From broken attribution to 14% dental patient growth

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, Cardinals experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Ashley Petrochenko: Hey guys, welcome back to the Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast. Really excited for today’s guest. She’s joining us from Northern California, my place and my birth. Always fun to meet new podcast guests and find those connections. Same thing with conferences. It’s like you go to a conference and you meet new people. Dykema DSO was just last week, so we’re going to talk about All Things Dental. She’s coming to us from Kids Care Dental & Orthodontics, where she is the VP of Marketing. Without further ado, let’s welcome Kassie Churchill. Welcome.

Kassie Churchill: Hi everyone. Nice to meet you. Thanks for being here.

Ashley: Before we dig into All Things Dental, let’s talk a little bit about who you are, where you’ve been, and some of your background.

Kassie: Like she mentioned, I’m Kassie Churchill, Vice President of Marketing for Kids Care Dental. We have 21 locations across Northern California, most in the Sacramento area, some in the Bay Area, some down in the Central Valley. We are pediatric dental and also orthodontics delivery locations.

Then we offer oral surgery and surgery center too. I’ve been here for getting close to two years. Before that, I was at Choice Healthcare Services, which is also pediatric dental and orthodontics, five states across the Western United States, where I was director of marketing there for several years too.

Ashley: Well, I think the pediatric space is more fun side of healthcare marketing in many ways. You’re allowed to cut loose because I think having that personality is what’s so important with building trust, especially with moms. I think most of our listeners know that mom is in the driver’s seat for most healthcare decisions. They are finding the providers, booking the appointments. It’s really important to build that trust with them. How are you thinking about that at Kids Care Dental? Building that trust right from the get-go.

Kassie: What we say is that the millennial mom is really our main target demographic. It’s changing a little bit as we get to the little kids, the under-five kids. Those are more like Gen Z parents. We see a lot of moms and dads at that, which makes me feel very old because I have little kids. That’s a millennial mom too. [chuckles]

What they’re really looking for is, can I trust you with a child? It’s like you said, it’s fun. We get to do the tooth fairy. We get to do superhero days and all of those fun activities and fun events and relationships with daycare centers and preschools and bring out the brushing buddy in a little tons. Really, what they’re looking for is, trust you with my child. Millennial moms are very into research. They want to make sure that your website is family-friendly, easy to book, that the provider has a good experience, the patient experience once they’re in there is a fun, engaging place, that they’re not scared.

What we like to say is giggly, fear-free smiles for all of our kiddos. They find us on Instagram. They find us on TikTok. Really meeting them where they are and ensuring that our website and any advertisement that they touch shows and really reinforces that trust environment too.

Ashley: You mentioned that millennial moms are very much doing the research, trying to find all the options. How have you seen that evolve over the last five years? We all know AI is playing a big part in that discovery phase. How is that appearing in the pediatric space?

Kassie: Absolutely. When somebody says that they’re an expert in AI marketing, I always say, at this current moment, you are. Let’s wait five minutes and see what happens to you. Who would have known that what we all could see the AI doing in the last six months? What we’ve really seen is we’ve launched an AEO and SEO optimized website. We make sure that we have all the capabilities on our website, that they find us where they are.

Also, really just improving the review generation, which is so important for the AEO and now GEO captures as well. We’re really seeing people being able to book directly from ChatGPT sources that we’ve seen from our UTM codes. That’s been pretty exciting to see the rankings improve there. We now have 17 of our locations that rank number one on ChatGPT AI searches on Kidstep, just near me, Pediatric nurse just near me, and those search terms.

Making sure that your Google My Business pages are really up-to-date, that you have all the FAQs, that you have your EAT signals that are top on your website, and those are the ones that are really pulling for there. It’s showing people where they are, which again, they’re finding us on these alternative news sources like TikTok, but then also ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude. It’s been on the frontier to be able to play around with.

Ashley: There’s not one channel. I’m going to do my research, and that’s it. They’re asking other moms, they’re asking ChatGPT, they’re listening to different reviews. I wanted to talk a little bit about that parent-to-parent referral because parents are trying to find trusted sources. Those are people, those are the internet, websites. How are you facilitating and encouraging those referral moments in person too?

Kassie: Especially in pediatrics, right? It’s like you see us twice a year, and it’s bringing them where they are. I’m sitting on the couch still on my phone, and it’s 8:00 PM and, “Oh, no, I forgot to book my kid’s appointment.” It’s reaching them from that kid-media’s perspective, but then also you mentioned from referrals that word of mouth is still so vital, and it’s almost a digital word of mouth too.

It’s why we’re talking about Google My Business pages and reviews being paramount in this environment. It’s also the relationships with local marketing, hyper-local marketing, and pediatric in particular is incredibly important because it’s the little league game that the mom’s sitting at. It’s the school play that they’re like, “Oh, no, I forgot my kid’s dentist appointment. Do you have a recommendation for me?”

It’s developing different ways that they can bring those word-of-mouth ones. That’s why they really stay involved in the hyper-local marketing as well. Not just paid media spend, bottom of funnel, but also those brand activities of community events and partnerships and relationships with daycares and preschools that the Millennial moms are going to.

Ashley: It’s not one channel. You mentioned Little League. I’m thinking of my own small little town. They sell $100 banners to put up on the fence. It’s like, but you’re sitting there watching. It’s like, “Oh, shoot, I forgot to book that appointment.” Then the Google–

Kassie: How many times a week sitting there? [crosstalk]

Ashley: Then you pull out your phone and the Google, I think in many ways, marketers, Google business profiles are like, “Oh, okay.” It’s a baseline thing that you need to do, but it’s becoming so important in the LLM world. That’s where they’re getting their information from. They’re pulling those reviews, like you mentioned. You need to have a strong presence and a really complete, 100% optimized profile, or else you’ll miss that hyper-local visibility.

Kassie: Just constant refreshing of it, too. It’s constantly uploading Google business profile photos, responding to even just the blank five-star review. This is really going to move the needle on those AI rankings, too.

Ashley: I’m assuming from a tech standpoint, you’re doing all of the– we always like to talk about tech stacks here, too. What are people using? What tools are you doing with the review encouragement, review campaigns, trying to get those moms to leave that feedback?

Kassie: Yes. We do have in-office promotions as well, where we try to encourage our teams that they get some incentive if they get the most number of five-star reviews. That’s really a three-star number of five-star reviews. We’ve had, in the last quarter, since we implemented an online reputation management system, as well as these different review platforms. We’ve had 85% increase in our five-star reviews. Nice. We’re really going to continue to add momentum to the industry, can I say.

Ashley: I like the competitive element of getting people to– I guess it’s not comfortable for a lot of people to ask for, like, ” Hey, give me your feedback right now. Having a little bit of incentive can help people get over that hurdle in the office when they’re right there. Your kid’s smiling, they’re giggling, like you said. They’re like, okay, now is when you ask, right?

Kassie: What a great thing. You’ve watched a movie, you played with the toys in the office, you got a balloon and a giveaway, and you’re doing really well. Also making it as easy as possible. Here’s a QR code that you can scan and do it, or here’s an SMS text after the fact, because they’re trying to get their insurance paperwork said and get the note to get the kid back to school, and the toddler is running off, and I have too much personal experience with all these parents.

Ashley: The chaos. Children bring a lot of chaos and fun. You have general dentistry. The routine need, like maybe you move to a new town, maybe for whatever reason you need a new dentist, but then there are the things that are a little bit more considered, bigger decisions. If you need dentists, maybe there’s an issue. You have those more considered decisions where you’re thinking about how do I find the absolute best? It’s a high-value service as well. How are you reaching and nurturing a mom to get to that point where they’re ready to make the decision?

Kassie: We like to think of it’s not just pediatric dentistry, and that what they’re looking for is that convenience factor. That’s not just near my location or takes my insurance, but also can I treat my child through the entire life cycle of my kiddo’s experience as a patient and their entire patient journey. That’s really something that we strive to focus on is that we’re not just pediatrics, but you can also transition into braces. We can take care of that for you right here with the dentist that you’re familiar with and the staff that you’re familiar with.

Then you need those third molars out, which 85%, 90% of kids do. You can do that here at our offices and our locations as well. Obviously, they’re higher priced than just the twice-a-year pediatric dentistry. They take a little bit more of relationship-building and conversion tactics as opposed to twice-a-year, covered by insurance. It’s developing those relationships. It’s making sure that they feel comforted as you are their provider for the entire patient experience through aging out as pediatrics as a whole.

Ashley: How do you think about payer mix? I know in pediatrics, in some locales too, there’s a little bit more of a Medicaid versus commercial insurance. Are you considering that and developing different pathways and journeys to reach those different mixes?

Kassie: I would look at that as a yes and situation. What we do is you reach the patient where they are. They are a little bit of a different, more transient population, more hard to get a hold of. From a communication channel standpoint, we do need to think about that differently. That’s a lot of, do we have SMS texting? They need to be able to go to our website.

Do they have any barriers to communication? We can’t really reach them at their address. Can we find email address for them? Can we reach them on social media to be able to let them know that we can take care of them here? That’s a little bit of a different communication channel standpoint. As far as the messaging itself, a mom is a mom, a parent is a parent. They’re all looking for the same thing.

It’s really, what is the problem we’re solving? It’s, can I trust you with my child? That message is very similar in commercial pay or Medicaid. We might change it for the specific location. The Central Valley requires a different message than the Bay Area. I think the two ones that most people that are outside California probably know the difference between those two, but language and all those, but we’re solving the same problem. Can I trust you with the care of my child?

Ashley: Yes, the root motivation and the root need that they need to satisfy is the same. It goes to, like you mentioned on the website, the information, like is my insurance accepted or not accepted? Is that convenience and that quick assessment? Thinking about millennials, Gen Z, how are they making appointments now? What trends have you seen? Is it more so online booking? Are you seeing a lot more engagement with SMS? What kind of advice, recommendations do you have for people to reach those new types of moms?

Kassie: It’s definitely switched over. I would say it’s about 60% that do online booking and about 40% that do through our call center. Particularly if it’s a little bit more complicated. They have lots of kids, and they need to be able to figure out different scheduling or activities or calling for an oral search or consultation. We don’t do online booking for those. I think that they’re reaching those more primarily on, is it easy?

Again, going back to what I said earlier, sitting on the couch at 8 o’clock and you’re like, “Oh, no, my kid’s two months past due or my kid is three years old, and I have never taken them in for an appointment at all. I should probably do something about that because I saw an ad while I was scrolling Instagram.” Making sure that we have paid media spend where they are, and lots of our lifestyle and mobile marketing campaigns are on the booklet now, but being able to still be able to call and reach a person who can answer questions is still really important. That’s about 40% coming through phone numbers.

Ashley: I can think of many instances on my couch at night where I’m like, “Shoot, I didn’t call them before 5,” and then I text myself a reminder, call the dentist tomorrow, call up my PT tomorrow. Yes, I think especially working moms too, that convenience factor, being able to do it quickly in between moments is really important to not have to be confined from that 9-to-5, which is tricky.

Talk a lot about reaching the mom. How do you get them in the door? Let’s transition a little bit and talk about measuring marketing performance. What have you found in your career advice that you’d say actually matters to the C-suite and board, and truths that you live by?

Kassie: What I think is interesting over, I would even say the last five to seven years of my career, is really taking a look at marketing as a ballistic discipline has really changed. It’s not campaigns. It’s not the big flashy, here’s the really cool impressions that we did or like that. It’s marketing is the growth engine for the organization. Less about communications, but growth engine, and how does that tie back to revenue?

I think that’s what they’re always really looking for when the board, CEO, when they’re saying, how do we build revenue and how did you build pipeline? Can you track this and attribute it into growth for the organization? Dashboards are cool, but also how do you translate that into acquisition of patients? Which again, going back to pediatrics, they age out of our system. Always constantly needing to tie anything, any activity you do, back to how did it grow the organization as a whole.

Ashley: The impact you have to prove, the impact to the absolute business outcome. Attribution, I think that’s every marketer’s favorite and maybe hated word. Hated out there. It’s tricky. It’s not perfect. We talked about all those different sources that you’re on your couch, you’re looking at TikTok, you’re on these different channels. You see that banner at the park. How do you guys think about still proving that impact and connecting the dots back to business outcomes?

Kassie: I think that’s, like you said, the most fun thing about being a marketer is there’s the ones that like the paid media spend that you can see bottom of funnel, and you can actually see patients book directly from that. Then there’s feeding the top of the funnel, and those activities like the banner at the park and the relationship with the local daycare center or the FQHC for the Medicaid population.

I think that bringing those back into an entire here’s organic growth, what’s the patient journey, and being able to optimize it throughout the patient journey and getting as close to a revenue conversion engine and making sure that you can translate that back into it too.

Ashley: There’s a lot of different ways, and it’s not perfect. Then how do you communicate that to the C-suite? If they feel confident, they need a level of trust. Is there anything that you’ve seen in your career that this is advice to our listeners that’s been helpful for you?

Kassie: Anything that you can do to tie it back to the source is really what they’re going to look at. They understand that you need the larger top-of-funnel activities, but as far as what they’re seeing, that didn’t translate into new patient growth. Being able to explain this much increase in this addition to the website.

What does that, on average, look like when it translates into new patient growth? Typically, do you see this piece being aired? Okay, well, then what does that translate into? Taking those averages and trying to amalgamate it into a dashboard, that’s the executive-level view.

Ashley: To close this out, and I think go back to maybe some of the fun parts that we talked a little bit about, pediatric specialties and how it allows marketers to develop some of those fun campaigns and let loose a little bit, I think, in the healthcare world. We’re going to do a quick closing, and we’re going to ask you a few rapid-fire questions. Thinking about outside of healthcare, where do you find your best marketing inspiration?

Kassie: I would say the brands that are the hello-there brands. You’re talking Disneyland, Dutch Bros, if you’re familiar with Dutch Bros, the coffee company. Chick-fil-A, the ones that you know that they are there for the consumer. I get a lot of, because again, we work in pediatric, so it’s that patient experience across the patient journey, so it’s like, how could I translate that into it? Disneyland, Dutch Bros, Chick-fil-A, the super happy, joyful ones to be here in their job.

Ashley: They’re fun, and they allow you to embrace your inner kid in some way, too. I think everyone can use the moments they get back to that inner childhood, and they giggle, like you said. Is there any one campaign that you’ve seen in any of those brands or other brands that you were like, “Dang, that is really good, I wish I did that,” or you drew inspiration from it?

Kassie: One that really turns the user into the marketer is Spotify Wrapped. I’m always really amazed when I see people share it. I don’t even have Spotify, but I’m always amazed every year when I see people share their Spotify Wrapped and how much they used it for the year and all the specifics on it. It’s really fun, and people like to do that, and it’s turning the consumer into the marketer, and I always find it fascinating to see.

Ashley: Yes, I love it. I think it reveals a little bit about who you are as a person, and people love that self-discovery. It’s like, who am I? Then I want to tell the world about it. Last question, real quick. A recent win that you’re proud of.

Kassie: One that’s a little bit less obvious is that we really just rebuilt the funnel. When I started, it was month over month, year over year declined since COVID. Every healthcare marketer’s nightmare. There was just no attribution. Everything was really external. It was a lot of really large brand campaigns. I rebuilt the funnel, brought a lot of the superfluous agencies in-house so we could have more of that, have people on our accounts as opposed to lots of this massive ecosystem that it was.

With that, we’ve been able to grow patients steadily since then. We closed June at 10% new patient growth and looking to close July about 14%. Rebuilding the funnel and being able to track it and attribute it has been, can I say exciting? Is that nerdy marketing speak of attribution?

Ashley: I think that’s very– we talked about campaigns and the fun part of marketing, but the foundational work of getting the right technology in place that’s HIPAA compliant, that you can actually track things in a compliant way. That’s hard work. It’s a slog. It takes a lot of people to get on board with. Once you do that, you have the ability to say, this is where we’re going to be able to grow and how we’re doing it. I think that is a really big win. That’s awesome. Congrats. Congrats.

Kassie: California always adds some more complexity to the healthcare marketing space too.

Ashley: That is true. California leads the nation in terms of all of their regulatory stances. I think you guys are on the cutting edge of figuring out how to navigate all of that. That keeps you on your toes. It’s fun, but it’s also really hard. If there’s anything to close out the episode, looking ahead for the rest of the year, where are you focused? You rebuilt the funnel. What’s next?

Kassie: I continue to grow and to meet patients where they are. As we said, we’re seeing a lot more of that Gen Z. What does that look like, because we’ve been focusing on the Millennial mom, and now it’s Gen Z parents? I’m really excited to dig into that and all the new AI capabilities. I think it’ll be really good to operationalize AI as opposed to if you use it for content and all the other online management and all those pieces that we’ve had before, but how can we really operationalize it to make a more efficient-looking organization?

Ashley: Kassie, thank you so much for joining Ignite. It was a wonderful conversation. Thanks, listeners. Join us again next week for another episode. Bye.

Kassie: Thanks for having me.

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