Jenny: 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 and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m very excited today to join you. I just finished doing our very last session, so session four, of our four-week Summer School, Epic for Marketers webinar series.

We had phenomenal attendance from leaders and marketers within health systems across the country, and really just phenomenal feedback from all of the attendees about what they learned. So I wanted to do today, just a brief little summary of a couple of the analytics tools and reporting options that are available to you within Epic today. So if you’re a marketer that uses an Epic system, first of all, you should absolutely go back and sign up for our Summer School series.

We will send you a link to watch the four episodes, the recording of each of the weekly episodes, and then, you will have all the information that you need to get a deep dive. But today, what we’re going to do is I just want to talk a little bit about the different names of the tools and the databases and the reports that are available within Epic.

So if you are a marketer on a health system that uses Epic, all of these tools already exist. One of the cool things about Epic’s marketing tool suite today is that you have the ability to put data into Epic and pull data out of Epic to be able to do your marketing campaign reporting. So what does that mean?

That means, let’s say that you’re doing a campaign for mammographies on paid media, and you can put a UTM parameter, which your marketing teams use for all campaigns already, on the ad when they click on it, and then go to your website and then schedule an appointment, that UTM parameter will actually be added to their patient record. And then you can actually do an export from that patient or from that database to be able to do a dashboard to show your marketing campaign ROI.

So you can show we spent X dollars on, say, this Google campaign. Here’s the number of clicks it received. So that’s campaign data. It lives within Google, right? And then here’s the number of landing page visitors that we received. Here’s the number that booked an appointment. Here’s the number of folks that actually completed that appointment. And then here’s the downstream revenue associated with it.

So that information all lives in different places, right. So what you have to do is put data into Epic and then pull data out of Epic to use your own data visualization tool. So a couple of different names of tools and terminology that you should know, is first Chronicles. That is a real time live transactional database. So it runs Reporting Workbench which is where a lot of pre-built tools, or sorry, reports live that you could access.

And it’s a great tool to answer questions such as “did our campaign today spike my chart activations today”? Otherwise, what you’re going to be looking at is Clarity, which is a relational database that does nightly data extracts, and Caboodle, which is the data warehouse that lives within Epic. So this is really great. If you want deep campaign analysis, this is where you actually want to see how many appointments were scheduled yesterday, what the downstream revenue is for the last 90 days after your campaign was launched, etc..

So LinkSource is the tool that Epic uses and it’s a native Epic tool. Again, you don’t pay for this. It just comes with Epic and whatever you send out. So you get that mammography campaign either it’s a Cheers campaign or maybe it’s a media campaign when somebody goes to the landing page for mammography service line and they schedule an appointment, that UTM parameter is appended to their patient record, along with the appointment ID, and then you can pull it out to be able to visualize it within your own data visualization tool, to be able to see all that information.

So you have the ability to put some information into Epic, but you don’t have the ability to visualize the data within Epic like most groups will want to see it. So we want to figure out exactly what data fields can we put in, and then how do we pull them out? One of the really interesting things, and some benefits that we’re seeing right now is whenever you manage your marketing teams and partners, really cohesively, you have the ability to be much smarter about media spend and patient acquisition approaches.

So for some of our clients, for example, if you’re able to manage paid media and Epic Cheers campaigns, let’s say again that mammography campaign will have an understanding of the amount of access that is available, and then we can actually send out a Cheers campaign to try to try to drive demand with our current patients, get them those appointments that we know they are up for, that they need to be scheduling to be able to stay on schedule with the proactive care.

And then also, we could do a paid media campaign to try to bring net new patients in. And if you have a centralized ability to be able to view access and availability, then you have the ability to understand, hey, we have more current patients responding to our Cheers campaigns. We’re actually going to pull back on our media budget a little bit until more appointments open up, and then we’re going to ramp it up again.

So there are some great dashboards that are already available within Epic. You can go to it’s called the Analytics Catalog. And that’s like a search engine for existing reports. Otherwise you can use SlicerDicer or the Reporting Workbench as other tools to be able to pull up data to be able to understand what’s happening as far as appointment scheduling and campaign response within your organization.

So this is just the tip of the iceberg. If what you’re hearing on this podcast all sounds like a foreign language to you, but you are with a system that uses Epic, please, please, please sign up for our Summer School series. It’s free. We’ll immediately send you the links to all four episodes. The first covered MyChart and Hello World.

The second episode dug into Cheers. The third episode talked about how you and your IT teams need to collaborate to be able to get all of this technology rocking and rolling and some different considerations of things that IT wished you understood about how their processes worked. And then the fourth was all around analytics data and dashboards. So again, it’s free.

The link will be in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining. Hopefully this gave you a little bit to think about. If you’re already on Epic as your system, there’s lots of data that it really is at your fingertips and just waiting for you to begin leveraging to be smarter about the way you’re conducting outreach and the way that you’re measuring performance of campaigns.

Thank you for joining us today on this episode of We Are Marketing, Happy. I will see you next week. Cheers!

Jenny: 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 and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m really excited to come with you today and chat a little bit about speaking to the boardroom, how to pitch marketing metrics to the C-Suite.

So we have had lots of conversations with our clients about this over the last couple of months as folks kind of prepared for budgeting conversations or progress update conversations with their board. And one of the things we really enjoy doing at Hedy & Hopp, as being a true partner to our clients and helping prepare even the content, the slides, making sure they have access to the metrics that they need to be able to justify the progress that they are making with the marketing investment, even outside of what Hedy & Hopp,

Maybe we are their media partner, but perhaps in how they manage organic or social. We are happy to help them, you know, put together that story about the progress that we’re making. And we have seen, you know, time and time again, it’s really difficult to make the transition from the marketing metrics that you’re used to talking about with your team and with your agency partners to metrics and data points that the C-Suite care about.

So today we’re going to talk about exactly that. We’re going to talk about the disconnect. We’re going to talk about and identify three financial metrics that your CFO is actually going to care about. We’re going to talk about building the executive-ready dashboard. And then we’re going to talk about how you can use these same metrics on the defense.

If you’ve been told that your budget is going to be cut. How can you actually frame the cost of inaction? So let’s jump in. Typically, as marketers, we’re always talking about things like, you know, more upstream metrics to be able to understand the reach that a campaign may have. And then, of course, getting down to that cost per lead metric.

One of the things that has been very difficult to actually accomplish in healthcare marketing is actually fully understand the revenue that marketing’s leads are driving, the growth that can be directly attributed to marketing’s work. And that has been because historically, there’s been a bit of a firewall kind of around the EHR and all of the, you know, clinical metrics.

That is shifting rapidly. We have successfully been able to put tracking metrics like UTM parameters into patient records within Epic, and then pull campaign reporting out. That allows us to understand the number of patients and the downstream revenue that specific campaigns drove. So the days of having, you know, that that walled garden and not being able to fully report on the entire journey and revenue that your campaigns are driving, luckily, is over for most organizations.

You just have to act to be able to stand up all of these different reporting technical capabilities. But once you’re there, what we need to focus on are a couple of different things. First, really understanding. And instead of talking about cost per lead, reframing it as a patient acquisition cost. So this is still on the cost side of the equation versus the revenue.

But it’s really important to be able to understand how to calculate the patient acquisition cost by service line. So as you’re talking about, to the board, objectives for the organization to be able to drive volume, you can actually put some dollars behind it through the lens of what is it going to take from a marketing dollars investment at a certain patient acquisition cost to be able to accomplish your goals?

So that’s the first metric. Second is really fine tuning it from downstream revenue, which again, we’re excited to even have in healthcare nowadays. So downstream revenue for many organizations is going to be a win. But if you really want to win the hearts and minds of the board, switch that over to contribution margin. So the board knows that revenue itself can be misleading.

So if you phrase it through the lens of contribution margin, that is the revenue generated by marketing driven patients minus the variable costs of their clinical care. So that helps them understand the true financial impact of the patients that marketing was able to drive. And then finally service line ROAS which is return on ad spend. So don’t look at a blended ROAS for your campaigns.

You really want to break it down and identify specifically those high margin clinical procedures like cardiology or orthopedics and neurology, where the financial return is going to be the highest, because that will absolutely enable you to be able to help justify additional dollars for some of these, service lines, especially if there’s additional, access to bring in additional patients.

Next. Second, let’s talk about an executive-ready dashboard. So the golden rule of a board presentation is less is more. You do not want to have to spend five minutes explaining a slide. That means it’s too complex. You’re trying to communicate too much. So an easy way to think about this is really like a three-column framework. Tell a story in five seconds.

First the input. What capital was deployed? What was the marketing spend by service line? In the middle is what is the output, the clinical volume that was generated. Again you can pull EHR, verify new patient encounters. And then third is the impact. So what does it mean for the bottom line? Hopefully you’re able to pull again contribution margin.

And then also estimated lifetime value. This is a really easy way in a screenshot. You know on a one slider to be able to quickly explain what progress marketing is making to achieving those operational and organizational objectives. A couple of things I want to call out. I failed to mention this in the first segment. In order to truly get to contribution margin, you’re going to have to become BFFs with your CFO.

So to actually be able to understand what that calculation needs to look like, what are those variable clinical costs? To be able to do that calculation, you need to become BFFs with them, help them understand what you’re trying to report on, because for them, they want that data just as badly as you do. So really working together to be able to report at that level of granularity is a big success for both of you, so it should be a pretty easy conversation.

And then finally, let’s talk about the defensive play. Let’s talk about the cost of inaction. So right now we are seeing budgets being slashed across the board in healthcare. Regardless of if you’re a privately held organization, you know, PE-backed whatever. Budgets are being slashed right now. So how are you going to help the board understand the impact of these budget cuts?

So marketing often is first on the chopping block. So it is your job to defend it. So first talking about and framing it as a market share leakage. So what happens if marketing stops actually calculate the patient volume that will be turned off if you turn off or reduce marketing budgets and really phrasing it not as a, you know, this is we’re saving money, but this is what’s happening.

But hey, we’re ceding market share to our primary competitor down the street. You know, here the number of patients that our marketing is absolutely going to no longer be bringing in the door. So big impact there. And then finally showing the board the direct correlation. If your hand is forced and you do have to reduce budget, actually look at and track the financial implications of what happened, what was the trajectory of, say, high margin elective procedures for a three month time period if marketing was turned off compared to what your expectations were, based off of that strategy that you had presented probably a year ago.

You know, based off those patient volumes, you expected that it would drive so really phrasing it as a choice. Like we can reduce our spend by 20% in order to hit this quarter’s cost cutting goal. But our historic models show we’ll reduce the 150 K drop in surgical contribution margin next quarter. Right. It’s data. And then if they still need to or want to reduce it, that’s fine.

But you’re actually making sure that they understand and meaningful numbers what that impact is going to be. So again this is a difficult mindset shift for marketers that have reported with different metrics and terminology their entire career to all of a sudden be talking to a completely different audience that oftentimes doesn’t care what the campaign is. They don’t care what the creative is.

They just want to actually know if it, you know, drove and contributed to growth of the organization. So definitely encourage you to step back, kind of think about the data points that you’re using, think about your analytics tech stack. Do you have the data pipelines in place to even accomplish reporting at this level? If not, give us a call.

We’d be happy to help you, but once you have it in place, then actually start reporting on it, and I guarantee your seat at the table will be much more valued by others than when you’re simply talking about marketing metrics, which they may consider vanity. So thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope this was a helpful episode.

Share this episode. If there is a colleague that you think would find it helpful, please share with them. Please like and subscribe 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. 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 excited to be here today to chat with you about human-led AI and paid media. So lots of folks are still talking about AI conceptually.

They’re talking about how organizations need to be smart, about how we’re integrating AI into your marketing processes, that compliance needs to be top of mind, and everybody’s doing it. But not many folks are actually pulling back the covers and sharing with you how they’re doing it, what steps they’re actually using to implement AI into their processes, and the results that they’re seeing.

So we thought today that we would focus specifically on our paid media division at Hetty and Hop and share our five pillars of AI integration. So at Hedy & Hopp, our stance on AI is it’s truly a core part of the agency’s DNA. So a couple of ways this shows up is we have a full-time employee who owns AI implementation throughout our agency.

It is her full time job that is all that she is focused on, is making sure that our processes are optimized, we’re being smart about the way that it’s being integrated. We’re following compliance regulations and that we’re being innovative. Our golden rule at Hedy & Hopp, however, is that AI accelerates and informs, but humans own the strategy and validate the outputs.

So the entire way that we think about AI has to be through that lens. We also look at it through two different bookends, if you could say. First is, is it improving our internal processes or is it improving our customer’s experience? Or patient experience? If we’re talking specifically about media being delivered? And so as we consider our prioritization of AI processes and tool usage within our organization, that are that is the two different ways that we think about how and what we prioritize as an organization.

So paid media has been a big area that we’ve been focused on finding efficiencies and improving the output of our clients media spend. So paid media is huge at Hedy & Hopp. And we manage millions and millions every month on behalf of our clients. We manage digital, but also traditional across the country. Buying billboards, radio, TV, all of the things to be able to make sure that our clients are really showing up where their patients need to find them.

So that really presents an opportunity, right? How can we use AI to be able to improve the budget allocation and the results? While also making sure that we are compliant? So the five pillars of AI within paid media that we’re going to talk about today are first, smart planning and budgeting, precision persona building through the lens of compliance, emerging channels, real time insights, and creative optimizations.

So let’s dig in. First, let’s talk about smart planning and budgeting. So typically whenever you’re looking at setting up a paid media strategy, there’s a couple of different ways, or steps that we do upstream as we’re doing research to provide recommendations for a client. One of the ways that we were able to improve this process and use AI to increase the efficiency and the strategic output, is use a variety of tools to be able to analyze over 400, 1st party data points, and then use real inventory data and performance signals to dictate exactly how budget should be distributed across those channels.

We wanted to make sure every dollar had a specific role, and in that full funnel that we were designing for our clients, and AI helped inform that with a lot of data points that would have taken hours and hours to be able to review and aggregate together in a traditional fashion. So one of the tools that we used is called AI Digital.

It is a favorite of ours. We use it in a variety of different parts of the process, but we have other tools that inform this step as well. But what it allows us to do is really move past those platform- suggested default. So for example, if you’re going in for a service line campaign and you’re trying to understand, you know, for orthopedics, perhaps we have 25 different DMAs that we need to show up for.

Google or Meta will tell you what’s available from an inventory perspective based off of your targeting. We like to go at this point deeper than that, and use additional first-party data points to really understand what the best optimized approach is to be able to drive those conversions and appointments. Next, let’s talk about targeting. So developing personas for each of your campaigns is foundational, right?

We’re going to be looking at a paid media brief really making sure that we understand the audience and the purpose for doing this campaign strategy and placement. But as budgets get larger and there are more moving pieces, often we found that there may be a primary persona, but we’re missing out on the opportunity to have more personas that allow us to do deeper level targeting.

So with some of our tools, we now have the ability to actually create precision personas, focusing on some granular audience data around demographics, median age, household income, and personal values across Google, LinkedIn and other platforms. And then once those personas are developed, our team then pressure tests them. Makes sure that they are accurate based off of the information that we understand within the health care landscape and the specific audiences that we’re looking at.

And then we have the ability to do a lot more strategic targeting across a variety of platforms using these personas than we would had we not had the ability to create additional personas at scale. So this really allows us to leverage many more personas and have precision targeting against those than if we were using old, more standardized persona developing processes that are a lot more time consuming to review data aggregation at scale.

Next, let’s talk about emerging channels so everyone understands that at this point, consumers are going to ChatGPT or other LLMs, and they’re asking healthcare-specific questions. They’re trying to find answers before they book that appointment. Well, at this point, we’re recommending and we are placing our clients in those LLMs as results. So in ChatGPT, for example, we can actually do placements within ChatGPT results.

Of course, we have the entire organic AIO/GEO optimization. We do that for a lot of our clients. I did a previous podcast episode about how successful we have been about having our clients show up organically in LLM recommendations, so that is a separate work stream. That is very important. But we also can prioritize placement through paid media placements, and that is always something that we’re thinking about now whenever we’re doing paid media recommendations, really guaranteeing those placements.

Sort of like if you think about Google Search, you have organic and you have paid. Kind of think the same thing about LLMs, now you’re going to have organic, then you also want to try to have paid whatever it’s available on that specific platform. Real time Insights is the fourth pillar. So we’ve never been an agency that would wait until the end of a flight to be able to talk about what worked right?

We are always an agency that’s going to be bringing up recommendations at a, at a minimum monthly, depending on the size of the budget, because sometimes if it’s a smaller budget, you can’t do insights faster than that. You need time for things to run to be able to have statistically significant results. But the cool thing about integrating AI into our custom Data Studio dashboards, which, by the way, for a lot of our clients, now includes Epic patient appointment and revenue data.

Using our UTM connect tool, we’re able to put those paid campaign UTM parameters directly into the patient records and then export them. So our campaign dashboards now often include full ROI, right? We’re not only looking at the number of people that attempted to book appointment, we’re looking at the number of people that showed up to the appointment and the amount of revenue that was driven. Right? Full cycle. Within these dashboards. 

We now have AI layering on top of these dashboards. And the raw paid media data to be able to understand trends before the human eye could actually identify them. So that’s one of the cool things about the capabilities of AI, is the massive amount of data that it can ingest and be able to identify trends faster often times than humans can.

Even if you have a dedicated analyst, having AI look, when you’re having, you know, dozens of campaigns and ad groups or placements across a variety of channels, AI accelerates those insights. So we’re able to have faster feedback loops and faster optimizations, because AI is identifying and flagging those insight opportunities for us at a much faster rate than was available traditionally.

And then finally, pillar number five is creative optimization, something that we have begun integrating recently that I am really, really excited about is actually including the creative production within our paid media fee. So it used to be that, all creative was outside of paid media management fees. But what we have found is whenever we actually include it, we can now use a variety of different AI tools to do quick, say, regional variations for a service line campaign.

And it drives much stronger results. And whenever we just include that in the fee, our team can act much faster because it’s all inclusive. So we have a variety of tools that we use for creative asset production that allow us to do those iterations that really speed up the optimization and results of campaigns. A huge, huge, huge caveat: we will never use AI for creative concepting.

We very much believe concepting still needs to be done by humans. So for us, when we talk about creative optimizations using AI, we’re really talking about creating versioning. Again, a perfect example is regional variations for a service line. If you want to have that specific neighborhood or specific DMA name in, and you have say, you know, 40 different areas that you’re optimizing for, you can, you know, crank that out in less than five minutes with some of these great AI tools, and then a human will QA it before it goes live, can save you a lot of time and money.

Then if you were trying to actually have a human go in, you know, and type in all of those individual DMA or city names. We are very excited about the direction that AI is going. I think this is probably our fourth or fifth podcast on AI, and it really is reshaping the way that marketers think about processes and optimization opportunities.

We still firmly believe humans are not going to be replaced in marketing. Sort of like when the onset of digital and the internet happened. Humans still are very, very important. But if you are not actively looking at ways that I can improve your speed to market and the results that you’re getting for your paid media management, then you’re really missing a key opportunity.

So again, the five pillars: smart planning, precision personas, emerging channels, real time insights, and creative optimization. This isn’t just about automation, it’s truly about smarter, human-led paths to performance for paid media. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. If this episode was helpful to you, we would love if you would give us some stars.

Some comments. Share it with a coworker that you think may find this episode helpful. Subscribe so you receive a notification when future episodes drop. And if you want to chat with us more about either how you are currently working to integrate AI into your own marketing processes, or about how Hedy & Hopp can help you with your paid media management.

We would love to hear from you. Shoot out, shoot us a message and give us a call. We would love to dig in and chat further. That’s it for us today on this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Have a great rest of your day and we hope to chat with you soon. Cheers!

Jenny: 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 and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. Today we are going to talk about scaling shared services. So we have been inundated over the last couple of months with inquiries about rolling out a shared service model to local offices.

So this really can come into play really usually about three distinct areas. So first you have the private equity play. And that’s in situations where groups have been acquired, but decision making and budgets are still partially left then individually acquired offices. So they’re still able to hire their own marketing vendors, make their own marketing creative, etc.. Next would be an M&A hospital system scenario, and this is when health systems that have experienced rapid growth through M&A still may have some marketing control at the local hospital level, so they still hold some regional power.

There are still some local nuances. And we also have found often that within hospital systems, you may even have certain departments that are trying to go rogue with a pink t-shirt, for example, that is completely off brand. Everybody has heard that horror story, right? And then another final example is nationwide organizations or health plans that are nationwide, but they have a lot of state or regional departments, decision making powers around marketing, positioning, lots of autonomy to really be able to drive their own marketing strategies and tactics.

And there’s also different regional regulations that they’re working with. So let’s talk about best practices here. This is something that Hedy & Hopp has been leaning in on and helping organizations figure out for over a decade, and we’ve gotten pretty good at helping folks really walk the line, because one of the mistakes that we see often is folks trying to force the hands of those, let’s call them local offices, right?

Just picking a word division, whatever. But these local offices, if they have autonomy or believe they have autonomy, the worst thing you can do is try to force their hand and force them to do what you want them to do with marketing. Unless you have a decision coming from the very top down that is literally stripping them of decision making and marketing ability, then you need to think of them more as your clients and get them excited about collaborating on marketing and advertising initiatives.

So let’s talk about four different pillars or strategies of ways that you can kind of pull them in and get them excited about collaboration. The first is making sure that you have an easily accessible, self-serve brand toolkit. So you really need to have some easily accessible brand guidelines and templates for really inexpensive, print-ready local customization. This is how the hot pink t-shirt that Sally had her neighbor print 30 versions of end up happening is because there isn’t a way for folks to be able to easily create things within brand standards.

If it’s too difficult, if it takes too long, or if it’s too expensive, they’re going to go rogue. So you got to figure out how to make it easy for them, make it easier for them to actually use the tool that you want them to use than to go rogue, right? So one of the first things you want to think about is a DAM or a digital asset management tool.

There are tools like Canva Enterprise or Mark where corporations can really lock down the logos and fonts and the template if you will. But local teams can swap out things like headshots, local phone numbers, etc. to really customize it for what they need. That is way easier for folks in trying to design something from scratch. If it takes a local office three weeks in an email chain of 20 people to get a flier approved, they’re going to go rogue.

So a DAM is absolutely the way to go here. And there’s lots of different options. Now, it’s your decision, at that point, if you just want to allow them to access the templates, the brand templates, do some customization and then take the print ready files and go to their own printer that they may have a relationship with. Or, if you even want to lock down the production where they actually have to use your t-shirt vendor, your print company, etc. That is a separate decision that you’ll need to decide. But as you’re setting up your DAM with all of the different templates, you could really make that decision about how much autonomy you give them on that last step of the production process. 

The second pillar is the network effect or knowledge sharing. So one of the things that we find the most valuable is making sure that if folks are pooling their resources or participating in some sort of a joint marketing campaign, that they know they’re benefiting from the learnings of others.

So give it a catchy name or productize it in some way. Call it like the “marketing laboratory effect,” where you’re going to be testing out strategies like perhaps a TikTok strategy or a YouTube pre-roll strategy within one market. And then once you have a win, you productize it and roll it out to locations B through Z, right? That way, the offices aren’t just buying menu items, they’re buying collective intelligence and processes that you know are going to be successful.

They will be much more excited if you productize and systematize the rolling out of that. If you do it quietly behind the scenes, they won’t know that it’s happening and you won’t get the credit for it. So you really have to figure out a way to productize it and then evangelize it, as you’re working with all of these different offices.

The third is centralized strategy with local execution. So figure out a way for the headquarters to absorb the heavy lifting. Think strategy development, creative concepts, even asset development. So it’s financially worthwhile for those local markets to opt in. This is really the carrot versus the stick dynamic. You’re saying, hey, you’re going to save a lot of money.

If you work with us on this, we’re going to do all this upfront heavy lifting. We’re going to work with an agency or we have in-house talent to be able to do all the big picture strategic thinking, and then we’ll be able to hand over the things for you to actually do the local media buy. So if they have the local radio relationships, or they’re really passionate about placing in local newspapers, they can still do those things.

But you will know that the creative assets have been taken care of, and they will feel confident and excited about it, because that’s honestly where a lot of the upfront money and time goes in getting campaigns to market. So it really will become a financial no-brainer for them to participate. 

And then finally thinking about a shared dashboard of some kind, a lot of groups that we work with to put together a shared services model, really find a lot of value in building with us a reporting platform that allows leadership to see the macro view, so the total ecosystem spend and results while letting local teams drill down into their specific microperformance so you can see what the spend is per tactic or across your entire campaign, what the results are, what the patient volume and revenue is that’s been driven. 

And then you can drill down either per tactic across the entire network or per local office. That makes it really helpful because then you can understand, and they get value, because reporting and analytics is a really difficult thing to be able to set up from an infrastructure perspective, if you’re just at a local office, you they may not have the relationships or the technical access to be able to set up something like that.

So if part of participating in the shared services models, also getting access to a reporting dashboard that they simply have to log into to be able to see the results, it’ll be very exciting for them and wonderful for your leadership team to be able to then actually understand financially what is happening. So everybody’s had situations where local offices go rogue.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas about how to better structure a shared service model. So it is a win for Corporate and a win for all of the local offices. If this episode was helpful, please give us a like. Give us a follow. Share this episode with a colleague who you think may find it valuable, and give us a follow because we drop new episodes every Friday.

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We’ll see you soon! Cheers.

Jenny: 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 and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m excited to be here chatting with you today about right people, right seats: how you can restructure your marketing team for today’s marketing demands.

I have had countless conversations over the last four months from marketing leaders at different systems of various sizes across the country, and they’re all struggling with the same problem. So I thought I’d record a podcast today to chat about it and give you a little food for thought if you’re dealing with something similar. Everyone knows all of the various pressures that have been pushing down on healthcare marketing teams.

We’ve had to pivot with positivity and get really good at compliance, which means our analytics technical skills have had to really improve and deepen over the last few years. Now we are learning new technologies for those groups that are looking at moving over to the Epic suite of tools for marketing technologies and CRMs. It just never stops, right?

The minute we feel like we have all of our marketing programs under control, a new change happens and honestly, that’s one of the reasons I love this industry. I think that it is a really big responsibility to have to make sure that we are staying on top of those trends and the shifting demand so we can help patients get access to care.

But I’ll tell you, as a marketing leader, when you have a team that you’re trying to manage, it can be really hard to figure out how you can continuously make sure you have the right structure for your marketing team, make sure you have the right people and they have the right skill sets. So it’s really a combination of decisions that have to be made.

Here at Hedy & Hopp, we have been an EOS organization for about five years. So EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System. It is based off of the book called Traction by Gino Wickman. Phenomenal read. I strongly recommend it when people begin working with us. One of the things they often say is, oh my goodness, you are so organized for a marketing agency. This is typically how I feel agencies run, especially agencies that are run are started by creatives, right? 

There’s typically a lot of chaos within the organization. Well, about five years ago we decided to implement EOS because we did not want to have any chaos within our organization. We wanted to really make sure that we understood our purpose as our organization, for our organization.

Everybody understood their roles and their responsibilities for helping us accomplish those goals and that purpose. And we had a structure to be able to communicate where we were going and why, and it has worked wonders. It has been phenomenal. The growth that we have experienced is phenomenal. It has just been a really great way to be able to grow an organization that has a solid foundation.

So there are a couple of key fundamentals in the EOS system that I want to share with you today. If you’re a marketing leader, this does not mean that you have to implement EOS for your marketing team or your organization. But there’s a couple of philosophies and structures that they recommend, and that is part of the EOS system that could be helpful to just kind of cherry pick them out.

So let’s talk about it. First is an accountability chart. So everybody has heard about thinking about your team and the titles that people have and the org chart set all of that aside. We’re not going to think about that at all. Instead, what we need to think about with an accountability chart is really what are the functions that a company needs and the role responsibilities?

So what are things that people need to own within your marketing team, and what are the skill sets for those individual boxes? We’re going to link to resources in the show notes. So you can actually see what one of these look like. But each box in the accountability chart is a person that is a seat. So within that, let’s say, for example, one of them may be, well, I’ll just share mine within our organization.

My seat is Visionary. So I am the top box at Hedy & Hopp. And my, accountabilities for the organization is to drive the organizational vision to manage large relationships for our organization, to drive the culture of our organization and a couple of other things. So when you’re building an accountability chart there, usually for a marketing team, you usually will have one, perhaps for a box for content strategy, one for paid media, one for analytics, one for CRM.

Right? So you can map all of those things out, and you really want to make sure that you’re thinking about what are the core functions. Make sure each one has a box. And then what are the five roles or the five responsibilities? The cool thing about accountability charts is it does not leave any vagueness. So for example, within content strategy, only one box has a content strategy in it.

They’re not multiple boxes with content strategy. So you always know who is in charge of that for your team and for your organization. Zero ambiguity or confusion exists after this exercise is completed. The big difficult thing about this is you have to completely set your and all of the humans to the side. This is about structure, not about humans.

So don’t think about your current team at all as you’re designing this. Imagine you’re building an ideal structure for your organization’s marketing team from scratch. Your hands aren’t tied for any reason. You’re not trying to retrofit current staff members into positions or into titles because they’ve been there for so long. Set all of the humans aside, and then map out all of the areas of responsibility and all of the functions that you really need to have to make your team successful.

A couple of things that I’ll note is you may choose to outsource some of these boxes to agency partners, and that’s okay. Still map it out. So you can understand the functions you need to be able to operate efficiently. Another concern that we’re seeing over and over is there may be some ambiguity around who owns certain functions. So for example, marketing analytics often IT will own the data pipe or the technical structure, but marketing will own the strategy.

And putting data into the structure and getting data out for reporting purposes. Set all of those to the side from a concerns perspective. We’ll deal with that later. For now, map out all of the things that you need to operate efficiently. Once you have all of that mapped out, then you have to start thinking about RPRS, that stands for right person and right seat.

So the first thing you have to do as you begin reviewing your current team members is you have to honestly look at it through the lens of right people. Do they share your organization’s core values? Are they the right person for your team? Do they have the interest in continuing and to grow their skill sets? You have to really take a look at that first.

And that’s what the RP is in RPRS. If they don’t share your culture, there is not a box for them in the accountability chart. If they do share your culture and you have RP, then you can start going into RS right seat. This is determined by what EOS calls a GWC framework. So that is Get It, Want It, and Capacity to Do It.

So “Get It” is do they understand the soul of this role? Do they understand what needs to be done? So do they get how a CRM drives patient volume, or do they just see it as a database right. For paid media, do they understand performance marketing and continuous optimization, or are they just really good at building ad campaigns?

Right. That’s the G that you have to decide that part the “Get It” first. And then W, “Want It.” Do they want these five responsibilities every day? So, for example, somebody who’s been there for a long time may say yes just to keep their job, but they may hate tracking, they may hate UTM parameters, they may not want anything to do with it, and they may just say that they do in order to stay on your team.

So you have to really push and understand. Do you want this right? Are you excited about this role? And then C is Capacity. Do they have the mental, emotional, and technical capacity to actually fulfill the position? So, this can be really difficult because the tough truth here is that you’re likely going to find some of your favorite, most loyal people do not have the capacity for modern technical seats like predictive analytics or the clinical CRM logic.

And that’s okay. If it means they belong in a different seat, or you may need to hire external talent for that specific function, that does not mean that they need to exit your team. If you can find a different seat for them. So that’s why we really separate that decision of right people first and then right seat.

So, this is we have found just such a phenomenal way to really separate the person from the problem. And really make sure that you’re serving your organization’s greater good and solving the problem first. So again, I strongly recommend reading Traction. I’m not saying you need to implement EOS for your organization, but I really, really like how simple it is to think about processes and structure for your organization.

So it’s a quick read. There’s some great podcasts. Also, you can specifically look for podcast episodes around accountability charts or RPRS and listen just to those. But it’s a really kind of refreshing way outside of a traditional corporate structure, to think about the way that you’re structuring your team for today’s hectic environment. I want to give a quick shout out to our EOS implementer, Kevin Hundel.

Kevin’s phenomenal. Kevin has been with us since day one, and he has been a big part of our organization’s growth. So if you are looking for an EOS implementer, I strongly recommend Kevin. He’s just a phenomenal human. In addition to being really, really good at what he does. So hopefully this gave you some really good food for thought.

If you have any questions or just want to brainstorm marketing team structure, give me a shout. This is a topic that we’re really passionate about here at Hedy & Hopp, and always happy to share our wisdom or even connect you with other leaders in the space that we know are currently trying to tackle the same problem. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Please give this episode a like. Leave us a review, share it with a colleague that you think may find it helpful, and be sure to tune in again 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. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. We are really excited today to chat about the future of healthcare marketing, a roadmap for new grads and those new to the industry.

It has been a really fun start to the summer, and one of those things that always comes with the wrapping up of a school year is chatting with new graduates about their hopes and dreams for their profession. So as I was chatting with my team, we thought it would be fun to put together an episode giving some guidance to those that are either hoping to enter healthcare marketing fresh and as the first step of their career after college, or for those that are interested in pivoting into healthcare marketing, and they’re looking for a little bit of guidance about what the industry trends are.

So today we’re going to talk about three major pillars that are shaping the healthcare marketing industry today. And then we’re also going to talk about four skills that if you’re interested in being successful in healthcare marketing, they are things that I believe are very important for folks entering the space. And then for bonus, we have collected input from a variety of Hedy & Hopp team members, and they’re going to share their thoughts and opinions on some advice for new grads and those entering our space. 

So let’s kick it off and talk a little bit about “the why.” Healthcare marketing can be extremely rewarding. If you talk to anybody who is in this industry, you will hear time and time again that folks love it for really two reasons. The first, and most important is it is a deeply purpose driven profession.

So it’s a great fit for those of us that perhaps don’t feel like we’re the right person to pick up a scalpel. I, for one, get pretty, lightheaded when I see blood. But I want to make a difference in the lives of folks and want to feel good about where I’m putting my talents. So, that’s why I had Hedy & Hopp specialize in healthcare marketing, as I wanted to know that all of my marketing and digital and tech talents were really making a difference in the world, and wanted to know that all of my work was helping folks find and access care.

Maybe making a bad day a little bit better because of a streamlined online experience. And we knew that we could do that. So most people in healthcare will share that exact same sentiment. If you’re in healthcare marketing, you very much feel good at the end of the day about the work that you put in. 

The other thing, though, is it also is pretty, recession resistant. So that’s definitely a positive. If you’ve ever worked in industry, that experience experiences a lot of economic turmoil. That is typically not something that you will see in healthcare. So our industry, though, is facing a huge variety of different shifts coming from different directions. But I really believe that new grads really have a distinct advantage if they possess a handful of modern skills.

So let’s get into it. First, what are the big macro trends that are happening in healthcare marketing today? What is shifting? The first big trend that you need to be aware of is the death of the standard Google search journey. So it used to be that whenever patients either had something weird going on with their health and they wanted to research a symptom, or they needed to find a provider, the first place they would always go would be the Google search field.

They would begin typing in, describing their symptoms, or they would begin doing a “near me” search to be able to find, say, an orthopedic surgeon near me, to be able to try to find people. That isn’t happening as much anymore. It still happens, of course, but the percentage of folks that go through that patient journey is getting smaller each year.

Instead, what they are doing is they’re using things like generative AI like ChatGPT or Gemini for pre-diagnostic searches. So they are trying to help diagnose what is happening to them and understand the what or the why behind it. And then they turn to social media often like TikTok and Instagram Reels as search engines for provider reviews and health tips.

So, lots of folks once, perhaps they know maybe directionally what is happening, they will go and try to find a provider that has a strong, thought leadership online, maybe try to research some potential solutions online or next steps for their care. So it’s no longer about traditional SEO and keywords. It’s about topic authority. And that really shows up through either AI or social media.

So the different channels and the technology behind showing up and being relevant is really shifting. The second trend that we are really seeing is that authenticity beats high production all day long. So, the era of heavily polished corporate hospital commercials is really losing ground for a variety of reasons. You have deepfakes, you have AI generated content.

All of those things are forcing consumers to really question the content that they are consuming online. And, really just trying to question if it’s real or not. So in 2026, patients are really demanding transparent, unpolished, native video content. They want to see real doctors giving quick health tips or real patient advocate stories. They want to see something shot on an iPhone.

They want to see something that isn’t highly edited in post-production. And then finally, the last trend that you really need to be aware of if you’re entering the space is privacy and the measurement reckoning. So there have been massive crackdowns on tracking pixels, and that has resulted in folks having to get really creative with the way that they are tracking measurement of their campaigns.

Some folks in the industry have really given up the goal of tracking anything at all, but I strongly discourage that use. There are still a lot of things that you can do. But we’re really up against a fractured patchwork of state-level privacy laws. So we have, I believe 20 at this point. Different states have privacy laws.

FTC and HIPAA, all of these different areas are putting regulations on health care marketers. And the way that we’re tracking performance. So we have to prove our ROI without violating patient trust. So let’s talk about how you can combat these three trends. What is the skill stack or what are the things that new grads or people entering this industry need to be really aware of?

The first that I think is really important is the human-in-the-loop AI prompting and workflow automation. So don’t just learn how to use AI to write a blog post or write your emails. That’s worthless. People can, at this point, identify AI-written copy if you’re soulless, do not do that, but use AI to take a massive compliance approved medical document and slice it into a multichannel campaign.

So, let’s say, for example, you have post-surgery tips or guidelines for an orthopedic program. You can use AI to be able to provide recommendations about how to cut that up in a variety of channels and formats. And then humans step back in to be able to actually create that content. Agencies and in-house teams really want grads to use AI as a productivity multiplier, not as a thinking replacement.

So I should not be creating content, but it can help you think about things through a different lens, or about things that have really structured guidelines around them. The second skill is microlearning and short form video storytelling. So doctors are busier than ever and patients have very short attention spans. You have to master the art of micro learning, so taking complex clinical topics and turning them into 60 second or shorter mobile first video concepts that educate and build trust instantly.

So become a pro at storytelling through social. The third skill is privacy first data and analytics literacy. So if you can look at a marketing analytics dashboard and understand the difference between something that would be considered a vanity metric, like a video of you or an impression on a paid media campaign and downstream business outcomes like actually scheduled and attended appointments while keeping patient information intact.

You will be the smartest person in that entry level entry interview room. So understanding what all of those variables are and what the different compliance components are that are forcing us to think differently, is going to be a really big opportunity to stand out. And then my favorite skill, the fourth, is having extreme empathy and healthcare literacy.

You aren’t selling shoes. You are dealing with people who are often scared, sick, or confused. They may be having the worst day of their life, so you need to be able to understand health literacy and write copy that a stressed out caregiver or a patient can easily understand. It’s a superpower, and that is not something that AI is going to take over anytime soon.

So we’re going to take a quick hiatus at this point. I would love to hear from some Hedy & Hopp team members. What’s your thoughts? What’s your perspective? What should new grads be thinking about as they are entering the workforce? Take it away.

Kevin: My advice for anyone getting into healthcare marketing is to stay curious and never stop learning. Platforms, policies, and strategies change constantly. So being adaptable is one of the biggest strengths you can have.

Philip: Use all of these awesome AI tools and understand with this abundance of information and ideas. The best thing to do is become a great storyteller and personalize your information that you’re putting out there.

Suzie: Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and learn how all the different platforms work. It’ll help you understand the difference in terminology across them, and also help you build things out in them more effectively later on.

Heidi: If you’re just new to healthcare marketing, it can feel not very fun to not be able to do any remarketing or custom audiences, but there’s actually a lot of opportunity to get creative still and still be completely compliant. Think about the “walled garden.” That’s what we call it a lot here.

If there’s any audiences that are generated in-platform, you can still use those because you’re not transferring that information elsewhere. And there’s no PHI involved.

So there’s still like video remarketing. There’s still a lot of things that you can do. You just got to get a little bit creative, and it can still be fun.

Megan: My piece of advice would be to be up to date on the WCAG standards. Things are changing all the time, and it just helps people have more accessibility and more of a user experience on websites, which gives them the ability to have more access to care.

Kate: My piece of advice would be to make sure that you’re listening not just to the physicians, not just to the hospital staff, but also to your patients. Patients are the reason that any of us are in business, in healthcare, and we need to make sure that they’re the top priority at all times.

Shelby: Always consider yourself a student. Healthcare marketing is constantly changing. Every single day, there’s something new. Whether that’s technology, whether that’s privacy. So subscribe to the newsletters, join the webinars, listen to the podcast, absorb as much as you can from your colleagues, from others in the industry. And just always, always consider yourself a student

Jenny: Thanks for those fun insights team. All these fun to have multiple voices sharing insights into the podcast and it was a great episode to get everybody’s perspectives. If you know a new grad, if you know somebody new to this industry, share this episode with them. It hopefully will provide some insights from that 10,000ft perspective of what is healthcare marketing facing today, and what are the skills I need to focus on over the next couple of months as I’m entering the workforce?

If this episode provided value to you, please give us a review. Give us a five star, like us, follow us on all the different channels. We drop episodes usually every Friday and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers friends!

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. I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy and Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m here today to talk to you about the rising crisis of AI deepfakes in video and social media content online, and the impact it can have on us as health care marketers.

This week, the American Medical Association actually introduced a comprehensive policy framework to prevent physicians from unauthorized use of AI-generated deepfakes. So they put out a press release with seven policy principles for a framework to help protect physicians. The AMA CEO, John White, talked about how, with the rising volume of deepfake social media content, online protections need to be put in place for physicians.

And as a marketer, I completely agree. We have all seen social media clips go viral, and to a more discerning eye, we can easily see that these are AI. But more and more often this content is becoming so sophisticated that it’s really difficult to be able to see with the naked eye if something is fake or not. So the AMA framework is built around seven principles.

I will link to a full article in the show notes for you to be able to read it in depth, but it really focuses on physician identity protection, making sure that there’s explicit informed consent if their likeness is used. Banning deceptive impersonations, making sure that consent is opt-in with consent, being able to be revoked. Mandatory labeling and transparency. A shared responsibility around platforms, hospitals and vendors implementing safeguards, including rapid takedown mechanisms and clear labeling if content is AI generated.

Enforcement and remedies if AI content is found to be used, and minimizing the administrative burden and ensuring that protections are the default with standardized consent processes that don’t create an undue burden. So the seven policy principles are meant to create a framework for how, physicians really should be collaborating with hospital systems and vendors to be able to ensure that their likeness is not used irresponsibly, or with a deepfake when, it is identified, you know, how can you quickly rectify this?

So that’s what I want to talk about today is as a healthcare marketer, what is your role in that? I mean, right now, we’re really seeing a crisis of trust for content online. This really started gaining traction during Covid when we were really dealing with misinformation, and now we are really dealing with the ability for technology to impersonate a physician and use their likeness, video or voice only, and making it seem as though they put content out.

And so we’re really having a crisis of trust in this moment. And so, as a marketer, our new mandate is definitely that we need to fight fake video and audio of doctors within our systems. And the antidote to that really, I believe, is undeniable authenticity. Right? So really making sure that we are putting out content that is easily authenticated by viewers and making sure that we’re creating a premium human in the loop experience for our viewers and for folks that are trying to research things online.

So search engines like Google, Google has the EEAT experience, expertise, authoritative ness, and trustworthiness approach to content and content that they prioritize within their search rankings. That’s really the way that we should be viewing the content that we’re putting out for viewers online. Our patient population also really our greatest asset as health care marketers, as our real living workforce.

So how are we going to actionize that? I have a handful of tips of ways that you could be thinking about action, to be able to move some real content forward. So first is you have to realize that raw, unpolished content is the new high-production video. Nobody wants super highly produced content anymore. If you think about social media influencers and kind of the TikTok style of content, it is raw.

Not highly edited, not highly polished. They use, you know, mobile, inexpensive microphones, usually shot on an iPhone. AI videos, deepfakes especially look usually highly polished. They usually use generic stock backgrounds. And so you can combat that with raw, behind-the-scenes, unedited video content. So, for example, physicians could film some or some, in nurses, somebody within your system, you can have them some quick day-in-the-life shorts or record them walking through hallways of your actual recognizable hospital.

Right. Like make the scenes in the background, something that visually, patients will be able to recognize as being part of your system. Also think about verification social campaigns. So actually create a campaign around something like real doctors, real answers. Right? So explicitly talk about how you’re creating verified advice and how you are putting real physicians or clinicians at the front to be able to talk with the patient population.

Use features like Instagram Live, LinkedIn audio spaces, interactive Q&As, anything where you can really go back and forth with folks. And it’s not something that an AI deepfake really could create. Make sure, next, that you have a multi-channel footprint. So don’t just rely on social media videos, which are the easiest to fake, but build an entire ecosystem. Make sure on your physician profiles that you have video content there that a viewer, if they see a physician on another channel, they can go to the physician profile and see if that content matches, see if, you know, the likeness matches.

And then finally localize the content, how the content that you create not be something that can apply to everyone across the country. Talk about hyper local issues like local allergy spikes, community wellness, event specific regional health trends, things that are happening in your back door that a deepfake, you know, just wouldn’t even have interest in participating in.

It will really anchor their authenticity and the physical community that you live and serve. And then the last thing you need to think about is how, as a marketer, can you help your organization comply with that seven step framework that AMA is working to introduce. First, make sure that you are auditing consent and media releases. One of the things that AMA highlights is that physician likeness is a protective right, and calls for explicit opt-in and revocable consent.

Remind your team to review their internal marketing media releases. Are your old forms giving blanket permission to use their voice and image forever? If so, work with HR to update forms on file. Make sure that you’re complying with this new framework, and make sure that you have all of your T’s crossed and I’s dotted. Next, you have to also consider that shared responsibility framework.

So the AMA stated that they believe hospitals and health systems share the responsibility to police deep fakes. So as a marketer at a system, one of the things that you can do is if your marketing team spots a deep fake or copycat account using money, your doctors names are faces. You need a rapid response plan. So work on creating that rapid response plan ahead of time, and then make sure that your team knows how to execute a fast takedown request on meta YouTube, and TikTok and then finally use it as a positive internal communication opportunity with your physicians.

Write a memo or newsletter explaining that you know, AI defects are a rising concern in the medical community. Here’s what we are doing to be able to protect our physicians and combat the fake content that is being put online, and help make sure that our patient populations can access reputable information from our system. It is a massive opportunity for you to build trust within your own system, for your physicians to know that you are, number one, aware that this is something that they are dealing with.

And number two, that you’ve got their back and are happy to not only handle some of the foundational components, like making sure you have a rapid response plan in place, but also if they have additional questions, that you can be a resource to help make sure that they feel educated. Some AI platforms like Gemini are doing some things to be able to make sure that AI generated photos and content.

Video content can be easily identifiable, like Gemini, for example. It’s called a SynthID to digital watermark. So even if you crop out that little star watermark, that it automatically puts on it, that is. And the SynthID is embedded in the code. So it’s very easy to be able to identify if it’s generated by AI. Hopefully all of the other platforms will be following suit, and this will be something that, in five years from now, will be able to look back on and laugh, because it’s something that we’re no longer dealing with.

But until then, being proactive and making sure that your physicians know that you’ve got their back and you’re on their side will go a long way to building trust not only with them, but also with your broader patient population online. So this episode was helpful. Please give us a like, be sure to follow the podcast so you get notification of our new releases each week.

And then if you found this useful, share it with a colleague. If there’s somebody within your organization that you think would find this information helpful, give it a share. Again, we’ll be linking the AMA release in the show notes. You can read more about it in depth. And thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We will see you next week! Cheers!

Jenny: 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 and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m excited to come to you today to give you some food for thought. As you’re thinking about the upcoming summer months, I want to encourage you to have it be a “near me” kind of summer.

So most marketers are thinking about going into vacation mode, perhaps excited about your own vacation, but people are also entering your service area while they are going on vacation. So are you currently optimizing your searches online through organic, paid, and AI to make sure that you are showing up appropriately for all of those “near me” types of searches?

So today that’s what we’re going to cover. I’m going to break down those three different categories and give you some food for thought and things that you can go back and chat with your team about. Make sure you’re really maximizing all of those opportunities. So first let’s talk about organic SEO. We’re going to kind of break out AI optimization and organic SEO separately.

Just because the recommendations are going to be a little bit different for each area. So with organic SEO, the first thing that you want to think about is really creating or optimizing some hyper-local landing pages. So don’t just have one page for urgent care, perhaps have one for urgent care near “beach name” or near “tourist town name”.

Really think about those areas of how people and why people are entering your service area for their summer vacations, and making sure that you’re creating landing pages that cater to those audiences. Next, think about your Google Business Profile hygiene. Are you making sure that open now hours are accurate, which is really critical for summer holidays? And then also make sure that you use that “post” feature to highlight summer specific services like sunstroke treatment or travel vaccinations.

And then finally, make sure that your content on those landing pages and on your service pages are really optimizing for natural language optimization. So people are asking their phones, where can I get stitches fixed near me? Or where can I get stitches removed or whatever? Right? Make sure that you’re optimizing for those long tail conversational queries rather than lactation repair laceration repair. Right?

Now let’s talk about paid search. This is what we think of as the precision strike. You were 100% making sure that you are more likely to show up for all of those phrases. The first is, if your state allows it, make sure that you are geofencing travel hubs. So make sure that you have ads targeting airports, train stations, popular resort clusters.

Again, there’s a little bit of compliance and privacy concern here because some states, like Texas, do not allow tactics like geofencing. So make sure you understand what your state’s local laws are around that. And if you’re not allowed to do geofencing, you can still do broader geo targeting that is at the county or city level. So make sure that you’re targeting those folks.

And then also make sure that you use call only ads for some of those phrases, because when someone’s in a minor crisis, they aren’t going to click to your home page. They’re going to look at your hours, find the address, or pick up the phone and call. And then finally, make sure that you use local inventory ads, because if you have retail clinics or pharmacies, you can show the real time availability for common summer needs like EpiPens.

And then finally, let’s talk about AI optimization. And for this we’re thinking about both GEO and AI agents. So first make sure that you’re optimizing for those search generative experiences. So Gemini and other platforms summarize the best local options. So if somebody asks ChatGPT or Gemini hey, where’s the best urgent care near me? They are aggregating that data using your site’s structured data.

So your schema.org that clearly defines your location services and credentials. So make sure that that is up to date on your website. And then go kind of big picture for your digital footprint and do a vibe check on yourself. What are your reviews like? I assure you that if somebody is new to your service area and they do not have brand loyalty, if you have a two star review for one of your urgent cares, they are not going to be choosing that location. 

So all the work that you do can really be eroded quickly. If you have a bunch of negative reviews available. And then finally make sure that you’re addressing things like out of state insurance or current wait times for clinics, and making sure that you’re incorporating that as much as possible to be able to feed the AI platforms that information.

So that way they can serve it to folks that are asking. And also, if a user goes to be able to understand what kind of insurance that you accept, because that could be a deal breaker for them, that it’s really easy to find. So again, while we always hope to be found for “near me” searches, perhaps for those that are not yet brand loyal to us, summer and summertime travel is an opportunity to really flex those muscles.

So I really encourage you to think about these three different opportunities of ways that you can turn the dial up a little bit, and then do not forget to have Search Console and an AI tool measurement tool in place to be able to understand what potential lift you’re receiving from this work. Because if you do a big push and you’re successful over the summer, you want to be able to have that data as a case study, to be able to share that back out with your marketing team, to be able to really drive those, drive excitement around how you are able to meet patients where they are.

So that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. I hope it gave you a little bit of food for thought and things that you can tackle. If you found this episode helpful, please give us some stars. Share this with a colleague that you think may find the information helpful, and be sure to tune in again next week where we will tackle another hot topic in healthcare marketing.

Have a great day! Cheers!