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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicole: Thank you for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jenny: You’re open to the idea.

Nicole: Yes.

Jenny: But you hate it.

Nicole: Yes. Hate it, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jenny: True. Yes, it does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

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

Jenny: Absolutely. Same. Same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

Jenny: I know, I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicole: I know.

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

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

Nicole: Right.

Jenny: So it’s like a nice cycle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

Nicole: How often do you post?

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

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

Nicole: Right.

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

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

Nicole: Yeah.

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

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

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

Nicole: Oh you do? Okay.

Jenny: Almost always. Mmhmm.

Nicole: Wow. Okay.

Jenny: Yep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kristin: Yeah.

Jenny: For sure. Awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kristin: Thanks, Jenny.

Phil: Thank you, Jenny. 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Cheers!

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

Madison: Hi. I’m excited to be here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madison: Oh, of course. Thanks.

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

Jenny: Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow, and I am your host and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. Today is episode 101, and I am very excited to have our very own Abby Davis join us today.

Abby is a very excited young boomerang employee. So Abby was with our organization for five years, 2017 through 2022, and Abby had a really interesting role with the organization previously, which we’ll get into. She then left the organization, did a little mini-retirement, entered a couple of other industries she was interested in exploring, and then we reconnected earlier this year, and I am so excited to have her rejoin our organization.

So before we get into your current role, Abby, I’d love to first of all, again, just welcome you back to Hedy & Hopp, we love having you on the team. And that I’d love to hear a little bit about, your role previously to kind of share with our listeners and level set your expectation coming or your experience coming back into the organization.

Abby: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jenny. I’m really excited. Yeah. I’ll tell you a little bit about my role with Hedy & Hopp in the first go round. So in 2017, I joined with you and the team, and I came from the publishing background. So I worked for Elsevier, better known as Moseby. So it was in the health science education textbook for higher education, publishing.

And we really focused on moving all of our print content over to the digital space. So it was when, you know, e-readers were coming out and online platforms for nurses and doctors and things like that, using all of our materials. So, I actually spent about 12 years at Elsevier, and it was very corporate. So, a large corporation, we had offices in in many countries.

And I was looking for a career change. And a friend of mine that I had worked with before had joined Hedy & Hopp, kind of a smaller young startup back then, and encouraged me to leave my kind of comfy corporate job and come over to digital marketing and website design, and development with Hedy & Hopp. And so when I came over, I was kind of dropped in a foreign land, you know, I knew, healthcare, I knew publishing, I knew, electronic content, but I wasn’t as familiar with digital marketing, in that space at first.

So when I came, I started as a project manager. And then soon after I joined as a project manager, as you remember, we, we started working with a large healthcare account, and that’s when my, my role really kind of skyrocketed from account manager to senior account manager, director of client accounts, and then ultimately, when we were much smaller, I was assisting as the VP of operations and finance.

So, around 20 late 2021, I decided to take a little break, a sabbatical from work to try to kind of reset and reorganize our refresh. So I took about two years off and, had a great time. I traveled lots of places, within the States and outside the country. And then, like you said, tried a couple different other organizations and then ultimately, was really happy that, you know, we stayed connected and was able to come back to Hedy & Hopp and join with you guys.

Jenny: Yeah. So when you were with us the first go around, you briefly touched on this, but you are the account manager for we were the digital agency of record for, the largest faith-based health system in the country. And it was a really large account and was really the conduit for me falling in love with healthcare marketing.

It really allowed us to see and understand how healthcare marketing could have a real impact on patient lives. We could make their day easier, make a crisis moment easier by allowing our talents to make it easier for them to find care. Schedule an appointment online, you know, find that specialist they need to work with, etc. so very passionate about that.

So, whatever you came back, you’re now on the practice side. So just a little bit of a reminder for our listeners here at Hedy & Hopp. We have two sides of our organization. We have the system side, which is larger healthcare organizations, payors, providers think like really large hospital systems, health systems, statewide, multi-state. But we were having a lot of inquiries come in from groups with smaller budgets.

And that’s, that’s something we’ll touch on really in-depth here is the budget differentiation. But a critical access hospital or a five-location ortho group, for example, would come to us and we just didn’t have the ability to service them as easily because our processes were built for systems. So we started building out those processes internally, and then the opportunity to actually acquire another agency that specialized in that space presented itself.

We finalized that deal in August of last year, acquired iHealthSpot. Now we really have two divisions of our organization. We have the system side, which really, again, works statewide, multi-state, and then the practice side, which really focuses on groups with a smaller footprint. But still looking to do that patient acquisition work and drive their reputation forward to be leaders in their area of expertise.

So, Abby, your role here is really focusing on both client growth and operations on the practice marketing side. So, from your perspective coming in, what is the difference in doing marketing at that practice size compared to what you had done previously when you’re here, and what we still do on the system side.

Abby: Yeah. So I have, you know, coming back and working with, with the practice clients, it’s fun and exciting because when I was on the system side, and worked with much larger clients, especially like the client that we talked about earlier, that I kind of started my, my marketing career with, you know, it was it was

fun and exciting, and we had to lean in and really learn and really strengthen our muscles around, compliance and privacy, HIPAA, state law, you know, state restrictions and things like that. And however, we didn’t really necessarily have the systems in place to be able to take those to take what we were doing for these large organizations and, be scalable to, to take on smaller practices like you mentioned.

So maybe they only have 1 or 2 locations. They’re smaller, they’re independent. But since we’ve acquired, you know, the acquisition in August with the practice Marketing group, we’ve been able to really take those processes and those systems that we built over the last several years and build out really cool best practice packages for our clients.

So this helps them a lot of our clients come with, you know, on the practice side, a variety of, you know, kind of experience and knowledge in the digital and marketing landscape so that our packages are able to, you know, really provide best practices and build a strong foundation kind of no matter where you’re at in the digital space.

Maybe you’ve tried it before. Maybe you’re you’ve tried to do it internally or with a vendor before. But, you know, you really didn’t have the muscle or the internal resources to be able to understand what you’re actually doing in that space. So now that we can take all of these great systems and processes that we’ve built for our larger clients and implement them for smaller practices, it’s super exciting.

Jenny: Absolutely. So some of the areas that we focus on, we have packages specifically around reputation management. So, building the online reputation and driving reviews, we have patient growth. So, really thinking about paid media to be able to drive service line or brand-level awareness online. We have packages around SEO and AI. We have AIO, we have, really affordable website packages, analytics packages, etc., so these are much, or very affordable.

Because they’re really leveraging best practices. There’s not a lot of, customization or, I don’t want to say strategy work because a lot of strategies gone into developing these packages, but it’s best practice. It’s what you need to be doing and showing up where you are. And we’re not reinventing the wheel. So let’s talk a little bit about the elephant in the room.

Talk about budgets. Like how is somebody a system client versus a practice client? What kind of budgets are we looking at on the practice side?

Abby: Yeah, that’s that’s a great, item to talk about because that’s one of the scariest things to the to the small practice owners, the physicians, the office managers, the folks that are coming to us and reaching out to us and saying, hey, we need help here.

But they’re scared of the budget because they know that they’ve they’ve looked before, and I mean, Google and Meta and all the other platforms. It’s extremely competitive. So they feel as if, you know, they come into the situation. They want to make sure they have the right amount of money, the right amount of budget to, to see the ROI they’re hoping for, especially if this is their first time and they have to then report back to their stakeholders in their leadership teams of you know, how our efforts are working.

So one thing, that I noticed a lot was with the, you know, foundation packages that you can come in on the practice side, we help you be able to add a small, you know, one time fee, be able to come in, understand the state of the state where you’re at, what have you done, what you know, where how far have you gone to identify your audience?

Your, you know, define your key messaging. Make sure that you have a strong foundation built, we’re able to come in and help some of these practice clients at a much smaller budget then I’ve heard that they’ve gone out to reach, you know, gone out to pitch for other agencies and seen much higher prices.

So, so we’re able we, our team and Hedy & Hopp, we were able to put these packages together, taking into account the, you know, the number of hours that it takes. You know, what kind of conversations do we have? What level of strategy do we need to do in order to, get you, you know, get your foundation started or build strength in a foundation that you’ve already built, and then hit the ground running.

So, like I said, now with our packages, with these best practices that we’ve put in place, we’re able to really identify the right amount of money that it takes, but not an excessive amount of money or all the fluff like kind of what you were saying on the other side. Like it’s more just, you know, hey, you want to get started, we want to help you.

We’re the experts here. Whether you stay with us forever or you’re just signing on with an agency partner to help you, you know, kind of, get your footing in the digital space. We have the packages that we’ve spent a lot of time, you know, building that can help you no matter where your budget is.

Jenny: Yeah. And to be just kind of transparent about budget ranges, we often talk to folks with budgets, you know, and, you know, the 100,000 to 250,000 annual all-in range, right? So, folks aren’t having huge seven-figure budgets. It’s critical access hospitals. It’s, you know, privately owned specialist groups. So they have a much more conservative budget. But we’re able to help them.

I think when you look at the goals for organizations, regardless of size, it’s usually the same, right? We’re trying to build a reputation. We’re trying to drive, patient volumes. We’re trying to drive awareness of ourselves in the market in really heavy competitive landscapes. So being able to do this with packages, on the smaller side, really makes sense.

And it it really is. It’s two. We were all Hedy & Hopp right. But we have team members really dedicated to the practice side that really know that side and what levers you need to pull that are just completely different from the system side.

Abby: Exactly. And you mentioned, you know, the large budgets that we can see. I talk to practices, every day.

And, you know, it is always kind of an elephant in the room because it’s like, I don’t want to put them on the spot and say, what is your budget? So we can see if we can work from it. But, because more than likely we can. But yeah, we’re seeing budgets that are coming in more, as you know, some practices only have $2,000 a month to invest in this.

You know, and sometimes that’s all in. That’s $2,000 a month to be able to start our campaigns, you know, do the, the the research. So, you know, obviously that’s going to be on the lower end of our budgets. But you can see that the difference between the kind of budgets, you know, all the way up to multimillion-dollar budgets, that’s working on the system side, to now, you know, this is a new physician or new practitioner launching their practice.

And how can we help them, gain traction and get their, awareness out there, and then also, you know, stay on top of all of the trends in marketing. So whether it’s social, PPC, you know, all of the, compliance, the trends, the, the updates that, we’re seeing across the platforms and new regulations and things like that, you’re able to have an agency partner, that maybe is just, you know, a small extension of your team, but we’re able to help you, stay on top of all those things because you’re small practice, you’re busy.

You want to see if you’re patients, you want to grow your practice. You want to increase your visibility in the community. So let us focus on, you know, navigating all of those ins and outs through the digital marketing landscape.

Jenny: Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us today, Abby. I hope this episode was informative for our listeners.

We talked so much about the work on the system side that we do that I really wanted to highlight this part of our business, because we do know a lot of our listeners don’t have a huge seven-figure budgets. So really helping you understand, you know, that heady enough was to love to be here and be your partner, and help you, you know, really help patients access the care that they need.

So with that, thank you so much for tuning in. Please subscribe and like the podcast. We drop new episodes every Friday, so we’d love to have you as a regular subscriber. Send in any topic, ideas or topics you’d like for us to cover in the future, and we’ll be sure to add that to our roster.

Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Abby: Thanks so much for having me today, Jenny.

 

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited! Today is our 100th episode of our podcast. It is a, it has been a super fun, rewarding journey.

And to celebrate, I invited Maggie Piasecki. She is the other owner at Hedy & Hopp and she’s also our agency’s president, our fearless leader. So Maggie, so excited to have you on today. Welcome.

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

Jenny: So before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to do a little bit of a throwback. So our first ever episode was in August of 2022.

And I had my dear friend Annie Harmon on. We met when she was at Ascension, and, at the time during the interview, she was at Reputation. She’s now at Press Gainey, in their healthcare division. But we were kind of snapshotting a moment in time talking about the impact of reputation for health systems and the different technologies that systems were using to try to improve their reputation online.

So if you want to throw back about what technologies were trending in 2022, you go give that one a listen. But today we’re going to talk about the four top themes that we are seeing with healthcare marketing executives. So Maggie and I consistently talk. We have a handful of conversations every week with folks across the country. And with that, we really have our finger on the pulse about what’s keeping them up at night, what is their leadership asking them to talk about, and board meetings and leadership meetings.

What are the trends their team members are bringing to them wanting to invest time and budget on? So let’s dig into the first one. The first theme is staying ahead of patient expectations and AI being the go to. So Maggie, I know we’re hearing about patient expectations. And I often what are you hearing?

Maggie: Yeah. So it’s a complicated one because I think any healthcare executive you talk to will always ask about patient acquisition.

Like, how are we being different, how are we staying ahead of the competition. And some of the key themes that keep popping up is, you know, multi-channel omnichannel approaches aren’t enough anymore, right? Patients, we know that they’re online. We know that they’re always going online when they’re searching for information, whether it be research or searching for a new provider.

But they’re doing that across such a variety of different platforms, channels, mediums, and they’re expecting for these organizations to show up in all of those different channels, platforms and mediums. Right. And now you have AI search coming into the to the realm as well, which, you know, creates a whole new set of difficulties. So I think, you know, some of the biggest challenges are ensuring that, our healthcare clients are prepared to show up across all of those different mediums, platforms, channels, etc. when the patients need it, they expect it quickly, but they also then expect it to be connected to a human if they need to speak with them.

So making sure that all of that is integrated. But the other pieces I really think around content strategies. We’re hearing content strategy a lot, especially with the AI tools. So, this no click type of search mentality really needs to come to the forefront. And ensuring that, you know, our clients content is ready to be very easily digested and picked up, whether it is through an AI search result or an AI tool itself.

It’s almost like a bit of a conversation right between patients and these AI tools. So I think, you know, content strategy that works across variety, different platforms, but also is digestible from an AI standpoint, have been really some big challenges that have been coming through in a lot of our conversations.

Jenny: Yeah. And kind of piggybacking on that zero-click search result, thought process, and mentality.

We’ve been advising and have been seeing a lot of our clients really shifting from that top-of-the-funnel content strategy to more bottom-funnel, where it’s solution-oriented. So no longer, you know, if you’re orthopedic, an orthopedic group no longer searching for, things like ways to prevent, you know, an ankle injury instead, it’s more I have an ankle injury.

Who do I go see now?

Maggie: Who do I go to?

Jenny: So somebody more raising their hand looking for a solution. And what kind of content can you provide to make their journey easier? Because oftentimes those broader searches, that’s a national audience. You know, if you are a regional system, there’s no value in trying to rank for those large terms unless you have, you know, a business case for that, which some groups do.

But the vast majority of times your resources are way better spent at that more, you know, action-oriented keyword structure.

Maggie: Yep, I would agree. And then again, making sure that it’s, you know, accessible across any different type of platform channel medium, AI tool, etc. not just thinking again, multi-channel, ensuring that’s all integrated across the variety of different ways that they can engage.

Jenny: One of the things we’ve been seeing people kind of unsure about is the uncertainty and inability of being able to track and understand website volume and traffic that is coming from AI search engines. One thing that we’ve been seeing, the movement on in the last couple of weeks is different tools actually trying to show, and help you understand how you, hate to use the word rank, but rank.

So how you’re showing up in these platforms, especially like the Googles, you know, Gemini, you know, I summary at the top. So there are ways to actually measure the efficacy of that at this point. So your team should be really, you know, digging in to be able to add down your reporting and insights. You’re looking at.

Maggie: That’s a really good callout.

And I think also, then the other flip side of that is there are trends, you know, showing that click-through rates are starting to go down, right, because of that shift. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not performing well or you’re not outperforming what you were doing prior. So more about the engagement and conversion across a variety of different platforms.

And the AI component kind of bringing all that together. So it’s a really good point.

Jenny: Yeah, I think that flows really well into the second key theme that we’re seeing, which is brand loyalty. And local trust still matters. So what’s your POV on this? Maggie.

Maggie: Yeah, this is always kind of a push and pull, especially with healthcare executives.

So going back to your point about sort of top funnel and, and not really putting money and energy into your in terms of like those larger, more, I would say symptom-based type of searches, but really putting the money and energy into building brand awareness and equity locally. There’s a lot of value that’s coming out of that.

And I think there’s been a big shift over the last maybe 18 months or so of how much that brand establishment locally really means. The end user. I also think when you look at a lot of the shifts from acquisition standpoint, so some of the larger organizations coming in and starting to put their brand on more of the local or regional hospital systems, that individual still wants to feel that brand connection.

And so when we’re in a room with healthcare executives and we’re talking about, you know, where do you want to spend your money, where are you going to get the best bang for your buck? We do try and move them up a little bit to brand awareness, because while it won’t show an immediate impact, it is building that long-term value in relationships.

And I also think, you know, going back to some old school tactics around the local publishers and the local newspaper or news outlets can play a big role in helping build that brand equity and starting to build some better relationships and sort of news coverage there. I think we’re seeing a shift with a lot of, especially our regional healthcare systems and tapping into those, those outlets.

Jenny: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think it would be a dream to only do digital, right, because, I mean, the easiest a dream, but that just isn’t reasonable. That isn’t where audiences are always going to be reachable, especially when you’re going into either a rural area or you have an older demographic you’re targeting. So it is really important, you know, to be across the board.

Another thing I’d love to kind of like piggybacking on that. So we’re talking about brand loyalty. One of the things we see folks struggle with, is really balancing brand marketing versus service line marketing, you know, and how you kind of not differentiate the kind of figure out what size of a bucket, budget bucket each of those get.

So I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Maggie: Yeah. And I would I would push that. It’s not just budget bucket, but it’s ensuring that the messaging all ties back together. So I think when we’re in the planning stages with our client, they’re they’re not only trying to figure out where do I put my budget and why, but how do I ensure that there’s consistent messages, right.

Because that person that’s receiving the brand campaign or the brand can message campaign message may also be receiving, let’s say, a cardiology-based message for that service line. So ensuring that those two come together, what we typically try and do is we get down to what that client needs to see from an ROI perspective with getting those patients in a door.

So I think if you talk with any hospital system, for example, they’re going to have a set goal on on the number of new patient acquisitions or the type of market share they want to take over from the service line. So getting creative about how do we adjust marketing spend to meet that demand. And maybe it’s a five-month sprint, depending on what the turnaround time or sort of leeway time is to get them in the door.

But that’s one way that we would often push, our teams to look at that. And then, you know, I go back to the messaging that messaging matrices, which I feel like fell off for a little while, are really coming back. When we think about tying that brand back into the service lines. And so in we’re about to go into planning stages for a lot of our clients and thinking about that, brand and messaging matrix across the brand, but also then the service lines really helps get that marketing team and anybody else it’s activating for them consistent ways that we’re communicating with the audience because they’re going to see it, you know, a

bunch of different times across a variety of different mediums.

Jenny: Yep. That’s a great point. Third trend establishing a preventative care relationship with baby boomers. Preventative care is not necessarily sexy, but it is a strong entry point to that relationship development. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Maggie: Yeah, I mean, we we hear the word baby boomer quite a bit, not only from our payor clients, but also from our healthcare system clients.

You know, I think the number is around 70 million. They’re going to reach by 2030 if I have my numbers accurate. So it’s a huge chunk of the population. This baby boomer group, you know, they’re sophisticated. They’re, you know, much more comfortable with digital than the generation prior to them. And they’re expecting to have that brand relationship with their healthcare providers and systems.

Right. And they want it to go beyond the transaction of just coming in, getting an appointment done and then leaving. So a lot of what we’re hearing from executives is challenging us to think about how do we get in at that preventative care point, how do we continue to extend that relationship with the baby boomer audience to where we’re not just a transactional name?

To them? We are a trusted relationship, healthcare partner to them. To really get them in that long because, you know, there’s going to be a variety of different needs that they’re going to, require over the next. You know, 15 to 30 years.

Jenny: Absolutely. And making it easy for them, just making it appointment and, you know, minimal clicks.

Maggie: Integrating the comms and all of those different pieces.

Jenny: Yeah. All of those things. And then last but not least, is they are talking about focusing not just on patient acquisition, right? Onesie twosies bringing in new folks, but really thinking about capturing more of the healthcare dollar overall for their patients. So share your thoughts here. So patient acquisition obviously is number one across the board, right? That’s what we hear in and out of every conversation. But where we are seeing that extend is one thing. Once they get that patient in the door, the marketers, not the healthcare organization, but the marketers themselves, are being challenged with, how do they expand that footprint with that individual patient. Right. So if they come in, let’s say for an emergency room visit, how do we extend, to get them to take another service with that healthcare organization?

Right. Once we have them in the door, how are we extending to think about preventative care or this type of subspecialty, whether it may be cardiology or orthopedics, whatever, have you. So there’s a big challenge in pushing down to marketers to not stop at patient acquisition and to think about how do they nurture that patient once they’re in the door of the system.

It’s obviously a hard balance, I’m sure, as everybody knows from a privacy standpoint. But I think one trend that I believe you talked about in your original episode is the tech stack behind it. Right? So I think healthcare organizations across the board are continuing to see, you know, some gaps in how do they integrate those variety of different texts and platforms from the point of patient acquisition to ensuring that we can compliantly communicate with them about what else is available?

And that’s another big area we’re really I think health executives are asking us that question. You know, we have Epic, for example, there’s a lot of opportunities and platforms within the epic system that they’re not yet tapping into, and they’re asking for us to really come in and help them think about how do they do that from a compliance standpoint that’s usable and actionable?

Jenny: Absolutely. And we have some clients that are on Salesforce and they absolutely love Salesforce. But we have a lot of clients who would love to be on Salesforce. But today they have Epic. So they’re challenges. You know, budgets are being crunched all over the place. How can we really focus on increasing the share of the healthcare dollars with the tools and resources that we already have access to?

So that’s a really great point and something that I think a future episode is going to be dedicated about.

Maggie: I would agree, and I think more and more marketing dollars will go to really ensuring that that patient is expanding, the lines of service within the organization post patient acquisition as we look in the next couple of years.

Jenny: Yep. I completely agree. Well, Maggie, today has been an absolute joy. Thank you for joining me.

Maggie: You are welcome. Thanks for having me.

Jenny: Yeah, I was so fun to celebrate the 100th episode. You’re the only guest I’d want to have on for today. And, I also want to give just a nod that it is officially going to be four years since the gang got back together in August.

That we’ve been working together again and has been just an absolute joy. Being side by line.

Maggie: Yeah, a ton of fun. And cheers to four years for that. And cheers to 100 episodes.

Jenny: Yes. Well, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Please like and share this episode. If you have any colleagues that would be interested in the content and please, follow along.

New episodes drop almost every Friday. And we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am your host today. And I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am super excited to have with me today, Sarah Zajicek. She is our copywriter and content editor, and she specializes in working with our practice marketing clients.

And we were talking about the topics that are trending with our clients, with the prospects that are coming in the door. And a lot of folks really are getting back to the basics, right. There’s all of these shiny objects that have kind of stolen people’s attention over the last couple of years, and in 2025, we really feel like it is an area of focus for marketers to get back to the basics.

So we wanted to do a multi-part part series on high-performing content. So today Sarah and I are going to talk about creating high-performing website content, and then I’m going to be joined with Haily Bartlett, our senior art director next week. And we’re going to talk about creating high-performing creative. So welcome, Sarah. We’re excited to have you on.

Sarah: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Jenny: So talk to me a little bit about your role at Hedy & Hopp. 

Sarah: Sure. So, primarily, right now I am writing website copy. I’m also editing that website copy. Primarily for our practice marketing clients. And these are clients that have private practices, or multi-location practices, usually under ten locations across the country.

And in that website copy, I am laying the foundation for strong SEO. So I work hand in hand with our SEO strategists, make sure that the copy is compliant with SEO standards and that we are also implementing those SEO keywords throughout the copy to help our practice marketing clients rank well on Google and Bing.

Jenny: Very nice. And also, I know that you and your team have implemented a lot of GEO content strategies as well. We’ve covered that on a lot of prior episodes, so we may sprinkle a little bit of that in on today’s episode. But definitely a fast-moving target. So talk to me a little bit about why content matters on the website, because I feel like lots of folks at conferences talk about how 50% of Google searches end up being zero click, meaning the answer to their question is found within the visible search results, whether it’s the practices phone number or a summary of services provided or the location.

So 50% of people don’t even need to click through to the website. So why does it still matter to focus on having high-performing website content? 

Sarah: Absolutely. So like I said before, high-performing content sort of lays the foundation for your SEO and also your AIO and your GEP. So, so having that content there helps drive organic traffic to your website, although you may not be seeing the clicks.

If you are structuring your content correctly and really trying to hit for those, AI overviews or general search options, you’re going to provide the users with the resources that they need to be able to contact you in the future and eventually convert into those new patients. So the relationship between your content and users, finding your contact information, and eventually finding their way to you, really go hand in hand.

Jenny: Absolutely. So, thinking specifically about our practice marketing client. So again, think about like an orthopedic group with eight locations across the state. If I was thinking about rebuilding a website for them, where would you start? When you’re thinking about content, you know, throw out their current website. Imagine you have to completely start from scratch. How would you start imagining the site architecture?

Sarah: Absolutely. So when it comes to the site architecture, you really want to lay things out in a way that your search engines are going to be crawling your site. A lot of this has to do with headings on your website, making sure that you’re heading tags are implemented correctly. Also, the way that your paragraphs are structured, you want to use short sentences.

Paragraphs that are pretty to the point, easy for not only the user to scan and read, but also for the search engines to scan and read. But you also want to be having those calls to action on your site, and you want them prominent not only for the user, but for those search engines, AIOs and whatever generated search engines that your users may be using or potential patients may be using to be able to find that call out information so you can convert more often.

Jenny: Yeah, that’s a really great point. Talk to me about length of content because in this industry it’s a pendulum, right? I feel like at one point everybody says, oh, it has to be long form content, like a thousand words per pages, and the pendulum swings to the other side and they say, oh, no. For a smaller practice, let’s do like one long landing page where everything’s on one page.

You know, people don’t have to navigate and click around. What is your team seeing as the best practice right now as far as serving the most ideal experience to the patient and those platforms like the search engines and GEO tools. 

Sarah: That is such a great question. So I think there really needs to be a balance. Typically with SEO standards, you do want to see some pages of longer form content.

Blogs, typically 750 to 1200 words. Those are really what the search engines rank as what we call authoritative content. So authoritative content is content that pretty much self-explanatory, drives authority. It helps the users know that you know what you’re talking about, and it helps the search engines know that you are credible as a resource. So when it comes to blogs on your website, I feel like that’s where the longer form content should come in, provide useful information to the user while creating that credibility and authority for the search engines to help rank your website as a higher ranking than other websites that may not be as resourceful for the users that are online.

When it comes to your main content. It should be shorter form. They say a typical page, about 500 words, is all you need in order to capture your user’s attention, and also the search engines attention for users to find you. Something that’s really quick and scannable. Lots of subheadings so users can find what they need on the page quickly.

And under those subheadings, I feel again short paragraphs, snappy sentences. A lot of bulleted lists have been favored by AIOs and generative search options just because they’re quick to scan, easy to read, easy to process. When it comes to those main pages, easy to process is the way to go. 

Jenny: Absolutely. That is such a good point.

And, I know something that we often have to educate our clients about. Also, is reading level, the way that you write that content. Right? Because physicians, especially if we’re working directly with the physicians or clinicians within the organization, they have much larger vocabularies than your average patient, right. So thinking about like, what grade level are we going to be writing our content at and really thinking about maybe like a fifth grade or so grade level, is really great, both for making sure that your content is easy to understand, but also making sure the vocabulary you use is actually what people are searching.

I remember whenever we were doing a big content program for a client a few years ago, we were working on the cardiology services section of the hospital’s website, and the cardiologist, the head of cardiology, hated the fact that we use the phrase heart doctor over and over, but that’s literally how people were searching for cardiologists on Google is heart doctor.

They didn’t know the word or didn’t know how to spell the word cardiologist, which may seem so weird to doctors when that is the name of their profession. But really understanding, you know what? How are people actually searching for these providers and making sure that we use the language that is approachable and understandable to them? 

Sarah: Absolutely. And that’s where the SEO and keyword research portion fits into our content is you do want to make sure that you’re hitting the right audiences at the right time by speaking their language, and a lot of times that does mean using some terms that our physicians or our practices may not typically favor but we do explain to them that, you know, some of these terms, like heart doctor for a cardiologist or, shoulder surgery instead of shoulder replacement. Some of these things, although they seem a little more elementary, it is just colloquial for the average person, and it’s what the average person would say and typically search for. So we do try to write, typically a sixth-grade reading level, for all of our clients.

And we try to also make sure that all of the content aligns with their values and their brand as a whole. Although content primarily serves a function for making sure that your users are informed and making sure that you rank well on search engines, a lot of it also has to do with your brand voice, and making sure that you’re clients and your patients know who you are, and that you understand that they need help and that you’re here for them.

Jenny: That is such a great point, and something that I feel like our practice clients often overlook. When you’re at a health system and you have a marketing team of 30, you have your brand tone defined. You know, the vocabulary that you use. You know the tone, you know, key messaging for your organization, whether you have it or you’re, you know, in the process of refining it, something exists.

A lot of our practices that we work with haven’t even thought about that. So, how do you help a practice really figure out brand tone? And then what’s an example? Perhaps if you can think of one of, you know, a way that a brand can really show up in a, you know, a certain way and really showcase their brand through the language they use?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that I do when trying to help a practice figure out who they are and what they want to exude in their website is really just go through some adjectives with them. Do you want to be warm and compassionate? Do you want to be family-friendly or would you rather be more professional? More technical?

Definitely more medical. And that is the preference of the client. And we can go either way, and we’re happy to accommodate in either direction. I will say a majority of our practice clients tend to lean towards a warm, compassionate, family-friendly tone. Just because, again, with medical practices specifically, I think the goal is to make sure that the patients know that we are there for them and we want to help them in any way we can, and in guiding practices to helping develop that voice for themselves.

I think the best way to do that is just talk to the doctor, talk to you, the owner of the practice, talk to some of the employees and see where their core values lie. And once you find that and sort of have a conversation about where they want to go and what direction they want to go in, sometimes those things just sort of flow naturally.

Jenny: I love that. Well, Sarah, to wrap us up, I’d love to hear from your perspective some common pitfalls that we see practices fall into whenever they’re beginning to think about their website content. What are some things that we’ve seen frequently that perhaps are myths or things that people think is important to do within content, but definitely are pitfalls, and we should stay away from them?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Like we said before, I think avoiding a lot of jargon, avoiding a lot of technical language, and really avoiding a lot of fluff, people that are coming to your website, yes, they do want to know you as a practice, but they they also want to get their answers, if they have any questions about a condition that they have or treatment that you offer, be as informative as possible and make sure that every piece of content that you have on your website truly has a purpose.

Whether that’s informing the reader about a service that you offer or a new surgery that one of your surgeons is starting to, implement at your practice, or even if it’s just an event that you’re holding a community event that you want others to participate in, make sure that everything that you’re publishing really has a purpose for the reader.

And in terms of SEO, just don’t stuff with keywords. I know can be hard to implement your keywords to rank well on SEO, but using them too often or adding them too many times can make things sound unnatural. And when things don’t sound natural, people aren’t going to respond to it well, and search engines aren’t going to respond to it well either.

Jenny: That’s such a great point, Sarah. So, thank you so much for joining us today. I think this is really helpful as just, overview and refresher for folks that are perhaps heading into a website rebuild process and are starting to think about the way that they want their organization to show up. At Hedy & Hopp, note that all of our clients are onboard with something that we call the foundation package.

And so all of our practice clients get two things in the foundation package. They get first compliant web analytics. So we set you up with a analytics platform that is fully compliant so you don’t have to worry about all of those compliance topics we talk about on here so often. And then also we go through a messaging framework and help you understand those key things Sara was talking about.

About how do you want to show up? How do you want to be perceived? And then, who are you targeting and what are the key areas of focus you want to talk about with your organization? So those things then serve as the North Star for all of the complete campaigns we run for you, whether it is designing and building a new website or activating something on a marketing services side to be able to actually drive new patients through your door.

So, thank you again for joining us. Listeners. Be sure to tune in next week for part two of our series, where we’re going to talk about high-performing creative. Be sure to like and share this episode with any of your coworkers who you think would benefit from the information, and we will see you next week. Cheers!