How Earned Media Builds Trust When AI Can’t

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.

Alex: What’s going on, everybody? I know you miss me. I miss you more. Actually, I don’t know you miss me. False. I miss all of our three listeners. Thank you for coming back to your favorite, maybe second or third favorite, 15 minutes of the week. This is going to be good. We got one of the big shots from a big place to learn from. Buckle up, or enjoy your gardening, or your walk you’re on. Genevieve, welcome to Ignite.

Genevieve Branco: Hey. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Alex: Yes. No worries. This is a highlight of my day because I get to learn all the fancy stuff all you fancy people are doing. This is going to be fun. Tell them where you work and where do you work from on the Left Coast.

Genevieve: I work in California in the Central Valley. I work for a hospital system called Adventist Health. My purview is over 8 hospitals and 131 medical clinics.

Alex: Woo. In total, the whole health system wide, it’s like 440. You got about a quarter of the sites of care.

Genevieve: We have Adventist Health and we have ADVET Health. They’re two separate companies. I’m on the Adventist Health side. We have a little more-

Alex: Beautiful-

Genevieve: -mid 20s in the hospitals.

Alex: Got it. I love it. For context, are you over all the service lines within those units? You have cardio, urgent care. I even saw dental on the website. Am I crazy? Did I– [crosstalk]

Genevieve: We do. We have dental. My team runs all the marketing and communication. That’s internal, and external communications, crisis management, and all the paid and unpaid marketing, social media, all of that, through my team.

Alex: What’s your favorite of all of those?

Genevieve: Probably earned media. I think we’ll probably end up talking about that a little bit today. The myth that earned media is free is something I’d love to chat about. That’s the most challenging. You get such a rush when you get something picked up by a media company or somebody calls you and says, “Hey, I saw your press release and I want to run a story for that.” I feel so accomplished when that happens.

Alex: It gives you a rush because it has real business impact. That’s why it gives us a rush, because it’s going to have real business impact. What are some of those impacts that you’ve seen?

Genevieve: Well, the biggest thing is trust and getting brand equity. When you get earned media, you’re getting the recommendation of others and the endorsement of others. That, really, it goes so much farther than us standing up bragging. I can say all day long that Adventist Health has advanced technology, and we have the latest and greatest thing. “Oh, we’ve got the Da Vinci Five robot, and we have this, and we have that.” That’s just me talking. That’s just Adventist Health talking. If you have a news source saying that or a partner saying that, then it really means something.

Alex: Now, all the PR people are loving life because the LLMs, AI search LLMs, take earned media, and press mentions, and reviews into account when they’re recommending what you should do for your care, or your treatments, or your symptoms, or your boo-boos, or whatever. It’s really fun. Earned media, not only good for the credibility, and you can use it on a website, “Hey, we were rated the best cardiologist,” whatever.

Now, you’ll show up in more search with earned media. All the PR people are like, “We told you we weren’t dead.” That’s very fun. Do you have dedicated motion to that? Are you answering the hero things that come out? I think they reinvigorated that. Do you have someone that just heads up all–? That’s you, I suppose. Is someone finding stories, going to them saying, “Hey, we rank you as–” What’s the motion there to give it priority?

Genevieve: To be honest, we have the leanest team. That’s part of the Adventist Health Central California model is to have a very lean team. I only have 10 people on my team, including myself. We have two people dedicated to internal and external communication. That means that they are responsible for driving all the external communication that gets a lot of that earned media. It’s a challenge. It’s a tough place to be. We’ve discussed getting a PR firm or something, but we really feel strongly that we’re doing a great job on our own.

Alex: Yes. Yes. Awesome. Hey, 10 people, Genevieve, is about 9 people more than most people have in-house health care marketing. [chuckles] That’s pretty cool. While we’re on the topic or maybe I’ll come back to, what would be your first hire? What was your first? They were probably there when you got there. What would be your first marketing hire if you were building a marketing team for in-house health system or provider group?

Genevieve: I think someone with great writing skills. That’s interesting because video is something we spend a lot of time on social media. We spend a lot of time on. We do so many marketing things that are all different platforms. To be honest, you have to have the writing skills, because whether you’re writing a script, whether you’re writing a press release, whether you’re writing a story, everything starts with the written word, believe it or not. It’s still a classic marketing, really important element. I would be looking for someone who wakes up every morning and says, “What makes me excited, what gets me going is the written word, and being able to tell a story.”

Alex: That’s so interesting. I hear marketing, ops, tech, someone that can manage our CDP. That’s the first time I’ve heard that. I love that because ChatGPT is making everyone super dumb.

Genevieve: It is.

Alex: Doesn’t help with bringing the story to the people. The story is not worth anything if nobody cares, and nobody cares if it’s boring.

Genevieve: I’ll tell you what, Alex, let’s talk about ChatGPT for a minute and AI because everybody thinks that’s the next big thing in marketing, right? “Oh my gosh, it’s making our job so much easier. I need a title for this,” or, “I need a summary for that. It can summarize my research.” You can do all this stuff. The truth is people can spot a fake from a mile away. I have a daughter who is 17. She’s an artist. I show her something I found on social media. I’m like, “Look at this cool picture of this tiny house.”

She says, “Mom, that’s obviously AI generated.” I look close, I’m like, “Oh, yes. You’re right. Those are stairs that go nowhere.” [chuckles] People are getting trained to see that fakeness. I believe that the pendulum is swinging back, and it’s going to continue to swing back into authenticity, genuineness, real people, real faces. People are going to be able to spot a fake from a mile away. While AI and ChatGPT and those things are a great tool, it can’t replace the real human thought and interaction that we have and our abilities.

Alex: I think all of the AI stuff and the robots are going to make people go back to human connection, wanting to just go sit at a restaurant and talk. I would love to be in the event, or wedding, or travel space right now because everyone’s going to flock to it. I think they’re going to get retired.

Genevieve: Yes.

Alex: Something healthcare marketers beware of is, I’ve seen a lot of people starting to use the AI videos and present it like it’s a real patient. Careful with that, guys. [crosstalk]

Genevieve: That’s exactly what I’m talking about. While everyone else is going in that direction and trying to save money, save time, do what’s easiest, I think what we’re doing is actually going the opposite direction. We’re pulling in local people, getting local employees, real employees, real patients, telling real stories, and people will know the difference. I think that’ll serve us best in the long run.

Alex: Let’s talk a little bit about where your focus is going. We talked about our media and how your first hire would be somebody with copywriting skills and that thinks in terms of story. What do you think helps drive the most patient volume? What are you focused on for the second half of the year? So much pressure being put on health systems to drive revenue, and we’re getting less funding, federal, [unintelligible 00:07:05]. What do you focus on for the rest of the year to drive patient acquisition?

Genevieve: Our issues are all related to the legislation that’s coming down from Washington. It’s all about doing more with less. Yes, it really is making the economy more tricky. [chuckles] Everything we’re doing is more tricky right now because of the unknown. We never really know. It’s always unknown. Obviously we’re proactively cutting our budgets and looking for more we can do with less, because we are anticipating lower net revenue as the year goes on as Medicaid and Medicare cuts come down the pipeline.

We have a huge rural footprint where we’re at in the Central Valley of California. We’re looking at a difference in the payer mix and the patient mix that we’re anticipating. Really for us, it’s being very focused on our marketing. We’re really looking at how we can drive commercial traffic specifically and commercially insured traffic, and really try to be intentional with every dollar that we spend. We can’t just try things. This isn’t the time to try things necessarily. It’s the time to do what’s tried and true.

Alex: It’s a fun part of marketing and it’s true. That’s what we’ve been telling people.

Genevieve: Yes.

Alex: Try things if your main thing is going really well.

Genevieve: You always want to try things, but you want to make calculated risks, right?

Alex: According to me, trying of the budget is smaller now.

Genevieve: Right.

Alex: [chuckles]

Genevieve: There’s times when you can be a little bit more liberal with your trying and take a little bit bigger risk. This isn’t that time.

Alex: This is not that time.

Genevieve: Yes. That’s right.

Alex: Okay. Driving more commercially insured patient. How are you doing it?

Genevieve: Well, it’s being intentional. We have a precision campaign, for example, where we compare our data with Optum data, and we look digitally to specifically target patients or prospective patients that are commercially insured or in the right age demographic, likely to be working. Targeting families. We’re all targeting primary care patients because that’s the front door. That and the ER. I think that’s a big, big effort for us.

Alex: Get them in the door. That makes sense. Through that data, you can layer in those audiences, I assume, and then you’re serving advertising for them. What is one big health care marketing myth, Genevieve, you would love to prove wrong?

Genevieve: I think I would love to prove wrong that health care marketing is not as trackable as other–

Alex: Woo. Tell us more. How are you tracking?

Genevieve: Yes. There’s a lot of ways to track health care marketing and your success rates. It’s true. We’re not selling widgets. You don’t walk into the store and buy a widget and walk out. It’s not a one-to-one. That’s true. You’re building brand awareness. You’re building trust. You’re educating your consumer. There’s so much going on. There are tools like NRC Health Data.

Any digital marketing is trackable. Any direct mail is trackable with consumers. You really have to think through how you can track what your website traffic looks like, where you’re driving your traffic from, and choose initiatives that help you overall see success in your market. I don’t think that you can take any one tracking tool independently. I mentioned NRC Health Data. They have a tool. [crosstalk]

Alex: Who is that? I’ve never heard of that.

Genevieve: Oh, it’s a trending tool  for brand and reputation management. You can see how you stack up against your competitors based on a small survey sample in that area. It’s just a small survey sample. Again, it’s not a standalone tool, you’re not going to hang your whole hat or your whole campaign on that. Seeing over several months or years even, seeing that the trend of your brand awareness or you’re likely to recommend scores go up, these are all good.

There’s also so many wonderful tools after a consumer comes into the hospital. Are they getting the experience they expected? I think that’s really important as a marketer. We’re not just marketing, but we’re marketing an accurate experience. You’re not going to advertise you have the fastest ER wait times or you have a fast ER if you don’t have a fast ER. That’s setting yourself up for failure. That’s setting your clinical staff up for failure. It’s really important for marketers to track to what they’re recommending or what they’re saying.

Alex: I love it. No one has a fast ER. Guys, nobody should be mentioning that because I’ve gone to those fast ones, and me and my kiddo sat there for four hours while his appendage was bursting. Genevieve–

Genevieve: I think it’s how we define fast, right?

Alex: [chuckles]

Genevieve: If you’re a nurse that works in the ER, you’re like, “Four hours, great job. That was really fast.” [chuckles]

Alex: The doctor goes, “Come in. Ollie, jump.” He jump and he’s like, “Hang on.” He goes, “Yes, it’s bursting. We should get you back.” I said, “Okay. Probably should have done that four hours ago.” Genevieve, you talk about making sure that we’re advertising what the clinical team can deliver on. Do you have a pretty close tie in with ops? You generally know what service lines are, what quality, but how do you know who needs what and where? How are you getting that information?

Genevieve: Yes. That’s really important. Marketers have to be the experts of everything in a hospital or in a clinical setting, and we’re not. Right? We’re not. We have to admit that we’re not. We have to partner with all of our clinical people. The way my team is structured is, each person has some service lines that they’re aligned with. Again, we have this eight hospital footprint. We span across five counties and we have eight hospitals. Every person on my team, for example, if somebody has orthopedics, they get to know that orthopedic leaders all along that whole Central Valley.

They’re charged with getting to know them, being right there in their frontline meetings, and things like that, so that they can really understand what the initiatives are coming down the hill, the pipeline, and all of that. It’s really important too, as we go forward with all of our marketing campaigns, to have those discovery calls with the business leaders on each unit and say, “What is it that we want to promote?” Align those with leadership goals and the tactics of the whole network. I think, as long as we’re doing that, we can get our information because, let’s be honest, we can’t be experts in every single way, even though people think marketers are. [chuckles]

Alex: We think we are. I had an AIDA post about how all of us tell people we’re in health care. [chuckles] It’s like, “No, we’re not.” That’s great. The service line leaders will– The Head of Ortho Service– It shows how little I know about health systems to ask that question. For you, that’s over all of those people, do you have meetings with–? Is there a head of all sur–? Where are you getting or it’s just your marketing directors of the service lines come to you? Then, what is the number one thing they track? What is the first thing you look at, Genevieve? Patient rolling, open appointment? What is it?

Genevieve: It depends on the service line. It depends on whether it’s a hospital based service line or it’s a clinic based service line. We’re going to have different metrics for all the different lines and their individual goals. Yes to everything you said. Yes, we have meetings with our service line leaders. Yes, we go to their meetings. Yes, they come to us. All of those things happen.

Alex: Got it.

Genevieve: We know which service lines are the biggest moneymakers, and we also know where our front door is. We drive traffic to those areas first and we lean into leadership. In our Central Valley network, we have leaders that go over the service line. For example, if I want to look at the neuro service line, I have one director that I can tap into to get the entire breadth of the network. That’s really helpful for us because we’re getting that whole story.

Alex: Yes, that makes sense. I think people downplay the importance of the internal networking where they get a new gig, as marketers we’re just like, “Hey, we’re going to go advertise,” whatever. It’s like, “No, you need to make buddy-buddy with all of these people,” because it’s like, “Whatever.”

Genevieve: No, and you have to be present. You have to be present. We recently just stumbled upon the best story because we were present. I was out at the Delano Hospital in Delano Regional Medical Center, and I was there for a leadership meeting with all the leaders, and just showing up. I didn’t have to go in-person. I didn’t have to be there that day, but I went there that day. I went over to the maternity ward to meet up with the DAISY Award winner, which was a nurse that won the DAISY Award that morning.

When I was walking through med surg, I saw that they had these big balloons that said graduate. They had some little stuffed animals, and I said, “Hey, what’s going on here?” They said, “Well, we’re doing a graduation ceremony for two of our patients who missed their high school graduations because they’re stuck here in the hospital.” I was like, “Wait. Stop time, stop the presses. This is a great story.”

Immediately I phoned a friend, I called up one of my team members, and she came running down, and she was present. We recorded, we got the family to sign off. This was one of our most popular social posts. Went on the news, it was fantastic, our media story about how we brought graduation to this family. If I hadn’t been there present at the hospital, I wouldn’t have heard about it because, unfortunately, the clinical people are too busy to think about, “Oh, this is a great marketing story.” They don’t have time for that.

Alex: Yes. They’re like, “No. Please saving lives.” [chuckles]

Genevieve: Yes. Saving lives. Exactly. I don’t have time to call marketing, even though we’re trying to get them to, they just don’t have time. You have to be present. You have to go in-person. If you have the option to get in an Uber or get in your car and drive to a place and have that meeting face-to-face, do it. That’s big advice for me. There’s no excuse if you’re on campus, or if you’re across the street, or if you’re down the hallway. This was a hospital that’s an hour away from me, but there’s no excuse that the hospital is across the street. You need to be in that hospital, go face-to-face, stand there and talk to people.

Alex: It’s crazy. I’ll go to my office tomorrow, and nobody will be there. Two lessons there, you have to show up being in-person with all the robot stuff, it’s the competitive advantage now. That is the one thing they definitely can’t do is be there. Number two, is you have to internally network so that when you do make the call, just like we just filled in, you phone a friend, they show up. [laughs]

Genevieve: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Alex: It’s about networking and being present, guys. There’s no replacement for that. I have one more question for you. What is the one tactic, and you can’t say all digital marketing, what is the one tactic that has been most instrumental in driving patient acquisition?

Genevieve: Well, I would selfishly like to believe that our paid advertising drives most of our traffic because it’s our most expensive initiative. I would like to believe that our television commercials, our beautiful Super Bowl ad that ran locally, our billboards, our accompanying digital media, all of that we’ve put so much time and investment in is what’s driving most of the traffic.

I can’t say that for sure. I think, to be honest, probably the biggest place we’re getting traffic from right now is some of our precision campaigns, some of our social media, some of our local grassroots brand awareness, our partnerships, our feet on the ground, showing up for the community, and everything we do. I think that’s probably where we’re getting the most brand.

Alex: What we just heard is there’s no one marketing thing that gets the whole thing done, guys.

Genevieve: That is true. That is true.

Alex: As much as everyone wants to track everything, the outdoor media does help, the grassroots stuff does help, the partnerships do help, digital marketing does help. You could run into trouble. Clients come to us thinking that digital marketing, BBC, big social we’re going to do, SEO is going to solve their business. It won’t. You have to do all those other things, and it makes our thing online really awesome, guys. You heard it from Genevieve. You got to do all the things. It just takes the wizardry of a really good marketer to understand what things to prioritize, and how much proportionate budget to give them, and then try to track something along the way. Genevieve, thank you for joining us on Ignite.

Genevieve: Yes, thank you for having me. Have a great day.

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