this data and the marketing automation tools. What’s coming next? What can people look forward to?
Sam: Yeah, two things, Jenny, I think are particularly important for marketers to understand as they’re looking [00:10:00] to grow their native capabilities within Epic.
One is that for the marketing automation that’ll be going through the Cheers platform, we’ve recently added our first version to be able to associate direct revenue with the campaigns that you are running. So now not only just the clinical outcomes that are occurring, But what are the true transactions that are happening?
What’s being billed to insurance and being collected? What’s going through self pay so that you can start actually talking with your finance team and with your revenue cycle team about the broader business impact, not even just the clinical impact that you’re having as a marketer. And we’re really excited to continue to expand that capability in the coming years.
Of being able to tie additional types of revenue as well as bringing in third party data for things like contribution margin to even be able to improve those numbers further. The other piece that we’ve heard from the community [00:11:00] is it’s great. We know our initiatives, but we don’t always have capacity in order to actually get patients in for that care.
And I don’t want to have to know as a marketer that I’m going to go talk with the leader of this clinic to say, all right, now I need to turn on the spigot to increase the volume because they have unexpectedly available capacity. And so a piece that we’re going to be making available in November for organizations is what we’re calling capacity based marketing.
And this is as part of your outreach and as part of your configuration. You define what is the type of appointment that you’re actually asking individuals to schedule. And so, before the system starts sending out those messages, it checks to say, is there actual capacity and then find individuals that live near that location or work near that location so that we’re providing access at the points that are most [00:12:00] convenient to the patient.
I think everybody can has had one experience where they get an email from a health system and I get engaged. Maybe it’s allergy season. You should schedule a consultation with an allergist and you click through and then the next appointment is nine months in the future. It’s a terrible patient experience because you as a health system, you as a marketer, you had me engaged.
But then when I went there wasn’t actually anything for me to do. And so now I’m less likely to engage with your content in the future. And so that’s where we’re going to be incredibly excited for organizations to simply have this always on behind the scenes capability. So that only when there is available capacity, you then are sending out information to the most prioritized individuals so that you’re both filling the slots from a business perspective, but then also providing a great patient experience.
Jenny: Both of those updates, I personally am super jazzed about as a [00:13:00] marketer. I mean, really understanding the true revenue per appointment is the holy grail. Right. I mean, marketers forever have had to create just estimates or averages of what each appointment was likely worth. So that is a game changer.
And then we have manual capacity feedback loops with most of our clients for the different service line campaigns we’re running, where we, like you said, have a text exchange or a message exchange every Monday and turn campaigns on or off. So again, this is going to be a game changer. So it’s exciting that your organization prioritizes these two different areas. So awesome.
Well, Sam, thank you so much for coming on today. It was really a joy to have you. And I think this conversation was really important to have because we continue to talk to systems across the country that are still just now starting to get to basic marketing metrics to be able to understand the ROI for the service line.
Our brand level campaigns they’re doing. So helping them understand really what is possible, bigger picture [00:14:00] as they’re building out their, you know, three to four year strategic roadmap for their marketing organization, they know what’s possible with the technology that they leverage. So thank you for being on today.
It was a joy to have you.
Sam: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jenny.
Jenny: So I’m going to put Sam’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if you’d like to connect with him, you’ll have his information. And for listeners please like, and subscribe. We would love to hear feedback about what you’d like for us to cover in a future episode.
You can reach out to me directly, jenny@hedyandhopp. We always usually respond to requests by recording a show relatively quickly. If it’s a request, we usually prioritize that because that means it’s something people are really interested in. So would love to get your requests.
Otherwise, thanks for tuning in today. And we’ll look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
In this week’s episode, we’re giving you a sneak peek of what to expect from Hedy & Hopp at SHSMD Connections 2024, happening October 13-15 in Denver, CO. We’re excited to be part of this event again this year and share how you can connect with us and attend our sessions!
What We Cover:
Even if you can’t attend SHSMD, the H&H team will be gathering key takeaways from a variety of sessions we attend and sharing them in a post-conference podcast. Stay tuned for that episode!
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Friends. Hi, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m super excited to join you today to give you a sneak peek at SHSMD 2024.
Hedy & Hopp is going to be showing up in full force at the event. It’s one of our favorite events of the year. And we’re going to be participating in a couple of different ways. So I wanted to give you a little sneak peek of some of the topics we’ll be talking about and ways that you can engage with us.
And first, I will say, if you are not attending SHSMD this year, just know that like last year, the Hedy & Hopp team will be attending as many sessions as possible and aggregating some of the key insights and findings and doing a summary podcast after the show. So if you’re not attending [00:01:00] you will be missing out.
I will say it is fabulous to see colleagues and other people in the profession in person, but we will be doing a recap podcast after the session. So you will be able to understand some of the key topics, trends, and then also we’ll identify who some of the key conversational influencers were as far as individuals at different providers across the country that really shared some impactful topics.
So be sure to tune into that episode. It will drop later in October. So for those of you that are attending SHSMD, it is October 13th to 15th in Denver, Colorado, one of my favorite cities. And there are a few different ways that you can engage with Hedy & Hopp. So first our booth, our booth is booth number 1015, but I will say, just look for the joy and you’ll find us.
We should be pretty easy to spot based off of our booth strategy this year. And we are going to be showing up with some really fun giveaways. [00:02:00] Two of the most in demand pieces that will be making a reappearance this year are going to be our marketing happy friendship bracelets. We gave out over 200 of those on the first day and part of the second day last year.
They were a really hot commodity, so we’re bringing hundreds this year so we won’t run out. And we also are bringing some art prints from our 2024 Artist in Residence, Katie Mertz. We’re going to have a couple of different art prints to select from. Some of you that attend every year have been building a collection of each of our year’s art prints.
But even if this is your first year swing by and pick up a free art print, we’d love to send you home with a little bit of joy. But let’s get on and talk more about the educational topics we’ll be discussing. So we’re going to be speaking twice at SHSMD this year. First, we have a pre conference workshop that I’m super jazzed about.
So I’ll be speaking alongside our Director of Analytics and Technology, Mark Brandes. And our topic is, OK, But How Do I USE AI – AI 101. [00:03:00] Or AI 101. This is a pre conference workshop, so it’s on Sunday from 12:30 to 3pm. You have to buy a ticket to attend this session. The pre conference workshops are an additional add on fee, but I assure you this is going to be very worth the funds for those that sign up.
This is actually an evolution of a session that SHSMD asked us to do a couple of months ago. They had a fabulous AI series that talked about how to begin integrating or understanding AI into your organization. And we were the last session and the series, and we wanted to help make it practical for folks.
Like, how can you walk out of our session and feel like you can comfortably start using AI and kind of know what in the world you’re doing. And so, We took that hour long session and turned this into a two and a half hour long session, and it is going to be very hands on. It’s broken up into a couple of different segments.[00:04:00]
The first segment is going to be talking about all the different AI platforms that are online and highly used today. So we even had to update this from when we did it a couple of months ago because things are changing so fast, like ChatGPT Perplexity, Claude, what are all of the main platforms that are out there?
How do they work? Who built them? What are the differentiators? What are they good for compared to the other ones? So there’s a really great one on one session that kind of starts it. Then we talk a little bit about some AI use principles and some core values around using AI and how to integrate it into your marketing workflow.
So some key do’s and don’ts, some ways to be able to encourage others within your organization to use AI, but kind of make sure that you have reins around how it is used and deployed so that way you’ll feel really comfortable with it. And then the third and now most fun session. The one I’m most excited about or section of the session is we’re actually going to have folks pull up their phones and laptops, and we’re going to spend some time [00:05:00] using the different AI platforms.
So we have, I think, five different workshop exercises, and I promise this is so easy. You will not be intimidated. Even if you have never used ChatGPT before please come to this session with an open mind and know that we’re going to walk you through it in such a way that you’ll feel exposed to it in a way that you understand at least in the 10,000 foot view, what it is and how to use it. And if you are a bit of a person who is a little bit more comfortable with AI, and you began playing with it a little bit already on your own, you will also get things from this session because we’re going to be talking a little bit more about some advanced prompting.
And that you can do some tweaks to make to your prompts, then also helping you understand the different platforms and the benefits of some versus the other based off the kind of work that you’re doing. So again, that’s our pre conference workshop, super excited about it. And please, if you are tasked, either, if you are tasked with understanding AI and how to incorporate it [00:06:00] into your marketing team, or really, if you’re just a marketing professional, you don’t want to fall behind, this is an excellent session to attend, to be walked through in very layman’s terms with what AI is, why we think it’s can be applicable in certain marketing use cases, how not to use it.
So it really, you’ll walk out feeling much more confident in how to use it in a applicable way immediately after the session. So it should be pretty empowering. And then our actual concurrent session that we’re doing is a evolution of our 2023 very highly rated session on privacy. We received fabulous feedback.
We had a, it was standing room only last year. There was lots of fear and concern right around SHSMD last year about the new OCR bulletin and what in the world that meant for marketers. Well, we’re doing a 2024 edition. But this is going to be much more evolved than the 2023 because we’re going to be talking about, of course, [00:07:00] HIPAA, FTC, and state laws, which a lot has happened in the state law space.
We’re also going to talk about how you can understand what you need to be adhering to from a compliance perspective. We’re also going to talk about class action lawsuits and what’s happening with that in the healthcare space across the country. And then my most exciting part about it is we have one of our clients, a pair called Quartz Health Benefits.
They’re out of Wisconsin. Jenny Bradley. I know Jenny B and Jenny B, but Jenny Bradley is going to be joining us and she’s going to be talking about how they were able to successfully make their marketing analytics technology stack. And all of their tactics fully compliant and then still successfully have open enrollment last year while their entire marketing campaign was fully trackable, they were able to measure ROI just like they did before with the old one.
And she’s going to be extremely transparent in the way their marketing tech stack was modified, what tools they chose, why, what else they looked at. We’re going to talk about [00:08:00] how we, as their agency partner. Worked with them from a compliance checklist perspective, making sure we’re all on the same page around who’s doing what how tactics needed to change.
So this is going to be a really educational session for those that still, I hope nobody’s still at the stage where you don’t know about compliance, right? It’s been so highly talked about in our space. So I don’t assume anybody is there, but if you’re still at that stage where you’re like, maybe you haven’t fully modified your tech stack where you feel comfortable that you’re fully compliant, or maybe you’re still having internal conversations around how to make sure measurement ROI tracking is still in a good place.
As you’re making that final conversion. This is a great session to attend. You will get an update on exactly what’s happening in the compliance landscape. What’s happening with the national privacy law and when that may hit and what that will mean for folks in health care. And it will just be a great way to go into you know, [00:09:00] the rest of your calendar year and then into 2025 really feeling like you have a handle again on compliance and are less likely to be surprised by something that may be coming up in your backyard or something from a national perspective.
So again, we are super excited about SHSMD. We’re making final preparations right now for all of the team members that are attending with Hedy & Hopp. Please come by and see us. We really cherish all the relationships that we make in person. I have a long list of folks I’m excited to give hugs to this year when I see them again in person.
So again, we are going to be at booth 1015, but look for the joy and you’ll find us and I hope we run out of friendship bracelets before the end of day three. So please swing by, grab some for yourself. And maybe for team members back home that weren’t able to come to the session and or to the conference and really look forward to either seeing you again or meeting you for the first time.
So thank you again for joining us on today’s [00:10:00] episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. Please subscribe and follow us on your preferred platform tool whatever app you use Spotify, Audible, whatever subscribe. So that way you’ll get our weekly podcasts as they are released.
And please send me a note if you have a topic, you’d like for us to cover at jenny@ec2-3-80-87-79.compute-1.amazonaws.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
Are you gearing up for a conference this fall or spring? Our team at Hedy & Hopp is deep into conference prep, and we thought it would be useful to share some insights on how you can better prepare and make the most of your attendance. Here are five solid tips to help you walk away with everything you need.
Bonus Tip: When returning to the office, hold a lunch and learn session with your team to share key takeaways from the event. It’s a great way to engage your team and strengthen your case for next year’s conference budget.
Connect with Jenny:
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Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am the CEO and founder here at Hedy & Hopp. We are a full service and fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are the creators and producers of this show. I am excited to come to do to you today with a topic that my team and I from the heavy marketing and sales perspective, are knee-deep in conference prep.
So I thought it could be useful for those of you attending a conference this fall or even next spring for me to do a little bit of behind the scenes view on some tips to better prepare for a conference and really maximize your attendance at a conference. So this is for providers and if you are a vendor, keep on scrolling.
These tips aren’t for you. But if you are a provider or payor and you’re attending an event this fall or winter or next spring, hopefully this will give you five really solid [00:01:00] tips to make sure that you get everything that you need out of this event and really maximize the opportunity. So first of all, The tip number one is to develop your goals and really make sure you know why you’re going to this event and what success looks like.
There could be a couple of different kinds of goals that you’re aiming for. First could be to network. Maybe you’re going and you want to come back with a variety of folks in similar non competitive positions like yours across the country. So you have kind of a think tank or a mastermind group that you can rely on and start building those relationships to experience share.
Maybe you’re wanting to learn. Maybe you want to have a great agenda that you’re going to be going to all of these key speaking sessions and you want to walk away with some key insights and some areas of marketing that perhaps you don’t feel as comfortable or confident in, or maybe it’s your focus for the upcoming year.
Maybe your goal is to speak next year and you want to attend sessions to [00:02:00] see how folks are doing it. Maybe use the opportunity to get some ideas for what your topics could be for next year and some key ways that you want to show up as a speaker or presenter next year. And finally, maybe you’re going to find a vendor or a couple of vendor options.
Maybe you’re looking for a new marketing agency or an email marketing vendor or something like that. And that could be a key take away for you, whatever it is, make sure you spend a moment and actually write this down. Here at Hedy & Hopp, we have a, we’re very organized, but we have a folder for each conference we go to, and there’s lots of documents inside.
One of them is our event goals. Why are we going to this particular event? How is it different from other events? We’re going to, and when we get back from the event or a month or two months after the event, what did success look like? And did we achieve that? So, yeah. Absolutely write it down and hold yourself accountable next.
And this is one of my key secrets to attending events. And I think it [00:03:00] really goes to one of the reasons why events are so successful. One of the many reasons that why events are so successful for Hedy & Hopp is spend time to develop your own personal brand. Visual is one of the key things, but it also could be in the way that you show up.
It can be the way that you make people feel there’s lots of different ways that you can develop and curate a personal brand, but I strongly recommend that a visual brand is part of that formula for Hedy & Hopp. My brand is a really bright blazer, pink, purple, something with the Hedy & Hopp colors, always have really awesome kicks on.
So Jordan 4s, whatever. We have some really cool ones for this year. I’m excited to wear next month for our first fall event. And then for me, I always have, handmade really bright earrings. That is my formula. It allows people to see me, remember me. And then when they see me later in the event or at a networking event at the event, or even at the next event, the next month, [00:04:00] they recognize it’s me.
The Hedy & Hopp team will show up at an event in November after going to one in October and people will say, Oh, Hedy & Hopp.. I know you guys, I recognize those blazers. So please don’t copy after us that shouldn’t be your brand. But for example, in 2021, there was a woman and she lives rent free in my brain because she was wearing three and a half inch studded, like sparkly stilettos, the entire conference. That was her brand. And she lives rent free in my brain because this was right after COVID where nobody wore heels. And this boss lady comes out wearing these killer shoes. They were gorgeous. I don’t know how she did it.
I couldn’t do it for the entire event, but that was part of her visual brand. When I saw her anywhere, I knew it was her. Other people may be. One of my good friends she’s a neutrals person. So it’s all neutrals hair, very clean and like slick back a little bit. And for her, it’s more, her approach is how she makes people feel during the event.
So the visual compliments it, but there’s more components to it. So I [00:05:00] know this sounds extra, but if you are wanting to accomplish your goals at the event, and part of it includes anything around your own personal branding or growth, please take a minute to do it. For three tip number three pre event, please don’t show up to an event without knowing what sessions you want to go to and which speakers you want to tune into.
This will not take long. I promise. Set aside a couple of lunch hours or a couple of hours in a block of time in an afternoon and just knock it out. Every conference you go to will publish the sessions in advance, along with the speakers. Some platforms for conferences have the ability to actually pre select the sessions so it can be in a curated agenda.
For others, you could create a separate document where you list out your tentative agenda, but go in with a purpose. And for this, you want to look at a couple of things. Number one, what topics do you want to learn about? Make sure that you attend all the sessions that are topical that you’re interested in.
And number two, what speakers do you want to hear from other organizations like yours presenting at [00:06:00] the conference? Are there vendors you’ve been thinking about calling up and talking about a potential partnership or scope of work with attend their session and see how they present themselves.
There’s lots of different reasons why you’d select your different agenda and craft it. And again, that goes back to what your conference goals are tip number one, but spend some time crafting it and then key tip. Any speakers you’re going to see, go find them on LinkedIn, connect with them and say, really excited for your session at this conference next month, next week, whatever.
I look forward to seeing you speak. That is the number one way to kind of warm up that relationship, especially if it’s somebody that you would like to introduce yourself to at the event, and you would like to get to know them and build a relationship. Do it. Every single person that goes to these events wants to meet people.
Every single person does. There is nobody going to these events that thinks they’re too good to network or that they’re too busy to network. That’s the point of attending these events. So doing your homework and determining who you would like to meet puts you in the driver’s seat of that and helps [00:07:00] you be more successful.
Which goes directly into my next point number four, never eat or sit alone. So if you created and crafted your list of the kinds of organizations that are people for the organizations that you want to meet, that can be helpful. You can create a VIP list of people that you want to scan and look out for at lunches or at breakouts to perhaps introduce yourself to them or whatever.
But even if you don’t see anybody or perhaps it’s like in the mid afternoon and it’s a coffee break and you’re just kind of mentally tanked, don’t have much left in it for networking, still sit by somebody. Cause I assure you that other person’s feeling the exact same way, but you still could develop a meaningful relationship with just a five minute conversation or the start of a relationship.
I’ve had lots of those situations where part of me just wanted to like, go sit outside in the conference and get some fresh air. And every time I chose to stay inside and sit down next to someone, whether it was a payor, provider, another vendor, whatever it resulted in a fun, delightful conversation that actually gave me a little bit more energy going [00:08:00] into the last couple of sessions.
And then the last event or the last tip for events tip number five is post event follow up. So what I do when I meet somebody, my personal tip is I always have a pen with me. And I write on the back of their business card. Now this is sometimes controversial. Sometimes people think business cards are sacred and you don’t write on them.
I’m not one of those people. For me, the business card gets added value whenever I write key notes or conversation points on it. So it’s your decision if you want to do it that way, or maybe keep a pack of sticky notes next to you that you would hear to it. Your choice. But I immediately write either when I’m with that person or immediately whenever we’ve parted ways, what we talked about and what I owe them as a follow up.
So often I’ll say, oh my gosh, we had a great podcast episode on that. Let me send that to you because that could give you some ideas about ways to think about how to tackle that problem. Or, oh, I know a provider that actually is focusing on that service line for growth right now as well. Let me introduce y’all because you’re not in competitive spaces.
I think you could have some really great [00:09:00] conversations about it. Whatever promises you made. Do it. And from a timing perspective, don’t do it that day. Don’t do it a couple of days after the event. Give people a little bit of breathing room and then send the follow up because people are inundated returning from conferences.
Let’s say the conference is Monday, Tuesday. Usually I would wait until the following Tuesday to actually send that introduction or whatever. Sometimes I send a note later in the week of the conference and just say, it was so great meeting you. I have it on right to do early next week to do this.
Want to let you know, I didn’t forget, but I’m not going to inundate you as you’re catching up from the conference. So, doing all of this, it may feel like it is burdensome or it’s extra. But I assure you, it will absolutely make sure that you’re getting the most out of the event for both your organization and your own personal brand.
And I know a lot of folks are still kind of like fighting their way to conferences. They’re having to really make the case for why the budget [00:10:00] to go to the event makes sense or why getting the time off from the day to go to the event makes sense. And if you were one of the lucky people that were able to win that fight, please take these five tips to heart and leverage them because it will really allow you to show your boss or a decision maker or whatever that you walked away with educational content of value, connections of value, etc.
One bonus step. One other thing that I will add is that if you are a marketer within an organization, one of the key things that I recommend you do is take notes about some of the key learnings and offer to do just a lunch and learn for the rest of your marketing organization that wasn’t able to attend and give them some of the key learnings, some of the key talking points, some of the key things that you found interesting, maybe case studies or organizations that are doing cool things that are like yours that they may find interesting that will absolutely help you with securing the budget for next year if you take that proactive approach and put something [00:11:00] like that together.
So thank you for tuning in today. We are super excited about the fall conferences. If you are attending, please come by the Hedy & Hopp booth and say, hi. I’m speaking at both SHSMD and HCIC this fall, our booth is going to be amazing.
We have art we’re going to be handing out. We’re going to have friendship bracelets again this year and lots of other fun surprises. So. If you’re attending either of those events, please come and see us. And if you’re attending another event that you think we should be at this fall, shoot me a note, we’re trying to fine tune our conference schedule for the upcoming year and would love to learn about events that are must attend.
Thank you for tuning in for today’s episode. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week. See you next week on a fresh episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.