Jenny: Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m excited to come to you today on a solo cast to chat a little bit about the state of health care marketing agencies.

As most people know, if you’ve been kind of following along over the last couple of years, there’s been a whole bunch of M&A activity. There’s been a lot of acquisitions, a lot of mergers. And the landscape has shifted drastically from what it looked like a couple of years ago. So I’ve spent a little bit of time over the last six months really trying to evaluate, like, what’s happening now.

Who are the players? Who’s thriving in this new landscape? You know, and as a provider or a health system, if you’re looking for a new agency, kind of what are your options today? We’ve had, you know, a lot of folks in the industry, right now are shopping for new agencies. And so, if you are thinking about looking for a new agency or, you know, if you are just curious about kind of what the categorizations of agencies look like in healthcare marketing right now, this is a great episode for you.

So, first of all, I’m going to start with a general disclaimer that from an agency decision perspective, the first thing you need to decide is if you want a health care only agency. There are lots of massive agencies, big conglomerates in the WPP and Omnicom firms of the world. They may have a healthcare specific agency, but they’re part of a really large conglomerate.

Also, you could always go to a really large, you know, non-healthcare specific firm out of New York City, and be, you know, one of their only healthcare clients. But maybe you love the creative work that they do. That could be the right decision for you. On today’s episode, really going to talk only about those organizations that are focusing exclusively in the healthcare industry.

So from our point of view, with all of the different regulations and compliance things shifting in the landscape, most buyers today are really wanting to focus on organizations that understand all of the nuances and the different challenges that healthcare marketers specifically are facing. So that’s kind of the framework of what we’re going to be talking about. So if you are looking for an agency today, there we have seen oftentimes this pendulum where folks are wanting to go first to like a full service agency, and then the pendulum swings over and they maybe want to go to a performance agency or a specialty agency.

And it really makes me think of this Peter Drucker quote, that says in times of stability, you need management and times of uncertainty, you need leadership. And so as we’re thinking about the organizational decisions that may drive the decision of if you’re going to look to partner with a full service agency or perhaps a performance or specialty organization, it really comes down to what are you needing within your organization?

Do you need that strategic guidance to help lead you through uncertain times, or do you really feel like you have your strategy on lock, and you need  really great execution partners. There is no right decision for everyone. It’s really going to come down to looking at yourself, your team, your marketing leadership within your organization and deciding, you know, where are you, you know?

And what do you want to do? Are you looking for a transformative change? Are you looking more to improve, you know, return on ad spend, and you’re wanting to get really tactical with what you’re wanting to execute. So that is kind of the big framework of how decisions, I believe are being made today. As far as what sort of organization folks are looking to partner with.

So we in our mind, really think about it as three different categories of agencies. I did an episode about 18 months ago that talked about the two different kinds of media agencies and its brand or performance. We had spoken with a lot of organizations that were looking for specifically a new media agency, and they were frustrated because their partner was really focusing more on awareness tactics and weren’t giving them any reporting that was helping them understand cost per lead, return on ad spend, or any of those more ROI-oriented data points.

The episode I’ve heard from folks really helped provide clarity around why that is. It’s not that that agency couldn’t do it. It’s just that’s not what they were built to do. They were really built to, you know, advertise for, you know, a BMW placement where it’s more about brand awareness, which is a great objective for some kinds of organizations.

So that specifically within paid media. But you can see that also across the broader spectrum for all of the different things folks are trying to accomplish. So the three different kinds of agencies that we see existing today that are healthcare specific are full service, performance, marketing and specialty. So when you think about full service, for us, the differentiator of organizations that we view as full service are those that focus on upstream strategy and branding.

Right. They’re still going to do often all of the same performance marketing tactics, but they have that upstream capability to help with things like, market research, persona development, kind of the, you know, who, what and why you’re going to market. It can help with messaging, positioning. So full service is a really great kind of agency to look for if you’re really needing to make some of those strategic decisions in addition to doing the activation work. Performance marketing, really focuses exclusively on patient acquisition and retention, usually only through digital marketing tactics.

So again, full service, more of that upstream strategy. But they also are going to have usually traditional media buying capabilities. Whereas a lot of the performance marketing agencies that are in market today and health care focused exclusively on digital, because they’re really focused exclusively on driving those appointments. And as we all know, billboards may be needed for brand awareness, but they certainly are not going to, you know, do a specific lift as far as the, you know, patients coming through the door or scheduling appointments.

And then the third category we call specialty, these are folks that specialize in content, specifically focusing on upstream research, direct mail website services. These groups are phenomenal at their craft, right? They exist and have existed for many years, often doing one specific kind of work. And so they are pros at it. These groups are great if you feel like you have all of your other marketing areas on lock, and you really need somebody to come in and dominate just on content, or you just are looking for a website rebuild, but you don’t need those broader agency strategic services.

There are lots of folks winning in this space. Just a call out a few of our friends–AHA Media,  WG Content, Coffee Communications. Right. There’s a lot of folks that are really great specialists and phenomenal at their craft. And then of course, a fourth category, which is not an agency category, but it’s something that usually organizations are kind of shopping for.

Parallel path is tech solutions. So these are SaaS platforms. These organizations do not offer services. For implementation you will usually be required to do a lot of maintenance and ongoing work yourself. But think about, analytics compliant CDPs. So our friends over at Fresh Paint and Ours Privacy, those are great examples of tech solutions. Often you think about full service performance marketing or specialty organizations can partner with these tech solutions and have deep relationships like we’re great friends with Ours Privacy. 

We share a lot of clients help do implementations for them. Lots of our clients use fresh paint. So often you’ll see those groups working in collaboration. And same thing with the specialty agencies. Like we have lots of clients that we share, you know, with some of those specialty agencies that I named earlier. So agencies working together is definitely something that you want to filter for as you’re doing your search back to the full service agency.

Lots of folks, when they’re going down the full service side, are kind of uncertain how to differentiate between all the different full service agencies. One thing that you always can ask is what are their roots in? Right. That’s kind of how you can understand how they were built, why they were built. Often their roots are in creative.

So they are a creative shop, have a creative founder, and then they, you know, added on digital capabilities maybe 5 or 10 years ago. And so they’re usually stronger on the creative side and maybe not as strong on the digital. Again, that is a mass assumption. They could bring in strong leadership to be able to make that side stronger.

But that’s kind of a general trend that you’ll see. Otherwise, groups like Hedy & Hopp, we actually are built with a foundation of really strong analytics, compliance, and performance. So I worked at Amazon previously, so I bring all of that data driven decision making into the founding of Hedy & Hopp, along with that strategy component. And now we’ve added creative over the last five years and really have made ourselves a great full service option for folks.

So again, there really is no right or wrong decision as your shopping agencies. But we’ve seen over the last couple of years that we’ve been in RFP presentations alongside competitors that maybe are like a tech solution alongside us presenting or a specialty group along with a full service. And they’re just such differences in who we are as organizations.

That it’s kind of confusing to us sometimes about why we are in consideration alongside one of these other groups, because our offerings are so vastly different and sometimes it’s because the buyer really wants to see and understand what each group can bring to the table, which totally makes sense, we love having those conversations, but sometimes it’s because they don’t understand the differences between the different groups and how to think about them categorically.

So if you are thinking about going into the agency, shopping, experience or the next couple of months or year, hopefully this episode was helpful to give you a little bit of a framework around what you should be thinking about, the kind of organization that you need based off of where your marketing group is within your, you know, life cycle and kind of what partnership you’re looking for.

So thank you for joining us for today’s episode of We Are Marketing Happy. If this episode was helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend. And please like and subscribe to be notified of future episodes. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you on a future episode of We Are Marketing Happy cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I’m Jenny Bristow, and I am your host, and I’m also the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited to be back with y’all! After a little short hiatus, we took a little bit of a break from producing new podcasts at the beginning of this year, and we’re excited to be back online and sharing some fresh content with you.

And with that, I’m really excited to welcome our very own Suzie Schmitt. Suzie is our Senior Digital Producer here at Hedy & Hopp, and she does a lot of the magic behind the scenes in the work that we produce. So welcome Suzie. 

Suzie: Thanks, Jenny. So happy to be back. 

Jenny: So what we’re going to talk about today is an example of AI in action.

So, so many organizations, so many podcasts, so many blog posts are out there talking about how you got to use AI in marketing. And at this point, it just kind of feels like noise, right? They all are kind of saying the same thing. None of them are giving real world examples besides really basic prompts, you know, that are having you kind of have the the platform do the things that we believe humans should be doing.

So we take a very different approach about how we think about and leverage AI and automations and we really want them to enhance the human output. Right? We don’t want them to replace it. We want to keep humanity at the center. So we built a tool called Hoppywriter. Leave it to Suzie to always have really fun names for the tools that we produce.

But Suzie, walk us through what the copywriter is and why we felt last year that it was something important for us to build. 

Suzie: I would love to. So the Hoppywriter was born from a couple of issues. One of them was just the ridiculously intense nature of producing health care content. When you’re producing healthcare marketing blogs, they are held to a much higher standard of factuality than most other industries, so we have to be really careful about that.

It’s, if you’re working with like an orthopedic clinic, for example, it can be hard not to get repetitive about a specific joint replacement or something like that, and it can just be kind of difficult to continue to brainstorm fresh content and also come at it from the viewpoint of somebody actually experiencing those two conditions or symptoms. So what we did is we created a tool that—what it does, is it streamlines the delivery process of our blogs by empowering our writers to have everything they need in one spot at their fingertips.

So it’s built in a Google Sheet, with using a Google App script as the full back end, which is just kind of a different flavor of JavaScript. But it also integrates several of our other tools. So when we were talking last year about how we could be more efficient in writing our blogs, how we could increase the quality, how we could make sure that we are keeping all the topics to be the best interest of the client, both in what they’re currently offering and and what can boost their SEO the best, we realized that we were spending a lot of time just getting the writers the information that they needed just to get started. So hey, here’s your focus keyword and here’s some other areas we want to touch on. Here’s some specific requests from the client. And we realized that we could be a lot more systematic about that. And so we were.

So essentially what the Hoppywriter does is it integrates several tools. The first thing it does is it pulls in all of the keywords that we have flagged as needing work for our clients, for our SEO retainer clients, so that we can make sure we’re focusing on the most high-value keywords possible. Then the writer has those right there in the spreadsheet with all their other, all the other information about that client, the voice they like to use, the doctors who do the specific treatments, the different awards they’ve won, what sets their clinic apart from others.

Everything is right there in one spot. You can reference with that real time data. And then we have different templates within our project management system, Wrike, that are for different approval processes and different clients have different, you know, everybody’s different. There is no one size fits all. So by setting all of that up at the front end and just being very organized, we can then pull in additional information for our writers and then push it to our project management software with an already fleshed out brief for the writer.

So then what we’re getting is we’ve got lots of human touchpoints that all of this, which is something I want to always stress, is that this is something that it’s not a button we push and it just happens. It’s you push a button and something happens. You do something with that, and then you push a button and that gets pushed somewhere else.

So it’s really much more of an efficiency pipeline than anything else. But, it’s cut down our time that it takes to edit and to write our blogs. It has resulted in content that our clients have been happier with, and that’s been even more effective in SEO, because we’re able to take a pretty prescriptive approach with the way that we’re structuring the content.

Our incredible SEO specialist, Yenny Rojas, I’ve gotten to work with her extensively on how we can set this up to give you the best outputs possible when it comes to, suggesting topics for the writers and then the content within that. And it’s been a really fun tool to work on, with, our creative writing team, who I normally don’t get to spend a lot of time with.

And it’s been great to hear from them what’s going wrong, and then say, hey, I built something that I think might be able to help you out with that, and then to see those real results, both for us and our clients. 

Jenny: Yeah, I love it, Suzie. What I was so proud about when y’all have been going through this process is that at no point did we try to replace the brilliance of human interactions with AI.

It was all about efficiencies. Making less clicks for the humans, getting the information the humans needed front and center. So it’s really a beautiful way to make sure that we’re never thinking that human work could be or should be replaced by AI or automations. On that: Talk about the guardrails as you were thinking about in building this tool. What are some guardrails that you had to keep in mind as we were fleshing it out? 

Suzie: Absolutely. So AI is one of the tools that’s used in the Hoppywriter. And we just evaluated it the same way we use all of our tools. So we stress tested it. We used edge cases. We gave it crazy prompts to see how it would react. We gave it every different situation we could think of to make sure we weren’t going to get any weird, crazy, unexpected results. And we also made sure that our data was completely safe and the data of our clients. So as we’ve talked about, we have a nice little Gemini ecosystem that’s in our Google Cloud account, covered by a BAA, and is never used to improve the models, and it never leaves our data silo.

So that’s a specific thing about AI that I, that made me feel comfortable using this for, where I would not feel comfortable using something where our information is not siloed. 

Jenny: I completely agree. And just for full clarity, of course, PII and PHI is never put into the Hoppywriter even though we have a BAA, right? 

Suzie: No.

Jenny: We’re not talking about any patient specific information here, but we still want to make sure that we have that legal agreement in place just to make sure that we’re as covered as possible with all of our information.

So let’s talk a little bit—

Suzie: We own all our data:

Jenny: Yes, exactly. Let’s talk a little bit about the Jaccard Index. 

Suzie: I would love to talk about the Jaccard index. So the Jaccard index is a metric of similarity between objects. And it’s been used a lot in machine vision actually. So detecting stop signs is one of the most blatant examples of the Jaccard Index for, cars that can see those.

But what we’re using it for is another to treat another symptom of writing content for health care, which is it can get pretty repetitive. As you may imagine, an orthopedic clinic that offers three different types of joint surgeries, that content might start to feel a little bit same after a little bit. So what we’ve done is we’ve introduced a Jaccard Index threshold for each client, and sometimes even each campaign.

We have a lot of control that we do to again, none of our clients are one size fits all, so we want to make sure we can tweak it and make sure everybody’s getting the best outlook and output. But what it does is it compares how similar two objects are. And it works perfectly with something like text, because it takes the size of the content as well as the count, the actual content itself, into regard when it compares those two objects.

And so we have a system in place for that automatically flags any topics that are too similar to anything we’ve written about in the past. And then even further beyond that, if we have something on this blog that hey, this paragraph, we basically said something, it’s basically paraphrased from something four months ago. That’s something we want to be aware of, and that normally it would be so time consumptive to have a copy editor or somebody, you know, go back through months of medical blog posts to make sure we’re keeping it fresh, so we’ve also …

Jenny: If it’s even possible, right? 

Suzie: It really, it’s not sustainable. So it’s something that’s given us a much better insight to our and just the way our copy needs to be while staying excellent for humans and excellent for search engines. And it’s been a really fun tool to use, to make sure everybody’s getting fresh content that resonates with their audiences.

Jenny: I love it. So it’s been a huge win for our SEO and GEO clients. We work with hundreds of providers across the country, helping them optimize their digital ecosystems with fresh content, more structured content, etc. For other organizations that may be thinking about embarking on their own sort of initiative, what are, what should they be thinking about as they go down that road?

Suzie: Think about the tools you already have. So most of these tools, all of them, we already had them. We didn’t purchase any software for this project. I, I will always say that the power of a Google App script is much more in reach than it might seem, and if you watch a couple tutorials, you might be surprised by how much you can start cleaning stuff up and how much you can start connecting stuff.

Always keep your API keys in the secrets—don’t ever put those out there. Somebody else will find it and rack up an enormous bill in your account. And just make sure that you’re approaching these all with the same lens. I think it’s really important, the way that we approach AI is the same way we approach a web hosting provider, a antivirus software, they all have to meet the same fundamental requirements for it to be an acceptable tool for us to use in our work. And if you can’t find a way to do that, then it’s probably just not quite there yet. But also it’s growing fast and it probably will get there. Yeah, I’d say the power of integrating your softwares together—huge. An absolute force multiplier. And for me, it it’s just great to keep our writers writing and not waiting for dashboards to load. So …

Jenny: Exactly, exactly. Humans center. Right? I would really encourage anybody, as you’re thinking about incorporating additional technologies or AI technologies, please continue to keep the humans center, to all of this, because that’s really, you know, we’re in the business of human connection and health care. So making sure that we’re continuing to advocate for that is really important. 

Suzie: 100%. And again, this is not replacing our copywriters. We have full time copywriters that write beautiful copy. And …

Jenny: Exactly. 

Suzie: So grateful for them to teach me from a technical standpoint, all of the incredible thought that goes into the content they create, it’s really amazing. Thank you.

Jenny: Totally agree. Thank you so much for joining us today, Suzie. For our listeners, I hope this gave you maybe some fresh ideas about ways you could incorporate AI automations and process improvement into your marketing technology stack and the way that your team operates. Whether you’re an in-house team or a fellow agency, there are really smart ways that you could incorporate and the technology like Susie said, is just continuing to rapidly accelerate. And if you ever want to nerd out and just talk about potential solutions, or ideas, give us a call. We love talking about this stuff and ways that we can make everybody in the healthcare marketing space thrive, so. And with that, thank you so much for joining us today.

Please share this episode with a friend or a colleague that may find it interesting. And give us a like and a follow so you’ll be notified about future episodes as they drop. Have a great rest of your day and we’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And I’m also very lucky to be your host. I’m thrilled to be joined today with Ben Riggs. He is the Content Manager at Kettering Health, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the current state of AI and content marketing.

 

So first of all, welcome, Ben. Thanks for joining us. 

 

Ben: Hey, thanks for having me. 

 

Jenny: And we’re going to get started by talking a little bit about a really fun AI tool that I stumbled across. It’s called Arcads. And I’m going to just play a quick little clip for our audience.

 

[Clip plays]

 

Jenny: Okay, so that’s really crazy, right? Ben, tell me your thoughts! That’s AI! What do you think? 

 

Ben: I so by way of admission, I’m still like when I, when I sit and think about fax machines, I’m still a bit mind blown. So that just for context, but I think you know, it’s it’s impressive. You know, I think we’re, it’s, it’s one of those touch points with AI that make us realize, like, we’re, we’re through this inflection moment where just like, slop is the guaranteed output, which is exciting. But also, gosh, there’s such a tension. And I know, like, that’s that’s where I feel like I exist most of the time with AI. Is this, you know, hearing both set like metaphorical angel and, and devil on your shoulder of like, here’s the benefit of it at scale.

 

And here’s what it’s going to mean for this population of people. But yet also you can’t help, you know, because of humanity’s resume in some ways. Think about like, oh, gosh, in the next 10s, what’s it going to be for someone who, doesn’t have the need that AI products trying to fill in a legitimate way, but maybe it has some other unsavory, motivations in life, I will put it. So so it’s I’m it’s it’s exciting. It’s mind blowing. It’s it’s also it’s, and like, alarming, but like, in that sense of existing in that tension, I know, like, what about you? 

 

Jenny: So I first stumbled across this actually on TikTok and it started as an influencer video. Like it literally looked like just a person talking.

 

And then the script itself said that it was AI, and then I–my jaw dropped because I did not realize that I was watching AI. So first I was embarrassed. I felt like a boomer, an old person. Sorry for boomers listening, but I felt yes, I felt, kind of a sense of almost fear, you know, like I’m very digital savvy.

 

And if I was just tricked? So I did what any smart marketer would do, and I immediately went and created an account with this tool, and I started playing with it. I was like, I need to know the extent of what can happen, and you can filter by gender, by, race, by situation. You can do medical and everybody’s wearing medical gear.

 

In order to be an actor that says, whatever you type into the script, you just type a script up and hit go in and a minute later generates this video for you. So I think it’s really important for us as marketers to understand where the technology is today, so that way we can be thoughtful in our applications within our own organizations.

 

I am also fearful because so many organizations are already facing distrust in the medical community, that information online. And so as you’re trying to create information to educate patients, we now have tools like this where it can have somebody wearing a, you know, a doctor’s white jacket talking about how, you know, X, Y, and Z is going to kill you.

 

And so it is just another hurdle for us to think about as we’re creating content about how we can make sure that our doctors have individualized reputations, and our system has reputations to really break through that clutter and noise. I’ll also say a funny aside, I have multiple people in my family because I am aggressive about notifying everybody about AI, like they’ll forward me a video and I’ll be like, that’s AI! How do you not know that’s AI?! I have multiple people in my family are like, I don’t care. It’s cute. I’m like, oh my gosh, really? Like you don’t, you’re fine with knowing that it’s AI? So an eMarketer study just came out today actually. And we’ll link to it in the show notes about how consumers’ trust with content online is decreasing really quickly because of the quick growth of AI generated content, whether it’s written or video form or images.

 

So let’s jump a little bit to the real application within a system, and talk to me about what you are finding useful, whether it is thinking about ways to integrate AI into your processes or, you know, generating actual content, like what are you finding valuable today especially, you know, compared to where maybe you were a year ago? 

 

Ben: Yeah, that’s the question, because I think we’re all just now that we’re starting 2026 is where we’re recording this and mid-January, I think we’ve all learned that things are going to be so different within two quarters, right? Six months or so. And so thinking about a year ago and what I was kind of poking around with AI and thinking like, you know, was on the cusp of, you know, cracking this nut of some frontier model, but, you know, it in some ways it like, I look back a year ago and, and, you know, I think I, you know, I’m a writer by trade and, and by profession still too. And so I think that I’m, you know, I’m always going to be sympathetic and have this fidelity to the sort of the cognitive relevance that the human brings to the writing process. The act of discovery, the messing with the blank page, the, credibility you win by making sure it’s accurate and and tussling with word choices to make sure it’s clear. 

 

And then, you know, you know, I know this wasn’t just a skip a year ago, but even a few years ago, but, you know, trying to think about, all right, how does how do I apply AI to some of these places. And so I think, like, you know, a year ago it was pretty garden variety. It was research. It was data aggregation. It was trying to sort of make sense thematically of of big gobs of complicated figures and facts and that sort of thing. And, and I think what, you know, it’s, it’s gotten so much better in that regard to, you know, I think these, these platforms even are able to digest more, you know, the whole like, tokenization idea. Right? Like they’re able to process more. It’s that’s that’s gone. I think it’s gone better for us. I think because we’re able to take in that that much more content that feels intimidating, that we really want to sift through. And we’ve also learned, I think there’s, I would imagine there’s been an uptick in literacy about how to prompt and get the right stuff out of that content to, and how to verify.

 

So I think we we’ve got a lot of room to get better there, to say the least. But I think that, you know, more and more people are privy to, how to go about using these, these tools and these models for those garden variety ways. 

 

But I think compared to last year, too, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m using, you know, just kind of like squaring up with large language models, like, I’m using them to sort of investigate what’s already kind of out there.

 

So like I’m thinking specifically written content. And so playing to each one, strength to find out, you know, if this were to be written right now, you know, because these things have such a breadth of content now, we, you know, from from training data, you get a pretty good vibe about what’s, what’s already out there, how it’s being covered, but then also leveraging it with certain prompts to then find the the consumer gap with the content that’s out there.

 

And so that’s, you know, I think that’s not I’m not saying anything new to a lot of people, but if I could just like, go on record and say that I’m a little late to the party to speak, but I am, I love Notebook LLM like, I don’t know if it’s okay to siphon off one one product right here, but …

 

Jenny: Yes, go for it.

Ben: I think it has been such, a product, production booster for me, productivity booster, because, I mean, one, just for my own sake, like, the safety of it feels premium. You know, obviously, like you have the ability to get in there. I think if no one’s used it, this is, like, the most like, I don’t know how we’re not screaming about NotebookLM from the rooftops, but the interface of being able to source the material and then know that I can play around in this kind of aggregated material and just tap that material, but then leverage, the sort of, you know, the, the probability machine that is, you know, like an LLM to really investigate with it. And use that as a thought. A thought partner. I’m like on the side using it to help me write a small book, but I’m like in the very beginning of the investigative stage and it’s like you, you can home grow a really precise conversation, in a safe way with this stuff.

 

And then I don’t know if people know this, but like, you can also create a podcast. So, like what I’ve been doing just to even keep up with the AI arms race is, you know, ChatGPT Health dropped. And then we have Claude for Healthcare. And I’m not necessarily like I’m not a techie person by trade. I sort of did it by way of necessity over the last few years.

 

But, you know, I’ve gone to reputable sources who have covered it, and then I’ve put it in Notebook LLM, create a podcast, and then I’ve been using that to help me kind of digest the material on the drive home and just going to and so that’s another way that I’m using it just personally. But I could go on to about ways we’re using it in healthcare, but that I just keep going back to that video you showed and just keep thinking about what’s what’s what’s possible and what’s at risk.

 

Jenny: Yep, fully agree. Ben, I am embarrassed or proud, I don’t know to say that my 15 year old son introduced me to NotebookLM because he had created a notebook for each of his high school classes with all of the materials his teacher provided, and he used it to be able to create, podcast and learn the material and quizzes to quiz him before the tests.

 

So he schooled me on how to use it, and I was like, this is, I’m proud of you and I’m amazed. 

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Jenny: What a cool application!

 

Ben: I forget how I tapped into it. It’s clear they know their market, right? Like they really like they they know that, you know, a lot of schools have their laptops. We’re talking about Google here.

 

But I think when it comes to like, you know, I’m, I’m sympathetic to the fact of like, I think a lot of people feel like they’re chasing their tails when it comes to keeping up with AI, and just different facets of it, whether you’re, you’re more aligned and business savvy, whether you’re more tech savvy, whether you’re more content savvy, like like the AI conversation is ubiquitous and for for good reason.

 

And I think tools like that are so helpful because it helps you really start to like, mill around and you’re thinking about it and encounter, like, I think, just the necessity of repeated messages that are important to kind of get to get your head around. So yeah, so I, I love NotebookLM. And I think a lot of it’s for, I think for, for book writers or people who are working on long form content that you really have to bake with for a long time.

 

It’s a really good tool. But I know too, you know, there’s, there’s GPT you can build for that sort of thing, but right now, my, my, my bread and butter is NotebookLM. 

 

Jenny: Yeah, I love it. Talk to me a little bit about, are you and your team thinking about optimizing content for AI, or are you doing GEO, AI?

 

Ben: Kind of. Yeah.

 

Jenny: I’d love to hear about the evolution of that over the last year within your team and your approach. 

 

Ben: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll be honest. I went from like this position of I got to get my head around this as fast as possible and jump at it, and like, I felt like I was sprinting to as things have kind of progressed, you know, there’s different opinions that have emerged, right? But I think where I’m at right now is, I mean, the user data is there. I mean, you know, ChatGPT’s healthcare as an ally study job just before ChatGPT Health, you know, 200 million people globally using it a week, 40 million people were using it, in the States for health stuff. And, you know, and that’s that’s just GPT, and so I think it’s, it’s a conversation that we have to have, and I’m curious about it. But at the same time, too, I’ve kind of have cooled off a bit because I think there is this, this ethic of whether it’s with AI or anything technological, you know, up to this point of like it’s really important to have the basics figured out and make sure that, like, you have really good like practitioner practices in place, whether it’s, you know, keywords, whether it’s schema, whether, you know, and because I think a lot of people right now, they’ve been creating content for a while.

 

They’ve been trying to figure out how to do that well. And here comes GEO. And now they’re like, oh my gosh, what do I do now? And they’re racing to go make updates and make changes and do this and that. And that was me. I, I drank the Kool-Aid and I was running hard at it, and I was creating a prop library for my team of like, when you’ve written something, you know, put it through this to create, you know, like a people often ask section at the end and all that.

 

And I think those are well and good. But I, you know, honestly, it might be sort of a cheap answer, but I think it’s really worth asking yourself, like, do you know, the basics of pulling this off well? Do you feel confident? Do you feel confident that your team has what they need to do to write and I’ll, you know, say it this way to write both for humans and for humans using AI?

 

That’s kind of the phrase I have with my team, because interestingly enough, I really believe that, so like from a search perspective, it’s it’s interesting too, because, you know, ChatGPT indexes off of Bing, obviously something like Gemini indexes off of Google. And even those have there’s the their nuances about, how they’re going to be found. And so you have to even ask yourself the question, you know, do I would I prefer shooting my shot, trying to when it can to show up in ChatGPT or do I need to kind of optimize for zero search and for Gemini.

 

And so I think and, and and those require spending time with what are the distinctions between what Bing’s looking for, what Google’s looking for. So but again, I think a lot of it comes down to, you know, do your homework, figure that kind of stuff out. Like for us, we’re, we’re prioritizing Google and Gemini, just because right now still, even though we’ve got this burgeoning growth of users around LLMs, fact the matter is, most Americans right now aren’t using them.

 

They’re still turning to Google. Like that’s where their habits are. But that means that many more people are likely encountering zero search results. So. So I think for right now, we’re kind of leaning into making sure we’re doing everything we can to show up there. But what’s fun, frankly, is like some of the stuff that’s, that’s encouraged, like we’ve been doing like …

 

Jenny: That’s awesome.

 

Ben: We’ve been, right? Like we’ve been trying to just write for, a human reader who’s in a little bit of a hurry, but not a dummy and trying to front load the right information, but, you know, keep it for human readable, scannable and, and and having, you know, the through line of the right keywords without, you know, keyword mashing, so …

 

Jenny: Exactly. 

 

Ben: Yeah. So that’s a little bit of a frenzied, answer to your, to your question 

 

Jenny: No, I love it. That’s great. We have the benefit here at Hedy & Hopp that we work with, large systems, so …

 

Ben: Mmhmm

 

Jenny: … state wide and multi-state. And then on the practice side of the house, we work with, say, like an eight location orthopedic group, right?

 

Ben: Yep.

 

Jenny: So we can test new strategies on our smaller practice sites way faster. We don’t have to go …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: … through lots of rounds of reviews. Then as soon as we find out what works, we can move it upstream to our system clients. 

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Jenny: And then have guaranteed results because we already know. You know …

 

Ben: Yeah, totally.

 

Jenny: … what we need to do. So it’s been really fun kind of doing the test, repeat, test, repeat, implement process …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: … on that side of the house. It’s very similar, as you know, to the philosophy of SEO, anyway. 

 

Ben: Right, mmhmm. 

 

Jenny: It just is a slightly different interface. So organizations that already have SEO down, it just as a slightly more enhanced or comprehensive way to think of it. So I fully agree with you. 

 

Ben: Right, yeah. I think at the end of the day too, it’s like it’s a matter of, you know, I think with, it was true of SEO, I think it’s on steroids now of, I mean, really doing it well means like, you got to really be thinking like your consumer.

 

Jenny: Yes. 

 

Ben: Which is like I that’s the, the writing adage for for an eternity now, right? Is like, you have got to be really audience-oriented. And so it’s a little I mean, it’s it’s going to sound, a little too casual, but like in some ways, I think the, the barrier to entry is, a little lower or higher. I forget how that phrase goes, anyway. But like, I think because now with search, things are so much more phrase based and they’re so much more, specific. I think it’s really given a lot of energy to the persona concept again. 

 

Jenny: Yes, totally agree.

 

Ben: I think a lot of people before were chasing those, but they weren’t sure kind of how to, like, make sense of them.

 

But now that you’ve got people who are learning to to put in their age, their location, you know, various things like, you know, the persona conversation has really been energized again. And so I think if you were doing those things, it’s great. And if not, then it’s a good time to kind of revisit that. 

 

Jenny: I fully agree. We were saying, had a conversation yesterday with a group that were helping with some Epic implementations and it was fun explaining to them: It’s basic marketing. 

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

It is user journey messaging, it’s persona development, messaging strategy. And then just the last 20% is whatever technology we’re talking about, right? 

 

Ben: Yep, yep.

 

Jenny: Whether it’s the AIO, Epic and Cheers, whatever it is …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: It’s a marketing best practices on the front end …

 

Ben: Yep.

 

Jenny: … to make sure that you’re talking to the right person at the right time with the right message, so.

 

Ben: Yes, come on now. Yeah. Absolutely. 

 

Jenny: Yeah.

 

Ben: Absolutely. I, I sort of, I, I did a bit of a like a fist bump to myself when this was all kind of like coming out in the wash after ChatGPT, I think 2 or 3 launched in November. It was like, like 22 and we all kind of had our whatever freak out moment you had, whether it was excitement or fear or both.

 

But once it started coming out, like in the wash that like to, to be sort of included in the, the adventure of being like, scraped by an LLM, it like being included in that meant that you actually were, weren’t writing in order to be scraped, like, if that makes any sort of sense.

 

Jenny: Yes.

 

Ben: Like you weren’t writing for the AI, you were writing for, you know how people talk, how people read, how people listen up, people think. And that that was being prioritized. And so I it’s just for so then for me as a writer who really values this, this sort of notion of, again, like the human reader and this fidelity of not just kind of writing to play the game, but writing to be helpful, like writing to add value, it’s kind of cool. Like for someone who went from wearing a tinfoil hat, like when when he read his first headline about ChatGPT to being this, kind of where I’m at now, I think, you know, one of the sort of the benefits and interesting conversations is kind of how it’s brought back what makes for preeminently effective writing back into the conversation—especially storytelling like that’s a whole different hours-long worth of of a conversation. Just how like storytelling has entered the the chat in a big way because of, generative AI.

 

Jenny: Yeah, I fully agree. Well, Ben, to wrap us up, I’d love to hear if you could look into your crystal ball … We went so far in the last year. 

 

Ben: Mmhmm. 

 

Jenny: Where do you think a year from now you and your team will be …

 

Ben: Mmm

Jenny: … or us as an industry will be as far as AI utilization?

 

Ben: Well, I hope there are more disclosure statements. I—because of the just I can understand the you know, the desire from leadership on down to you know, make the ask for, for AI applications. But you know I’ll, I’ll take the approach of just, you know, maybe not being able to look downstream at what’s currently happening, where that’s going to lead. I, I think what I’m hoping for is, you know, again, this kind of as things are moving forward, that the right things are in place to help enable teams to use AI well and responsibly. So making sure that there’s not just the ask and the pressure, but that there’s the infrastructure, there are conversations happening carefully about what adoption looks like, where the limits are, you know, and I just. Yeah. So I hope that what’s, what’s going to happen, not maybe at the risk of slowing us down, but is just having a more, and a definitive posture toward having AI, which has both feet on the ground where we’re, we’re saying, here’s how, how we’re going to use it, this kind of confident stance of this is what responsible engagement looks like with this. Because to your point, I’ll just kind of wrap with this, I think because at the end of the day like it’s always been about trust, right, with health care, like it’s always going to be about trust, whether it was when the internet dropped, a while ago, or it’s AI now.

 

And so I think the conversation is, how are you going to leverage AI and encourage adoption in a way that’s going to cultivate trust with the people that you’re asking to use it. And how are you going about, doing it to where trust is such a high premium with the consumer? And so I think, you know, making sure that that’s, that’s done well, and keeping quality and, value add being the best thing.

 

Jenny: I love it. Well, thank you, Ben, for joining us and sharing all of your insights. It’s really exciting to have somebody that is actually in the trenches, as I’ll say on the system side, doing this, thinking about it, living that healthy tension, you know, to join the conversation and get your perspective. So thank you. 

 

Ben: Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

 

Jenny: Awesome.

 

And if you want to learn more about Ben, connect with them, his LinkedIn profile link will be in the show notes. And on that note, if you found this episode helpful, please like it? Share it with a colleague, shoot us a note and let us know what sort of content you would like to see moving forward. And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We will see you next week! Cheers!

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I’m Jenny Bristow, and I’m your host. And I’m also the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m here today excited to chat with you about AI and personas. 

I have two of my fabulous team members with me. I have Sarah Zajicek. She’s a Copywriter and Content Editor, and Yenny Rojas, who is an SEO Marketing Specialist. Welcome, ladies. 

Sarah: Thank you. 

Yenny: Thank you.

Jenny: So we created a podcast episode a few weeks ago, I guess a couple of months ago at this point, talking about SEO and how AI is really changing the game. And then I posted a LinkedIn post a few weeks ago talking about the huge strides our team is making and having our content rank well in AI.

So whether that’s an AI overview or showing up as an answer for LLMs, and I’ve received a lot of questions about the behind the scenes of, “How does that work? How are you using AI to create content on the front end, while you’re still able to somehow make high-quality content that people enjoy reading? What are you doing structurally to have it show up all on a website?”

So we wanted to do a follow-up episode. So on today’s episode, we’re going to be digging in more into the power of AI and really supporting the creation of content and how things like personas and structure come into play. 

So I’m going to start with Sarah. Sarah, really excited to chat with you a little bit about the big shift in AI and what is happening and how people are using AI to find content. So talk to us a little bit about that. How are people using AI to find information, and how should that shift to the way that marketers show up on behalf of brands? 

Sarah: Yeah. So there’s actually a study published pretty recently by the creators of ChatGPT that found that up to 49% of searches, or messages, that are being sent into ChatGPT are actually asking questions. So a lot of people are using it more as a research-based tool than a, an action tool, and they’re looking for answers to their questions.

So the way that we have found we can better structure our content is by answering the questions that people are asking ChatGPT, so we can better show up for those users and gain more brand awareness among them.

Jenny: So Sarah, talk to us a little bit about what that actually means in practice, right? So you have both large systems. You have service lines within those systems. And then you also have individual practice offices. So let’s say, a five location orthopedic practice. If I were a marketing strategist and I were trying to think about how people were going to be finding me, what does the study say? How are people using AI to do that research?

Sarah: So on a smaller practice perspective, patients are generally turning to AI to search for questions more about the conditions or procedures that they’re interested in. And having those service-based pages inside of a small practice’s website can really help the user find the information that they’re looking for, while also getting the education that they’re looking for. And from a hospital system perspective, patients are using AI search to find those specialties within their local area.

So having those specialty pages and having them structured well will help them find that information. 

Jenny: Absolutely. And we talked in a prior episode, not only about the importance of AI through the lens of how people are searching, but also the importance of reputation and the influence of AI. So if you—if that idea is new to you, go back and listen to that episode. We talked a lot about how ratings and rankings can really influence the way that you show up in AI. So really important to kind of think about not just content on the site, but also how people are talking about you off the site. 

So let’s talk a little bit about big picture best practices for content and SEO strategy in the AI area. One of the things that we do a lot for our SEO and GEO clients is focus on their blogs, but also their main service line pages, and that feels kind of obvious, right? Like, of course you’re going to put content there. But talk to us a little bit about the specifics. How are we optimizing those pages?

Sarah: So we optimize service pages and blogs fairly similarly. Our service pages, or the main pages on our website, that act sort of as pillars for the rest of our blog content to connect to. And the way we structured these is with bulleted summaries at the beginning of the page. This creates a quick and snappy way for users to find what information they’re going to be seeing on this page, but also a great way for AI to sort of quick sight what is found on your, on your website. 

Also answering commonly asked questions in the form of FAQs or Q&A style copy helps users find the answers that they’re looking for. Again, using bulleted lists to break up copy and large blocks of text. Anything that gets the user to easily scan what they’re going to be read is more likely to be cited in AI search. And implementing those FAQs. So snappy content, answering questions quickly, and an implementation of an FAQ schema, which is just a, a structured snippet of code, helps not only the users, but the AI search itself, crawl the website and gather that information. 

Jenny: So basically what you’re saying is: AI does not have a big attention span either. 

Sarah: No!

Jenny: So we have the write bulleted lists for users to scan. And we gotta write bulleted lists for AI to scan because everybody’s just looking for the headlines. 

Sarah: Exactly. The easier it is to read for the user, the easier it is to read for AI. And everybody is happy in the end. 

Jenny: Absolutely. I think what’s kind of interesting with a lot of things in marketing is a lot of this stuff feels common sense, right? But actually taking that and implementing it whenever you have a massive digital ecosystem is where processes and structure and well-defined schema really comes into play, right? Like nothing that we’re saying I think people will listen to and say, “Oh, that’s a lightbulb idea.” But the thing that’s light bulb is actually taking that and developing a process to scale it across a massive digital ecosystem, so that way then you’re really making, solid steps forward for the users and for, you know, AI platforms to be able to digest the information. 

Sarah: Absolutely.

Jenny: So if somebody were trying to implement this internally and they were trying to create, let’s say, going into next year, a program to implement this within their own organization, what are some practical applications they should be thinking about?

Sarah: The best thing that they can do, really, is just think about how to quickly and concisely answer the questions that people are using. Think in terms of how you would be searching for things online. A great resource is the FAQs section or more questions section in Google. It provides a list of questions that people are commonly asking and searching for, within a specific query, taking those and running with them.

And again, as many bulleted bulleted lists, Q&A-style copy format that you can, that you can fit into a page. 

Jenny: Absolutely, absolutely. How about the integration of AI writing tools into a process? So how should marketers think about that? When is it in your patient’s best interest to use those tools, versus when is it kind of becoming lazy and creating content that they don’t want to read?

Sarah: That’s a great question. I know AI writing tools can be a little controversial in the marketing space, just because if you don’t use them correctly, your copy can sound very robotic, and obviously if it doesn’t sound right, users aren’t going to find interest in it. And AI is not going to rank it very well either, the AI search engines.

So you want to be able to use your AI writing tool to your advantage, but you want to use your best judgment as a human to sort of, intervene when necessary, break up those blocks of text and, really play around with the instructions that you’re giving your AI writing tool to be able to get the best output for yourself.

So, emphasizing, you know, the bulleted lists.

Jenny: Well, in addition to bulleted lists, you can also do, summaries or headlines. Another thing that is really valuable that our team has done is, for example, if you do have an article that’s been written, you can use AI to be able to summarize it.

Okay, Sarah. So let’s talk a little bit about when I can play a role in the creation of content for SEO and GEO versus when it should be a human actually involved in the process. What’s your perspective? 

Sarah: AI writing tools are great for additional support. Although they’re not perfect, they’re not always medically accurate if you’re writing medical content, and they tend to sound a little robotic if used repeatedly. So, having that human intervention there to help in creating more of a natural voice throughout the copy, breaking up large blocks of text, again, with those, bulleted lists or even summaries, really comes into play with, using AI tools to the best of your ability.

Jenny: Absolutely. Think of it as a support member on your team, not the star person. 

Sarah: Exactly.

Jenny: Perfect. Well, let’s shift over talking a little bit about personas and AI search. Yenny, give us your thought about, kind of where we are, how it plays in, and what the future is going to hold. 

Yenny: Sure. Thank you. Jenny. So first, AI is changing the game, right?

So AI doesn’t care just about the keywords. It tries to understand who is behind the question—your role, context and even all the constraints can influence that answer.

So for example, I have two prompts: typing in “best skincare routine.” Or someone might say to ChatGPT, “I am a 35 year old male with sensitive skin and recurring acne. What is the best skincare routine recommended by dermatologists?” You see the difference in the two prompts? One has context and information. So AI tailors the answer to those specific prompts and personas. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to start thinking persona-first when creating content. AI and large language models change how search works.

Prompts don’t just carry what someone wants, but who they are also. Content must respond not only to queries, but to the identity and constraints behind them. In AI search, a persona is defined, is a defined identity or a set of characteristics that guides how the AI responds to process information. So it goes beyond what is being asked and consider who is asking and under what circumstances.

In old search, success mostly came from doing keyword research, finding the right keywords, making sure your content align and match the search intent behind them. And as long as you pick the right keywords and align your content with that intent, you could rank well, right? So now in the AI search prompts, expose not just what but the who is asking—again role content, context and constraints.

So with AI search, a user’s query isn’t just about what they want, it also reveals who they are and the situation they’re in. Also environmental factors like where they live, living in different states have an effect in their responses. 

For example, if a user prompts ChatGPT is something like, “I am a 50 year, 50 year old living in Miami, Florida. I need a yearly physical, but I don’t have health insurance. Can you show me a list of nearby, primary care doctors who offer free physicals and also provide me with a checklist of what to bring to my appointment?”

That was a lot of context, a lot of information. And so with this prompt, ChatGPT has enough background information: They know about the user’s needs, they know their personal situation, their financial constraints, where they live and how they like that information to be presented to them.

So AI systems personalize the summaries and citations around that context. Different personas, don’t just want different information, they also want it delivered in different formats. So AI tools recommend your content into different formats that are most useful for the searcher. 

For example, a person, an executive persona. Right. This person prefers a summary with a bullet list because they wanted to scan the content quickly. As on the other hand, a researcher persona might want a deep-dive narrative with sources and charts and explanations. 

So by anticipating the format preferences of different personas, we make it easier for AI to recommend the content in a way that is very useful and valuable for the user. 

And so what this means for content strategy, we want to start this in ways to incorporate personas into the content. We want to revisit our core pages, our core content, and integrate targeted examples, localized details. We want persona-specific insights to make the content more relevant and engaging, right? If not every content or not, every topic needs a personalized version. Instead, we want to find places where we can speak to the audience naturally and more directly—whether through localized callouts, customer-focused CTAs, or targeted subsections within that existing content.

Also, now that we have talked about tailoring the content to different personas and formats, the next step is making sure we have a strong base persona to work from. And this starts with core demographics. These are things that we already have when we create the content. Things like the age, the gender, the race, locations, education, income. So all of these basics, core demographics are the foundation for layering our context and preferences and constraints when writing the content. 

And it is tools like Google Search Console that come in very handy because it gives you a real world insight into what, who is finding your content, what they’re typing in, what are they searching for? So by analyzing these types of questions and queries, from your visitors, you can infer what problems or goals they have. And this helps you in building the persona for writing your content. 

Jenny: That’s super helpful. I think a lot of folks are thinking about personas when they’re doing social media content, but that hasn’t necessarily translated over to SEO and on-site content as much.

So hopefully for our listeners, this is really good food for thought and really helps you think about how persona-based marketing really extends into all of these other tactics and ways that you’re creating content for your patients online. So Jenny and Sarah, thank you so much for all of the information you’re sharing today. 

This whole world is shifting so quickly. So we’re going to continue creating episodes on SEO and the impact AI is having it, on it, every couple of months to be able to continue to give people some food for thought in context as they are refining their strategy. 

So thank you, both of you. 

Yenny: Thank you. 

Sarah: Thank you.

Jenny: And for our listeners, thank you for tuning in today. Hopefully, both Sarah and Yenny gave you some additional ways that you can think about content strategy, content creation and the way that AI and AI overviews are digesting and using your information on behalf of your patients. So the way that you will continue to create content will shift over time, and you’ll continue to do better and better to show up in those places that your patients are looking for you.

If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to reach out. We would love to chat more. Otherwise, please share this episode with a colleague who may find the information helpful. Subscribe to this podcast. We drop new episodes almost every Friday, and like us on social media. You need to get updates on the new information that we’re sharing.

And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We will see you on next week’s episode. Have a great day! Cheers!