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Bonus Episode 4

Top Strategies for Healthcare Marketing

Illustration of Katey Watkins, Group Director, Health at Lever Interactive

About This Episode

June 28, 2023

We unpack the dynamic world of healthcare marketing and offer top strategies for healthcare marketing campaigns that drive brand recognition.

Katey Watkins | Group Director, Health, Lever Interactive

Carly Foy | Director of Sales, North America, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

A lot of times I think everybody wants to focus on the bottom of the funnel. They want patients to walk through the door, they want a new sale. But you can’t always focus there. If you’re not bringing more people in and you’re not looking at your brand awareness, your broader reach channels, your bucket is going to continue to get smaller because somebody else is going to figure it out. And they’re going to be there. First, take a small part of your budget, test something new, see how it works, try it, if that doesn’t work, use something else, maybe pull it out of some of your ROI to figure out what’s going to bring in and what’s really going to have an effect that aligns with your ultimate goals at the end of the day.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:33)

But then you think about the social landscape combine all of these different touchpoints that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.

Sneha (00:00:54)

The first thing you do when you’re not feeling too well is to type out your symptoms and do a search about it on the internet. This is obviously not the best thing to do but you’re not the only one about 5% of all searches online are health-related. If you look at the trend, healthcare digital advertising spend overtook healthcare TV ad spend for the first time in 2021. And healthcare digital ad spend in the US is projected to increase by 10% this year. Experts expect this trend will continue in the coming years as well. Talking about experts we have two people with a ton of experience. Joining us today. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I’m Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. Today we’re diving into the world of healthcare or medical marketing and joining us we have Kate Watkins from Lever Interactive and StackAdapt. Very Own director of sales. Carly Foy. Firstly, thank you so much for joining us. And before we jump into more intense questions, Kate, let’s start with you. Could you please run a quick round of introduction telling us about your professional background, your area of expertise, and also introduce Lever to the listener?

Katey (00:02:09)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. My name is Katey Watkins. I am the Group Director at Lever Interactive emphasize with an emphasis in healthcare. I’ve been in the healthcare marketing space for about 15 years, started off working in an academic medical center providing the health system I had there for the past 10 years, I have been working at an agency doing omni-channel strategy with the emphasis on Medicare and under 65 health insurance. And then the past two years I’ve been working at lever. So a little bit about lever we’re full service marketing agency specializing in digital experiences and offering comprehensive services across all channels. We’ve been around for about 17 years and have a strong reputation for service their clients and really personalized way back in 2016, we acquired coming of age and really expanded our capabilities to focus on that aging audience, as well as bringing some offline channels. So this has made us a very versatile agency that allows us to meet our diverse marketing needs of our clients, and especially those in the healthcare space.

Sneha (00:03:08)

Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Over to you, Carly.

Carly (00:03:12)

So yeah, Carly Foy, just in case you missed it, but I’m here the director of sales at StackAdapt. Previously, I have worked exclusively in the programmatic space first at a Holdco agency and then moved over to a smaller trading desk where I left the team. I specifically worked actually with healthcare insurance in the US, even though I’m based in Canada, and then I made the move over to StackAdapt. And I’ve been here for about five years working on clients such as Katy, I’ve known her for quite some time now specializing in healthcare, both B2C and B2B as well.

Sneha (00:03:43)

Wow, that’s a lot of experience that both of you bring to the table. And it’s great that you could give us your time excited to get this conversation started. So my first question to you is about defining healthcare marketing. So how would you define it and what does not come under, you know, health care or medical marketing, but does not consist of it? And what would you say are some of the rules and regulations that are governing this?

Katey (00:04:10)

Yeah, so for me and how I look at healthcare marketing, there’s really three different avenues. So you have your provider health system, and then you’ve got your insurance side, but on the third side, you also have your pharmaceutical and your medical devices, which is where a lot of your B2B, but you still have some B2C aspect within there. So I think most of the time people really focus on the provider and the health insurance and you know, the unique challenges of that but it really to me includes all three of those things. So I think also, what is not health care marketing are your supplements, your things that are told is your health, your beauty, your wellness, that is not if it is an impulse buy, it’s not really healthcare, marketing, healthcare marketing. It is a long game. You never know when someone is going to need the services and you need to be President throughout, if you’re waiting until they need it, you’re probably too late to the ballgame. So from the legal side, each one of the different areas, it has different governing bodies. So I would say everything under health care, we’re all familiar with PII, health care as in the layer of pH I in brings upon HIPAA and all the requirements. So I would say definitely one thing is just you have to be careful, you’re very your list are important, but they have to be stored correctly as an agency, or you need to be looking for high trust and just making sure that you’re meeting all of this HIPAA requirements, because even from the agency side, a mistake on your end can affect the client. So they can get penalized fines, all kinds of stuff. So you really want to make sure that you’re really following the rules and laws that govern that. But at the same time, all of the clients read roles differently. And this was very surprising to me, when I started, you have one set of rules in four different companies or their legal teams are going to take different interpretations, some are more conservative, some are more loose. So you really have to lean in and know your clients, the ultimate expert, understand the box, understand your limitations, but trust and go with what their legal team says. So even from a creative review standpoint, that’s on each individual’s legal team, what they’re comfortable saying against the laws, because they are ultimately the experts at the end of the day. High trust is a big thing you’ll hear a lot talk about that allows insurance agencies health systems to actually share their first party data with you which we know the future of the cookieless world and third party scoping going away the really the importance of this first party data. So knowing the high trust, and honestly being willing to go through that process, it is a very lengthy process to get high trust certified. But it does give an extra where it’s much easier to get the clients to get those less so you can really, you know, have the best marketing there and most targeted disclaimers, you have to think about your disclaimers, it does no good to do a radio spot, if 27 seconds of a 32nd spot are disclaimers. So understanding what’s required even within the channels that you’re picking, and what’s doable and not doable. So there are different types of legal boards. So the FDA is where your pharmaceutical medical device is really set. You have your State Department of insurances and CMS, the Federal is really for basically just your insurance. And then for your providers, it is all different types of laws, their state government, their state boards, federal, everything that applies in there, I will say on the provider side, the most the legal concerns, stop providers for marketing. They don’t want to deal with it, they don’t understand it. So it stops them. But ultimately, those that choose to go into it really do see success, which is why a lot of times you’ll notice one physician or one health system when they market a ton. It’s because they’ve seen the success with it. And they were willing to figure out what the laws around it were.

Carly (00:07:52)

Katey, I think you bring up an interesting point as well. I remember all the time opening up a magazine and seeing a four page ad for a new medication and two to two and a half pages were just disclaimer, all the information that they had to share. So it does present quite an interesting challenge, especially when it comes to approaching digital marketing as a whole. So I think a lot of the times too, and we talk healthcare with clients, specifically, we’re looking for more custom HTML five units that we can use where we actually do have that scrolling capability. So they’re able to see all the fine print. Is it 100% readable? I would hope so. But at the same time at least we have that disclaimer in place to follow the compliance that is set out by the client. I think Additionally, you mentioned targeting. That’s a big one here. Because specifically, like when we talk about targeting, not everybody has access to first party targeting. So I think as we continue to see the cookieless future, we’re gonna have to go into contextual, which is so old school to think of because that was like the big thing 10 years ago. So are you seeing a lot of your advertisers also geared towards contextual when it comes to targeting?

Katey (00:09:03)

Yeah, and I really think that’s kind of going to be where we see the future. Because I think one of the things and I mentioned this kind of briefly is you don’t know when somebody’s going to need it, you never know when somebody’s going to have a diagnosis. And also, unlike other products, we’re not looking for a female, aged 20 to 25, that’s going to buy a teeth whitening or something along those lines, right? Every single person is a potential patient. And when you’re talking about healthcare marketing yesterday about customers, but at the end of the day, most of the time these people are patient. So it’s everybody and anybody. So it’s not your normal demographic income. It’s a lot more of where people are at this phase of their life or what has happened. And I think that’s where you know, the StackAdapt platform and your targeting really helps with that and contextual is going to come into play. If your product is some type of cancer. Well, you’ve got to find where are those people? Where are they because they’re not just on your normal website. So really figuring out how to target that audience based on their unique condition, diabetes is going to be somewhere completely different than cancer. But yet at the same time, if your health system, those are all patients that you’re trying to reach out to. So yeah, I really think contextual is coming back. And I think a lot of the things that we used to see, old school is coming back, I think you’re gonna see patient testimonials, people are wanting more humanized content, they want to feel they have all of this information. And everything is so overwhelming, that seeing someone else talk about going through a similar experience. That is key, you know, within a lot of medical conditions, people are looking for the others message boards, Facebook groups, social, it is so important to know that they’re not alone. And so those are the areas where the people are, and that’s are going to be how you have to reach them, you know, yes, they’re going to be doing Google searches. And that’s always going to be there. And SEO is unbelievably important as people are trying to educate themselves. But you’ve also got to find where they’re spending the time and looking.

Carly (00:11:03)

I think that’s also an interesting point. To talk about targeting too, you have to toe the line, because it is sometimes a sensitive moment in a person’s life that you don’t want to be outright, saying, Hey, we heard that you have this diagnosis, go to our product, or go to our health center. So I think that’s absolutely key when you are thinking about your creative strategy as well, like that line of empathy, because people don’t want to be alone, inherently, we are very social creatures. Personally, I’m an introvert, but you know, I do like to talk. So it’s always key to have that support system. And a lot of the time too, you’re gonna find people maybe not having that support system at home. So it’s really interesting that you brought up that whole idea of the community and Facebook, maybe even Reddit, for example, and talking to other people who are experiencing this because it can be pretty isolating. So I love that approach that you mentioned from a creative strategy leaning towards empathy, because I think that’s absolutely key as a healthcare marketer.

Katey (00:11:57)

And I think empathy is great, but also taking it to the next level, what are these people, it’s overwhelming, it is a language, they don’t understand. Doctors and physicians have spent years in school, and I am just an average person trying to understand they’re looking for a way to fill in control, because right now they are out of control. How can you empower them? Because that’s what a lot of time they’re looking for is how can they have some control and some say and what is happening to them. So it’s giving them those tools and those resources, and, you know, building them up, education is huge. And that’s something that honestly, in the past few years has changed. COVID force, health insurance and banking to finally come up to speed with everything else. Those are the two industries lagging behind, they are now going okay, we have to figure out how to be online how to be digital. And education is one of the biggest things. Another change that we’re seeing as healthcare is becoming politics, which is a very different space. It’s never been brought together, people have their own ideas, they have their own opinions. And they’re looking for doctors and physicians that match up to that, that believe and agree on their approaches. So it’s becoming so much more that you’ve got to have information out there, people have to learn if you are hiding and being like, I don’t want to offend, I don’t want to do this, I’m not going to have an online presence, you’re just going to be left behind, it’s time to roll with the changes. You have to do the way things worked five years ago is not how it’s gonna keep going. And with that, you’ve got to be willing to test you can’t just sit there and focus. You know, a lot of times I think everybody wants to focus on the bottom of the funnel, they want to do patients walk through the door, they want a new sale they want. But you can’t always focus there, if you’re not bringing more people in and you’re not looking at your brand awareness, your broader reach channels, your bucket is going to continue to get smaller because somebody else is going to figure it out. And they’re going to be there first. So if you don’t have a huge but take a small part of your budget, test something new, see how it works, try it if that doesn’t work, use something else, maybe pull it out of some of your ROI, to figure out what’s going to bring in and what’s really going to have an effect that aligns with your ultimate goals at the end of the day.

Sneha (00:14:13)

I was saving this question for later. But I think in context of what you just mentioned, it makes sense to bring it up now. This is about healthcare campaigns targeting those who might be experiencing an emotionally difficult time in their lives. How do you keep this in mind and still be empathetic with your campaigns while hyper-personalizing and targeting these individuals? Can you share some practical tips on campaign tactics or campaign creatives?

Katey (00:14:43)

Yeah, I think you’ve got to be there before. You know it’s there is a major brand awareness brand portion. When somebody gets in that emotional spot if they’ve never heard of you, they’re a lot more critical. It’s going to you’ve got a lot bigger hill to climb. So branding being the are being persistent. So someone knows who you are. But then yeah, it’s just how do you help them feel in control? Are there tools you can give them? Or is there anything? You know, a lot of times healthcare marketing is really Legion-focused, because there’s so many people involved in that final decision, right? You’re not making a decision about talking to your doctor, friends and family are involved or on the health insurance side, there is usually brokers, friends and families from the medical device, I would say is a one that is the most straightforward and the most similar. But there’s so many people within that. So most of the time you’re looking at getting a lead, what is it that you’re going to use to get that lead? What is that payoff? How is that going to help the person? Because, yes, we want an email address. So we now have first party data that you can target. But why is somebody going to give that and how does that help them where they are right now. So I think really just thinking that through and fully understanding the best you can have what your patient is going through, if you are a health provider, putting this together, talk to your patients, you will be shocked that the cancer patient, this is their their entire life has completely changed. And they are now they are forever and always be a cancer patient. And that is what they’re going through a heart patient is going to react completely differently. A lot of times heart patients think, Oh, I could have done something there’s, they kind of want to almost forget it happen if or how they can get back to their past life. Well, that’s two very different approaches. So you’re gonna have to think that through. So it’s just, I love data, any data you can get. So if you can meet with patients and figure out and set up focus groups, and really hone in on what matters to them, that’s going to where your campaign is going to be the most successful.

Carly (00:16:39)

You actually mentioned something interesting, and it’s totally a very great point to have. People interact differently depending on the diagnosis. So like, for example, like, if you are like a heart-specific hospital center, would you say that from awareness perspective, because obviously, unless there’s a heart condition I might have, or alternatively, that knock on wood, that I don’t have any condition like a stroke or a heart attack. Basically, at the end of the day, like, to your point, they want to forget about that happening. Right? So when it comes to awareness, like for a heart patient, for example, just use them as again, the key would you say like, for example, the messaging for awareness to get your brand out there still is maybe on preventative care, how can you work towards heart health?

Katey (00:17:28)

Yeah, I think it is, I think, very preventative, because with a heart attack will throw stroke in there as well. seconds matter. And so it’s also being aware of what the symptoms are. I mean, we’ve heard it a heart attack for a man and heart attack for a woman, woman, the symptoms are very, very different. So you can’t you’ve got to educate and try to get that out there. And, you know, knowing the signs, how can you from a social perspective partner like these are the things you’re looking for? Do you realize putting these signs together could mean that you’re about to have a heart attack, or you’re possibly are, because you’ve got seconds to decide, and getting to the right location is important. You know, if you’re in an area, there’s multiple hospitals, well, you know, this health system has a special cardiac unit. That’s ideally where you want to go. But that’s where the branding comes in play right? In the awareness. You’ve taught people what to be looking out for you told them to come here, because that can matter. And I mean, it’s terrible. This is life and death situation. So that’s where that’s where you can’t be late to the ballgame.

Carly (00:18:29)

You want to be out in front. That totally makes sense. T for that example, I thought that was like a perfect key example of how we can bring awareness into play because I think also to to your point, yeah. Like, people are like, Well, why would I care until they actually need me, it’s very important to obviously have them care before they need you. It also, like your point, life and death right at the end of the day. So I think that was a really awesome point. Thank you, Katey.

Katey (00:18:54)

Oh, you’re welcome. And I mean, I’ll say also part of healthcare is veterinary services. Let’s not discount them. I have a dog that is too weak out of major surgery because in the middle of the night, we had a major episode. What is the first thing I did? I started Googling, what is this mean? Little did I know when I call the 24-hour vet, he was going to be in surgery. So it’s the same type of thing, right? I mean, it was two o’clock in the morning, so I only had one option, but luckily that was a specialist that I needed to see.

Sneha (00:19:26)

So how did the healthcare industry see changes in the past few years? And what would you say are some of the KPIs for a successful healthcare campaign?

Katey (00:19:35)

Yeah, so I think the past four years and in healthcare COVID changed a lot. COVID changed so much. One of the biggest was telehealth. It is now it used to be something a few places offer and it was kind of looked at oh it’s a nice to have. But I think the latest numbers I’ve seen is 50 per 60% of people are utilizing it especially in the younger generations like it is very sought after it is now just kind The most standard thing, especially if you have a cold, you don’t want to go sit in a room and you just want to get it handled. So telehealth has been huge. And just technology wearables are big, you know, are just coming up more honestly, medical devices are now becoming technology that can communicate with your physician and tell them how you’re are you actually doing your exercises, have you gained weight, like all of this information, physicians can now get real time. So that is definitely a big change. I think we mentioned earlier politics, and healthcare, very different change. And so, you know, that is just something that you’ve got to be aware of. And now that it’s out there, in education of the audience, as the audience has their own views, or whatever, they are continuing to be more and more educated primarily due to Google, and at home searches, but looking things up themselves, go maybe going into the office, and sometimes instance, they’re like, I think I have this, the physician is like, Wait, we’ve got to check all of this, right, but you’ve got people doing self-diagnosis, and that whole space where doctors have to feel how do they get some of that control back as well. So I think those are some of the biggest challenges.

Carly (00:21:05)

I was just gonna say, I’m totally guilty of the self-diagnosis. My doctor probably resents every time I book an appointment.

Katey (00:21:13)

It has and in some instances is great. I mean, I know some people that I’ve seen stories where they go in and they’re like, I went and kept going to doctors until they tested me for this, because in some ways, you know your body better. So it’s figuring out how to build a partnership. And I guess healthcare in some ways, is trying to become a partnership with your doctor and feeling like they’re really listening to you. And that empathy we’re talking on the creative is the doctors expressing that empathy as well. Because, you know, location boundaries have changed. This is not the way it was 30, some odd years ago, where you had one doctor, and you really didn’t have choice. You have choices. Now, especially with telehealth, if you want to go see a doctor that’s in a different city, and they offer telehealth services that can now start becoming your primary care. So you can start finding the doctors that you feel comfortable with, and that you’re like, This is who I want to provide my healthcare. So locations have changed, you don’t have that holding you down anymore. From a success standpoint, and healthcare marketing, it’s some of your really traditional metrics, you know, you’re looking for leads, you’re looking for responses, you’re looking for awareness impression. Sometimes your time on site, it’s a little more in some ways old school, because there’s so much that happens between the time of sell, and I hate using that word of healthcare, but the top the time they come to the patient, they choose to go forward with a procedure. There’s so many external factors, that marketing can’t input. So marketing can get you into the door, it can get you in the consideration phase, but these external factors in the relationship with the physician or the family members, that’s what ultimately affects the sale. So I think it’s a real hard time to always say, hey, marketing, you’re responsible for the sale, when 50 other hands are going to touch it from the time marketing has become a lead.

Sneha (00:23:02)

Yeah, that’s a lot of changes. And I’m sure what changes you had some challenges. So if you could highlight some challenges, and also talk about some trends to watch out for in 2023. And a little beyond that. And also, if someone’s just starting off in this industry, what would be some of the tips you’d like to share with them?

Katey (00:23:19)

I think one of the biggest challenges everyone in the digital space experience is what’s going to happen as third-party cookies really phase out? How are you going to find it? How is contextual advertising going to start to be your key? Like what is going to be that allows you to use programmatic and things to help build those audiences that you can target other channels? What is that going to look like? So I think that’s probably one of the biggest challenges, kind of going off a little bit on the KPIs attribution, that continually because so many hands do touch it, how do you go back and really attribute what brought this person in to show how the marketing is working within healthcare. Education is always going to be around here, I’m talking about patient education. So you can’t just have you know, does your website educate the patient going back to empowering if somebody’s coming to you, because that website is constantly empowering them, they’re starting to see you as a trusted source. That’s going to play huge, you cannot forget about SEO, SEO is going to be the key because everyone will forever and always be Googling their symptoms. So understanding SEO and how that plays into it, competition. In the insurance space, there are more and more plans every single year people are inundated with choice. So what makes you stand out? You know, there’s a set things everybody offers, but what are your differentiators? Are you able to clearly explain it to them? You know, they say typically if it’s online, it needs to be at a sixth-grade reading level. In healthcare. The words alone put it at a college reading level most of the time. So are you breaking it down so that your audience truly understands it? So that’s that’s a big challenge. that we’ve been focusing in that will continue, that’s not going to change. We mentioned this a little earlier for providers. Now, just because you’re the only hospital in a small city doesn’t mean anything, you know, people will go other places for health care, and they’re expanding out. And they’re looking and being more active in their health and in what’s happening with them. So I think those are some of the big things their retention and engagement. No, are you considering how your offline your online? How all of that works? Together? Are patients using your patient portal? How is that affecting them? Is it a positive experience? Is it a negative experience is really looking at the entire journey, not just through, hey, we got them through the door, but what happens once they get through the door? Easier to keep somebody than it is to bring somebody in New? And then are you reinforcing? That? Is your marketing still reinforcing? Why are they there, so really kind of closing the test, or closing the loop on that journey. And then I’m still gonna say a big thing is, you’ve got to be willing to step out of what happened in the past, and what was working last year is not always going to be the same test, grow, test and grow. If you’re not testing and all you’re just gonna get left behind, because somebody else is gonna step into that space first. I’m somebody that’s kind of starting out. These are kind of what I tell pretty much you know, people when they start are, you’re never going to know everything, and it’s okay not to know something, you are much better off within your clients to say, I don’t know, rather than telling them something wrong, right, you’re gonna build a lot more trust to say, Hey, let me check on that. Let me reach out to the experts. I cannot tell you how many times I said, Hey, let me check on that. I have sent Julian an email and be like, hey, the guys are sorry, that, hey, what are y’all tell me about this? So I knew what I was telling them was correct. And that is okay. It honestly it builds trust, it makes you better. Ask questions, when the client tells you something, and you’re not sure continue to ask until you truly understand and not just go, okay, that’s what it is, you need to know why. And this goes to things that you’re doing, you know, constantly understanding why because if you know the why there may be a better way to get to it, there may be a better way to figure it out. If you understand what you’re doing versus just accepting it. Ask questions, constantly. Don’t put yourself in a box. Think outside of the box. You know, we have laws, we have rules. Yes, we have. But there’s different ways to approach it. Look at the problem from the other side or rephrase the question, constantly look at it and constantly challenge what you’re seeing there. If you can find a good mentor, and it’s not just oh, this is the person that’s in the exact job I want. It’s a good mentor is somebody that you see yourself in, at least for me, it’s somebody that could see myself and know, we have a similar style, I don’t have to change who I am and how I’m working to kind of step through that. So really look for that type mentor that you can kind of grow with.

Carly (00:27:54)

I think one other thing too, I’d like to also say if you’re new to the industry is if you have partners that are also helping you guys out, please like absolutely reach out to them. I remember when I started off in digital marketing, I had no clue what I was doing. And I always say jokingly for about eight months, and then it finally clicked one day, but I was able to leverage my partners I was working with to be able to understand the product more to be able to understand the solutions I was focused on building for my clients. So I think that all of that is absolutely fantastic. And that’s just my one ad because Katey, you nailed it.

Sneha (00:28:27)

So, we are just about to close. So thank you so much Katey and Carly for joining us and giving us your insights on so many things. And to the one who is listening till the very end. Thank you so much for staying back and listening to the entire episode. It looks like you might have found some value in this. So make sure you follow and like the podcast, share it with your friends or people in the industry who you think we’ll find value in this. And if you want to get in touch, you can write to us at academy@stackadapt.com that is academy@stackadapt.com we have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesdays so make sure you catch the episode right when it drops. Don’t forget to subscribe. I will see you in the next episode. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you soon.

Episode Outro (00:29:19)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

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