How Influencer Marketing is Changing Healthcare

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: I already have a guest on today that I’m very excited about. I learned from everybody, but this is really cool because it’s slightly outside the Cardinal wheelhouse. You guys know us as a performance advertising agency. We help multisite provider groups to acquire patients. Very cool. There’s a new type of marketing on the block that we’re going to learn about today from Pavllo. Pavllo Zengo, welcome to Ignite.

Pavllo Zengo: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Alex. I’m excited to get to talking and discuss everything about healthcare, everything about influencer marketing. It’s still new, but not new as it was years ago. There’s a lot of development. Let’s get into the nitty gritty of it.

Alex: I like it. I’ll tell you, it is new to healthcare, especially multisite providers. We’re getting a question every month or so from clients, “Hey, what do you think we should do, UGC or influencer?” We’re like, “We don’t know.” Let’s learn from Pavllo.

Pavllo Zengo: Send it to IMF. Exactly.

Alex: All right. What is IMF? Let’s start there. What’s IMF other than the Mission Impossible’s department?

Pavllo Zengo: Influencer marketing factory. We specialize in all things influencer marketing. That’s our bread and butter, but we do a lot more than that. We’re more of a full circle agency where we make and bring your campaigns to life through multiple platforms, really telling your story in an authentic way that sticks, and leveraging paid media, influencer marketing, UGC, social media management. You name it, we pretty much do it. We’ve been one of the first to do it. We have relationships with TikTok, with Meta. We bring something very curated and very customer-centric to the table.

Alex: It sounds soup to nuts. You can bring the campaign idea and you guys can–

Pavllo Zengo: It’s great for me. For me, I can tell you because I was on the brand side. I started off with brands and I hired IMF as an extension of my team. I’ve worked with them from the very beginning and I’ve worked with them across multiple brands. Finally making the jump on the agency side and joining their team earlier this year, in January of this year.

Alex: You’re a believer and a [unintelligible 00:02:14]

Pavllo Zengo: Definitely.

Alex: [laughs] All right, let’s talk–

Pavllo Zengo: We’ll go over the details of why I’m a believer in influencer marketing specifically and the right partners to bring that to life.

Alex: Why does it work in healthcare? Let’s start there.

Pavllo Zengo: There’s a lot of opportunities. Healthcare, if you think about healthcare as a whole, what are you trying to really do is build trust through personalized lived experiences and storytelling. Healthcare is not like other verticals. It isn’t about the hype. It isn’t. It’s just about the honesty. People want to hear from someone that really gets it, especially if they’re navigating any sensitive or confusing health challenges. Hearing from a creator or hearing from somebody who has symptoms that are similar to yours, I think it makes it relatable. I think that is where more companies are seeing the opportunity where influencer marketing or social media campaigns are making a move.

Alex: Give me an example of that. We talked earlier and you gave me a really cool one. I want our three listeners to hear the example of that. Influencer is what compared to UGC? We all get them confused. Let’s answer that in the context of give us as many healthcare examples you know apply.

Pavllo Zengo: Of course. You have different types. People get them confused. You have brand ambassadors. These are your people who are your core audiences who fight for your brand, for the believers. They are not for a partnership, but they are your core supporters. We call them, usually, ambassadors. Different industry, different things, different names, but for our purposes, ambassadors. Influencers are creators who have an account, have a following, and are relatable and have some kind of connection with your brand or with your business. That’s the sweet spot.

You can find a creator and obviously pay and make it very transactional, “Here is X amount of dollars, promote my brand.” That’s the generic-based information. If you really want to be successful, you want to find somebody who resonates with your brand. Understanding your brand, understanding what it is that they’re promoting, is that applicable to them? That goes into the example that you were just talking about. Specifically with healthcare, you’re building trust. It’s not like another vertical with beauty, skincare, “Oh, I use this lip balm,” or, “I use this eyeshadow,” or, “I use this skincare.” No, this is something that is real symptoms, real issues.

It could be anything from something that’s severe to something that is mild. I think the example we use is we share a client which is in that space and in skin dermatology area. An example that I said to you was about rosacea. When you’re promoting or you’re talking about rosacea and how to treat it or what are the symptoms, it’s hard if you haven’t lived with it. It’s hard to talk about it because the symptoms can range. Being able to showcase that through storytelling and how it’s specific layered with the storytelling is what’s rare. When it’s done right, it’s incredibly powerful.

It’s not just about the content, it’s about the representation. The conditions will look very different across all different bodies, skin tones, communities. Audiences want to see somebody like that reflect in the story. That’s how trust is built. It’s not going to be wide and generic, but it’s going to be deep and specific.

Alex: I love it. Good example on the rosacea. We love our dermatology clients. Where does it start? We have a lot of house of brand clients. It’s 400 brands, 400 locations. Probably doesn’t work. This specific is one brand that covers a major area in a certain state. It works better then because the person is going to say, “Hey, I’m a client. I’m a patient of X dermatology group.” What are they doing? They’re actually going into clinic or they’re saying, “I went and got treated for my rosacea.” Walk us through how the whole campaign works when they come to Pavllo and the IMF, talk us through soup to nuts, how the whole thing is deployed and who it makes sense for with provider type groups.

Pavllo Zengo: You’re talking specifically for somebody who is trying to get leveraged influencer marketing, or you’re talking about somebody who’s never done that? There’s different things.

Alex: Somebody who’s trying to leverage influencer marketing. Generally, these are the more advanced. They got 100-plus locations. They’re good on Google ads and Meta ads. This is the next tier to become more believable and reach different audiences.

Pavllo Zengo: The number one thing that we like to identify is what are they looking to do? What is the goal of the campaign and how are they measuring? What are the KPIs? The next part is identifying how do they measure success? Everybody sees success very differently. You can have a list of KPIs and trackable metrics, but how do you measure success? That way, we are aligned in this.

Then my job is to bridge those two together with influencer marketing. If this is what your KPIs are and this is how you measure success, now, how can I leverage my tools and what I offer to bridge those together? Again, identifying that is very, very key. With a brand that has multiple locations or in healthcare, is very different. It’s not product. It’s not something you can do at home. You have to go on site, on location, specifically when you’re trying to find something.

A rosacea can be a little bit more common, but you’re trying to find somebody who’s allergic with allergen tests. Who’s allergic to a specific allergy. Now, finding that person in New York with this difficulty, to go to that location can be difficult. This is where we zoom out and see the important part is finding the right patient and the right person to tell the authentic story, because, again, in healthcare, we want to build trust, we want to build loyalty, and we want to tell true stories. You zoom out, you find that perfect person, patient who’s struggling with this and can speak on it and who’s going through the pain because they’re also more invested in the process and understanding it.

It’s not just a transactional thing now, it’s something that is something we believe in. Then when they create that content, you will tell content that’s being done for money or transactional, and content that’s being done because it’s the story behind it. It applies to the individual. They want to share this and resonate with audiences and touch somebody or explain their struggles and their wins and their successes along the way.

Identifying that, picking the right person. Then this is where it becomes a little difficult because you will have the brand, the client who’ll be like, “Okay, well, I need them to come to this location,” or, “This is where we do it,” or for example, “This service is only offered in this region. We don’t offer across all of our 200 locations.” We get the content, get the service, and then we have to promote it accordingly with paid advertising or any other metrics in those centric areas.

Once we have the content, then we can promote it easily across multiple regions. Again, this really comes into identifying the right influencers, the right partner for you, because when you have that partner or influencer, it doesn’t matter who their following is, it doesn’t matter how much of their following. You can always boost it and the content is rich in story and rich in honesty. For me, that is a lot of the base importance of it is really getting that. Then pushing it and feeding it to the market is different strategy. Part two of it

Alex: It seems like a double play. You want to reach the influencer’s audience, but more so you also want to control the content and then advertise through paid social or whatever it may be as a true story. It’s great advertising content.

Healthcare marketers, what’s up? It’s Alex from the future. Guess what? Scaling Up: The Healthcare Performance Marketing Summit is back. Scaling Up is focused entirely on driving patient acquisition to your group. You’re talking the largest provider group, health system leaders, everything it takes to drive a patient to your practice or health system, from media, BI, analytics, performance, creative, SEO, AI, because we’ve got to have that acronym in there. October 28th and 29th.

Thousands of healthcare marketers are going to be showing up to this. It’s virtual and it is free. That’s the best part. Last two years, we were charging for it. This year, I want every healthcare marketing comp. We need to connect more patients with care. We all do. We all need to do it together. I’ll see you there at Scaling Up.

I have heard the same horror stories you have of influencer marketing and the campaigns that have gone wrong. I bet that a lot of that comes down to misalignment. Hey, performance marketing doesn’t work for a lot of groups either. I have those horror stories, too. That’s why in the initial discovery calls, we are so serious about how

do you see things. What are your disqualifiers, Pavllo, so that the audience knows, “Hey, listen, I need to think about things this way, and I know Influencer will or will not work based on these KPIs or the way I’m going into it.” What are some of those mistakes or myths or whatever you want to call it?

Pavllo Zengo: Honestly, for me, number one thing that I like to know is, do you know your brand? Do you know what your message is? Do you know what your target is? Who is your audience? Where do they live? What platform are they digesting information? A lot of people don’t know the basic information because they’ve seen or they heard about influencer marketing. It’s new, but not new like it was five years ago. People know, and they know a lot of success stories, or they don’t know the in-between, they don’t know the longevity of it and the ongoing process of it.

They know the influencer blew me up or influencer is a waste of money, the polar opposite, but they don’t know the part that it’s an ongoing method that you have to constantly work on. It’s an iteration. You can’t just be like, this works, this doesn’t work. Setting up the right tone, understanding your brand, knowing the KPIs. Again, what is successful, what is that going to be? That way, you know what we’re measuring.

Everybody says, “I want to track everything,” but we need to prioritize. Are you looking for reach, engagement, sales, top of the funnel to low funnel? Vanity metrics can be misleading when they’re not connected to actual goals. Yes, we can track all the big impressions, engagements, clicks, growth, saves, shares, but it’s understanding.

For example, I’ll give you a prime example, if we do a brand campaign and when you say we got 5K clicks and zero conversion, one brand can look at that as a flop and another one can celebrate it because the goal was to create buzz and education. Context is everything. In healthcare specifically, context is more of a nuance because metrics like comments, shares might show trust and building that trust and equity, even if it doesn’t translate in immediate appointments.

That’s why we always zoom out and ask, okay, does this move towards the long-term business goals? Is it giving us an audience insight that we can use for future campaigns? Are we learning what stories or creators or audiences are connecting with? Ultimately, it’s not about data volume, it’s about data with direction. The only way to get that is to define what you’re measuring and why before you even hit the publish button.

Alex: To me, it seems like a big-time brand play. That’s good. We all need that because there’s not enough demand just on Google ads for anything anymore. Google’s losing more share every day. It’s still the behemoth. You got the patient journey is complex and mama’s on TikTok and mama’s on Meta and Insta, the whole thing, and watching YouTube. Feels like you got to be everywhere. That’s the way these types of campaigns should be looked at. You can use it to convert, but it still feels like an awkward thing to show an ad with an influencer, to convert is really to build awareness. Then they’ll come looking for rosacea treatment when the time comes to Google or SEO or ads or SEO or whatever it may be.

To me, that’s how clients should look at it. Guys, this is a brand play. If you really need conversions, you should be maxing out Google ads. If you’ve already done that SEO, if you’ve already done that, guys, yes, we’re going to play in the influencer space and use this ad and promote in your local market. At the end of the day, it’s a brand pay. Look for more brand lift and search, look for your CPLs to come down, look for appointments eventually to come up. It feels like that’s what it is.

Groups with zero influencer experience, where would you tell them to start? Then if you can give us an idea of budget, too, how do you even look at that? I know of Google ad and stuff, how to do that by location. Where do you start? I haven’t done it before. Where do you start?

Pavllo Zengo: Budget is an interesting topic every single time because it’s the chicken or the egg. You tell me or I tell you. The idea between that is I want to look at your goal. If you’re looking to push $100 worth of inventory or make a sale of $100, typically, you want to spend 20% of that towards marketing or marketing push. That’s a generic rule that I tell people, is if you’re looking to sell through X amount of dollars, take 20% and let’s build that out.

Then within that 20%, we want to split it across, make sure you have enough content, you have enough social media, of course, you have influencers supporting it, you have enough paid budget behind it, because again, your influencers can only resonate so much. Then you want to geotarget it. You want to use paid ads. You want to use those quick calls to action specifically around big yearly calendar events.

Obviously, in the healthcare space, that translates differently. You have clients who during the summer, they should be tested more for skin cancer. You have different things that are happening throughout the calendar. Understanding that and laying that foundation. The biggest thing when you’re starting off from zero experience is to understand the goal. Again, what success looks like. That’s always going to be the main key things for me. Then the clarity of how you define the strategy.

I would say that we have to give ourselves a space to learn. The first campaign is always a testing ground. It’s about seeing what works, what doesn’t work, what the audience is responding to. Take calculated risk is very important, but give yourself enough runway, both in budget and time to collect the real data that will give you benchmarking. Normally, you don’t have anything to measure it from. You don’t really know if it’s working or not working.

How do we get enough data to see if this is working? If we go off the 20% off of what you want to sell, let’s say it comes out to X amount of dollars. Now I want to say, okay, let’s give ourselves at least six months runway, because less than three to six months, you’re not going to get enough data insights to see if it really works for you or not. Even then it’s aggressive. You work backwards from the formula.

Six months, I give you an average of X amount of dollars per month to spend. Now, within that six months, depending again, what industry you’re in, you might have a month where you’re going to spend a little more a month, a little less than you can fill it out. It’s a big push, little push, but you never want to have big fight. You want to have this continuity of efforts that are pushing continuously. Think of a momentum when you’re running and you’re sprinting and you’re passing the baton, you never stop. They both start running at the same time. Can you pass it mid running? You never stop because you never want to lose that momentum. The same thing with this.

People don’t realize you don’t want to lose money. You want to pivot and you want to make sure that this is working. This is not working. Let’s try this AB testing. Then you never want to stop it until something went completely wrong. Then, of course, you know you need to change course. That’s the idea behind it and how to get the hood. Then you build enough data and information to benchmark to see what’s working, where it’s not just a one-off post.

Then choose the right partners also. It’s a big thing. Having the right agency that understands and supports your business model. They have to understand what you’re working with. Some agency that’s good with consumer packaged good is not going to be good with healthcare because it’s a completely different model. Understanding the business model, the day-to-day pressures, the compliance landscape, build around that.

Healthcare isn’t just a regular brand where influencer marketing space can be treated the same way. It’s not a cookie cutter. You need a lot more strategy to go behind it. If you can get this grounding to your approach, I think you build the room for learning and then you surround yourself with the right team and you’re pretty often a good start and then it’s sustainable. That’s what you want to be. You want to be sustainable in it.

Alex: I like what you said. The first thing that really resonated with me is, give this six months, guys. If you’re just trying to test this over a quarter, you’re not going to get anywhere. You can’t even test Google ads and it’s a demand capture thing in three months. You can’t. It takes three months for the algorithms to learn. Unless you’re going to invest this for six months to give this a decent amount of serious budget. I know Pavllo gave us 20% off. Guys, I imagine if you’re not going to spend 50,000, 100,000-plus like this, you’re not going to get statistically significant data targeting a metro area. Right, Pavllo? Am I crazy? 10,000 is going to get– I don’t think.

Pavllo Zengo: No, it’s hard. I was that client. I was on the client side. I knew when you have that 5,000 per client, some 5,000 is a lot of money. That’s fine. I just think the expectation has to be set accordingly. There’s minimal spends. When you work with an agency, too, for example, us, or we’re running campaigns on TikTok, we work with multiple brands. Our purchasing power, so to speak, is a lot higher. We get a lot more incentives from the actual platforms that help the brand out.

Again, partnering yourself with the right agency will get you more for your dollar, but really understanding and pushing through. Look, I’m going to spend this much money no matter what. I’m going to divide it across these many months. I have the timeline. I have the right runway for the end of my strategy to pick up. It’s not premature. [crosstalk]

Alex: It feels like this type of thing works really well. We have the dermatology-shared client, anything visual, aesthetic, or man, it feels like reaching moms. If it was ABA therapy, something like that, that would be really impactful. I brought my kid to this ABA. Man, anything visual or heartfelt targeting with the moms.

Pavllo Zengo: Get new perspectives. We did the same thing with the client that we share. We gave different perspectives. We get the perspective of the actual provider, the professional. Give that POV because people want to know what’s different about coming here versus going to somewhere else. Then give the POV of the actual client consumer.

Alex: You had the providers in the videos that was part of the experience that–

Pavllo Zengo: Yes, I did. Again, what we did was we dissected what are your key differentiational points, what makes you stand out across your competitors or across anybody else in the market. Then you go search that. Okay, these are the five key main things that sets us apart. Okay. How do we tell this story in something that’s digestible? For example, if being able to get an instant appointment is something that’s important to you. Let’s showcase that. Let’s showcase what people really go through.

I know when I have to go to my provider or my regular doctor, sometimes I call and I’m like, “I’m not feeling well.” Oh, the first availability is in three months. I’m sorry. [chuckles]

Alex: I will be okay then. Thank you. Or I won’t be.

Pavllo Zengo: You end up going to a walk-in clinic. Again, telling that struggle is, okay, what it really is like when you can just go in and click your appointment, same-day appointment, that’s big. Showcase that from their POV and then showcase that from my POV. Okay, now I don’t have to worry. I can get seen today. I don’t have– It’s a peace of mind. Again, building the trust, building the relationship. Creating those storytelling through different POVs and through different customers is the same as treating different kind of symptoms or different

kind of concerns. Showcasing that is more relatable. You’re reaching a wider audience.

Alex: It feels like just you need different types of content to add to the advertising and outreach mix. You have provider, you’ve got an actual patient going through it. It’s like, well, guys, we can only create so many statics and videos and office walkthroughs. It’s another type of content. You can use the ads all year, whether you run the campaign for three or six months.

I love what Pavllo said about giving you enough runway. Guys, that applies to influencer marketing. It also applies to performance marketing. That is the number one Cardinal sin of advertising I’ve seen, is you want to test advertising or influencer for 90 days. Just don’t waste your time. Keep your money, come back, but–

Pavllo Zengo: Make it fun. That’s another thing is that people take it too serious. Have fun with it. It’s social media. People don’t want just serious. Have fun. Tell a different perspective. There’s a time and place. Understanding what platforms. You mentioned there’s so many different platforms. You have the opportunity to be serious. A YouTube channel where it’s more educational. Then you have time to make fun of yourself or make fun of the nuances of the lightheartedness of TikTok.

Then the in between of Instagram. Again, there’s a place and time for everything. The more you understand your brand, the more you understand what those KPIs are, then you have the freedom of creating these big pillars and categories where you can just have fun with content. [crosstalk]

Alex: Hearing you talk, it makes it clear, the most impactful part of marketing over the next few years, it’s going to be creative strategy, all of these channels. I need content that’s humorous on this one, more serious on that one. I need to talk to this person, that one in this demographic, in this city. [laughs] It used to be easy. Google ads.

Pavllo Zengo: Talking patient. Yes, and you’re limited.

Alex: That’s fine.

Pavllo Zengo: Now, it’s like all these capabilities. Communication, too. One of the main important things that I’ve learned in marketing across my 10 years of being in marketing is that people don’t communicate or don’t have that line of communication. For example, we work on the same client. We work together when we’re hitting those goals. Having that open communication where the agencies or your partners, internal or external, are constantly working together because you’re driving the same goal, is allowing you to get more for your dollar.

You have an ad, you have a spend that you are allocated. I have a spend allocated. We’re going for the same goal. There’s going to be overlap in there. Why not partner up and see how we get the most for our dollar? Gives us a longer runway and the ability to double down on that return. Be able to have that cross team pollination is huge for me. It’s a big, big missed opportunity. Low-hanging fruit that a lot of businesses either don’t recognize it or don’t put in the effort to combine those entities together.

Alex: Cross team pollination. Let’s make it grow. That’s why we love organic stuff. Pavllo, this was a blast. Man, I learned where to start, how to get it going, how to look at influencer marketing, how to think about audiences and providers and all of that stuff, and what messaging and what do you use on platforms. This was exactly the education I was looking for. Guys, you heard different examples. Remember, it’s all the ABA. This applies to a whole bunch of healthcare verticals. I think just about anything that’s retail healthcare,-

Pavllo Zengo: Anything.

Alex: -this works.

Pavllo Zengo: We can do anything. Just let’s work together.

Alex: You need to have enough money. Pavllo, thank you for joining us on Ignite.

Pavllo Zengo: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

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.