In this episode, Jenny Bristow, CEO of Hedy & Hopp, speaks with Drew Hardesty, CEO of Wonder Boy Media, about how AI is transforming video and image editing in healthcare marketing. They explore the innovative ways AI is helping marketers save time, enhance creativity, and improve efficiency in editing tasks.
Episode Highlights:
If you’re a marketer looking to make the most of AI in your editing process, this episode offers information on how to use these tools effectively—without compromising creativity or privacy.
Connect with Drew:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are the proud producers of this weekly podcast. I am so excited today to have Drew Hardesty with me.
He is the CEO and founder at Wonder Boy Media, which is a full service video production company based out of Owensboro, Kentucky. Welcome, Drew.
Drew: Thanks for having me.
Jenny: Yeah, we actually met at SHSMD a couple of weeks ago. We were in what we like to call the quirky corner area, but we had so much fun talking about all things content generation for providers.
And so I invited you on the podcast today to talk about one specific area of topic that we dug into quite a bit, which is the emergence of AI in both photo [00:01:00] and video editing. Mark Brandes, who is the Director of Technology and Analytics at Hedy & Hopp. He and I did a masterclass at SHSMD about AI and the immediate applications that marketers can use in their day to day workflows.
To improve efficiencies consider things from different perspectives, et cetera. And you and I had a really great conversation about how that applies to video and imagery. So to kick the show off today, I think what I’d love to do is have you really explain the difference to listeners about AI art generation versus AI image and video editing and what we’re going to focus on today.
Drew: Okay. Absolutely. So when it comes to art generation these tools like Dolly. Dolly’s the one I use the most, but Canva does it as well. It’s really using a text prompt but being fairly specific and concise with that and having these machines just generate sometimes [00:02:00] perfect art, sometimes a little off, but for the most part, it does a really good job.
So art generation is based on text prompts. Whereas AI and when it comes to editing is based off of, you know, something that’s already been created a video that’s already been shot an image that’s already been shot or captured. And then using that and some of the surrounding aspects of the image to, you know, generative fill or expand or all these things that we’re starting to hear more and more about.
Jenny: Excellent. That is a really great example. And when, and during the class, some of the folks that were participants, we had a fun workshop area and one of the people actually like said, do a dog looking at a laptop, like this really quirky prompt. Right. And like, it’s really cool to see what AI can do as far as creating that imagery through the lines of art, but it is rarely applicable in our day to day lives as marketers in the healthcare space.
So I’m excited to focus more on the AI through the lens of like editing and process improvement. So, let’s start first talking specifically about [00:03:00] photos. I’m going to chat about photos first. Then I’ll chat about the video second. So talk to me a little bit about marketers when they’re thinking about photography or any sort of static image assets, and what sort of applications there are for AI to improve their workflows or editing processes.
Drew: Yeah. So we exclusively use the Adobe suite. So we’ve got, you know, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, all these famous programs people have heard of. Those can have a little bit of a learning curve. And so for those marketers out there who don’t have that experience or don’t have that time to learn these programs, Canva does a great job with it as well.
I’ve taken images into Canva, their background remover is really good. Their duo tone tool, you know, all these different things that you can edit an image that’s already been shot, you know, maybe it’s a headshot of a physician, but it was kind of a weird background.
You want to take that out and put them in front of the hospital. So, you know, Canva does a really good job of removing [00:04:00] backgrounds and things like that where we would get more into kind of the professional realm would be in Adobe and the AI in Adobe is just taking leaps and bounds like every day.
It blows me away how good it is. Their denoiser, we’ve got a camera that, you know, we’ll shoot some pretty good megapixels, but it typically has some noise there. AI denoiser is unreal. Their generative fill. If there’s you know, a space that you want to expand. You know, put something in like a, hey, put a tree here next to this person, you know, they can, it does a really good job of that.
We’ve used it for expansion. So if you needed just a little more headroom on a shot, or if you needed a little more of a wall in the background, their generative fill and generative expand are just light years ahead of things. Most people would have access to you.
Jenny: That is a great summary.
I was reading an article last week, a little bit about Adobe’s AI functionality, and the person said, I tried to create a list of all the things that don’t do, and I literally [00:05:00] couldn’t come up with anything because it’s expanded so much in the last couple of years. That’s really exciting. So one of the examples that I hear over and you spoke on it, is marketers that have to get a physician’s headshot for the directory and they used to drive or send a photographer that they hired a contract or on staff for hours out to a remote, a rural clinic to get a headshot of that physician. And it was a whole day’s contractors expense. And now, like you said, you can literally take just a photo of them that they submit and then generate it into a standardized headshot imagery.
So I think. Just like you said, whenever I’m thinking about ways that marketers can be smart about it, it’s not so much about getting super creative and doing fancy art. It’s more about how can I clean up processes, reduce the noise or the budget, unnecessary budget of travel and whatnot, just to be [00:06:00] smarter with my budget allocation.
Drew: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s where AI is really well used in the workflow process. So if you have an image of a doctor already, and you just want to polish it up, make it look more professional, you know, there are apps out there that will take just the face and then put them on this, you know, Clean looking professional looking headshot, you know, it’s just, it’s more of a workflow thing.
I think then getting to create right now, the creative side of it is a little wonky, but workflow is where it really is powerful.
Jenny: I love that. Let’s transition over to video. Cause I think we’re going to talk about the exact same thing on video, right? It’s not about generative creating it from scratch.
It’s more about being smarter with your workflow. So what are some ways that folks like yourself, your organization, or marketers within organizations that focus on video editing, what are some ways they can look at integrating AI into their video editing processes?
Drew: The biggest thing right now, at least in our world where we are here in Owensboro, we’re starting video podcast [00:07:00] studios.
I’m actually in one now. And so those podcasts, video podcasts could be an hour and a half, it could go Joe Rogan and be three or four hours long. And where AI really helps there is these plugins that have that Adobe has that will take multi camera angles and edit them in minutes. And just the amount of time that would save me as an editor from basically having to rewatch the whole video that I already saw live in person.
Taking that and editing it within minutes is just. A huge time saver. And I think that’s where, as when it comes to video AI is going to, as is really helping us with time saving just helping that workflow speed it up, get projects out the door faster and accurately. And it does a really good job.
Jenny: Yeah. So thinking specifically about this podcast, for example, thinking about like removing pauses, removing ums and other filler words, right. I think it’s really [00:08:00] important to clarify that there’s nothing creative being done with this editing with AI, right? That’s where the human touch is still so important.
So for a podcast, it’s not as big of a deal because we do a straight shoot here, but if you’re doing, for example, a commercial video you know, for your organization, that’s not something that AI can edit. For you, right? Like that still takes, you know, a person like yourself or a member of your team to be creative, right?
Drew: Yeah. That is. And I mentioned that we talked earlier about some posting I had made on LinkedIn, Instagram, and it’s that human touch. That was, you know, what I liked about that post is that it’s so important especially, you know, in healthcare marketing, when we’re trying to focus on storytelling and the human condition.
It takes that human touch to really make something creative and to tug on heartstrings and to connect with people. Whereas AI isn’t quite there yet. It’s still, you know, I’m not out of a job yet, put it that way. I’m not worried about my job. AI has not taken over my job. You know, there’s still a place for that [00:09:00] human touch.
Jenny: I think it’s just probably letting you focus on the more fun parts of your job.
Drew: Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s. Taking over the tedious work and allowing us to be a little more creative.
Jenny: I love it. So if I were an in house marketer and I were thinking about doing either a video or a image job of some kind with an outsourced organization, what are some questions or things I should ask them to understand if they’re using AI effectively?
Cause I would think that probably would mean that from a budget and timing perspective, they’re likely going to be a better partner.
Drew: Absolutely. I mean, Open AI is, you know, free and, you know, you can use Dolly, Chat GPT. I was doing it earlier. I was trying to come up with some tattoo designs of all things.
And it just spits out, you know, 10 designs right then and there. So that’s completely free. Most, I would say marketers probably have a Canva subscription. And if you have the pro version, then, you know, you have their AI tools as well, that are a part of that. Yeah. You know, Adobe, again, we talked about that can get a little more expensive depending on, you know, your, the learning [00:10:00] curve, how much you know about it.
But once, once you have access to those programs, it’s completely free. I think it really just goes back to creativity. When to use something that’s free and when to partner with someone is when you need to be creative and AI is, you know, going to kind of get you halfway there, but that human touch is what’s really going to set it off.
So if you need to be, you know, spitting out graphics on brand for social media posts, I think AI is great for that. They’re going to get the tone, right. As long as you’re prompting, well, they’ll get the tone, the colors, the brand, all the things, right. But when you need to do something really creative and outside of the box, partnering with someone getting that human touch would really help.
Jenny: Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And one last disclaimer as the self proclaimed queen of privacy, I have to remind everyone to not upload anything into any of these AI platforms that is considered private. So if you’re not willing to put it on a billboard, [00:11:00] outside of your office for your competitors to see, or for the general public to see, do not upload it.
That includes anything specific to patients any sort of financials or positioning information about your organization. You just gotta be really smart about that.
Drew: Yeah, that’s a good disclaimer.
Jenny: Absolutely. Well, Drew, thank you so much for being on. For our listeners, Drew’s organization, we’re huge fans of Wonder Boy and all of the work that they’ve done.
I’m going to include a link to his LinkedIn in the show notes. So if you’d like to reach out to him to chat more about his work or his use of AI in this space, I’m sure he’d be happy to chat.
Drew: Absolutely.
Jenny: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Please, as my kids would say, like and subscribe, and share us with a colleague who may appreciate this content. We will see you on a future episode.
In this episode, Jenny Bristow, CEO of Hedy & Hopp, is joined by Suzie Schmitt, Senior Digital Producer, to chat about creative solutions for data integration in marketing dashboards. Building on recent discussions about privacy and analytics at industry conferences, they discuss a workaround that enhances the reporting capabilities of data—while staying HIPAA compliant.
Additional Episode Highlights:
Connect with Suzie:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I’m the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are very proud to be the creators and hosts of this podcast. I’m jazzed to be here today with Suzie Schmitt.
She is our Senior Digital Producer here at Hedy & Hopp. And I invited Suzie on because as we’ve covered in recent podcasts, I was at SHSMD a couple of weeks ago talking about privacy and I’m going to be at HCIC in a couple of weeks talking about privacy, and though our agency does so many things beyond privacy we’ve definitely become known as privacy gurus in this space, which is a hat we’re proud to wear.
But the questions keep coming up about workarounds, like even once you get sGTM or some other analytics solution in place, and you’re really comfortable with the way that you’re marketing analytics or your website data is being collected, [00:01:00] used and stored.
What about those third-party tools that you’re using? And so I was having a fun offline conversation with Suzie and I invited her on to talk about a workaround that our team has created that I thought could be interesting to some of our users or some of our listeners today. So, Suzie, I’d love for you to just give us a little bit of the lay of the land.
How did this technology solution, this process even come about?
Suzie: Sure. So we were looking into call tracking options for one of our clients to track campaign performance and we found that CallRail has a great HIPAA-compliant product, but that reporting on it once you leave the CallRail ecosystem can be kind of difficult.
So when we’re trying to tie everything back into all of our marketing efforts to get a holistic picture, we weren’t able to get all of the data we needed just from the out-of-the-box connector. So what we did is we created an API call that [00:02:00] only calls non-sensitive information. So it all gets written to a Google Sheet that has no PII at any time.
So it’s completely clean and kosher from a privacy standpoint. And it runs on a time base every 12 hours and updates our dashboard automatically. And that was a way for the client to get those specific numbers tied to campaigns and tactics into their dashboard where they could see it combined with all of their other tracking metrics.
And we did that through Google Apps Script, which let us connect that API using JavaScript just to a Google Sheet.
Jenny: Excellent. And I love that. And we’ve been long-time recommenders and users of CallRail. Their HIPAA-compliant version is great. And VOCA is another tool that a lot of our clients use.
Again, they have a HIPAA-compliant version, but what we’re talking about here is that with the HIPAA-compliant version, while the tool itself then becomes HIPAA compliant, it can then kind of be [00:03:00] difficult to get all the data you need into your reporting interface to actually report on campaign efficacy.
So for example, with our clients, most of them use Looker dashboards, and we are the ones that set them up from a campaign reporting perspective. And so if we’re trying to do, you know, soup to nuts from spend to final conversion you know, we got to get that data in. And so what you were able to do then with the call reel data is export it.
Only the data that is non-PHI, and then pull it back into Looker and then associate it with the correct campaign information. So we could accurately report on the number of phone calls and conversions that came in, right?
Suzie: Correct. Yeah. It’s kind of like a little custom Looker connector.
Jenny: Absolutely.
And this can be done really with any platform that has API availability, right? Walk us through, like if a marketer on this call is thinking like, Oh, I want to make my dashboard more robust in the third-party tools that I pull in. How can they [00:04:00] think through what tools this could be applicable for?
Suzie: Really, anything that has an API is an option. But as you go through it, think about the fields you do and you don’t need. So for example, for the calls, we needed the number of calls. We needed the average duration. We needed the time of day that the calls were coming through so we could make sure all of our campaigns were running smoothly, but we did not need any of that sensitive data that CallRail needed. And so once we had identified what we did need, we went to the documentation for the API and matched it up. And if you can see that the documentation has it, the ability to get granular enough so that you can get what you need and not what you don’t, it’s probably going to be a pretty good option for a pretty simple JavaScript API call.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done it may feel a little manual, but in the end, it’s not manual. We’ve done Google Sheets to feed data into reporting dashboards for lots of different use cases. So this is just another example of creatively pulling data in to customize it for our needs. [00:05:00]
Suzie: That’s correct.
And since most APIs are pretty static and don’t change very often, we have a really low level of maintenance to do with these. And Google also has a built-in way to handle secrets so we’re able to handle API keys securely as well. So it’s been a really great, low-maintenance way to keep our dashboards up to date and make sure that all that data is tying in together and we can tag everything appropriately.
Jenny: Absolutely. So for those on the call, if you’re trying to build out your reporting dashboard for additional data sets or information from other platforms that you use, and there isn’t an immediate way to do it, this is a great way to kind of think outside of the box and kind of problem solve a way to be able to get the data.
Another thing that came to mind for me, whenever you were talking about a solution like this is if you’re an in-house marketer and you create these reporting dashboards and you share them with people outside of your organization, especially people you don’t have a BAA with, this is just another level of [00:06:00] safety to make sure there isn’t any data accidentally being put into those dashboards that you shouldn’t be sharing with third parties.
Suzie: It’s a great clean data source to keep things entirely separate so that you have, if you need to, you can go into CallRail and you could even match that call ID and see those granular details on each one if you need it. But if you want to report and not worry about any of that, it is ready to go. And if it doesn’t have anything sensitive.
So it’s great for reporting, whether it be for a presentation, like it’s something like SHSMD or whether it be to a larger internal team anything where you just wouldn’t want that sensitive data around.
Jenny: Oh, that’s awesome. So what are some watchouts? I know, for example, we were talking through, like, you shouldn’t just go and set this up on your, like, personal Google workspace. So if somebody’s going to pursue the creativity of a solution like this, what should they look out for?
Suzie: Well, the first thing is that we have two BAAs with Google here at Hedy & Hopp. We have one for Google Cloud platform and we have one for our workspace instance, which means that all of [00:07:00] our Google apps for workspace for business are all covered by their BAA.
So this was done on my, on the Hedy & Hopp accounts and not on a personal Google. You can never get a BAA with a personal Gmail account. So you want to make sure that you’re doing this in a secure environment. Anytime you’re dealing with an API, you’re also probably going to have an account number and API key.
And you’re going to want to make sure that you take care of those by using Google’s secrets manager to properly hide those variables. They’re not just exposed and flying out there because that’s kind of just leaving the key to your house in the lock. And then finally, you just want to be really careful about the fields that you pull because you just want to make sure that you’re referring to that documentation and lining it up and making sure that you really are creating what you think you’re creating and that everything that you want to make sure that you’re not just relying on what you think a field name might be.
So those are really my big watch ads for keeping these compliance safe and useful.
Jenny: I love it, Susie. Thank you [00:08:00] so much. And for our listeners, I hope this had you look at the opportunities for data integration to dashboards in a slightly different, perhaps more creative light. I know this is a pretty technical topic to talk about on our podcast, but I like throwing those in every once in a while to kind of encourage some technical thinking and brainstorming, especially because I know based off my conversations over the last few weeks, so many organizations are still focusing on building appropriate reporting dashboards and incorporating as many data sources as possible to have them be holistic.
So hopefully this episode was useful. Please know that if you have specific questions about platform compliance, or even opportunities for what a dashboard could look like please reach out to us. We love talking about this stuff and we’d be happy to hop on a call and talk with you and even brainstorm about specific platforms or tools you’re trying to integrate and see if we can help you problem-solve. So, thank you so much for joining us on today’s episode, Suzie.
And thank you listeners for tuning in. [00:09:00] We will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
Back from SHSMD Connections 2024 in Denver, CO, Jenny Bristow, Shelby Auer, Mark Brandes, and Taylor Fedderke from Hedy & Hopp share their key takeaways. They discuss the latest trends in AI and privacy, the strong audience engagement in Q&As, and why using data effectively remains a top priority in healthcare marketing.
They also highlight sessions on recruitment-focused marketing strategies, a basketball-themed initiative that improved KPIs like reducing harm events and patient stay times, and a creative healthcare heroes social media program.
From first-time attendees to catching up with old friends—and handing out fan favorite friendship bracelets and art prints at H&H’s booth—the team shares their favorite moments and insights from a successful conference!
Connect with Jenny:
Connect with Mark:
Connect with Shelby:
Connect with Taylor:
SHSMD24 Speakers Mentioned:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. We are very jazzed to come to you today to chat more about SHSMD24. My fabulous team that I have on the podcast with me today traveled out to Denver on Sunday, and we attended three awesome days of SHSMD.
It was an amazing conference, so many highlights. And so we thought we would hop on and just record a summary of some of the key takeaways for any of you that were unable to attend. So you can get a feel for what the vibe is at these industry events. So if you’re thinking about adding sessions or conferences to your budget for next year, you’ll have an idea of the benefit that you’ll receive.
So we’re going to jump right into it. Again I’m going to do a [00:01:00] brief highlight of my team that attended with me. Taylor is Hedy & Hopp’s Marketing Manager. Shelby is a fabulous Account Manager and Mark is the Director of Data and Technology. So first I want to talk a little bit about our overall experience.
At the conference, we spoke at two sessions, which we’re super proud of. We started with a pre conference workshop around AI. It was two and a half hours, which at first we were a little like, Ooh, how are we going to make something engaging for two and a half hours? Well, we did it. People stayed like 15 minutes after for Q&A. Mark tell everybody about our workshop.
Mark: Yeah, it went really well. You know, I think people really liked it because it was so engaging. So we not only kind of talked about AI and different tools, we kind of had more of a lecture style, the first half of it but then at the end, we really got into, hey, open up your laptops, bring out your phone, and we kind of had them go through prompts or Jenny, you had [00:02:00] them kind of, you know, take pictures of their notes and had those be transcribed, right?
Showing them some cool stuff that AI can help them with in their daily work. The other thing I liked is that we kind of went through how different tools, whether you have to log into them, whether you can use them kind of in your personal life to help them understand that, hey, it’s not just a tool to say, go write me an email or make me a, you know, a generative piece of content.
It was more about how can these tools actually help you in your daily work? How can you talk to your leadership team? So we gave them a list of tenants, right? So we have these six tenants and we pass those along to the users to kind of say, hey, these are things you can approach your leadership with to say, hey, we’re not going to use this to make deliverables, right?
We are going to make sure we stay skeptical about these things. And so you can have kind of, that conversation to help you maybe get that ChatGTP unblocked, right? Or get access to something like Copilot so that you don’t have to kind of [00:03:00] fight them because we gave them a stat that, you know, like, a lot of people, even though it’s blocked, they’re still going to be using, they’re going to be on their personal device or find another way to use it.
So, you know, it’s better to sometimes embrace these technologies and find ways to kind of put some safeguards in place. And that’s what our tenants are all about. So we had that conversation. I think people really appreciated that because that gave them a takeaway to really take home. And then, you know, they’ve already used the tool now, right?
They’ve already used the technology, the ChatGPT app on their phone, they’ve already gone into Copilot and done a prompt, they’ve already used Perplexity. And so having them already do that, I think really was made it impactful. And I think that’s why people thought it was a really good session.
Jenny: I totally agree. It was really fun hearing the buzz, the whole session about people that wish that they were able to attend that pre conference session. And then the other session that we did was actually one of the last sessions of the whole event. It was at 11 a. m. on the last day. Right before the closing keynote, and we did a 2024 version of [00:04:00] our HIPAA, FTC and state law, but this time we actually brought one of our clients Jenny Bradley from Quartz Health Benefits attended with us, and we talked about a client’s perspective of what it’s like to switch over to server-side Google Tag Manager right before Open Enrollment campaigns launched.
So it was super fun to have a client share their perspective and point of view on something technical like analytics. And she did such a great job. So it was really fun to have her presenting alongside us. Taylor, talk to us a little bit about our booth and what we did this year.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Very exciting.
So as a lot of people know, typically when we show up, when Hedy & Hopp shows up to a conference, we have a very colorful booth. Easy to see. This year we did something a little bit more special even so usually we have an artist in residence, you know, each year that we’re bringing art prints to hand out, which is always really fun and people enjoy receiving those.
So, of course, we brought our 2024 Artist in Residence, Katie Mertz, art prints to bring and pass out, so that was great. But we also partnered with [00:05:00] two other artists. So for our backdrop this year we worked with our 2022 Artist in Residence, Jessica Hitchcock, and she created this beautiful backdrop, nice and colorful, kind of tying in our brand colors, and we had a perfect spot on there for our Hedy & Hopp sign, which actually, yes, behind Jenny, if you’re watching, we tied in there too.
And then also for our, outfits, we worked with an artist named Trent Colquitt. He customized our Nikes, painted them. They were super fun. And so kind of did a variety of things to make us stand out a bit more and have the color scheme that really goes with our brand. And then also of course had the friendship bracelets there too, to pass out.
And it’s always fun seeing people walk around having them on. Everybody’s kind of matching if they stop by our booth. And with that art piece there, a lot of systems, as we were talking to them at the booth mentioned that they are building art programs, which was really cool to have those conversations.
I know that’s kind of a separate piece to, you know, from the marketing that we’re usually chatting about. But it was really cool to kind of hear that side and further discuss, you know, the different artists we worked [00:06:00] with for the conference.
Jenny: Absolutely. Yeah. It was like you said, super fun to see our friendship bracelets all over the conference facility.
So let’s pivot and talk a little bit about some of the themes we saw at SHSMD this year. So one of the things that we did the week before SHSMD is we shared the 2023 podcast recording we did. So anybody could listen to it on the plane or on the way there to kind of remind themselves of what some of the topic themes were, because I find it very interesting to kind of pull up to that 10,000 foot view when you’re looking at annual conferences and kind of look at the pivoting and the shifting of topics.
What’s nobody talking about anymore? What is the trend? So let’s talk a little bit about that. Shelby, talk to me a little bit about some of the topic themes that we saw in 2024.
Shelby: Yes. So to no one’s surprise and goes right along with the sessions that we ran this year, AI just continues to be top of mind across the board.
There were many different sessions that focused on different ways that [00:07:00] organizations have been or can be using AI, whether it’s in their day to day or whether it’s larger opportunities to utilize that in their organization. So, it’s really interesting to see kind of year over year. I feel like the last couple of years.
That’s been a key theme, but that just continues to pop up honestly, even more and more. And privacy, it was really interesting. To see last year, compared to this year, how privacy is still being talked about in almost every session, whether it was really privacy focused or not, but really focusing and honing in on what organizations have been doing this last year because last year was a lot of here are all the different opportunities, things you can be doing to help in the privacy space and then.
Organizations were really sharing and talking amongst themselves about what they’ve been considering, what they’ve done, what they’re not sure about. So we just continue to see privacy be a huge theme going forward. And I [00:08:00] think we all know that’s likely not going to change in the years ahead and just a lot of organizations are talking about how they’re using data effectively.
Right? Kind of hand in hand with privacy. Okay. Based on what you’re doing in that space, what, how does that affect the data that you’re able to see and utilize and how are you usually using that to its fullest potential? So it was really interesting to see how organizations are taking advantage.
Mark: Yeah, as the resident data guy, I definitely jumped into a few of those, right? So there were some they were talking about using GIS right? Effectively. There was a lot of talk around some of those more locational data and using kind of 3D kind of views of data to help you understand your region and what the nation looks like, which is really cool.
There was also some talk about propensity models, which was kind of fun. That was super interesting. From a group at CAC at USC, it was very nice. And then in general, like I really enjoyed how people were talking about, you know, how they’re really developing [00:09:00] certain KPIs that are very effective.
It wasn’t just, hey, the standard KPIs. There was some conversation about, hey, how do we actually turn this KPI into something that’s meaningful? It’s something that drives our organization. Not just something we, a number we look at or something we track, but actually make it something impactful. And so there was a lot of discussion around that, which I personally appreciate it.
Jenny: Absolutely. I completely agree with you, Taylor. Talk to me about trends that we saw as far as the humans that attended the event.
Taylor: Yeah. So really a super interesting piece of this as people were coming up to the booth or just us making conversation at different sessions. A lot of them had mentioned that they were first year attendees at SHSMD which is very cool.
And kind of with that, even this one woman had mentioned she goes to a lot of local conferences in her state, but this is her 1st time really branching out and going to a larger conference. You know, that’s further away. And, you know, especially a bigger one at that, you know, there’s a very large event and you can get a lot about a lot out of it.
And so their [00:10:00] overall feedback or kind of thing I was hearing over and over again was that there’s a lot of first years, which is great to see. And then also kind of tying into that, a lot of people were new to healthcare as well. And so just trying to really understand, you know, privacy here. That was something very new to them. They haven’t really spoke too much with their team about. And so just by them attending to getting to hear more about what’s kind of going on in the space and learn about it, which was great.
Jenny: Absolutely. And then 2 other things I’ll add that I thought were really interesting is that every single session I was in had extremely strong Q and A. So people really participated and asked very meaty and sometimes difficult questions for the presenters, and they were handled very well by the presenters. So, there was, I was not in a single session where they said, are there questions and no one raised their hand.
So I think it was a great discussion. Just extremely impactful and really added to the overall experience for attendees. And then it was a busy last day. Like so often you see that the last day is kind of dead because people are catching their flights home. People go [00:11:00] hard day one and day two and day three, they’re like, meh, session attendance is pretty light.
That was not the case. At this year’s event, we did our, like I said, the last real session of the last day. And it was packed. Almost every chair was full in a lot, like probably a hundred or so attendees in this one session, which normally last session of the last day, I’ve been there in prior conferences and like eight people show up because everyone’s already at the airport.
And so, I will say that’s really strong. If you’re planning on attending this event in 2025, do not fly out early. Unless of course you have to for personal reasons, but like the content is strong all the way through the closing keynote on that note, let’s talk about actual sessions. We love attending sessions in order to call out people that are doing really cool things.
I think that’s one of my personal favorite reasons for going to these conferences is hearing about case studies and advancements happening. With providers and payers across the country that they perhaps aren’t like blasting out on the internet and sharing publicly, but they’re willing to talk about it, [00:12:00] conferences and share an inside peek around their processes and their strategy and their outcomes.
So let’s highlight a few of them. Shelby one session that you attended was beat the workforce blues, how to tackle your health systems. Biggest problem. Tell us about it.
Shelby: Yes. So Maria and Christina over at Shepherd Pratt, were sharing a little bit about how they tackled the issue of recruitment, right?
Organizations. Since even before COVID, but COVID and beyond are just struggling to recruit talent. So it was really interesting to hear how Shepard Pratt has tackled this difficulty. I loved one of the nuggets that they talked about was, you know, while recruitment isn’t necessarily marketing’s problem, when recruitment and marketing really joined forces, that’s really where you’re going to see.
A lot of benefit to those efforts. So, for example, they did this and they ended up creating templates for the recruitment team to use and [00:13:00] personalize when communicating to prospects to make sure things are more standard and used the same kind of language across the board. And they really focused on building.
A strong employer brand. So beyond even their own external branding, they work to create an employer brand with personas about their own employees to help them figure out. How should we be messaging? How should we be pushing this out? And they really trained their team on LinkedIn posts when they’re sharing about a new job opportunity, kind of key tips and things they should be including in those posts in order to really make the most of it.
And it was really amazing because they shared with us some stats that their vacancy volume has been at a year over year decrease of nearly 25%, which is huge. They were talking about the organization really hadn’t seen this in years. So shout out to them because it was really amazing to hear the great work that they’ve been doing in that space.
Jenny: Absolutely. We are big fans of Christina and [00:14:00] Maria and Shepherd Pratt overall as an organization. So, we will be sure and put their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes if anybody wants to connect with them. Mark, a session you attended was called Engaging Physicians and Leaders, Data Driven Specific Initiatives.
Tell us about it.
Mark: Yeah, I really enjoyed that one. It was run by Allison Vance and Jani Radhakrishhnan from Regional One Health. And it was great. So they had started talking about, you know, they have been trying to put certain strategic plans in place over the years. They’ve had certain metrics. They’re following what I talked about before.
They had not been seeing a whole lot of movement with those metrics, right? So they were tracking them. They were following them, but they weren’t really seeing anything effective. And so really, they started saying, well, how can we do this? And so I think when Allison and Jenny both kind of started, they were kind of tasked with, hey, let’s make this happen.
And so really, to get at the heart of this, they kind of had to rethink how they were doing their strategic planning. And so what they did is they got physicians involved. 1st of all, [00:15:00] they had administrative people and then they had, you know, the day to day workers, right? The nurses, the people from the food staff, right?
So, like, they would get multiple people from around and they made these kinds of cross functional teams. And then what they were going to do is basically have a break down all these different areas where they want to kind of address and they had certain KPIs tied to that. And then the best thing about this was they made it fun.
They turned it into a basketball theme. And so to get people on their team to go after these certain issues, they had a big draft. And so they had people up on stage and they called them up and there was high fiving. It was very cool. Right? They made some height videos with their clinicians.
Right? And so they had them in basketball gear and. Playing basketball and doing stuff, which is so cool. And then really, you know, they not only did they do that and kind of build the hype around that and have a lot of buy in, but they also then made these cool dashboards in Domo that actually made sure that it was aligned with what this team was trying to [00:16:00] accomplish.
And they realized that, hey, some of these people get this data every once in a while, or maybe somebody gets a monthly, somebody gets a daily, somebody else that gets it, you know, weekly. And so they realized, hey, we can’t have this because that’s really not leading to that change we want to see. And so they kind of identified some of those problems.
Then they turn these dashboards into daily dashboards, right? And now they get feedback when those things aren’t updated every day. They get feedback that it’s not updated, which is a good problem to have. Right. And so what was so great is that not only when they have these dashboards, they were actually able to show us data that, you know, harm events and we’re way down now that they have this in place, right?
Or they were looking at, you know, time of stay at the hospital that was way down, right? So they really, after doing this and getting so much buy in from people around, around the hospital, and then having data to back that up, they really saw some effect. And then the coolest thing was they had big celebrations, right?
So, when they had these wins, they really celebrated him [00:17:00] and then they gave out awards like buzzer beaters, right? Or they gave out the best assist, you know, or highest score, things like that. So staying in that basketball theme which was so cool. It seemed like a lot of fun and it was very effective.
So it was a great kind of session to attend.
Jenny: Yeah, I think that by far is the most engaging implementation of a data improvement strategy that I’ve ever heard of within an organization. So kudos to them. Regional One Health. Great job. Taylor. Tell me about the session you attended, Social Media + Healthcare Heroes, a Dynamic Duo.
Taylor: Yeah. So this was with Carly Cori. She’s the Director of Social Media and Creative Services at Stony Brook Medicine. I will say when I walked in that room was full, it was full to the gills, which was awesome to see. I was really excited for this session just to kind of hear some of their strategies around really working with their healthcare heroes and really promoting them on social media and telling their stories.
So yeah, tou know, showcasing those inspiring stories and how hard their staff is working. And I feel like with this, you know, while we’ve kind of heard some of this before, some organizations [00:18:00] already doing this, I feel like their approach was pretty innovative, which is why I wanted to share this.
But to just help determine who, when, and why they feature a hero, they really tap into their marketing team, SEO, social team, internal communication teams. It’s very collaborative, which is always great, no matter what you’re doing, but I feel like, especially in this space and in social media to kind of hear everybody’s strategy there and recommendations there to really highlight is great. But they create a variety of things. So written vignettes and photos, but they also have social first video clips, you know, which can be a bit more casual and longer form expert videos. And one thing I wanted to highlight here too, they had this like emotional, grateful patient video about his patient or this patient had an experience.
At Stony Brook’s Cancer Center and I could tell everybody was very impacted there in the room. It was very emotional. The patient was very emotional. So it was great that they had some, you know, examples included there too to kind of give people an idea to make you know, more of these social posts more impactful.
But really showcasing those patient outcomes, having everyday recognition programs is something they’re [00:19:00] doing to kind of tie into this strategy. But I really like that they also touched on the more challenging piece, a piece of this, which is getting your employees to really buy in and be willing to share this information.
And so a lot of times, you know, employees aren’t necessarily comfortable being on camera. You know, always that just limited in time piece to where, you know, maybe they can’t sit down to have this video created for a half day or whatever that looks like. And so they had some solutions there. You know, offering and creating a variety of content.
So whether they prefer to do a video or just take some images and do more of a written story and giving them also examples. So they know what to expect some. So from previous videos or anything like that to where they felt comfortable and, you know, kind of ready for whatever it was there or felt or to determine if they felt comfortable to do that.
You know, actually take care of that piece and help out there. Or also I think they kind of threw up this example as well, where one of their physicians didn’t necessarily know if she wanted to do this or was kind of feeling more uncomfortable, but they said, you know what let’s just try it out.
If you aren’t comfortable, we scrap it. But at least maybe we just give it a shot. And so I think that helped out knowing that like, hey, if it, maybe I’m not [00:20:00] feeling it as I’m actually doing it. We don’t necessarily have to move forward with it. And so throwing out some good options there.
Overall, I feel like it was a really great presentation, whith some really great, like actionable takeaways from it and a really great Q&A afterwards with marketers that I could tell were really focusing on like, okay, how do I implement this?
Jenny: Awesome. That’s awesome. It definitely sounds like a strong session.
And then last but not least, Shelby, talk to us about the session opportunities for child mental health within your integrated mark home strategy.
Shelby: Yes, talk about a session that was really special. Everyone that attended this session seem super passionate about children’s mental health. But Donna Teach, who’s the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Nationwide Children’s as well as Breanne Taylor, who’s the Administrative Director for Kids Mental Health Foundation, really talked about how as an organization at Nationwide they realized about 8 to 10 years ago, this looming crisis [00:21:00] that was on the rise. Right?
And they shared a lot of startling statistics about, you know, 1 in 5 kids having a mental health disorder before the age of 14 and how many teachers feel like they are ill equipped and how that impacts those students in the classroom.
And so. Nationwide Children’s ended up kind of making a five year commitment in their strategic plan that we want to focus on behavioral health. We see that this is a need not only in our community, but nationally. So let’s figure out how we kind of combat this. They wanted to partner with a national group that already existed to do this, but they couldn’t find one that was really focused on prevention and stigma breaking.
They found some that were very focused on kind of niche aspects. Specs, but not a little bit more higher level. So they talked to leadership and ended up deciding that, hey, this was something they were going to create. So they kind of started small with a local kind of call to action campaign. That was, [00:22:00] it was called on your on our sleeves and it was talking about how kids there’s a lot.
of stuff behind the surface that you can’t see that it’s not on their sleeves. The creative was really special. They put that out in the local marketplace and then COVID hit and they were like, oh, talk about a mental health crisis. Wow. What did we get ourselves into? So they had to pivot and really focus not only on kids, but the caregivers of the kids at this point. How do you help kids through this thing that we’re also trying to figure out ourselves? So they ended up pivoting by 2023 to a national cause organization called the Kids Mental Health Foundation. And they, guys, it’s been, it was so special to learn in this session, all of the partnerships that they’ve created and all of the material and content they’ve created.
And they’re able to have other organizations license some of that content and be able to co-brand and share it [00:23:00] to their patients and folks in their community. So they now have resources in all 50 states, and more than 18M people have interacted with their content. Huge. That rolled out in 2023, the National Cause Organization.
So, crazy stats of what they’ve been doing and the impact they’ve been able to have. So, spreading the word as much as I can to other children’s hospitals, organizations that want to get involved and partner with them. They’re doing some amazing work in that space.
Jenny: It’s a great case study about thinking about the bigger impact your content can have, right?
Because it’s one thing and it’s very impactful to create things for your local organization, but then licensing it for other hospitals that are like yours to leverage. Not only it gives you the monetization to then be able to perhaps create more content and feed that machine, but then also it spreads your impact.
So it’s a beautiful case study and a great job. Great job by the presenters. So, well, we had such a blast at this year’s SHSMD, we’re already looking forward [00:24:00] to 2025. I think it’s going to be in Dallas next October. So super jazzed about that for all of you that we saw again, this year, face to face our longtime friends.
It was great seeing you and it was fabulous meeting all of the first timers. Hopefully this recap was helpful if you’re thinking about attending SHSMD next year for the kinds of sessions that you can look forward to. And thanks for tuning in. Thanks for just being loyalists. It was really fun.
To be able to hear so many people approach us and say that they really look forward to each episode of this podcast and it made us feel really good that we’re doing a small part here at Hedy & Hopp to drive education throughout healthcare marketers across the country. So, thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy and we’ll see you soon.
Take care.
Epic is one of the leading electronic health record platforms, but did you know it can also help healthcare marketers gain deeper insights into their marketing efforts? In this episode, Jenny chats with Sam Seering, Product Manager of Cheers at Epic, about how healthcare organizations can use Epic’s CRM solution, Cheers, to better understand marketing impact and improve key performance indicators (KPIs).
What’s Discussed:
This conversation highlights the potential for healthcare systems to move beyond basic marketing metrics and understand the full ROI of their services through advanced technology.
Connect with Sam:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, and we are also the organization that produces this podcast. I am very excited to be here with you today to do an episode where we’re going to dig in and talk about how you can get into more in depth marketing measurements and KPIs and what that looks like.
So with me today, I have Sam Seering. He’s the product manager of their suite Cheers and I am very excited to dig in because Epic, as all of our listeners know is the gorilla of the electronic health record space, if you are a provider, a hospital system, many of you listening have Epic and use Epic.
And there’s lots of really cool ways that you can integrate your data into your marketing [00:01:00] tactics and get a better idea of how your marketing is actually impacting outcomes. So welcome, Sam. I’m excited to have you here today.
Sam: Thanks for having me, Jenny. Glad we were able finally to make it work and get me on the podcast.
Jenny: Yes, Sam and I have been emailing about this for, I think, two years.
Sam: Something about like that now.
Jenny: Yeah, so it’s great to have you. And I think there have been a lot of exciting developments on the Epic side in that time period. So I’m excited to bring the most up to date information to our listeners.
So I would love it to get started. If you could just give a little bit of an overview about what marketing measurement is possible what functionality and tools exist for our listeners that work at an organization that leverage Epic.
Sam: Absolutely, Jenny. So there’s a few different options, whether you’re using Epic, dedicated marketing automation capabilities through cheers, or maybe if you’re using other technologies, but you want to be able to [00:02:00] track data into Epic.
I think there’s pathways for marketers to take advantage of that. They might not be might not be aware of. So for as a baseline understanding for organizations that are just using Epic more holistically, not using the cheer suite of tools. Important thing that I would encourage you to start turning on is that if you are using online scheduling capabilities for your patient acquisition efforts, so showing your provider profiles and then linking to their available scheduling slots.
That component that goes on your website is able to ingest parameters coming from the website so that if you’re driving folks there from social media advertisings or display ads, you could actually understand for the folks that booked the appointment on that page, where did they actually come from?
And the nice piece is that information is then stamped on that new patient [00:03:00] record and that encounter. So that you can do back end analytics with that information to be able to tie that appointment schedule to your actual advertising work that you’re doing online. Now that’s something that I would encourage every organization to do because every organization has that as part of their toolbox.
When we start talking about, though, some of the more advanced capabilities that comes with Cheers campaigns, our marketing automation solution, this is where we can get that full end to end journey for that direct engagement. Of course, this is going to cover your more traditional marketing metrics.
Jenny, I think you did a great job of measuring this as part of your KPI 101 podcast that you did recently. And so you could include things like how many folks are you reaching out to? What communications are you sending them? Are they opening the emails or the MyChart messages? Are they clicking the links in the text message?
Your more traditional [00:04:00] marketing KPIs for your outreach campaigns. But because we then have an integrated longitudinal data set about the individuals that you’re engaging, we also can track what were outcomes that occurred before a conversion, a true conversion for the organization. And then what happened afterwards?
And I think an easy way to put this into context, Jenny, is with a real world example where an organization may be doing outreach as part of breast cancer screening initiatives, whether it’s part of a broader population health work, or maybe it’s a cancer awareness campaign that folks are doing.
What you would be able to do as a marketer is be able to understand not only how many folks did you send messages to that needed to get that breast cancer screening completed. But then also, how many folks scheduled a mammogram, how many folks completed it, and then finally, how many of those individuals had a clinical [00:05:00] diagnosis of a malignant neoplasm of breast because of that outreach.
And this is where marketers can start showing their true value to the organization and the clinical impact that their operations are having.
Jenny: Yeah. I mean, when I talk to, it’s one of the reasons I love being in healthcare marketing so much is whenever you go to conferences and talk to all of the marketing directors, managers, CMOs, whatever position they’re in for providers across the country, their number one passion is helping patients access care and helping their community and giving back, being able to access the number of people that actually were diagnosed or receive treatment as a result of your marketing campaign.
I mean, talk about making it real.
Sam: Oh yeah.
Jenny: Right. Right. I mean, that’s where it really becomes emotional. Yeah. So one of the things that I think is interesting whenever we were kind of doing some pre work about this, you’re breaking down all the different ways that marketing attribution can work within your platform is you talk about two different ways to create attribution, right?
So there’s different [00:06:00] ways that you can integrate the data to be able to get it. Analytics as an output. One you said was standard analytics. What was the data extraction suite? Can you talk a little bit about those different pathways so that way marketers could really understand based off of their Epic implementation of the package they have?
Kind of what, how they would access that?
Sam: Absolutely. So in some instances, there is going to be direct analytics that is out of the box ready to go. So when I was talking through each of those touch points of that mammography journey that we were that I was just chatting about, every one of those is a discrete metric that shows up on a dashboard that you can go and look at every single day and drill into the details.
We’ve had organizations that then pull out actual individuals that had that full journey. And then they reach out to them to say, Hey, would you be willing to be part of all their marketing initiatives that we have? So that they can help really promote that brand and that more broader [00:07:00] identity of the organization.
However, there’s definitely instances where you may want to merge the data that you’re seeing through the Epic capabilities with other data. I think a great example of this is if you are doing a search engine marketing campaign, being able to see how many impressions occurred and what was your actual spend then linked to the number of appointments.
And so that’s where, for my example earlier of scheduling an appointment online, you can take that data, which is extracted out to a SQL database, getting a little bit technical, but being able to take that data, and then marry that either in an Epic native warehouse solution, or if you want to bring that into another business intelligence tool, you would have that capability to do so.
So all of the information that we are calculating, both the appointments as well as the campaign activity, is then available in that raw format that you can then take and merge [00:08:00] that with other information as necessary.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of systems that we have worked with, for example, that have their own data warehouses and they have their own in house data teams.
And so knowing that data is extractable and able to live in their own warehouses is extremely helpful. And one thing that I’ll point out here for all of our listeners, when they know that I am the queen that doesn’t want to be the queen of data privacy of marketing, is that the good news about this is that Epic is an organization you already have a BAA with.
So all of this data sharing back and forth is absolutely allowed. And it is absolutely in the best interest of the patient. So just to make sure that we state that everything is done in a safe and compliant fashion.
Sam: Yes, absolutely. And we’re more than happy to talk with organizations that we’ve seen about best practices around that message personalization and segmentation because that’s a powerful thing of having your marketing technology natively integrated with your core electronic health record with an Epic.
That [00:09:00] you have a massive opportunity to get hyper personalized in your messaging. But because of that hyper personalization, you want to make sure that you’re doing it in an appropriate fashion and not exposing information through unsecure channels.
Jenny: Absolutely. Or coming across as creepy because you’re sharing it at an inappropriate time.
I think that’s a fine line that we all have to walk as marketers. How am I helpful, but not making, you know, somebody feel as though I know too much about them, which again, luckily, since hopefully you’ve fostered a positive relationship with your patient you have kind of the benefit of the doubt based on the channel that you’re using.
So. So that’s good. You know, one thing I’d love to hear about is you guys are continuously improving, developing new ways to be able to help marketers and the way that they are able to leverage this data and the marketing automation tools. What’s coming next? What can people look forward to?
Sam: Yeah, two things, Jenny, I think are particularly important for marketers to understand as they’re looking [00:10:00] to grow their native capabilities within Epic.
One is that for the marketing automation that’ll be going through the Cheers platform, we’ve recently added our first version to be able to associate direct revenue with the campaigns that you are running. So now not only just the clinical outcomes that are occurring, But what are the true transactions that are happening?
What’s being billed to insurance and being collected? What’s going through self pay so that you can start actually talking with your finance team and with your revenue cycle team about the broader business impact, not even just the clinical impact that you’re having as a marketer. And we’re really excited to continue to expand that capability in the coming years.
Of being able to tie additional types of revenue as well as bringing in third party data for things like contribution margin to even be able to improve those numbers further. The other piece that we’ve heard from the community [00:11:00] is it’s great. We know our initiatives, but we don’t always have capacity in order to actually get patients in for that care.
And I don’t want to have to know as a marketer that I’m going to go talk with the leader of this clinic to say, all right, now I need to turn on the spigot to increase the volume because they have unexpectedly available capacity. And so a piece that we’re going to be making available in November for organizations is what we’re calling capacity based marketing.
And this is as part of your outreach and as part of your configuration. You define what is the type of appointment that you’re actually asking individuals to schedule. And so, before the system starts sending out those messages, it checks to say, is there actual capacity and then find individuals that live near that location or work near that location so that we’re providing access at the points that are most [00:12:00] convenient to the patient.
I think everybody can has had one experience where they get an email from a health system and I get engaged. Maybe it’s allergy season. You should schedule a consultation with an allergist and you click through and then the next appointment is nine months in the future. It’s a terrible patient experience because you as a health system, you as a marketer, you had me engaged.
But then when I went there wasn’t actually anything for me to do. And so now I’m less likely to engage with your content in the future. And so that’s where we’re going to be incredibly excited for organizations to simply have this always on behind the scenes capability. So that only when there is available capacity, you then are sending out information to the most prioritized individuals so that you’re both filling the slots from a business perspective, but then also providing a great patient experience.
Jenny: Both of those updates, I personally am super jazzed about as a [00:13:00] marketer. I mean, really understanding the true revenue per appointment is the holy grail. Right. I mean, marketers forever have had to create just estimates or averages of what each appointment was likely worth. So that is a game changer.
And then we have manual capacity feedback loops with most of our clients for the different service line campaigns we’re running, where we, like you said, have a text exchange or a message exchange every Monday and turn campaigns on or off. So again, this is going to be a game changer. So it’s exciting that your organization prioritizes these two different areas. So awesome.
Well, Sam, thank you so much for coming on today. It was really a joy to have you. And I think this conversation was really important to have because we continue to talk to systems across the country that are still just now starting to get to basic marketing metrics to be able to understand the ROI for the service line.
Our brand level campaigns they’re doing. So helping them understand really what is possible, bigger picture [00:14:00] as they’re building out their, you know, three to four year strategic roadmap for their marketing organization, they know what’s possible with the technology that they leverage. So thank you for being on today.
It was a joy to have you.
Sam: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jenny.
Jenny: So I’m going to put Sam’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if you’d like to connect with him, you’ll have his information. And for listeners please like, and subscribe. We would love to hear feedback about what you’d like for us to cover in a future episode.
You can reach out to me directly, jenny@hedyandhopp. We always usually respond to requests by recording a show relatively quickly. If it’s a request, we usually prioritize that because that means it’s something people are really interested in. So would love to get your requests.
Otherwise, thanks for tuning in today. And we’ll look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
In this week’s episode, we’re giving you a sneak peek of what to expect from Hedy & Hopp at SHSMD Connections 2024, happening October 13-15 in Denver, CO. We’re excited to be part of this event again this year and share how you can connect with us and attend our sessions!
What We Cover:
Even if you can’t attend SHSMD, the H&H team will be gathering key takeaways from a variety of sessions we attend and sharing them in a post-conference podcast. Stay tuned for that episode!
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Friends. Hi, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m super excited to join you today to give you a sneak peek at SHSMD 2024.
Hedy & Hopp is going to be showing up in full force at the event. It’s one of our favorite events of the year. And we’re going to be participating in a couple of different ways. So I wanted to give you a little sneak peek of some of the topics we’ll be talking about and ways that you can engage with us.
And first, I will say, if you are not attending SHSMD this year, just know that like last year, the Hedy & Hopp team will be attending as many sessions as possible and aggregating some of the key insights and findings and doing a summary podcast after the show. So if you’re not attending [00:01:00] you will be missing out.
I will say it is fabulous to see colleagues and other people in the profession in person, but we will be doing a recap podcast after the session. So you will be able to understand some of the key topics, trends, and then also we’ll identify who some of the key conversational influencers were as far as individuals at different providers across the country that really shared some impactful topics.
So be sure to tune into that episode. It will drop later in October. So for those of you that are attending SHSMD, it is October 13th to 15th in Denver, Colorado, one of my favorite cities. And there are a few different ways that you can engage with Hedy & Hopp. So first our booth, our booth is booth number 1015, but I will say, just look for the joy and you’ll find us.
We should be pretty easy to spot based off of our booth strategy this year. And we are going to be showing up with some really fun giveaways. [00:02:00] Two of the most in demand pieces that will be making a reappearance this year are going to be our marketing happy friendship bracelets. We gave out over 200 of those on the first day and part of the second day last year.
They were a really hot commodity, so we’re bringing hundreds this year so we won’t run out. And we also are bringing some art prints from our 2024 Artist in Residence, Katie Mertz. We’re going to have a couple of different art prints to select from. Some of you that attend every year have been building a collection of each of our year’s art prints.
But even if this is your first year swing by and pick up a free art print, we’d love to send you home with a little bit of joy. But let’s get on and talk more about the educational topics we’ll be discussing. So we’re going to be speaking twice at SHSMD this year. First, we have a pre conference workshop that I’m super jazzed about.
So I’ll be speaking alongside our Director of Analytics and Technology, Mark Brandes. And our topic is, OK, But How Do I USE AI – AI 101. [00:03:00] Or AI 101. This is a pre conference workshop, so it’s on Sunday from 12:30 to 3pm. You have to buy a ticket to attend this session. The pre conference workshops are an additional add on fee, but I assure you this is going to be very worth the funds for those that sign up.
This is actually an evolution of a session that SHSMD asked us to do a couple of months ago. They had a fabulous AI series that talked about how to begin integrating or understanding AI into your organization. And we were the last session and the series, and we wanted to help make it practical for folks.
Like, how can you walk out of our session and feel like you can comfortably start using AI and kind of know what in the world you’re doing. And so, We took that hour long session and turned this into a two and a half hour long session, and it is going to be very hands on. It’s broken up into a couple of different segments.[00:04:00]
The first segment is going to be talking about all the different AI platforms that are online and highly used today. So we even had to update this from when we did it a couple of months ago because things are changing so fast, like ChatGPT Perplexity, Claude, what are all of the main platforms that are out there?
How do they work? Who built them? What are the differentiators? What are they good for compared to the other ones? So there’s a really great one on one session that kind of starts it. Then we talk a little bit about some AI use principles and some core values around using AI and how to integrate it into your marketing workflow.
So some key do’s and don’ts, some ways to be able to encourage others within your organization to use AI, but kind of make sure that you have reins around how it is used and deployed so that way you’ll feel really comfortable with it. And then the third and now most fun session. The one I’m most excited about or section of the session is we’re actually going to have folks pull up their phones and laptops, and we’re going to spend some time [00:05:00] using the different AI platforms.
So we have, I think, five different workshop exercises, and I promise this is so easy. You will not be intimidated. Even if you have never used ChatGPT before please come to this session with an open mind and know that we’re going to walk you through it in such a way that you’ll feel exposed to it in a way that you understand at least in the 10,000 foot view, what it is and how to use it. And if you are a bit of a person who is a little bit more comfortable with AI, and you began playing with it a little bit already on your own, you will also get things from this session because we’re going to be talking a little bit more about some advanced prompting.
And that you can do some tweaks to make to your prompts, then also helping you understand the different platforms and the benefits of some versus the other based off the kind of work that you’re doing. So again, that’s our pre conference workshop, super excited about it. And please, if you are tasked, either, if you are tasked with understanding AI and how to incorporate it [00:06:00] into your marketing team, or really, if you’re just a marketing professional, you don’t want to fall behind, this is an excellent session to attend, to be walked through in very layman’s terms with what AI is, why we think it’s can be applicable in certain marketing use cases, how not to use it.
So it really, you’ll walk out feeling much more confident in how to use it in a applicable way immediately after the session. So it should be pretty empowering. And then our actual concurrent session that we’re doing is a evolution of our 2023 very highly rated session on privacy. We received fabulous feedback.
We had a, it was standing room only last year. There was lots of fear and concern right around SHSMD last year about the new OCR bulletin and what in the world that meant for marketers. Well, we’re doing a 2024 edition. But this is going to be much more evolved than the 2023 because we’re going to be talking about, of course, [00:07:00] HIPAA, FTC, and state laws, which a lot has happened in the state law space.
We’re also going to talk about how you can understand what you need to be adhering to from a compliance perspective. We’re also going to talk about class action lawsuits and what’s happening with that in the healthcare space across the country. And then my most exciting part about it is we have one of our clients, a pair called Quartz Health Benefits.
They’re out of Wisconsin. Jenny Bradley. I know Jenny B and Jenny B, but Jenny Bradley is going to be joining us and she’s going to be talking about how they were able to successfully make their marketing analytics technology stack. And all of their tactics fully compliant and then still successfully have open enrollment last year while their entire marketing campaign was fully trackable, they were able to measure ROI just like they did before with the old one.
And she’s going to be extremely transparent in the way their marketing tech stack was modified, what tools they chose, why, what else they looked at. We’re going to talk about [00:08:00] how we, as their agency partner. Worked with them from a compliance checklist perspective, making sure we’re all on the same page around who’s doing what how tactics needed to change.
So this is going to be a really educational session for those that still, I hope nobody’s still at the stage where you don’t know about compliance, right? It’s been so highly talked about in our space. So I don’t assume anybody is there, but if you’re still at that stage where you’re like, maybe you haven’t fully modified your tech stack where you feel comfortable that you’re fully compliant, or maybe you’re still having internal conversations around how to make sure measurement ROI tracking is still in a good place.
As you’re making that final conversion. This is a great session to attend. You will get an update on exactly what’s happening in the compliance landscape. What’s happening with the national privacy law and when that may hit and what that will mean for folks in health care. And it will just be a great way to go into you know, [00:09:00] the rest of your calendar year and then into 2025 really feeling like you have a handle again on compliance and are less likely to be surprised by something that may be coming up in your backyard or something from a national perspective.
So again, we are super excited about SHSMD. We’re making final preparations right now for all of the team members that are attending with Hedy & Hopp. Please come by and see us. We really cherish all the relationships that we make in person. I have a long list of folks I’m excited to give hugs to this year when I see them again in person.
So again, we are going to be at booth 1015, but look for the joy and you’ll find us and I hope we run out of friendship bracelets before the end of day three. So please swing by, grab some for yourself. And maybe for team members back home that weren’t able to come to the session and or to the conference and really look forward to either seeing you again or meeting you for the first time.
So thank you again for joining us on today’s [00:10:00] episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. Please subscribe and follow us on your preferred platform tool whatever app you use Spotify, Audible, whatever subscribe. So that way you’ll get our weekly podcasts as they are released.
And please send me a note if you have a topic, you’d like for us to cover at jenny@hedyandhopp.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
Are you gearing up for a conference this fall or spring? Our team at Hedy & Hopp is deep into conference prep, and we thought it would be useful to share some insights on how you can better prepare and make the most of your attendance. Here are five solid tips to help you walk away with everything you need.
Bonus Tip: When returning to the office, hold a lunch and learn session with your team to share key takeaways from the event. It’s a great way to engage your team and strengthen your case for next year’s conference budget.
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am the CEO and founder here at Hedy & Hopp. We are a full service and fully healthcare marketing agency, and we are the creators and producers of this show. I am excited to come to do to you today with a topic that my team and I from the heavy marketing and sales perspective, are knee-deep in conference prep.
So I thought it could be useful for those of you attending a conference this fall or even next spring for me to do a little bit of behind the scenes view on some tips to better prepare for a conference and really maximize your attendance at a conference. So this is for providers and if you are a vendor, keep on scrolling.
These tips aren’t for you. But if you are a provider or payor and you’re attending an event this fall or winter or next spring, hopefully this will give you five really solid [00:01:00] tips to make sure that you get everything that you need out of this event and really maximize the opportunity. So first of all, The tip number one is to develop your goals and really make sure you know why you’re going to this event and what success looks like.
There could be a couple of different kinds of goals that you’re aiming for. First could be to network. Maybe you’re going and you want to come back with a variety of folks in similar non competitive positions like yours across the country. So you have kind of a think tank or a mastermind group that you can rely on and start building those relationships to experience share.
Maybe you’re wanting to learn. Maybe you want to have a great agenda that you’re going to be going to all of these key speaking sessions and you want to walk away with some key insights and some areas of marketing that perhaps you don’t feel as comfortable or confident in, or maybe it’s your focus for the upcoming year.
Maybe your goal is to speak next year and you want to attend sessions to [00:02:00] see how folks are doing it. Maybe use the opportunity to get some ideas for what your topics could be for next year and some key ways that you want to show up as a speaker or presenter next year. And finally, maybe you’re going to find a vendor or a couple of vendor options.
Maybe you’re looking for a new marketing agency or an email marketing vendor or something like that. And that could be a key take away for you, whatever it is, make sure you spend a moment and actually write this down. Here at Hedy & Hopp, we have a, we’re very organized, but we have a folder for each conference we go to, and there’s lots of documents inside.
One of them is our event goals. Why are we going to this particular event? How is it different from other events? We’re going to, and when we get back from the event or a month or two months after the event, what did success look like? And did we achieve that? So, yeah. Absolutely write it down and hold yourself accountable next.
And this is one of my key secrets to attending events. And I think it [00:03:00] really goes to one of the reasons why events are so successful. One of the many reasons that why events are so successful for Hedy & Hopp is spend time to develop your own personal brand. Visual is one of the key things, but it also could be in the way that you show up.
It can be the way that you make people feel there’s lots of different ways that you can develop and curate a personal brand, but I strongly recommend that a visual brand is part of that formula for Hedy & Hopp. My brand is a really bright blazer, pink, purple, something with the Hedy & Hopp colors, always have really awesome kicks on.
So Jordan 4s, whatever. We have some really cool ones for this year. I’m excited to wear next month for our first fall event. And then for me, I always have, handmade really bright earrings. That is my formula. It allows people to see me, remember me. And then when they see me later in the event or at a networking event at the event, or even at the next event, the next month, [00:04:00] they recognize it’s me.
The Hedy & Hopp team will show up at an event in November after going to one in October and people will say, Oh, Hedy & Hopp.. I know you guys, I recognize those blazers. So please don’t copy after us that shouldn’t be your brand. But for example, in 2021, there was a woman and she lives rent free in my brain because she was wearing three and a half inch studded, like sparkly stilettos, the entire conference. That was her brand. And she lives rent free in my brain because this was right after COVID where nobody wore heels. And this boss lady comes out wearing these killer shoes. They were gorgeous. I don’t know how she did it.
I couldn’t do it for the entire event, but that was part of her visual brand. When I saw her anywhere, I knew it was her. Other people may be. One of my good friends she’s a neutrals person. So it’s all neutrals hair, very clean and like slick back a little bit. And for her, it’s more, her approach is how she makes people feel during the event.
So the visual compliments it, but there’s more components to it. So I [00:05:00] know this sounds extra, but if you are wanting to accomplish your goals at the event, and part of it includes anything around your own personal branding or growth, please take a minute to do it. For three tip number three pre event, please don’t show up to an event without knowing what sessions you want to go to and which speakers you want to tune into.
This will not take long. I promise. Set aside a couple of lunch hours or a couple of hours in a block of time in an afternoon and just knock it out. Every conference you go to will publish the sessions in advance, along with the speakers. Some platforms for conferences have the ability to actually pre select the sessions so it can be in a curated agenda.
For others, you could create a separate document where you list out your tentative agenda, but go in with a purpose. And for this, you want to look at a couple of things. Number one, what topics do you want to learn about? Make sure that you attend all the sessions that are topical that you’re interested in.
And number two, what speakers do you want to hear from other organizations like yours presenting at [00:06:00] the conference? Are there vendors you’ve been thinking about calling up and talking about a potential partnership or scope of work with attend their session and see how they present themselves.
There’s lots of different reasons why you’d select your different agenda and craft it. And again, that goes back to what your conference goals are tip number one, but spend some time crafting it and then key tip. Any speakers you’re going to see, go find them on LinkedIn, connect with them and say, really excited for your session at this conference next month, next week, whatever.
I look forward to seeing you speak. That is the number one way to kind of warm up that relationship, especially if it’s somebody that you would like to introduce yourself to at the event, and you would like to get to know them and build a relationship. Do it. Every single person that goes to these events wants to meet people.
Every single person does. There is nobody going to these events that thinks they’re too good to network or that they’re too busy to network. That’s the point of attending these events. So doing your homework and determining who you would like to meet puts you in the driver’s seat of that and helps [00:07:00] you be more successful.
Which goes directly into my next point number four, never eat or sit alone. So if you created and crafted your list of the kinds of organizations that are people for the organizations that you want to meet, that can be helpful. You can create a VIP list of people that you want to scan and look out for at lunches or at breakouts to perhaps introduce yourself to them or whatever.
But even if you don’t see anybody or perhaps it’s like in the mid afternoon and it’s a coffee break and you’re just kind of mentally tanked, don’t have much left in it for networking, still sit by somebody. Cause I assure you that other person’s feeling the exact same way, but you still could develop a meaningful relationship with just a five minute conversation or the start of a relationship.
I’ve had lots of those situations where part of me just wanted to like, go sit outside in the conference and get some fresh air. And every time I chose to stay inside and sit down next to someone, whether it was a payor, provider, another vendor, whatever it resulted in a fun, delightful conversation that actually gave me a little bit more energy going [00:08:00] into the last couple of sessions.
And then the last event or the last tip for events tip number five is post event follow up. So what I do when I meet somebody, my personal tip is I always have a pen with me. And I write on the back of their business card. Now this is sometimes controversial. Sometimes people think business cards are sacred and you don’t write on them.
I’m not one of those people. For me, the business card gets added value whenever I write key notes or conversation points on it. So it’s your decision if you want to do it that way, or maybe keep a pack of sticky notes next to you that you would hear to it. Your choice. But I immediately write either when I’m with that person or immediately whenever we’ve parted ways, what we talked about and what I owe them as a follow up.
So often I’ll say, oh my gosh, we had a great podcast episode on that. Let me send that to you because that could give you some ideas about ways to think about how to tackle that problem. Or, oh, I know a provider that actually is focusing on that service line for growth right now as well. Let me introduce y’all because you’re not in competitive spaces.
I think you could have some really great [00:09:00] conversations about it. Whatever promises you made. Do it. And from a timing perspective, don’t do it that day. Don’t do it a couple of days after the event. Give people a little bit of breathing room and then send the follow up because people are inundated returning from conferences.
Let’s say the conference is Monday, Tuesday. Usually I would wait until the following Tuesday to actually send that introduction or whatever. Sometimes I send a note later in the week of the conference and just say, it was so great meeting you. I have it on right to do early next week to do this.
Want to let you know, I didn’t forget, but I’m not going to inundate you as you’re catching up from the conference. So, doing all of this, it may feel like it is burdensome or it’s extra. But I assure you, it will absolutely make sure that you’re getting the most out of the event for both your organization and your own personal brand.
And I know a lot of folks are still kind of like fighting their way to conferences. They’re having to really make the case for why the budget [00:10:00] to go to the event makes sense or why getting the time off from the day to go to the event makes sense. And if you were one of the lucky people that were able to win that fight, please take these five tips to heart and leverage them because it will really allow you to show your boss or a decision maker or whatever that you walked away with educational content of value, connections of value, etc.
One bonus step. One other thing that I will add is that if you are a marketer within an organization, one of the key things that I recommend you do is take notes about some of the key learnings and offer to do just a lunch and learn for the rest of your marketing organization that wasn’t able to attend and give them some of the key learnings, some of the key talking points, some of the key things that you found interesting, maybe case studies or organizations that are doing cool things that are like yours that they may find interesting that will absolutely help you with securing the budget for next year if you take that proactive approach and put something [00:11:00] like that together.
So thank you for tuning in today. We are super excited about the fall conferences. If you are attending, please come by the Hedy & Hopp booth and say, hi. I’m speaking at both SHSMD and HCIC this fall, our booth is going to be amazing.
We have art we’re going to be handing out. We’re going to have friendship bracelets again this year and lots of other fun surprises. So. If you’re attending either of those events, please come and see us. And if you’re attending another event that you think we should be at this fall, shoot me a note, we’re trying to fine tune our conference schedule for the upcoming year and would love to learn about events that are must attend.
Thank you for tuning in for today’s episode. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week. See you next week on a fresh episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
In this week’s episode, we’re joined by Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health, who brings nearly nine years of experience at the organization and a deep understanding of the evolving healthcare marketing landscape. We dive into a critical challenge many marketers face today: demand for healthcare services sometimes exceeds supply, requiring a strategic shift.
Key Discussion Points:
Connect with Jeremy:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And today I am super excited to have a special guest on today. We have Jeremy Rogers.
He is the Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health. Welcome Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, Jenny. Happy to be here.
Jenny: Yeah. So I’m really jazzed to have you on today. I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for some time and really respect the work that you’ve done. You have been at Indiana University Health for almost nine years.
So you’ve been through and seen a lot of the shifts in healthcare marketing and the different ways marketers have had to pivot as far as digital becoming more important and the privacy becoming more important. And what I’m excited to chat about with you today is a lot of my podcast episodes have been around the [00:01:00] conversation of driving patient demand, but sometimes demand far exceeds supply.
And so marketing’s role in that case really shifts. We’re still very important in the conversation, but it isn’t about driving patients. So I’d love to start off this podcast, just getting a little bit of insight from you about what are you seeing with that shift? How is that impacting you and your role within your organization?
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s a super important topic. You know, I think you’re spot on. I mean, I can think back, you know, my career here at IU health is basically split in half by the pandemic thinking back in the good old days, pre COVID. The top of the funnel was wide open. Everyone was focused on acquiring net new patients.
You know, it’s low acuity, primary care, urgent care, fill the funnel, you get downstream revenue. That’s the classical model. Well, the reality is in this post pandemic world, it’s super duper uneven. I mean there are many parts of the country where access and you can [00:02:00] define access many different ways.
I don’t want to quibble over that. But it takes a lot longer for a patient to receive care today than it did, say, four or five plus years ago. And so, the impact of that, the trickle down of that, I think is being felt in different waves across the country. You know, a lot of our work back in the day was heavily focused on primary care.
That was the quote unquote loss leader. You attract a patient, you get your hooks into them, you build loyalty, you get a referral, they have a procedure, a screening, what have you, and then magic happens from there. Well, the reality is today, for a typical primary care provider, you may not be able to get in for two weeks if you are lucky.
And so in terms of what that does with the customer journey, the way people come in and out, the way people are leveraging urgent care or quick care or virtual care. As proxies or alternatives [00:03:00] to receiving care and the impact that has on their lifetime value their brand affinity for a health system is just totally different now than it was.
So again, super duper important topic.
Jenny: Absolutely. So what is marketing’s role in this new ecosystem? Right? Like the brand hat, we have the brand hat, we have the communications hat, the digital hat, technology, we have all these hats we’re supposed to wear. What is our day to day look like when this is the scenario?
Jeremy: Yeah, I wish I had an easy answer for that. I do not. I’m sure people much smarter than me have figured it out. I think the short answer is it depends on who you are, where you’re at. And I think it, it varies day by day. I believe, you know, a progressive marketer nowadays is really reevaluating the value they add in terms of the pay, you know, how are they representing the patient, representing their organization.
At the core, a marketer should be the voice of the customer. Like, what are you representing there [00:04:00] internally? So in terms of the collaborations we are having across your systems, whether it’s operationally medical groups you’ve got to be at the table speaking up about what customers expectations are, because that’s what pains me the most is even in my own family.
There are people who just don’t understand. You know, if you have to go to an emergency department today, it’s not a great experience. You’re oftentimes waiting for hours and hours. And I don’t think a lot of consumers around our country have embraced that similar with like primary care. I mean, I told my own mom a few days ago, you may want to book your wellness visit a little bit earlier this year, because it’s going to take you longer.
Like I can tell you personally, I’ve got one booked out over a year from now because I know you just can’t get in like you used to. So just the small things and big things like that’s where I think marketers have to play.
Jenny: Oh, Jeremy. First of all, I do too. I book my annual when I’m at my annual. So I aligned with you because I understand how the world works now.
Jeremy: Very smart. Yes. [00:05:00]
Jenny: But so if we’re thinking about that, then it’s more about you know, loyalty, current customer engagement, proactive communication about service line availability, et cetera. So then building relationships with other teams within your organization is super important. What are some of the departments within your organizations that you’ve become good friends with?
Jeremy: Yeah, so I would say almost all of them is the reality and maybe not good friends, but like bigger edging, like we’re frenemies maybe potentially but heavy on the operations access side and it depends on how the different orgs are structured, but folks who run your scheduling teams, whether it’s the call center or the front desk, you’ve got to be plugged in with them.
In our case, we have a very strong medical group presence. The medical group is heavily involved in that. They’re the ones who are handling patient throughput, even new provider recruitment, because you think about the supply demand piece, you got to be involved there too. All the way down to registration, like what is the, you know, look across the [00:06:00] customer journey.
It’s not just the care continuum, it’s the pre and post piece. You’ve got to be plugged in across that entire continuum.
Jenny: Yep. Absolutely. I’m going to ask a question that may be controversial for some folks. What’s your thought about working from home when you’re needing to actually develop friendships?
Because I’ll tell you a lot of our clients, we work with systems across the country. A lot of them are still working from home. We have some folks that maybe they go in a day or two a week. I mean, how realistic is it to be able to really work from home primarily or exclusively and then also still be developing these relationships?
Jeremy: No, I’m with you. I’m not a purist. I think it’s a bit of both. I think in my experience, the average academic health system in our country is still fairly conservative. You’ve got a lot of people, whether it’s leadership or operational people, they’ve been in person. Forever. They never stopped being in person.
So I think we, you have to show up where they’re at. So, you know, for example, my team, most of my [00:07:00] team is largely hybrid. They’re not in person very often. Me personally, I’m on average in the office maybe four days per week because I want to be able to bump into those leaders in the hallway, the break room in the elevator.
But that’s just my style. I think you have to kind of, you know, have a pace and show up where people are at basically.
Jenny: I completely agree with you. I definitely think that’s really important to building that community where people are wanting to collaborate and work together. So if I were a listener were a marketer in a hospital system, and they’ve been really primarily focused on driving patient volumes, and they’re starting to see maybe they need to stop driving volumes because appointments are too far booked out, and they haven’t yet developed these relationships, and they don’t really understand what scheduling looks like.
Do you have a couple of tips or starting points for them with some activities that they could do to kind of start wrapping their arms around what their own situation [00:08:00] is within their system?
Jeremy: Sure. So I think if they don’t already get to know the people who produce the reports, like get into the data because they’re there.
I guarantee you, if you don’t have it already, there’s some people in your organization who have the data that would show you. They may look at things like next available or median lag, whatever the measure your system uses to quantify access. You need to understand that. That’s the first step. Once you get there, it’s really drilling into it because, you know, I mentioned earlier, it’s hot and cold, right?
I guarantee you, you still have some access. There are probably some service lines or individual services where you have decent access. It may not be the ones where you want them to be. They may not be super strategic, but you’ve got to know, like, what is the current state? Once you get that, then what is your planning cycle?
Whether it’s brand planning or service line planning. You probably want to focus your time, energy and resources on those areas where you have [00:09:00] a good shot at getting a patient in within a reasonable expectation. You probably want to double down in those areas. And I think conferences I’ve been to in recent months, I still hear people talking too much about casting a broad net.
I worry people are wasting their time. They’re wasting their money and their finite resources on promotion or campaigns or just efforts that don’t have a chance in heck of actually resulting in a booked appointment because there just isn’t access. I see too much of that.
Jenny: Yeah, I, that’s an excellent point.
I mean, one of our best practices as an agency is whenever we are running patient acquisition campaigns, there’s a multi multiple times a week, we’re talking about available appointments and what locations do we need to pause? What locations can we double down on budget? So if you as an organization either manage your own media or have a third party, definitely incorporating something basic like that as a starting point can make sure that your spend is allocated appropriately.
Jeremy: Because most people probably [00:10:00] don’t have bigger budgets now. So you want to make sure you’re being smarter with the money you have. And this is a really good way to do it.
Jenny: Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, this has been so helpful. And I think really gives folks an alternative way to think about their role as marketers in the shifting landscape.
So thank you for your time today. I’ll be putting Jeremy’s LinkedIn link in the show notes. So if you want to connect with him and ask any follow up questions that will be available. Otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in today. Be sure to like, and subscribe, and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy.
Thanks, friends.
In this episode, Miranda Ochsner, Director of Paid Media at Hedy & Hopp, joins Jenny to discuss how to determine the optimal media mix for your organization. At H&H, we frequently work with clients across a wide range of budgets—from under $10,000 to over $1,000,000. Our recommendations for media channels vary depending on several factors, and Miranda breaks down the key considerations and decision-making processes involved.
Key Topics Discussed:
Connect with Miranda:
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If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host, and I’m also the CEO at Hedy & Hopp. We’re a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And I’m super jazzed today to have our very own Miranda Oschner with us. She is the Director of Paid Media here at Hedy & Hopp. Welcome Miranda.
Miranda: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Jenny: Yeah, so I’m excited to have you on today because we have a really robust media capability here at Hedy & Hopp, and so that means we’re having conversations with organizations every day, every other day about what they’re perfect media mix looks like right.
And sometimes we talk with folks who have smaller budgets, say under ten thousand a month to spend and some of our clients have over a million dollars a month to spend. And so our recommendations vary wildly based off of the budget size, as well as [00:01:00] some other considerations. So. I first want to set a disclaimer that for anyone listening, this is not a roadmap of what your individual media plan should look like.
Right? Like, do not copy paste the things we’re talking about today. I just really wanted to talk about some different considerations and the decision matrix we use whenever we’re putting together different channels. So, Miranda, I would love it if you could start by just giving us an understanding of first, budget size, right?
If somebody has a smaller budget versus a super large budget, how does that change your approach to determining the media mix?
Miranda: Yeah. Great question. So I mean, budget’s really going to drive from a, you know, from a channel recommendation, you know what we’re pushing forward with, right? If it’s a 10K a month budget versus a million dollar, that’s gonna vary what that recommendation looks like.
You know, we’re not gonna wanna stretch $10,000 a month over five different channels and three different tactics in each one. ’cause you, you know, you really wanna invest in those channels that are gonna work best. But if you’re looking [00:02:00] at a million dollar a month spend. You’re going to be looking at a lot of different channels, but it’s also going to come down to what the, you know, what the core goals are, you know, is a goal awareness, or is it going to be a deep funnel conversion that we’re, you know, that we’re looking at?
And that’s really how, where we start to make those recommendations.
Jenny: That’s a great point. Let’s talk about let’s start with deep funnel. You know, really that patient or consumer acquisition tactics. I mean, one of the things that whenever I’m starting a conversation with folks and then I loop y’all in the next round to have those deeper, more robust conversations is talking about.
I call it like the media funnel, right? At the very bottom of the funnel is tactics where people are actively and proactively trying to find what you’re offering, whether it is a service line offering an insurance plan that they are in need of purchasing today, they are proactively finding it. So.
What are some of the things that you start with? Whenever we’re more that lower in the funnel where people are proactively researching solutions.
Miranda: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you know, before we make any kind of channel [00:03:00] recommendation, we’re always wanting to look at what that research is, whether it’s the patient side or the HCI side.
We really want to look at it from a media consumption standpoint, but then we’re also looking at it from a social listening standpoint, as well as, you know, doing our keyword research. Like, what are folks searching? Are there discrepancies between this county versus that county? And really, truly understanding the, you know, the differences between all of the different channels of where they’re really spending their time.
So we can pinpoint what keywords do we want to bid on, you know, put a little bit more behind when we bid or what’s an area we really probably should avoid from paid search that we’re not seeing. So, you know, seeing any attraction from so really understanding the nuances from the research standpoint are going to fuel that recommendation.
You know, if we’re deep funnel and they are actively looking. I mean, we’re always going to be looking at it from a paid search component. And again, budgets going to come down to how we split that up, whether it’s more branded focused words or more service line focused words and what kind of reach we’re looking at specific on the location.
Are we looking [00:04:00] at a 10 mile radius around a facility? Are we looking around a hundred miles? So it all really plays into that on what that, that core goal is, but also how, you know, how the patient and target audience is engaging with media and they’re trying to understand their steps, right.
But also maintaining their privacy at the same time.
Jenny: Yeah, great point. So I have conversations often with folks who have really relied primarily on digital and they’re wanting to kind of dip their toe into the more traditional like radio billboards, et cetera. Is there a general budget range or a tier where you start having the team start exploring more traditional tactics and channels to be able to add to the strategy or how do you make that consideration of when it’s time or appropriate to do that?
Miranda: Yeah, that’s a tricky question, Jenny. Traditional is very expensive as we know especially right now it’s, you know, it’s political season and we are seeing traditional costs I think they’re about 45 to 50 [00:05:00] percent higher than they normally are, which is just crazy. It’s crazy. You know, so when we’re looking at it from, does this make sense for the best use of our funds in this given moment, we have to take all of that into consideration.
You know, the Olympics push prices up a little bit and you know what, not in political, you know, got to keep all of those things, but also the seasonality, like holiday time, not a great time to be on TV because like there’s so much going on with the holiday. So really, truly understanding what the best weeks are, what the best quarters are to understand how to make that recommendation.
But also, you know, depending on the market you’re in, right? For example, Springfield, Missouri might be very different than Austin, Texas, or Atlanta. It’s really dependent on the geography size as well as what you can do from a budget standpoint. You know, since we’re in St. Louis, to use that as an example, out of home boards for one four week cycle can go anywhere from 4, 000 for a month to, you know, [00:06:00] 10 a month.
So it’s like, is that the best use of our funds? If we are trying to do a lower funnel conversion metric from a KPI standpoint, we probably shouldn’t invest 80,000 in billboards straight out the gate. Let’s really focus on what that core goal is and then build upon that.
Jenny: Absolutely. And an interesting thing that we’ve seen over like the five last five ish years or so is that kind of in between, right, with like connected TV and then digital radio, where you’re kind of tiptoeing into that traditional space, but it’s still managed digitally and some ways you have more flexibility with budget.
So how do you take that into consideration? Is that market based? Is that demographic based? How is that incorporated?
MIranda: You know, it’s all of the above. We really, you know, when you’re looking at it from a digital standpoint we still have the luxury of looking at it from a traditional viewpoint of, okay, we can understand what these kind of come back is from like a ratings.
And then we can compare it to, you know, what we’re looking at it from a traditional, but then we look at it from a CPM [00:07:00] standpoint versus how we’re looking at TV, which is a cost per point standpoint. So really trying to understand those nuances. You know, at the end of the day, if the goal is just mass awareness, we’re going to focus on in a very efficient CPM.
So that’s really how we want to buy any kind of digital component. So really understanding, you know, how we can buy those different platforms. Sometimes we can go direct to platforms, whether you know, it’s a Spotify or a Pandora or a Hulu. We can go to them direct, but we also have these capabilities to kind of buy inventory across all of them based on who the audience is.
And it’s not so much if you’re a female living in St. Louis or a female living in New York, it’s more of like, they’re a mom and we can tell by their use they’ve got two children who are actively in St. Louis with kids in sports or extracurriculars and really hone in on who they are without digging too much into that PHI really keeping that we have to stay HIPAA compliant, right?
So, there are ways that we’re working with these partners to [00:08:00] make sure we’re utilizing those tactics at an efficient cost while remaining compliant. And then we’re on the channels that they’re on and not where we think they’re at. Right? Like 10, 15, 20 years ago, it was like, we have to be on this station or on, you know, in this print publication or this billboard, because that’s where everyone drives by that.
And it’s like, that’s great. Now we can track all this stuff. And it’s more about where the person actually is, not where we think they are.
Jenny: Yeah, I love that. I think all of us healthcare marketers kind of collectively mourned the fact that retargeting is really taken away from us as a target and we’re still mourning it.
Right. But I think you bring up a great point that you still can do a lot of smart demographic and sociographic targeting within these platforms based off the data that they have. They have, so it’s not your data. It’s the data that they have, and even in platform retargeting is still allowed. So for example, if somebody interacts with your ad on Facebook, you can still retarget them on Facebook within face the Facebook ecosystem.
You’re not incorporating your own site or your own [00:09:00] data. So again, like a smart media team can create a platform, a strategy that doesn’t incorporate that. Right. In a compliant fashion.
Miranda: Yes, 100%. You have to be strategic. You know, there the digital space is changing every day. I think I just saw like two new updates on Google and I’m like, oh gosh, I mean, it’s just constantly changing.
So keeping, you know, keeping aligned with all of those changes in addition to making sure we’re staying compliant is a constant thing that this team is educating themselves on. Like, you know, there, there are really Minor things that, you know, larger agencies that aren’t healthcare focused are like, oh, that’s no big deal where we’re over here.
Like that’s a big deal.
Jenny: Exactly. Sometimes it’s like, oh my gosh, a big enough deal that we can’t use this partner anymore. Right. Totally shift because what they’re doing, you know, it could get our client into legal trouble. And so definitely having healthcare expertise and understanding all the privacy stuff is really important.
MIranda: Yeah. Yeah. It’s. It’s a constant shift in how you have to think and whatnot. And it’s at the same time, it also makes your [00:10:00] internal teams be a little bit more strategic and ask a little bit deeper questions and, you know, really focus on that persona building of what that patient looks like. So it makes, you know, it makes those internal conversations more strategic, but also having those conversations with your potential clients or your client of, hey, this is how we have to look at it.
Let’s think about how we approach this or this goal for this audience instead of just like, Everyone. So really, it really gives you an opportunity to be super strategic and putting that puzzle together.
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. Last question I have for you is when we’re thinking about again, like the decision maker matrix, and you were talking about this a little bit, but I’d love just a little bit more detail.
Like we have clients come to us and they say like, oh, all of our patients are rural. So we only want to do traditional, we don’t want to do digital at all, or all of our clients, all of our you know, patients for this service line are all over the age of 65. So we only want to do X tactic. So how do you push back with data and research to really make sure that we are reaching them where they are not where people assume [00:11:00] that they are?
MIranda: Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s a great question. Cause every audience is different. Different, right? Like at the end of the day, we have a lot in common, you know, but we also have a lot of differences and it’s, we’re not going to have the same journey. And it’s the same with, you know, the audience spaces of an 18 to 34 or 35 to 54 or 65 plus, there are so many different experiences between those different age groups and individual ages that it can’t just be a one size fits all model, you know, through research, it’s like, we’re looking okay.
You know, the 40 plus really vibes with Facebook really well. And then it’s like, oh, they kind of dabble in Instagram and they kind of dabble in TikTok. But really like, we know when we’re laying out our budgeting, we have to give a little bit extra certain audiences in that channel versus another. So as we’re laying out those strategies, we’re constantly looking at how our audiences are indexing with the different channels, and we’re looking at it from a heavy consumption tact, you know, a heavy consumption approach to very light, minimal to none. So really understanding [00:12:00] how and when they’re consuming media. Also, how many times are they reading the newspaper? We can get that, you know, we can get that granular through our research tools and through different platforms that really kind of fuel those conversations.
Like. We hear you, but let’s chat about what we found and see where we go from there. Just, you always have to have that research to back those conversations because if not, you’re just making assumptions and nobody wants assumptions.
Jenny: Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Miranda. This was really helpful and insightful.
And I hope for all of our listeners, if you’re in the middle of media planning, or if you’re really making considerations about perhaps shaking your world upside down and revisiting the way that you’re structured, give us a shout. We’d love to have a conversation with you. Happy to hop on a complimentary hour long call and just share some thoughts and insights around what we’re seeing working right now both in the provider and payer space, regardless of your budget size. You can shoot me an email jenny@hedyandhopp. And again, thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode, please like, and subscribe, and we will see you on a [00:13:00] future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Have a great day, friends.
In this podcast episode, we cover the essentials for dashboards. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the terminology, technologies, and the need to demonstrate ROI when developing your first dashboard for your healthcare organization, you’re not alone. Our goal is to set a baseline of understanding so that when you tackle yours, you’ll know what to look out for and the right questions to ask.
What We Cover:
Questions to Consider:
This episode is designed for those just starting to dip their toes into dashboards. Whether you’re working with an in-house team or an agency, these insights will help with the development of your dashboard.
Related Patient Privacy Podcast Episodes:
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of we are marketing happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We are a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency and our goal is to bring the joy to your healthcare marketing work. I’m here today to chat a little bit about dashboards.
I’m going to call this episode Dashboards 101. Dashboarding and reporting can be extremely overwhelming to folks in the healthcare marketing space, especially for folks that come from more traditional think like communications or PR background. Whenever they’re beginning to try to show the ROI of the marketing campaigns for the first time, it can be very overwhelming.
There’s lots of different terminology that floats around. There’s lots of different platforms and technology that you can take into consideration when you’re moving into the dashboard or reporting space. And so I want to do just a little bit of a one on one episode today and kind of give you some things to think about, hopefully set a baseline of [00:01:00] understanding.
That way, whenever you go to tackle this project yourself within your organization, you’ll have a better understanding of what to look out for and the questions to ask. So let’s get started. I want to start super, super high level and talk just a little bit about terminology. We often see terminology like dashboards and reports kind of be thrown around interchangeably and I want to start out just by giving a little bit of a definition.
So a dashboard is usually if you think about like the dashboard on your car, it’s real time. It’s providing real time feedback and information about what’s happening, whether it’s how fast you’re going or how much gas you have left left in your tank.
It’s real information being fed to you in real time, whereas a report is really a snapshot in time. It could be generated from the dashboard or it could be manually created using other data sources. But usually that would be, let’s say right now it is August. Let’s say we’re putting together a [00:02:00] July campaign performance report that is a snapshot in time, looking exactly at those date ranges and really talking about performance, whereas the dashboard is more real time information.
And so, first of all, that’s high level, the difference between those two terminologies. As you’re starting to think about dashboarding and reporting first of all, don’t forget about patient privacy and all the different things you need to do to potentially clean up your data feeds and analytics tools.
We have lots of great episodes about that, so I’m not going to talk about that at all. We’ll link to some episodes in the show notes you can go listen to. But I do want to stress that everything we’re talking about today is absolutely possible to continue doing while keeping patient privacy, top of mind, so you can implement all the best practices, remove all the potential PHI or even just personally identifiable information from the data feeds.
And you still can get this level of granularity we’re going to talk about today. So let’s just assume that you’re moving forward with patient privacy handled. So if you’re going to start [00:03:00] building a dashboard for the first time, our organization always recommends when we go through with our clients, what we call a measurement plan.
So it sounds simple, right? Like, of course we know what we want to measure. It’s a campaign. We want to measure how many clicks we get. We want to measure how many form submissions or phone calls we get, but it actually can be a lot more complex than that because that may be the first instinct. About what you want to report on.
But if you take a step back and what we do with all of our clients is we say, okay, maybe that surface level information is what you want to know today. But think about at the end of the month, what do you have to report up to your leadership team? What would you love to be able to report to your board?
So it’s almost a wishlist of performance metrics of the information you would love to have at your fingertips to be able to showcase how well your campaigns or your work in the marketing space are doing. And so what we do is we go through when we first understand, you know, what are the business [00:04:00] objectives?
If there’s a strategic plan in place, we really like rolling up the measurement plan to that strategic plan. Just so again, everybody’s using the same vocabulary, same you know, foundation for how we’re talking about success, but then we get to the conversation and be breaking it down by service line or by product offering.
Do we need to break it down by location? How do you, how do you talk about success within your organization? How do you have to report back success? So really getting to that level of granularity of how we need to present the information. And then what actual metrics need to be included at that level of filtering and detail.
At that point, we go in and actually make sure the analytics tool we’re using is set up to measure those things. For example, a call tracking software, is it actually set up on all of the correct service line pages? That’s the call to action. Are there forms that should be tracked that aren’t? Are there other call to actions like downloading an informative PDF about your service lines that need to be reported [00:05:00] on?
Maybe that event isn’t set up yet. So you make sure that really the on site website tracking matches that measurement plan and what we’re trying to accomplish. Once that’s done, then we get to really the fun part where we’re talking about visualization. So when you think about visualization, often we’ll be talking to folks and I’ve had so many clients come to me and say, well, I bought Domo, but it didn’t work.
And I totally understand that frustration because if you look at the websites of these data visualization tools, it really looks like it’s plug and play and it’s going to be super easy. Right. But the interesting thing is that all data visualization tools are at the foundation level the same, right?
They’re going to visualize data in the way that you ask it to visualize data. So that measurement planning process where you’re getting organized and figuring out exactly how you’re going to tell that data story and how you’re going to visualize it has to be done within your organization before you can get to the pretty part about actually setting up those visuals.
So, we love Looker. as a [00:06:00] visualization tool. We actually have used Looker way before it was used by Google or owned by Google, but there are lots of other ones. We have folks that use Tableau, Domo. It really, the list just never ends of the different tools you can use. I really like Looker. If you’re just getting started with data visualization and dashboarding, because it’s free.
So you can spend your funds from a budgetary perspective on training your team, but how to use the tool or bringing in third party experts to be able to make sure everything is set up correctly versus paying just to access the tool itself. So that’s the data data visualization side. The other thing that I wanted to explain that I think folks kind of overlook or get confused about sometimes is how is the data coming into the visualization tool?
And really, there’s two different ways for this to happen. First is a straight data feed. Usually this is through an API. Most of the tools on the backend have a way for you to really just enter your login credentials, say to Google Analytics 4 or whatever, you know, analytics tools you’re using.
There’ll [00:07:00] be a variety that you’ll need to connect, whether it’s Google Ads, Meta, whatever. You enter that in and then the data feeds begin connecting and then you can make modifications about how it actually is visualized. The other way is a much more sophisticated option. So I don’t recommend starting here but it’s actually having a data lake and then doing backend calculations.
So you’re actually pulling the data together into one super large database. So then you can actually do data connections. And you can actually understand by IDs, different steps of the patient or the user journey and really connect it together. So you can get a bigger picture understanding about how that individual is engaging with your marketing on the front end or your organization on the back end, depending on if your analytics is really just focusing on the marketing side or your entire organization.
It’s much more sophisticated. So again, I wouldn’t recommend that you start here. If you’re just starting out and getting used to [00:08:00] showcasing formants of your campaigns, and you really just want to start showing ROI, I definitely would start with the easier version, but then once you are ready then you definitely would need to either have some pretty sophisticated talent within your internal team.
So this isn’t really just like a marketing person. This is more of a developer role to be able to set up that data lake. You can actually include some back end calculations, whether it’s ROI calculations, et cetera, to then be able to visualize the data in a super specific way for your needs.
Hopefully that was a really helpful overview. I could talk about this for hours and hours but I really wanted to create an episode that would be helpful for folks that are just starting to dip their toe in. So hopefully this gives you a framework if you’re going to begin moving forward with it. A couple of questions that you want to keep in mind if you are working with your in-house team to develop a dashboard for the first time, or perhaps you’re working with an agency that’s doing it [00:09:00] is acouple of questions.
First, what’s the timeliness or refresh rate of the data? You can make data, you can make dashboards real time. All of our dashboards that we do for our clients are real time so at any time whenever you log in it will be information up to that day. But others they update maybe every Sunday night for the week prior.
It just depends on how they’re building that dashboard. So always understanding what is the refresh rate or the timeliness of that data is super helpful. Understanding if it’s straight data feeds or if there’s any back end calculations, that’s super helpful. Understanding the data sources with all the dashboards that we create.
We actually on the first page, it’s kind of introduction to the dashboard. We list every single data source including like the property IDs. That way, if there’s ever a question about data matching or numbers not quite syncing up, we can understand exactly where the data came from and really be able to quickly understand any discrepancies.
And then the final thing I would say is if you’re building a [00:10:00] dashboard definitely do not skip that measurement plan and really challenge your team to make sure that every action you want to track within your marketing ecosystem is set up to be trackable so you can report upon it appropriately within the dashboard.
And really, if you haven’t yet start thinking about things like call tracking, form submissions through events and any other sort of interaction, whether it’s an online chat or whatever it is, make sure all of those interactions are captured in a way that’s measurable.
So you can really track out that patient or user journey on your website. So you can properly optimize it. So thank you so much for tuning in today to this episode of we are marketing happy to our dashboards. One on one. If you have any questions, reach out to me, I’d love to chat and answer any specific questions you have about maybe a dashboard or analytics project you’re tackling within your organization.
If you’re running into any roadblocks or any frustrations and we’re just like a second point of view, we would be [00:11:00] happy to chat with you. You can reach out to me at Jenny@hedyandhopp.com. So until next week please like, and save this podcast so you can get our weekly updates, new episodes drop every Friday.
And we’ll see you next week on our next episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers.
In this episode, we dive into the digital patient journey, focusing on mapping success. Over the past few weeks, we’ve had numerous conversations with systems and providers across the country who are looking to rebuild their websites and make their digital front door easier to access. Many face budget or approval constraints, so we’re here to bridge that gap by focusing on interim action items such as content and technology adjustments.
Sometimes, it’s necessary to redo your website entirely. However, if a full redesign isn’t feasible right now, here are some steps to improve the patient journey in the meantime:
Activity:
Key Discussion Points:
While a new website might be the best move eventually, these steps can help enhance the patient journey and improve your digital front door experience even without a complete overhaul.
Connect with Jenny:
If you enjoyed this episode we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I am the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. We are a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And today we’re here to talk about the digital patient journey specifically about mapping success.
We have had a very large number of conversations in the last few weeks with systems and providers across the country who are wanting to redo their website. They’re wanting to make the digital front door easier for patients to access, make it easier for folks to be able to find them online but the problem is a lot of these folks do not have budget approval to move forward with a full website redo.
So what we’re doing is really coaching them and helping them kind of build a bridge. You don’t always need a complete website redo in order to improve the digital patient journey. There’s a lot of interim steps [00:01:00] that you can do revolving around technology implementation and content strategy that can really help you move that project forward and move patient access forward without necessarily having the budget or time to commit to a large website redo. Now I will be the first to say that sometimes it is time to redo your website, right? Sometimes your website is outdated. Sometimes it’s not mobile friendly.
Sometimes your information architecture is a disaster because it’s been just Frankensteined over the last how many years and you really need to clean it up. So this is not an episode saying don’t redo your website. This is really an episode saying friends, if you cannot redo your website until 2025 or beyond, then here are some things that you can do in the interim to help really improve that patient journey. So let’s get started. So first I have an assignment for you. While you’re sitting at your desk, whether it’s at a home office or actually in the office, take some time and write down your primary service lines. So perhaps you [00:02:00] have an organizational strategic plan where there are certain service lines that you’re really wanting to drive patient volumes or improve patient access.
Write those down. Then take your cell phone and only your cell phone. Go to your car in your driveway or your parking lot and try to find that try to find each service line individually, pretend you are a patient and you just walked out of an appointment with, let’s say, primary care provider and they said, you know, “Hey, you need to go follow up with a cardiologist. Here are some recommendations, but you also can go, you know, to somebody else that you find online.” Whatever it may be. And you’re on your cell phone trying to find it. Spend some time and actually understand what that experience looks like. Do not use your own brand name/ organizational name.
Instead, use your service line name. Again, let’s say it’s cardiology or dermatology or whatever it may be. Use near me phrases in Google. Like you’re actually searching and trying to find something or [00:03:00] a provider that you could book an appointment with really put yourself in that patient’s headspace about what they would be Googling to try to find a provider to book an appointment with and map your journey.
Figure out number one, do you show up on the first page? Are competitors showing up? above you. Do competitors have more reviews than you do, et cetera. Just take notes of the overall experience. And that is a really great starting point. Just understanding the landscape through the lens of a patient trying to find care.
So that’s the first assignment. And then you want to step back and we want to remember a couple of things, friends, right? First of all, 88 percent of appointments are still booked by phone. We want it to be online. We want that fancy find an appointment button to work, but right now still only 2.5 percent of appointments are booked that way.
So while as an organization, you may want to get to the point that you’re offering that solution. And I strongly recommend it if your [00:04:00] EHR you know, allows you to integrate that way. Absolutely. Let’s focus on doing that. But you don’t have to start there. We can still improve things for patients and 88 percent of those folks are going to prefer to call as of today anyway.
So the first tip that I’d give you as you’re kind of digesting all of the search results that you saw and where you may or may not have shown up is to really thinking about optimizing for micro-moments. Think about those search terms you typed in. Let’s say for example, it was, you’re focusing on dermatology.
Was it just dermatologists near me? Think more about symptoms or other search friendly terms. Terms maybe like, weird mole. How can I get a weird mole checked near me? Right? Like you need to dig into your search terms with your SEO team member on your team, or, you know, go and just explore using some tools like Semrush to really understand what people are searching for.
It isn’t [00:05:00] always going to be. The big picture service line or physician title terminology. For example, with cardiologists, we actually found that folks very rarely use the term cardiology. They searched for heart doctor, which really pained those cardiologists to hear that, but we have to show up where the user searching and where they are showing up.
So number one, optimize for micro moments. Number two, simplify the path, reduce the friction, right? So let’s say you were able to find your website and those search results while you’re sitting in your car and you were able to click through the service line page. How many clicks did it take you to actually get to where you could call to schedule an appointment?
Figure that out. And then figure out within your existing website ecosystem. How can you make that shorter? Is it something as simple as adding a call to action button? Call now to schedule an appointment or click here to schedule an appointment. If you can offer that sometimes as easy as kind of thinking about your content through the lens of creating shortcuts could be really beneficial.
Next, I’d really [00:06:00] recommend for you to go beyond your website. Right. If we’re trying to really improve patient volumes here, it doesn’t have to be your website. In fact a large percentage of folks will never even visit your website. They’ll either click on your Google Local Business listing or other online directories that are listing providers.
So make a note of while you’re doing those searches, what other websites showed up that were online directories that you can be listed in a lot of organizations like, and we do as well offer overall web visibility optimization services. So it’s not just your own website. It’s also making sure your organization and providers really are showing up where they need to on third party directories.
And then finally, I would say really think about mobile first if you’re on your cell phone and your car and it says call here to schedule an appointment, is functionality built into your website where you can actually click and it will call or do you have to like copy and then go to your phone to call and then call? These are really simple [00:07:00] dev tweaks on the backend that can really improve the ability for folks to leverage that information from their cell phone. So go through and make note of that. Are there simple things that we can do from a development and content perspective to be able to shorten that journey, make it easier on a mobile device, to be able to call the schedule and appointment things that you can do within your own ecosystem today that are not necessarily going to be the budget or timeline of an entire website redo. And then the last thing that I would share something to consider is spend a little bit of time doing a competitor deep dive. Again, we’re not necessarily looking at like what social media platforms are they on? What’s their content strategy? We are only thinking about digital patient journeys. How are folks able to find them online and schedule appointments for those same service lines? Because I guarantee if I am trying to find a dermatologist appointment and they have 300 plus five star reviews and your organization only has eight because you haven’t spent the time or energy on it, they’re going to get my phone call. And so really make note of that [00:08:00] within each service line, it may be a different lift that you need to do. Some may be more review oriented. Some may be more you know, content and just access oriented to show up in those search engine results. So make a list of kind of what you need to focus on per service lines.
You have a little bit of a direction versus trying to do the same level of energy across all of the different service lines. So hopefully this was helpful. Again, sometimes doing a completely new website is the right move. A lot of the folks we’ve chatted with recently haven’t redone their website since pre-COVID and there are a lot of improvements and changes that need to happen in which case, awesome. But if you are struggling to get organizational buy in, if you’re struggling to get the budget approved to move forward with that, do not think that you can’t improve your digital patient journey and front door experience.
So hopefully these tips helped. As always like and subscribe. Thank you so much for tuning in today and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. [00:09:00] Cheers.