These changes may seem daunting (and even a bit terrifying) at first, but remember that dealing with change is what marketers are designed to do. We constantly need to adjust based on the information received and this challenge is no different. Marketers can either embrace this new world as an opportunity to improve trust with their audience, or keep doing the same thing until they’re forced to make a change (which is inevitable).
At Hedy & Hopp, we prefer the former, and want to share with you how we’ve helped our clients make sense of the changes and set themselves up for success in the long-term.
Want more details on these steps? Please keep reading!
Got a case of “TLDR”? Please get in touch – we’d love to help!
Like most evaluation efforts when a massive change happens, we start with an audit. Document all of the channels you use, plan to use, are investigating using or/and have used in the last 12 months (to account for changes with seasonality).
Supplement this list by using third party tools like Wappalyzer to identify any pixels, code, plugins, etc., that may be on your website.
PRO TIP:
It is important not to skip this part. We cannot tell you how many clients have told us that they removed a software but we still saw live tags in GTM or hard-coded on their website There are also many plugins that our clients didn’t even know existed that we were able to identify (and actually remove if needed) through using these tools.
At least in the initial stage, it’s important for marketers to know what applies to them. Covered entities are always beholden to HIPAA, but health-adjacent companies and non-covered entities also need to be aware of the FTC and state laws, where applicable. Most states require companies to reach a number of annual visitors or/and meet a specific revenue goal in that state before they are required to comply, but it does vary. IAPP is a great resource for keeping up with those details.
First, conduct a monthly traffic report for the last 12 months, and separate out by state.
Under the state(s) that are relevant to your company, review the following:
You will probably find a lot of softwares that can be excluded from further investigation, like Javascript libraries, fonts and some plugins. But there will be a host of others that, either by nature of the platform or based on your implementation, will cause some issue with privacy – specifically with the “selling” (or sharing) of personal information.
Below is a guide for the kinds of platforms we have seen make the priority list:
If this list freaks you out, we see you. It looks like EVERYTHING is a priority! So we broke it down even further to prioritize based on the intent of how the platform is using that data, which makes the list looks a bit more manageable:
Priority 1: Data shared with additional third parties or/and includes sensitive information
Priority 2: Data necessary to perform function
Ok, that probably still makes your heart race, but what’s important to keep in mind is that the biggest concern for these platforms is based on the information being shared and how. Tools like your Website CMS by nature need to collect IP addresses, so while your company is sharing that “personal” information with a third party, it might not be a big risk for your company since that access is required to work.
Why do we say that? Although an IP address is still considered PII, it’s not nearly as personal (i.e., 1-to-1) as a diagnosis, a name, or an email address. This is why it’s essential to work with your legal team to determine what platforms are riskier than others based on the agreements in place.
As a marketer, your first instinct may be to say that all of these softwares, tools and platforms are necessary. And that might be the case. In our experience, however, there are usually software or tactics that are duplicative or have a more compliant alternative. Think critically about what your marketing is doing for you and embrace the opportunity for refinement that you now have.
Here are some questions to ask yourself while evaluating the priority tools:
If you said “no” to either of these questions, definitely consider removing those tools and tactics and you’ll be on your way to a cleaner, more compliant marketing plan and website. If you responded yes to any of these questions, then the next step is an important one – so keep reading!
PRO TIP:
Consider if any of the tools are duplicative. If you can consolidate tools to limit the number of third party tags and tools on your website, we would always recommend doing so.
This is the big one – the future of your marketing activation and evaluation. This last part will take some time and collaboration from your organization and marketing partners. The main question here is how you can modify the implementation or replace the tool to improve compliance. Some tools may offer anonymization, for example, which would be worth exploring.
Each marketer will implement various tools in various ways (too many variables for this post!). Here are a few best practices that helped us get our clients up to par (without losing their minds).
PRO TIP:
If you’ve not done so already, this is the time to make absolutely sure your legal team is aware and involved in these discussions. With the number of nuances with HIPAA privacy, it’s critical that your company’s legal team has the opportunity to engage and provide input on updates, specifically on privacy policies and the company’s overall data privacy approach.
Once these changes are in place, consider the next 30-60 days as a trial period. Are you missing any data for evaluation? Any new questions arising with the data you can see? It’s a good reminder that any change that you make will take some adjusting, but that doesn’t mean insights can no longer be found.
PRO TIP:
Don’t forget to update your data visualization dashboards to account for any new placements, accounts or configurations!
A healthcare marketer can leverage LinkedIn advertising in several ways to effectively reach their target audience and promote their healthcare products, services, or brand. Here are some strategies and tips:
Targeting Healthcare Professionals: LinkedIn allows precise targeting based on job titles, industries, and functions. Healthcare marketers can target specific healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, administrators, and executives, based on their job titles or industry affiliations. This ensures that the ads are reaching the right audience.
Thought Leadership and Content Promotion: Healthcare marketers can use Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail to share valuable content, such as articles, research papers, case studies, or educational materials related to their field. This positions the marketer as a thought leader and helps build credibility and trust with the audience. Promoting webinars, conferences, or speaking engagements can also be effective in establishing expertise.
Job Postings and Recruitment: Healthcare organizations often have specific talent acquisition needs. LinkedIn provides targeted options for promoting job openings and reaching qualified healthcare professionals who are actively seeking employment opportunities. Healthcare marketers can use Sponsored Job Ads to attract top talent to their organization.
Brand Awareness and Reputation Management: LinkedIn advertising can help healthcare marketers increase brand visibility and manage their online reputation. Display Ads and Dynamic Ads can be used to create visually appealing brand messages and reach a broad audience. Marketers can also target specific industries, organizations, or regions to raise awareness of their brand and build positive associations.
Industry Events and Conferences: Healthcare marketers can utilize LinkedIn advertising to promote industry events, conferences, or webinars. Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Display Ads can be used to drive registrations, highlight keynote speakers, and generate buzz around the event. Targeting options ensure that the ads reach professionals interested in the healthcare industry.
LinkedIn collects a variety of personal and technical data from its users, including:
Remember – just because a targeting option is available does mean that you should use it. In fact, taking advantage of features that could make your campaigns more effective could be what compromises your HIPAA compliance.
After the updated guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services was released, things haven’t exactly been black and white as far as whether or not this crosses a line, but from our perspective, it really depends on how you use the platform – specifically the Insight Tag. Conversion pixels can compromise HIPAA compliance in a few ways.
While LinkedIn only keeps personal data collected from the Insight Tag for 180 days, there is a lot that can be done with this data in that time period. The HHS is also very specific that the sharing of, or even the ability to access any personal health information is a violation.
Pro Tip:
LinkedIn is somewhat unique in that healthcare marketers may be using the platform to reach a different audience than prospective patients. For example, if a healthcare marketer is using LinkedIn to reach HCPs (healthcare professionals) HIPAA may not even apply to those efforts.
That being said, there are also some tactics available in LinkedIn Advertising that aren’t unique to that platform but are never HIPAA-compliant, such as remarketing, lookalike audiences and uploading target lists. It is also important to consider other tools that have access to your LinkedIn data, including optimization and data visualization software.
As with most advertising platforms, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate risk and to protect your users’ data as much as possible. Some good rules of thumb are to limit conversion pixels as much as possible, consider a server-side tagging strategy, and to ensure that you are not using predatory tactics to reach people with a specific condition or disease.
As with anything HIPAA-related, compliance tends to lie on a spectrum of your risk tolerance as well as the steps you take to mitigate as much risk as possible.
Pro Tip:
It’s important to connect with your legal team to determine how best to move forward. Listen to our HIPAA & FTC 101 podcast for more information about changes for healthcare companies.
YouTube is a powerful tool that can be used for marketing in a variety of ways. It has over 2 billion active users, making it a great way to reach a large audience with your messages. You can target your YouTube ads to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring that your messages reach the right people.
YouTube is a visual platform, so it’s a great way to create engaging content that will capture people’s attention. By creating high-quality, informative videos, you can build trust and credibility with potential patients. You can also use YouTube to drive traffic to your website by embedding your videos on your website or by linking to your website in your video descriptions.
Here are some specific ways that healthcare businesses can use YouTube for marketing:
This type of advertising, outbound marketing, is often used in conjunction with search ads, a form of inbound marketing from Bing or Google, which we have gone over the compliance of in previous posts.
Pro Tip:
YouTube does have specific guidelines around advertising in healthcare. Most notably, companies promoting pharmaceuticals & addiction services must be verified through LegitScript in order to advertise on YouTube’s platform.
Similar to Google Ads, YouTube relies heavily on the user being signed into their Google Account (which automatically becomes their YouTube account) in order to track behavior across a wide range of touchpoints. This means that YouTube collects the following data on its users:
Additionally, even just embedding a YouTube video on a website could be cause for concern, as the iframe sends information back to DoubleClick, the base advertising platform that Google uses. This means that users watching a YouTube video embedded on a third party site could have that video’s contents tied to their Google profile, which could potentially reveal sensitive health information about that user.
After the updated guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services was released, things haven’t exactly been black and white as far as whether or not this crosses a line, but from our perspective, YouTube advertising is certainly one that your team should think critically about, especially when you consider the long list of Google’s subprocessors, who could potentially have access to any and all data collected. This is especially true if you’re adding a Google tracking pixel to your website.
Furthermore, there are also some tactics available in YouTube Advertising that aren’t unique to that platform but are never HIPAA-compliant, such as remarketing and lookalike audiences. It is also important to consider other tools that have access to your YouTube data, including optimization and data visualization software.
As with most advertising platforms, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate risk and to protect your users’ data as much as possible. Some good rules of thumb are to limit conversion pixels as much as possible, consider a server-side tagging strategy, and to ensure that you are not using predatory tactics to reach people with a specific condition or disease.
As with anything HIPAA-related, compliance tends to lie on a spectrum of your risk tolerance as well as the steps you take to mitigate as much risk as possible.
Pro Tip:
It’s important to connect with your legal team to determine how best to move forward. Listen to our HIPAA & FTC 101 podcast for more information about changes for healthcare companies.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is a leading force in social media. Its platforms are used by billions of people around the world, making them a valuable tool for marketing in nearly all industries, including healthcare.
While Meta offers several services for businesses including business pages, groups, and other options to expand organic reach, this article will focus on the advertising side of Meta.
Meta’s advertising platforms offer a variety of features that make them well-suited for marketing, including:
As a result of these factors, Meta’s platforms are a popular choice for marketing in a wide range of industries, including healthcare. Healthcare businesses can use Meta’s platforms to reach a large audience, or a more refined, targeted audience.
This type of advertising, outbound marketing, is often used in conjunction with search ads, a form of inbound marketing from Bing or Google, which we have gone over the compliance of in previous posts.
Pro Tip:
Meta does have specific guidelines around advertising in Healthcare. Most notably, companies promoting pharmaceuticals & addiction services must be verified through LegitScript in order to advertise on Meta’s platform.
Of all of the platforms you may be using, it’s possible that Meta is the one collecting the most information about your users. This is largely because users who see your ads are already registered users of Meta’s platforms, meaning that Meta has extensive profiles on each customer, even before they may view your ad.
More data can be collected if you have a Meta Pixel installed on the site that your ads are driving to. This pixel links events and conversions on your website to specific ads, as well as specific user profiles. Some of that data can even be passed through the click-through URL, meaning that data is shared with your analytics platform, such as Google Analytics.
After the updated guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services was released, there were two notable companies that faced scrutiny from the FTC, both of which were using Facebook marketing tactics. BetterHelp and GoodRx both settled for large sums after these allegations surfaced. The scariest part? They were using Facebook and Instagram ads in very common use cases. And while compliance isn’t really a black & white concept, from our perspective, Meta is a very risky platform that should be among the first platforms marketers evaluate.
Furthermore, there are also some tactics available in Meta Advertising that aren’t unique to that platform but are never HIPAA-compliant, such as remarketing and lookalike audiences. It is also important to consider other tools that have access to your Meta data, including optimization and data visualization software.
Some risks can be mitigated in Meta ads by taking advantage of options to enhance data privacy. These options include never using remarketing audiences and foregoing the Meta Pixel. This could disrupt how you’re currently evaluating marketing effectiveness, so if Meta is a platform you must keep to grow your business, there are ways to still leverage this channel with limited data sharing risks.
As with anything HIPAA-related, compliance tends to lie on a spectrum of your risk tolerance as well as the steps you take to mitigate as much risk as possible.
Pro Tip:
It’s important to connect with your legal team to determine how best to move forward. Listen to our HIPAA & FTC 101 podcast for more information about changes for healthcare companies.
Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that allows businesses to display their ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERP) and other Google properties, such as YouTube and Gmail. When someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your business, your ad may appear at the top of the search engine results page. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, so you can control your advertising budget. Google Ads offers a variety of ad formats, including text ads, display ads, video ads, and shopping ads. You can also target your ads to specific demographics, interests, and even locations.
Healthcare marketers can use Google Ads to reach the following audiences:
Pro Tip:
Google does have specific advertising policies that apply to some Healthcare products and services including pharmaceuticals, speculative and experimental medicine, clinical trial recruitment, health insurance, and addiction services. In order to advertise pharmaceutical products or addiction services, a LegitScript certification is required. In order to advertise health insurance, a G2 certification is required.
Google Ads collects a variety of data about its users, including:
Additionally, Google Ads can collect personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and location data when using Enhanced Conversions and Customer Audience Data Imports.
According to the updated guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services, there isn’t a clear yes/no answer. However, knowing that Google Ads will not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), we think using Google Ads, specifically when using conversion tags, does pose a risk.
Furthermore, there are also some tactics available in Google Ads that aren’t unique to that platform but are never HIPAA-compliant, such as remarketing and lookalike audiences. It is also important to consider other tools that have access to your Google Ads data, including optimization and data visualization software.
As with anything HIPAA related, compliance tends to lie on a spectrum of your risk tolerance as well as the steps you take to mitigate as much risk as possible. Some risks can be mitigated in Google Ads by taking advantage of options to enhance data privacy. These options include using server-side tagging, never using audience imports, remarketing audiences, or enhanced measurement, and not tagging pages that could potentially pass PII/PHI in URL parameters.
Pro Tip:
It’s important to connect with your legal team to determine how best to move forward. Listen to our HIPAA & FTC 101 podcast for more information about changes for healthcare companies.
Similar to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that allows businesses to reach their target audience on the web, on mobile devices, and in apps. Microsoft Ads offers a variety of ad formats, including text ads, display ads, and video ads.
Healthcare marketers can use Microsoft Ads to reach a variety of audiences, including:
Microsoft Ads collects a variety of data about its users, including:
Microsoft uses this data to serve ads that are relevant to your users, track the performance of ad campaigns, and improve its own ad platform’s performance.
You can see a full list of the data collected and accessed through the UET tag in their privacy section (“What data does UET collect once I install it on my website?), but that list will get longer with the new UET update set for June 29.
Additional Considerations
There are some tactics available in Microsoft Ads that aren’t unique to that platform but are never HIPAA-compliant. These include remarketing and lookalike audiences. Conversion pixels also may render your ads non-compliant, depending on their usage. It is also important to consider other tools that have access to your Microsoft Ads data, including optimization and data visualization software.
The updated guidance from the department of Health and Human Services, there isn’t a clear yes/no answer. However, knowing that Microsoft Ads will not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and doesn’t have the same kind of privacy configurations you can leverage in Google Ads platform, we think using Microsoft Ads, specifically placing their UET pixel on your website, does pose a risk.
As with anything HIPAA related, compliance tends to lie on a spectrum of your risk tolerance as well as the steps you take to mitigate as much risk as possible. It’s important to connect with your legal team to determine how best to move forward. Listen to our HIPAA & FTC 101 podcast for more information about changes for healthcare companies.
Today Jenny welcomes her longtime friend and VP of Marketing at TCARE, Julia Pitlyk. They dive into Julia’s transition from the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry to healthcare marketing, discussing the similarities, differences, and best practices that have emerged along the way.
Jenny and Julia reminisce about their early days working together and reflect on how their shared love for problem-solving and complexity led them to the healthcare industry. Julia shares her unique experiences in both the CPG and healthcare sectors, highlighting the valuable insights she gained from working on billion-dollar brands and driving consumer-driven campaigns.
She also emphasizes the need to consider the holistic manifestation of a brand throughout the patient journey, extending beyond visual elements to encompass every interaction. They also discuss the complexities of the healthcare industry, and developing a strong brand presence throughout the patient journey.
Connect with Julia:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpitlyk/
Interested in working with Hedy & Hopp on a privacy compliance program?
Book time with Jenny today.
Connect with Jenny on LinkedIn
Explore what Hedy and Hopp can do for you
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi, friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – a Healthcare Marketing Podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am your host. I am so excited to be joined today by my long, longtime friend Julia Pitlyk, who is the VP of Marketing at TCare. Welcome, Julia.
Julia: Hi. Happy to be here. Longtime friend, also former employee of yours.
Let’s not forget way back!
Jenny: true. It was like, 13 years ago. Long time ago. And it’s turned into a great friendship, so that’s right. Yes. It’s been so fun watching your career grow and continue to evolve. We had worked together previously at sort of an agency and then you left to go into the CPG world with a well known brand.
[00:01:00] After a while, you then pivoted and came into healthcare. So that’s quite a transition and I’m really excited to dig in with you and talk about the differences in the industries and maybe some best practices you’ve been able to pull over, or some, really big evolutions or differences that we can chat about.
So let’s get into it.
Julia: Yeah, that sounds great. I love that we both found our way into healthcare independently. I was thinking about that as I was preparing for this conversation. I feel like we just love problems to solve. We love complexity and bringing kind of clarity through it so it makes perfect sense that we would wind up doing marketing in healthcare where there are just such complex journeys and as everything from the journeys to the data analytics.
Always something to navigate, always a problem to solve.
Jenny: Well, we love helping people too. Right? We want our work to feel impactful, so I agree. Totally not surprised.
[00:02:00] So, let’s talk first about that transition. You were at that large, big packaged consumer goods organization for some time, and then whenever you made the pivot into healthcare, talk to me about some of your initial reactions and experiences with that change.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely. So I spent about eight years in the consumer packaged goods industry. My experience there was really unique. I think I sort of got to see some of the best of both worlds. Working within the walls of a company, building, managing and operating billion dollar brands. But I was also more of that entrepreneur, so I was on a team, focused on innovation and building out new business models, really focusing on directing consumer pathways.
So I really got to see, what does it look like? What can I take from that experience where it’s so much rigor around brand design, consumer insights brand management, really having that [00:03:00] data driven business mindset when it comes to marketing and branding, but also that scrappy perspective – designing the journey’s, experimenting, testing by design.
So I was really grateful to have that pretty unique vantage point. Especially knowing that, coming from more startup backgrounds, being able to always preserve some of that scrappiness was really helpful and that was absolutely necessary in coming to healthcare especially.
The role that I came to after my time in CPG was designing direct-to-consumer experiences and campaigns for healthcare, because I think a lot of legacy companies and healthcare of course, depending on the nature of the vertical you’re in within the healthcare industry a consumer-driven approach is a new one.
So the organization that I went to was very B2B focused, had a typical kind of healthcare sales-based model, account-based model with a large end market and field sales force. And so as they were thinking about how [00:04:00] do we reached consumers with our message. That was a very new way of thinking and was very grateful to have had the experience that I had from the CPG side because we leaned really hard into journey mapping.
We wanted to know at every stage of the experience, not just where does the brand need to show up and where do we need to market, but so much deeper than that. What is that consumer thinking, feeling, doing? What’s their mindset at each of these nuanced stages and how do we really design and deploy a really good experience for them?
So I took that and just absolutely lifted and shifted, of course with some modification, but applying it to healthcare and found that was a really successful way to bring some of these consumer driven campaigns to life. And it’s interesting because I think one of the benefits of healthcare is it is so human driven.
When I was in the CPG side, we’re selling packaged goods, right? Like there’s emotional ties. That’s what all the branding is about is you know, that [00:05:00] emotional resonance. And we were very insight rich. We had tons of great consumer insights and tons of great empathy work. But it’s always a leap to go from something onto the shelf to really like, winning the heart of a consumer.
Brands do it well, we did it well. They do it every day. But when you go into something like healthcare, that’s such an inherently, there’s nothing more personal than a healthcare decision for you or for a loved one. So being able to come into a space where empathy and insights and kind of that emotional connection are, should be the norm, should be table stakes.
Was really exciting because it made the way that we could deploy messages at the right stage of the journey. Really rich and personalized.
Jenny: Oh, I love that. So when you began to apply that experience in the healthcare space, were there any unexpected hurdles or roadblocks that you had to overcome and really change your approach?
Or do you think that most of your prior experience was [00:06:00] applicable?
Julia: I would say most of it was, the core of, how do I think about designing marketing? I’ll say a campaign, but really a marketing experience or a consumer experience. Leaning into the insights first and foremost, really not listening to anybody but the user insights and, the feedback, the call recordings, things like that.
That’s where I start. That’s kind of where I build my gut, I like to say, very data driven. You wouldn’t have raised me any other way when I first started working for you. But so much of that, the qualitative stuff is, that forms insights too. To me, it’s all about forming the gut.
I think from a marketing standpoint, we’re really data driven, but the data’s never going to tell you what to do. It gives you, insight and direction, but you have to apply that. And some of that is, what I like to think of as like a really well educated gut that’s connected to your heart that’s connected to the mind. Right. It all has to work together. So that was all really applicable I think with healthcare the most.
The biggest gap, I think is more [00:07:00] of the, this maybe sounds a bit tactical, but more of the channels with which we can go to market. Where I would say the gap between marketing to a consumer and then them actually getting, the product, the good, the service, within consumer package goods, it’s commercials, it’s coupons, it’s anything. And then you go to the store and if distribution’s done well, then it’s on the shelf.
And you put it into cart and you buy it. Or you go on an e-com site and do the same thing. Depending on the business model, within healthcare, you may be marketing to a consumer, but there is a big chasm, a big gap that they have to jump from wanting the good, the product – the medicine, the test, whatever, to actually getting it ordered.
So there is a very the journey maps and the messaging and all of those artifacts get a lot more complex because you have a much bigger landscape and ecosystem of stakeholders to educate. You’ve gotta think about, okay, well we also have to make sure we’re educating the providers.
There’s the payer angle [00:08:00] too. When I started in healthcare, we were in the testing space. So you literally had to have a provider order a test. So that’s a whole other set of education and tasks and jobs to be done.
So I think that, there are some kind of pure play, more true direct to consumer healthcare products popping up, be it telemedicine services or direct to consumer tests or medications or things like that, which feels much more straightforward and I should say normal, not in a judgment light, which is normal, a normal user journey compared to the really fragmented one that can happen in healthcare.
Yeah, and I’m sure you run into that too with a lot of your work.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. Especially depending on the kind of care. So for example, like cancer is much different than promoting say, bariatrics, where it may be a decision that is proactively being made versus a decision that your health makes for you and then you have to find a solution.
So I think that’s definitely an excellent point.
Julia: Yeah, that’s a great point [00:09:00] too, when I think about the journeys and you said a health event, something happening to you. As marketers, we’re always thinking about what’s going to trigger the beginning of that journey.
And in healthcare sometimes, and oftentimes, unfortunately there’s a very very personal, very intense, sad, heavy trigger that happens. A diagnosis, okay. Of yourself or friend or family member, and that’s, very crudely from a marketing perspective, that is a clear entry point from a marketing standpoint.
That’s, it’s not nice, but you know what I mean, it’s a way in. But my goodness, again, that’s where it goes to the empathy, the insights, the messaging, the respect that you have to have, the first words out of your mouth to someone to speak is absolutely critical.
But yes. You’re exactly right. In terms of that journey. I remember doing some of my initial journey maps when I came into healthcare, and I was so used to going all the way from awareness, engagement, conversion. I mean, I had direct to consumer e-com store, so I’m used [00:10:00] to cart convert, reorder.
And one of the first journey maps I saw really sort of ended at this more of this…Consideration stage, right? Because that’s all we could get the patient to do was say, I’m aware of this product. I know it’s for me. I’ve considered it. I want to talk to my provider about it. And I remember thinking, wait what more can we do?
How else can we help bring this along? And truly, to your point, it’s about helping someone who has a need and helping them fulfill it. But I think was the biggest adjustment I had to make was that, I could not have my e-comm side of transactions all the way through, and some healthcare companies do, but that was very much an adjustment.
Jenny: I love it. Let me, let’s kind of slightly pivot – still talking about the overall patient journey. Let’s talk about the importance of a consistent brand showing up throughout that journey. I mean, I think [00:11:00] it’s really interesting when you think about legacy, large well-known brands compared to tech startups and smaller organizations that maybe don’t have that consumer recognition and are still offering something really phenomenal to patients, but they’re not super well known, they’re not something that’s top of mind. How can and should marketers be thinking about the brand and the ways that it shows up throughout that patient journey?
Julia: Oh, I love that question. To me, a brand is a promise kept. You don’t do it for you as the organization. It’s really the brand is designed for the people that you’re serving. And that’s one of the biggest takeaways from, my time in cpg Again, that’s in a more commoditized space. The brand is really all you got.
So you have so much time and investment in architecting that. And I think it’s important for me to clarify to [00:12:00] marketers, but also especially non marketers, that when we say brand, it’s not colors and typography. That’s a part of it. And I could spend an hour talking about the millions of dollars spent researching some of those things because it does, it does ladder up to something.
But for me, I remember, in my, even in my early days of brand management, just as much what you say when you answer the phone when someone calls in as it is the colors, the typography, all of it Yes, actually it’s so much more than that. Especially for a company that’s developing a brand. My biggest advice is to think about the brand as just how your company shows up to consumers in every touchpoint.
And you said that yourself, you know how you show up and don’t. Don’t think of it as just the visual aspects or, sort of over invest or over architect in that. Cause you think about it, an iconic brand like [00:13:00] Nike, that was a $35 swoosh logo. Right?
It’s all the heart and the meaning and the manifestation of that core. Go to work with every touchpoint, especially the ones that are often outside of typical marketing control and really understand how your business is coming to life.
So go to the call center, right? Look at those scripts. Look at the way that those are being navigated. I think those are some of the channels that are often not under the umbrella of marketing, but actually, especially from like a call center standpoint, is one of the very few places where your brand voice is actually talking directly to your customer.
I did a lot of work with that in my CPG side as well, because we would spend lots of time and money thinking about brand voice, but that whole world was not part of marketing. And wasn’t really [00:14:00] influenced by it. So to me it was, oh my goodness, we need to bring that all in.
The brand is about the consumer. That’s it. If your consumer can feel how your org is structured then you have not done your job well. As a marketer, as an organization, it should feel really seamless. So I think tactically it’s looking at that journey. Any good journey’s gonna have these channels sort of defined.
And then it’s going and really making sure that what’s manifesting in those touchpoints are exactly how you’d want your brand as a person to show up in the world.
Jenny: I love that and I spoke at a class with Northwestern two nights ago, and one of the students had such a great question specifically about telehealth, so we’re gonna pick a very specific subsection within healthcare.
And she asked me what the importance of branding was in the promotion of telehealth services. And so I used a real life example. At Hedy & Hopp, we work with a lot of different telehealth service [00:15:00] offerings. As far as our clients, and I’ll tell you, it is much easier and cheaper to get a telehealth patient for Ascension or some large brand that already has that patient relationship and that patient trust than a startup that is trying to break in into the field.
Even if clinically, their outcomes are wonderful and they are great, if they’re not known, it’s gonna take a lot more work and budget to be able to even have a third of the ability to sign a patient up online.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s, so when you look at something like telehealth, and I’ve had this experience too in my prior role of designing a telehealth experience with a third party provider.
I think it’s really important too, in my mind, I wanna say the words brand equity, right? Which doesn’t really mean much to a consumer, but to me it’s looking at where is there the strongest [00:16:00] brand equity, or I should say, To put it in better consumer words, recognition and trust from that consumer or patient.
And let that lead the way. So your example with Ascension is exactly right. There’s trust, there’s a relationship, there’s scale of the brand. And so the consumer then has, permission to bring someone else to the table, to literally like think about if you came over to my house and you had a friend with you because of the trust that I have with you, I’d feel fine letting that friend in my house compared to a mild acquaintance or even relative stranger wanting to bring someone else in my house.
Like, it’s just very different and that’s the way I like to think about marketing, be it whatever channel, especially digital. I think we kind of lose the fact that we’re just humans with hearts and minds and I always like to think of like, okay, what’s just a real human example of what we’re trying to do here?
And so that’s how my mind [00:17:00] works. Like, if you bring someone over to my house because of the trust I have with you, they can come to the party. And I think that’s exactly, especially with the proliferation of online care and telehealth and there’s definitely some scrutiny and skepticism around it, especially as you’re looking to perhaps targeting older audiences.
There are bad actors in certain situations and I’m glad the consumers have a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to their health. But yes, so I think in terms of if I’m a smaller company, a startup trying to bring in a telehealth partner tactically, I would really like to consider things like what would it look like to White label a service or just get the brand hierarchy done right?
Because you’re kind of just a bunch of acquaintance acquaintances showing up to a consumer’s house, and you’ve gotta respect that and you’ve gotta build trust. I’ve been in situations where a telehealth experience I designed, it was a provider referring a patient to my [00:18:00] organization and then we were referring them to Telemed and I kind of zoomed out on the creative.
I’m like, there are three logos, like to get it really clean and simple. Three logos, and this consumer maybe has 75% of a hundred percent of trust in one of them being their provider, and the rest are complete strangers. So how are we gonna do this in a way that’s actually gonna make them feel comfortable and that they know what’s going on, and kind of who’s on base in terms of providing them what kind of care?
And then back to my example of the journeys, like you’ve gotta also think about the service and fulfillment aspect of it. So who does the patient call and when, if they’re referred by Ascension to telehealth and they have a question or an issue, how do they know who to go to? And are the teams orchestrated and organized behind the scenes so that they’re not receiving a call from a patient saying, oh, sorry, that’s not us, you need to call Ascension instead.
Like, but that’s not great, right? So you’ve gotta really think about that [00:19:00] orchestration. Both from, I should say the consumer facing front end and the back end.
Jenny: Yeah. And the much more difficult thing, as we’ve already spoken about, is typically the patients coming from a place of fear, right?
If they’re seeking out telehealth, something’s probably wrong. And so, like you said, making it as easy and streamlined as possible is so important,
Julia: Exactly. That’s the promise that they’re thinking that they’re going to get from telehealth. Right. It’s easy, it’s streamlined, it’s not needing to leave the home.
It’s more access. Like what are the types of benefits that they think they’re getting that you better be sure that you at least deliver table stakes on, but definitely don’t make it in that negative in terms of making it more difficult, more complicated. Because you’re right, that actually just adds to the fear and the skepticism.
And if there’s a sense of urgency with what this patient needs to get from this. You best not get in the way of that as much as possible.
Jenny: Exactly. Well Julia, this was so much fun. It has been just a joy watching your career continue to [00:20:00] grow over the last decade plus. And I’m gonna link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
So if anybody would like to connect with you, please feel free. I’m sure you’d love to continue the conversation.
Julia: Yes, I could talk about this stuff all day, so please connect. I would love that.
Jenny: I love it. Perfect. Well, for all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy.
You can’t fully understand the evolution of something without knowing the history. This is where Jenny and her guest, Michele Szczypka, Interim VP of Marketing and Communications at SSM, begin today’s episode. Michele expresses the importance of understanding the industry’s past to comprehend the impact of changes in the present. She emphasizes the value of this perspective for new graduates and early-career professionals.
Jenny and Michele discuss how healthcare marketing Initially started as PR and image-building for hospitals, but has gradually transitioned into true marketing and branding, aided by the emergence of marketing technology (MarTech) in the past decade. They highlight the challenges faced by early adopters of MarTech in developing models for ROI to convince hospital executives of the need for increased budgets.
Michele also notes the evolution of CRM in healthcare marketing which from their inception grew to allow more sophisticated tracking and measurement of marketing efforts. The implementation of CRM systems necessitated collaboration with finance teams and the establishment of goals and ROI models for different service lines.
The conversation shifts to the current concerns regarding tracking methodologies in healthcare marketing due to HIPAA and FTC regulations. Michele identifies two
camps and how they are reacting and/or pivoting. She and Jenny know that it boils down to the importance of respecting privacy and finding solutions that balance progress and compliance with guidelines.
Connect with Michele on LinkedIn
Interested in working with Hedy & Hopp on a privacy compliance program?
Book time with Jenny today.
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Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast.
I am super excited to have Michele Szczypka. She is currently the interim Vice President of Marketing and Communications at SSM, but she previously held the role of Chief Marketing Officer at Trinity Health for 18 years.
So welcome, Michele. Thank you for joining us.
Michele: Yes, thank you. I’m really excited to be here too, and it’s so nice to see you, Jenny.
Jenny: Thank you. So this is one of my favorite kinds of episodes. I’m really looking forward to digging into the history of measurement in the marketing world, specifically within healthcare.
I know whenever I graduated college and first started getting involved in healthcare, I knew what was happening at that time, but it was really difficult for me to understand what had happened 5, 10, 15 [00:01:00] years before I personally entered the industry. And I think having that perspective is really helpful for new graduates or for people, let’s say in the first five years of their marketing career because then they can more effectively understand how something that may seem like a small change can actually have rippling effects within our industry. So I’m looking forward to digging in.
Michele: Sounds good.
Jenny: Awesome. So let’s talk first about your role at Trinity. So it overlapped multiple transformative periods within healthcare and communications.
So let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s talk about your experience.
Michele: Yeah, what you had said in the very beginning about people coming in and being new, also people coming from outside the industry have no historical perspective on how healthcare marketing strategies have evolved, especially now that digital has really exploded.
It just didn’t exist when we first started this work. Healthcare [00:02:00] marketing started out really, quite frankly, maybe over 20, 25 years ago. We were PR groups, trying to sort of tell this good story of what’s happening at the hospital, trying to develop just image and awareness.
And then we’ve sort of over time transitioned into true marketing, branding engines and also adding on a MarTech stack, which didn’t exist. I mean, as we all know, the MarTech stack has really come out in the last 10 to 15 years. So those that were early adopters really didn’t have models for ROI.
And really were trying to develop those to build the budget, to convince them, the hospital executives and CFO that, look, we need more money so that we can, really build out new strategies.
Jenny: And on that, let’s talk about the evolution of ROI specifically, because generally the justification of additional budget happens as a result of measurement and showing that it’s working.
So tell me a little [00:03:00] bit about what measurement was like when you started in your healthcare marketing career, and then what big leaps you have seen and have made over those years.
Michele: So, boy, there are so many different things that took place in terms of measurement.
We were desperately looking for measurement. What is soft ROI? What’s hard ROI? The soft ROI was really around, we did an advertising campaign and we would start to see the volumes creep up. And we could anecdotally say, yeah, look at what’s happening with our campaigns.
We put a bunch of billboards out, we did some radio and television advertising and we got all kinds of calls and that was great, right? And we believe that was because of our advertising. But over time, really trying to find ways to build out true ROI. Looking at what areas in the organization were great revenue opportunities, and then building out nurturing cycles. A sales sort of cycle, which didn’t exist before[00:04:00] for healthcare marketing.
How do you build that out? So we did start to turn to look into the new age of digital marketing and turning to partners that could help us determine the best practices that were out there and pioneer new models.
Jenny: One of the things as we were kind of chatting, prepping about this episode is chatting about the evolution of CRM and your work at previous organizations. Talk to me a little bit about what it was like when CRMs first came on the scene in the healthcare marketing space and how that changed the work.
Michele: It really did change the work, Jenny. I mean, CRM just didn’t exist. I mean, there were some database tools to keep track of how certain customers were interacting with us. And especially when it came to physician relationship management, like looking at the referrals that came in, but [00:05:00] not true, like looking at our customer base and our patients and how they interact with us.
And over time we said, we really need to be more sophisticated. So when we started, we were at meetings and you would talk with people about their new CRM tools.
Well, we did have this one group that had some ideas about how to do it and we decided we wanted to pioneer some of the work and brought in a partner. And they’re some other company today. But they were really building out new ways of interacting through CRM and being able to look at a little bit of the patient journey, but really starting to dig into when we did a campaign, were we able to really bring in some return on our investment?
One of the things I think I told you about was our CFO and our finance team. Really, it took a while to convince them that this was gonna work and to invest the expense to [00:06:00] in this type of tool. So then there needs to be, beyond the expense, there needs to be additional revenue, and we have to agree on what that model looked like in terms of what money might already be coming in because we don’t just advertise, but we might also have a new business strategy or even a new technology.
Right? And then what is actually coming in because of our campaigns. It was very exciting. It was very challenging, and it really was the beginning of this work that was not that long ago. We’re still early on in this journey and there’s so much more that’s happening now as we’ve, sort of explored with you guys looking at how to really do our patient journey. That’s something that’s happening in the patient experience world, right? I mean, that’s important to us too. But that customer journey, what is the consumer journey from the minute they look at your front door to what they, which is your website or other digital touchpoints to when they’re interacting with your [00:07:00] organization and starting to request information, starting to actually request an appointment or talk to your call centers.
What’s that journey like for them and where do we have gaps in how we interact with them?
Jenny: Yeah, it one of the things that whenever I meet with young marketers entering the healthcare space, one of the things I always tell them is, become best friends with the CFO.
You need to understand how they see and value marketing’s role within the organization so that way you can speak their language. So, as you were able to develop larger budgets to be able to implement CRMs, and you were able to really begin seeing and justifying and understanding the actual lift.
How did that change marketing departments? How did that change the way teams were built or the way that you communicated with, within the organization or with other leadership team members?
Michele: [00:08:00] So, when we started to implement all these CRM tools and some of the activities around that, we would predict a certain amount of money that might come in through a campaign. Obviously, that’s very difficult to do, but we certainly had goals and that was always by service line.
So those people that are, familiar with our sector service line is sort of like a product line, right? And so, if we put out a cancer campaign we knew there’s a longer journey for people to actually get into the system, it’s more around awareness, but there certainly would be a journey we’d have to agree on, what the length of period of time before we’re gonna see a return on an investment.
It’s different than a campaign that you’re talking about for bariatrics. We found that was one of the best ways of measuring more rapidly. People are dealing with weight issues. And they’re making decisions pretty rapidly over that. So we would see return on that investment much more rapidly than we would a different [00:09:00] type of service line.
And orthopedics, for example, also an opportunity for a higher or quicker turnaround. And when we’d make these goals, and we would tell our CFO, or our finance teams who also validated the model that we put together for their ROI, we worked with them directly. And then when we said, yeah, this is what we’re gonna test, this is what we’re gonna believe in.
And then when they started seeing the value, the investment either, continued or increased.
Jenny: Which is that’s phenomenal. Very helpful perspective I think. The big thing that’s happening right now that is on top of mind for every healthcare marketer is all of the things happening related to HIPAA and FTC and all of the tracking methodologies that we’ve all become so comfortable with having to change. We’ve really seen two camps. We’ve seen one camp where even super large systems are just pulling all tracking. They’re so afraid about doing the wrong thing, they’re just going to do [00:10:00] nothing.
And so we’re stepping back 20 years. And then on the other side, we’re seeing people actually implement correct tracking to be able to continue measuring their campaigns appropriately. So I would love your perspective on what you’re seeing at the leadership level throughout the country with your large network, how are people taking all of these changes and evolutions in healthcare marketing in stride?
Michele: Yeah, you kind of nailed it. There’s, there probably are two camps and there’s really very few things happening in between. I think there’s that anxiety about, wanting to really be sure that, we’re following the guidelines and making sure that we are protecting privacy.
And that’s so, so important. I don’t think there’s anyone that’s not concerned with that across the board with healthcare. So, we’ve made so many strides in what we can do in the marketing space, but we wanna be sure that we really honor and respect all of the issues that are out there.
So I think that what my personal philosophy and what [00:11:00] a lot of people that I’ve talked to really wanna do is be sure that you’re committed to progress. I mean, honestly, there’s a way to solve for anything, right? I mean, right now there’s AI, AI is coming out and it’s all over the place.
And AI is so exciting. There’s so much opportunity with it. And there’s some people that are afraid of it because also it comes along with some issues that you have to be sure that you’re avoiding. And I think marketers. We need insights. We need technology. We need tools to help reach people in better ways than ever.
And for us, we’re selling a product nobody wants, right? I mean, nobody wants to have healthcare issues, but do they wanna have good health? Do they wanna deal with health issues?
And you wanna know that you’re going to a trusted provider and trust is everything. Right? So some of the tools that have had to come offline, well, they’re, being retooled, if you will, to be secure. There are other avenues that perhaps you can pursue you. I don’t think you should [00:12:00] abandon this all together. This is my personal belief. I think that progress is something that is so important.
And if you pause, I mean you should be thoughtful and pause where there’s risk. But you should also think about, there’s always solution. There are always ways, and so pursuing that work and that passion for progress is important.
Jenny: I love that. And that is definitely the way that we’re all gonna continue having a positive impact on patients’ ability to access care.
So yeah. Thank you so much, Michele. This was such a wonderful episode. I hope for all of the folks that are either new to healthcare marketing as an industry or just starting their careers, that this was some helpful perspective. And thank you for being a guest.
Michele: Thank you. It was great talking with you.
We are thrilled to announce that our podcast, We Are, Marketing Happy was named the 2023 Healthcare Agency podcast of the year!
Thank you Medigy and HITMC!
If you aren’t yet subscribing to our podcast, View our We Are, Marketing Happy show page and Subscribe/Listen now!
With the new HHS/OCR bulletin surrounding HIPAA guidelines, healthcare marketers who use Google Analytics for measuring digital tactics have had to shift focus from the impending Google Universal Analytics (UA) data retirement (on July 1, 2023) to considering how their current (and future) data is being collected and stored. While Google will keep all UA data for at least 6 months after this date marketers cannot lose sight of what their plan is for storing this data before it’s gone forever.
The challenge: The HHS/OCR bulletin has many marketers questioning whether they should continue using Google Analytics as their third party tracking technology at a time when they may still be working on their full migration to GA4 (especially now that Google is automatically installing GA4 for Google Ads conversion tracking) and their plan to store UA data. What do they prioritize? What precautions do they need to take? Who else needs to be involved in the decision?
The bottom line: Regardless of what tracking platform marketers plan to use, UA data IS going away in a few months, and a plan to save and store relevant data must be made and started as soon as possible.
Our recommendation is to take your UA data storage plan into consideration as you plan to safely and compliantly store and track your future data.
Deciding to keep everything will likely be a challenge for most marketers, unless you have an in-house data engineering team who can store and organize all past UA data into a data lake of sorts. Depending on how large your website is and how far back you want to review data, you could be exporting (literally) millions of rows of data, spread across multiple spreadsheets, making data retrieval and analysis incredibly difficult (if not impossible).
We recommend first determining what data you want to look at on a regular basis, and how it needs to be analyzed to make this data storage process as seamless (and as useful) as possible. For example, if you use mobile vs. desktop traffic to inform your advertising spend, you’ll want sessions by device saved by week or month. However, if you really only reference mobile vs. desktop traffic to understand trends over time, you likely only need sessions by device by year. Moving a dimension to yearly will likely save you thousands (if not tens of thousands) of rows of data to later have to sort through and aggregate.
Doing this step first will also help you better evaluate your options for tracking and storing data in the future – it’s a good exercise (and discipline) to root your organization on the data that really matters and have a plan in place to retrieve it easily.
Where do I begin?
When considering what’s important, always begin with your business objectives and the website KPIs you’ve established to measure success. If you have not done so already, start this discussion today and include your marketing, sales, IT teams and leadership if needed, to ensure you’re not leaving out any core metrics that other departments require to determine success or opportunities.
Since this data will no longer be available in your Google Analytics account, the data you want to keep will need to go somewhere. This is where your technical and IT teams come into play. As long as it’s useful and works for what you need, we recommend sticking with whatever system you have in place for future data tracking and storage (see Step 3!)instead of building something separate.
A few options for storing this data include Google’s BigQuery, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or even spreadsheets with pivot tables, if you don’t have a lot of data.
Next, think about how you want to access this data (and who else will need access). Tools like Looker Studio, Tableau or Power BI can be really helpful in aggregating and visualizing your core metrics, as they are straightforward and more user-friendly than complex servers that may require a more technical or experienced hand. Setup and maintenance is fairly simple once you have your core metrics and KPIs established (remember Step 1!).
Finally, test, test, test! Once your data has been stored and accessible, it’s important that you play around with it to make sure you have the right dimensions and filters available. Do this before the deadline to avoid any gaps or issues in future reporting and analysis!
Not sure if you have the right data? Here’s a tip: find a recent request from a colleague and try finding the answer in an older time frame from the UA data you stored. Were you able to access that data? Any missing information? Was there any additional or manual work you needed to do to find the answer?
You can learn more about Hedy & Hopp’s guidance for understanding the new guidelines and ways to make tracking compliant here. But the key things that matter for storing and accessing UA data relate to where your data can be stored moving forward in consideration of your success metrics (see Step 1).
For marketers currently using Google Analytics, we see a few options:
Throughout the decision making process it’s important to consider how your new setup can account for past analytics data storage, too, if possible. Ideally, the quicker solution for UA data will also be a compliant one.
Where do you go from here?
If this seems doable, great! Our hope is that this 3-step guide will help you stay on top of what’s coming and feel confident that you know what needs to happen and who to involve in your organization.
However, there is a LOT to think about, and we know that you may need to shift focus to other priorities. If you are feeling overwhelmed, don’t have the time, or are just not sure how to start, please reach out to us! We’d love to help you evaluate your current set up and get you on the right path forward.