Chris Madden:
Email marketing isn't new, but the way we use it is changing fast. And if you're not thinking about automation data, and even AI when it comes to email. Then honestly, you're leaving money and momentum on the table. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden. Today we're looking at how email gives you something you don't always get in other channels.

Direct personal connection with your audience without relying on rented platforms like social media. And with the right setup, it can scale smartly using segmentation. Automation and the first wave of AI powered tools to help us break it all down. I'm joined by Jessica Best. Jessica Best is a recognized expert in email strategy and CRM helping brands from Fortune one hundreds to healthcare leaders unlock better performance through smarter email programs.

Whether it's fixing deliverability, rethinking lifecycle strategy, or adapting to changing creative best practices. Jessica brings practical clarity to the most reliable channel in digital marketing, which is email. Let's begin with the first thing that makes email different from every other channel, that subject line.

Jessica Best:
One of the things that's super important in email marketing is the subject line. It's not just a headline. This is whether or not they open the email. 40% of that decision depends on the subject line. Now, another 40% depends on the from name. Also not maybe something you think about in other channels. Who do we send it from?

Is it from Chris or is it from Match node? There's a lot of differing opinions out there and I have some data that says that if I don't recognize that name, that email doesn't stand a chance. If it's gonna come from Chris, I better know who Chris is or Chris at Match Node is a nice combination option.

So these are the ingredients that maybe exist in email that don't exist in other channels. But the other piece is data. The fact that when I send out an email, I might send it to a hundred people, but there are 10 different groups or three different segments of that list that needs something a little bit different, a different product feature, a different contract size, whatever it is.

All that specificity is really hard to do without an incredibly robust media spend, paid media spend. So typically that's one of the things that I see people maybe not taking as much advantage of is email's just a little bit of a different beast. We need to make sure that we've got a good blend of image and text.

We've gotta have a really good subject line, and we should be using data to drive the content of our emails.

Chris Madden:
There are so many elements to get right in an email. The design, the data, the content, the call to action, and the trade off is real. You want it to look good, but you also need it to work. So I asked Jessica, how do you make smart choices when every brand, audience and funnel looks different?

Jessica Best:
I worked at a very brand driven agency for the last eight years before my consultancy, and a lot of those clients are brand first. We're talking about beautiful emails. Who cares if they work for everybody? It has to be a balance, especially when you start talking about things like B2B. It can't be one big designed image that's not gonna land very well, and a lot of folks here on the go, you get your email on a mobile device.

That image could take. Three seconds to load. I don't have three seconds. So I think it has to be a good balance of image and text no matter whether you're B2B, B2C, restaurants or healthcare. If we're talking about the data that drives results, plain text emails can be really effective, specifically in B2B in a sales automation sense.

Because it can look like it came from Jess at BetterAve or from Chris at match node, and I think that's pretty powerful. We forget that automation is one of email's greatest superpowers, and if we can automate those things, that should could, would be done by a human. Otherwise, that human's time is then freed up for things like phone calls, which I can't do from the email team.

Plain text emails can work. I would lean towards not making plain text emails the whole arsenal. Even healthcare brands have a brand. There's something that a visual can tell you faster than five paragraphs of text, whether it's a happy patient, whether it's a resolved issue, whether it's how quickly you can be seen, whatever that is.

It can be really quick to get that through a visual or image as opposed to having to read five bullets.

Chris Madden:
And that's where automation comes in. The more tech you have behind your emails, the more personalization and efficiency you unlock. And that comes with some setup needs.

Jessica Best:
Depending on which email platform you have, segmentation and automation and data-driven email can be really easy or.

Let's say really complex, the complexity does come with complication. So there are some pieces of data that are in a system that just does not talk to your CRM, let alone to your email platform yet that it's gonna be harder to get to. And you probably need either a team member or an expert on the outside to help you integrate those systems to draw up what it looks like to have those systems talk to each other, how often.

Who wins if the data's different in each system, those types of things. There are some technical requirements there when you get more complex, but the truth is that a lot of this stuff can be plug and play these days. I mean, thank God of all the things that computers can do for us, talking to each other should be one of them, literally in email platforms.

Second most important job is to make sure that it can get the data in. Fast enough to take action on it. And so a lot of the email platforms that we see today, whether that's Salesforce or Klaviyo, a lot of those we see have prebuilt walkie-talkies to some of the systems that we think are gonna be the most important to feed data into our campaigns.

So automation lifecycle marketing, we gotta have data at every stage. Think about how important it is to know when somebody is a new lead. Versus a cool last lead versus a hot lead that just like they reactivated and they're starting to engage again. That data has to go back and forth. I need to tell the CRM that somebody's coming in hot on the other side and starting to open a lot of our emails.

Conversely, the sales team's CRM updates on, I have a call with this person on Thursday that has to make it over into the email platform, or I'm going to keep nurturing them while you're physically on the phone with them. So that's the type of data that there are a lot more prebuilt connections that can.

Sync that back and forth without a person having to oversee it. And my favorite chief here, by the way, if you're a small team and maybe don't have a database development team yet, try Zapier. They have an entire marketplace of Zaps apps that connect common CRM tools with common email platform tools. So if the only thing you're looking for is to really power your lifecycle marketing and you know that those two systems have to talk to each other, that is one of my favorite cheats.

Chris Madden:
AI is taking email to another level, not just in writing content, but in how platforms talk to each other and execute campaigns. But it also raises a question, how much should we rely on AI, especially in healthcare where trust and accuracy matters so much.

Jessica Best:
The keyword or the buzzword, the Peewee Herman word of the year is AI.

For the last two years probably, and one of the things that I find interesting is that in email marketing, we've been using AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning ML for about 10 years. And I don't mean disparagingly. We haven't been using generative AI, which I think is having its moment right now.

But if you think about the way that data powers decisions in email platforms. That's artificial intelligence. It's rules based, or it's making its own rules, which is that machine learning part of it. We're letting the computer move faster than human beings that could make those decisions individually.

That's how we get segmentation. Some of the email platforms out there will say, this is your top 20 most engaged database. I could pull that. I could literally also do that manually, but the computer did it for me. AI did that for me, and I think there's a sliding scale of. How robust AI is involved in the decisions, and I would say that from an automation perspective, AI has to do this stuff.

I literally can't do it fast enough to make it make sense. From a content perspective, I have been a little shy at getting AI involved in things like set up my data sync between system A and system B. I don't want AI to do that. I do want automation to do that. I do want an app to do that, but I want it to follow my specific instructions because that can get messed up in the scariest ways, and I wanna make sure that it follows my pretested.

Process. So I think AI can help with things like, did you mean this? Or you probably want this other piece of data, and it was excluded originally. Do you want Yep, absolutely. I wanted to make suggestions, but I don't want to take the lead yet on talking between systems and connecting systems.

Chris Madden:
Jessica's hesitation with generative AI makes sense. Digital health isn't the space where we can hand the keys over to a robot and walk away. We still need human involvement as fast as AI is improving. Right now, it is still more like a smart intern than a seasoned strategist.

Jessica Best:
For generative AI. I am a little nervous to give the final writing piece over to.

What I think of as an intern and maybe a new intern, by the way, like I think generative AI is really young and it's gonna get a lot better, but I love the idea of digging into your own data and figuring out what's worked, and knowing that if you've got seven years of data, there's some recency required to that data to make it true.

There's an amount of data to train that model that will make it better, smarter. And I think that's really important, but it's also just like an intern. They give you something and they're like, every time we use the word Chicago in our subject line, it wins. This event isn't in Chicago, so that doesn't work for me.

I think just that corrective. Oh, what a great find. We'll have to put that into our database of things that work really well. What would work if this event is in New Orleans? So almost that second prompt. If you're using generative AI, let them give you probably bad ideas and then realize, oh, the data that I gave you is including a lot of really specific event data, and so I need to tell you that this event is in New Orleans.

It may be true that putting the venue or the location in the subject line is the part that lifts as opposed to the word Chicago. So continuing to put better data in or train your intern a little bit better to find what's working and why, as opposed to just rote memorization. What's working, which I think is where we're at right now with generated AI.

There's one layer of processing power and we're gonna ask it ah, with new information. How else would you answer that question?

Chris Madden:
So we're all wondering how far will AI really go in marketing? Jessica makes a great point here. AI can think fast, but it can't think new just yet. It doesn't replace creativity, but it does accelerate it.

Jessica Best:
I think the future of AI is still on that build campaigns for me side, if I can trust it, if we get to the point where you're telling me how it's gonna work best, all right, I'm gonna look at it 'cause. I don't know. I'm a human brain. And even just if it was a second AI, I think everybody needs a proofer and AI will be no different.

But if we get to the point where AI is PhD level smart, smarter than me, and I'm actually saying, I want the outcome to be this. I want the audience to feel like this. Those are two things that I have to set right, and then the campaign comes out pretty big, like something I wouldn't have even thought of.

I love the potential future of that. Where I would put an asterisk is. And I don't know if this will change as AI grows up or not, but right now, by definition, nothing new comes from AI. No new idea, no new play on words, no new concept comes out of AI now. That's why I say I think that the campaign ideas is a really powerful side.

So if you get to the point where your AI is PhD thinking three and four and five levels deep, what if this is true and this is true and this is true? What if this would be the most powerful combination of those things? I couldn't have thought that. I think we're now getting briefed by the machine instead of the other way around.

And I think that can be a really powerful step for AI and email marketing specifically.

Chris Madden:
AI isn't built to replace relationships. You can't automate trust. And in healthcare, that's what makes the difference how connected people feel, not just how quickly we can send them a message.

Jessica Best:
It's possible that AI will give us the leg up so that we can do the more creative and more, I don't know, the more strategic thing.

I think that it's absolutely possible that AI will do the strategy, but the thing that we will bring to the table is the relationship. AI learns that email works really well, and so sending more email probably works better than sending less email, and so it sends more email and it sends more email, and it sends more email.

And it might even still be working because if it wasn't working, the AI would learn that it's not working and send less email. But what it's not doing is building a relationship with someone. It may be harming that relationship with that someone. So AI might have a small window where things work really well.

It's like getting shortsighted even as a human being. Email works really well. Let's send a lot of it really good in the short term. Not good for long lifetime value, and it takes a long time. For AI to be with that program long enough that they realize their mistake. We humans, no matter what, I've got 20 years of experience and some of those lessons took me more than three months to learn.

So I think that's the piece of it that we can add of. What does mimicking a true human relationship look like? While AI is still learning, even as smart as you get, even as strategic as it gets, that to me feels like the piece that humans can really own. I don't think AI is ever gonna replace our salespeople.

It might replace marketing tasks, and which of us would not like to have a very well educated intern on our staff doing some of the stuff that we do over and over and over again. That doesn't have to be how we spend our time. And so I think not being afraid that AI is coming for the repeat tasks. And being okay with that so that we can think about those things.

What do we wish we could try? I went to a conference and I heard this thing and I thought I would love to try that campaign idea. I have no idea when I would feed that into my schedule. Those are the things that we can be free to test or try or brainstorm on or throw spaghetti against the wall.

Chris Madden:
One thing that hasn't changed deliverability.

If your emails aren't landing in inboxes, then none of this matters. Getting past spam filters isn't just about tactics, it's about permission, value, and relevance. When you respect your audience's inbox, they reward you with attention.

Jessica Best:
Yeah, deliverability has been one of the, no matter how advanced we get, email still has this one little mole where she's so cute.

She's so effective. And actually I think it's a gift in disguise because what it really is the gate through which we have to pass, and the key is permission. If we are putting people on our list that have no idea how they got there, they're gonna call us spam and then we're gonna be treated like spam, and that's deliverability.

And it's more indicators than just calling a spam, right? A high unsubscribe rate if you get a 1.0 or higher unsubscribe rate, really I like to say under half a percent unsubscribe rate. That indicates that there's a good chunkier or list that isn't interested or isn't interested anymore in your list.

Same thing with a low open rate. If your open rate falls below a certain percentage or it cuts in half of what it used to be. Something's going on there. You're not as interesting. Not as engaging. Something is not. Living up to expectations and, and boxes. Listen for that kind of thing. They listen for those kind of indicators to determine not just whether to put you in the inbox, but which tab to put you in.

This is my, if I get to it later, if I have time for it, list of things as opposed to being something that I definitely wanna read and engage with. The challenge of deliverability is close to my heart because we can do a lot of great email marketing, design and copywriting, but if that email hits the jump folder or just doesn't get delivered at all.

It was all a waste, right? And unfortunately, it doesn't take that high of a threshold of people calling you spam to be treated like spam. So permission is the key. That's the magic ticket. If everyone on our list expects our email and we're sending what we said we were gonna send from a value perspective, that's a pretty good indicator.

But then the third piece really is keeping your list clean Over time. There's gonna be a port from your list, statistically a third of your list that hasn't opened in over a year, hasn't opened or clicked in over a year. They're just sitting there drawing down your open rate. A lot of us grew up in the grow your list at all costs.

Sorry, more people is better no matter whether they're cold leads or dead or whatever. And the truth is that the dead weight in your list is actually making you look horse. So we wanna keep that list pretty fresh. We can always go out to those folks and ask. We think you're not there anymore. Are you still there?

Do you still want something from us? It's a re-engagement campaign. Or we can just trim 'em and make sure that our open rates stay really healthy with those folks who are still engaged over time. I had a a retail example where a client of mine was sending six days a week, and their total number of average purchases was like 1.7 or something.

We're here whenever you're ready for your second purchase of the year, and it was just overkill. And so they wouldn't remove the inactives from their list, but they ended up sending those folks once a week or once a month instead. So that they were still getting something, but only the best stuff and much, much, much less frequently.

For example, cold leads, lapsed patients, those types of things really need to be treated pretty differently.

Chris Madden:
Your tech stack plays a huge role in that success, and not all email platforms are created equal in healthcare, especially privacy and compliance raise the stakes. It's about choosing platforms that protect patient data while still giving your marketing team the flexibility to test, personalize and grow.

Jessica Best:
One of the most common questions I get asked is, what's your favorite email platform? And I was speaking in the National Restaurant Association Show, and half of that room is using something that's built into their point of sale system, which isn't. That uncommon retail and that type of thing, that isn't that uncommon.

For those of us that are in more of a long lead time sales process, or B2B or that are in systems need to be extremely safe. We need to pass extremely high thresholds of safety. We're not gonna use a credit card swiping machine to keep our patient data. So there's gonna be, probably in the health space, there's gonna be an electronic medical record system, whatever that is.

That keeps different data, but also every single piece of this needs to be secure and secure in transit. Your EMR database, you might also have a separate CRM, although a lot of electronic medical. Records platforms are, I think, trying to play a little bit more in that space as well as the email platform space.

I'll tell you, I've not been like blown away by any email functionality inside a non email platform yet. They're working on, they're young, just like AI. They're gonna grow up at some point or acquire somebody, but typically you've got that product data. The CRM customer relationship management system, which is great for things like your support tickets, go here, your invoicing questions, your sales tickets, go here.

Those the sales conversations, all of that is for when humans need to touch that relationship. An EMR is, you saw a doctor, A CRM is you talk to a support person, and then the email platform is, if the CRM is the home of that data and marrying that data, the email platform just needs. Access to that data, both directions.

I'll tell you how people are engaging with emails. If you'll tell me basically everything about these people now, because in the healthcare space we're talking about not just personally identifiable data, healthcare data, I would advise that you talk to a lawyer, 'cause I'm not a lawyer, but I have advised people in the past to focus on segment data after data analysis.

And what I mean by that is you have data in in EMR. That is specific and healthcare related that you don't have to have in an email platform. Now, if your email platform is HIPA compliant, go nuts, but just tread lightly in moving data into an email platform that you don't actually need. What you really need is that person's segment has been in the last year, I don't know what they were treated for.

That's not as personal as Jessica had a broken finger. Broken finger doesn't have to go in. Your email platform has. Certain type of insurance coverage or has been treated for a category of things rather than a specific diagnosis. Those are the types of segment things that feel like they actually might belong even in a HIPAA compliant email platform, as opposed to leave some of the medical stuff in the medical record.

Space.

Chris Madden:
Jessica shares one of her favorite campaign stories, a lifecycle campaign for Blue Cross Blue Shield. It's a great reminder that lifecycle campaigns can do more than convert. They can build lasting relationships, as we learned in our episode on lifecycle marketing. By timing your outreach to match the customer journey, email becomes less of a broadcast and more of a conversation.

Jessica Best:
They had this sort of add-on dental package. You could take any product out there and this is basically your cross-sell and upsell campaign. It starts with prospects, in this case, current clients it, it starts with people who are insured under blue. And then we are gonna try and ask them, do you feel good about your dental coverage?

We're going to offer you this option at a good rate, at a partner rate exclusive offer some of this language that we know can. Hopefully convert and make people feel really well supported. This campaign starts at this many days after they signed up for their original plan, and then at 90 days again, we'd turn again.

We had these flighted moments where we would sneak in dental articles in their newsletter and they clicked on one that would trigger them. Now it's time to talk to them again. So there were multiple points along the sort of sales funnel slash customer journey. What is somebody thinking, feeling, and doing all the way along that experience?

And when are they ready for this message and when could it benefit them? Signing up for new insurance happens for most people once a year, and so signing up outside that cycle really is a tough thing to sell. And so we would start to mimic what that actual true customer journey is. Learning from when somebody makes those decisions and then helping.

Supporting when we can help those decisions. One thing I loved about this campaign, they were so into testing, which I love, but you can definitely over test. We got to where we were testing orange buttons versus purple buttons, and I was like, guys, I wonder. Also, neither of those are our brand colors. I wonder if the button color is our most powerful test.

Well, turns out in this case it was because the purple button wasn't very legible. The contrast between white text and the purple button. So the orange button still on our brand color, the orange button ended up lifting in clicks, or the other one was the button. Contact us or click here in the hero image, versus having a standalone call to action button at the bottom of the paragraph of a sort of sales text or whatever, having a separate button lifted.

That was a good finding in our test results, just knowing how people read an email or skim an email and how people make those decisions. That was a really fun one. I felt like you really, really tapped into. What is the most helpful, relevant, useful way email can support this product or this patient for that matter?

Chris Madden:
Data is at the heart of that. Every click, every open, every interaction tells a story. When you use that information, well, you're not guessing anymore. You're responding. That's what makes modern email marketing so powerful.

Jessica Best:
There are no coincidences left in marketing. We are way too smart for that. What I hear from people is, I don't have the data for that.

I don't have the data to do segmentation or automation, and I'm like, aha. Ah, hold on. The clicks that you get in your platform. So another email platform that I've used is Pardot. Pardot. It plugs right into Salesforce Outta the box. There's a connector. You don't have to build or maintain anything. It's fussy, but it works.

It has this thing where any link you click in the email, they can take an automated action to assign a topic of interest or a field of data to that contact record. Okay, now I'm talking data like now. You click on it in any email. The trick was we would use the same URL for the series, and so if you clicked on that link in any email, you got one little point of interest.

You were one out of five interested, one star. If you clicked again, you were two out of. And I'm combining this with a home builder client. Functionality wise. In part, the idea was we're listening for what you're doing and then almost scoring you based on interest in that product as opposed to, you've heard of lead scoring over the course of a campaign.

This is really saying, yeah, but if you're interested in this product, I got somebody you should talk to. So making that interest area something that we're collecting in data. Just on the email side, this isn't. I don't have to listen for CRM conversations or website visits, although that would be excellent too.

I only have to listen for clicks in the body of the email, and that's really powerful because you're winning your spot in somebody's attention by just being relevant. Oh, I was just looking at that. Yeah, that's not a coincidence.

Chris Madden:
So what's Jess's lasting advice? Automate the immediate. If someone takes action, whether with a sign up, a click, a form fill.

You should respond instantly. That's how you turn attention into engagement and start the conversation and don't stop at the welcome email. Every step of the journey is a chance to communicate, educate, and to move people forward.

Jessica Best:
There were two things I would tell everyone to do. The first one is you have to have an immediate email.

If you have a newsletter and somebody subscribes a welcome email, if you have a lead form on your website and somebody fills out that lead form, I love the sales person for calling them within five minutes. I love that promise. And you still can't be faster than my automation. Like you have to send an immediate email.

You have less than five minutes of somebody's attention before they're probably checking out another offer. So if I get one thing, send an immediate automated email for any digital action taken on your website. If I get two things, think beyond the welcome email in your email automation. I see so many brands that turn on a three email lead, nurture, and nothing else.

What about a new customer? That blue example is actually a customer. It's a new customer. And part of onboarding that person and giving them all the things that they need and all the information that they want is giving them something that we think they could have. So what is the next moment in the customer journey that you're not taking advantage of?

Absolutely. Lead capture is a moment. Cool. Lead hasn't taken action in 90 days. That's a moment. Lack of action. That's a moment. What about somebody who wakes back up and it starts to click on everything? That's a moment. Somebody that has a sales conversation and gets a sales proposal but doesn't close lapse, lead, nurture.

There are moments all along the customer journey, and I think we get so focused right up front. Email can do amazing things pretty much all along the funnel to increase conversion to the next step. And sometimes that's just getting that person more ready for the next phone call from sales. But sometimes it means we close the deal.

Chris Madden:
Email might seem like old technology at this point, but it's still one of the strongest channels we have, especially in healthcare, tied closely to retention and impact. As we heard in our lifecycle marketing episode, it gives you space to personalize, educate, and nurture, trust at scale. And now with AI and automation, it's becoming an even more powerful engine for growth.

If there's one thing to take away from today, it's this. The best email strategies don't just send. They listen, they respond. They meet people where they are and guide them to where they want to go. So whether you're building a full lifecycle journey or just improving one campaign at a time, remember, in Digital health, good email isn't about blasting a list.

It's about building relationships. With your owned channels in place. The next lever is Partnerships. Episode 13 explores how providers, payers, and influencers can multiply your reach and growth.

Phi Pham:
Lifecycle Marketing is really about sending the right message to the right user at the right time.

Chris Madden:
That's Phi Pham, and you'll notice right away he's not thinking about people as users or numbers in a funnel. He's thinking about human moments, what messages show up, when and why, and how that sequence can either build trust with the human on the other end or erode that trust.

Phi Pham:
And I think that means more than just sending promo campaigns, it means more about creating meaningful moments across your full customer journey, and how do you do that? I think that's the issue, is how do you actually create meaningful moments and curate a strong customer journey?

Chris Madden:
Phi Pham is the co-founder of Verbose, a lifecycle marketing agency that helps digital health companies scale by embedding dedicated lifecycle teams within their organizations with a strategy first approach. Phi and his team combine embedded operations, flexible support, and a relentless focus on driving long-term patient engagement.

Lifecycle marketing is what happens after someone becomes that lead or customer. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

There's a delicate balance at play as companies do need some level of data to operate. It helps them figure out how to better serve you, but where do you draw that line? The people in these lifecycle marketing campaigns have already filled out the form or bought the first thing such that they are already customers, members, or patients, however they're referred to.

So in this case, you have the direct information to send the person an email, send them a text message, or even send a direct mail piece to their address because you already have all that information.

It's worth considering the tools and protections that are in place, to maximize this business potential and serve their customers in the best way possible, while also protecting our privacy in the digital health world. How can you help a prospective patient as much as possible over the longest period of time by implementing lifecycle marketing strategies that enhance patient retention, reduce churn, and maximize lifetime value?

Those are the exact things we're going to be hearing about from Phi and his co-founder, Carlos Govantes. Their lifecycle marketing agency Verbose specializes in building dedicated, embedded lifecycle marketing teams for digital health companies.

To get us started, Phi says that it's crucial to get a bird's eye view of what your program is today.

Phi Pham:
Oftentimes within our platforms, these flows and automations are pretty fragmented. Like you have a post purchase series, you have an abandoned cart series, and it's hard to get a bird's eye view of a cohesive view of your customer journey of what's sending. And so that's what we start with.

Chris Madden:
If that sounds like a great place to start, then stick around. We'll be exploring customer journey maps, learning about customer retention, and figuring out how data is utilized to best service patients of digital health companies.

What I loved about my conversation with Phi was how both technical he is and yet also understands that every piece of data represents a human interaction, and he really values the human side in balance with the technical side.

Still, Phi says that the flows and automations within the platforms they work on are fragmented most of the time, which means getting a cohesive view of that whole customer journey can be difficult.

Phi Pham:
I think that's the main thing that really needs to happen, taking a step back and identifying kind of the gaps and opportunities within your program today. Whether it's channels, whether it's messages and branding, whether it's the data, whether it's the friction points, just understanding kind of your entire program today and the state of it.

I think from there it's really taking into account the data of it all. Where are we seeing the most volume flow? Where are we seeing the most engagement? Where are we seeing the most drop off from a retention or churn perspective? Why are we not seeing enough engagement with our platform?

Chris Madden:
To answer all those questions, the lifecycle marketing agency employs a three step system to identify core retention behaviors.

Phi Pham:
Step one, take a step back, look at what's going out. Step two, identify what the core opportunities are within those gaps of what's going out today. And three, double dive into the ones that are high impact, high priority, and try to think through what you can do there, whether it's testing, whether it's revamping the entire series and the way that you communicate.

I think oftentimes brands think of people as numbers, but specifically with digital health, these people are patients. These people are actual humans that you're trying to support in their journey. That's very vulnerable and very emotional, especially in telehealth. And so it's, how do you drive behavior change? How do you build trust and often guiding someone through their journey with you as a telehealth or as a digital health wellness company.

Chris Madden:
Before we break down the stages of lifecycle, Carlos Govantes is a co-founder at Verbose Marketing. We introduced Carlos in episode ten around technical setup when we went deep on events, signal resilience and attribution.

Carlos gives a concise context of how lifecycle and paid marketing fit together and can also overlap, especially from the point of view of the customer. Having run lifecycle and growth teams, I was curious what Carlos has held onto from his experiences with both. What's his perspective on the two journeys? How do they fit together? How does he use that knowledge to build now at Verbose?

Carlos Govantes:
For the majority of my career, I was in email lifecycle channels and really early on in particular, thought about it kind of siloed to those channels.

But in a previous stint that I did, I had the opportunity to become head of growth for about a year period. And I really started connecting the dots between paid acquisition and then the handoff to lifecycle. And I think a lot of companies usually have these two teams separated within their marketing organization, and a lot of them operate in those silos.

But honestly, there's such a close handoff that happens between the orgs that there should be more integration thought about from that.

And what I mean about that is, on the lifecycle side, we're usually picking up after the paid acquisition or the paid search or whatever it is collects the lead, whether it's an email, a phone number, even if they can get them to purchase, that's where the lifecycle journey begins.

There's been many times where I've seen completely different performance or even interest between someone coming from Meta ads versus TikTok ads versus paid search versus even organic. So really incorporating the acquisition source into our lifecycle decisioning.

Chris Madden:
So just to recap: step one, look at what's going out. Step two, find any gaps. Step three, double down on high impact pieces and rebuild the flows that matter most.

It sounds simple, but it's not. It's the difference between spray and pray email setup and something thoughtful, human and effective.

Now, Phi takes us through the three main stages of lifecycle, the first being the so-called awareness stage in the marketing funnel. He calls it a handshake of sorts between the paid acquisition team and a marketer's lifecycle team.

Phi Pham:
So you have top of funnel where your paid acquisition team is testing in ads, TikToks, CTV, SEO, organic, things like that. If they come to your site, they explore your site and they sign up as a lead.

Understanding that between paid and lifecycle is really important as well because we want to understand how users are first learning about your brand, what they're interested in, and how they're coming to your site, and being more interested in the value props.

And so if someone's running a top of funnel ad on TikTok about a telehealth company and they're really interested in the doctor interaction and being kind of asynchronous, the lifecycle team should really know that because they can take that handshake and build on top of that with workflows, lives, communications and things like that.

I feel like there's a huge learning curve typically and a huge building of trust that needs to happen before someone signs up with you. Especially at Thirty Madison and at telehealth, we're really helping them through a journey that's really personal and vulnerable for them. And so we want to make sure that they feel like they're supported every step of the way.

Chris Madden:
When you hear Phi talk about eventing, such as add to cart or browse, he's talking about behavioral signals that happen on a website or in an app. What users click, where they pause, what they add to cart, what they check out.

It's how the system knows what to say next and not have to guess.

Phi Pham:
And so that includes welcome series that nurtures them and educates them. That includes abandoned cart, that includes browse, understanding people's behaviors and really building their journey so that we're sending the right message to them after they activate.

I think that's where I love to really work within. It's like, what does the customer journey really look like? Onboarding, formation. How do you build advocacy with the user so that they're referring their friends? And then if they're not having a great experience with your service and they churn, what does that win back experience look like so that we can regain their trust and build a better product over time.

Those are the main three stages of lifecycle. It's awareness, it's activation, education, nurturing, and then it's also post-purchase retention. It's how do we actually build a better customer experience with our customers.

Chris Madden:
That's where Phi hands the baton to his co-founder, Carlos. While Phi thinks in flows, Carlos lives in the data fields, schemas and clean naming conventions. He's the one making sure that what we send is based on something solid.

One class of tools he talks about are CRMs. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and some really common CRMs include Salesforce and HubSpot.

Carlos Govantes:
So if we think about the user updating their cart, there could be an event associated with that product added to cart. If the user makes a purchase, there can be an event associated with that that comes into your CRM tool, purchase event.

You then use that event to trigger your order confirmation or your abandoned cart welcome series, and so on and so forth.

The data schema is what I would say that is the data inside of the event. So you have your abandoned cart event, for instance, and then within the abandoned cart you'd have the product name, the price, the image URL, the link to the PDP, all that kind of stuff.

So you really want to make sure that you have very clearly defined events coming from your website into your messaging platform, and then for each of those events, you have a clear distribution of data that you want to leverage in your messaging.

Chris Madden:
But there can be obstacles to that. Many times, Carlos says, it's obvious when a transition has occurred within a company.

Carlos Govantes:
Say there's a different engineering leader or even just different engineers or teams touching the databases while working on projects. And if there's not really solid core foundational documentation, and sometimes that's hard to come by, especially if you're a startup and you're moving really quickly, the data schema starts getting recreated by a different engineer who's picking up on the project.

So one thing that I usually like to look in with clients, it's a really good test to understand, do we have any issues with our data and our platform?

Chris Madden:
The litmus test in this case is what Carlos calls the first name test. Different techs all refer to someone's first name. Is it actually accurate for your purposes? Because if there's a mess, you've got to find some workarounds.

For example, you might have first name with no spaces, you might have first underscore name, you might just have name. Carlos gets into it.

Carlos Govantes:
So if you go into ESP and you look for a field called first name, if you have more than one of them, there could be an issue with your data schema.

A lot of people upload CSV lists, or the abandoned cart event will have first name, but it'll be like first underscore name, and then the purchase event, it might be firstname, all one word. So you end up having the same value that means the same thing, but there's just different ways of naming it.

And when you want to call that data into an email template or an SMS or some other kind of a workflow, the marketer might not know which one should I be using. Sometimes it's null, sometimes it's not null. What was the most recently updated one?

And then if you think about your tool, like an Iterable or a Braze, whatever your CRM platform is, you'll have all of these fields on the user profile. If you have five first names and all of them are populated, how do you know which one you should be using consistently across all of your messaging?

That can lead to breakages with dynamic personalization logic.

First name is just one very basic example. Let's assume we're thinking about something else like lifetime purchase history or the last product purchased. If that's getting updated from various different places, it can cause a lot of issues in your messaging and your logic.

Chris Madden:
This is where things get tactical. Carlos recommends setting up a staging environment so if you break things, you can fix them and test before anything is ever publicly live.

Carlos Govantes:
The technical details, I think things that matter most there, there's a couple different buckets. One of them is really understanding and mapping out the data that you want to use.

What I've come across a bunch is a lot of times companies or individuals will think, I don't know what I'm going to use this data for, but let's just get as much data into that platform as possible. We'll figure it out. It's better to have more than it is to not have it at all. I don't know if I 100 percent agree with that.

While yes, it is a nice to have data, you can figure out use cases. If you just add everything to a system, it can create a lot of bloat. And then we start getting into those issues where fields might be misnamed. And then you have to replace it with a different field.

Or maybe you just threw everything in there with one set of engineers or one project, and then a year later you're trying to solve a very specific use case and they create some new events or new data and it does the same thing that's already in there. But since that was created a while ago and no one was really using it, no one understood why it was there, so there was just, let's just create new data that we have a better, clear understanding of.

So I think that's one part, being very clear on which events you want, knowing exactly how it's going to be leveraged before you start the building process.

As a marketer, if I want to create a journey around a post-purchase, for example, and I want to know which conditions the user might have, or what age bracket they're in, so that I can cater the content for them, I want to have a thought about how I'm going to leverage that data and then I'll provide requirements to my product or engineering partners and say, here's what I would like the event to look like, because this is the messaging that I want to execute on.

So that's one part of it. Having that really clearly defined and of course documenting it so that if anyone has to pick up this project at a future date, they have all that context and history and they can pick up right where you left off versus creating something which could conflict with it.

The other thing that some companies just don't have the bandwidth or resources for, maybe it's not the time, but I've found it so valuable over my career, having a staging or QA environment. Don't just push things to production because that's where a lot of this event and repeat data issues occur.

We put an event into production. We were just testing it. We actually need to change the name of it, or we actually need to add some extra fields, or maybe we don't even need that event after all. Most platforms like Iterable and some of the other ones, you can't delete events once they're in there. You can hide them. You can try and clean it up. But it unfortunately stays in there forever, until you move to a new environment and no one wants to migrate their entire system. That's just too much of a pain point.

So using a staging environment is great because if the events get messed up, if the data gets messed up, who cares? It's a staging environment. You can hide them. You can worry about that later.

The other thing I like about a staging environment is you can be very meticulous about how you QA things. You can try and push through all those edge cases of a user made this purchase on a browser that's less than 1 percent used by most people. Did that break any of the data flows or messaging or any of that kind of stuff?

And then as you find those use cases, you can fix them. And then once you have everything nice and clean, now you move it and push it over to production. So you have a clean environment, one. Two, you don't have any bugs that the user has to experience either.

Chris Madden:
Just as it's important to pay attention to all of those details, having a robust strategy can usher in success, says Phi, whose embedded lifecycle team Verbose is built for delivering just such a strategy.

Focus on nurturing a prospect instead of just trying to snag more leads.

Phi Pham:
In the past where we've worked with agencies that have been a little bit more production heavy with lifecycle programs, you need a lot of hands on keyboard.

Developing emails can be as simple as stacking image classes, or it could be as complex as building pure HTML emails, so you send out to your users, which is a lot more best practice.

And we also worked with agencies that really only did creative for us, but one thing that was missing with my experience all within in-house brands is the strategy of it all.

I think lifecycle specifically really only works when you have a strong strategy, because all the rest funnels down into creative and production.

And so we created what we call an embedded lifecycle agency, which essentially embeds fractional lifecycle strategists onto your team, then augments your current resources so that we can better build out your strategy and build out your program.

I like to help brands move from more of a reactive execution to more of a proactive lifecycle strategy, because oftentimes you have a lot of top down going, hey, let's send more emails, which, no, we should be a little bit more methodical about it.

And it does bring it back to defining what lifecycle marketing really is, and I think it's a lot different than thinking of yourself as a channel marketer. Oftentimes, a lot of brands get stuck into the scenario of like, let's send more emails, let's send more volume. It's working. It's lowering our CAC.

We spend so much acquiring a user as a lead, but then we don't spend much time nurturing them and actually getting them to make their first purchase. And so email is one of the cheapest channels that you can spend on. And so let's send more so that we can convert them.

And oftentimes that kind of pigeonholes you into a very promo heavy comms style after sending emails five times a week, saying, hey, we have a discount on site, come and convert.

Chris Madden:
When Phi talks about brand messaging, he describes the handshake between acquisition and lifecycle and says we should picture them like a figure eight. He says that the relationship between the two sides determines what sort of overarching brand messaging a digital marketing team is looking to cultivate with its customers from the top of the funnel all the way down to churn.

Phi Pham:
Having a one-to-one kind of synchronous relationship with your paid team is super important. With the nuts and bolts, it can get very technical. I think especially with lifecycle, there's a CRM component of things. What data are we getting from our users? What data can we use to really personalize experiences and what's really core to a strong lifecycle program is the data infrastructure and how you're leveraging it.

Obviously, when you're getting users in from paid, really the only thing that we have is the paid source. What channel are they coming in from as well as the messaging or the creative that we're getting them from.

I think there's a lot we can do with landing pages as well, especially if you add lead capture to landing pages because it really shows the content on the landing page and the handshake of like, hey, this person came in on a landing page that had X, Y, and Z. Let's continue to dive deeper into that messaging within the email or SMS channels because we have a deeper relationship with those channels.

And so I guess, number one, is like understanding that with your paid team, the messaging that's happening and how do you pass that data onto the lifecycle team so that they can double down on that. Because if a specific value prop is hitting, then you'll definitely want to double down and make sure that you're nurturing that over time.

Chris Madden:
One suggestion from Carlos is to consider using unique welcome messages that depend on which ad a user may have seen.

Carlos Govantes:
If you saw a UGC ad on TikTok, you might want to follow up in your welcome email referencing back to that ad.

And that can be accomplished by tagging your ads and having parameters passed through during the acquisition. So like a lead collection box, think about like maybe there's a UTM that gets passed in, and then you can save that in your CRM tool so that when the welcome email kicks off, you can have either a dynamic module or even splits or branches in journeys that can say like, okay, this user came from this channel.

So we're going to A/B test and we're going to do a whole bunch of content to see which type of content really drives users to the next stage of the funnel for TikTok versus an organic customer who might already know more about the company because they've been doing the research, they came to the website via some other means.

Whereas a person who saw a TikTok video or Meta ad, it may have just come across their timeline, caught their eye really quickly, they clicked on it. Maybe they didn't spend a lot of time on the website, so there might need to be more education and trust building with whatever the business is versus that organic searcher.

Chris Madden:
Carlos makes a great point here. Not all leads are created equal. The message that works for someone coming from TikTok might not resonate with someone who found you through Google search. Lifecycle teams need to know where people are coming from so that they can meet them there.

Carlos Govantes:
So if I am looking at all of my sources, I really want to build funnels by source.

You know, what's the lead acquisition to conversion time for users that are coming through from organic? What does it look like if they're coming from paid search or TikTok or Meta or wherever else?

Most of the time, it logically makes sense. If someone's coming organically or via a search channel, they're going to have higher conversion rates. It might be a shorter turnaround.

The tricky part is the world is not linear. So a person does not only find a website organically, or they do not only come through via paid search. Usually if they're searching for a brand, it's because they previously saw a TikTok video or a Meta ad or something else, or maybe they heard it from a friend.

That's where it becomes a little bit more tricky. There's tools like multi-touch attribution to help understand where your leads are coming from and what different touch points they've had.

We've actually worked with a ton of clients and others even in-house, trying to solve the very tricky attribution issue. I wish there was an out of the box easy solution for it. But again, like so many things in life, it comes down to like, can you build something that's consistent and that enough people internally can have alignment on? And then can you look at that over an extended period of time to have some kind of consistency again with it?

Whether you're using GA4 or some other multi-touch tool or even in platform metrics, it always gives you a different answer.

Where I've seen the most challenges at different stints and other clients is when they try and use multiple sources and then marry the stuff together.

So if I'm looking in Iterable, for instance, at in platform metrics and I'm reporting on Iterable revenue per email, and then one of the analysts is using either internal database or Google Analytics 4, then we're reporting two different numbers and a lot of questions come from executives.

Why is revenue down here? It's like, well, actually you're comparing revenue in platform to the centralized database, which is coming from some kind of weighted attribution system.

So again, it's really key to just have consistency and make sure that when you're having those conversations around data, that everyone is aligned on what are we comparing to so that we have those apples to apples.

Chris Madden:
Phi points out that first step, the first purchase a customer makes, is vital. And when it happens, the game changes.

Phi Pham:
Lifecycle from an acquisition standpoint, getting that user to make that first purchase is really similar as well. We're testing value props all the time in our comms. We're testing what works, what's resonating with users that really gets them down the funnel.

I would say when they purchase, it's like a whole different ballgame where you're really focusing just on the customer experience.

I think within telehealth there's a huge focus on onboarding and specifically within the first 30 to 60 days, because if you don't build trust or a habit with the customer, the churn risk skyrockets really within the early days, and you have a hard time retaining them over time.

Chris Madden:
He says that the key KPI for product market fit is how long a customer will stick with us. Sometimes organic referrals may even come into play.

Phi Pham:
If you're spending so much on acquisition and you're getting all these leads and you're getting these first purchases, but they're not retaining, that's really difficult to really move the needle because that's more of a systemic product issue than it is a lifecycle marketing issue.

That also goes into the whole shift. The lifecycle marketing has become so cross-functional these days because retention has become such a performance KPI for businesses. Retention is the ultimate proof of product market fit.

If you have strong engagement early on and you have consistent usage with your platform or your product in the first 30, 60, 90 days, that's a really strong signal that people are finding your product valuable and that they're going to use it for the long term. And you can scale this with new users.

In those early days, when you have low volume of users signing up for your platform, it's not the millions of emails that we have for these larger brands. It's like two leads that come in a day. It's really hard to start A/B testing because you can't find stat sig on a lot of tests or optimize that.

It's more about how do you actually just build a stronger customer experience and product and leveraging lifecycle to do that is such a valuable tactic.

An example of this is customer feedback is such a valuable insight early days while you're trying to scale your product or your business. And the only way you can do that is really sending them an email and asking them or DMing them.

And so how do you build those communications in place where you're actually leveraging that feedback and that data, to delineate that message and give it to your product team, your engineering team, so that you can build a better product.

I think another big piece of it is referrals, word of mouth. Are your customers actually sharing your product? Is it going, not necessarily viral, but is it spreading quicker and virally in a way that's supporting your business on the organic side?

I think that's a great kind of indicator of product market fit because people are finding value and they're willing to share this with their friends. And that's a big thing to really put your name behind something.

And so it's all about, I would say, providing value to your users. Because if you're just pumping paid dollars into getting more leads, but they're not converting, that's not going to be sustainable business.

Chris Madden:
If retention is the KPI for product market fit, I was still curious what the relevant KPIs are on lifecycle, which Phi fills us in on. He also talks about how over focusing on retention can be problematic.

Phi Pham:
It really depends on the stages of the lifecycle that you're looking at.

I would say the first stage is the path to purchase, which is once they become a lead, how do we get them to actually convert? And oftentimes there it's a pretty robust testing environment, similar to paid ads and things and seeing kind of what value props are working.

And so oftentimes some KPIs that we're looking at are obviously conversion rate, but I would say engagement rates like click data, value prop tagging, what modules are they clicking on most, and doing a lot of testing within the channels.

But then retention is where it gets really complicated, I would say, in terms of KPIs, because especially with the introduction of subscription businesses having become so popular as a business model, you have subscription businesses that have one month subscriptions or even 12 month annual subscriptions.

And so the difference between one month is really easy of testing. You'll see the result of your experiment within 30 days. But if you're testing with an annual subscription, something that you do in month one, month two, you're not going to see the actual true results of it until 12 months later when they renew or they churn.

And so it gets really complicated, and I think with the longer plans, like the 12 month, there's, I would say, I think Netflix called this secondary KPIs or tertiary KPIs that are a good indicator of what the long term result will be, which for them was like the number of views that they came back to watch, or the number of likes that they had on a title.

If that was increased incrementally in the first month, then that was clearly a good indicator that it's going to actually increase retention over time.

And so we can go into this more granularly, but I would say it gets a lot more complex in terms of the KPIs we're looking at, and it differs every business, because usually retention KPIs are really tied to the product KPIs and performance KPIs there, because we're the ones driving that habit.

We're the ones doing a push retention that says, come back and track your sleep, or come back and track your food log. It's really tied to product.

Chris Madden:
It really makes sense if you think about it. The success of the product, how well it performs, translates to how long clients and customers will stick with it.

Carlos' approach involves communication and understanding.

Carlos Govantes:
The biggest thing is talking to the humans and really having an understanding of where they're coming from and trying to get some kind of alignment.

For me, what I really like to do is always understand the whys of how things are done. So yes, it's important to understand how something works, but I always want to talk to the person who owns that department or owns that metric, that report, and understand why are they reporting it in that way.

A lot of times what you'll find out, especially orgs that have a bunch of turnover, they'll inherit something like, well, this is what was in place, so I'm just keeping it going. Usually when you have those scenarios, there is more opportunity to like, hey, let's rethink this. Maybe there's a solution where we can come up with something that's going to have a better handholding event where we'll be more in sync with each other.

Sometimes you'll talk to the person who actually implemented and owned that from scratch and they have very good reason for why they want to do that, and then you can cater your metrics or your reporting to be more in sync with what they have.

Chris Madden:
Carlos says that one of the things he loves about lifecycle is that it mostly happens all within one tool.

This part is worth taking notes on: holdout testing. Instead of just sending the email to your entire list, you hold back and don't send the email to 10 percent of it, and then you compare how many purchases that group that did not get the email made compared to the group that did get the email.

Carlos Govantes:
The other thing I like to do, especially from the lifecycle side, this is a little bit more isolated into lifecycle, one of the things I love about lifecycle is it all happens mostly within one tool.

Hopefully you have a tool that can orchestrate your email, your SMS, your push all in one, so it's easy to have full control over the lifecycle messaging. Even if we don't have attribution figured out at the company wide level, we can still control how we measure incrementality from our lifecycle channels.

What I like to do a ton of the time is roll out holdout testing. And what I mean by holdout testing is imagine we have a big batch campaign that's going to go to a million users. I might take 10 percent of those million users that are eligible for this campaign and not send them the email.

The other 90 percent, I will send them the email. After the campaign goes out, maybe a week or so later, we'll take a look at both of those cohorts side by side. We'll see what was the conversion rate, what was the revenue per user driven from the users that received the email, and then what did that look like for the group that did not receive the email.

We can then directly infer the email caused any difference between those two groups, because that was the one variable that we isolated to in this experiment, and that will give us a good understanding of how well our email performed.

We don't have to worry about, did GA4 attribute it, was the UTM set up right. We literally have those two cohorts that we can run a query on the database and we understand exactly how many purchases and revenue came from them, and it gives us our cleanest way to look at that.

Chris Madden:
Behind every successful company are those very small, yet very significant details, and you've got to get them right.

In explaining his approach, Phi tells us how important it is to pay attention to each individual customer and their feedback with the aim of getting a better understanding of the effect your company has on them and how it can capitalize on that and hopefully grow.

Phi Pham:
Learning about what they're going through is a great start. Lifecycle marketing isn't just about revenue, it's about building relationships, and I think that's a huge, huge core component to a strong lifecycle program.

At all of my previous lives, one thing that really rooted me into my work and really energized me was actually reading customer feedback and reviews on your product, or even doing customer interviews and talking to them specifically.

I think at Thirty Madison, we had a lot of conversations directly with patients, real patients and their experience with our platform, and I learned so much about migraine.

Like migraine is a very debilitating thing that people have, and the fact that we can help them get medication or treatment really accessibly was such a really powerful moment for me, to be like, this changed my life.

Like you guys are helping me be able to not be cooped up in my house all day and be able to go out and see the sun. It's those relationships and those powerful feedback moments you have with your customers that really change your perspective.

Lifecycle actually has a huge impact on building trust and relationships with our users. And once we do have that trust, it's life changing for them.

And that's the same with every product that I had, whether it was Lalo, which is a very e-commerce platform where moms were coming out and saying, I was able to get this thing at an affordable price, and it changed the way that I take care of my child or the way that I live my life.

At Peloton, obviously the motivation was a huge factor for them in their product, which was an intangible thing. It was motivation, not necessarily the actual product itself, and the instructors being able to motivate you to actually live a healthier life was what they focused on.

And so hearing that and hearing that feedback from customers and that they trusted us and that they trusted the instructors was another powerful indicator that we built strong relationships with our users through communication, which is what lifecycle is all about.

Sending channel marketing versus building a better customer experience and doing kind of what I call human marketing at scale, especially within lifecycle.

Once you have better integrations with data and there's just so much tech out there that's being built with AI specifically as well, that is going to be such a valuable tool for strategists to be able to scale their programs and build more personalized messaging.

That's what I'm really excited to see, and that's what I'm really excited to see a lot of our clients start to think about and start to do. You can't do any personalization without a strong foundation, like kind of data infrastructure or tech stack that really enables you to do it.

And so I'm really excited about that piece of things and building more stronger one-to-one personalized messaging with our users versus more broad, general shotgun approach type messaging where you're sending a message to everyone, but we know everyone's not the same.

I think that's one thing that I'm seeing that I'm really excited about that is happening today and accelerating at a really, really quick rate versus back then where we had to assume a lot of things and build this more channel marketing based strategy where it's thinking about numbers and conversion rates and how do we send more volume versus thinking truly like what is the customer journey experience look like and what do we want to build.

Chris Madden:
We're in a new era of tracking data, which really helps marketers hit their targets while protecting patient privacy. It's definitely to marketers’ advantage that so much of our information is tracked and out there the second we go on the web.

Simultaneously, privacy concerns are a high priority. So when it comes to personal data, PHI, HIPAA and trust, companies have to make sure they've got their bases covered.

Phi helps us distinguish between these data types.

Phi Pham:
It really is a balance of implicit data versus explicit data.

I think in our world it's about, I think, implicit meaning we have all this behavioral data that we have on users that we've cookied or that we've learned about them, and we're building affinity models to say, hey, Chris is more likely to want the Peloton tread because he viewed that page, or that he's interacted with email content that's more tread focused.

That's implicit, where they haven't told us specifically that they want more content on tread. But we're actually just assuming and we're sending them more content based off their data.

And then it's explicit. It's like the surveys and the feedback that the users are actually giving to us specifically that we can leverage and build better customer experiences based off of that.

And so you often start seeing brands reach out and saying, hey, what is your preference on comms so that we can better curate your experience based off of that.

And that's what I like to do. I think it's a combination of both, but I like to be a little bit more explicit in soliciting that information, because that is really truly your customer giving you consent on like, hey, I wanted this information. Can you please in a strong way give me a better experience there?

An analogous example of this is back in the day when we had cookies for Facebook ads and things like that where you would just say a word like AI or like water bottle, and then all of a sudden a bunch of water bottle ads are showing up on your feed.

That was creepy to me. I never told you that I wanted this. That's the same thing with lifecycle. As much data we can get and get from them the better.

And oftentimes you'll start seeing a lot of brands build these quizzes or these surveys top of funnel that really ask them what they're looking for so that they can better curate experiences for them.

Chris Madden:
And what about when you can turbocharge the whole process, figuring out what works, what moves who and why, and when?

Looking to the future, AI is the conversation on everyone's mind. Phi talks about what the potential gains could be when it comes to AI and lifecycle marketing.

Phi Pham:
I had this whole robust organization around building a really strong email program.

We had data science teams to build personalization, one-to-one models where each user's experience was curated based off of what they purchased, what they liked. We had engineering teams building our in-house marketing automation platform so that we can scale the way that we do one-on-one personalization.

And we also had dedicated creative teams where we can hyper rapidly test new templates to increase incrementality on performance, because even increasing performance by 1 percent was millions of dollars in revenue every year.

That was millions of dollars in resources that we needed to spend to be able to do that, and something that's still hard to do today.

Brands are oftentimes chasing that and really trying to put resources into building that out more robustly. And I think AI is going to change that so much.

I think AI is going to help us work smarter when it comes to faster content generation, better segmentation and personalization, as well as predictive modeling.

That whole data science team that we needed to build in DTC, we probably no longer need that. We probably can do that pretty robustly with AI.

That being said, I don't think AI can replace empathy. I hope not. Maybe one day it will, may replace us all. And so I would say it's more of a tool, not a strategy.

It can be a tool that strategists use to be able to scale what's working. I think the magic still comes truly from understanding kind of the holistic customer journey and who your users are and talking to them like they're humans at scale.

Chris Madden:
Empathy is a recurring theme when it comes to marketing, especially healthcare marketing, and the lifecycle approach is no different.

We can test and fine tune on a quest to reach a better result, but even that method is contingent on an appeal to what we may feel and what people want.

Yes, AI may help us scale content and may scale automated personalization, and it may help us improve segmentation. But as Phi says, AI can't replace empathy, at least not yet. That's still on us.

Owning the relationship means owning the data. Episode twelve is all about email, how to run compliant, HIPAA safe campaigns that deepen trust while staying personal.

Chris Madden:
Is it possible to build a durable healthcare marketing infrastructure that optimizes for performance, but also ensures people's privacy? This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

There's been a major evolution in how digital health companies are able to use data in their performance marketing while still respecting regulations like HIPAA, as well as respecting patient privacy.

That's what we're exploring on today's episode. You'll be hearing from three experts, Adam Putterman, Marina Alves, and Carlos Govantes.

We're kicking off the conversation with Adam Putterman, the co-founder of Ours Privacy, which is a CDP or customer data platform that helps healthcare organizations run compliant privacy first marketing campaigns. With deep expertise in HIPAA and state regulations, CDPs and healthcare tech, Adam brings sharp insight into how brands can navigate digital marketing while protecting patient data and building trust.

To frame this part of the episode, Adam picks up five to ten years ago, starting with pixel tracking, which is the simplest, earliest form of tracking, which is still used by many non health clients.

Next, we talk about Conversions API or CAPI, which is a direct connection between your website and your ad platforms. And finally we get to the modern era of health specific CDPs. Here's Adam.

Adam Putterman:
When you're working with a platform like Meta or Google, essentially what happens is you want to feed it as much data as possible and then tell it something like, will you find me more people like the people that have purchased so far?

And because these algorithms require so much data, what the norm has become is to put an advertising pixel on your site from these platforms, so to put a Meta pixel on your site, and then let them collect every possible piece of data about what is going on in your site, and in some cases what is going on in your product.

And if you're an e commerce brand, that is probably okay. There's privacy implications and consent implications, but there's no real legal risk as long as the consent is there.

Where the issues start to arise is if you're a healthcare company and a lot of the data that you're collecting is most likely sensitive data, or PHI or health data of some sort.

Chris Madden:
If you're unfamiliar with the acronym, PHI means personal health information.

Marina Alves is our technical lead at Matchnode. We introduced Marina in episode seven during the overview of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health. She recounts how pixel based tracking worked when it was the only game in town.

Marina Alves:
There used to be a time where pixels were our only source of tracking events on platforms, and that gave us total freedom on sending all the people information, their email, their IP, everything about them.

But recently there have been changes where people are more worried about what information is getting shared about them to all the companies out there, would that be the ad platforms or honestly anyone that could see their information, so with the move towards customer privacy.

When Meta launched Conversions API feature, that allows advertisers to send signals back to Meta, but without having to send them all the personal information through the person's browser. So it basically removes a step in the middle where that step is where the privacy issues came in.

Chris Madden:
What came after pixels and cookies and why, CAPI or Conversions API, enables businesses to send conversion events from their servers directly to ad platforms, with the goal of both increased privacy and more accurate results.

CAPI arrived in 2021 thanks to Apple's app tracking transparency in iOS 14.5. CAPI was the next generation, more complex, safer in offering more control given privacy concerns.

Marina digs into the mechanics of a Conversions API to describe what's actually happening, and tells us how to set it up.

Marina Alves:
With pixel and cookies, for example, say you use Google Chrome and you're on a website and you submit a form. So what happens in the background that you don't see is the browser says, oh, hey, this person submitted that form. I'm gonna get their email, gonna get their IP, and I'm gonna send all the information to Meta and their pixel and let Meta know that that person clicked on an ad and submitted that form.

But with Conversions API, what happens is if you submit that form through, I don't know, if it's a HubSpot form or something like that, what Conversions API does is it gets that form submission directly from HubSpot straight into Meta without having to go through the cookies on your Google Chrome browser.

And it gives you also the capability of choosing, oh, I don't want to send that person's email through if I don't want to. With a pixel, it gets sent through if you have a little checkbox checked for automatic advanced matching, that's gonna get sent through. But with Conversions API, you can choose not to if you don't want to, so we have more flexibility to customize what data you send through.

And then you also avoid losing information in between because people can install a bunch of things on their computers that are gonna say, hey, I don't want that pixel to see what I'm doing, and then you're just not gonna get that signal back on your ad platform.

But with Conversions API, I have direct access to everyone who's submitted that form, and I can send that straight to Meta without having to jump the roofs of that person not wanting to install a pixel or install cookies on their browser.

Chris Madden:
And if that sounds sophisticated, there's more. You may be wondering like I am, how does AI fit into all that? If you're not on board with this, does that mean your business will fall behind?

Marina explains that for one, it streamlines reporting.

Marina Alves:
The biggest change has been automation, because you used to be that you had to manually build reports, had to manually go into Ads Manager and manually get all those single metrics that you wanna show to your clients or maybe just see for yourself.

And with AI, it's now integrated with so many of those platforms that you could just ask for it in one place and it'll give you the answer without you having to manually go in there and find it yourself.

Chris Madden:
The proliferation of AI tools is increasing what it's possible to know about creative performance, says Marina.

Marina Alves:
So there are AI tools that show you creative performance specifically. If a same image is being used in multiple ads, you can't easily find that information in Meta to see how many conversions were there for that specific image by itself.

And there are tools out there that make that logic of combining all those images into one category, and then you can see all the conversions for that specific image, for example.

There are also a lot of AI tools out there that look at the creative images, not just like what the image is called, but what is actually in the image. So if the person in the image is a man or woman, or if they're over 60 years old or under 60 years old, there are AI tools out there that look at that information that you, like a person, would be able to tell, but a computer used to not be able to and now they do.

And then see if the ad is doing better or worse, depending if that person is older or younger or whatever dimension you wanna analyze for that. So there's a lot of different things that are now possible with AI that weren't possible before if you didn't have like a person actually looking at it and taking those conclusions.

So it's making it easier for us in an advertising world in that way.

Chris Madden:
She says that there are many amazing ways to integrate AI, but different formats can present challenges that she's working to overcome.

Marina Alves:
Getting the data from out of the ad platform and into some AI model to analyze it, technically it should be easy, but the thing is each data is formatted in a different way. So Meta's API is different than Google's API and the result that they spit out when you call their API is always different too.

So finding a way to tell AI, this is how you analyze the data from Meta Ads, but this is how you analyze the data from Google Ads 'cause it's different. They're structured different, so there's nuances in there too.

And then there's different ways to integrate with AI. So you can use workflow tools like Zapier to send data from one AI tool to another tool that you want, or like send an email notification with that AI information that you just ran through.

You can directly integrate the Meta API or whatever API you want directly into ChatGPT, and I'm still discovering new things about this.

Chris Madden:
When it comes to Conversions API, Marina says that Meta remains at the head of the pack.

Marina Alves:
Meta is the most restrictive one and they do things first and then the other platforms kind of like copy and see how it works out for Meta before they do it themselves, I feel like. So Conversions API is working great for Meta and it is now available for a bunch of the other ad platforms too.

But for example, for health restrictions, I feel like they're stronger on Meta than they are in Google. So it's rules that are always changing and it could be very restrictive now and not be the next day, so you never know.

Chris Madden:
Given her role, I asked Marina to share what AI tools she and our team have been using.

Marina Alves:
So I obviously use a lot of ChatGPT to help me with coding because for some of the tool integrations that I had to do for the team for a report or for some conversion tracking, it involves custom coding and writing that code with the help of ChatGPT or Claude or whatever AI that there is out there is a lot faster than typing that code out by myself.

Also, I have used a lot of New form AI to add information into Slack as if you're talking to your assistant or like to a teammate that gets that ad information for you, but it's actually an AI bot.

Those were the ones that I've used the most so far.

Chris Madden:
Dealing with all of the data, the contingencies, the privacy concerns, and the new methods has changed Marina's perspective on healthcare marketing.

Marina Alves:
I didn't know that the companies who were advertising their services out there actually cared that much about you because I thought it was kind of just like, oh, they want as many clients as they can.

And now that I'm working with the brands who offer those services, it's more clear to me that they actually care about, oh, we shouldn't share that information about our clients.

It's less of like, I want as much money as I can from as many clients as I can, and more of like, oh, I actually care about that client, that person's experience of how they find us or how they schedule a call with us. It's more personalized than I thought.

Chris Madden:
Customer Data Platform, also known as CDP. It's a technology solution that helps businesses consolidate and manage customer data from different sources into a unified view.

CDPs collect, clean, and organize data, linking it to individual customer profiles, providing a 360 degree view of each customer. And once you've got your CDP in place, the result is a more holistic, unified overview.

Your business can personalize customer experience, target specific audiences, and improve the overall effectiveness of your marketing. While there's a defensive element to CDPs, digital health companies can also play a bit more on the offense and be more focused on performance in their marketing efforts.

Adam explains that a Customer Data Platform lays out everything you should be aware of to be able to do just that.

Adam Putterman:
The biggest advantage of using a CDP is that you're able to capture more data and tie that data together more effectively, which means you have a better idea of what true attribution is.

So you can see that a customer found you via a blog post and then came back via a Facebook ad, and then eventually purchased after seeing a Google ad, and knowing that they had all three of those touchpoints is very important from a decision making perspective about where you invest more time and resources, everything you can imagine there.

So when you get into what a CDP can do with cookies and server side tracking, and real time native connections, we were talking with a potential client about the potential cons of only uploading data every week or every few days, and how then ad platforms aren't able to quickly adjust to what's changing or not.

So you want data being passed in real time as much as you can. There's a lot on the performance side, and that tends to be what we focus on a lot when we're talking with clients.

This isn't just a compliance decision, it's also a performance decision.

Chris Madden:
We have the basics on how customer data is tracked and great tools to help keep that data safe.

Marina highlights what she looks for in accounts that signal to her what's not working and what needs fixing. One tool she cross checks is Google Tag Manager, also referred to as GTM.

GTM is a primary tool in Marina's tool belt. It's a free tag management system that allows you to add and manage marketing tags, which are snippets of code or tracking pixels, on your website or app without directly modifying the code in your code base.

Marina walks us through what using GTM is like, how it's organized, and examples of variables you might end up working with.

Marina Alves:
It's a Google tool that, once it's installed on a site, you can easily go into that tool and add code in there instead of adding code on your website from scratch.

So in there you can also add what we call triggers really easily, and that just watches out for something happening on your website and then adds a piece of code, a pixel, or whatever it may be onto your website when that trigger is fired.

It just helps you control everything that's happening when you want it to happen.

Chris Madden:
While the interface remains user friendly, an expert like Marina knows how to direct it to get the results she needs.

Marina Alves:
In Google Tag Manager, you have really easy form submission triggers where you can say, fire some pixel on all the form submissions on my site. Or you can filter it by, just fire this event only on the form submission when the page contains the word “setup” or something like that.

So you can filter it by whatever conditions you want. And sometimes that can get very technical where you have to figure out exactly what you need to filter by to figure out a way to fire that event only on that specific occasion and not fire it every single time 'cause that would not be accurate.

So it's just a lot of technical analysis into figuring out the right triggers for everything.

Chris Madden:
Marina walks us through what using GTM is like, how it's organized, and examples of variables you might end up working with.

Marina Alves:
You have separate tags for each of the pixels, so each ad platform has its own pixels, so you'd see a Meta Ads pixel tag in Google Tag Manager, you'd see a Google Analytics tag, you'd see a Google Ads tag, and those are for the pixel base codes that just make sure the pixel is on the client website page.

But then you also have tags for specific events firing. So that would be a form submission, a button click, and usually you try to name it as clearly as you can just so other people who collaborate with you on that Google Tag Manager account can understand what that tag is doing.

You also have different views for being tagged by tag. You can also see trigger by trigger. There's also Google Tag Manager variables. So if on a specific event you want to send for an event purchase, you want to send the event name through, you have a variable with that event name set in there that you can then send it through on your Google Analytics tag or on your Meta pixel tag.

Chris Madden:
Marina says what the interface dishes up is good, but sometimes needs to be tweaked for better results.

Marina Alves:
I don't think there's ever a case when I go in there and like everything's wrong, like I have to redo everything. But sometimes maybe I see Google Tag Manager script set up.

If they have like a form submission that they're tracking, for example, they sometimes use a thank you page as a trigger showing that the form was submitted. And most of the times there's usually a more efficient and more correct way to track that, which is tracking the actual form submission instead of tracking that confirmation thank you page view.

And sometimes that is impossible for however many reasons there are out there, but tracking the form submission specifically instead of a confirmation page view is best practice.

Chris Madden:
While it might not sound like a significant problem, Marina explains how the information collected can be skewed.

Marina Alves:
When you're using page views, for example, too, if someone submits the form, gets to that confirmation thank you page, and then they for some reason reload that page, that could count that form submission twice if we use a page view.

So if you're only counting the form submission specifically, that wouldn't happen.

Chris Madden:
Early on in the process she says it's important to plot the course.

She walks us through something called event firing. Marina and the client will decide what events like button clicks or form fills are most important on their website, and then map those to assure we're tracking them correctly.

Marina Alves:
For a new client, I always start out making a data map, which is like a roadmap. The data map is helpful for myself because I can start understanding how the client data flows from beginning to end and how everything connects.

So once I understand that for myself, I test all the events, I trigger all of them on my end, test, see what's firing, use a bunch of browser extensions to help me out with that too.

I start building the actual data map, which is basically just squares that connect to each other, and it names all the events that are firing at each step of the way or each step of the flow that the person goes through once they click on an ad.

Once I build out that data map, I share it with our Matchnode account team first, and then hopefully helps them make more sense of which events are firing, maybe which event we could use instead of another one that we're using right now.

And then we also share it with the client because sometimes some clients we talk to aren't like super technical or not super savvy in Meta Events Manager, for example. So seeing that visual of the one square connecting to another and seeing which event fires after each other and how that ends up all the way into their CRM at the end, for example, it helps give a more visual of everything that's going on.

Chris Madden:
Marina regularly accesses Google Tag Manager and adds new events to the data map.

Marina Alves:
A lot of times when I'm going through building out those data maps, I find not really gaps, but some events that aren't being tracked anywhere right now that could be tracked and it's totally possible, totally doable.

So if I have access to all of it to set it up in Google Tag Manager, for example, I just go ahead and set it up right then and then add to the data map and then let them know, hey, we have this new event set up.

So that's how I usually go about my process. But sometimes, of course, that depends on if we don't have access to some tool that we need to set up the new event.

But yeah, the data map does help me figure out gaps of things that aren't being tracked that should be or could be tracked.

Chris Madden:
The right tool never leads you astray. From CDPs to GTM, there's a way to improve your situation with the help of technology.

Carlos Govantes is the co founder of Verbose, where he designs the technology and lifecycle frameworks that power sustainable patient engagement for digital health companies. His expertise covers the full spectrum from growth strategy to technical setup, including real world experience solving challenges around event tracking, subscription models, and scaling engagement through smart infrastructure.

He knows that at the end of the day, there are different tools for everyone. It's all about preference.

Carlos Govantes:
When it comes to lifecycle marketing for any business, health or otherwise, there's no right tech stack. There's no perfect tech stack. Some companies want to build it in house and have full control over their eventing and use APIs for eventing and things like that.

Some companies might not want to build their own and purchase a CDP solution, something like a Segment, an Amplitude, what have you. What's less important is what the tool is. What's more important is having clearly defined what your eventing and your data schema looks like, so that you can have clean data.

If you're sending junk to the second part of the tool, it would be your CRM tool or your ESP to deliver the messaging.

Chris Madden:
Before we go further with Carlos, let's make sure you're familiar with the acronyms, CRMs and ESPs.

A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management system, which is just a software solution that helps businesses manage and analyze their customer data. It centralizes customer information, tracks interactions, and provides insights to improve sales, marketing and customer service.

CRM systems can be used by businesses of all sizes to streamline their operations and build stronger customer relationships.

Another tool he mentioned is an ESP, which stands for Email Service Provider. ESP is a service that enables marketers to send email marketing campaigns to a list of subscribers. Subscribers opt into these lists to receive marketing messages.

Carlos Govantes:
Whether it comes from an out of the box tool or you're creating it yourself, it's gonna be very hard to manage it. And similar to your data eventing and data schema structure, which you would have sit on your website to track user behaviors, build audiences, create cohort segments, and all that kind of stuff, where it doesn't really matter which one you're using as long as it's the right fit for your needs and your technology team and all that.

I've used a whole bunch of them from Iterable to Braze to Customer.io to Klaviyo to some other ones that don't even exist anymore. They all function in a very similar way. It's really understanding the nuance of the platform and making sure you have the right use cases, and you have the clean data that you need in those platforms so that you can execute your messaging and segmentation strategy with the best possible way.

Chris Madden:
But what exactly is eventing? These are the same events that Marina referred to in event firing. Carlos defines it again for us and explains how its clarity helps define data, a firsthand approach to problem solving, and creating a lasting, solid foundation.

Carlos Govantes:
When I say eventing, I mainly mean what are the events that are gonna power most of your core messaging or journeys?

So if we think about a user updating their cart, there could be an event associated with that, product added to cart. If the user makes a purchase, there can be an event associated with that that comes into your CRM tool, purchase event.

You then use that event to trigger your order confirmation or your abandoned cart welcome series, so on and so forth.

The data schema is what I would say that is the data inside of the event. So you have your abandoned cart event, for instance, and then within the abandoned cart you'd have the product name, the price, the image URL, the link to the PDP, all that kind of stuff.

So you really wanna make sure that you have very clearly defined events coming from your website into your messaging platform, and then for each of those events, you have a clear distribution of data that you want to leverage in your messaging.

What I've seen across several different stints is a lot of times there's obviously transitions within companies, different engineering leaders or just even different engineers working on projects. And if there's not really solid core foundational documentation, and sometimes that's hard to come by, especially if you're a startup and you're moving really quickly, the data schema starts getting recreated by a different engineer who's picking up on the project.

So one thing that I usually like to look in with clients, it's a really good test to understand, do we have any issues with our data and our platform?

Chris Madden:
That's where the so called first name test comes in, according to Carlos.

Carlos Govantes:
So if you go into ESP and you look for a field called first name, if you have more than one of them, there could be an issue with your data schema.

So a lot of people upload CSV lists, or they'll have the abandoned cart event will have first name, but it'll be like first underscore name, and then the purchase event, it might be firstname, all one word. So you end up having the same value that means the same thing, but there's just different ways of naming it.

And when you wanna call that data into an email template or an SMS or some other kind of a workflow, the marketer might not know which one should I be using. Sometimes it's null, sometimes it's not null. What was the most recently updated one?

And then if you think about your tool, like an Iterable or a Braze, whatever your CRM platform is, you'll have all of these fields on the user profile. If you have five first names and all of them are populated, how do you know which one you should be using consistently across all of your messaging?

That can lead to breakages with dynamic personalization logic. First name is just one very basic example. Let's assume we're thinking about something else like lifetime purchase history or the last product purchased.

If that's getting updated from various different places, it can cause a lot of issues in your messaging and your logic.

Chris Madden:
Not all events are created equal, so I was curious about the nuance involved, how flexible they can be or how standardized.

Carlos fills us in on the different types of events and how they're part of a purchase cycle and can determine what a marketer's next steps are in communications with customers.

Carlos Govantes:
There are some standard events like the purchase or the abandoned cart, but one of the good things about eventing is you can control that from your backend.

So in the example of a subscription business, a lot of times there's an attribution lag between having the purchase once a lead comes through. And in order to understand that the user is following an expected path along the lifecycle, you can create sub goals in between.

So let's say we had a product that had a 90 day on average purchase cycle, but there were very key, important steps along the way before 90 days.

Let's use the example of maybe the ultimate goal for this company would be to get a user to subscribe to some kind of a supplement or medication or something like that. In order for the user to understand if they actually even need that, maybe they have to take some tests along the way and then get some results on that test.

So we can create events along the path for a user signed up, was interested in taking a test. We can then create another event where the user purchased or executed the desire to take the test. We can have another event for the test was delivered to the user.

We can have another event, the user took the test and submitted it. Then another event, the user received the results, and then finally an event that says the user signed up for a subscription.

We can use all those events to kind of build a funnel, acquisition funnel, if you will, or at least a lifecycle stage funnel. And then we can track where are the users going along this funnel, what stage are they currently in.

We can then use that data to cater our messaging to that stage of the lifecycle. If we know we sent you a test, but we haven't received the results back for, maybe our messaging becomes more around nudging you, hey, have you taken the test yet? Here's how to take the test, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

And then we will continue nudging until we get that result back, and then we can switch our messaging and our flows to, okay, the results are in, here's what you should be doing next, here's what they mean, all that kind of good stuff.

Chris Madden:
While it's miraculous to be able to tailor the actions of our marketing approach to potential customers within our sales process cycle, let's not forget that when it comes to collecting data, healthcare is a high stakes sensitive subject for which data security is fundamental.

Marina explains that it's great to be able to have access to and be able to manipulate the data, but again, PHI needs to be protected, which puts constraints on marketers.

Going further into PHI, it's any data that could be used to identify an individual and relates to their past, present, or future physical or mental health.

This includes things like name, address, birthdate, social security number, and medical records. It's governed by HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, to protect patient privacy.

Marina Alves:
When it comes to healthcare clients, what happens a lot of the time is we have access to see all those tags in Google Tag Manager, most of the time have access to edit them, but the publishing action would come from the client.

So we make changes, we edit tags that they want to delete or adjust for some reason, and then I go back to them and say, hey, can you review, please publish this. And that just adds a little more security of like there's more people's eyes on it than just one person just publishing stuff live and makes sure that we're not pushing stuff live that we're not supposed to when two people are looking at it instead of just one.

Chris Madden:
Yes, there are a lot of technical bells and whistles involved.

Marina correctly highlights that as digital marketing evolves in healthcare, making the sale is just one objective among others that include genuine connection, privacy, and truly understanding what a patient needs so that it can be addressed.

Increasingly, our digital interactions shape our health and wellbeing. Once the data is flowing, the real work begins, keeping patients engaged.

Our next episode, episode eleven, dives into lifecycle marketing, activation, retention, and building loyalty that lasts.

Chris Madden:
How do you make your ads stand out among the endless feeds and doom scrolling? You need thumb stopping creative. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

Today we're digging into one of the most important skills in digital marketing, mastering creative strategy and testing. How do you figure out what content, messaging, and ads really connect with your audience?

How do you spot the winners, double down, and keep improving until you've got ads and messages that are driving real conversions at volume, at an efficiency that you can live with? That's what this episode is all about. Jessica Vogel and Briana Osborn work every day helping Matchnode’s digital health clients stand out online.

They're taking us through their strategies, ensuring we follow health privacy guidelines while reminding us to stay true to authenticity. Jessica Vogel is the Creative Director at Matchnode. We introduced Jess in episode seven when we provided an overview of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health.

Jess starts us off at the early stages of working with a new client.

Jessica Vogel:
So my role as a Creative Director, I always tell clients that my job is to understand, research, and drive creative strategy based off top performers and trends, and marrying that with our client's brand. So it's honoring their brand and applying our best top performing strategies along with best practices.

We have a weekly status call with our clients, talking through all of the data. My job is to understand how creative is performing, so I'm looking at captions, headlines, actual ad creative when it comes to video. Is the hook resonating? How long are people staying on a video?

So I take that all into account and watch what has been performing best. Also looking at what are lower performers that have too high of a CPA or aren't spending. And I discuss with the accounts team and also the client what are the needs, what are some upcoming campaigns they want to work on, or things that they'd like to focus on.

After those client calls, I get into either research mode and creating briefs, or creating tasks for iterations. A lot of my day to day also comes from creative direction, so I'm working with a talented team of graphic designers, reviewing the ads, presenting the briefs to them with my ideas, my inspiration, and how to make these ads come to life.

They will then execute, and I am in rounds and rounds of feedback, making sure that this is aligning with our client's brand, but also our idea for the new design.

Chris Madden:
Having a high performing creative team is now a must have in digital health marketing. Jess and her team are putting in the work to make sure that the client's goals are met while pushing the brand forward with research and care.

Jessica Vogel:
Once we have our kickoff call and I have a better understanding of what the client needs and who they are, I jump right into brand assets. I need to know where I'm starting, because a big part of the creative brief is also understanding what the brand's capabilities are. If we have no brand assets or no imagery, then I'm not starting at zero, but I'm definitely not starting at the best case.

So having a whole folder of their brand assets, and also video and imagery that either they have produced or content creators that they have permission to use, that's also a great starting point for me to get into a brief and understand what their past creative looks like and how I can iterate on top of even just their past top performers.

I think the first round would be a mix of iterations off of their past top performers to see if we can enhance what they've been doing, and also going into a creative brief on just starting a completely new perspective and fresh start on how we can provide a diversity of ad creative and market to all of these potential patients and see what messaging resonates.

Chris Madden:
Briana Osborn is a UGC strategist and Creative Director who specializes in helping healthcare and wellness brands create high performing, authentic content. With a background in nursing before years in full time content creation and creator management, she brings a rare blend of clinical understanding and marketing insight.

Through her work with brands like Credo Health, Briana coaches creators, shapes platform specific content strategies, and leads campaigns that deliver real results in highly regulated categories.

Briana specializes in UGC ads. UGC stands for user generated content and refers to ads that are made to look more like organic content. They're a hot approach to digital ads and the “it thing” for consumers. If you want your company to be relevant, it's going to be part of your repertoire.

Where do you start?

Briana Osborn:
With especially health, wellness, digital health fields, anything like that, it really is about building the trust and authenticity in the UGC ads that we create. I feel like it is really important, and I try and tell all my creators this, but before you start actually filming, you really do want to strategize and you really do want to ask yourself two possible questions.

And this is what I always ask all my creators to answer. You want to ask yourself and this client, who am I actually talking to? I always ask my creators to really be specific in who they're talking to. So it's like, okay, I'm not just talking to busy moms, but I'm talking to busy moms who have low time, that are ages 30 to 40, and who want simple routines.

After that, you do want to always ask the question of what is the angle that makes them care. So you do want to always have that be a specific angle. Is it going to be emotional or is it going to be functional? So it could be convenience, it could be confidence, it could be time saved, money saved, stress reduction, or even credibility.

I feel like for moms, it's really convenience, making sure that their hook is, “How I cut my morning routine as a busy mom from an hour to 20 minutes,” and it's something as super specific as that that's really going to make content convert. So I always try to make creators realize that it's not just really obtuse observations, but really specific observations that are going to make content convert and make people really relate to that content.

Chris Madden:
There can be a lot to juggle. Briana simplifies the creative brief. She tells us her strategy of finding the right creators to fit the project. She uses Matchnode and digital health specific examples which translate to most of your needs.

Briana Osborn:
For the creative brief, I always brief on specific outlines that the brand is looking for.

I want the creators to really emphasize what they do best. So I do maybe provide some specific hooks or some specific really good intro lines that are actually performing really well on different platforms, but also just making sure that they know that they have full creative freedom to do that.

I have been specifically providing or sourcing creators from X and also through Meta opportunities. I have a really good platform on X where I just know a lot of really good, high quality creators. So if we're sourcing for Matchnode, then I definitely want to make sure I do the posts about what specifically that brand is needing.

It's going to be age range, it could be profession, if they needed to be a prior nurse or things like that. And then after that, we go ahead and I touch base with Jess and make sure everything aligns in that space and she's happy with all of the creators I've sourced. After that, I reach out to them and it's pretty straightforward, which I really like, especially with the creators who respond within the 24 hour timeframe or things like that.

Chris Madden:
With content creators, especially for UGC, pre planning is the most important part, even if it's often rushed through or overlooked.

Briana Osborn:
People really do focus on the filming part of it, but you really do want to understand the brand, understand their specific struggles, what someone who would actually want to hop on the brand and actually hop on the service would be interested in and why.

And that's what's actually going to convert and create the converting content that you want and brands want, agencies want. And that's the most important part. I feel like a lot of creators skip over that because they're so excited about, “Oh, creating this content that I saw,” or “I have this one problem and I think this is going to be great for this brand.”

But you really do want to do the research.

Chris Madden:
In all the excitement, Briana feels UGC creators also focus too much on all the features and unique selling points of each product, and often miss the focus on their audience. Who are they talking to specifically and what are that person's needs?

Briana Osborn:
You don't want to just start jumping into product features without really identifying who they're talking to or what angle matters most.

So you really do want to have that framework of, it's the audience plus the angle. Let's say I had a script for a 25 year old starting Pilates. It's going to look a lot different from a mom who is juggling three kids and has a lot of work stress, even if it is the same products.

So the creators really do focus on having that relevance, having that relatability, having that in person connection, like, “Oh, this is where I found this problem, and this is the turning point,” and the creators who really do focus on their relevance rather than the cleverness really do make a converting piece of content.

Chris Madden:
Ultimately, authenticity matters the most. It is necessary but not sufficient with health marketing. You should also have a very high bar for sensitivity in clinical efficacy data when making health claims. It is important not to make general or unsubstantiated claims.

Briana Osborn:
A lot of people, especially new UGC creators, really do like to focus on creating something aesthetic and cute, but that's not anything that sells today.

People are getting so smart in how they actually spot ads and things like that. So no matter what platform you're on, it could be TikTok, could be Meta, it could be any other platform, Pinterest, whatever it is. It is all on the authenticity versus just creating something aesthetic that's aesthetically pleasing.

And so that's something I feel like is really important in teaching these creators, especially new creators in the health and wellness field. That it's really about bridging that connection between what it does and actually relating it to real life problems that you actually have.

You always want to make personalized statements. You never want to make full medical claims. It's always something along the lines of, “This helped me manage my stress during long work days.” Or you can add your experience in it, you've worked with patients and this is how you keep their roles within your line of expertise, or really just making sure that you balance compliance with the authenticity and the health content.

So not ever full general claims. You really do want to make it authentic to you. I feel like the relatability really does come from having a smaller audience and again being really niche specific in what you're asking your creator, or even just when you're creating a video as a UGC creator, what you're asking your audience.

And just really gaining that smaller audience and that smaller and higher trust, and really treating the pain points and the raw problems as something that is the main point of the video. I do feel like focusing on solving real problems and not necessarily selling, really focusing on solving what could be the issue, the brand results really do follow after that.

Chris Madden:
For conversion, actually driving the business results, you want to have a great hook. Briana shares what she calls her hook trifecta.

Briana Osborn:
This is for any platform, any platform at all. It could be TikTok, it could be Meta, Facebook, especially with how short attention spans are nowadays. So it is really all about grabbing the audience in the first three seconds.

So I like to teach my creators what I call the hook trifecta. So that is, one, a visual hook, what's happening on screen, really what makes someone stop scrolling. So think of a pattern interrupt, things like that. This could be something as easy as an unexpected shot, a transformation, a fast movement, something that's really just moving and grabbing that visual attention.

The verbal hook is going to be something completely different. So that can be something said out loud, like your actual verbal hook. It could be something that you actually put into your editing, like a sparkle sound while your onscreen text is coming on screen, so it's something that actually grabs that kind of verbal attention, or it could be something that you're actually saying.

And then of course, you do want to have that onscreen text. And this is going to be different from what you're actually saying. You do not want it to be the same, but it does really reinforce the message that you are visually showing people. And that could be without sound, but it is also grabbing that attention with the onscreen hook that tells what the viewers are going to watch and see before the verbal hook actually tells them.

Chris Madden:
And sometimes, of course, viewers just read the captions or text, but they don't have the volume on. I was curious why it matters that all three are different, with that being the case.

Briana Osborn:
Those three things should be different specifically because it keeps the viewer on the screen for longer, especially on Reels or whatever is playing, because they're taking in so much information at one time.

They're taking in a different onscreen text, which they're reading. They're actually intaking something else with a verbal onscreen hook, and then the visual hook is going to be something that's moving. People read faster than they actually hear. You can have a super out of the box onscreen text while you're saying something else, and it just really does keep them more engaged for a longer period of time.

If you wanted to put that ad onto a lot of different platforms, the hook trifecta really does make it easier for you to be able to monetize that way, and the fact that you're not just relying on a visual hook, you're not just relying on a verbal hook, but you're also relying on an onscreen text hook.

Like with TikTok, I know that it does mute a lot of videos before you actually click to unmute it, so that onscreen text hook will be a really good variable to help people stay on your screen for longer, especially for Instagram, and they'll be able to actually be on your video for longer, and you'll be able to see what is making them stay or what's making them go.

Chris Madden:
One of Jessica’s important strategies is never settling, even if you've isolated what works. It's about always pushing the envelope. Keep creating, keep diversifying. You'll hear her refer to a campaign for a weight loss drug.

Jessica Vogel:
When they're scaled so much that we know their messaging, that's when we really, really need to work on creative diversity.

So when we're creating that much, my strategy is, what can we try? What else haven't we tried? And really looking at what's out in the industry. And because it's also a really crowded industry, specifically when we're talking about weight loss for women, semaglutide, GLP-1s are everywhere, and so trying to create creative that stands out when everybody is price checking how much they can get GLP-1s for, how much they can get semaglutide for, creating a really diverse, wide array of creative is our sole focus.

So in my strategy, I'm really changing all briefs to different layouts, different looks, and really trying messaging, changing the colors. For the longest time, blue ads worked well for us, and then all of a sudden, all of the yellow ads are happening and being top performers. So it's a lot of iterations, and when we come to create a brief, I'm really trying to throw a lot of different ideas out there, because we have the bandwidth to put them out there.

Chris Madden:
Sometimes things fall short. Even your best ideas may not land. With today's technology, Briana is able to analyze the data so she knows what to adjust.

Briana Osborn:
It's platform specific. So I'm going to go to TikTok, where they can actually tell what specific second viewers are scrolling on, and you can actually see where they were losing interest.

It does help you see, okay, was it the onscreen text, was it the verbal hook, was it the visual hook, was it the video idea in general? Where were people actually scrolling that they weren't interested anymore? And I feel like that will be a huge indication on where you actually need to iterate and where things could be different a little bit, especially with health platforms.

Because I do feel like health platforms specifically, you are really leaning into that authenticity. You really do need to build that trust, and you're hitting on the real pain points that they're actually experiencing, and it's not just something that you think the company or the product is going to sell, but something that the actual consumer is dealing with as an issue and something that they can connect with on that basis.

Chris Madden:
Jess shares an example of how she also analyzes the hook rate and applies those results to the next project.

Jessica Vogel:
The top metrics that I'm generally looking at are CTR link click-through. When it comes to videos, I'm looking at the hook rate, so it's when someone has watched the video in the first three seconds.

And even better if they keep watching the video, that means that the video has hooked them in. So especially for videos, I'll rewatch the video and understand what hook is capturing people and see if we can apply that to future videos, either that iteration or if that's something that we need to go into a research and apply a similar type hook.

One hook that has worked really well for us for our perimenopause ads is, “I was 41 and I didn't know I was in perimenopause.” It hooks people because a lot of people don't know about perimenopause and how early it can start, and so that's what's hooking people in.

And also looking at copy when it comes to looking at headlines and captions. When I'm looking in those platforms, I'm looking at, okay, is there some type of template of why these specific short headlines are working? And I've actually, from these platforms, seen my copy become almost like a templated format that I can keep reapplying.

Chris Madden:
Testing various captions and headlines is also part of the process.

Jessica Vogel:
I'm always testing five captions and five headlines. That's a good starting place where I'm always using different formats of captions and headlines. Headlines being a max of 40 characters so you can get a really tight message in there. Captions can be a little bit longer.

So I have a few go to formats, one being testimonials. People want to hear from other people and they want to know that this is a good experience and it's not just feeling salesy like a car salesman. And so it's really validating to hear other people's experiences when they're going through a health journey.

The second one does seem a little bit more salesy, and that's like a bullet point list of value propositions from the company. What can they offer? Is it covered by insurance? Is it completely virtual? How fast can I get a prescription? And I love emojis, so of course those bullet points are prefaced with a different emoji for each. Or you can use the point emoji, check mark emojis, there's so many out there.

And then the last one is an informational type of caption. So I have an example here that we use that works really well for perimenopause type ads. “Did you know perimenopause often starts for women in their mid forties, but can begin in some women in their thirties?”

It's a really shocking stat, and myself in my thirties, that freaks me out a little bit. So that can place a little bit of fear, but it also can get women thinking about, okay, how can I get ahead of this? How can I figure out that I don't gain extra weight in perimenopause or menopause? Or how can I get ahead of osteoporosis strength training for that one?

So those testimonials, bullet points of value propositions, and then informational captions are my go to. What I do from those is, if I see ones that are top performing in captions, I may add those into ad creative, or top performing headlines. And because of seeing what performs in headlines and captions, that's where I find my winning copy templates, and then I apply them to ad creative.

So I have kind of a little bit of a case study here for a winning copy template that I've used for our client Midi Health. It's a very short sentence. It's direct and to the point that I've added in ad creative, and it continues to win.

Chris Madden:
There are so many AI tools out there now. The possibilities can seem endless. Ultimately AI is here to support the workflow, not yet to take it over.

While she says she doesn't rely on it solely, Jess knows how to use AI in a smart way and understands what it can do, what it can't do, and then builds off of what's working. How she's using it to optimize video testimonials makes her life easier.

Jessica Vogel:
I use AI from the copywriting standpoint to brainstorming creative briefs to the actual execution of design. So it's integrated everywhere, which I could not say two years ago.

When it comes to copywriting, I use a mix of ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Perplexity. They all kind of have a little bit different outputs. I will ask it, “Write captions for me based off of these top performers.” So I'll supply top performing captions or lines. I'll also say, “Provide different formats of the caption and also use Meta Ads best practices.”

That usually gets me, I'd say, 80 percent of the way there. Sometimes I will use the same prompt in all of these different platforms and see what they spit out. I've been working in AI enough now that I can see when it feels a little bit cheesy, a little bit overdone. You kind of just get the vibe it's AI, so I always will tweak or add a little bit more of my human element when it comes so it feels more personal and relevant.

That is also really great for, like I've mentioned, writing scripts for videos. Video testimonials that we've gotten from a client, so we'll get these video testimonials. They generally are really long, and we need to have quick clips for Facebook Reels or even TikTok videos.

So I will copy and paste the transcript into GPT, Meta AI, or Perplexity and ask, “Can you pull out the most valuable quotes that would convert another patient from this testimonial?”

It will then pull out, “Okay, here are the best quotes,” and then I'll ask, “Okay, can you reorder those clips in a way that would be an engaging video?” So then from hook to problem to solution to an example from the experience to an ending CTA. And then I have multiple blueprints of how I should edit this video and hand it off to our designers to create.

Chris Madden:
Among the various AI tools, Jessica says that Perplexity is especially effective for brainstorming. For example, you'll hear her refer to a client she works with called Midi, which is a healthcare platform for women going through perimenopause or menopause.

Jessica Vogel:
When it comes to brainstorming, I've found that Perplexity is really strong. So I will, especially with new clients, ask it questions more about the industry we're in or perimenopause or menopause, and ask, “If someone's going through perimenopause, what are the top symptoms and what are the solutions that Midi could provide?”

And it will supply those answers, but also provide sources and pull from blog quotes that are in Midi or videos that they've talked about, and that also provides me more assets that I can pull from, especially if they're created by our client.

Then lastly, when it comes to design execution, Photoshop and Adobe products have just been killing it in the game when it comes to constantly iterating on how they can make it better. There's always a new beta version.

One of my favorite AI tools is Photoshop’s generative AI, so it'll expand an image, make it look seamless or bigger so you have room to add text or reformat the image so that the feature is center stage in an asset.

We also like using Captions.ai, and the recent tool that I've been playing with is AI clones. So you can upload your own video and provide a script, and I could upload a video myself and it will create a video of my clone speaking the script. It's not completely perfect, but it is wild and quick and fast. So creating videos that seem a little bit more authentic from the person you want to be speaking is pretty cool.

Chris Madden:
While you're building your hooks and creating, it's really important to monitor the guidelines for the brands.

Briana Osborn:
I feel like the quality in the brief is important when you're sourcing any kind of creator, just making sure they're aligned with what they need to do, as well as the brand is aligned with what they're expecting with the creators and what kind of content they are expecting.

Especially with health and digital marketing agencies, you never want to make huge medical claims. You really do want to lean on the personal experience and lifestyle impact that the brand or product brings.

You don't want to make, and this is really specific also for TikTok Shop and TikTok things, but also Meta as well, you just never want to put out the fact that, “Oh, this will cure anxiety.” But you do want to really personalize it and be like, “This will help me manage my stress during long work days.”

So it's more personalized to you, and that's where someone else can actually connect with it, and that's where someone else can put themselves in your shoes and really say, “Oh, okay, Midi Health. I do experience hot flashes, I do experience brain fog, and that's where I do really want to connect with this brand because they really do help with those aspects.”

So it's all about creating that authentic personal connection, especially with marketing nowadays. That's going to be the key.

Chris Madden:
I was interested in how the platforms differ. Will something that performs well on TikTok also succeed on Meta, or do different types of UGC content do better on specific platforms?

Briana gave me her insights on how she would adapt different health content across platforms.

Briana Osborn:
TikTok, it's very much more raw, authentic, curiosity driven content. And especially for TikTok, they are pushing out watch time more than anything else, so it's going to be hooks in the first three seconds and making sure people are actually watching that, relatable scenarios, things like that.

For Meta and Instagram, it's definitely a little bit more polished. It's going to be longer storytelling, also really good for retargeting a lot of ad campaigns and iterating on things like that.

And I really do stress this for any platform, all ad angles, authenticity is greater than anything right now. This is what we like to call the “ugly angle” in UGC. So it's really about pattern interrupts, it's really about breaking up what the viewer would actually see, and the authenticity is really going to win.

The biggest example I can produce for an ugly angle would be, you have a bag and you are just showing the insides of the bag and showing how you would actually use it in a real day scenario or things like that. It's not aesthetic. It's not like, “Oh, a cute bag with a really fancy backdrop,” it's, you're looking for something in the bag, you're out and about and you're going through your day, and you pull it out of your bag.

And it's those ugly angles, those real life angles, that do produce the best results today.

Chris Madden:
Here's the big takeaway. Creative testing isn't optional. It's the engine that powers your best ads and best results.

The faster you run smart tests, the more you learn and the closer you get to the messages that truly resonate and convert. And don't forget authenticity. The ads that win are the ones that feel real, honest, and aligned with your brand.

Let the data guide you. Start small, scale what works, and keep experimenting. Creative wins attention, but you need the right systems underneath to make it count.

Our next episode, episode ten, digs into data and technical setup, events, attribution, and signal resilience with tools like CAPI and GA4, so you can grow with clarity and confidence.

Chris Madden:
We live in a digital world. Most of us are online most of the day. Now, more than ever, you need a strategy to help your brand stand out and rise above the noise. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

Ben Cao, Brian Davidson, Marina Alves and Jessica Vogel are getting into the specifics of each of the main advertising platforms to give you a better understanding of how to use them to your advantage.

Meta and Google Ads are foundational, with Google Search ads being one of history's great business models, as they so neatly match intent with solution. Digital health companies also tend to test other ad platforms, including TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Nextdoor, programmatic and more.

Ben Cao is a digital marketing strategist focused on performance media and healthcare with deep expertise in programmatic advertising, channel orchestration, and full funnel campaign planning. Ben brings a nuanced view on what makes paid media work in complex high compliance environments. He's led campaigns across platforms for healthcare, pharma, and wellness brands, bringing both a tactical edge and strategic clarity to how digital health companies acquire and retain patients at scale.

Ben gives us a main breakdown of the social platforms.

Ben Cao:
There's a couple different tangents to go down when we're talking about search versus social and then Meta versus Google.

And so Meta and Google are both pretty synonymous with search and social, but in the social ecosystem, there are some emerging competitors to Meta. You've got TikTok, you've got Snapchat, you've got Pinterest, you've got Reddit, and so there are all these different social platforms that are now competing and vying for market share in that social space.

But Meta is still the dominant player. And if Meta isn't your primary strategy for social, then you may be missing the mark, because there's much rich data within Meta to be utilized, and then also such a wide audience. The majority of social users are still on Facebook and Instagram, and so it just can't be ignored when you're building a social strategy.

And then on the Google slash search side, I like to put Google and search together, but Google is a lot more than just search. So when you're thinking in the confines of the search channel, Google is still 90% or more of all of that search volume and capturing all of that advertising budget on search.

And then Google has expanded its reach beyond just search into the display environment, into video on YouTube, into the native space with Google Discovery. And so there's all of these different channels with Google’s marketing ecosystem in their marketing stack that Google has evolved outside of just search.

So when you're thinking of Google, most people think search, and then when you're thinking of programmatic, Google’s still one of the primary dominant players when it comes to programmatic channels as well.

Chris Madden:
Expanding on Meta ads, AI has officially entered the chat. Platforms have incorporated AI and you must adjust as well.

Jessica Vogel is the creative director at Matchnode. We introduced Jess in episode seven when we provided an overview of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health. She's digging into how AI is changing the way we create, test and report on ads.

Jessica Vogel:
There is a whole class of new AI tools that integrate with Meta Business Manager, Ads Manager that can see all of the creative all at once.

And being a visual person, it's really helpful to see creative next to the metrics, quick and fast. Meta does have creative reports that I will use on a whim if we need a quick result, but for regular reporting I've found that some of these AI tools are really helpful for finding results quick and also just display them visually in front of a client, and I can share a link to the report and it just makes the ads reporting and creative performance reporting a lot easier.

The second part of these platforms that I'm seeing with AI is I can find inspiration through Meta Ads Library and a Chrome extension, put it on these platforms and it will read the transcript of said video that I found, and I can say, I want to apply this similar script format to my brand and it will write the script for me.

That is the magic of AI that is just blowing my mind recently.

And then there's the platforms that will say, okay, this one is dropping down. It's not having nearly as high scheduled appointments than it was a week prior. And so that's where I'm like, okay, well this is falling down, it's getting a little bit more fatigued, and so I'm gonna start iterating or looking at a brief or then looking at what is the top performer and compare that to their top performer last week and what's changed.

Chris Madden:
Ben follows with a great point here. Search, social and programmatic all play different roles in healthcare. Those differences really matter.

Social builds community and brand presence. Search captures intent. Programmatic lets you be selective about the context. Showing up on health sites, blogs and publishers can reinforce your credibility. That context can be powerful.

Ben Cao:
These are also universal differentiators, and so when you're loading up a paid social campaign, the way that I think about it is you are building a community and you're also showcasing your brand through these social assets within the confines of a social media platform.

And so you can tell stories and represent a brand in a very special way through your social media profile that you don't get from search and you don't get from programmatic.

The differentiator for programmatic is you can align based off of content very differently than you can for search or social, because now you've stepped out of the confines of that social media platform, and now with healthcare, you can align yourself with healthcare focused content. You can advertise on a WebMD, you can advertise on health blogs, you can advertise on content that is talking about health, technology, news, all of these different things to contextually align with your brand.

And so when you're running a campaign on Meta, you're not necessarily next to healthcare content. You're next to all of the other content that's out there on social media, from sports content to news, to politics. So there's so many different things that your brand is next to.

With programmatic, you can be a little bit more surgical, for lack of a better term, so that you can pick and choose where exactly your content is being distributed and how your brand aligns with these different publishers.

And so that's a very big thing when you're strategizing a programmatic campaign is, how can I tell a story and present a message to my potential patients, potential customers, and also align with different publishers and different brands in that way to say, hey, we do want to be partnered up in a sense with a Forbes or with a WebMD, or with an ESPN or an AOL.

There's so many different ways to construct a programmatic campaign and so many different types of content that you can align yourself with.

Chris Madden:
Brian Davidson is my co-founder at Matchnode. We first introduced Brian in episode seven when he contributed to the overview of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health.

Brian zeroes in on Meta. He says optimization is everything and shares a few things he often sees in accounts that he would like to do differently.

Brian Davidson:
One, unnecessary fragmentation. A lot of times there's campaigns that are competing with each other that aren't segmented for any good reason other than “I want to test a message over here that's different than this message.” That can be done in a much, much cleaner fashion.

A lot of times I see a lack of video. Sometimes these businesses don't necessarily have the marketing resources to create a video, but generally speaking, Meta campaigns perform a lot better when there's a video and a still image alongside each other, even if that video is only served about 10% of the time. That's really, really important.

A lot of times I also see people not optimizing towards attribution. Facebook by default runs on seven day click plus one day view optimization. There's a lot of businesses that haven't gone through intense incrementality testing and have no idea if that view-through is important to growing their business.

So if you haven't gone through incrementality testing, generally speaking, you probably want to optimize for just that click.

Another big thing that we see are changing budgets and people moving things around unnecessarily. When we're making a change on Facebook, either we're making a really big, large, very intentful change, or we're moving things very slowly so that we're not completely disrupting the algorithm and starting over.

Chris Madden:
When it comes to Google, the name of the game in classic search ads was choosing the right keywords and making sure you're not wasting budget on the wrong ones.

Brian talks about how things are evolving with Performance Max and conversion tracking.

Quick explainer: Performance Max is a new type of Google Ads campaign that leans on Google’s AI to find your results across all of Google’s properties, and when you hear him talk about “firing your conversion,” that just means triggering the tracking code whenever someone does the thing you care about, which can be filling a form, booking an appointment, or making a purchase.

Brian Davidson:
A constant sweep for negative keywords is really important.

Sometimes there's an over-reliance on exact match or broad match. Either you're going really, really niche and missing out on conversions, or sometimes you're going too broad and you're getting a bunch of search terms that don't fit your business.

A lot of times I see people that turn on Performance Max, see a flood of spam come in, turn off Performance Max and never come back to it, rather than working and seeing if you can create some nuance or do some things on your landing page or introduce reCAPTCHA, or do different things on how you're firing your conversion back to Google.

Chris Madden:
Your media mix matters, but you can't just spread money everywhere. It's not only about reach, it's about relevance.

Was your ad seen on a billboard, discovered through Google, or surfaced on social? Understanding those touch points tells you whether your dollars are actually working.

Ben helps us put the puzzle together.

Ben Cao:
The buzz word a few years ago was multi-touch attribution. And so what the industry was moving towards was, how can we understand the most logical pathway to a conversion and what were all the touch points along the way?

And so these multi-touch attribution models were created so companies could understand how many times was the customer touched by which channels and what's the impact of each channel on their way to making that decision point, whether it's a purchase or whether it's booking an appointment or whether it's signing up for or subscribing to a newsletter.

There's all these different actions that we're trying to drive, and how can we understand which channel contributes more towards that final action? And so multi-touch attribution is still used today, but it's evolved one step further into more advanced media mix modeling to take all of that attribution data to say, okay, we're going to assign 70% of the credit from a conversion to search.

Well, now we need to understand, is it possible and is it logical to assign 70% of our budget to search, or is there a more nuanced media mix where search can only handle so much, because there's only so much search volume and so much search intent?

We might not be able to spend 70% of a million dollar marketing budget onto search. So we need to understand, okay, what's the incrementality there?

How can we maximize how much money we spend on search and then put the rest of the budget into the channels that contribute 50% to that conversion, 30% to that conversion, 15% of that conversion, and maintain those different touch points with the consumers?

Because the more times that you can capture attention, because that's really what it's about, there's a difference between putting impressions out into the ether and then delivering a message that's actually absorbed by the end user.

And so how can we understand those different touch points and then use modeling and use data to have informed decisions on where we're spending our money?

Chris Madden:
Keeping up with the trends is important, but measuring what works for you is a classic non-negotiable.

Brian talks about Facebook’s Test and Learn platform, which can include splitting your audience or doing audience holdouts to see what is really having an impact on your revenue and your profits.

Brian Davidson:
It's all about structured experimentation on Facebook.

If I'm testing one really, really big thing, I'm gonna use their Test and Learn platform. I'm gonna split my audience in half.

But there's also nuances to creative testing on Facebook. One of the things we like to do is have a separate creative testing campaign. It's difficult to insert a new creative into your champion creative and have it overtake your champion ad simply because Facebook wants to keep serving that ad that it knows is successful.

So it's hard to put a cold ad in and have it overtake the champion. So usually we're constantly running a separate testing campaign, and if we see that ad breaks out within that testing campaign, then we introduce it to the challenger.

Another new way to test on Facebook is they do allow different dynamic copy options. You can insert up to five different captions or headlines with your ad, and we like to take advantage of that as much as possible to learn different messaging nuances.

And then a lot of times we'll take those text champions and then we'll insert them into our image or our video or our landing page and see if we can get a boost there as well.

Chris Madden:
And here's the thing, if something works, try it somewhere else.

Brian’s philosophy is simple: keep testing and keep iterating. Small tweaks can unlock big gains.

In our experience, most campaigns don't fail because the idea is bad. They fail because people stop too soon and fail to capture the gains in the compounding returns of continuous, small improvements.

Brian Davidson:
You don't roll out something and say, well, that didn't work. Sometimes it takes two or three different tries in small nuanced ways to really make a difference.

It could be something like changing an attribution setting. It could be something like decreasing fragmentation. It could be something like a totally new type of creative.

It could be using a different type of campaign. It could be introducing something on the backend, like a value parameter that you're pushing through to the platforms.

There's little things that can make a really big difference over time, and I see a lot of people throw in the towel too quickly, saying, this just doesn't work for our solution. Our solution is too niche.

It's my belief that if you keep working at it and you've got a big enough team, that you can find a solution.

Chris Madden:
Now, digital health brings its own set of challenges and complexities when compared to less regulated e-commerce, for example.

Ben shares his wisdom on how patient privacy and the sensitivity of health data raises the stakes. That's what makes clear positioning, compliance, and careful messaging so critical.

Ben Cao:
There's a few different nuances when advertising digital health as compared to a straightforward e-commerce campaign where you're just getting from point A to point B and the end goal is making a purchase.

There's so many nuances with data privacy and with the messaging that's allowed and with legal compliance, and then also just the personal nature of an individual's healthcare versus buying X, Y, Z product online.

And so because there are all those different nuances and we have to make sure that our advertising is HIPAA compliant, we have to make sure our measurement is compliant, we have to make sure that our messaging is resonating with that end user and patient.

Trying to meld all of those things together while also utilizing all of the data that is available at our fingertips and all of the algorithms and all of the models that are available, it becomes increasingly challenging.

But what makes me excited about the future of digital marketing for healthcare is, because of the new legislation that's being placed and because of the direction that we're moving towards data privacy and consumer privacy, the algorithms are getting stronger and they're getting smarter when it relates to anonymizing user data and tailoring advertising experiences to individuals without being invasive.

And so we're able to separate out all these different programmatic channels and separate out search and separate out social, and then dive very, very deep into what is causing the desired action.

And so we're able to take patients on this journey and customize a messaging flow and customize an experience so that people are able to get the information that they need and get the healthcare that they need in a way that is efficient and non-wasteful for our healthcare advertisers.

Chris Madden:
There are explicit regulations like HIPAA compliance and unwritten rules like being mindful with health related imagery, or empathetic with weight loss messaging.

As Jessica Vogel points out, knowing those boundaries keeps your brand safe and your message effective.

Jessica Vogel:
Especially when working with ads focused on women and working with a client who focuses on perimenopause and menopause while offering weight loss solutions.

Meta definitely has ad regulations where you can't show before and after imagery. There's also things in digital health where it's compliance legally. Some weight loss medications are not FDA approved. You need to have fine print in there and you need to cover all your bases. Make sure that legal is looking through all of the ads and all of the copy.

HIPAA compliance is also like not sharing patient information, but we do have patient permission when it comes to some testimonials. So we've used video testimonials that patients have supplied of their experience with a client, and we're able to clip that up and use it as an ad and they have signed waivers and that's completely good to go.

Chris Madden:
We've covered the two biggest ad platforms: Meta and Google.

Now let's go into more detail about programmatic and its subcategories with Ben.

He highlights how it stands apart from search and social, the advantages of it, and why programmatic deserves a real seat at the table in your media mix.

Ben Cao:
So the main subcategories within programmatic that I focus on are display, CTV, programmatic audio, native, and I'll put rich media and high impact into its own bucket within display.

So display is your standard banner ads, and then also those rich media interactive banner ads that you see that are either animated or interactive and engaging in different ways.

That is the widest, broadest level of programmatic because generally speaking, most websites have banner ads enabled on them. So there's, at this point, millions of websites that are buying and selling display inventory for different advertisers to pick and choose from.

And so because it's so vast, you have all of these different categories to choose from between your different ad formats and sizes. Within display you've got all your different content categories. Within display you have different resellers. Within display there's a lot of data and audience enrichment partners within the programmatic ecosystem that kind of sit over all of those subcategories.

And so the beauty of programmatic that you don't get in social and you primarily don't get in search either is you have all of these different data partners at your disposal to analyze browsing behavior, to analyze that keyword behavior that we were talking about, to analyze other data aggregators to say, okay, we've got these different data sets for people's job titles, for people's browsing behavior, for their different social media aggregation in terms of what they like and what they see on social media.

And so all of these different data packages get bought and sold within programmatic, and you can layer them on to your display, to your CTV, to your programmatic audio.

So the way that I look at programmatic, it's a little bit more transparent and it's a little bit more granular than social, where social you get these black box, you can target this big bucket of people, you can target this big bucket of people, but we don't want to get too specific, because then it starts to open up questions about privacy.

And so with programmatic, because it's a little bit fragmented and you can connect different data sources to different programmatic platforms, you've got this kind of overarching targeting layer that makes programmatic very unique.

Chris Madden:
Ben lists the different subcategories of media formats within programmatic.

The first one is display, short and simple.

Ben Cao:
Display, super wide. You can put a banner ad on just about any website that exists.

Chris Madden:
The next is CTV, which is Ben’s personal favorite.

Ben Cao:
It allows you to reach the household and the living room on the TV device with all of that added targeting and all of that attribution data.

So when you're comparing CTV to traditional TV buying, you're still gonna show up on relatively the same TV shows and the same content. I can target Monday Night Football programmatically and I can buy Monday Night Football advertising traditionally and just call up ESPN and say, hey, I want to show up on your cable broadcast for Monday Night Football.

And so if I do it programmatically, I'm showing up on the same football game and I'm showing up at the same time, but I can layer on targeting job title. I can layer on zip code targeting. I can layer on household income targeting. I can layer on all these different things that you don't get with traditional TV.

And then I can also be extremely specific and surgical about the timing. Do I want every Monday Night Football game? Do I want every other week? Do I want to show up on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays for certain programming so that you can be so specific and so customized with connected TV, and you don't get that flexibility with traditional.

The attribution is paramount. We need to measure what the return on our investment is, and so being able to connect the TV ad back to a conversion on a separate device, whether it's someone's mobile phone or their desktop or their laptop or even a tablet, allows you to understand, okay, how effective is this TV marketing?

Is my message hitting the right people and is it driving action? And so that's a huge differentiator between connected TV and traditional TV.

Chris Madden:
The final subcategory is something currently trending right now, and you're experiencing it. It's audio.

Ben Cao:
This is a growing segment of programmatic because of how popular podcasts are becoming and because people are finding new ways to implement audio content consumption into their daily lives, whether it's in their commute, in their drive time through Spotify, Pandora, or other streaming audio components where we're not as heavy into terrestrial radio as we used to be.

And so that advertising space becomes more and more valuable as more and more people incorporate that streaming audio into that piece of their daily life.

And then podcasting, you can do the same contextual alignment with your advertising with podcasts. If you're wanting to advertise a B2B product, there's business podcasts that you can focus on. If you want to advertise B2B within healthcare, there's healthcare podcasts like this very one that you can isolate and say, hey, this is the exact content and the exact audience that I'm targeting for my healthcare product.

And within that audio component, you can be so specific with the types of content and the ways that people are engaging with different content. It's all about capturing that attention, and people are pretty leaned in when they're consuming audio content, and there's a level of trust with audio that is deteriorating a little bit with visual digital content.

We're seeing a trend towards trust with podcast hosts, and them endorsing a product or endorsing a service or a company goes a long way, because these are people that are engaging with their audience on a regular basis, developing that level of trust with their audience.

You don't necessarily have that same connection within a social media platform to develop that level of trust. And so those endorsements within the podcast space are becoming increasingly valuable, and all of that can be bought and sold programmatically.

Chris Madden:
To bring this back to how it all plays out in the world of digital health, Jessica Vogel puts herself in other shoes in coming up with a marketing approach.

In contrast to working on a typical consumer brand, she explains that there's an extra layer of empathy that comes into play here, because it's not just about selling a product, it's about people's lives, their health, their wellbeing, and that kind of responsibility changes the way you think about everything, from the messaging to the creative strategy.

Jessica Vogel:
Everybody has their different health issues. Not always. I would love for everyone to be always healthy all the time, but that's not the case.

For example, one of our clients is Midi Health, women going through perimenopause and menopause. That happens for all women.

So getting into the shoes of someone who could be going through perimenopause, or another client who is focused on mental health. For families, mental health is so, so important, and so I can empathize with patients who are needing therapy or psychiatric services.

There's a lot more pain points to identify with a digital health client or a digital health patient.

You have to almost have a little bit more empathy when you're creating these ads and to be able to get into the shoes of these potential patients, of what are they looking for in a solution.

Chris Madden:
Of course, it's great when you’ve figured out what works and have a winning formula when it comes to messaging or imagery, but the creative testing never stops.

Similarly, we test a lot of technical improvements.

Marina Alves is our technical lead at Matchnode. We introduced Marina in episode seven during the overview of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health.

Marina says there are three types of technical work she focuses on. The first one is when there's a paid ad or campaign that's brand new and needs to be set up and tracked.

Marina Alves:
That's when I'd get involved. Also ongoing would be making sure that everything that's already set up continues to work and nothing's broken, everything's still working as expected.

And the third option would be if there's an improvement to something that we already have set up, that we could change it just to make that better.

So if it's a new page, a new conversion that we want to track, I would get involved into setting up that new conversion. For the maintenance of making sure things that are already set up are working as expected, sometimes like a client goes through a website redesign or they buy a new tool that they're going to install on their website or something like that, that could change and influence the Google Tag Manager triggers or some of the other triggers that you have on your website to fire those conversion tags.

So it happens a lot of time when there's a redesign of a page, it breaks one of the Google Tag Manager triggers. And then when we notice that that's broken, we go in and fix and adjust that and make sure everything, test. It's a very big piece of the job too, testing, make sure everything's working.

And then for improvements, there's a lot of situations for maybe sometimes for Conversions API, sometimes for third party tools, especially like I keep saying form submissions. There are new integrations that come out every day. Sometimes one tool doesn't integrate with another, but one day that tool just decides to release a new integration and then we can finally start tracking something that we have never been able to track before.

So that's another piece of the job too.

Chris Madden:
Brian Davidson leaves us with some final wisdom. I'd summarize it in two ways.

First is maximizing the synergy of relationships with trusted players for the sake of your marketing strategy.

Secondly, when you see an ad with your insurance company's logo in it and saying that a treatment you may need is in network, it feels like that ad is for you specifically.

Brian Davidson:
If I had to give you one really simple piece of advice. If you accept insurance and you're allowed to use that logo, use that logo.

Those businesses spend millions and millions of dollars on their brands, and they're powerful brands. One of our first healthcare clients was eHealth in the Medicare space, and we had a really simple ad showing different insurance companies and blurred out pricing next to them, and I tried so hard to beat that ad.

And I could not beat that ad and beat those logos. They're very powerful logos.

So if you are allowed and it makes sense for your brand, test using insurance logos, not just on your landing page, but actually in the ads.

Chris Madden:
That's a wrap on today's episode.

We've covered a lot from Meta ads to Google Ads to programmatic and other digital ad platforms.

One takeaway is to test everything and to expect to crawl and then walk before you run.

Build a mix that makes sense for your stage, your goals, and your patients. Test, measure and keep refining until you've scaled the number of people that you can help.

It's not just where you advertise, it's how.

Our next episode, episode nine, explores creative strategy and testing, showing how breakthrough ideas and smart iteration can transform patient acquisition.

Chris Madden:
In this episode, we're diving into the basics of the paid acquisition funnel in digital health. These are the advertising touchpoints that are part of your customer's journey. They can fall anywhere from first hearing about your business to the moment they book an appointment to become a patient.

This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

Now, when it comes to health in the ad space, there are some unique challenges. Unlike other industries, digital health brands face strict rules when using paid channels. But don't worry, we'll walk you through how to navigate those restrictions and make the most of your ad budget. This is the work that we at Matchnode specialize in.

For our clients, we're running high velocity tests that are either technical or most frequently creative in nature to learn and improve return on investment, usually driving new patient appointments or other digital health sales conversions.

If your company is just starting to scale with paid media, you may have a lot of questions or strategies to consider. That's where Brian Davidson comes in. He's my co-founder at Matchnode, and he knows this stuff inside and out. Brian has helped redefine marketing for digital health companies by focusing on performance driven strategies that deliver real results, with deep expertise in strategy, advertising, and digital health.

Brian has worked with brands to optimize campaigns, scale patient acquisition, and navigate the evolving digital ad landscape. He describes the scenario where things are moving in the right direction and a business is ready to throw gas on the fire.

Episode-07_Matchnode_20251008_R…

Brian Davidson:
They've already proven out to some degree that their offering is working, that there's a marketplace for it, that they're able to help patients or validate that their product is working or their service is working, and people come to us saying, this is great. I've got these channels that are working.

Some people are finding us organically. Email marketing might be working, or we've got something going with direct mail. Can we start to scale this using paid channels?

Chris Madden:
You're likely familiar with many of the paid channels Brian mentions that you can tap into like TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Still, he points out that the big players in the space continue to be Meta and Google. The key here, he says, is balance. It's all about figuring out how to spread your budget across those platforms in a way that makes sense so that you can hit your targets.

A quick heads up, when Brian refers to LTV, he's talking about lifetime value. That's an estimate of the total value, whether revenue or profit, a business can expect from a customer over the course of their relationship.

Brian Davidson:
Media mix really matters, and it really first starts with your budget. One, how big is your budget? But two, just as importantly, is your budget scalable?

Meaning if you could acquire a customer for X, would your budget expand because it's done profitably? If the answer is that you're doing it profitably, I usually say that your budget should be unlimited, and we want to push each channel as hard as you can until you start to see that point of diminishing returns.

However, every business isn't in a world where they're automatically acquiring a customer in the black. A lot of people are acquiring customers actually at a loss and hoping that the LTV will make it up, or they're still in growth mode and they just need to acquire users, period, to validate their product and maybe raise another round.

It's all about the results.

Chris Madden:
If something is working and helping your business grow, you want to double down. Similarly, you want to pull back on tests that do not deliver the expected results.

That's why Brian says getting the media mix right is so important. Here, he talks about surfacing a product or service. You see something online that does indeed interest you, that you did not know about or think to search directly for when you woke up that morning. For example, a digital health company might introduce a new solution to a health problem that you suffer from.

Brian Davidson:
It comes down to generally two specific principles, however that line is beginning to blur.

One, Google is fantastic at harvesting demand. I've got an ailment for X, or I am wondering about Y, I put it into my search engine and boom, I'm seeing the answer. Paid search can absolutely surface solutions to different health problems.

The flip side, Facebook or Meta is fantastic at delivering demand and surfacing demand and generating demand. So a user might be on their feed and they may have Googled a few things earlier in the day, they might be going on with their health life, and using the power of their algorithm, they are able to surface a product or service that fits your exact need and services that demand the same way that your search would.

Those are very, very different concepts as far as search for something, find solution, versus the feed showing you something that you probably had a pulse on, but you did not necessarily know that you were looking for when you jumped on Facebook.

Trying to understand your CAC on both of those different platforms is really important.

Chris Madden:
CAC is something we will hear a lot about in this discussion. CAC, or the acronym CAC, stands for customer acquisition cost.

Brian Davidson:
We are going to push the most budget towards wherever you are going to find the most efficiency.

For some businesses, it is Meta. For other businesses, it is paid search. Sometimes paid search can be extremely, extremely competitive and very, very costly. Unless you are converting those clicks at a very high rate, it might be cheaper actually for you to be advertising on Meta.

Sometimes, however, the conversion rate on Meta can be a little bit lower than it is on Google. So really trying to find that media mix is really balancing both this demand generation as well as this demand fulfillment principle, but also chasing CAC and chasing efficiency.

Chris Madden:
Brian says it is all about optimizing the media mix, balancing the demand generation and the demand fulfillment principles, while also settling on an efficient CAC with the desired volume.

Social and search are both hugely important, Andy Crestodina says. Andy is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios. We introduced Andy in episode one around why marketing digital health matters.

He's quick to point out how different search and social are from one another when you consider how and when a potential customer comes across them.

Andy Crestodina:
From a distance in digital, they just look like two different channels. Oh, I'm going to promote this thing in both channels.

But in fact, they are not just different, they're opposite channels. The psychology of the visitor in these channels, the way that we use them, the reason we go to them is wildly different.

An easy way to think about that is that nobody goes to a search engine to browse around, and similarly, nobody goes to social media mostly with a plan of action and a specific need.

In other words, visitors to websites from search tend to be busy, and visitors to websites from social tend to be bored.

It's really great for content discovery. It is great for innovators. It is great for inventors of new things and things that were unexpected, things that were visual, things that were emotional and provocative, things that were personal and collaborative. Social blows it all away. It is incredible for those channels. There is nothing more personal. It is literally social media.

Search is like a research tool. It is long form text content that answers questions, and your job is to satisfy an information need. In search, we meet expectations. In social, we are a little bit unexpected.

The psychology of the person who landed is very different. If a skilled content strategist can actually look at a topic or a headline and quickly have a sense for which channel would have a natural advantage, and maybe how to adapt it for a different channel.

One final point. Search has a ceiling. There is only X number of people searching for a given topic per day. Things do not go viral in search.

Social, I am amazed. Have you ever seen the analytics for a social media viral event? It is incredible how many people there are in the world.

I am careful of my biases, but what I find interesting is to find the topic-channel fit. Does this topic have an advantage in search or social? And then try to construct it specifically to perform in one or the other.

Chris Madden:
Chris Turitzin says that while Meta and Google Ads make sense for B2C digital health companies, they are only a part of the marketing mix for those acquiring patients directly for B2B2C companies.

The requirement is to be part of a covered population, whether through your employer or your health insurance plan.

Chris Turitzin is a growth advisor for digital health companies and is the founder of Single Aim Marketing. We introduced Chris in episode one. Here Chris refers to B2B2C specifically.

Chris Turitzin:
Because every nine out of ten people will not be eligible for your thing. So you will be burning through money, and those systems do not have any good way of targeting people that would be eligible for your thing.

A lot of those companies generally feel pretty frustrated by the paid channels.

SEO is a channel though that I think a lot of them do invest in.

Chris Madden:
When taking a referrals approach, Chris advises marketers to apply some built-in skepticism. He shares the pitfalls he has seen and what to watch out for.

Chris Turitzin:
What you see a lot of times is a company going in, spending a lot of money on paid, realizing a year down the road that the CACs are too high, because everyone else in the market is depending on referrals and has basically zero dollar CAC, and then kind of scrambling to adjust from there.

Chris Madden:
Healthcare is a great example of a category where you need a ton of information at the top of the funnel, according to Andy Crestodina. He explains how that translates into an individual's online search activity, which underlines the importance of where a product or service is present.

Andy Crestodina:
It takes just seconds after you have a healthcare question before you are looking for an answer online, even though you may not be in need of any services or procedures at all.

Then farther down the funnel, it is the ultimate example of a category where the visitor is making an insanely important decision, like the highest stakes in search.

There is more to it than search, but in search, Google has a name for these kinds of pages, YMYL, “your money or your life.” The visitor is really making a serious decision that will impact their life.

Which doctor should I use? What procedure should I get? How serious is this? Should I get a second opinion? Is this person credible?

We do not make any buying decisions anymore without doing some research first, and for healthcare, we do a lot of research.

Chris Madden:
It is important. It is a big decision.

Andy adds that it is pretty rare these days to have just one touchpoint with a brand. Everything is connected. It is a multi-channel world out there where nearly everything we see or hear is intentional, whether it is word of mouth, a billboard, or a search ad.

It is all about companies trying to meet people where they are.

He also contends that Google and Meta basically run the show when it comes to search and social.

He says that lately Google has been rolling out more visual, algorithm driven products, and with all that new inventory, things are getting interesting.

But here is the twist. Thanks to AI, the line between search and social is starting to blur.

Andy breaks down what this shift means and where things are headed.

Andy Crestodina:
It is not as clean as it used to be. These things are moving closer to each other.

One of the things that made me very aware of that was when I learned some of the trends about how people are using TikTok as a way to get answers. There is enough content there that people will search for a topic and find the answer there.

So social media and social content is satisfying information needs now.

YouTube is always in the middle. It is a place for content discovery. It is also a place where people go to get answers.

There is a big gray area in between.

Probably what is still relevant as a way to think about the targeting on these. In search, you target people based on what they are thinking. It is keyword-based targeting, so you know what they are thinking, but not who they are.

In social, you can target people based on demographics and behavior, so you know who they are, but not what they are thinking.

So in that way, there is still contrast.

I can target people. Is my offer or content something that aligns best with the moment and their current information needs?

An example I used to give was if you think you have bedbugs in your house, you are using Google three seconds later.

But you cannot in social media target people who think they might have bedbugs. It could happen to anybody.

On the other hand, there are some products like, I have a pair of sunglasses. They are tinted blue mirrored shades with clear frames. I never would have looked for that. I love them. They are badass. These are Gas shades.

I saw them on social media and immediately bought them. That was content discovery. So there are lots of things where no one is looking for them. You have to market them in a different way.

Other things, yes, people look for it, but you cannot target them in social media, because they do not fit into a demographic. There is no behavior that indicates whether someone needs an exterminator.

I do not think that it is as clear a line as it used to be. I think there is lots of overlap now. I think that human behavior is more diverse. These channels have more overlap.

If you search for something and use the YouTube videos in search results, those YouTube videos are also likely being pushed in front of eyes on that platform and being discovered as recommendations.

Keyword-first strategies or social targeting, you need help from a pro. Talk to an expert. They are going to help you out.

Chris Madden:
Social, Andy points out, is a fantastic discovery tool for healthcare for several reasons.

One of them is geography. It may be a telemedicine offer, which is maybe less specific to a geography, but I am an advisor to a children's hospital here in Chicago, and there are big outdoor campaigns.

It is very focused on specific areas. They target certain neighborhoods.

In search, you cannot really do that. That is not how search works. It sort of tries to know where you are and tries to serve things nearby, but in social, you get much better targeting.

They can find their audience very quickly in social, much better than in search.

So geo specific phrases in Google were never great. It shows the map sometimes, sometimes not.

You will get a lot more accurate targeting with paid social for a healthcare program with a geo specific offer, of course, or a physical location.

Search has always been kind of weird for that.

Earlier, we talked about companies paying for ads because organic alone is rarely fast enough or responsive enough.

Andy says time is of the essence when it comes to building your strategy and talks about how spending money on ads saves time in the long run.

It sparks a process that provides necessary velocity. For example, in message testing.

Andy Crestodina:
Organic is really slow. It is just very slow. It takes a long time to build up the things that make it work.

It might be a flywheel effect after it is working. It tends to work better. But building links and topical relevance for search, or growing a social following, or building your email list, it is durable because you publish something and it stays around. That video you made is still there.

But not every brand has the time and patience to go through this long process, or are they comfortable with the uncertainty of organic outcomes or the indirect benefits from the organic outcomes. PR attribution is terrible. It does not feel as direct.

Paid is very fast. You can become visible very quickly. You will get data to then iterate right away. You can see the numbers are stronger.

Sure, it is temporary. Stop paying for that ad and it disappears. But that is a good way to think about it.

Organic is like your vegetables. Go to the gym and write high quality content.

But I need results now. It is not appropriate for that.

Organic, slow but durable. Paid, fast but temporary. They complement each other.

I see accounts in transit and I just wish they had a budget for paid so I could get more data. It is a beautiful thing. Just put a budget on something and you will get traffic, and then I can tell which of these two landing pages has higher conversion rates.

Now I know which to optimize for search. There is a hundred ways in which these channels work together.

I feel bad for the companies where the teams are siloed. Talk to an expert that understands the overlap, and you will get better results for each.

Chris Madden:
Andy also shares with us his tips on making a page convert better. Conversions are what we marketers call the objective or goal that a company is working towards.

For example, filling out a form, booking an appointment, or watching a video.

As part of his diagnostic, he asks a number of pointed questions that get to the heart of the issue.

How does the content reflect the individuality of your business?

Andy Crestodina:
When I am meeting with someone, I sometimes just pull up any page on their site and start scrolling down asking, could this header and paragraph and bullet list, whatever the whole page block, could this be written by anybody, or is this specific to us?

Next one, could this be written by a startup born yesterday, or is this specific to us?

How differentiated is the content?

Most pages were written with a brand-first perspective where they wanted to write something. Maybe it is kind of clever or it gives a feeling, but in the end, you stand back and look at the page and it just tastes like water.

So much content on the web is just not really specific to that company.

What makes content different? Is it well supported with evidence? Is it filled with proof points? Are the team and the people themselves there? Are the faces stock photos, or are these the actual people at the company?

How many things on any of your pages, go to your homepage and just ask, what percentage of these words and images are completely specific to who we are, versus could be written by a startup born yesterday?

That is it. Easy test, and most of the page is stuff that is completely undifferentiated.

That page could be working much, much harder. In fact, the majority of the content on the page should be content that really only you have. Only you could say you are the only company with that certification, those statistics, those people, that evidence, the testimonials, the reviews, the case studies.

Really, it is a lack of evidence that is one of the biggest gaps on these pages.

Chris Madden:
Highlighting what makes your enterprise different is important in all marketing.

As it relates to paid patient acquisition at Matchnode, Brian Davidson takes an incremental approach to doing that by tweaking the message and making adjustments to the marketing budget.

Brian Davidson:
I am looking to slowly tap on the gas. Where can we find efficiencies? Where can we keep learning?

So that is usually about an increase of either 10 percent a week, or maybe 10 percent a month, maybe even just 10 percent a quarter, but enough to run consistent tests on your account.

Testing anything for messaging can make a huge, huge difference. Advertising on these platforms is, are you going with a really specific health benefit, or perhaps you are tapping a little bit further on the worry side of things and tapping into a disease that could go wrong in your life?

Learning that nuance is really important from a messaging standpoint.

There are also pieces around imagery that you are seeing in the ads. There could be things around testimonials that you are running on these ad platforms. There could be things around your onboarding flow that can make a huge, huge difference in your overall CAC.

So I recommend slowly ramping up that budget while continuously running tests.

Chris Madden:
Brian explains that outside of something going viral, paid media offers about the only way to quickly crank up visibility and reach by increasing your spend, once your unit economics are working.

Brian Davidson:
What exactly am I getting back?

You could run a large connected TV campaign. You could run a large podcast campaign. You could run a large radio campaign. You could throw millions of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or maybe just thousands of dollars at a PR agency to get you booked on all sorts of earned media.

Most of those platforms, it is going to take a lot of time and it is going to be a bit of a gamble if you are going to get a return.

On paid media, specifically paid digital media, in near real time you are going to start to learn and understand exactly what you are getting out of the platform.

Chris Madden:
The best way to make the most of paid media? Test everything.

Generate ideas with your client and then test them. It is a sure-fire way to both get results and to learn, Brian notes.

There is a lot of research involved on the client's end and on Matchnode’s end, and in collaboration, AI can help generate different ideas for testing.

Sometimes unorthodox ideas teach you the most.

In general, we want to test concepts that are very different from one another instead of micro tests around button color, for example.

Brian Davidson:
I want to run a scientific test. However, the world is not scientific, and especially on Facebook. When a political event or a birthday or something in your friends' lives, or even a sporting event, your feed can change on a daily basis.

So it is not always possible to run a pure scientific test on the platform. But whenever possible on both Google and Facebook, I want to run a pure split test where half the audience is seeing one ad, and half the audience is seeing one landing page.

I try to control my variables so that I am only testing one thing at once.

There are those outlier opportunities though, where you might want to try messaging a new ad with a brand new landing page, and you want to insert that as a challenger in your existing campaigns and see how it does.

So there is a little bit of nuance to the science in the testing in that it is not always possible to run a perfectly scientific test, but whenever possible, that is absolutely the way we go.

We try to test very cleanly in a slow way so that we learn.

The biggest thing is messaging and learning what core message resonates, but also just delivery. Is that messaging delivered best through a static image? Is it delivered best from a doctor? Is it best delivered from a patient? Is it longer form or shorter form?

All those nuances really matter.

Chris Madden:
After taking all of those factors into consideration for paid channels, Chris Turitzin describes how a paid acquisition funnel can lead to a position that is defensible and differentiated.

Chris calls it a growth hierarchy of defensibility.

Chris Turitzin:
So the most non-defensible channels are paid channels. Anyone can set up a Meta Ads account, Google Ads account, and start paying for ads today.

If that is what you are depending on, probably you are going to have trouble down the road. You are going to get in some CAC wars with competition, and eventually it will get so expensive you do not really want to be in the business anymore.

So you want to move in differentiated ways that are also hard to differentiate into.

I like to think of this as, first, differentiated conversion. That can be defined as you have really good creative, you have really good landing pages, you have really good conversion funnels, so at some point your conversion is so much higher than others that your CACs go down, and it is relatively defensible.

Then I would move into the differentiated channels category. So you actually get access to channels that your competitors do not have.

For example, if you are doing employer or payer based, getting those relationships is very differentiated and very defensible. Or maybe you have some specific partnerships that will amplify your marketing, like channel partners and stuff that is defensible and valuable.

Which basically leads into a differentiated CAC.

You get to a point where, let us say that you have insurance coverage and your competitors do not have insurance coverage. It will be cheaper because your people will convert better because you have insurance coverage and they do not, which is highly defensible.

And then lastly is differentiated LTV.

Chris Madden:
Just to refresh, LTV is lifetime value, or how much a business can expect to earn from a single customer during the length of their relationship.

Chris Turitzin talks about how these positive, defensible dynamics can compound and create a flywheel.

Chris Turitzin:
So if you can get to a point where you are actually making more money off of your users than your competitors, that is kind of the golden place you want to get to.

So, you know, when we worked at Bicycle, I was trying to move in that direction. We started, of course, with paid. We started with SEO, which is relatively defensible.

And then, over time, paid got very competitive. We still do paid, but it is less that we are just dependent on ads on Facebook and Google.

We have done tons of work on driving conversion and having unique channels that only we have access to, and then having insurance coverage everywhere, so our CAC goes down, and then having unique insurance contracts where LTV goes up. That is, I think, the trick for succeeding in this business.

Chris Madden:
Whether things are going well or not, change is constant.

Your LTV is going up, so you are willing to pay a higher CAC, or tweaks are made to spend in the media mix. Everything can be a moving target.

Brian Davidson:
Cost of acquisition becomes more stable or certain over time when you are spending dollars, but it definitely does fluctuate, and it can fluctuate on things like season. It can fluctuate on things like time of day. It can fluctuate based on your spend levels.

It is really, really important to decipher a stable CAC and start to learn if you can drive efficiency with it, but at the same time, continually running tests to lower that cost of acquisition.

Chris Madden:
Amidst the uncertainty, businesses need to decide how much to spend.

At the outset, it may be more about learning than ROI, according to Brian Davidson.

Brian Davidson:
When you are just starting out in the paid advertising world, I tell this to lots of entrepreneurs, not just in the health space, your initial budget should be the amount of money that you are prepared to lose to learn.

Because sometimes you are just going to be doing things that are not going to be profitable for your business, and you are just going to be learning, what is my CAC and how does that relate to my business?

So I recommend starting, not small necessarily, it could be a somewhat larger number, but you need to go into those initial spends fully understanding that you are here to learn, not necessarily grow profitably.

Chris Madden:
It is not just about spend. For those that need to be extra budget conscious, Jess Vogel is the creative director at Matchnode, with deep expertise in digital health marketing, helping brands craft campaigns that drive real impact.

From testing messaging to balancing creative strategy with rapid iteration, she understands what it takes to make creative work in patient acquisition.

Jess recommends doing a diagnostic on what is working to figure out what to prioritize.

Jessica Vogel:
I would identify what are the pain points of my patients that are converted, what is the company solving for here, and then that is where I would apply my messaging.

That can come from testimonials. If they do not have testimonials, then I would lean into the pain points or create an ask-me-anything where it is not necessarily a testimonial.

You can use stock imagery. It can be a very limited design basis because it needs to look organic, and put in the ask-me-anything of what would a common question that your potential patient would ask, and then we can fill in all the information of, we can do this and it is covered by my insurance, and it is completely virtual, so I do not have to drive 40 miles outside of my town to see a specialist.

So that would probably have been my go-to for someone who just does not really have anything in their assets but needs to drive home a really strong message.

Chris Madden:
While we incorporate classic advertising principles, Brian says the complexity makes marketing digital health a different animal.

Brian Davidson:
One, generally speaking, some of the strategies that work for some health companies naturally work for others. But two, the platforms themselves also have a lot of different restrictions on the type of data that can be used.

Specifically, there is a lot of data restrictions around being able to target specific people based on the condition that they have.

Chris Madden:
Brian says it is crucial to understand how the numerous diverse channels intersect, especially given that Google continues to roll out new products that blur the line between demand generation, your strategy to create awareness and interest in a product or service to generate sales and revenue, and demand fulfillment, which is how you meet customer demand that pre-exists for your product or service.

Brian Davidson:
There are things like YouTube Ads, Gmail Ads, display ads, products like Google Performance Max and Google Demand Generation that definitely are closer to Facebook than a pure search campaign.

In that world, it is really, really important to try to understand, what is that true path to purchase or path to acquisition?

So there are HIPAA compliant tools like Mixpanel that we love to use. There is also incrementality testing that can be done on the platforms.

Facebook actually just rolled out a new beta that we are enrolled in for a new incrementality optimization that we are really excited about.

So trying to not just optimize the platform to grab a conversion of someone that was going to convert anyway on Google, but go look for purely brand new people.

Cannot wait to run that test, but there is still going to be a world where they overlap, and you need to use a tool.

Another tool that we are using right now is called Hows, where we are doing a true incrementality test with geographic holdouts to try to understand how the channels intersect with each other.

So taking a look at the models that are available in a HIPAA compliant way, running geographic incrementality tests, as well as running incrementality tests within each platform, are all different tools that we utilize.

Chris Madden:
All kinds of digital health companies, from broad stroke primary care providers down to condition-specific digital health specialty care companies, can encounter various roadblocks on paid platforms.

Brian Davidson:
There are different restrictions depending on how specific you are in treating a condition. Specifically, if you are marketing towards a specific condition, Facebook can be a little more restrictive.

Whereas if you have a more broad offering, what we are seeing is generally you fall into a mid-tier of restriction because you are advertising health in a general sense versus advertising a cure for a specific ailment.

Chris Madden:
HIPAA is one thing to keep in mind in all of this.

HIPAA is a US federal regulation that, among other things, aims to protect sensitive patient health information.

Marina Alves is the technical lead at Matchnode, where she helps digital health companies design compliant, high-performing acquisition pipelines.

Her work touches everything from platform tracking to HIPAA compliant data flows, making her the go-to expert on the technical foundation behind effective health marketing.

HIPAA puts constraints on health marketers, as protecting people's personal health data is on the line.

Marina Alves:
There are a lot of tools, for example, in Meta Ads, where you can just check a box and that automatically tracks a bunch of stuff for you. With health clients, that is not an option most of the time.

For my technical job, it makes it more difficult because it is easier to just check a checkbox and everything gets sent through. That is a lot easier for me.

But with the restrictions, sometimes you have to manually filter through everything that you want to send or not send, and that is the big difference.

You do not have as much freedom to just send everything that you have available and let the ad platform do its thing.

You have to be more aware of what exactly you can share. You have the ability to share it, but you are not supposed to share it depending on what your legal team tells you.

So just being aware of all those callouts for every single client, every single website. It is not every time the same restrictions for everybody.

It changes between company to company, website to website, even within the same brand, the same company. They have a portal that is restricted and I cannot send anything through there to the ad platforms, and another page that is just a marketing page where I can send through more information.

So there is a lot of things that depend on what category it falls under.

On more upper funnel events, like a button click or a page view or a search on a search bar, those are usually where we have a little bit more freedom on what we can track.

But when it comes to form submissions or things that are more specific and that, I would say, show more intent and then they are kind of like a proof of what medical condition you may have or what medical treatment you might be looking for, and this shows, oh, that person really does want that treatment or converted on that treatment, that is when we are not allowed to send through those specific conversions and that specific information.

Chris Madden:
It is no surprise that the digital advertising landscape is always changing. That is why it is so important to stay flexible and prepared.

Brian shares how the team at Matchnode adapts, whether it is a major shift in the tools or just staying calm when the rules change.

Brian Davidson:
Our world was rocked in November when Meta announced sweeping changes to the platform and how they were going to classify health advertising and what different people were able to do.

They allowed a new structure where some businesses were allowed to be mid-tier restricted, and some businesses were completely restricted from running anything on the platform that had to do with conversion optimization.

When that news came out, we knew we needed to adapt immediately, and the first thing I did was start a giant brainstorm list on, based on what they said we could do, what would make the most sense for those businesses.

So, for instance, they said you could still optimize your campaigns for traffic. So I thought to myself, well, how can I optimize for the very, very best traffic?

I only want traffic that is going to be on a website for up to two minutes or that scrolls down to the end of a blog post. So how could we adapt our advertising to adapt to that new world, and specifically, how could we alter our signals on the back end to optimize that advertising for a quality visit versus someone who comes to a website and might even be a bot that comes for one second and bounces?

But like all things in advertising, that also kept changing, and Facebook kept changing its messaging from a week-to-week basis.

They were almost saying the quiet part out loud, that this change is actually only coming to satisfy lawyers rather than a fundamental belief or change in the advertising that should or should not be allowed on the platform.

We started to understand that special custom events, when set up properly, were still going to be allowed on the platform.

So we have had to do a massive transition for a lot of our clients in the last few months, moving from Facebook standard events to new custom events that are in a lot of ways more restrictive. However, they were nowhere near as restrictive as the initial messaging that Facebook pushed our way back in November.

Chris Madden:
Brian says it is a balancing act. Share too much data and you could wind up with a lawsuit.

We discuss this tension on the upcoming technical and privacy episodes.

If you do not share enough, do not run any ads, and your company can die out from lack of exposure.

This is one aspect he says is at the top of the priority list.

Brian Davidson:
The most important thing is to understand the law and make sure that you are compliant with the law. We do not want to be doing things illegally.

Once you are confident of where that line is, there are different things that you can be doing on the ad platforms, and even within the current framework, I have seen businesses push it to one end and seen others take a very, very cautious approach.

Frankly, I have seen both paths work to some degree.

So again, it is really, really important that you stay within the law, but you find a product or a service or a strategy that fits where you are comfortable with being.

Chris Madden:
With doing the technical work around digital advertising platforms, he adds that having a strong team makes all the difference given the nature of the tasks.

Brian Davidson:
Increasingly, the technical work is actually what I will call privacy work.

Things like pixels, things like cookies, generally speaking, they are further invasion of privacy than either server-to-server or conversions API or back end signals that are secure.

It is really important to have a technical team that can implement this in a compliant way so you are not leaving anything to chance around being shut down.

Also, increasingly, the pixels and cookies are not even being allowed on the ad platforms themselves. So if you do not have a tech team to implement these important signals in the back end, you are going to be forced to be using only extreme top of funnel tactics.

Chris Madden:
State government regulations can form a patchwork, which can result in a lot of fragmented campaigns.

State-to-state campaigns can also fragment along state lines for insurance network reasons.

Meta and Google algorithms do not like fragmentation, Brian says, because they give better results with larger audiences.

Brian Davidson:
When they have a very large audience and target, they can understand who is at the bottom of that funnel trying to make a buying decision for a product.

But for a lot of different reasons, we cannot necessarily run one giant national campaign for the healthcare companies that we work with.

One, it could just be availability in that state.

Two, it could be that our best ads have an insurance logo on them. However, they do not accept the exact same insurance in every single state. So we still want to run our best ad, and to run that best ad, it might be done on a state-by-state basis.

There are also pieces of different restrictions in different states. We might need to run some states to a specific landing page, whereas some states might have to go to a different landing page.

We have worked with some healthcare companies where they have one offering that is more broad that can go to a variety of states, and they might have a health offering that is a little more niche.

There also might be product availability in different states. So it is really, really important to understand the restrictions and build your campaigns around them.

However, you also want to be mindful of what the algorithms really want to do, and that is to find a really big audience. So it is a constant push-and-pull to find that balance.

Chris Madden:
Brian predicts that Meta and Google are likely to get increasingly specific in their healthcare related products and services.

Brian Davidson:
And launch more and more health-specific advertising solutions rather than restrictions.

These products and services can literally save lives. They can also greatly improve the quality of life. It is a very large sector of growth for the population. It is obviously a large advertising base, a lot of dollars specifically at stake.

So from a capitalism standpoint, they want to cater toward those dollars. But from just their mission of connecting people, connecting people around health solutions is very, very powerful.

So I could see a world where they continue to roll out health-specific advertising products rather than health-specific advertising restrictions.

I do not see search evolving in some fundamentally different way. I do not see Google Shopping evolving in some fundamentally different way. But I do see YouTube, Performance Max, Demand Generation evolving consistently and coming out with new products and being more and more effective.

Generally speaking, I think those are the products that can introduce new healthcare solutions to people, especially things that are on the cutting edge that do not have to do with a specific ailment or specific symptom that you are searching for.

It could be something where, I do not know, I do not necessarily have heart pains, so I am not going to Google search and say, I have heart pains, what are the solutions?

But I could very well see an ad about general heart health and see that on YouTube and be interested and say, you know what, my dad had some health issues back in the day. They definitely related to his heart. I just turned 40. Maybe it is time for me to look into this product.

Maybe there is something innovative about it that really strikes your curiosity.

So I do see it evolving a little bit more closely to Facebook, instead of developing on their own timeline.

Chris Madden:
Like many applications in our society, AI has introduced a powerful new set of tools that have quickly permeated the work of advertising for health brands.

Brian Davidson:
The big buzz in the healthcare world is a lot of AI on the back end servicing things like insurance fulfillment.

But on the front end, on the marketing side, a lot of this is idea generation.

We cannot necessarily turn on things like AI optimize our text and have Facebook scramble up our text for us, because everything needs to be compliant and the client needs to understand exactly what text is running.

But we do use a ton of AI for generating new ideas, new copy, new videos, new pictures.

A lot of times, a lot of the health companies that we work with actually have a limited amount of marketing imagery, so we are using AI to generate a lot of that imagery up front, and it is getting better and better and better and more and more lifelike, and it has been a really big help to business.

We have used a tool called Captions.ai that has been a boom for our design team, and generally speaking, they allow us to test more creative in a much faster way.

Chris Madden:
Marketing in the health space can sometimes feel like a high wire act.

You have to achieve a balance, learning your limitations in ads to protect patient privacy, while also making sure you get your company's message in front of the right people who need it, in the way that works for your business.

Changes in technology taking place at hypersonic speed might make for a safer and more effective perch on that tightrope.

With the funnel in view, we zoom in on the platforms themselves.

Our next episode, episode eight, takes us deeper inside Meta, Google, and beyond, how each ad platform plays its role in reaching, converting, and retaining patients.

Chris Madden:
Welcome back. In our previous episode, we explored content creation as part of your strategy for digital health marketing. In this episode, we're looking at SEO and the organic tactics involved in a holistic strategy. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden. Returning voices, Ahava Leibtag and Ben Riggs share more specific insight related to SEO. They'll also highlight the emotional aspects of illness and how we search for answers online.

Let's get things started with Noah Goldfarb. Noah Goldfarb is the director of SEO Strategy at Fire&Spark, a digital health SEO agency where he helps growth leaders scale organic patient acquisition in highly competitive, high compliance environments with a specialty in content strategy and generative AI search.

Noah brings a sharp, tested perspective to what actually drives growth in search today and where teams often go wrong. This episode is really all about what he does, so I knew he'd be the right person for the conversation.

What distinguishes Fire&Spark from other SEO agencies is how it focuses on conversion generative AI, and high stakes technical work for digital health. Many other SEOs are trained at the top of the marketing funnel around initial awareness, which is actually only the beginning of the journey according to Noah. It's the concrete results at the bottom of the funnel that count.

Noah Goldfarb:
At the very baseline, what every company, what every marketer should expect out of their SEO team, whether it's in house or at an agency, is reporting on actual business growth. Whether that's leads, signing up through a form, whether that's phone calls, however you can measure conversions, especially in a HIPAA compliant environment.

That's what you should be holding your SEO accountable to. SEO is a long term game. It's gonna take a while. It's a cliche, and it takes six to 12 months in a lot of cases before you see a notable traction. But where I think a lot of marketers make a mistake is hearing from their SEO, from the marketing community writ large, that what SEO does is it drives traffic and it improves your rankings.

Sure, those are leading indicators, but what we really need to hold ourselves accountable to is acquiring patients, customers, or leads, whatever it might be for your business.

Chris Madden:
From the very start, accountability and tracking are key. Noah highlights how success is actually measured, which numbers are important and why SEO truly matters.

Noah Goldfarb:
You're reporting success not against the number of keywords you're ranking for, but the number of people that you're converting in are becoming paying customers in one way or another.

Beyond that, technical SEO does matter. Your site needs to be findable, crawlable, understandable by Google, and now large language models as well.

The fact of the matter is that most companies' websites in 2025, whether they're built on a standard platform or even custom coded, they usually have their ducks in a row. For the most part, if you have a very complex site, a very large site, a very old site, then there might be some more technical hurdles that you need to remain aware of and address.

But for the most part, Google's gonna be able to understand what you have on your website, what the solution then becomes from a patient acquisition perspective or a customer acquisition perspective is you need to be able to not only bring someone onto your site, but provide them with the experience that they're looking for.

Chris Madden:
Noah says that he uses what he calls confidence building content.

Noah Goldfarb:
What that really means is from the moment they land on your website, you understand how they got there. If they landed there through SEO, you understand the search term that brought them there. Through organic search, you understand where in their conversion decision they might be.

You understand whether they're searching for information for themselves or maybe a loved one. And then you're understanding where they're likely to want to go from there, what other questions are they likely to have? What questions might be the piece of content that they're landing on, provoking them?

And then how can you provide those answers to them in an intuitive way, in a valuable way that nobody else on the web is doing, including now, AI models and ChatGPT and Google's AI overviews and all those sorts of things.

So the short answer to your question is SEO that drives conversion focuses on tracking the right metrics, holding yourself accountable to those metrics, and providing a site visitor experience that doesn't stop at bringing them onto your site, but gives them the information they need and the experience they need to feel confident in their conversion decision.

Chris Madden:
Noah introduced me to what I think is a very cool and very important distinction. Where someone is in the funnel and what their level of intent is are two different and sometimes unrelated dimensions. High versus low intent and higher low funnel are two different axes. It's possible to be high intent at the top of the funnel and low intent at the bottom.

Noah says building different content for the various points in the funnel is key in their strategy.

Noah Goldfarb:
The way to understand what kind of content you need to put in front of a specific site user at a specific time really starts with understanding the intent behind their search for now, like the intent behind the prompt that led them to your website in the prompt, meaning in a tool like ChatGPT.

What kind of conversation were they having with that bot that pointed them towards your website? So it's key to understand not just what they're searching, but the why behind they're searching that, and then to be able to map that on to a particular stage in a funnel.

One mistake we see a lot of SEOs making or a lot of marketers who have invested in SEO is that they produce SEO content. And what SEO content usually means to them is blog articles. Either the 750 to a thousand to maybe 1200 word blog article, maybe longer with a keyword in the header and two times in the body, and it's the keyword optimized, and sometimes that's going to get you in front of the right person. Usually those are going to be people at the top of the conversion funnel.

I think there's a mistake that people make where they conflate being top of funnel with being low conversion intent, and I think those are actually kind of separate axes. Someone can be searching something informational at the very top of the funnel, and they might have a lot more questions they need to answer before they're ready to convert. They still have conversion intent though, but there's also other people that are searching at the top of the funnel on their informational terms that are just not valuable at all.

For an example of this, if you run a telehealth brand and you tend to prescribe a particular medicine, if someone is searching a term like, why does this medicine make my burps taste funny, that person is probably already on that medication and you might be able to convert them, convince them to maybe leave their existing provider and come with you, but that's someone who's probably already on this and receiving the treatment that you provide, unlikely to be someone who is starting out in their conversion journey.

Meanwhile, someone might have heard that this medication can cause funny tasting burps. And they might be concerned, maybe they've heard that maybe this is the right thing for them, but they're not sure and they really don't want those weird burps. So they're searching about that. And that could be someone that's actually at the top of the funnel searching an informational term, but is essentially in the market. They might convert eventually if you can provide them with the confidence that your solution is right for them, if it is right for them.

Chris Madden:
Once you have a better understanding of where they're on the funnel, Noah says, the next step is to simply search for the topic you wanna rank for and see the results. Try this on Google, ChatGPT and other LLMs.

Noah Goldfarb:
The best way to do that is just plugging that search term or that prompt into Google or into an LLM and seeing what it shows.

Often what you'll see is some big names, your competitors, if you're in healthcare might be Cleveland Clinic. All sorts of different kinds of information that Google or LLMs are essentially telling you this is what we think people who are searching these terms want to see. This is what we think will satisfy their intent.

And then the challenge becomes, how do we create something that satisfies that intent even better than everything else that's being shown here? And sometimes the competition's gonna be too stiff. Sometimes there's going to be an opening for you, especially if you have something unique to say, if you have expertise that others don't. If you can provide a better experience on your site, those are your advantages in that case.

Chris Madden:
Noah says that once you have an understanding of the intent behind your searcher and you know where they are in the funnel, you can start to plan specific content to satisfy them. That's where the brainstorming comes in.

What language belongs on that page? What format should it be? What

Noah Goldfarb:
visuals. Should this be a blog article? Sometimes it should be, but we recommend not just defaulting to that. Should this be a landing page that's more of a marketing style landing page, less text, more visuals? Should this be just like a short FAQ?

'Cause you can really give them the answer in a hundred words and that's all anybody would want, because they don't wanna read a dissertation to get a simple answer.

Once you get them onto this site, no matter what kind of content you're using to do that, you then provide them with the opportunities to continue to explore and to get educated, to build their confidence directly on your site.

So from a blog post that might be links to related blog posts, it's gonna be calls to action to more conversion oriented pages. If it's a traditional marketing landing page where they're searching a conversion oriented term that would suggest they're near the bottom of the funnel, then great, you brought them onto your site 'cause they were looking for the treatment you provide, but they're gonna wanna know how do you provide it?

Do you take their insurance? How much does it cost? How often do they need to meet with a provider? How long is it gonna take to work? Do you treat people in the area where they live? These are the kinds of questions that you can continue to provide answers to in a really straightforward way, and help them move to the very bottom of their funnel and ultimately convert.

Chris Madden:
It is interesting to think about the different types of content for different depths in the funnel and tailoring what you put out there to take people to the finish line. Doing that well takes more than a bit of strategic thinking and purposeful actions when it comes to content.

However, some digital health companies think that they know what they need to do or accomplish right from the start, but they may be on the wrong track.

Ahava Leibtag is the founder and CEO of Aha Media Group. We introduced Ahava in episode four around storytelling and trust. She likes to perform a diagnostic with clients to help them figure out what they really need. She asks them big picture questions to pinpoint that and to figure out how her content consultancy can help make that happen.

Ahava Leibtag:
Any really great content strategy engagement or digital strategy engagement is really kind of like therapy. Clients come to you and they say, this is our problem, and I know because I've done this for a really long time that's not their problem.

They think that's their problem because they're doing it every day with an up against their face like that and it's hard to see the forest for the trees.

And I just use my experience to try to uncover what's really happening for them. So I'll give you a recent example. Somebody came to us and they wanted a website rewritten, and I started to ask them about their overall channel strategy. You know, do you have an email newsletter? Like they have very specific business goals driving leads.

We do a ton of lead gen work, but we do it obviously a little bit differently than like a landing page. So we try to build something a little bit deeper and a little bit more holistic and including their audience's true needs. I started asking him questions about what he was really trying to accomplish as a business, and we came to the conclusion that he doesn't need the website rewritten. He really needs to understand his overall audience and what they're looking for from the messaging and educating them about what it is that they do.

And through the questions he said to me, you know, I really just thought I needed writing, but I really see that I need a lot more than that. And so I think that when people first start with us, they can come to us and say, we need an ebook written.

And we can listen to them and we can say, okay, let's figure that out and let's write that ebook. Or we can be smarter and say, okay, well what's the ebook designed to do? Where are the leads gonna go? Who's keeping track of them? How are you nurturing them? What's the ebook gonna do when it's on LinkedIn?

Are you gonna throw ads behind it? And when you start to delve into what they're really trying to accomplish, what you realize is that they don't need an ebook. They need to do some discovery work first to understand what they're trying to truly accomplish, because very often the stated business goal doesn't match the content activity that they think it should be.

So that's where I really do try to ask a lot of questions. One of our values at Aha Media Group is stay curious longer, 'cause it's so easy for me to just listen and be like, oh, I know the answer to that question, but I don't know the answer to that question. I literally just met this person 10 minutes ago.

So I really do try to see these conversations as, you know, let me get to know you, you can get to know us a little bit, and if we don't go out on the second date, no problem. But at least I added value by listening to their problem and telling them, I think our expertise can match to this. Or maybe it can.

Chris Madden:
Starting with questions and really listening does open the door to a strategy that succeeds for clients in the health marketing space.

Ahava is also quick to emphasize the importance of writing for the web when it comes to digital health marketing. Health information online, she contends, can be complicated and full of jargon. She suggests using plain language as much as possible.

Ahava Leibtag:
Very few organizations start in the right place. Well just gimme the basics here. Just start from, what are we trying to say? And then you can build the appropriate content formats based on the audience, and then appropriate distribution channels based on the audience.

So there's the technical aspect of web writing, which is using shorter sentences, bullets, chunking links, using the inverted pyramid when writing. And that's really important as we move into AI as well, to continue to use those technical best practices because AI is now spitting out content that does not have those, and so it's taken too long for people to read and they're not interested in what they're reading, so you kind of need a human writer to get in and massage the information.

Chris Madden:
Again, use the simplest words possible to provide the maximum amount of clarity.

Ahava Leibtag:
People hear that and they think it's dumbing it down, but that's not what it is at all. It's just helping people find the information that they're looking for, understand the information that they're looking for, and then use it to make the next best decision.

When we think about people finding what they're looking for, that's search and using search terms that they use about their own conditions in their own health, and then it's about helping them understand it. So taking out jargon doesn't help them.

Now jargon isn't using the technical terms of the diseases and conditions that they may have. If you have supraventricular tachycardia, you need to know what it's called 'cause that makes you a more educated patient. But taking out jargon that sort of many writing communities use to sound more educated, that's not what patients need at that moment. They need to understand what they need to do next.

And so I think, you know, those two things, the plain language plus the technical web writing is really where you can find that synthesis between making sure that the robots and the spiders can find your content, and also making sure that humans can understand it and use it.

Chris Madden:
Speaking of robots, keywords are a fundamental way for companies to improve their SEO and bring consumers to their site. As technology is advancing, consumers aren't just using Google anymore. ChatGPT, TikTok and YouTube are some of the top places people search for health information now, and that means more to think about in terms of catering to the consumers on those platforms.

Noah Goldfarb takes us behind the scenes of a comprehensive keyword research process.

Noah Goldfarb:
It's looking at the keywords that you're already ranking for. You can get that from SEO tools. We can get that from the search console.

It's looking at the keyword that your competitors are ranking for, that you may be ranking for as well or may not be ranking for, but more and more, it really is going to come down to the understanding that you have of your target audience, and the reason for that is people are just searching in more ways than they ever have before.

That includes LLMs and tools like ChatGPT. People are also searching on YouTube. They're searching even on TikTok and all these other sorts of platforms, and they're still searching in Google, but they might be doing it in different ways, or when they're searching the same thing, they're looking for a different result.

What that would look like is someone who's searching informational terms, and a year ago they might've expected to click through on a website, but now they're just gonna read the overview that's there.

So yes, to start out the project, we do a very thorough analysis of the keyword space. That usually ends up with, depending on the space, 20 to 50,000 keywords that we're looking at in total. Then it's assessing those keywords, starting to categorize them and identifying the opportunities for you.

Sometimes you're already ranking well for high value keywords, and there's something we can do to improve those further. That's likely going to be overhauling or improving the existing content on the site to match search intent even better, most likely.

There's also going to be tons of opportunities for new keyword targeting. By far, the most common problem that we see is people defaulting to the blog, which means you're generally going to have a very high ratio of informational, top of funnel traffic to bottom of funnel traffic that's ready to convert, which is fine.

The reason people tend to do that is the competition is lower. It's generally easier to rank for the many more informational related terms, each with generally more search volume than those lower conversion terms. So what we often find is companies where they've invested significantly in bringing people in at the top of the funnel and have really neglected the middle and the bottom of the funnel.

What that will look like is a telehealth company that's not going after any local terms, for example. They're not even trying to rank for a keyword like “blank treatment type in Boston” and doing that across all of the different areas that they service.

Same thing for insurances, “blank treatment type covered by Aetna,” “covered by Medicaid,” whatever it might be. Those are higher conversion terms. Yes, they tend to be competitive, but if you can get in front of those people, you are the perfect match to provide the solution that they're looking for.

So it comes down to assessing the total keyword space, seeing what your unique opportunity is, getting a bit longer tail, getting a bit more conversion focused, and really just deciding to not necessarily default to quote unquote easier informational content when there's more opportunity lower down in the funnel.

Chris Madden:
Organic search and optimized keywords are one thing. Social media queries are another.

Ahava Leibtag observes that social media undergoes almost constant change. For example, in 2018, Meta's ad engine started to switch to being AI driven.

In terms of SEO, Ahava addresses organic versus paid acquisition and discusses some pros and cons companies consider when balancing each. She also identifies a great channel that we will dive deeper into in future episodes, which is email.

Ahava Leibtag:
When Twitter became X. And so many people left and now they're back. And is it still a research place or not? Like where can you reach healthcare executives and are they on LinkedIn?

Are the doctors really on Doximity? It's so complicated, and I think that if you're gonna do paid, you have to have a very honest expectation set around what you're really gonna get, how qualified those leads are gonna be.

I think if you're starting an organic content program, putting paid behind it really makes a ton of sense 'cause it's gonna help you rise and you're gonna get some quick, early wins.

I would prefer to see things happen organically, but I also recognize that we live in a world where they know that they can get money out of you. So why would they show your content to your intended audience?

And so for me, from my perspective, it's really weighing the business considerations and what they're trying to accomplish. If you want my personal feeling, your most important channel right now is email in 2025. And if you're not working on your content and your tech and your distribution around email, you're missing the most important channel you have, unless maybe you're a retail institution and Instagram's where you get a lot of your sales.

But certainly for healthcare marketers, both B2B and B2C, you should really be using your email. That's work email.

An email newsletter needs to be designed. Now, I do think that you should follow accessibility guidelines, so you should have both versions available to people because they prefer plain text or HTML, then give it to them. If you wanna stand out, you need to look sharp.

Chris Madden:
Similar to what Ahava said about paid versus unpaid, Noah Goldfarb mentions possible constraints that emerge and says that there are times when his content team gains perspectives by working with other marketers.

Noah Goldfarb:
When we are working on our best projects and really firing on all cylinders, we're collaborating very closely with the paid marketing team. We wanna understand the search terms that are working for them, the collateral, the creative that's working for them, and if they are regulated, restricted in the information that they can have.

If they don't have a strong reporting regimen or understanding of their data or there's limitations to what data they have access to, that makes it a bit tougher to do our job.

Chris Madden:
That holistic view that Noah mentions is key and can be unlocked with organization and communication. Some of these are common sense and fundamental basic business practices.

At the same time, each classic marketing tactic needs to be checked for safety and compliance in digital health. For example, in the case of local SEO, soliciting reviews from customers is an area to be careful of legally.

Noah Goldfarb:
So if you have any sort of local presence, if you have Google Business Profile listings and you're trying to generate positive reviews, because that is one of the most effective ways to improve your rankings in those listings, you gotta be a bit more careful than you normally would be in soliciting those reviews due to patient privacy concerns.

If you're not in a regulated space, you can just reach out to people and say, hey, please leave us a nice review. Within healthcare, you need to be a bit more specific in your wording. You can't reach out to people individually. But it still remains equally, if not more important, that you do have a positive set of reviews on your public listings.

Chris Madden:
That's Noah sharing just one example of a local SEO tactic that requires extra caution in digital health.

At our best, that extra level of caution and care is everywhere.

Ben Riggs is a writer and content manager at Kettering Health. We introduced Ben in episode four around storytelling and trust. He mentions one of the most important differences between health marketing and regular retail, for example, which is that the emotional component may be extreme, and that can deeply affect how your content is consumed and understood.

Ben Riggs:
When you add the emotional pressure of a cancer diagnosis or someone who's just gotten a WebMD and found out their headache might be a brain tumor, but they're also trying to look for something else out there that feels more credible, maybe people aren't in this kind of emotional vacuum when they're reading something from us.

We have to take that into account because the studies show that sort of cognitive emotional loads will actually decrease functional literacy. And so if you're not prepared for that, or if you've interviewed a subject matter expert on, or something about for some condition or service page, and it's incredibly accurate, but perhaps it's in clinician speak, that already without having anyone visit has boxed a lot of people out for probably being able to access it in terms of what it means.

But then you add folks who are going through something heavy, hard, and it's just asking a lot of readers, and it's asking a lot more of them than should ever be asked for.

And so I think plain language and trust are really connected at the hip, especially within healthcare marketing.

Chris Madden:
Taking all that into consideration, Noah Goldfarb says it's all about patient acquisition, which determines every choice companies make when they're trying to grow their business. Once again, getting a holistic view as you toggle between macro and micro is crucial.

Noah Goldfarb:
When we work with a digital health company, what our strategy really revolves around is getting to measurable, impactful business growth, which we're tracking at the conversion level on the website. And it sounds almost obvious, but when we are building a strategy, it is important that we use that as an anchor.

We're using patient acquisition, however closely we can track that, as the guiding light for everything that we do. We kind of work backwards from there with our strategy.

Often what that means is we're coming into a client project where they've invested in SEO before and the investment they've made is very top of funnel. It's a lot of blog articles, maybe it's technical SEO, maybe it's link building.

And what they've likely ended up with is anywhere from a not so functional to a somewhat functional traffic acquisition engine. And in that case, our job really becomes to turn that into a patient acquisition engine. That means taking the existing traffic, taking the existing rankings and assets and content, all that work you've already put in and putting it to its best use.

Improving the content further, making sure it matches the intent that people have when they're searching to land on that page. And then really taking things the rest of the way. So that's thinking about site structure. How does our main navigation look? What are the bells and whistles we can put within a piece of content, including just straight up conversion calls to action, but also internal linking, valuable assets, whether it's a checklist or a quiz or graphics.

Anything we can do to not just meet someone at whatever stage they are in the funnel but really to help guide that person. Again, I think of it as building their confidence. So with each and every piece of content that you have, each keyword that you're already ranking for, how can we get them from there to a state of greater confidence in what you do as their solution if, again, you are actually their solution.

And if you're not, that is fine and you can politely send them on their way so they can find what they do need.

In short, what we do for our clients is a very deep dive into the intent behind their audience searches. It starts with understanding their audience as well as possible, speaking to their subject matter experts, understanding the questions that their sales team or their enrollment team gets once they get somebody on the phone.

Making sure we're answering those as thoroughly as possible on the website. Just providing the best experience that we can on the website so that when somebody lands it is an easy process and a helpful process for them to get to an actual conversion decision.

All of this is becoming complicated and also more important as generative AI comes into the fray. As tools like ChatGPT can now do the kinds of things that you used to have to go to a website for, including finding answers to questions that you have, it becomes increasingly important to think of the unique value that you and you alone, if possible, can provide to the searcher, can provide to the visitor.

Why would they stay on your site? What can you do to provide an excellent experience for them that is informative and valuable and builds their confidence all on your website to keep them there and hopefully guide them through to a conversion decision?

Chris Madden:
So effective SEO and organic health marketing tactics aren't just about visibility or top of funnel clicks. They're about adding trust, addressing emotional needs, and guiding individuals toward confident, informed health decisions based on the integrity of the content you provide them.

If we can gain an understanding of each patient's journey, we can turn top of funnel traffic into genuine patient acquisition as long as we make sure that every touchpoint is valuable to those people and builds their confidence in your product or service. That sounds like a winning formula to me.

Once the content is in motion, it's time to fuel it with ad budget. Our next episode, episode seven, opens the door to the paid acquisition funnel, how digital health brands turn investment into measurable growth.

Chris Madden:
Have you been reconsidering your content strategy or looking for ways to level up your organic content program? If so, you're in the right place. Today is all about content strategy and digital health, specifically how to create content that resonates. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

We've brought in just the right experts to walk you through how you can leverage educating your audience and building trust. First, you'll hear from Ahava Leibtag. Ahava is the founder and CEO of Aha Media Group, a 60 person content strategy agency focused on healthcare communication, a pioneer in plain language and patient-centered messaging.

Ahava helps organizations simplify complex topics into powerful stories that engage and convert. She's also leading the agency's repositioning towards full funnel digital marketing strategy in response to AI and evolving healthcare needs. You'll also hear from familiar voices like Derek Flanzraich, Ben Riggs, and Andy Crestodina.

Derek was featured on episode four talking about trust building. Also from episode four, Ben taught us a lot about the basics of storytelling. Last, Andy was first featured on episode one, discussing his own personal health journey. They'll chime in with additional expertise and perspective on Ahava’s comments.

So there's a lot of ways to reach an audience when it comes to health marketing. In my own case, I see a lot of ads online for companies that I consider or even already use as a product or service. There's a lot of people that I talk to in my family and friends that I trust for word of mouth for how I get some of that content.

And then of course, just being online and seeing things, whether it's a clinic itself or advertising on a billboard or TV. There's a lot of healthcare marketing out in the world. So if you're a content marketer, knowing your goals or desired outcomes is really important before you start to think about writing content or even thinking about what channels this content might be on. First, you start with your goals.

So while repurposing content for different channels is common, Ahava says it's not really the best practice anymore. Ahava walks us through what she now considers the three critical factors of content, information, format, and distribution. Repurposing content might be on its way out. The question that you want to ask is, what are you trying to convey?

So in this example, let's say you're trying to tell your consumers to not smoke cigarettes.

Ahava Leibtag:
There's the format that you put it in. So if you have an audience that you're trying to tell, don't start smoking, who are you talking to? Well, you're talking to teenagers, you're talking to parents, you're talking to teachers.

You're talking to people who might influence these teenagers never to start smoking. So you have to think about the audience and the format that's gonna work for them. So teenagers are gonna love video. You might want to print out signs and hang them on the back of bathroom stalls. Think about the context. They might be scrolling through TikTok. They're also in the bathroom, whereas parents are never in the school bathroom. So printing out signs for them isn't gonna work.

But blog posts and stories about how you stop your children and you talk to them about this at dinner and you make sure that they understand the dangers of smoking, those are the kinds of things that parents are gonna respond to. So they may be more inclined to watch a video, but actually read about it.

Then a teacher, obviously there's so many different formats that a teacher might use. Certainly research might be interesting to a teacher or a principal. So it's just thinking about that. And then it's the distribution of those things.

So we already talked about if you build a flyer, well then you're gonna distribute it on the bathroom stall, but you can change that flyer so that it stops the scroll on Instagram. So when people talk about repurposing content, it's very hard to shift and lift. Think about any book adaptation you've ever watched in a movie.

How many of them are as good as the book? It's the same content. It's the same story. It's the same characters, and yet sometimes it really works more beautifully on the page than it does on screen. I think we could argue there are very few adaptations that really capture the magic of the book, and that's why, because you can't just repurpose something.

You have to find what works in that content format. Take the magic that was in the original content format and the context with which people are consuming the content, and then slide it over to the next format. And that's again, I think where the nuance comes in.

Chris Madden:
Ahava says you should consider the various contexts in which your audience could see your content. For example, if you're on a social media channel, your goal as a marketer or a communicator or even as an educator is to get people to stop scrolling and grab their attention.

Ahava Leibtag:
And so when we think about the different contexts that we're meeting people in, if you're on a social media channel, your goal as a marketer or a communicator or an educator is to stop the scroll and get people's attention.

So the kind of content that you're gonna use is gonna be very different than on a blog post where you're trying to tell somebody a story or you're trying to give somebody a point of view, or on, let's say, a conditions or treatment page where you really are just giving people information that they need to decide what to do next.

And I think that's where the art and the nuance of content creation is. You can tell somebody, this is what plain language is and this is what that formula is about, and just go and do that. But it's the practice of learning the technical best practices, understanding the way that content is searched by the search engines and by these large language models, and then putting all of those different things into practice.

Understanding that human psychology itself hasn't changed. We painted cave paintings 10,000 years ago. Content has always been king. The question is, what context is a person in in order to understand it and use it, and what are they primed to do at that moment? When you're on a hospital webpage or you're on Google to decide what is SVT, which is supraventricular tachycardia, you're thinking about that information very differently than you might be if you're on Instagram or Facebook.

And so it's really a marketer's job to understand, where is my audience in this moment, not only in their thinking, but in their prime to action space in their head? And then how do I then design content that gets the reaction or the action?

Chris Madden:
It's crucial to consider the medium before implementing a strategy. Regardless of the medium, Derek Flanzraich’s focus is on setting content strategy into motion. Derek is a builder and health founder. He's the CEO of Healthy-ish Content and writes the Five Healthy-ish Things newsletter. Derek also founded Greatist, which was a pioneer in health content.

Derek says follow through on your strategy is everything.

Derek Flanzraich:
I'll say that writing the best answer on the internet is very easy to understand, but takes chutzpah to actually execute. It takes resources, it takes time, it takes patience. And so a lot of people, even if they intend well, a lot of companies don't end up following through on that.

They cut corners, they want something cheaper. They work with SEO first solutions as opposed to content first solutions, and they end up with something that's like in the middle. So the first thing to say is it's always about, you have to be really bought into it, and frankly, you have to have the resources to commit to doing it right.

So let's say that's all true. What's next and how you decide what to cover? Most people will tell you that's a science, and I believe that it is equally art and science. The science of it is very simple and very classic SEO. It is you take a bunch of keywords that are relevant to your company. You put them into the many different platforms for SEO that exist.

You look at the list of those keywords and compare the volume of searches against the amount of competition that exists, essentially saying, do you have an entryway? Can you get in and compete with what is already existing? And ideally, you want to pick something with high volume and lower competition.

So that's the classic thing. Our agency does that too. That's critical data. I just think it's never enough, and I tend to dismiss a lot of the competition if I believe that you can create better content than them, and also that your brand, your company, what you're offering actually has more of a right to win than who's competing.

Then also picking the keywords very carefully based on what is your business proposition. Value proposition is also a very nuanced thing. Let's say you're a virtual first provider that's providing autoimmune support. There is a million different things in autoimmunity that you can be writing about. You can be writing about symptoms, you can be writing about disorders, you can be writing about explaining the different things that go into it, the care that you can receive for it.

So how do you whittle that down into something that makes sense, I think is often the data's not enough to make that decision.

Chris Madden:
Of all the marketing methods out there, Derek says content is still his favorite.

Derek Flanzraich:
I believe it is the most cost effective way to start a relationship with the target customer and the most cost effective way to deepen that relationship.

It is not always the most cost effective way to convert a customer, but I think people heavily underrate the potential for content to lead to conversion. And in almost every company I've ever been, when they turn multi-touch attribution on, they realize that nearly every conversion at some point interacted with content from that brand in some way if they have a robust content offering.

So I think it's a much bigger part of the sales process than a lot of people give it credit for. Most people think of content as education, as awareness building. Maybe you get some traffic. I tend to think it's a marketing channel and the way that you measure success from it has to ultimately be conversions.

Chris Madden:
Derek says that getting those conversions is about driving as much high quality traffic as possible, then working the funnel over time to improve your conversion rate such that the traffic you're driving delivers more and more of the business outcome that you want, or what we call conversions.

Derek Flanzraich:
And so to accomplish conversions, we tend to try to drive as much traffic as possible and then work really hard to convert the traffic that does come down the funnel.

The primary way we do that is through conversion rate optimization, CRO. That means putting a bunch of buttons, putting a bunch of organic, authentic modules. Think in the healthcare world, putting pictures of the doctors or clinicians you can see with a button that says, “Book an appointment.” Think patient testimonials, a carousel of patient testimonials to capture someone with the stories of patients who've gotten better, whether that is a module that shows you what insurance plans are accepted.

Each of these modules are A/B tested and ultimately the ones that are the most effective get placed into each piece of the content alongside buttons with also A/B tested kind of copy on the buttons. Then if someone is not ready to convert, you don't want to lose that person.

And so a lot of the attention next is placed on capturing sort of this, what I call latent demand. People have been exposed to your brand, they're interested in what you're doing. They're clearly interested enough to read and engage with some piece of content you wrote. What you want to do is do everything you can to get them to sign up for an email.

They're not gonna sign up for your product and service right now. Let's get them into an email. And the way to do that, besides your kind of traditional popups and box at the bottom telling people about a newsletter, is often through some type of a lead gen download. So think of it as, get a free cookbook by entering your email, a quiz, or a symptom checker.

Those tend to be very effective in health and healthcare. You have to enter your information to start, and then that means you've captured the email. And then the last kind of key part of this is actually sending to those subscribers something worth them subscribing for. And usually, in my experience, that's a best in class weekly newsletter, as you create a flywheel essentially of content.

The content you write on your blog, you can then bring into your email. You can, in your email, promote popular blog posts, and you create a new sort of diversified marketing channel that drives, yes, retention, engagement, awareness, kind of brand educational value, but ultimately plays a very important role in your funnel towards conversion.

One other piece to consider when it comes to articles and their role in the funnel is what the topic is. Often top of funnel content is going to be more broader based. So let's say you've got some product that you offer, but a lot of other people offer. Can you get to the top of that in a keyword that might not necessarily immediately drive people to purchase your solution?

Then you need another piece of content that is going to be more mid funnel, explaining kind of your solution or how your solution compares to others. And then ideally, you actually have an even further, even more low funnel solution, which explains how to sign up for your service. And so even the articles themselves can work together to drive someone down through to conversion.

Chris Madden:
A good strategy starts with truly working to learn and understand how your audience behaves online. Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media. Andy walks us through a word of mouth moment when online content seals the deal with credibility.

Andy Crestodina:
You go to the internet and you search for the doctor's name, so this is called a navigational query.

You're looking for a specific person. You click, you land on a website, like a hospital site, for example, or their medical group. Now, that page will either sparkle with credibility or not. That page will either explain their passion and history and origin story or not. If it has those things, especially if it has them as video, that was a very short funnel. You were recommended.

So you looked at it, the page builds trust, and it was mostly validation. The page was sort of doing a confirmational job. But if I'm not yet brand aware, maybe I don't have a doctor's name yet. What I think all these healthcare systems can do is build search optimized procedure pages and then on those pages, show video that conveys the passion of the docs themselves.

That's cheese and mousetrap. Search optimized pages describing procedures, and maybe mentioning the geography or the related conditions that are being addressed, but then on that page, to put in all the image-related trust signals, accreditation, certification, association memberships, but then also I think really it's worth it to put some video content there.

Also, that's social content as well. Share that, post that, cut that up. Use it in different ways. Put it into streams, because you can easily build the brand of the hospital once you have these videos. It's catnip for credibility building on the internet. And then also make sure that your referring doctors have access to that and that you inform them that, hey, if you're referring this doctor, by the way, here's their page.

This page has their story, and that story is highly credible. So I think that you'll have a higher conversion rate from the word of mouth and referral. So all of the little digital marketing elements are totally relevant. It's really in many ways higher stakes, sure, but not so different than marketing for sort of anything else.

Chris Madden:
In healthcare, credibility isn't optional. Ben Riggs is a writer and content manager at Kettering Health. Ben says real stories from real people are what make content relatable and trusted.

Ben Riggs:
To tell stories, you need stories, and so we want to make sure that we're aligned with our folks in marketing. They have the relationships with the different facilities, service lines, where the stories are taking place, where these patient interactions are happening.

And we really want to create sort of a low clearance bar in the sense of we know that these folks are busy, whether it's clinicians, whether it's frontline staff, whether it's service line leaders. We don't want them to have to feel like they have to be content experts. They've got jobs that keep them busy.

We want to make sure that they're on the same page with some of those baseline things that we're looking for in terms of someone who had a positive experience with us, which thankfully there are countless ones of those.

Chris Madden:
Ben says that Kettering has a process for the marketing team to be able to collect stories and ideas for content from the frontline health workers who are actually providing the care.

Ben Riggs:
We have an intake system where, through our marketing team, these folks can kind of let us know about story leads that happen, patient encounters, and these really have a spectrum on their own, whether it's what might feel like a sort of everyday patient experience, but that patient said something in that interaction or just the clinician is privy to the fact.

Because a lot of people are having these everyday experiences, it's important to capture those too. You don't want to just tell the big dramatic ones because most people aren't having them. A lot of people, their healthcare experience is trying to figure out what's going on with their stuffy nose, scheduling an appointment, seeing their primary care doctor, and maybe being prescribed something.

You want to tell stories that mimic that sort of everyday quality too. That may not require the resources of a whole video team or a writer shadowing a primary care doc all day, but it might warrant us reaching out just to talk to a patient that we've heard about. Maybe if they said something to a provider that just made that provider or service line leader think, oh, this could be a great story.

With Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, places where the real estate, there isn't a lot, smaller experiences are great there. You can also tell these stories by way of your PR teams, and I think too, just knowing that they were there. You may not have moved on them right away, but keeping them around in your back pocket as other things come up.

Or maybe media reaches out and they have a question or they'd like to talk to a patient about X, you've got those folks you can reach back out to and inquire about their interest. But I think too, we're always interested in those stories that do present complex patient cases and also provide a backdrop to be able to really delve into the complexity of certain kinds of patient care.

Chris Madden:
I love how Leibtag’s approach is rooted in experience. She once faced a life-threatening illness herself and found that what she needed online was clarity and compassion.

Ahava Leibtag:
I had a life-threatening illness when I was in my early thirties that made me realize how hard it was to find empathetic content online.

Most of it was very clinical. It didn't really answer my questions. There wasn't clarity about what to do next. I became very passionate about trying to solve that problem for the millions of Americans who deal with that on a regular basis and, quite frankly, across the world. And I learned a lot about Web 2.0 when I was working as a federal government employee.

And so I was able to take Gerry McGovern’s principles of web writing, and I learned from her and applied them to healthcare. And then as the digital marketing space grew and evolved quite rapidly, I tried to really become an expert in what made the most sense for people in healthcare and in content. So I wrote a book about it called The Digital Crown, and I just continued to preach what I thought was the most important thing, which is that we need to speak to people, meet them where they are, speak to them with empathy, give them hope, even when it doesn't seem like there is any, but the goal is to help them understand where they can go for the help that they need, and then deal with it from that.

So a lot of people always ask me, how are you now? I unfortunately have a chronic GI condition that I manage every day, but I'm a patient every day. So I really feel for people who are looking for that healthcare, whether it's for themselves or a loved one. It's really important that when you go through a crisis, you feel like you can depend on the community that you have.

And sometimes a lot of people find that community online.

Chris Madden:
Personal struggle can shape perspective, especially in health marketing. Ahava gets what it's like to be overwhelmed. She reminds us that for most Americans, health information is hard to access and even harder to absorb.

Ahava Leibtag:
In healthcare, when we talk about somebody feeling scared or frightened, what happens in our bodies is that our adrenal glands start to pump out cortisol, and that sends a message to our brain to leave our frontal cortex, which is our executive functioning.

So if you're faced with a very scary diagnosis, or you're in pain just from the cut on your thumb, and anybody who's had that knows it's throbbing, your executive functioning is really not as high as it would be if you're feeling a hundred percent healthy. So when people are trying to consume healthcare language and they're trying to understand what to do next, we already know that their literacy has fallen down.

Then you also look at studies that HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, did, and nine out of ten Americans struggle with health literacy. Just understanding basic prescription directions or understanding even a map to how to get to a doctor's office. Literacy in this country has fallen tremendously over the last 40 years, and so you can imagine what's happening in healthcare in general.

So when you take these highly complex topics, like your heart is speeding up, why is it doing that? Well, then you have to sort of break things down for people in really simple concrete ways. Your heart runs on an electrical system just like your house, and it's a pump and it moves the blood around your body.

And so when you start talking in those more simple terms, it helps people sort of to calm down that adrenaline reaction of, oh my God, I'm so scared about what's happening to me right now. And it's just sort of basic facts. We have doctors who can help you. Here's what they're gonna do. Step by step is very important for people when they're feeling flooded and sort of just getting them off that emotional response and into a place where they can be more pragmatic about their care.

That's where thinking about plain language is not necessarily about jargon, taking out overly complex ways to describe things. I also think it's about choosing words that are real words that real people use all the time.

Chris Madden:
This is such an underrated advancement compared to the days of annual checkups and static brochures as the sole sources of health information. Ahava and experts like her are going deep to make sure that the message is as clear and understandable as possible. Content marketing for the health sector is not only about simplicity.

Ahava Leibtag:
It's not always about taking out words. It's sometimes actually about putting words in to make things easier to understand, because you have to move step by step.

The question we have to ask ourselves anytime we're creating content that's designed to educate people is, do we want them to understand, or do we want them to walk away and think we're smart? Because they're not gonna walk away and think we're smart. They're gonna walk away and think, this is useless and I'm gonna move on to the next brand who can actually help me.

So a lot of content creators talk about, in writing, really getting inside the hearts and minds and shoes of the people that are going through this and leaving your ego at the door. It's really about trying to help people. You can write great content, but you have to be aware of who it's for and when it's for them.

And if it's not a moment that they're really looking to connect, but they're just trying to solve a problem, just get to the point faster.

Chris Madden:
Empathy means putting yourself in other shoes. And in an ideal case, marketing can give people exactly what they need at the moment they need it. Ahava’s content instincts come from years as a journalist, and it shows.

Ahava Leibtag:
If you think about a headline, a headline tries to summarize exactly what the news is. “The Dow dropped X number of points, investors concerned about tariffs.” So that's the top. You want to get the top facts. What happened? When did it happen? Why did the stocks drop? Why did the Dow tumble? Then you get into the things that people might not want to know as much about if they already know the background of the story.

One of the content strategy elements that I espoused was putting on the top of an article “what you need to know” in three or four bullets. So for healthcare, this was this study that was done by HHS. This is what they found on low literacy readers. If you just summarize the article for them at the top and told them the top most important things that they had to do.

Don't start smoking. If you smoke, try to stop smoking. Here are resources with a link to help you stop smoking, instead of giving them this long article that they could read that, quite frankly, is just telling them what those three bullets say. Now, the counter argument to that is, well, why don't you just do that for everything?

Well, because we have to make a case for people and we have to help them understand. But certainly for low literacy readers, they're probably not gonna read the whole article. For people who are more comfortable, we want them to understand the background and the basics behind it. I don't think there's an American that hasn't heard the idea, don't start smoking, stop smoking if you smoke. But giving people really important facts and reasons why they shouldn't do these things, I think has to be included so that people can choose what they consume or what they don't consume.

Chris Madden:
That mindset drives Ahava’s whole approach. Health orgs turn to her when messaging falls flat, whether it's launching new leadership or chasing a business milestone. She knows the right digital marketing can close that gap.

Ahava Leibtag:
The way that we approach these conversations is in a consultative way, so if an organization comes in and wants to talk to us, I'm the one who has the conversation first. Because first of all, I learn more on those calls than I do almost anything else, because it's just so interesting to hear people's challenges, how their organizations are organized in terms of which departments are responsible for which communication activities.

I listen to what they have to say. I ask very specific questions. I'm trained as a content strategist, so I'm always thinking about how am I gonna move the needle for the business and how am I gonna move the needle for the audience, because if that Venn diagram, if there's not an intersection between those two things, that's where your content is usually falling flat.

And then we have a conversation about what we might be able to do for them, whether it's content creation or it's auditing and discovery, or it's figuring out a content marketing campaign, or it's a huge website redesign and rewrite. It just depends on what the needs are and what they're really trying to accomplish.

And I've often been told that one of the reasons that people choose to go with us is because we come at it from a very strategic point of view. And I think that's because I'm the business owner. And so in the same way that I'm thinking about how am I gonna grow Aha Media Group and make it a thriving place to work and a thriving organization, I'm also thinking about how am I gonna help these businesses, which they are. I don't care what kind of healthcare institution you're a part of, every business needs revenue. Their goal may not be profit, but they need revenue.

So I'm always thinking about how are we gonna use messaging and branding and content and storytelling, and then all the tools that are in our toolbox, like SEM and search and writing and video. How are we gonna use all those things to get them closer to what they're trying to accomplish as a business?

Chris Madden:
Then she says it's about figuring out exactly what it is that's going to help the business achieve its objective.

Ahava Leibtag:
When we do lead gen, people feel like, ugh, this is rapid or chasing the dollar or whatever. But you know what? When I had that life threatening illness, if that doctor didn't get research dollars and revenue to progress the treatment of what I had, I wouldn't have been able to have a life.

But that revenue went into his lab and went into his inventing a stent that was in my body and helped me. And so I think about that all the time, that unfortunately we have this very cynical view towards revenue. In healthcare, revenue is what drives the purchase and innovation behind new technology, behind training doctors, behind clinical trials, behind moving ahead. They cured cystic fibrosis in our lifetime.

That didn't happen with no money. That happened because people gave a lot of money to try to make that happen. When people say, “Oh, marketing is vapid,” I'm like, growing a company is vapid? No, it's not. Growing a company is incredibly important because it's helping people for the most part. Remembering that those dollars fuel that innovation and that technology and that research that really gets us closer to solving a lot of these problems.

That's what makes the work also meaningful to me. We try to be fun. Healthcare is a serious business. But you know, I have bright pink hair and hot pink glasses and I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift and I use her lyrics in my email marketing. I think we try to have as good a time as we can about it because we do feel like we're helping people, and I think that when you help people in good cheer, you get a better product at the end.

Chris Madden:
Ahava drives home the power of relatable, informative content. And Derek shows us how even details like adding a doctor's photo add credibility to a piece of content and help build trust, because empathetic content that continually puts your audience first drives real long-term results. A strategy is only as strong as its execution.

Episode six, our next episode, gets tactical, breaking down the technical details of high stakes and high impact SEO that supports acquisition, conversion, and retention. Now including GEO, or generative engine optimization, to optimize for LLMs.

Chris:
Health is personal. It's emotional, and behind every patient is a story. This is marketing digital health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden. Today we're delving into the power of storytelling. We'll explore how authentic, emotionally driven narratives can build real trust and long-term brand loyalty. Our conversation begins with Ben Riggs.

Ben Riggs is a writer and is the content manager at Kettering Health, where he leads content development for a large multi-hospital healthcare system. With deep experience in health storytelling, team management and editorial strategy, Ben brings a thoughtful lens to how hospitals can build trust, clarity, and patient connection through content while navigating complexity, AI disruption, and cross departmental coordination.

After that, we'll hear from Derek Flanzraich, Joe Cannon and Jon Ward, who provide real life examples of showing how content drives impacts. Trust in healthcare is arguably the most important factor of the whole equation. Ben recalls how his own experiences of being drawn to good storytelling and feeling how it affected him and other people. It's been foundational to his career as a content manager at Kettering Health.

Ben Riggs:
Whether it was print or digital, or it was scripting that ended up into a movie or TV show. There was kind of this mystery of what was happening in the aggregate. All these choices being made by writers and producers and whatnot, that created this experience of sorts.

And I just, you know, to me it felt like the closest thing to literal magic in a way. I remember watching like the Hunger Games in the theaters when it first came out and sitting there and probably being one of the few people who was overthinking it at the time in the movie. But you know, sitting there as they're kinda like all running to the weapons and my hands were getting sweaty and I did, I had the thought of, okay, I'm not even, I'm not there. This moment's fabricated. How am I having this emotional, visceral reaction?

And I remember too, there was like, the question that was popular after that was like, what would you do if you were in the Hunger Games? Like anyone who saw it put themselves there. So I think I got bewitched early on to figure out what the basics of storytelling were.

Come to find out there's sort of the basics of human life. What are the qualities of being human? Things like, you know, action being the first one. I think we're sort of verb centric creatures. We write, we dance, we sleep, we talk, you know, life. Life is action. And so I think story at the very bottom is verb, verb centric.

It involves people and the dynamics that make us person. So our psychology, our hopes and dreams and those things we can't get really our hands around, but are there and shape our decisions. And I think change. You know, I think no one wants to stay static for the most part. And so I think that we see these things in real life. And I don't think it should be any surprise that these are also the things that are requisite for good storytelling and to that end, then I think it should be no shocker then to find out that storytelling really is, it's a fairly principle impulse within people.

You know, I've said before and have borrowed it from other people who have done a lot more thinking around this, storytelling really is about as ancient a reaction almost as fight or freeze. There's a book called Wired for Story by Lisa Cron, C R O N, and she says pretty early on in the book that opposable thumbs give us the ability to hang onto things. Story is what gave us the ability to figure out what we needed to hang on to.

The basics of storytelling, verbs, actions. Emotion, change. These are the things that again, make us human and also make for a good story, and that's no accident.

Chris:
The human fundamentals of storytelling are consistent, but making something that resonates with everyone is hard. As Ben explains, people come from different backgrounds with different stories. What clicks with one person might not interest someone else, even if they have a similar background in life experiences. So how do you do it?

Ben Riggs:
Structure is vital to the chagrin of many of us coming out of middle school who had to learn how to outline with the Roman numerals off to the side.

There's a book by John Franklin, who was kinda one of the first literary journalists. The book's called Writing for Story, and he has a whole section about the role of structure and he actually refers to the outline as the English teacher's revenge based on this shared experience we've all had with it.

But I think the point he makes in that book and that a lot of other authors and screenwriters make is that you have to impose structure. That's effectively narrative, right? I think if you think about maybe the sequences of, you know, of events that lead to change, that's everyday life. It's haphazard, it's chaotic, but, and I think that's trying to mimic that has been attempted in some books and in some movies, and I couldn't quote what they are right now, but I don't think they did very well when it came to capturing our tension and the zeitgeist and even maybe making some money.

It's, I think, the idea is imposing some sort of order or structure, being thoughtful about really what is it that is being said. Because I think, like I said, you can have this series of events that capture change and you could find that sort of banal and maybe lacks, lacks the attention grabbing opportunities that other stories do. And I think the other stories have a certain structure imposed on them that really there's not one, despite what others might say.

But I think at the end of the day, it's what kind of structure provokes sort of the singularity of meaning or theme or focus. So to quote John Franklin again, he talks about how story is really, it's chronology with meaning. And I think if you're going to help a reader or a viewer draw out meaning you have to sequence things intentionally.

Even those writers or storytellers who play with time a lot, whether it's foreshadowing and doing that in crazy places, you know, I think of Christopher Nolan, right? He's a master of fiddling with chronology, but in a way where, you know, unless you've kind of fallen asleep for even just five minute, then you lose track of the thread. But even though he, it feels like he's all over the place, you're right where you need to be. He's right where he wants you because he's a master of structure and he's built those stories out in a way to get you to that place right where you should be. We don't know it as the viewer, but it works.

And then there's other ways to do this. John McPhee, who wrote a lot for the New Yorker, has a book called Draft Number Four, in which he actually shares all the different kinds of story structures that he uses to write really compelling pieces. Like he's got one where he writes about rocks and you're kind of thinking, oh my gosh, who in the world is gonna write something compelling about rocks? But it's kind of a famous essay. And he goes through the structure that he used in order to bring you along that story.

And so I think that to kind of put a bow on this thought, I think, yeah, finding structure solicits and helps create meaning, but I think too, it helps make sure that things can be complex without feeling chaotic. There's a lot of good stories that bounce between timelines. Like this is kind of an approach I use a lot where I'll tell a story, I'll write a story with the sort of background being some sort of event or something with tension or drama. In the foreground I'm maybe trying to play out something that has happened in the past.

You have to be intentional with that. You can't just hop back and forth without certain cues, but you do that well and people can pick up on a clear meaning.

Chris:
They're effective for health marketing too. Ben says, your company should figure out your what early on. By that he means: what kinds of stories do you want to tell? What do you care about and what considerations are there?

Ben Riggs:
There are business related things going on about which service line has some volume opportunity. Do we want to focus our energies to help share about our heart and vascular folks who they've just kinda realized they've got space to taken some patience? There's a lot of things that are steering the ship or that we're trying to keep in mind along the way as we're choosing stories.

I really believe if you spend a good amount of time with anyone, you'll find out that even the stories that don't feel like stories at first glance, that there is something going on there. And so I think that some of the best storytellers are able to capture the drama in something that seems emphatically not dramatic, and not because they're fabricating it, but just because they were able to sit with a topic or sit with someone and ask the right questions to get certain responses and answers that they were able to follow those trails of thought or trails of experience into like, oh man, this was really going on behind the scenes.

So suddenly one thing that feels mundane or every day suddenly has something else going on entirely behind it.

Chris:
Ben has permission to share an example around reporting and storytelling that he did that reflects the variety of very relatable health situations that people can find themselves in.

Ben Riggs:
I actually, I shadowed a primary care provider for a day because we just wanted to let people in on what's this look like. It was kind of a writer's dream because this provider was really willing to help me work with patients to get permission and I stood in exam rooms all day. Patients would come in, I was standing against the wall with my little notebook, and they would have a patient physician interaction, and it was everything from someone falling off their diet while on vacation and had to get back onto it because of his heart condition to helping another woman vet through her medications because she's coming out of cancer treatment for breast cancer.

And so I think standing in that room, capturing these moments and just being exposed to them. I've had my own, obviously, with my own primary care provider, but being in there with these folks made me realize that the drama that we want from a good story, the emotion we want from a good story isn't just in the traumatic incidences of car accidents or crazy brain tumor stories or that kind of thing. It's in everyday life.

And so I think good storytellers are also really able to figure out how to frame and position everyday life in a way where it might not be capital D dramatic, but you can connect with it because of the capacity for empathy and the very things that you're kinda worried about, thinking about yourself suddenly put you in the shoes of someone else.

Chris:
According to Ben, drawing people into the story is one thing, but cultivating trust is another.

Ben Riggs:
In healthcare it's a little different because you're not necessarily putting a product out in the market. But you are trying to make sure that you stay top of mind and or that the dots connected in people's minds are that should they encounter or come across or have a healthcare experience, an illness, an injury, something that the impulse is gonna be to think of us in a positive way.

That they're gonna have had experiences with us in such a way that what was cultivated was obviously this positive sentiment. I think trust is cultivated in a lot of different ways. I think at the bottom I think about trust and how we just do it in everyday life, and it's just being true to your word and being consistent and being understanding.

And so the question becomes, well, how do you do that with content? And there's a lot of ways to do that. You can share it by way of information. So we do content by way of kind of consumer health articles where we're trying to create that patient provider interaction by capturing maybe a question people are asking about health in some way, shape or form, whether it's their physical health or their mental health.

And what we're doing is we're interviewing physicians, clinicians, others who are subject matter experts and trying to capture their expertise and write informational pieces that help answer these health related questions for folks. That's one factor that goes into developing trust is are you not just speaking their language, but are you providing value by way of answering questions that they have?

And I think too, it's something we don't talk a lot about, but I think you can also answer questions that people didn't know they were asking. Which I know sounds nebulous and oddly philosophical, but I think sometimes there's those moments of information about something that people almost, they knew implicitly was important, but they didn't know they were actually thinking about it a ton.

Chris:
Ben describes an article that his team published on navigating grief.

Ben Riggs:
It's a few years back and it continues to be one of our highest performing organic pieces out there largely. Probably through SEO, but also because grief is unfortunately probably a pretty heavily searched topic. So there's a lot of people asking probably around how to understand their grief.

But then we also have ones that perform really well about colonoscopies. People didn't know they were wondering about those until the moment was presented that they had to start thinking about it.

Chris:
Ben's advice is to meet patients where they are. When you're navigating tough topics, make sure to keep language simple. Using fancy jargon can make it so that your message is not understood clearly.

Ben Riggs:
Our education teaches us that when you're trying to inform someone you have to impress them. And so there's kind of language choices we reach for to impress people, but we find out quickly that the irony is that if you reach for those language choices, you actually don't impress anyone 'cause they don't understand you.

With storytelling, it's a little bit more intuitive to choose language that is a little bit more, a little bit more accessible. But then also too, I think a lot of it comes down to also like web content, condition pages and service line pages. Trying to build those out and write them in a way that, like I said, isn't, doesn't force people to go through paragraphs of either brand heavy stuff that kind of feels like a commercial before they get to actually what's substantive about, okay, can you take care of what I'm dealing with? Where do I go to find that kind of care? Do I qualify for it? Those sorts of things.

Plain language really is the basis I think, for developing trust. 'Cause I think that the decisions you make when you're thinking about plain language, and it's not really plain language, is a funny phrase 'cause it's not just about language, it's also about user experience. So you're thinking about formatting, you're thinking about placement of text and formatting of text, and the simplicity of a page and where a click through button is for schedule a visit.

You're thinking about all these things as it relates to the consumer experience. I like couching it in the conversation of plain language because that's really what you like. You want it to be plain in a non derogatory sense, like you want it to be simple. You don't want it to be complicated to have to sift through.

Chris:
Within healthcare specifically, Ben says, content producers should remember that people searching for medical information may be distraught or in pain. Many are going through something personally or have a family or friends struggling that they're trying to help. They're likely already under a heavy emotional and or physical strain that can skew how their brain processes information.

Ben Riggs:
But when you add the emotional pressure of a cancer diagnosis, or someone who's just gone a WebMD and found out their headache might be a brain tumor, but they're also trying to look for something else out there that feels more credible, maybe people aren't in this kind of emotional vacuum when they're reading something from us.

We have to take that into account because a study show that sort of cognitive emotional loads will actually decrease functional literacy. And so if you're not prepared for that, you know, if you've interviewed a subject matter expert on or something about for some condition or service page, and it's incredibly accurate.

But perhaps it's in clinician speak that already without having anyone visit, has boxed a lot of people out for probably being able to access it in terms of what it means. But then you add folks who are going through something heavy and hard, and it's just asking a lot of readers, and it's asking a lot more of them than should ever be asked for.

And so I think plain language and trust are really connected at the hip, especially within healthcare marketing.

Chris:
To summarize, Ben Riggs emphasizes structure, empathy, and using the simplest words possible. Let's switch gears for a bit and get some perspective on marketing, wellness products and tap into some of the strategies there.

Jon Ward is the founder of the Assembly and former VP of Sales and Business Development at Plunge. We introduced Jon in episode three around people-based marketing and sales, earned media and influencers. Jon says that building brand loyalty was key to Plunge’s success. Plunge positioned their product as a recovery tool from the product launch. They included real influencers like Wim Hof, who popularized cold plunging globally, starting as a response to an emotional trauma in his life. Who better to create an authentic advertisement to draw in a target audience when potential customers see a strong, healthy 66-year-old man like Wim in peak physical condition, swearing by cold plunges they want in.

Jon Ward:
Wim Hofoff came out and he was doing the breath work and he was kind of like this character, but he was so compelling. He just lived such a unique frame of life. We had seen some of the benefits and, you know, the original founders, Mike and Ryan, like they're outside the box thinkers and we know when the company launched.

The best part about it was that everybody viewed it as like a recovery tool. Oh, I train a lot. So we had the early stage like the biohacker, the optimizer, the weekend warrior, and they were all getting in. And typically early on it was a lot of men that was buying the product and we called it wife approved 'cause it looked good enough that the wife would probably just okay it.

It's this, you know, white acrylic tub with like nice lines and the men would start doing it 'cause they were training a lot. And then eventually they would convince the wife to go and then the wife would use it as much or if not more. Because maybe she wasn't training the way he was, but what she was getting was all these mental health benefits associated with it.

It's really hard when you have three kids running around the house and your two people trying to manage that, and all you really need is two to three minutes for most people.

Chris:
Even after you have a captive audience, the utility of storytelling continues. One way to use storytelling with existing customers is messaging that helps them understand how to best use your product. For example, by not overdoing it at the start with cold plunging.

Jon Ward:
You're not gonna go put on 225 pounds on the bench and see if you could do it. You're gonna start with a normal way and then work up into it. What was happening was they would do it, they would try it, they would get into it, they would start doing it every day. And through the breathing, through the forced breathing and from the cold itself, they were getting the muscle recovery.

They were getting these feelings of nature of this dopamine release that would hit, which the dopamine is like the love drug. So you see your dog or you see your kid and you feel a sense of like love and openness and friendliness. And over time with the breath, it would regulate your nervous system and the dopamine that would come would make you feel better about life.

And oftentimes the brain influences the body. And so if you feel good and you have a great perspective on life and it affirms your body, then you're synced up. And I would get calls often, hey man, I didn't know this was gonna happen, but this product changed my life. I'm getting in cold water and I'm a better dad or I'm a more patient person, or I'm a better business owner.

Chris:
That's how Plunge’s ability to improve people's lives started going viral. Jon recalls a prominent business executive who gradually came around to embrace the products, and then an even bigger fish in the fitness industry took notice eventually.

Jon Ward:
Like the founder of Under Armour was like, hey, this is the thing, you gotta do it. So he ended up getting into it, and then he calls me on the phone and goes, this is the best thing ever. I could not be doing my businesses. My whole system was completely fried from being an entrepreneur for 15 years. Whatever I have to do to help you guys or support you, I'm in. I'm a better business owner for doing this, and this person's influencing a lot of people.

The energy of all of that, that happened all of the time, at least three to four times a week, that's what would happen. So imagine what your life is like when you're living in that world. I was living in a very airy weird world, and all I was doing was really just providing them cold water and then supporting them.

That's the energy that I'm taking outside of that experience. That's actually what people are looking for. They are looking for something, a group, a company, to provide an experience that makes them feel better about life and makes them feel better about their own personal health journey.

Chris:
Plunge told a story with their cold plunges and saunas that turned people into fans, and then even advocates, they led by example. But Jon adds that not every influencer might be right for the role. It's a tricky game.

Jon Ward:
To be honest, on the affiliate side because some people are just content makers and not all the time business people. So you really have to find the niche on that. And we just found through numbers, we eventually found the people and we found the right audiences and fine tune over time.

Chris:
Hyper Rice is another business that has thrived from forging relationships with influencers of their potential customers, including athletic trainers. Hyper rice designs and manufacturers recovery and movement enhancement products, think massagers, air compressors, and heaters that help athletes and fitness enthusiasts recover.

Joe Cannon is SVP of Global Partnerships at Hyperice. Where he's helped transform recovery tech from a niche product into a consumer wellness category. From Equinox to the US military to major sports leagues, Joe has helped Hyper ICE as a vital part of movement health, while also challenging the healthcare system to rethink MSK care, wellness access, and preventive innovation.

While word of mouth is strong, it was storytelling and partnerships with the most influential that set off a domino effect for their product's popularity.

Joe Cannon:
We really focused at the start on fitness and really focused on a vertical and trying to be as authentic to that vertical as possible and as endemic to the space as possible. And Mark Mastro, the founder of 24 Hour Fitness, and a brilliant mind in this space, said at a very early conference that we were at, it was at NAS’s Optima in the fall of 2016 and said, you know, trainers are the heartbeat of the fitness industry. NASM is the largest certifier of personal trainers in the world.

And it was very much the model we had used in professional sports. 'Cause in order to get the athletes bought in, the trainers have to, the ATCs, the strength and conditioning coaches, the orthopedics, they have to be bought in and they're the ones who help the athletes learn and try these new technologies.

And so if we can win their hearts and minds, then we can win everyone else. When you think about a fitness club. Personal training is some of the most intimate connection you can have with your member. You have these one-on-one or small group moments, and if you could teach them about what the world's best trainers that are at the top of their field are doing with the world's best athletes, they can be a part of this story.

And we tell the story. Like in fitness, we did probably over 200 live trainings my first year at Hyper Rise in clubs. I was an English major, so I went and got my NASM-CPT at the time really fast because I was like, I can go and tell stories and about how the company was founded and Anthony, and hiring an aerospace engineer and doing all these amazing things and get them really excited about the story and the vibrating rollers and making foam rolling faster and less painful because of what it does with the Golgi tendon organ and muscle spindle complex and go on and on and on.

But really it was the story that they got excited about how they could use the product with their people. And so we went in UFC Gym and Crunch and Lifetime, we and Steve Nash gym's in Canada. We were doing it everywhere we could get in, anyone would take us and could bring three or more trainers. We were there. We just wanted to be in the room and talking to them and hearing their feedback of the product and we learned a ton about what we were doing, but then they go and integrate that technology into their training when they're training four to five people a day, the multiples there are pretty crazy.

That was always our focus and it was a focus on fitness. And as we've built across the fitness channel, we have this incredible team who eats and breathes and sleeps it every day and continues to drive that business forward and make sure we're integrating and building recovery rooms for people because that creates the experience.

Chris:
Joe recalls that Hyperice was intentional about focusing on the fitness worlds and learned about what athletes do and where they hang out when the game is over.

Joe Cannon:
We met a guy at the time who used to run Hilton's Wellness Program, a guy named Ryan Crab, who was taking sabbatical, getting his MBA from Georgetown and was going to ended up going, spending about six years at Peloton and.

He was like, if you wanna get in a spa, you gotta start going to these like live love spa shows and go and be endemic to it. 'Cause what's after fitness? These people are doing the same thing. They have massage therapists. Our look at these businesses as, and whether it's physical therapy, whether it's corporate wellness, fitness or spa, hospitality, it's like, what's the connective tissue?

And so for fitness, it's trainers and it's the education the trainers provide in spots, it's the people who are actually doing the work every day. And I think there's this really cool story where it's like, where do you go physical therapists? You can teach them to use it. How do they integrate it? More people get to experience it. So that's always been our key focus is what are those connective tissue points that like can get us across a broad swath of an industry and create experiences.

Chris:
Some partnerships just fit, Joe explains that around 2023 Hyperice launched a program with the Marriott Hotel chain. It resulted in 250 locations where guests can have Hyper Ice and NormaTec devices delivered right to their rooms.

Joe Cannon:
And so it went so well that every one of the locations had to buy more units, but then even better, they added it to the Bonvoy app because customers were getting upset that they would get there and it was already sold out or spoken for.

And so they started buying more and bringing those in. And so now a lot of the industry's looking at that. It's like, why would you need to be in room? What would that do? Well, the penetration's so much higher in room, there's more people. But when you think about going on vacation with your spouse or your work travel, you're like, will you try something new this time?

The barrier to entry's low, like it doesn't require you to really buy it. You're getting sent to your room.

Chris:
Joe asks a thoughtful question, where are people more likely to try a new wellness product or service? It might not be where you think. Joe and the team learned that people are open to trying new things more in certain contexts than in others.

They found that when in hotels and traveling, as in the Marriott partnership, people are more likely to try a new thing, like a Hyper Ice recovery device, and then that can be baked back into the storytelling.

Joe Cannon:
So I think there's, there's like trying to think about where are people more likely to experience wellness. 'Cause like we found, like us on a concourse of a stadium during halftime of a basketball game showing people massage guns. Is it really the sweet spot for wellness? It's like, where are they looking for this?

What are these common traits of these early adopters? For us, a key focus on where are people more likely to engage with new wellness tech or be more willing to experiment with stuff. Airline lounges we've done with the Delta One lounges with their Hyper Ice spa, and it's pretty amazing. But it's one of those things where it's like, why would that take sense?

Like, well, it's packed and it's because people are willing to take time and those business trailers maybe are indexing a little bit more toward health and wellness. So that's how we focus on these verticals and a lot of times it's our partners suggesting we get into spaces and come to us and say, hey, that's a really cool thing. We wanna plan wellness. How can we do that together?

Chris:
Derek Flanzraich is an entrepreneur working to make health more accessible. He previously founded Greatest, which became the largest health and wellness site for millennials and was acquired by Healthline. He also launched Nest, a venture backed health first credit card startup.

Today, he runs Healthy-Ish, a personal holding company across content investing and advisory work. His agency, which is called Healthy-ish Content, creates content for brands like Elementro, Elara, and Midi. He also writes Five Healthy-ish Things, a weekly newsletter with over a hundred thousand subscribers where he shares the most interesting and useful health ideas he's come across that week.

Derek Flanzraichzraich:
We actually sat in a room, me and a bunch of very talented friends who were willing at the time to work for free, who also agreed that health content on the internet was totally crap.

We sat around a room and we basically reverse engineered what we thought great content on the internet should be. Google at the time, which was the primary way people find content today, was the primary way people found content. Then Google was at the top of every health search, essentially promoting livestrong.com content, which was part of Demand Media pretty famously.

Explicitly content farms that were not interested in high quality content. And so we didn't do it for Google, we did it for ourselves. And we asked what kind of content would we trust? And so that started with making sure that every fact that was cited with a scientific study and we actually went to the extreme of ranking and putting in different tiers, journals, scientific journals, and internally we trusted some journals or other journals.

We felt like every piece of content needed to be approved by, not one, but at least two completely legitimate experts. We felt like the articles should cover all topics and to make sure there wasn't, weren't missing some part of the topic that we were writing about. We felt like every link that we were linking out should be to also a trusted, trustworthy site that had a high domain ranking.

We felt like every article should have graphics, unique graphics. And we felt like every article should have a voice that was engaging. It was written by an amazing journalist and storyteller and researcher, not the expert that often comes with a biased, one-sided view. All these choices we made because we felt like that was the right way to do content, was really rewarded when Google woke up and decided to start defining for themselves what great health content should look like.

And it turned out that we were it basically, and that led to a very quick and exciting time of growth where Google fell in love with Greatest, and our traffic went from zero to 15 to 20 million unique visitors every month over a short period of time, few years.

And it was because ultimately we were writing content the way that Google was explicitly saying it wanted content in the health space.

Chris:
For consumers, having someone that truly cares, like Derek, helps foster trust. He saw what Google was promoting to users was not in their best interest, and he took action. It ended up making a serious impact.

Health is universal and personal to each of us. Ben Riggs gets philosophical in his view of how marketing collateral needs to reflect real life.

Ben Riggs:
People's hopes and dreams and plans, their fears. An exam room is a very emotionally visceral place as well as EDs and things of that sort. And so I think that when we think about storytelling as it relates to healthcare, the easy comment would be to say there are stories everywhere. But I think when we go back to what makes for the basics of storytelling, healthcare is ripe with them.

When you think about storytelling, being so central to the human experience and how we develop an understanding of something, anything really, and if you've got legitimate marketing or business incentives to help a community understand the mission, the level of care at a certain hospital, there's a lot of things you can do. Obviously a marketing and advertising and a reputation standpoint.

And then also obviously from the operational side of things, you wanna make sure if you're promising a certain level of care in your marketing, that people are experiencing that as much as possible in person. You can offer up expertise and you can do a lot of things about your points of access, this, that, and the other, but at the end of the day, it seems painfully obvious, but at some point you wanna show and share that people are choosing your hospital or your health system, or that maybe they're not outright choosing you.

Perhaps they were referred, but even so there, you want to show the world that people's patient journeys are intersecting with your facility, your clinicians, your staff and storytelling's the best way to do that.

Chris:
Ben says there's a spectrum of storytelling from brief first person Google reviews, for example, to more sophisticated long form narratives.

Ben Riggs:
I think we're still figuring out what lies over there, what opportunities there are, but I think this is where you'll find things like the long form written pieces, the videos even on more self-contained social posts that help share abbreviated patient experiences. You have to do that because you wanna capture what it was that people went through when they came to your hospital, to your health system, to that primary care office, and you want to do so in a way that captures the basics of storytelling.

I think that a lot of people got hit to story probably in the last, I don't wanna call it 10 years in a big way. I think a lot of people were using the word story, like they were using the word content a few years before that and, and much like content, everything became a story.

And so the underbelly of that in some ways became anyone with a team who is producing content marketing pieces thought if I get a person talking about their experiences, then I'll have written a story and out of fairness to them. That's true.

But when I think of story, I'm thinking about those things we've talked about, verbs, action about. Emotion and not just capturing a sequence of events, but really trying to draw out how someone felt, the things someone thought as they were receiving a diagnosis or they're going through treatment, or how they felt getting to the other side of something, which was the result of clinical intervention. Those are the things that really make stories seen.

And so what I think we've seen sometimes is some places and spaces have thought they've shared the story, and for those that can't see me, I'm using quotes with my fingers because there's a person, there's a beginning, a middle and end.

Chris:
Ben Riggs says that Kettering Health has focused on telling authentic stories accurately with honesty and transparency. Stories that don't have to, as he puts it, bend the knee to legacy marketing approaches.

Ben Riggs:
That's kinda where we have found a home with storytelling, whether it be video or written, if we're just trying to capture and really understand what are the basics of good storytelling and make sure we're doing a good job too of intersecting our brand into it. 'Cause it would be silly to do this without thought to how are people walking away from a story with a better understanding of who we are?

You know, again, that seems patently obvious 'cause we're not journalists in the formal sense, but in some ways we are journalists in the sense that we wanna capture real life and tell it authentically and honestly.

Chris:
There are dedicated people like Derek who fight for truth and committed storytellers like Ben, who boldly pursue authenticity. Successful health marketers are those that care. About the patient, about the details and about the truth.

Get those things right and you've got a head start. Stories connect people and create meaning for them, but a good strategy can bring them to action.

In episode five, we'll dive into organic strategy for digital health. How to plan, prioritize, and create content with purpose so your marketing drives real patient impact.

Emily Peters:
The world works because of relationships and human relationships and the charisma of your company and how you align with people's priorities and what they're trying to achieve.

Chris Madden:
That was Emily Peters, she's one of the guests in today's episode. In a world flooded with ads and AI driven content, credibility is everything, and trust is required for scaling digital health. Authentic conversations that build relationships with real people have always been the primary way to build such trust.

We go deep on surfacing digital health messages via influencer marketing, earned media, media relations, and more. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden. This episode is all about how to elevate your brand awareness ultimately so you can drive patient acquisition. The experts in this episode, Emily Peters and Jon Ward will share with us their insights on strategies surrounding reaching the right people through channels and audiences that others already own, which works only when the message in audience align when it comes to health.

First, let's hear from Jon. Jon Ward is the founder of The Assembly and former VP of Sales and Business Development at Plunge, where he helped shape one of the most emotionally resonant and virally loved wellness brands of the last decade. From leveraging influencer networks to launching partnerships that mattered. Jon brings a deeply human and tactical lens to building trust, driving behavior change, and connecting health products to personal transformation. At Plunge, the social media strategy is centered on getting the right people to discuss the brand experience authentically. As these online influencers already had built substantial trust with their audiences and they naturally fit well with Plunge.

Jon Ward:
If you're a startup, unless you've raised a bunch of money, you don't have money to go do anything else. So the initial rollout of kind of the affiliate influencer side was let's just get in the best people that we know that represent the brand well. And by doing that, it was like Angie Huberman and it was Abby Marcus, and it was Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Tony Hawk. And it basically took profits and started like rolling it directly to that. And the goal was that if we got the most aligned eyeballs, like something good would probably happen. It was probably more a hypothesis than anything, but what we found is it made us seem like we had more product in more places than we probably were, just by being really strategic about the placement.

And over time it was our key strategy to growth. The unique thing about us is there was other brands in the space, but they didn't have great product market fit, and their price point was a lot higher, and we came in and fit really well. And ultimately wanted to make it cool and make it fun and make it engaging.

And because we were the thought leadership and we were way ahead of the curve, it allowed us to be flexible and make errors and trial and error. And we would just reposition marketing dollars towards, rather than spending on ads, gift free tubs. And the exchange would always be, we need you to express this in a very organic and natural way, like what's happening?

The secret sauce is that the product was doing the thing. So like if you have the thing that's creating the experience and all you have to do is capture it, a lot of times we wouldn't even have something for them to say. We would go, just say exactly how you're feeling right now. And that is a very unique moment, because most times the curation of the moment is usually what is occurring.

Once we started that program, and then I would say a couple years in, we just kept ramping that up and it became on every social platform, we would get people calling and go, look, I can't see another ad or another person talking about cold plunging. I'm just gonna buy this because everybody's doing it. It's the new form of the television and commercial, and we just did it through rather than paying a bunch of money to do it. It was a very economical, smart way to do a startup.

Chris Madden:
That kind of omnipresent messaging from influencers is one way to deliver big results with clear ROI.

Next, Jon talks about his overall marketing approach. He recommends getting clear on your priorities, asking yourself pointed questions, and fitting your approach to your goals.

Jon Ward:
What was amazing to us, and this is why like product market fit is so important to me, we had to say no to people all of the time, and we had to pick where we wanted to get our viral moment from.

What segment, what market, where do we want to tap into? And you would take your shot from time to time. The mechanical part of it would be, okay, what market are we interested in, like exposing now, how much do we allocate to it? How much product do we allocate towards it? Do we need to scale back? Is this an area that's actually has a signal?

And when we started focusing less on mass exposure, which is, that's what everybody wants, you go to someone that has a big audience and they have massive engagement, and they said that was important at the time, it's not as much now. The initial push was, we're getting signal, let's just keep expanding and let's see where we're getting more signal from.

And then we grew a pretty big number of tubs that we would give out every month. And then we just repositioned the brand once there was enough exposure, enough PR out there that we would just hyperfocus on very specific areas. So like health and wellness was one. Fitness influencer was another. YouTube reviewers was another, and through that process, especially on the YouTube reviewers or even doing traditional press releases and working with an organization like Men's Health or something like that, we would send something out with them and then we would see the signal back.

The main point is that at one point it was about mass exposure, and then another point it was about hitting a market. And then at the end of it, because we had touched those, how do we actually monetize this now? How do we create a whole different channel that people can, we can just rely on, support these people?

It's essentially an extension of a sales force, except you're continuously getting marketing from them. And I think at the end of the day, what I found on it is you do have your billboards, you have your commercials. Then you have like your extension of your company, and those can be considered ambassadors or they can be considered affiliates.

But getting the true sources of those people who are dedicated business people changed the game for us.

Chris Madden:
Another way of getting there, he adds, involves finding the right aligned brands and verticals to work with. While the intent is to tap into your partner's markets, it wasn't hard for Jon and the marketing team at Plunge to create win-wins with their partners.

Jon Ward:
We would go, hey, we're gonna get emails. You gotta do a post. We gotta tag three people. You gotta give us your email. And so the email has a lot of value. You could attach a monetary value to each email, and then we would do a giveaway. We'd give a smaller type away. We would give a bigger type away, but the connection between brand to brand, one, it would drive more alignment.

And in future state we would share things together. But everybody that would essentially be in that network, to them, would become part of ours. And we had access to so many brands. GORUCK was a great one that we did. Great audience. It's a more premium product for what it is. Had huge success. TRX was another one. We did ones with Alo. We did ones with a bunch of different brands in general, and it was across apparel, fitness products, brick and mortar. And I think through being semi strategic, I wouldn't say there was a long tail to a lot of those. A lot of those were fairly transactional in nature, but we gained and garnered so much more exposure and direct sales through gaining all those emails.

The email was the champion. And we would just put 'em in our lifecycle and then it would turn into something over a course of time and we would just track it as we went.

Chris Madden:
That willingness to cooperate with other brands is clearly an intentional effort that paid dividends in their efforts to help growth companies scale, to upgrade and become full-blown players in healthcare. Emily Peters takes a slightly different tack.

Emily Peters is the founder of Uncommon Bold, a strategic communications and branding firm focused on digital health with roots in journalism, a historic run at Practice Fusion and deep experience, including enterprise across the Blues, Medicaid initiatives and growth stage startups.

Emily brings a relational mission led lens to how modern healthcare companies earn trust and grow with intention.

Emily Peters:
At Uncommon Bold, we have a very specific set of skills in helping companies make that transition from being an early stage company, often focused on direct purchasing from patients, or sometimes even direct purchasing from physicians into becoming a mature healthcare company, which 99% of the time always includes some kind of enterprise element.

And it can be a very difficult transition from a mindset perspective, like culture perspective, mission, goal alignment, valuation. Like you start as a small team and you might be saying, okay, we're gonna make sure people get inhalers right and we're gonna sell these incredible inhalers and we're gonna sell them directly to people.

If we think of our like classic tech startup, you have your early adopters in your early hype cycle, right? And you might get your big investment and great, and now you're onto this next phase and there's only a limited amount of market there, right? So like you're gonna run out of patients, you need to shift into an enterprise story.

It's so different. If you had big, you know, social media marketing, traditional influencer marketing, paid search, paid growth, all of that is completely different now if you're shifting over into an enterprise sales cycle where it's reputation building with literally a dozen big payers, right? You're talking about how can I work with health plans, how can I work with employers?

It's a completely different kind of relationship. It's a different kind of valuation. Just even the timeline of those deals, as a direct to consumer company, you might be looking at maybe a couple weeks, right, from like the top of the funnel all the way through to that engagement. In an enterprise, you're lucky if it's a year.

And so to help companies understand how to evolve their brand and really pivot it through that.

Chris Madden:
For Emily, that process is fun and there's a lot of learning involved. She says she prioritizes helping companies understand the full picture to figure out how they can take advantage of their unique mission to acquire patients.

Emily Peters:
Trying to help companies understand this crazy healthcare economic system that we have and who's a buyer, and being able to show them how their product really aligns with the incentives of those markets and how it maybe fits in that kind of story, hopefully without losing the magic and the special sauce that made their company really unique in that mission, that pattern matching of how do you click into an enterprise world and still be a very passionate, really excited company that's doing good.

That's aligned with what your values of like why you started this and your valuation.

Chris Madden:
According to Emily, who's from the San Francisco Bay Area, the healthcare industry works much differently than how the Silicon Valley scene works, where product and technology are king, and that means the health space requires tailoring your marketing approach.

Emily Peters:
There's this idea that you're gonna be able to like create such an amazing product and you're gonna be able to A/B test it, and those are the only two things that you need to succeed. There might be a couple of cases, I'm not actually having worked in that world, but that's lightning strike. Like that is not how the world works.

The world works because of relationships and human relationships and the charisma of your company and how you align with people's priorities and what they're trying to achieve. And being really user centered, if you will, another Silicon Valley term of how you think about your brand. And so we do a lot.

And probably the second thing that we do after converting B2C companies into enterprise companies is converting very product driven companies into companies that have full body and skin and heart and emotion and relationship. That it's not just that one piece of really incredible technology, which can get you from a Series A.

You could sign a couple really big deals. You can strong arm a great product out into like a Series B level success. But after that, you still need to be having relationships. You still need to really be having a reputation and something that sets you apart. The thing that people also kind of overlook with it, it can be really playful.

So I work a lot in interoperability world and health data network and data analytics, and there are just hundreds of thousands of companies in this space that all look and sound pretty similar, right? And there's a company called Elkay, which is spelled E-L-K-A-Y. They have bees on the roof of their headquarters and when they go to trade shows, they bring honey and they bring beeswax chapstick, and they bring a caramel corn made with the honey.

I use that as a case study all the time. That has nothing to do with their actual technology or product or what they're trying to do in terms of being a technology company. It has everything to do with standing out from the crowd and being memorable and being interesting. And they built all this incredible stuff around this bee theme.

And you can go and visit the office and see the bees, because some of their marketing communications are from the hive. It's fun. This is a fun thing and that's the reason that I remember the name of that one company versus the hundreds of other interoperability health data companies that are out there. It doesn't always necessarily need to be product first, A/B tested. It should have a personality, and that personality will really be a massive differentiator in something that assists you in getting those deals done.

Chris Madden:
Emily says that a unique identity can make you memorable, but you still need to get the message out, and influencer marketing is the new way to leverage others' relationships.

Emily Peters:
You know, influencer marketing, when we talk about big enterprise healthcare decision making, is also incredibly powerful. And, you know, we know we're in a very small pond here in the digital health world. There's only so many of us who really are working in this space and who are making decisions. And so.

One of the areas of opportunity, place I think that we tend to underinvest, is thinking about influencer marketing in terms of clinicians, in terms of buyers, in terms of payer voices, employer voices. A lot of enterprise healthcare technology companies really shy away from getting people to be evangelists of their technology, right?

Even if they are beloved and they have great case studies, they're not necessarily bringing together like an advisory board or bringing people together for events or to have those conversations and really talk about what's cool about it. I think sometimes people, it's infrastructure technology. It's things like physician shift scheduling or, you know, managing sterile processing.

It's too boring, but the people who love those worlds, right? I had one of the best conversations in healthcare I've had is with a guy who ran sterile processing in a hospital and he would've talked about it for a hundred hours and it was fascinating. I mean, he really loved it, right? Like, this is such an incredible part of how a hospital works.

And so that evangelism is something that even the driest, most technical infrastructure pieces of healthcare, there is a lot of opportunity to consider that through an influencer lens and to have those conversations and really be able to lift up people who are evangelists for you.

Chris Madden:
That curious approach is what uncovers specialist knowledge and stories from the trenches, which makes for awesome and captivating content.

Speaking of content, there are also some old school techniques to augment your brand strategy. One of them, Emily says, is publishing a book.

Emily Peters:
Books are an incredible tool for PR, for brand strategy, for getting media relations, for building reputation, for being able to tell your story. They still carry like a really significant cultural cache.

A book might not be that much more work necessarily, than putting together a podcast or a webinar or something else. There's just something about a book that people really love. I love, I bring in collaborators. This last book had 25 different artist collaborators in it. You know, just an incredible way to open doors and to listen to what people have to say and to elevate them and to create evangelists around your work.

And so I'm working right now on the new book, which is about money remaking medicine. And so we're looking at how to address costs and people who are doing really innovative things around the financial side of healthcare, which is very spicy and very taboo and a lot of fun to work on so far.

Chris Madden:
Emily says that brand strategy and reputation, being authentic, matters today now more than ever in a marketing field that has been leveled by AI and other influences.

Emily Peters:
One is that it is much, much easier today in an AI driven world to create something that appears to be a real brand or appears to be high value. There was a shortcut for maybe the last 20 or 30 years that if you invested in a nice enough looking website. It was polished. It had some good messaging on it.

You would look real. Not everybody would be able to invest in a nice enough website. Now anybody can create a website that looks really real, that says healthcare solutions on the top of it, and that you're improving patient outcomes and blah, blah, blah, and like nonsense. So you need to work way harder to have a real reputation.

To have real word of mouth, to really be understood in the market, because there's a lot of slop out there, there's a lot of competitors, there's a lot of legacy technology. It's just a very, very crowded space. And so if you really are trying to do something and be known, brand strategy is the way to be differentiated in the market, and especially in healthcare technology, which is deep enterprise sales.

This is relationship driven, reputation driven marketing. You're not trying to sell like a lipstick, have like a one and done experience off of Instagram, and maybe it's a great experience, maybe it's a terrible experience, but we're talking about signing millions and millions of dollars of contracts over many, many years.

This is something that you should take really seriously, how your reputation is in the market, and the more seriously you take it, the more the market responds. Now your enthusiasm is very contagious. Right. And so how are you showing to the market that you are enthusiastic, that you are genuine, that you are real, that people are enthusiastic about you?

That's what drives change, especially in the enterprise health.

Chris Madden:
A big part of your enterprise's reputation has to do with building relationships, which require investment. He recalls how difficult it was for him to feel a benefit from traditional networking events. His answer was to create his own event, more intimate, on the beach, and focus on wellness experiences instead of keynote speeches.

It brings together decision makers from health and wellness to build friendships first, so the business deals happen naturally.

Jon Ward:
It's bring together the best minds in health and wellness, get them to do experiences together. When you go on a trip with someone, a group of people, family, you remember those moments.

So how do we create the Davos of wellness, with an adult summer camp vibe, with the key decision makers in the space, and we just get them to do a bunch of experiences, personal, maybe there's some professional mixed in. We wanted to keep the keynote speaker down because most people in the room probably could be a keynote speaker.

Lots of fireside chats, lots of us doing uncomfortable things together so the relationship can forge, it can get built. And then from that, have that connective piece that's been missing, which is the best partnerships and outcomes come from relationships. And then we can take these disparate markets, which is healthcare, hospitality, fitness, health and wellness, and high performance.

And we basically bring all them together so that they can cross pollinate and stop being so silo. I think we're curating something really fun, really exciting. It's not as serious as some of these other events that I've seen. It's really about like grassroots, human to human. Let's get to know one another.

And organically, all the people are typically the C-suite, founders, like all they do is business. So like the business will occur in a natural and organic fashion.

Chris Madden:
Jon is getting this special group of business leaders and influencers together for something unique. He's inviting them to partake in the cold plunge and sauna experience offered by Plunge. Take surf lessons, try rucking, and more.

Jon Ward:
From the experience side, the product side, we're gonna have cold plunge and sauna overlooking this beautiful landscape of the beach as well as the ocean. It'll be curated, meaning someone will be guiding the experience. We're gonna have the escape beds.

We're gonna have surf lessons and can't totally fill it in yet, but it'll be somebody that most people would know. We're gonna be running rucking throughout the course of the day. Physical activity starts in the morning, but product placement and trying different products is gonna be great. Our title sponsor is Lifeforce.

So incredible brand, super interesting work that they're doing. It's essentially how do we actually take the medical feel and we bring it to your home, so they'll do blood paneling there. It'll be limited on the quantity of people that can do it, but they'll put you in and they'll get you results back quickly.

So that's obviously super exciting to us. And there's a bunch of other sponsors that are in the works right now, all brand names that you would know. As far as other activities, we're gonna be doing breath work and we have Kelly Starrett, who a lot of the trainers in the space, professional and otherwise, go to to get their information.

He'll be guiding workouts, breath work. We're gonna be doing some yoga. We will have some super interesting panels. Mostly we're focused on fireside chats, which are more intimate and they're more thought provoking, and there's more personal shares involved. We'll have a couple keynotes and the only keynotes, the only speakers, are really innovative people or brands that would be helpful for the rest of the people in the room to actually know what's going on there.

Chris Madden:
It's all about connection. Jon is inviting some of the biggest leaders in wellness to forge a personal bond with one another as people first. The business and brand awareness cultivated there is secondary, but also valuable. It comes through the personal experience of each participant creating a buzz in the industry.

Absolutely. Emily Peters explains that ideally, in terms of brand strategy, it's great to have everyone talking about you more than you're talking about yourself. It pays to be creative in how you make that happen.

Emily Peters:
That's the real secret of brand strategy, is we want people to be coming inbound. We want people to be talking about you.

We want people to be buzzy about you. It's really simple things like if I sign a massive deal with your company, let's say like a six figure deal, we'll go small, right? Are you sending me a package that has some stickers and a water bottle even? Like, are you acknowledging that I am now a potential fan for you?

There's these really easy little brand strategy tricks in terms of building up influence that a lot of companies just don't even engage on, so have fun with it, right? Think about what is that thing that you wanna send somebody? Are you acknowledging their anniversary with you? Are you acknowledging, are you inviting them to come out to a dinner or inviting them to speak to a reporter?

How are you using the voice of your customer? I just am always surprised that more companies don't do that. I mean, it is a lot of work. You'll get turned down a lot. I mean, especially in healthcare, a lot of people working in a hospital or a big health system don't, it's not easy to get permission to have them speak out for you.

But it's not impossible, and it is so effective. Everybody in healthcare, if we think of the Epic case study, it's a very risk averse sector, right? And so people want to buy the safe kind of leading choice that everyone else buys. And so how do they know that? That's through things like KLAS surveys and it's through your sales marketing, but it really is through reputation.

Like I'm gonna ask my friend over at the next hospital in the next town, or if I'm a physician, I'm gonna ask the next practice, the guy I went to school with, what's he using? And that kind of reputation marketing literally can be as cheap as sending somebody a sticker. That sticker could be worth $10 million by the time you get somebody who really loves your technology and is really evangelizing for you. Why wouldn't you send that sticker?

Chris Madden:
It's great to consider how such small, creative and intentional efforts can have a huge payoff. But such results can elude us without an incredibly key element, which is trust. Emily highlights how trust affects everyone from patients to the doctors, to the hospitals. Emily says people can be very attached to their powers, decision makers, when it comes to healthcare.

Emily Peters:
The patients don't trust the health plan. The health plan doesn't trust the hospital. The hospital doesn't trust the physician. The physician doesn't trust the pharma company. It's this incredibly toxic relationship of people who can point fingers, but also who have different responsibilities and different pieces in it.

And so the most common thing that I think new companies coming into healthcare or new founders coming into healthcare, they don't understand that economics. And they say, well, we're gonna create incredible product and patients will pay for it or doctors will pay for it. And we both know, having worked in healthcare for a long time, that those, neither of those is true sustainably and long term.

We do see a lot of companies come in with a direct to consumer pitch initially. It can be a great way to get through your Series A, right? And then you need to pivot and what we're talking about is, are you selling into payers? Are you selling into large health systems?

Are you selling into employers? Who is it that is gonna be the person who pays for this, and how do you have that relationship? It's most commonly for healthcare to be B2B2C. A patient you always want to have in there at some point, right? Physician, clinician, ideally if you're doing it right, you want them to be in there as well, but the person who is actually buying and who is signing your contract is neither of those.

It is a very complex thing and we do a lot of work with early stage companies, especially really mission driven companies, of they're coming in with this strong mission of this is gonna be something that is for patients, for this, the little guy, and now you have to find a way to build it into this healthcare economic ecosystem without losing that mission.

It's hard, it's not impossible. There's a lot of places where the interest alignment actually does work really well, and especially in a world that's transitioning towards value-based care. There's a lot of really cool opportunities to make those alignments in a way that feels really authentic and genuine.

We see big health plans, big employers wanting to provide more social care in things like social prescribing, like prescribing arts or prescribing healthy food. So that's more of a vibe that healthcare should include more than just me going and getting my annual flu shot or getting my annual cholesterol test.

Like I want my health to have mental health, to have all these proactive pieces to it, and then there's an actual deep economic piece to it as well.

Chris Madden:
And if more healthcare companies lean into building relationships and trust, it can be transformative for everyone, she says.

Emily Peters:
The advantage and the opportunity in healthcare is that there's so much love and beauty and miracle stories of how we are curing cancer, of how life-saving surgeries and the doctor being able to catch something, and there's so much goodness.

That's really inherent in our medical culture that I think in a lot of ways we kind of take it for granted. People love their doctor, right? They love the hospital. Like you, that's the place where they have their baby. That's like this incredible human setting. We don't realize that it's work, that relationship and that trust with the community and being a place where those most important moments in your life happen, that doesn't just like organically maintain itself.

And we're seeing a lot of fallout from that right now. For healthcare brands that really want to lean into that relationship, that change that dynamic to be super successful in doing it. Kaiser is a great example of a big healthcare system, a big payer that has a very different relationship with its members.

You really feel like you're part of this big managed care organization. You have a set of shared values. Mayo Clinic is a great example of a healthcare organization that has a much different relationship with its workforce. They take it really seriously about having low turnover, having people who work there. They call it the cult of Mayo, right?

The doctors who are there are intensely invested in Mayo in a way that you just don't see that in a lot of other health systems. So there are little points of light. If we did start to see more healthcare organizations really taking that relationship super seriously, it would be transformative, right?

Like we have a healthcare system that is starting to tip into being quite despised by a lot of people right now, and we could catch it. We don't have to let it go all the way over. Like we could start to change how we wanna think about those relationships.

Chris Madden:
Mayo Clinic is another great example of a company that has fantastic relationships, both with their consumers and also with their employees. The impact is more than smiles and good feelings. A healthcare organization's brand is about how it works for patients, according to Emily. Mayo is an organization that takes clinician satisfaction super seriously in a way that a lot of other healthcare employers don't, which then positively impacts the patient experience.

Emily Peters:
Mayo has this culture of excellence. They have a culture of clinicians participating in the conversations about what the policies are, where the organization goes. So some really basic public relations, human relations, like HR type things that they do as an organization that unfortunately are just rare.

There's also specific policies where they don't use RVs in compensation, which is the most widespread thing for every physician in any kind of like medical setting, which RVs measure the actual increments of somebody's work. And so it just becomes this nickel and dime fee for service fever nightmare for people.

I can't even imagine trying to work in that setting and being incentivized based on that kind of like productivity at that level. So because Mayo Clinic has this culture of excellence, they really use the story of the initial founders. They still bring them up by name in their meetings, even though they have been dead for quite a long time, to talk about the mission and what they're trying to do as an organization.

So they just have this incredible culture that I think I would love to see more organizations try to do that in terms of their clinician staff. And then of course, because that staff is so engaged and they're so invested in that organization, the reputation for patients is that Mayo Clinic, of course, is prestigious, the place you wanna be, the place where you receive excellent care.

So it trickles down, right? Kaiser also does it very intentionally, but also because the economics that are set up there are different. So you, me, as a Kaiser patient here in Northern California, do feel like we share an actual interest alignment. You know, Kaiser is going to help me get my vaccines, that are going to help me get my preventative care.

They're gonna make a lot of things really easy and when there are tougher health choices that I need to make, I really trust that Kaiser is going to make those decisions with me, even if it is hard. How do I choose whether or not to have this surgery? I don't think Kaiser like wastes my time or wastes my money.

And that's a reputation that they've invested in significantly, both through the culture that they've had as an organization, and then also tons of advertising, those classic Allison Janney commercials about Thrive, and just really being a pillar of what's possible in terms of community relations as a healthcare organization.

Chris Madden:
Emily says that some of the things a company can do to earn trust are free. These include defining your core values clearly and operating by them, having an honorable mission and fostering a positive culture.

Emily Peters:
The classic line about what is PR is do the right thing and then tell people about it. Doing the right thing gets you halfway there, right?

Have a good core value, have good mission, have good culture, do the right thing. Don't forget that you also have to tell people about it, and I think we have problems on both sides of that equation in healthcare. I think a lot of us are not necessarily doing the right thing and we're also not telling people about it.

Classic brand paradox is that the term PR has its own PR problem. Classic. We love that always happens with every type of company or brand. PR today is generally understood in the market as being like media relations. We need good PR, we need to be in The Wall Street Journal. We need to be in Fast Company.

PR as it was developed, and as I learned it in school, is really public relations and it's about how you create those relationships and how you're understood. So it's much bigger than just media. And so brand strategy today is a more accurate term in terms of like how are you intentionally positioning your company, communicating clearly what makes you authentically good, what people really love about you, how are you aligning your incentives with what the market wants?

How are you being seen as a choice that speaks to me and my identity more than even maybe the product features and like how you're differentiated in the market? And then media relations is a tiny piece of that. So it can be media relations, it's social media, it's influencers, it's content, it's events, it's speaking, it's design.

It's everything that you do every day that really sets your company apart.

Chris Madden:
Here's a differentiator for you. Emily explains that one of her favorite examples of value-based care involves mandatory bundled payments, which act as an incentive for getting the best possible results when someone has joint replacement surgery.

Emily Peters:
One of my favorite pieces of value-based care, which is mandatory bundled payments for joint replacement surgery, which is my personal little like thing that I love, maybe not everybody else is a huge fan. But it has been a very, very transformative program where now, you know, hospitals and surgery centers and orthopedic clinics get paid a flat bundled payment for any hip or knee replacement.

And if something goes wrong with that patient, like a friend of mine, her father just had sepsis after a surgery for knee replacement. The cost of that follow up care and the payment that they received, they have a downside risk on that, right? So they get paid more if you have a good outcome. And so we've seen a massive change in how people getting joint replacement surgery are treated. They have now actually shorter hospital stays, but way more home care. So they're getting home visits from PTs, they're getting cool apps to use, they're getting really cool ice circulation machines. They're getting all this incredible stuff because the focus is now on value in terms of the outcome, and it's been massive and it's been very successful and it's created a lot of new opportunities in the market.

For the kinds of outcome-based technologies that can really impact that.

Chris Madden:
Emily says that the success of such an outcome-based approach has resulted in many other opportunities in the market, so this accountability could be a big benefit for patients. Regarding the future of healthcare, she says policy changes are coming with cost cuts likely on the horizon.

Emily Peters:
We're entering a period of real instability in healthcare because of policy changes that are coming. We know that there's a lot of cost cutting that's gonna happen. I think it's a terrifying time for a lot of us in healthcare, but it's also a time, you know, there's a great classic PR saying of every crisis, this is an opportunity.

And so I'm a little curious right now to see who takes this moment of big budget cuts and big pullbacks and big change in our sector, and who makes that into an incredible opportunity to do something cool and different and to feel a little less stuck as a healthcare system right now is a silver lining in a time that's potentially really harmful for a lot of people.

But I remain an internal healthcare optimist that I know we can build a healthcare system in America that looks like America, that really lives our values and really treats people with compassion and that we can still innovate and come up with like breakthrough care. But we can also make it less expensive and less harmful to people.

So, I mean, we're on a journey together. Hopefully starting to see some change soon.

Chris Madden:
In today's digital healthcare world, brand is about recognition. But it's also about trust, and the trust in an organization is about the trusted relationships between people in your organization. A strong brand can set you apart, build credibility, and help patient acquisition, but how you treat people and build relationships must authentically match your marketing and your mission.

Whether new school tactics like influencer marketing or old school, like writing a book, doing PR, or going to conferences, don't forget that, as Emily says, it's people all the way down. Once you've earned the spotlight, the question becomes how do you keep it? In the next episode, episode four, we'll explore the art of storytelling and trust.

Why the right narrative isn't just marketing, but can be the core of lasting patient relationships.

Chris Madden:
In today's digital world, people want to feel that they matter. They want to feel seen. As consumers, we want a brand that resonates with us, one that we can trust. When things all come together, we as customers feel the connection and we know the difference.

To explore such connections, we're chatting with experts in brand strategy and positioning. This is Marketing Digital Health, and I'm your host, Chris Madden.

Brand strategy and positioning are the fundamental pieces that you have to get right so all of the subsequent work can perform. Brand is the sum total of all the public facing touch points that a consumer can have with your business.

Positioning is a strategic framework that analyzes what your prospects want, as well as what other competitive alternatives they'll consider.

Now, this work doesn't happen overnight. Chapin Herman is a founding partner at Herman Shear, where he builds leading brands in healthcare, self-care and wellbeing, clarifying who those brands are, what they stand for, and where the biggest opportunities for growth and scale live.

Your business' brand is a reflection of your values, personality, and unique qualities. For Chapin and his business partner, their personal experience with the healthcare system was a driving force behind their mission.

Chapin Herman:
For the first 13 of those years, we were somewhat omnivorous to industry and space, and over the last couple years, both he and I had two really interesting reflection points that kind of changed our views of the business. We both had children. And at the same time, we both helped parents battle disease and found ourselves deeply immersed in the world of both consumer health and wellbeing and also traditional healthcare.

Chris Madden:
Chapin Herman is the chief executive of Herman Shear, a brand strategy and creative agency which specializes exclusively in health. For over 15 years, the firm has been a force in branding.

Chapin Herman:
We became members of who we defined as the sandwich generation, which is being the health advocates of our kids, of our partners, and our parents, and sort of became obsessed with this world.

And we had a sort of stars aligning moment. We took a look back, we looked at our body of work, and so much of it was already in this world of health and wellbeing, and we just saw this opportunity to go all in. It's what we're most interested in, excited about, and where we believe the most change is happening.

And so we work in building and transforming brands in healthcare, healthy food and beverage, fitness, recreation, health tech, personal care. That's the world that we live in.

For us, brand strategy always begins with a hypothesis on where we believe a business has the biggest opportunity in the market. What kinds of customers or patients, depending on how you define them, are most ripe to fall in love with the business and a product and service. And that's where the work always begins, with that hypothesis and putting some rigor behind those hypotheses to ensure that brand is the right opportunity.

And then from there, we begin to crystallize a positioning in the minds of those people, of what this business is and ultimately why they're going to love it.

Chris Madden:
Getting into the minds of your customers is how you can find your place in the market.

Let's start with the conceptualization. You're looking for the “how” it will fit into the market, as well as your “who,” which would be your target audience.

Chapin Herman:
It begins with a collective sharing of intellectual capital between our team and our clients' teams, and usually between the two of us, we've got pretty good understanding of where we believe the biggest opportunity for our business lies, and we want to ensure that we're never living in a silo of our two teams' respective thinking.

It's then coupled with really wonderful qualitative sit-down one-on-one conversations with folks, be it the customers, be it on the B2B side, any kind of providers, payers, insurers, to validate or poke holes in our thinking.

Then with that, we begin building out or distilling the right sense of values and ethos for a business that's really gonna resonate and make sense for these audiences. And then that leads and informs everything that we do from a creative standpoint.

One of the things that we've found to be really successful with our clients is what we define as a brand degradation exercise, and it's where we help them to spot where their brand is potentially dying from thousands of paper cuts.

These are the less glaring moments within a brand and brand system and experience. It could be a sloppy email footer. It could be inconsistent product packaging, potentially a tone deaf ad. Many of these things don't outright break the brand, but together they begin to chip away trust and degrade the positioning and the identity.

It's a way to figure out where and how to remain sharp and not just look at the core experiences, but also look at the micro moments within the experiences that don't ladder up to how we aspire to be positioned and identified within the market.

This is not something that happens once, but rather there are teams that are dedicated to identifying brand degradation across the experience and building out the right resources and actions to be able to solve for those moments of brand degradation and shore up the experience holistically as often as possible.

We're constantly thinking about what we define as the growth audience, right?

And in the end I think that the benefit lands on the consumers and the patients. And I'll give you an example as to why.

You've got, obviously, wearables that track loose sleeve heart rate, glucose, and so people are inundated and flooded with numbers. More data doesn't always mean more clarity for folks, but what I think this makes space for is really a wonderful end benefit to patients and consumers, in providers needing to consider more holistic offerings.

And I'll use GLP-1 medications like Emti, bruja as an example. Their efficacy is so directly tied to lifestyle factors, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and now more precise data available. Consumers are expecting these brands to address these interconnected factors, not just prescribe a pill or an injection.

What that means for a lot of these businesses is that they will build their own integrated offerings. Some will form strategic partnerships and some will just maybe play in those adjacent spaces solely through the means of content.

What that really means is that in the end, more holistic offerings are gonna define success for these businesses because we have so much access to data to prove efficacy that it's currency for modern healthcare business.

Chris Madden:
Our bodies are integrated systems. From a business perspective, this can represent opportunity for expansion for digital health companies. They can expand from being a point solution to being a platform.

There's a human biology reason as well as a business reason that these digital health companies tend to start with a single problem, then expand to care for the whole person.

One of the most important things about branding is to keep it alive and vibrant.

Chapin Herman:
One of the biggest misconceptions we see is this idea that branding ends with the delivery of a brand book that's like this static document that solves for everything. But for us, our belief is that branding is the sum of all the experiences that people have with the company and it transcends product, customer service, social presence, packaging.

It's this living system and it's evolving constantly. And at the end of the day, so many times people ask, “What is good branding?”

It, full stop, is the kind of branding that helps to sell product. All the aesthetic and emotional strategic work that goes into it is all entirely focused around conversion and growth and loyalty, and if it serves any other purpose, it's not doing its job.

Every business should be brand sharpening on a continuous, never ending basis. They should be conducting brand degradation exercises.

The ones that understand it are the ones that stand out, and the ones that know that they have to continue to move and evolve and be comfortable being a little bit amorphous, with the right sets of values and the things that remain true, but with soft and squishy parts around the edges that allow them to extend to what's happening in the market, what's happening with competition, with technology, with culture.

That's where the most sizable opportunity is, both from a business standpoint, but also from the ability to help more people with any kind of product or service.

Chris Madden:
As the evolution of healthcare branding undergoes such monumental shifts, what do marketers need to take into consideration when it comes to positioning?

Quite simply, April Dunford is the go-to authority on positioning. As the author of two books, Obviously Awesome and her new book Sales Pitch, she has helped hundreds of companies from startups to enterprises find their positioning edge.

April's clarity driven approach is especially useful for digital health companies navigating crowded categories, emerging trends, and the challenge of building trust with patients and other stakeholders alike. She's all too happy to clear up mischaracterizations of brand positioning.

April Dunford:
My personal pet peeve is when people talk about brand positioning, which really bugs me, because I think there is branding and there is positioning, and those two things are actually not the same.

I would argue we cannot build a good brand or understand really what the brand should represent until we understand the inputs to it, which are positioning.

So in my world, positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering something, some value that a very well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.

It defines things precisely like: who exactly are we positioning against? What are the alternatives to our product? How are we different from those alternatives? And specifically, what is the business value that we can deliver that the alternatives cannot?

Then we also need to define who's a really good fit for that business value, because when we decide this is the value that only we can deliver, not every company in the land cares the same about that value.

And then lastly, it defines what is the market you're gonna win, or put another way, the market category or the frame of reference that we position a product in such that our value kind of makes sense to those people.

That's how I think about positioning.

I work mainly with technology companies. In technology companies we tend to have a vision, the far future state of our glorious product. It's the all singing, all dancing thing we wanna be when we grow up, 10 years from now or five years from now. If we're raising money, it's the future that we paint for the investors and say, “Oh, the vision is, eventually we're gonna be this.”

The strategy is the way we're gonna get from where we are right now to where we wanna be in the future.

For tech companies, often that means we're changing the market we go after. We might say, “Well, we're gonna start by focusing on little wee companies, because we can service them very well, even with a product that doesn't have all the things. We have a good product for little wee companies, so we're gonna sell to little wee companies. But then once we've dominated that market, then we're gonna start focusing on the mid-market a little bit more. Then once we get the mid-market, then we're gonna add some other things, or maybe we'll even do an acquisition, and then we'll have this much broader set of offerings. Eventually our vision is we're gonna be the best thing for everybody in the land.”

All the way, the strategy outlines what are the steps we're gonna take to get there.

Your positioning at every step in that journey defines why a customer should buy you versus the other alternatives at that step.

I worked for a company and our vision was to be the greatest CRM for large enterprises anywhere. That was the vision. But our first step in that journey was we were gonna sell to investment banks.

Our original positioning was: we are the greatest CRM for investment banks, and we had a way to win there. There wasn't as much competition there, and the competition that was there, we were clearly better.

But our strategy said, well, we'll start there. Once we've established a beachhead there, then we're gonna add some new functionality, and then we're gonna go after retail banks. At that point, the positioning isn't gonna be CRM for investment banks anymore. It's gonna shift, and then it's gonna be CRM for retail banks.

Now we're not just targeting investment banks, we're targeting banking, so we're gonna be CRM for banking.

Then the next step in the strategy was, banking is sort of adjacent to insurance and in some ways overlaps with insurance. So we were gonna add a bunch of things for insurance, and then we were gonna go after insurance.

At that point we would shift the positioning and say: we are CRM for financial services. So investment banking, retail banking, and insurance.

Then if we captured that market, then we reasoned that we would be very big at that point because that is a very big addressable market. Then we could take on the established leader for all of enterprise CRM, and then we would knock them out.

How do people actually do positioning?

The closest thing I ever came to that was something called a positioning statement. Most people are familiar with this, but if you're not, it's kind of like a mad libs, fill in the blank sort of a thing.

“We are a blank that does blank, unlike blank, blanky blank blank blank.”

The blanks are things like: here is my competition, this is the value I deliver, these are my customers I'm going after, this kind of thing.

When I first encountered that thing, I had already repositioned a couple of things, and what bugged me about the positioning statement was there were these blanks in there like “market category,” and I'm like, I could position almost any product in a dozen different market categories. The question is, what's the best one? There was no answer to that.

So the positioning statement, I thought, encouraged you to just write down whatever your assumed positioning was. It certainly wasn't a methodology to get you to great positioning, or even better positioning than the positioning you had right now.

So I found that very frustrating.

I embarked on a multi-year journey to dive deep into how we do positioning. Maybe I could take positioning and break it down into its component pieces, get the best answer for each of the component pieces, smash it back together and voilà, good positioning.

Breaking it into pieces wasn't hard because the pieces correspond to the blanks in the positioning statement, and so there are five of them.

The first one is competitive alternatives. If you didn't exist, what would a customer do?

Second one is differentiated capabilities. So what have you got that the other guys don't have? That is feature function of your product, but also capabilities of the company. Maybe you do pricing in a different way or services in a different way.

The third one is differentiated value. This is the “so what” of your capabilities. What is the value that your product enables for a customer that no one else can? What's your differentiated value? How are you helping a customer make money or save money or do something better?

Fourth is best fit customers. We're not trying to sell to everybody. We're trying to sell to customers that are really a good fit for our stuff. So how do we define that?

The last one is market category. Am I a database or a business intelligence tool? Am I email or am I chat?

Once you break it up like that and you lean back and look at it, the first thing you'll notice is each of the component pieces actually has a relationship to the others.

The positioning statement gives you no clues about this, but it should.

The value my product can deliver for customers that no other product can is completely dependent on my differentiated capabilities. I have stuff in my product that it does that no one else does, that unlocks that value. So I can't figure out differentiated value without figuring out these distinct capabilities.

But my distinct or differentiated capabilities are only distinct or differentiated if I compare them to a competitor. So I can't figure out what's unique about my stuff until I know who a customer is comparing me to.

So those three things are tied together. I can't figure out one without knowing the other.

Then think about best fit customers. What's my definition of a best fit customer? That's a customer that really, really cares a lot about the value that they can only get from us.

So I can't figure out best fit customers until I understand what my differentiated value is. Those two things are related.

Then market category is the last thing. Market category is the context I position my product in such that this differentiated value kind of makes sense to these best fit customers.

We start at something, we work our way around, we get candidate positioning, we take it out to the market, we see if it works. If it works, great, we run with it. If it doesn't, we go back to the drawing board and we do it again.

I sat there for years doing that, and it was terrible, because it's great if your first guess is correct. Then you look like a star. CEO hires me to go fix positioning. I come in as a VP of marketing, I get this positioning, we take it to the market, we test it. If it works, I'm a hero. Everybody's like, “Best thing we ever did was hire that April. She came in here and fixed that thing and everything's great.”

But if I get it wrong on the first try, now I gotta go back to the CEO and say, “Oh yeah, remember that thing? Well, the first test failed, so now I need two more months to go run another test with new positioning, which also might fail.” It's a good way to get fired.

Eventually I had an epiphany about this. I got really into Clayton Christensen and thinking about jobs to be done and jobs theory, and how that intersected with this.

Where I landed was we needed to start with competitive alternatives. If we do not start with competitive alternatives, what we end up with is positioning that sounds very good in the office, but it doesn't work when we take it out to the market, because our positioning is insufficiently differentiated from the other things that a customer could do out in the market.

So my process starts with competitive alternatives.

If you didn't exist, what would a customer do? That's our stake in the ground. This is what I have to position against or what I have to beat in order to win a deal.

I start there. Then I can say, okay, what have we got that they don't have? Here are my differentiated capabilities, and I can make a big list of those. There's probably all kinds of things. Write them all down on the board.

Then, for every one, what I'm trying to get at next is differentiated value.

I go down the list of capabilities and for every one I'm asking myself, “So what? I got a whizzbang AI thing. So what? Why does the customer care? What's the value that that feature enables for a customer's business?”

While I'm going down that list of capabilities and translating to value, I don't want to end up with 9,000 points of value. I want one, two, maximum three value themes or value buckets.

What we want at the end of this step is to be able to say: look, customers should pick us because we are the only solution on the market that can deliver this value plus this value, and the features are how we get that done.

Once we've got that, then we can say, okay, we're the only ones that can deliver these points of value, but let's be real here, not every customer cares about those things.

So what are the characteristics of a target account that make them really care a lot about the value that they're only gonna get from us? This is our bottoms-up way of getting at an ICP.

Once I have that, then it's like, okay, I got this value, I'm trying to communicate it to these folks. What is the best market category to position the product in?

If we are doing a B2C thing, like we sell to a business and that business then sells our thing on to a consumer, typically we have two positioning challenges. We have the positioning for the business. Why should the business sign on with us? Why should the business pick us versus other things they could do or other partners they could work with or other choices they might have?

But if our success depends on ultimate consumer adoption, then either we are out there marketing to the consumer, trying to get the consumer to adopt this thing, or the business that we've just sold to has that responsibility to then try to get consumers to adopt the thing.

So we will have this consumer positioning, which is often very different, because the consumer is making a different comparison. There are different competitors in the minds of the consumer, and for the consumer there are different points of value.

When we think about selling something to a business, generally we only have two real value pillars. We're either helping you make money or we're helping you save money, and that's it. The business doesn't really care about anything else.

Whereas if I'm selling to a consumer, consumers care about all kinds of stuff. They care about getting a date. They care about looking cool. Sometimes that value we can kind of make up, and that's really different from B2B.

Chris Madden:
If you're a marketer, how much thought have you put into positioning?

Let's say you're a smaller company where roles overlap and everyone wears multiple hats. Someone's working on positioning, right? Do they know what they're doing, and is it sufficient?

April Dunford:
Often what we see is that positioning is happening, but it's happening accidentally. Someone wrote a sales deck sometime, somebody wrote a tagline, somebody wrote a value proposition. It all kind of got bolted together, and that's what we're running with.

I think it's really important to have a cross-functional team working on this so that we get the best possible answer that takes advantage of everything that everybody understands about the customer, their process, and the market.

Chris Madden:
How does this apply to digital health companies, I wondered.

Many of them have B2B sales teams to create partnerships. For one, they have to get employers on board with a new way to improve patient health. Then there's the insurance networks, which also need to be convinced. They're the ones that decide which treatments are covered.

In terms of B2C, digital health enterprises need to get people that work at those companies, or are covered by those insurance plans, to activate and actually use the benefit that is offered to them.

There are a few things that a company can consider to properly position for the consumer.

April Dunford:
If I have a thing that I'm selling straight to a consumer, there's no B2B2C, it's just B2C, straight to consumer. I think you can use a similar process to get to your positioning, although I will caveat that my process is not designed for consumers.

The piece that you really need to think about is the value.

Chris Madden:
In the health field, direct choices by consumers have extremely high stakes.

Let's say you have cancer and you must make a decision whether to use a virtual clinic or to do exactly what your primary care physician tells you.

Chapin Herman:
There's a number of products and companies that I'm excited about.

One is a company called Echo Health. It's a digital stethoscope business. As the world digitized, the most commonly used device in medicine remained analog. They digitized it, and now they have, on the way to, millions of recordings. They use those recordings in their AI to detect cardiac dysrhythmia, heart murmurs, and heart disease two to three times better than a human can, which is remarkable.

We're also working with a company called Fatty 15, which is an incredible supplement. It's an essential fatty acid, the first one discovered on the way to 90 years. It has awesome leadership in Stephanie Van Watson and Eric Van Watson.

There is an incredible story of how they discovered it, studying dolphins on two different parts of the country for decades and recognizing aging and disease patterns in those dolphins, and ultimately distilling it down to different levels of C15 in those dolphins.

They were able to isolate that as a supplement and sell it as Fatty 15. I think it's one of those products that's right for everybody. I don't think that there's anybody that can't and wouldn't benefit from taking it. It has tremendous impact on overall health and wellbeing.

And then the last one is a company called Mild Detox. It's modern physical therapy. It's not just reactive therapy once you get hurt, but it's proactive. It's a combination of both massage, traditional physical therapy, and chiropractics.

Incredible experience. They're based in Canada, have a sort of cult-like following, and we've been helping them to grow the business and the brand here in the US market. I can't speak highly enough of the experience. I went there for myself and signed up for a 10-pack immediately thereafter.

Chris Madden:
The enthusiasm for those new health products really does illustrate how right Chapin is. Consumers are more involved. Some are more obsessed with their health than ever before, especially with products and services that they can buy to improve it.

So if you want their attention, you have to learn to stand out.

And if you want people's trust, you have to be honest and authentic with them, because the business of health is about personal relationships.

Branding sets the stage, but how do you actually earn attention?

The next episode, episode three, digs into people focused sales and marketing, exploring how influencers, enterprises, and earned media shape credibility in healthcare. It's where human trust creates momentum within markets and audiences.

Chris Madden:  

Welcome to Marketing Digital Health. I’m your host, Chris Madden. On this podcast, we’re exploring why marketing digital health matters. Why does it matter? It matters because healthcare in the United States is largely broken, and innovation that increases access, builds trust, and improves people’s lives is a big part of the solution.

We’ve interviewed over 30 innovative leaders who are experts in their fields and who are passionate about improving healthcare for all. I’m excited for you to learn from their perspectives and to leave with takeaways you can use. This is the digital age of healthcare. Patients have never been more informed because of the amount of information available online.

If you’re under the weather, it can be as simple as Googling your symptoms, or if it is more serious, it can be as complex as finding the right cancer doctor. When someone’s health or life is at stake, companies cannot afford to lose your trust. This series is an attempt to sketch a comprehensive overview of how digital health companies are growing today, with topics ranging from positioning to content, brand to paid media, lifecycle marketing to compliance, and most everything in between.

Thanks for joining us. We are excited you are here and excited to share what we are learning about Marketing Digital Health.

For this first episode, our expert guests will give a general overview. Let’s get started with Dr. Aabed Meer, who brings a rare blend of clinical training and hands-on operating experience to healthcare investing. A physician by background, he has spent the last 15 years backing and building companies across the healthcare landscape. Throughout his career, Dr. Meer has rolled up his sleeves alongside founders and management teams, helping shape strategy, hire leadership, navigate complex payer dynamics, and scale operations. He is also known for his ability to spot emerging themes early and back companies with a real mission.

Dr. Aabed Meer:

I see a natural synergy between being a physician and investing in building these companies. It is incredible to be able to see what is happening in healthcare on the front lines, and that allows you to really understand the issues and problems we are facing and then seek solutions that address those issues.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be doing what I am doing. I have had the good fortune of working with a number of incredibly talented entrepreneurs, founders, and management teams, and ultimately this is about improving healthcare, improving care for everyone in this country.

Healthcare is something that everyone deals with, regardless of who they are or where they come from, and there is a tremendous opportunity to improve how we deliver healthcare. Healthcare today is evolving at the fastest pace I have seen it evolve. Part of that is by necessity, and part of it is driven by technological advances that are not just within healthcare, but outside healthcare as well. The way we are going to deliver healthcare and practice medicine 20 years from now is going to be very different from the way we deliver healthcare and practice medicine today.

As a physician and an investor, I see firsthand where clinical needs and technological advances align, as well as where they do not. The best innovations solve real pain points for patients, providers, and all the other healthcare stakeholders. Truly impactful innovations should enhance access to care, enhance affordability, and improve patient outcomes, and you have to do that without adding complexity for providers.

Many healthcare solutions fail when they do not consider what real-world clinical workflows look like. Ultimately, you want technology to empower clinicians and not burden them. Healthcare is often slow to change because physicians are overloaded, the system is overloaded, and adoption only happens when new solutions make care delivery simpler instead of more complicated.

Chris Madden:

That's a sentiment you'll hear throughout this podcast.

Our guests are emotionally invested in what they do. They care deeply, which we believe leads to better outcomes for people's health.

Dr. Aabed Meer:

Healthcare is something that everyone. Deals with, regardless of who they are or where they come from, and there's a tremendous opportunity to improve how we deliver healthcare.

Healthcare today is evolving at the fastest pace. I've seen it evolve. Part of that is by necessity. Okay. And part of it is driven by the technological advances that are not just within healthcare, but outside of healthcare as well. And the way we're going to deliver healthcare and practice medicine 20 years from now is going to be very different from the way we deliver healthcare and practice medicine today.

As a physician and an investor, I see firsthand where clinical needs and technological advancements align as well as where they don't. The best innovations solve real pain points for patients, providers, as well as all the other healthcare stakeholders. And ultimately, the truly impactful innovations should enhance access to care, enhance affordability, improve patient outcomes.

And you have to do that without adding complexity for providers. Many of the healthcare solutions that we're talking about can fail when they don't consider what real world clinical workflows look like. Ultimately, you want technology to empower clinicians and not burden them. And healthcare is often slow to change because physicians are overloaded, the system is overloaded, and adoption only happens when new solutions make care delivery simpler as opposed to more complicated

Chris Madden:

Aabed names, a basic truth that can be missed. A new healthcare solution isn't going to get traction if clinics don't have time to deal with it. Another guest, Chris Turitzin, is going to tell us about the three growth models that can be used in health marketing. And those models are based on regulations which determine how healthcare is paid for in the us.

Christian is a growth advisor and the founder of Single Aim known for bringing rigorous product and marketing discipline to the world of digital health. After years of leadership at Meta and digital health companies, he now advises companies like Bicycle Health, Ours Privacy, and other healthcare leaders on how to architect scalable growth systems tailored to diverse business models from DSE to payer aligned care.

Chris Turitzin:

And to be clear, when I say direct to consumer, I am not saying. Cash day. 'cause that is often a misinterpretation. Direct consumer is just applying to the literal meaning of direct consumer. It is marketing direct to consumers. So these would be companies that essentially advertise online. Any of these, like weight loss companies or women's health companies or men's health companies, or the things that you would see on a TV ad, or the things you see when you search on Google, or you would see on Instagram or TikTok.

A lot of mental health companies too, if you talk to those companies, probably like 90 ish percent of their incoming patients are from some direct to consumer channel. 

Chris Madden:

Chris says the second category is B2B2C. Meaning people are eligible if they work for a company or have a health insurance plan partnered with that digital health company. Chris likes to call these covered populations. Here's his explanation. 

Chris Turitzin:

These are companies where you have to unlock a population before you can market to them. So usually what that means is an employer or a health plan starts paying for your thing. So these kinds of companies offer like treatment experiences that are slightly abnormal.

So they don't sit into either a cash pay basis or into a, uh, insurance pay basis, like traditional insurance, like they have a new model. Companies like Omada Health, Virta Health, a lot of these employer based mental health companies like Lyra Health and Spring Health. Advantages of offering slightly less traditional services, actually big advantages in the sense that you can be more flexible in the actual treatments.

But you need to basically get payment permission from an employer or health plan, and then you need to get marketing permission from that employer health plan.

Chris Madden:

Chris says the third category is the one that best resembles traditional healthcare and that it's based on referrals.

Chris Turitzin:

Interestingly, I think it's the one that people think about the least in the digital health world, and that's basically a referral based, um, business.

If you talk to most doctors, like most of their patients are coming from referrals just like traditional, like you know, some ophthalmologist down the street or urologists down the street. They have like a local network of physicians that refer into them, and that's kind of how healthcare works. And it is also possible on a more of a scaled basis.

I would also say though, building a company like that is very different than building a direct consumer company, and I think many organizations try to do everything and just don't succeed.

Chris Madden:

We will be hearing a lot more about the growth models in health marketing. Later on in this series. We'll also gain perspectives from Joanna Strober, who's the CEO and founder of MIDI Health, a virtual care platform for women navigating midlife, hormonal changes and other underserved health journeys. A serial entrepreneur and investor turned founder.

Joanna has built MIDI to address the clinical, emotional and structural gaps in women's health, expanding care for millions, often through what she calls the side door of healthcare. MIDI was named a top 100 most influential company in 2025 by Time Magazine. She emphasizes the importance of differentiation and positioning, or as she says, determining what your business stands for right from the start.

Joanna Strober:

It comes down to figuring out what do you stand for, and then making sure that the marketing that you're doing reflects what it is that you stand for. And I think that's true for any company, but even more so in digital health, if you stand for weight loss, you're gonna disappear, right? Because there's gonna be a thousand other weight loss companies out there.

That are trying to do the same thing as you. So what bigger thing do you stand for? What is your story that you believe in, that you are doing? And then how are you going to put that into a story that's gonna be resonant to your end users? And what? So really, what is your brand promise? And then how do you execute that throughout everything that you're doing?

There's lots of tactics you can use, and I think those tactics are obviously really important, but my suggestion is really nail the value prop first.

Chris Madden:

We've reached a point that doing the right thing for a traditionally underserved patient population is also profitable. This is partially due to technology that increases access to information and also increases access to care.

Joanna points to women having been purposefully forgotten about or ignored in medicine, for example. It wasn't until 1972 that an unmarried woman could be prescribed birth control in the United States. Fast forward to today, and women can buy birth control online, delivered right to their door. They can also do online research on side effects and communicate with doctors about that through a digital platform.

Clearly, things have come a long way, something which has been partly driven by the high proportion of money spent on health by women. 

Joanna Strober:

Women weren't even included in research studies. Most of my lifetime, not until 1992, the people who are making the research decisions and making the funding decisions have historically been men, and so they've been more interested in researching and funding things that are oriented toward their problems.

What has happened more recently is that there are women in places of power, in venture capital funds in research organizations who are saying, actually. There's a pretty big market of taking care of women health. This is not just a nonprofit exercise. Women spend much more money on health than men do.

Women make most of the healthcare decisions for their families, and women spend money to take care of themselves. The economic argument for investing in women's health is actually very strong. And so once you are able to make that argument, and there's people who have capital, who can invest in that.

That's really when things change. I've never imagined how fortunate I would be to get to have a company that's impacting so many women's lives. We provide care, we also provide listening, and we provide empathy, and all those things are really important, and they're not things that are found very much in our healthcare system because there's just not enough time.

We provide time to our providers. To have these in depth conversations with women, to understand their health issues and challenges. And then we provide the expertise to fix those health issues. And honestly, people come for a whole variety of reasons, but really what they're coming for is they don't feel right and they want someone to help them to figure out what are their challenges and how can they be fixed.

And that's what we do. And we have. Expert creating protocols for us on all the different issues that women are experiencing to make sure that you as a woman get access to this empathy, someone who cares about you and someone who knows the science and will give you all of your options. It's not my job ever to say, you must take X medication.

I don't make money because you choose a patch, a hormone patch, or a cream or something else. My job is to give you education and to give you whatever prescriptions are appropriate for you or supplements that are appropriate for you to enable you to feel great. And so to me, I mean, literally I get stopped pretty much on a daily basis by someone in our neighborhood who is saying, thank you for midi.

Thank you for helping me to sleep. Thank you for helping my anxiety or my brain fog. I'm told by men all the time, actually, thank you for saving my marriage. I get that a lot. Men pop up on my LinkedIn all the time saying, you really did save my marriage. I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. And this is, you know, this is magic.

Thank you. So it's both men and women that were benefiting, even though we're taking care of the women and you know, when people are provided the right medications, they can thrive and they can feel great and they don't have to suffer. And that's really rewarding for us that we're able to do that. 

Chris Madden:

 Joanna says, the getting to know your customers is crucial.

She highlights that your business should repeatedly ask, what are my patients searching for? And with that knowledge, you can guide them towards possible treatments.

Joanna Strober:

What we've realized is there's certain things that people are searching for online. They're searching to lose weight, they're searching perhaps for brain fog.

But they might not be actually searching for sexual wellness or bone strength or cancer prevention, but they still need those things. And so what we have learned is that there's our front doors, the reasons why women will come to us, what are they searching for? But then in the visit we can say to them, have you thought about having a DEXA scan because you are skinny.

And you're 55 and you have a history of osteoporosis. Why don't we get you a DEXA scan and see whether there's things we could do for your bones. Women might not be searching online for this, but that doesn't mean they don't need it.

Chris Madden:

Joanna says that the problems or issues that patients search for specifically bring them in the door.

Once they're in the door. The care often expands to other areas of the woman's health, ultimately caring for the whole person as one integrated system. 

Joanna Strober:

And there's a lot of different benefits they get from staying with us that they don't necessarily know they're searching for. So honestly, sexual health is a big one like that.

We thought that sexual health would be a really big opportunity for us, and we were running all these ads, and I loved our ads, right? We talked about the magician, which we thought was so clever, and no one came. They just didn't click on them. But in a visit after I've taken care of your sleep. If the provider says, are you also experiencing vaginal dryness?

Would you like to talk about the fact that sex has become less enjoyable for you? Maybe it's become painful for you. Would you like to talk about that? They lighten up and they say, yes, I would like to talk about that too. So what we've learned is there's certain things that people search for. We provide that, but then we have lots of side doors.

Different reasons why women are getting care, and our job is to provide all of those.

Chris Madden:

Artificial intelligence is exerting a huge influence on our society, and that very much includes the healthcare space. So we ask. Every guest about ai, Kelly Arduini Iday is the Director of Ventures and Innovation at Northwestern Medicine, where she leads system-wide efforts to find, evaluate, pilot, and prove the value of emerging technologies in clinical and operational settings.

From AI tools to drones and robots, Kelly's team plays a critical role in shaping how a major hospital system embraces innovation while maintaining patient safety, clinical alignment, and scalability. She is on the front lines of AI in hospital systems and speaks about one of the many ways it's making things better.

Kali Arduini Ihde:

The big buzz right now in healthcare and the one that a lot of organizations are either already using or exploring is ambient documentation. So the ability to leverage AI to listen to the conversation between a physician and their patient during a visit and start generating the visit documentation in real time.

And so this certainly helps physicians stay focused on engaging with their patients while meeting with them. So lots of great eye contact versus hands on keyboard versus really focusing on getting what they need into the computer system so that the follow up can be done quickly. But it also takes a lot of the administrative burden off of our physicians.

So we've seen anywhere from. Five to 20 hours less time spent documenting for some of our physician users, those who really commit to these tools. We're also seeing improvements in patient satisfaction, better survey outcomes, specifically calling out the direct engagement, the eye contact and things like that as they're meeting with their physicians.

So I would say that's one that we've been using for over a year now, and just seeing incredible results with both from an experience perspective, but also it's freeing up physicians' time. And more often than not, our physicians are giving that time back to their patients.

Chris Madden:

 That certainly sounds like a win-win win With Clear ROI. Another win is the ability to go online and research your health concerns or to discover new treatments through advertisements that are really groundbreaking when you consider how our parents used to do those things. Joanna shares how she has come around to supplements and peptides, for example, and how her interest has increased as she learns about the latest research.

Joanna Strober:

I grew up with a doctor father who didn't actually believe very much in medications. He was. Not a huge fan of supplements, for example. He didn't think you needed them. He was very worried about things like cholesterol and exercise and was very fundamentally into what you eat. And exercise, I would say is, was very important to him.

He is actually come around a bit on supplements. It's interesting, I do the supplement work now and I'm actually starting to buy into supplements in a way that I didn't before. And I think that research that's happening on them is pretty interesting. So I've become. Very interested in whether it's taking fiber or I've started taking a cortisol manager at night, which is a combination of L-theanine, magnesium and ashwagandha.

I think I sleep better, so it's exciting to me the different research that's getting done on supplements and I'm starting to become a fan. I would say there's just emerging research on peptides, like there's a lot of emerging research that I think is gonna help us to live. Healthier, and I enjoy following all that.

But fundamentally, what is the most important thing that I do? I try to exercise. I try to lift weights. I try to eat healthy. Those are the basics, and I think those are still the things that will matter most.

Chris Madden:

I was really grateful to Joanna for sharing such a personal point of view. I asked each guest how working in digital health has impacted their personal health. Sometimes health marketing can literally save someone's life. Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, a web development and website optimization agency.

Andy is also an author and speaker known for distilling complex SEO and content strategy concepts into practical actionable tactics As a leader at the intersection of content and technology. Andy's insights are especially relevant as AI transforms how we think about visibility and value in marketing.

While Andy mostly talks to us about marketing strategy and organic content in our series here, he recalls how a piece of marketing collateral led to a life-changing decision about his health.

Andy Crestodina:

Yeah, so me as little boy got a heart murmur. Doctor says, keep an eye on it. Me as middle-aged man, go to the cardiologist.

He says, Ooh, you gotta get that fixed bad valve. You need a new valve. Literally like your valve. you, you're, this is terminal. You've got aortic stenosis, you've got a bicuspid aortic valve. You need surgery, but you're kind of healthy. You know, maybe you don't need like an artificial valve. That would mean you need blood thinners.

Why don't you do this Ross procedure? We're gonna move your pulmonic valve into the aortic position. It's gonna be great. Like, wait, what? That sounds crazy. Musical heart valves timeout. No, no. Told my parents, they were like, heck no. They looked online and said that other cardiologists themselves, don't get this, don't do that.

That's a bad idea, Andy. But then the referring doctor shared with me a video. This is a true story and it changed my life, and it's a, maybe partly a marketing case study, but it's a, there's a lesson here It, I click this link. I'm on YouTube and I'm watching a video of this, this older gentleman, Dr. Paul Stelzer, talking about his obsession with aortic valves.

He basically says. The focus of my career and my life is this valve. This is all I do. The best way to fix it is to get your other valve in that position. It's called the Ross procedure, and it has all these advantages. You don't need blood thinners for the rest of your life. Don't get a mechanical valve.

It doesn't need to be replaced. It's your own tissue. The pulmonic valve. Yeah, you get a cadaver valve there. That's a lower pressure system. It's not as big a deal. You need your own valve in the aortic spot. And he, he is just this normal guy. I mean, he just comes across like, so legit. he's scrubbing in.

You know they're talking to a patient who's like, yeah, no side effects. Totally healthy running marathons. Like I showed that to my parents and they were like, book it. We're going, where is it? New York. Set it up. That video. Converted, if it's a, we're using GA4 It's a key event, but it turned me into a patient and customer of Dr. Stelzer. There was no way to change a mind as fast or as completely as hearing the doctor themselves tell me through a screen that his obsession and focus of his career on life is fixing this valve. He's done it 400 times, so chill. I'm like, fine. Let's go man.

Chris Madden:

For Andy, this personal health experience led to a conviction that if a health system or a care provider is doing good work, it's crucial for them to spread the word through their marketing so that patients are aware of them so that they can get the best possible outcomes.

Andy Crestodina:

If you are in a system that does good work and you are in the healthcare vertical, you're working with docs that are literally saving lives, not every provider, or just improving people's health outcomes. Improving people's lifestyles, helping people get back on their feet or do better preventative care.

Whatever it is, not every company is good. If you believe in what you're doing, you should feel urgency to market these things, to promote them, to help people make the right choice, to guide people toward you as a good option. I, I think it's important. This is not trivial work. This is important work. To help guide people away from shady providers and toward the decent ethical brands that care marketing for healthcare matters.

It matters a lot because you can really make a difference in someone's life. I'm a great example of that. I would've gotten a artificial valve and I would've taken blood thinners this morning. Marketing saved me from that. That video saved me from that. I wouldn't have gone. To New York and had Dr. Stelzer fix my heart, had I not been exposed to, sure, it's a piece of marketing, but I didn't think of it as such. My parents didn't think of it as such, and it made a difference in my life.

Chris Madden:

That's the ideal of effective healthcare marketing. It's what happens when someone, in this case, Andy, is exposed to an authentic testimony that is backed up by his doctor's dedication and skill.

If Dr. Stelzer hadn't done the video, surely fewer potential patients would be aware of him. Good providers like Dr. Stelzer putting real messages out via marketing are making our population healthier. Stay tuned for more episodes in which we're going to share specifics on how leading companies are crafting and sharing those messages.

In episode two, we focus on branding and positioning to lay the foundation for all that follows.