Should You Use Reddit for Healthcare Marketing?

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 Membrillo: I’ve been watching this dental group. I don’t know if Kaela ‘s going to let me call it that. They are one of the most advanced dental groups. I don’t want to call it DSO if you don’t want to be called a DSO. I don’t know what’s friendly. They’re awesome. They’re super innovative. You guys are going to really enjoy this. Kaela and I debriefed earlier and some of her perspectives on different things are top of mind for you. I know that you are going to really enjoy the next 15 to 16 minutes.

By the way, Kaela, I heard from one of our three listeners yesterday on LinkedIn. She hit me up and she said, I love all your content. I’m one of the three. I said, oh, just have two more to find. Kaela, welcome to Ignite.

Kaela Shupe: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. I’ve loved all of your content on LinkedIn for so long. I’m a super fan. The fact that I actually was invited to be on the podcast, I’m like, this is cool. This is really cool.

Alex: Oh, that’s very cute. The team will love hearing that. Listen, I thought she was going to say she’s been listening to podcasts, so we might have found our second on the three, guys.

Kaela: Maybe.

Alex: It’s okay. You’ll be listening to at least this episode, I have no doubt. Or you’ll listen to the sound of your voice, which creeps me out. I feel bad for all of our editors. They have to listen all day. Kaela, where do you work and where do you work from?

Kaela: I work for Tend Dental. I work out of primarily a New York City hub, but I live outside of Philadelphia.

Alex: They’re playing the Cowboys tonight, not to date this. We have no doubt how that is going to go. Prescott’s going to put up 40 points, both in fantasy and in real life, and still lose.

Kaela: He’ll still lose. Okay, as long as he lose.

Alex: I haven’t finished Jerry’s documentary. We’ll get to that at some point. Kaela, what is Tend? How big is Tend?

Kaela: Yes, so Tend, I like how you grew around DSO a little bit without getting into it. We’re smaller in the DSO space. We have 33 locations based out of New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Connecticut, and Nashville. We started in Nashville and now we’ve expanded out.

Alex: I didn’t know you started in Nashville.

Kaela: Yes, we started as a hub in Nashville. Our first location was actually in Flatiron, New York. We started building our corporate office in Nashville and then moved over to New York is where we were going to plant our roots.

Alex: Very cool.

Kaela: Yes. We’re about to celebrate our six-year anniversary since inception, so looking forward to that for early October.

Alex: Yes, that’s good. Thirty locations is what you said, right? They don’t call them clinics, guys. They call them studios, and they look really unique. You can reschedule by texting. I’m telling you guys, this is Lauren, our CGO’s favorite provider DSO, MSO thing in the country. She loves all things Tend. They are very advanced. Don’t let the 30 locations fool you. Some of the stuff that they’re doing is really cool.

The first question I want to ask, because it’s on top of mind and you see on the LinkedIn content, everybody comments whenever I say this word is Reddit. Why are you interested in Reddit? What are you guys doing to prepare for it or do something with it?

Kaela: Yes, I think Reddit’s very interesting. I’ve had Reddit for, I feel like forever, and I’ve used it in different capacities for my own personal use. We actually ran this AI brand audit when I saw one of your posts talking about Reddit’s going to be one of the key places for ChatGPT to get content. We’re seeing it’s coming from Reddit. I thought, all right, well, what does it look like when we actually go on ChatGPT?

We searched, is Tend a great place to go? We didn’t find a ton of favorable posts. I think it was a really hard look in our face of, great, we feel internally we’re an amazing company. I believe that we are, too, but what does the outside perception look like? Taking the look in the mirror and seeing what that is. Knowing that so much content is coming from Reddit, and that’s where the negativity was brewing, we’re like, let’s just nip that in the bud right off the bat, and let’s figure out how we can actually overcome all of that.

I do think that there’s such a crazy opportunity here for Reddit to evolve. I think there’s going to be Reddit influencers. I know everybody’s probably tired of hearing about influencers in general. I think there’s just regular, like affiliate marketing influencer fatigue. I think that Reddit influencers are going to be a thing. I think that authenticity, feeling like you’re talking to a friend, being in these really exclusive, not necessarily exclusive, but being in these subreddits that are exactly where you want to be. I think there’s a ton of opportunity to tap into really niche audiences.

My team started building out our own Tend subreddit. We have our own Reddit. Our chief dental officer, Dr. Chris Salernos, then going on and commenting under dentist subreddits, dental hygienist subreddits. I thought it was really interesting. He commented on one person who was asking in New York, is this normal? He comments, and his thing is like Dr. Chris at Tend, right? It’s not anything hidden or anonymous.

They’re like, hey, I actually saw one of your lectures. For us, this not only is around a brand perception, but talent acquisition, marketing pipeline, and how do we increase that? I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to start really building this out and coming off as really authentic in a space that wasn’t always favorable for us to begin with. I’m putting some eggs in the Reddit basket this year.

Alex: Yes, that’s good. Quick caveat. I’m assuming you’re doing that because your media is in a good place. We’ll get back to media, but I’m assuming. I don’t want everybody jumping in a red before the media is in a good place and we do audits every day, and the media is not in a good place, and we should not be talking Reddit. Back to Reddit. Guys, when you’re interviewing for a job, you heard it here first. Ask your chief medical or dental officer, are you willing to go on Reddit and answer people’s questions?

Kaela: Yes, he’s going to do an AMA soon. We’re looking for our first AMA, which is crazy.

Alex: Yes, and we’ll see how that goes. Can you give real answers without being like, and this is not hypothetical? I guess you have to advance like a lawyer a little bit on that. I understand somewhat of the explosion of Reddit because of the LLMs are indexing and so is Google. It’s a big thing. Is there anything else? Why did this all of a sudden come to be so exciting and influential?

Kaela: Yes, I think that just the authentic part of Reddit is something that I’m really interested in. As I think about it as a user, that’s where I’m going for things. If I want to dig into a Google review even further, I’m searching on Reddit. My husband uses Reddit for car stuff. There’s such a big opportunity to tap into so much knowledge. It’s like our millennial Wikipedia, I feel like.

Alex: I was going to say, where did we used to go? Facebook groups, but it doesn’t pertain to like dental. I’m not in a dental Facebook group. I’m wondering where–

Kaela: You can’t be unless you’re a dentist. How do you hack in?

Alex: Where did the landscapers all let me in? Where did the traffic come from? Where are we coming? Where did we used to get this information? That’s been on my mind lately.

Kaela: Before I was in the dental space, I was in the vet space as well. I was really working super closely with all of my veterinarians. What’s the insider scoop? Trying to figure it out from them because they were allowed to be in these groups and I wasn’t. Reddit is just a public forum. You’re like, cool, I can see the insider thoughts. Even the dentist question, like dentist subreddit is interesting because it’s dentists, and it’s people who have questions for dentists. It’s not like you’re just hearing a siloed version of what you want to hear. You’re just seeing a ton of different people responding. For me, that’s also really interesting because that’s the voice of the consumer. For us to be like, what are they actually saying about going to the dentist? What are they saying about this experience, molding our brand voice a little bit to help answer questions they might have?

Alex: So wild. I think I like your husband already. I spend most of my day doing car nonsense, and then I don’t do anything about it because I don’t have time. It’s interesting, too, because the yellow limbs have forced us to look at our business is the reputation, the brand perception and PR manners again and all that stuff. It’s like a Google, but it makes us better at the business. The business facts actually matter.

Just real quick, and we don’t have to dive into the nitty-gritty. What did you do? You went to chat and you say, hey, listen, what would earn us a recommendation for dentist in Philly or New York or Nashville? Is that what you did? Just help everybody understand. Tactically, what do you do? How do you figure out brand perception?

Kaela: Actually, Semrush has been really oddly helpful. I don’t want to pitch company or anything like that, but they ended up having this AI tool. I was like, well, let’s just put my domain in here and see what happens when I run this. Some of the new functionality that they have has been really helpful for us, and that actually was our baseline. Here’s what our positive perception is right now. Here’s areas of where we could be increasing. I think that for us was the eye-opener.

Okay, here’s where we know we need to improve. Then Semrush gives you ideas. Here’s content gaps that you have. For us, where do we start really drilling into those content gaps and filling them? Where do we own the market and where do we need to get better? That was our big starting point. We did just say to ChatGPT, in every market, we ask the same questions. Would you recommend Tend Dental to a friend in Boston? Would you recommend them in DC? Those were questions we were asking. Then we were also saying, what keywords are people searching and what’s the general sentiment of Tend in this market?

We took all that together, put it back in ChatGPT, and we did this not just in ChatGPT. We did it on Perplexity, on Claude, on Gemini, on Grok. We did it everywhere so that we don’t want to live in this bubble of just thinking Tend is amazing. Look, we know we have flaws, and we are reading them in Google reviews. I was between you and I, like, well, and all of our two listeners–

Alex: There’s only two.

Kaela: [laughs] We were seeing pretty flat 4.4 Google ratings month over month as a company. It wasn’t going up, it wasn’t going down. Okay, so we got to do something on our own here. I think that was, for us, our big moment of this is our way if we’re not going to get an influx of reviews that are all rave reviews. How do we change that narrative? This was our out, I guess.

We’re only about 45-ish days into having a Reddit. We’ve seen a lot of positive response from it already. We’re seeing traffic come from Reddit, which I was pretty surprised by. I’m like, oh my gosh, somebody read this post. We’ll take it. We get a couple of down votes when we go into select markets. Then other people are like, I left then. I’m like, cool, great. We’re doing it. We’ve got a great team who keeps an eye on everything, too, which is good.

Alex: That’s good. The goal wasn’t probably to drive traffic and leads. It was more to help brand perception, LLM recommendations and all of that stuff. Hey, if it helps, it helps. I do know it’s almost every search after the first or second position is just all Reddit queries. I think part of the reinvigoration of the platform is that we’re tired of the robots. I don’t think people trust that they’re getting back on Google or even the LLMs. It’s a regurgitation of what’s on Google. I think that’s part of what this is. Humans want to hear from humans until they extinguish us.

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Alex: Going back to chat content, I know you’re a big believer in making content interesting for healthcare. I thought that was interesting that you don’t feel it has to be all snooze fest.

Kaela: No. How many people have we all talked to that are like, I used to be afraid of going to the dentist? I read these books to my young kids, and there’s illustrations of dentists who look awful and evil and scary. You’re with a drill. It’s this menacing doctor over top of the chair. Of course, I also think back to when I was 26 years old, off my parents’ insurance for the first time and had to call the dentist on my own to book an appointment. That’s where the anxiety started.

Then the anxiety started. Who am I going to sit in the chair with? How do you actually make dental done differently, which is one of our taglines, and looking forward to the dentist actually a thing? How do you actually walk the walk? I think that’s been one of the things where I’m like, we can have fun. Are we jumping on the Taylor Swift opportunities after her engagement? Of course, we are. That’s our target audience, too, who resonates with that.

I think that’s a big thing that I don’t want to be like, oh my gosh, everybody go copy what all the brands are doing. That’s who our audience is. They like the summer I turned pretty. They like Taylor Swift. They like that kind of stuff. 80% of our members and our employees are women. We know who we’re talking to a little bit when we start out on any of our content.

Alex: That’s interesting. Two things there, guys. You got to know who your target audience is. Not everybody. 10 obviously knows it very well. Then you can have fun and be relatable in healthcare without breaking the HIPAA constraints and all that stuff. I think it’s really important that we all get more relatable because it just seems so bland, the stuff that we’re seeing. I think that’s really interesting. You know your audience well. I think that also tends to be one of the insights that you have gleaned about healthcare marketing is that you find that patients need reassurance as much as information. Tell me about that.

Kaela: Yes. As a woman in healthcare, I think a lot of times we’re afraid to speak up if something doesn’t feel right or sound right. I think that’s one of the hardest things to overcome, being in a chair or how do you speak up and advocate for yourself. When I think about our teams and how we treat people who come into our studios, that’s one of the big areas that I’m really passionate about. I think all of our teams are very passionate about making sure people feel heard, and that they understand what’s happening and why we’re suggesting what we’re suggesting instead of just saying, you need a root canal or, oh, you need this. I think giving the education also helps ease that anxiety and feel more connected and be like, I’m not just another number, especially when you’re a chain, a DSO, et cetera

Alex: Then you train your teams differently too.

Kaela: Yes. Our teams definitely have more compassion. I think it’s not just the headphones and the TV on the ceiling that help. It’s like, I’ve gotten in before. I’m like, can you just hold my hand for 20 seconds? I’m afraid when you’re going to give me the shot. I just need to, it’s going to be okay type of thing or rub my arm or something. Not everybody likes that, but for me personally, I’m just knowing that. I feel like I have a partner in the room with me instead of somebody super clinical who’s just going to drill away is a different scenario for what we do at Tend.

Alex: It’s important. The point being marketing can say all the right things and Tend has a wonderful website, but then the teams have to also believe in that, be trained on the persona and also have different ways they go about doing business to reinforce what marketing’s been saying on the website and the whole reason they got the booked appointment. Talking about your goals for the rest of the year, you have very similar goals to just about everyone else, lower tax and drive higher conversions, but you also believe in driving the right conversions. Tell us about that.

Kaela: Yes. I feel like this is a big thing. One of the areas that I want to focus on is, of course, numbers look good. Being private equity back, I want my numbers to look great when I’m sitting in front of the board, but at the same time, I want to make sure I have quality people who are actually going to show up. One of the areas that we realized prior to opening a studio is we were running coming soon ads and we were seeing a ton of traffic coming from Meta. We’re all like, put more money in Meta and then give it to Mark.

The next thing I know is there’s a 69% no-show cancellation rate for those appointments. I’m like, okay, psych, just kidding. Let’s shift gears. Being able to have insights to those analytics has actually been really helpful for me too. I would rather put the money into a channel that I know is going to work. No, it’s not saying Meta doesn’t work. I’m not trying to sit here and be like, it doesn’t work for us. It does, but it’s more of that post-open type of messaging that we’re doing and less of the coming soon and trying to get people. How many times are you that late night scrolling and you’re like, yes, I want that added cart or sign up for this and next thing in the morning, you’re like, I didn’t actually mean to do that.

Alex: I just had a trailer and it’s to show up here today. I’m like, I didn’t really need that trailer. It’s three new car seats. Didn’t need those either. My kids have eaten eggs now. Just a specific point there, you’re able to track lead from source, generally, multitask too hard, but lead from end source and then weather and show rate and then revenue, or you would invest more in analytics to get to revenue so you know if Meta drove show rates, but hey, they were all implants or whatever like that. Are you there? What are you tracking all the way?

Kaela: We’re getting there for sure. We use Jarvis and so we have Dentrix Ascend and use Jarvis on top of that to really track revenue all the way through. I think we’re in our early phases of really rolling out with that platform and I think that’s where I’m excited to see this go. We have our tax to LTV ratios. We have a general understanding, but I think we’ll get more clarity in that, and then we’ll continue to get clarity. I think if anything, I’d want to put more resources to help us get there faster. How do we figure out how to really drill in even deeper than we already are from an analytics side and title together?

Alex: Yes, it’s not easy. Healthcare makes it almost impossible to know every touch and all that stuff, but hey, we can get closer and closer every day. Guys, what you heard there is Kaela ‘s trying to understand not just how many leads are driven, but show rates. Understanding call center, effectiveness, online appointment versus call versus lead form, show rates, very important. Net new booked appointment versus mama just calling back in to get a script filled if you’re an MSO or get her kiddo. Back in, that’s not net new. Kaela ‘s trying to track all of it and then which platforms are driving the best quality leads, not just the highest volume leads to make the numbers look good.

CPL and showing that CPL or customer booked appointment went down, and leads and volume went up, but then the show rate is terrible. Eventually, PE figures it out and says, yes, but our Atlanta studio is not improving in revenue. Kaela, it doesn’t add up. I think that’s interesting. A question for you, Kaela, I’ve been pondering on. Someone asked me the other day, hey, with chat taking a lot of the search traffic, and I don’t think it’s a lot yet, but a meaningful amount of search traffic, are you worried that Google Ads becomes less effective? I don’t want to give you my answer to that. I’m curious what you think because you’re sharp. I was like, maybe my answer is dumb. What do you think? Are you worried?

Kaela: No, I’m still a Google Ads component.

Alex: It’s the majority of lead flow for every MSO and DSO. It is. It is. It is.

Kaela: I don’t think I’ll ever be like, oh, Google Ads is out. I think Google Ads will stick around. I think if I had to guess with Google, they’re just going to get even smarter and outsmart OpenAI soon. I think they’ll figure out a way to get even more money from me, I’m sure.

Alex: For the dental, you all have LSAs, you got PMA, you got all kinds of things that some MSO type stuff doesn’t have. I’m not worried either. I think you all hear the hesitation in Kaela ‘s voice, same as mine. We have not noticed lead flow going down at all for a single client. If anything, if your AIO type stuff is really good, you’ll capture whatever is being lost because I think people are still looking for care on Google, but they’re researching symptoms, conditions on chat potentially.

Kaela: Yes. I think that’s going to be one of the interesting parts. I think treatment conversion, once you’re in the chair, will be a different story. I’ve seen my sister do this. I don’t know how many people do this, but taking X-ray or taking something that you’re getting from a doctor and uploading that into ChatGPT, I’m not there yet personally.

Alex: Oh, I like you. I like it. I like your statement.

Kaela: Uploading that into ChatGPT and being like, what’s wrong with me? Or like, what’s my doctor going to say? I feel like that’s what the younger generation is really going to do. My sister, she’s only two years younger than I am, but she stopped me the one day I was with her. I’m typing something into Google. She’s like, what are you doing? I’m like, what do you mean? She opened up ChatGPT and typed the same question. Just seeing that transition. Even a two-year age gap of how she uses and search versus how I’m still doing it. I’m like, oh my God, am I my mom right now? I feel like, am I aging myself by using Google? I still think it’s going to be relevant. Google is still, for me, more intent-based, and I’m going to make an appointment.

Alex: Chat does a great job of summarizing Google search results so I don’t have to click on 10 links to do all the research myself. It’s good for that. Treatment stuff, not yet.

Kaela: I will say too, though, I did see ChatGPT with the agent side of things. I did type in, book me an appointment at 10 Upper West Side. It just took so long to actually go through that whole process and just going to the website and doing it myself. It is pretty cool. It is pretty cool you can do that.

Alex: Eventually, I think in the next couple, probably in the next year and a half, you’ll be like, I don’t feel that well. Can you find the best urgent care dental and book me an appointment? If you all are able to receive the appointments through Chat, I think it’ll be an AI talking to an AI to get the human.

Kaela: Oh, my gosh.

Alex: AI’s going to be like, why do I need you, human? You’re just annoying.

Kaela: Yes. There’s going to be robots walking in the street. They don’t care.

Alex: Yes. Dude, you saw that Black Mirror episode and now we see China was just parading. Oh, my God, this nightmare fuel. Yes, I’m not worried about it yet. Also, ChatGPT, OpenAI, and the rest of them are losing so much money that eventually, one day, someone comes and says, turn on ads. I’m tired of not making money. That day’s coming and it’ll just give us another thing to serve ads. For us dinosaurs that still love Google.

Kaela , this was awesome. I expected it to be. I knew it to be. Tend is extremely mighty and very advanced. You heard it in not just Reddit, in their media, in their measurement. Kaela knows what’s up. Where can they find you?

Kaela: Hellotend.com.

Alex: They’re going to look for you, though. They’re going to look for you. Yes.

Kaela: Okay. All right. You can find me on LinkedIn, Kaela Shupe.

Alex: It’s Shupe, like Salt-N-Pepa.

Kaela: Shoop like Salt-N-Pepa, yes.

Alex: Thank you, Kaela. We appreciate you.

Kaela: Thank you so much, Alex. 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.