Building Healthcare Marketing Teams That Actually Perform

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 to another episode of the Ignite: Healthcare Marketing Podcast. My name’s Ashley Petrochenko. I’m the VP of Brand Marketing here at Cardinal, and I’m really excited about today’s episode. I say that every week, but I truly mean it each and every time because we’re talking about a new topic today. Typically, we are exploring performance marketing, medium mix optimization, measurement, brand management, all of those things which are so important in driving new patient growth.

Today’s topic is equally important, and maybe even more so. We’re going to explore how to build and mentor high-performing teams. This is something that without that foundation, without a good team, you’re going to struggle with all the other things in marketing. Joining us today is a marketer who has more than 20 years in the healthcare space and has always stepped her foot in the door in higher ed. Please join me in welcoming Kelly Perritt, the Chief Marketing and Brand Strategy Officer at Horry-Georgetown Technical College. Kelly, welcome to Ignite.

Kelly Perritt: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Ashley: Yes, you’ve had a foot in the door in higher ed. It seems like a mark of your career. I think that gives you a great perspective on what it takes to really build those high-performing teams, how do you coach young talent. I’m really excited to dig into that. Beforehand, maybe you can share a little bit with our listeners. How did you get to this phase? What drew you to higher ed and all of that?

Kelly: Yes, definitely. I actually have worked in healthcare marketing for over 20 years. I’d say I have done every model. I’ve worked at a nonprofit, a for-profit, an academic medical center. I’ve had a lot of broad experience. I did get my PhD. I love teaching. I always wanted to teach. Teaching college was important to me. That’s part of my journey.

My journey here to my current role, it’s a little bit closer to where my family lives. That was part of the reason. My son actually graduated from this college a couple of years ago. He’s 23. My husband was having some health challenges, which we’ll definitely talk about. He had open-heart surgery a couple of years ago. I wanted to be able to be close to him and not travel as much and that sort of thing. This role really resonated with me. Also, the mission of higher education and the mission of healthcare, really, they coincide in a lot of ways. It’s really about changing people’s lives. That was part of what attracted me to this role.

Ashley: I like that. It is about changing people’s lives in very different ways, but there’s a lot of parallels. I’m really excited to dig into those. I think you’ve had over 20 years in the healthcare space. One of your colleagues reached out to us and said, “We have the perfect cast for you.” You’re the best marketing leader that they’ve ever worked with, something that you aspire to. What does your leadership philosophy actually look like in practice, and how does that show up?

Kelly: A couple of things. It’s so funny, the person that you’re talking about. I remember the day that I left the office. It was my last day. I wrote this quote on the board. It was a quote from a poem by E.E. Cummings. It said, “I carry your heart. I carry it within my heart.” I wore my little heart necklace, too.

I really do feel like that leadership should be from the heart. It starts with caring about people. I’ve always taken an approach of guided autonomy. I give people a lot of autonomy, but I give them guidance along the way. Then I’m very egalitarian. I like things to be flatter. They aren’t always that way, certainly in healthcare or higher education. I think that’s important.

Authenticity is another thing that is a leadership principle for me. Be who you are, know who you are. We’ll talk a little bit about that because I’m a big believer in a couple of things like those strengths finders is one of them realizing what the positive things that you bring to the table. To me, leadership from the heart is, I think, an important part of who we are.

We’re in the healthcare industry, and care is really embedded in the name. If you don’t have that care for the people that you’re leading, I think it’s difficult to bring a team to where they are. I like it when people do question things. That’s an important part of having that dialogue in a respectful way. I like to give people autonomy to really learn their jobs and to make mistakes sometimes and to learn from them because I certainly have.

Ashley: I like that. I also like what you said about the care. If you can’t care for your team, how can you care for patients? How can you bring a brand to life in healthcare if you don’t have that ethos in your philosophy at your organization? That’s really great advice.

Back to the autonomy point, we want to give our people autonomy. We want them to learn from those mistakes and grow on their own. Then you are managing diverse teams. You have creatives, you have performance marketers, communicators, all these different types of people. How do you keep them all aligned and motivated, moving in the right direction where you might be hitting bumps along the way? Any tips there that you can share?

Kelly: I saw that when I was looking at it. One of the things I mentioned, strength finders, I think you have to know yourself. As a leader, you have to know yourself. You have to know what you’re good at. You have to have people that speak truth to you. One of the things that is a strength of mine is called individualization.

I have to copy this because I don’t know how to read all of this. It’s like you’re interested in the characteristics of an individual, like who they are, what makes them up. You’re not about stereotypes. Each individual brings something to the table. You really want to understand that and let people be who they are. That gets into the alignment.

Now, first of all, you do have to look at what is the organization’s mission. We talked a little bit about that earlier with changing lives, making things better. I think, as a leader, you have to know your strength. I look at the people on our team and what they are good at. Then I try to align them to the things that they enjoy that can be a role. Then once you’ve done that, you can really, as a team, look at how you are going to deliver on the organization’s mission.

I do strengths finders with every team I have. We go into what we’re good at, what we like. We have this retreat. We play giant Jenga, all that kind of stuff that people usually do or sometimes do. I think it’s understanding each person and then weaving those people together. I equate it to putting a puzzle together. I love puzzles with my mother-in-law, and I used to do puzzles before she was losing her eyesight a little bit.

When you’re putting a puzzle together, if you think about it, you start with the edges. You group pieces of the puzzle together in similar patterns. Then you work on each section of the puzzle. It’s hard to see the big picture until you start putting those little pieces in place. I think it’s the same way with team building. If you think about it, I’m getting to know who you are as a person. I’m understanding your strengths and then how you fit into the overall puzzle of our team.

That process can take time. Sometimes we don’t always take the time to do that. In teams that I’ve led, it can take five years to really get things where it’s, yes, we’re really starting to deliver on the mission. We’re really starting to make things happen. It’s all of these little things, bringing them together, that really helps create a team configuration that is a high-performing team.

Going back to the puzzle example, my mother-in-law, whenever we did puzzles, she used to jam pieces in because she couldn’t see the outline of the puzzle. I would just go back and pretend, “Okay, I’m not going to jam. I’m going to just move the pieces to where I know they go.” Sometimes to really make her feel like I’m accomplishing stuff, I would put pieces that I knew fit near where she was working the puzzle so that she could, “Oh, I got this.”

I think, as a leader, thinking about that intentionally, if somebody has these strengths, jam them into this piece of the puzzle, or somebody is having trouble with a piece or putting something together, like you there helping them. My son is in the army. One of the things he said to me, he was reserve and then he went active duty. He said, “I want to go in as a non-commissioned officer.” What that means is you’re not starting up here. You’re starting down here. You’re really learning about everything that the rank and file do. He’s like, “When I become an officer, I will have the respect because I went in this way.”

I try to do that with my team. Learn the things that they do, or listen and learn about what they do so that they know I have a level of respect for what she does because she’s going to get in the trenches with me and she’s going to help. It’s easier to do that now with things like Canva and AI and all of that kind of stuff. It’s important that someone that’s leading the team is in there with the team. I think it gives folks a level of respect for what you bring to the table. It does help put that puzzle together in the end.

Ashley: The guided autonomy, that allows you to give that guidance, but it doesn’t feel like it’s overbearing. It allows you to come along because you’ve been there, you’ve seen what needs to be done. I like going back to strength finders as something, probably fail if you try to force someone into the wrong role. You can only coach them up so far. You can’t coach them to be a different person, a different way. Just focusing on the strengths, that’s something our founder, Alex Membrillo, always focused on, too. You can’t change people. What’s their strength? Lead with that, and that’s how you go.

I love that. I think the puzzle analogy is really good. For marketing leaders, just standing back and looking at how your team fits together and where the pieces naturally fit together versus trying to force people. I think that’s a great analogy for people to learn from. Is there something, if you could think about most underrated aspect of team building or nurturing, that you think people just overlook when they’re focused on leading? Maybe they’re focused on results and they’re not thinking about, “Okay, how do I actually get there?” Maybe they skip over something.

Kelly: Yes, I think listening. Whenever you said that, what is it? You have one mouth and two ears. People always say that, but I think listening is underrated. We spend a lot of time talking. I know we’re talking in this way. [chuckles] Even as an instructor, when I’m teaching classes, it’s like you’re in front of people, you’re talking about ideas.

I was sitting behind my computer, and one of my employees came in and was telling me something. You know how sometimes you’re like half in, half out listening? I fired off an answer, and then this individual just stood there. I was like, “That wasn’t the right answer, was it?” I knew that I hadn’t completely listened to what they were asking me, and then being able to forge a response.

Also, we go so fast, we don’t spend time. I know, especially depending on what generational cohort you’re coaching, time is required. Sometimes it’s just sitting there listening to somebody talk about their day. I’ve done that in some ways, and it gives you a level of rapport and respect with that person. It takes time as a leader. You physically have to go over there. You physically have to make time to have these conversations. Sometimes when you’re busy just scheduling out your day, it’s very difficult to do that.

I think listening is important. In marketing in general, listening to your employees, listening to your audiences. Fail to listen, often you miss things that other people see. There’s a whole body of research around fixing things and the power of listening. I think it’s something I could certainly grow in. I’ve been told that, actually. I had a coaching session with one of my employees, and I said, “What’s one thing that I could improve?” They said, “Listening.” I was like, “I’m going to drill down on listening. This is good feedback.”

Ashley: That is good feedback. There’s such a push to do more, more, more, more, that it is that rush. No, let’s just slow down. Even listening to other people’s perspectives, you may draw a conclusion for something. It worked or it didn’t work for whatever reason, but if you just listen to someone else’s point of view, sometimes you come to a new approach.

I think that goes listening not only to patients and your employees, but let’s talk about across organizations. I think healthcare has a lot of silos. I think higher ed also has a lot of silos across divisions and teams. There’s silos across the world, but if we all listen, let’s talk a little bit about how you’ve been able to gain better alignment across marketing and operations and leaderships in your career.

Kelly: Absolutely favorite quality management, which I have a PhD in healthcare administration. I did that because I want to understand the business of what is done here. Quality management is a key part of that. One of the theories or approaches to quality management is called the Donabedian model. It’s a structure process outcome.

The structure you create, which is what we just talked about with the team, like the configuration, how you do things, how you intake requests, how you meet with people, how you consult, how you develop your service level agreement, which is what you do for the organization starting with your mission. Those are all structural elements. Then process is, again, what you do from a process standpoint. I always say, you don’t have a process if it’s not articulated in writing. If you do, it’s up here, and someone that is across the organization may not understand what’s up here, but if you have it in writing, it forces you to think through the steps of that process.

For example, we use Canva, and some people like it, some people don’t like it. Some of our designers are like, “I hate Canva,” but we have a Canva process that I share institutionally. You can create an asset. We have a brand kit. Here is the whole process for how you get approval to use your Canva asset. I think it’s things like that help create better alignment across the organization. It’s very hard.

This sounds so easy coming off my tongue, but all of these things, the structure and the process that you create, equal a positive outcome. That outcome in the end that you’re trying to achieve, which is the alignment that you just talked about, it is hard because it takes time to educate people on what your process is once you get your structure in place. Especially if you’re shifting and changing and applying things like AI to the work that you do, it can create challenges.

If people are living in that silo, we had someone just randomly set up a social presence, and we’re like, “Time out, you’re going to have to shut that down because you did not follow the policy that we have about how you need to engage with us before you do this.” About protecting the organization, of course, but you can still have those siloed areas where if folks don’t understand, it may require a meeting, listening, walking through what your process is.

I think that helps. That’s how I think about things to best understand what we’re doing, and it just takes time, too. People learn that change happens in degrees, rate, desirability, and the timeframe all affect the curve of change, and it often takes time, depending on the organization, too.

Ashley: I think having that documentation and processes that are understood across the org is really helpful for that alignment, but also just for onboarding new team members and stuff. I’ve known many teams where there is nothing documented, and that’s hard for them to get up to speed, too. If you have a foundation, I think it helps with the alignment piece, but also for onboarding.

I’m going to skip ahead a little bit. From my experience, one of the ways that I have found AI has helped me the most is in that documentation thing. It’s so hard to get that out of your head and down, and I find that dictating and being able to get it has helped me build processes and standards so much more quickly than I ever. That’s, for me, what has been life-changing in some ways. Get it out of my head. I need to get it on paper. Is there anything that you’re finding AI is really helping you in terms of improving efficiency or coaching or onboarding teams?

Kelly: I love using AI for stuff. I have the upgraded version of Copilot. Not my favorite, but I have my own ChatGPT, and I do a lot of stuff in it. It helps me with all sorts of things. It helps me develop, if I’m looking at the student side of stuff, develop announcements for the course that I’m teaching. From a healthcare marketing standpoint, it helps me look at work differently, revise things, like you said, document things. I love finance because I need money in marketing, but it also helps me manage my invoices.

We have a project management system that applies AI, and you upload the invoice, and it’s like, woof, it’s very useful at night. From a marketing campaign standpoint, I’ve done this in past organizations and definitely want to do more of it where I’m at now, but it helps you with targeting audiences, bring up ads, and lead generation. It really does help. Even iterations of ads that you’ve developed, we have organization archetypes that we go by, and it’s how we frame a lot of what we write, and you can plug that into AI, and it will give you suggestions on how to align your messaging with your archetypes. It’s super helpful.

I know some people don’t like it. There’s a pushback. I do think there are ethics and things like that that have to be considered whenever you’re applying AI. I thought about this when I was thinking about AI. I don’t want a robot sitting with my mother-in-law in the nursing home comforting her. It’s so inhumane. That is not a good use of AI, okay? [chuckles] Can we not do that? In other ways, it makes work more efficient and effective.

Ashley: Thinking back on my career, like you said, thinking about invoices and data entry. Basically, just groundwork. I spent so many of my very first years doing groundwork, things that I think new young marketers entering the workforce probably will never have to do again, many of them, because there’s going to be automations and tools to do it for them. Looking at your students, how is this changing the way they enter the workforce? How do they think about marketing? Anything you can share, observations there?

Kelly: Unfortunately, I think sometimes students misuse AI. They think, “Oh, it’s just going to write my paper for me.” Then, like they were saying, it’s creating a dumber-down generation. They’re not using critical thought, but I think that students that use it well are using it for functions to enhance what they do. I absolutely think that’s the direction that students should go in. It shouldn’t replace the critical thought.

You see the flyers and the certain things that are created, like AI photos, they look like AI, okay? I would say that let’s use AI for the things that create efficiencies, but for the creative work that you’re doing, let’s use that human brain to really push the limits of creativity versus AI. Now, it’s fun. We did My Little Soda Pop video with my granddaughter using AI, and she’s four, and she was dancing. Those are fun little things AI can do. You can tell it’s fake, and we really want the human to be doing the things that really push the limits of creativity and AI to be doing those enhancing things, like the groundwork kind of stuff that can be outsourced to AI.

Ashley: I think your example, you don’t want your loved one to be cared by someone who’s inauthentic or who’s fake. When you’re being served an ad and it’s obviously AI-generated, it breaks a little bit of trust. You’re like, “What is this organization doing if this is how they are showing up in the world and trying to collaborate with me or resonate with me?” It breaks trust, and trust is so important.

I think in today’s marketing space in the world, there’s a lot of erosion of trust that I think you have to use AI to sensitively understand how it’s going to impact your audience. Let’s look at it this way. I’ve talked about it a lot. Thinking about how AI is changing some of the work that marketers do, and going back to that puzzle piece, where are you focused on hiring? When you’re building a team, are there things that you’re not maybe recruiting or hiring for now, or you’re just changing the way that you’re approaching talent?

Kelly: The way that I approach talent is someone that’s a little bit more multidimensional. Before, you would just have, “Oh, somebody is just a videographer,” or, “Somebody is just a graphic designer.” I really want somebody that has more– they could do graphic design, they could do social media, they could do photography, that has multidimensional things, because you could use AI to do some of the groundwork. Even editing in Lightroom or InDesign, it makes the process a little bit easier.

Our approval workflows, we can use AI for some of those, and then that gives you time to go out and get human, authentic, creative that really can resonate with our audiences because AI can’t do that. [chuckles] They just can’t. It just can’t. That’s what we need people for. I think about that when I’m hiring people. I try to get people that are a little bit more multidimensional.

Ashley: Thinking back on your career, what qualities set apart some people that you think that they’re going to become a real leader, someone that you can– this is something that they just embody that it’s just the start of their amazing things they can do?

Kelly: Yes. I love thinking about the future workforce and that sort of thing, and attitude and learning are the two things. If you have a positive attitude, a can-do attitude, your glass is half-full, and you’re just going to do what you can to help support the mission of an organization and you’re willing to learn, you’ll go far. Hands down, people that learn usually go far.

Ashley: I think that’s the world we’re in. Marketing is a career for learners. If you don’t learn, you’re just going to be left behind. I think every few months, it’s like we’re always learning, I think, is pushing us to always grow. Last closing thoughts for our listeners. If there’s one piece of advice you could share for other leaders, what would it be?

Kelly: Be authentic and be kind. I think especially if you’re working in healthcare. I talked about my husband having open-heart surgery. He was in the hospital for a month. The people that I remember are the people that were kind to us. His nurse, her name’s Amy Anderson, and we’ll never forget her. She did so much for him. That is the business that we’re in, humanity. I think kindness and authenticity really underpin being human.

Ashley: Everything. Lead from the heart, like you said. Be kind. That shows up on the team, and then it just transcends outward to the rest of the organization.

Kelly: That’s right.

Ashley: That’s great advice. Thank you, Kelly, so much for joining me tonight.

Kelly: Thank you for having me.

Ashley: I think people have a lot of tidbits that they can take back to their teams. I know I do. I want to noodle on this and think about some ways that I can show up better. Thank you again. If listeners wanted to connect with you, learn from you, where can they reach you?

Kelly: I’m on LinkedIn. That’s my primary thing. If you just search Kelly M. Perritt PhD, you’ll find me.

Ashley: Cool. We’ll link it in the show notes. Thanks again for joining Ignite. Join us again next week. Thanks.

Kelly: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Ignite. Interested in keeping up with the latest trends in healthcare marketing? Subscribe to our podcast and leave a rating and review. For more healthcare marketing tips, visit our blog at cardinaldigitalmarketing.com.