Are Behavioral Health Marketers Speaking the Wrong Language

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Ashley Petrochenko: Hey, everybody. Welcome back for another episode of the Ignite: Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I am so excited for this episode. I say that every week, but I truly mean it. These conversations with healthcare marketing leaders are so rewarding. It gives us insight into what all of you are dealing with, the challenges, the struggles, the wins. We’re really excited about today’s episode. Joining me today is Jennifer Muñoz Callahan, the VP of digital performance at Promises Behavioral Health. Jennifer, welcome to Ignite.

Jennifer Muñoz Callahan: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Ashley: We’re recording this. It’s the middle of May. It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. This is a topic that’s really passionate for me. I know it’s a passion of yours, so I’m really excited to dig into this. Before we get into the conversation, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and the work that you do at Promises?

Jennifer: Yes. My original foundation professionally is in hospitality. I spent a lot of time in food and beverage. Then when COVID happened, I decided to go back to school, and I was looking up programs of, “Hey, if this pandemic stays like this and we don’t get to be around anybody, what careers are going to be in high demand?” Digital marketing was one of them. I went back to school, and I got a professional certification from Texas Tech in applied science and digital marketing.

During our finals, I had to pick two jobs that were local and do a pitch for them, a competitor analysis, all that jazz. I sent it to my professor, and she said, “If these jobs are still open, you need to send these.” One of them was for an autism organization. They were local here in San Antonio. I reached out to the VP of marketing, sent my resume and the competitor analysis, and then I got hired shortly after. I absolutely fell in love with behavioral science.

I learned so much at that job, not only about the world of behavioral science in general, but how we apply it every single day to pretty much every single thing that we do. I was approached by Promises, and they let me know what they were looking for. They needed help with restructuring their digital marketing program. This was a different side of behavioral health. Before, I was working with more pediatric. This is more adult-focused. It is with substance abuse and mental health, which I have a direct correlation and tie to.

I want to state this, I was absolutely apprehensive about taking this job because I thought I have so many close triggers and ties myself if we want to talk about mental health. I was very, very concerned if that would bring triggers, if it would make me sad, what it was going to do to me personally. I definitely worked through all of those kinks within the first two months, and I said, “I know that this is where I’m meant to be.”

Ashley: I love that. I think that is probably giving you a perspective to really understand the people you’re trying to reach, and we’re going to talk all about that. I think that’s great. I think your background in hospitality is really interesting, too. I think in healthcare, sometimes like a coldness, things feel sterile, and it’s not necessarily about how do you connect with the people you’re trying to reach. A lot of places could learn a lot from retail and hospitality, and how do you actually approach people as people.

The behavioral health space is one of the most sensitive spaces, I think, in healthcare. Historically, there’s a lot of stigma, misunderstandings. People don’t quite know what options are available. They might not want to talk about it openly. That’s a big challenge for how do you actually reach the people that need you the most. When you’re thinking about your marketing strategy, what are the biggest misunderstandings or things that you want to overcome and make clear to the people you’re trying to reach?

Jennifer: It depends, which person am I trying to reach? We have so many personas in what we do in this space. I categorize them into three. You have the parent’s journey is completely different. They’re never going to give up on their child, their adult child. They’ve been through it, so reaching them is probably the easiest. I want to say the patient is the toughest sell. They have so much that they have to overcome, and just making that first step.

What I like to tell people is it’s like this inertia that is pushing against you, and that inertia is rooted in shame, pain. What is it going to be like? I’m going somewhere that’s unfamiliar. Even though their coping skills are painful for them, it is still their comfort, and that’s scary to just pull away from. I think it’s really important that when we are marketing, we are definitely looking at our different personas and saying, “How are we reaching their psychographics? What is it that scares them the most?”

When we write content, when we speak with them, we are really driving home, “Hey, we all know the first things that you’re thinking.” What is it going to be like? Where am I going? What does it look like? What are the people like? Can I bring my cell phone? Am I going to be able to keep my job? There are so many different questions that they have. How am I going to pay for this? I don’t have insurance. There are so many different things that go into that. I really do think that we try to lead with, “This is what is going to happen your first couple of days.”

Ashley: Thinking about trust, they get the recommendation, they have someone suggest a solution to them, and they’re looking for those credibility signals. What are you doing to establish that across? You mentioned different messages for different channels. Are you doing patient storytelling? Are they video testimonials? Are you reaching out to your existing patient base? How does that materialize and get those credibility signals out to your audience?

Jennifer: Testimonials, we don’t do much of. What I am trying to do now with our social media and brand storytelling moving forward is definitely trying to produce content that everybody can see themselves in. It’s not, let’s walk through a field with weeds and flowers and touch them. It’s not, let’s show somebody who’s on a hike. It’s more so showing somebody who’s staring at a phone, and if anybody has been through anything similar, they know that that first step is the hardest.

The inertia is almost like trying to push the Titanic away from the glacier. I think that you can build a lot of credibility and trust if you use your channels, try to alleviate those initial fears that are going to just say, “Oh, no, I’m not going to go,” because with all of your different personas, your patient is the most difficult to sell. They are going to feel the most pain. They are the ones who have to step into total discomfort.

If you talk about mental health and behavior, I don’t want to say that it’s wholeheartedly, but a lot of substance abuse issues are rooted in mental health. Even though they are seeking comfort in what brings them pain, it is still their comfort. Rewiring their brain to seek comfort elsewhere, that’s a hard sell. I try to tell our content manager, “Look, the one thing is that you have to be relatable. Every decision that you make is hard. You have to choose your heart. We have to convey that.”

I think that we have to take away the stigma and shame and all the social media that we put out, that everybody is struggling. Yes, you may have relapsed. I relapsed 400 times on my diet since the beginning of January. I have a gluten intolerance, so I should be very strict on that. Everybody steps back. Nobody’s growth in this life is linear. It looks just like a hot mess of bing, bing, bing, bing, detour, detour. I think when you open up the story to say, you have mirror situations that we do, our struggles are just different, it allows you to take away the shame.

Ashley: I like that. Understanding those personas and understanding, especially the dual diagnosis, it’s not just one thing. People are complex and showing up to them authentically. I think in healthcare, there’s just been this history of stock photography that does feel really artificial, like you said, and people are frolicking through grass fields, but that’s not the moment that they’re in.

Finding that route, how to be relatable, that builds that trust a little bit, that they understand what I’m going through, and you get my pain and my challenges. If you don’t, how can I trust you? You’re just speaking to me meaningless. You have to really be that connectiveness and understanding of their situation. I like that. That’s really helpful.

You mentioned one other thing I wanted to dig into, about that moment when they’ve been going through these challenges, and they finally do make that moment when they want to reach out. They make the call, they submit a form online, and at that point, the clock is ticking. How do you think about speed to appointment or speed to actually respond to them so that once they make that decision to get help, that they’re actually on the track to doing that? What friction points do you see? How can you alleviate it to get them the care that they need?

Jennifer: I’m really big into behavioral science, so I like to tie everything into consumer behavior, how we go about making decisions and what friction points do for us. They make that initial call, and they are on board, probably skeptical, probably one step away from just saying, “No, I’m not doing this.” Speed to call is just so imperative. At Promises, one thing I can say about our admissions and call center, they are absolutely on top of their game. They have skin in the game, most of them. They understand that we only have a very short timeframe to get in contact with them, to verify any kind of benefits.

During this whole time, those first initial phone calls, you’re just being hit with friction of why they can’t come. They need a ride, they don’t know if their insurance is valid, they don’t know if they’re ready. I think what is very important, which we do have at Promises, is having a very skilled team who knows how to walk them through that journey and able to make that conversion. When you have people who have skin in the game, that’s a completely different sell. They understand the resistance.

I have listened into calls where I feel the nurturing in the communication, not only to the patient, but to the family. Whenever I look at follow-ups, we are trying to follow up as much as we can because we know that they can change their decision really quickly. That’s not so much of, “Oh, man, we just missed an admit.” It is more so that somebody lost taking those first steps because we didn’t get to it quick enough. I know that our call center, they pride themselves on making sure that we do everything we can in our power to get same-day admits so that they don’t have an opportunity to step back and say, “No, we’re not going to do this.”

I think it’s really important. This isn’t like your normal sell. If you are somebody who is marketing in behavioral science, in substance abuse and mental health issues, and you have no relatable experience to it, and you are not putting the personas and the psychographics behind it, you’re really missing out. These people, when they’re making these phone calls, whether it’s the parent or the patient, they are in duress, absolute duress, and they want to have that solidified, making that next step as soon as they can.

This can be 3:00 AM. This can be 6:00 AM. This can be on a Sunday. This can be on a holiday. I am really just appreciative that I have a call center that we are working 365 days a year. We want people to know that we are committed to getting you help and getting you the Promises help, because we pride ourselves on our program being rooted in behavioral science.

You are not coming to some organization where we’re going to sit in a circle and trauma dump and trigger you and sing kumbaya. We are diving in trying to get to the root of what the issue is, the root of what the behavior is, so that we know this is what we need to treat, these are the tools that this individual needs, and that is all rooted in behavioral science. What can we do to rewire these brains so that they seek comfort in healthier choices, not in the old habits that brought tons of harm to them?

Ashley: That close relationship that you have with a really strong contact call center, it sounds like that’s paramount. Marketing and operations have to have strong alignment, and it really sounds like they’re empathetic, they understand, they are that first point of contact. Just advice for the listeners, they’re on that front line and having that right communication. Is that something that you guys work together on on messaging or insights that you get from them to bring back to marketing? Is that a collaboration point that you guys work through?

Jennifer: I do know that we definitely audit closed case attribution and what was the issue. We try to keep a pulse on, “Is this something that just happened two or three times, or is this something that’s becoming a trend?” We definitely look into it. If it’s something that we need to do with the call center, then they have an incredible leader, which is our VP, Sadie Sanzotta, but she is on her team. They are constantly training. They are constantly recalibrating in what the nurturing part of the journey is to get them to come and be a patient and get help from Promises. I think it’s highly imperative. We work together as much as we possibly can because we are all on the same team, and that is to get people help.

Ashley: Yes, everyone’s on the same team. It’s about patient access, connecting them to care. I like that. Thinking about your hospitality background, is there any learnings or experience there that you have brought to the behavioral health space that you’d want to share?

Jennifer: I definitely can say that coming from the hospitality industry definitely makes you a more human-based person, because you are human-facing. There, we would say client-facing, but it definitely transfers over to patient-facing. It really is having a way with people, being able to talk to them, being able to connect. That definitely helps them, one, remember you, two, send people back your way, be an alumni in this case.

Hospitality would say be a recurring customer, somebody who came into your facility all the time. That moves mountains, and I definitely have tried to bring that into this space. Our alumni, if you think about it, they are the best source to tell other people, “Hey, the experience that I had at Promises was very fruitful and beneficial.”

Ashley: Word of mouth cannot be underappreciated, especially as trust is weakening in some institutions. People are looking for testimonials directly or asking their friends or neighbors or family on what worked for them. You have to have a really strong patient experience that they want to tell everybody about, the moms want to tell their other moms about. I think that’s really important to bring that to the piece.

Jennifer: Let me bring something up to you right there, because this is probably going to be like, yes. Testimonials are great. I literally cringe whenever I hear that because we’re in healthcare marketing, and it is so difficult to stay in compliance with HIPAA and all of the other healthcare regulations whenever it comes to getting testimonials or maybe doing a podcast where we feature patients. That’s not something that we’re allowed to do. We are definitely hindered in our ability to work like the rest of the marketing world, where you can have people on your podcast and say, “Hey, give a testimonial, tell people all about us.”

I do think that reviews are extremely important at the facilities, just because everybody checks reviews. If I am an addict and my mom is trying to get me to go to a facility, I’m going to find every excuse to tell her why I’m not going to go, but you become very manipulative and creative. You’re like, “Oh, mom, I went to the Better Business Bureau’s, mom. Do you see this?”

Ashley: A list of things.

Jennifer: Yes, there’s a list of things. They don’t treat their people well. How are they going to treat me well? I definitely feel like I could see people trying to get out of coming to care or talking themselves out of it because of bad Google reviews.

Ashley: Yes, the consumers and people– When I say consumers, I mean, they’re just people. We’re all people here. Like you said, everybody is reviewing, and they’re at 2:00 AM on their phone reading Reddit forums, trying to find out every bit of information that they can find about Facebook groups, Reddit, AI now. People will dig and dig to find what they need. If it’s a parent, to find good information, like you said, maybe it’s the opposite, a reason not to seek care.

I think one of the other pieces of that that you touched on earlier is that insurance piece. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding, maybe unknowns about how much do things even cost? Is it covered by my insurance? Can I even afford this? That could be that barrier. What are you guys doing in that regard to try to alleviate that friction point to get people to not use that as an excuse not to seek care?

Jennifer: That is actually one of the first steps for the call center is they want to get the VOB because it’s just absolutely important to take the next steps. What I love about our call center, and I can’t brag about them enough, and also our business development team, is if we can’t work with your insurance, we are going to find you somebody who can. We have really incredible relationships with other facilities who maybe take an insurance that we don’t, or they have grant programs that we don’t. We are going to match you with that.

It does not just stop at Promises because we don’t take your insurance. I think that’s an absolute beautiful thing. I’ve never seen any business organization be so tied to one another of just saying, “This person needs treatment.” You can call somebody up at another facility who’s your competitor and say, “We don’t have any beds open for XYZ,” and they’re going to find help.

We work in healthcare, so insurance is always very fascinating. It is by state, by what county, what area of that state you’re in. If you have Medicare or Medicaid, we definitely try to seal that deal in the very, very beginning. I do know that, especially in this economic time, we have become a lot more relaxed on our upfront cost to start seeking services. I think that alleviates a lot of the friction, too. That is something that we had to look at and say, “Hey, times are different. There’s a lot going on in the healthcare world with different programs being cut, and we keep our pulse on that. We are going to make ourselves as available as we can to make sure we get people the help that they need.”

Ashley: I like that. There are a lot of changes happening in the world from political, economic, and all the ways. You mentioned looking at call transcripts and trying to keep that pulse on trends. Is there anything that you’ve seen in the last couple of years or things that have stood out to you as an emerging trend that you’re watching in 2026?

Jennifer: I wouldn’t say that one of the things I see is an emerging trend that is positive, but one that I feel is very negative, and I see it in healthcare a lot, is we’re too clinical in everything that we are putting out. For instance, dual diagnosis. I can walk around in downtown San Antonio, that’s where I’m at with the mic, and say, “Do you know what dual diagnosis is? Do you know what dual diagnosis is?” I think sometimes we are so deep into what we’re doing that we become very acclimated to these clinical terms that nobody else knows.

I would like to see a trend for everybody who’s watching is to start talking to the actual patient and realize that dual diagnosis, most people don’t know about it. If you live in a rural area, mental health is not something that is really talked about. I’m in Texas. Not a lot of people are familiar whatsoever with mental health, that you can seek help and go to a facility for it. We’re talking about PTSD, we are talking about depression, and we are talking about eating disorders.

This is to all my behavioral marketers out there, the trend needs to be in 2026 is to start dissecting that for our patient demographic, telling them what all of those things are, the treatments and services we provide. Going on a website alone and you’re like, “Oh, it covers this particular program,” and it’s stuff that’s absolutely foreign to you. We’re right there, and you’re like, “Oh, this sounds a little more intense than what I need,” instead of just saying, “This is for [crosstalk].”

Ashley: Yes. That’s not for me. That’s not what I’m dealing with. It’s a question of why I’m leaving.

Jennifer: Yes.

Ashley: It sounds like being authentic, really understanding these people and speaking everyday language, helping them to understand it is scary, but helping it feel approachable, and something that can actually motivate them to seek help. I think that’s great advice. Behavioral health marketers, I think healthcare as a whole can try to strip away some of that clinical language.

It is just no more doctors in white coats, no more kumbaya circles. Let’s be real people and actually connect with people as they want to be connected with. I think that’s great advice. It’s not a one-time thing. Often, like you mentioned before, it is a continuing conversation. How do you think about marketing’s role in the recovery journey and keeping them on that track to better health?

Jennifer: I think retention marketing is probably the most critical and crucial thing that we can offer in order to help facilitate somebody staying on their recovery journey. I dial it back all over again and being authentic in the messages and the content that we’re putting out, but I also think it’s very important to reiterate on our online social media accounts things that they have learned when they were in the facility.

I know they talk a lot about using their toolbox. Shout out to Jemece and Rhonda, who are very wonderful women on our clinical team. I’ve had conversations with them. Those are the things that they take when they step out, and when they hit that first trigger, they are like, “Okay, what do I have in my toolbox to help me get away from this?”

It’s very important that when you are scheduling your content for the month, and please, behavioral health people, all think about this, when you are scheduling your content, remember that is just as important as them walking through a field or on a beach saying relief is near. The reality of it is, and this is because I know I have parents that are addicts, so I’ve spent 20 plus years being the person who’s calling, being the person who is seeing struggle. The biggest part and the most actually intimidating part is when they step out, because they owe people money, they have warrants, they don’t have a place to live. I don’t know about you, but that would send me back to having a cocktail or margarita at Chili’s.

We try to set them up to where they have all of the resources when they step out from the clinical team. I think it’s just as important for marketing and for blog posts that you are giving them the same insight so they have a place to go. We also have a really good family program. We have an incredible alumni program. I always tell people, if your area has a Facebook group to join that, because those are absolutely incredible and insightful. People get on there every single day and share their stories, their ups and downs. I think the best way to help in the recovery journey is to not allow things to become a secret again. We do that by keeping community.

Ashley: I love that. Thank you for sharing so much about how do you build an authentic and accessible brand that is there to help people. I think, like you said, marketing’s role doesn’t stop at the beginning of the journey. It’s building that brand and resource across all those touchpoints throughout someone’s journey, and I think that’s so important. You shared some really wonderful advice, Jenn. Thank you again for joining Ignite. This has been a great conversation. I hope our listeners, if they have any questions, they want to reach out to you, where can they find you and connect with you?

Jennifer: LinkedIn.

Ashley: Great. We’ll drop your link in the show notes. If anyone wants to reach out, say hey. Thank you all again, and join us next week for another episode of Ignite.

Jennifer: Thanks.

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