The ‘Platinum Rule’ Every Healthcare Marketer Needs to Hear

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: What’s up, everybody? We’ve got both coasts, the left coast and the right, joining you on Ignite today. Todd, what’s up, dude?

Todd Richards: Hey, good to see you and great to be here with you. Looking forward to a fun conversation.

Alex: Yes, we’re going to have fun. Todd, tell them where you work and what you do there.

Todd: I am the Senior Director of Digital Marketing at Keck Medicine of USC. Academic medical center attached to the University of Southern California. I’m responsible basically for all things digital. The website [unintelligible 00:00:55], an organic search, paid and organic social, digital advertising, digital display, et cetera, so quite a bit on my plate.

Alex: Big job. I wasn’t as familiar with Keck as we’re over here on the right coast. I became familiar looking at LinkedIn, and y’all are top-ranked for a number of service lines. One of the top health systems in the country and also academic, which means all of the smart, innovative things happen. It’s not just theory. I went onto the website and I started typing in because I had AFib, and I had an ablation.

I was seeing if your search bar would auto-complete with some of these things. I did minimally invasive, and then I did cardiac surgery. I clicked on it and then I started reading all about your Maze surgery, which is more useful and has doubled the success rates. I didn’t see that on your site. I went to another website and it actually is doubly as effective as what I had done. Keck is actually very innovative.

I wish I had known about it before I did what I did. The point for people listening is not just to feel sorry for me. It is that when you do this and you go to that page, there is a video from a patient that walks you through the entire surgery and the recovery. What it was like and what her life is like now. If you guys think that you can just throw a condition and treatment page and have your content look just like everybody else, it doesn’t work. Todd’s going to explain why it doesn’t work.

Wow, kudos to you guys for having patient testimonials on treatment pages. I don’t see it often, Todd. Let’s talk. What do you see as the top trend healthcare marketers need to be aware of this year, it’s early ’25? What are you looking at? What’s keeping you up at night? What are you paying attention to?

Todd: Well, I think what’s keeping me up at night is, I hate to start with a buzzword, but AI is– We have to talk about it. We can’t ignore it, specifically, getting organic or driving traffic to our website, the site you just mentioned. It’s getting harder to do, certainly through organic, because of AI, the terrifying, if you use AI overview, answers all the questions for you. That’s something I think about just about every day is just understanding, how do we reach people. At what stage are we going to be talking to them?

Have they already gotten the definitions out of the way because they’ve read an AI overview, and then they’re looking for something else, and how do we make sure that we’re answering those questions at the right stage? That to me is a significant part of what we’re doing, at least from the website standpoint and from the organic, more than anything, outside of the business.

Alex: Let’s talk more about it because we have a live stream coming up in a week. It will have already happened by the time this launches. We’ll talk about that, and we’ll get to media in a moment. I want to stick on the AI overview type stuff. I was up at 1:00 AM last night seeing where AI overviews are coming. It seems to be a lot of upper funnel and dump stuff like that. Are you seeing that? Are you starting to see that as grabbing lower funnel, higher intent? Have you actually modified anything you do with the content, your website video? Anything on the website? Have you modified anything yet?

Todd: Great question. I’ll start with the first part of your question there. Is it mostly upper funnel? From what I’ve seen, yes. The stats I’ve seen show 85% of healthcare searches are shown an AI overview.

Alex: Yes.

Todd: Google hasn’t rolled out to everything for everyone, but healthcare is the highest of all the industries. Healthcare is number one. That’s reason to be concerned or at least get paused. The existence of the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, WebMD is another reason to have a little bit of concern. Those upper funnel, “What is sarcoma?” type of questions, they have a lock on that in many respects. Half of the different health systems across the country are licensing their content from one of them anyway, at least from a healthcare library standpoint. Most of it is upper funnel. That’s certainly opportunity for us. Now, have we changed anything on the site?

The biggest thing that we’ve changed is our content strategy. Can we differentiate ourselves based on our definition of sarcoma versus Mayo Clinic versus any other health system? I hope not. Honestly, I would hope that we’re at a place where the definition of sarcoma is the same for everybody or darn near the same. We can’t differentiate based on the definition content. Maybe that’s okay, that the overview is just going to take that for us. In terms of changing the content strategy, now our thought is, let’s assume they’ve got those definitions. Does that mean we don’t need to provide them? No, we still need to have that.

It’s somewhat table stakes, if you will. Rather than working to build that out and increase our content library around definition content and that sort of thing, we’re not focused on that. We’re focused instead on the areas that differentiate us from our competitors, and that would be at least potentially those treatments that you mentioned. Those treatment pages, that’s where our expertise, that’s where we come in, defining clinical terms. Everybody can do that, including and AI. Actually performing the critical care, the clinical operations, what have you? That’s where we differentiate. Our focus in terms of content strategy is let’s build out more of that.

Let’s beef up those treatment pages to highlight the differences. What makes us special? Whether it’s the people that are providing your care, which is a huge part of it. Or, if it’s the care that we provide, specifically certain treatments that we offer. You mentioned certain procedures that we do that might differentiate ourselves. That’s a big part of what we’ve done as well.

Alex: What Todd is saying, guys, and this is really important. I’ve been harping about it on LinkedIn, is we can’t rank for everything anymore. That’s what AI has taken us, the upper funnel. We used to get that upper funnel traffic and hope it would convert down. We can’t rank for everything. There’s some really well-established players, yada, yada, yada. Focus on your unique selling proposition. What are you the best in the world at? What do you do better? Then really hone in on that content, make those pages the best that you can. Patient provider testimonials, MD input, where your content is like almost editorial, like guys, focus on that and make it the best.

Not only will it help the ranking, Google I think is pretty smart. They will see the pages more useful. The dwell rate is longer, all that kind of stuff. You will rank better, but more importantly, when someone like me finds your website through whatever means, the patient journey’s elaborate now through whatever means, and they end up on that treatment page. They choose you because it resonates, it’s personable, and there’s actually a patient testimonial. Todd is spot on. Focus on what makes you best, and go there and stop worrying about the upper funnel traffic, it was taken. That was very low intent anyways. All right. SEO AI, that’s what we’re paying attention to. That’s what Todd is paying attention to. I love it. You are in charge of all digital media. That is all service lines to all service lines-

Todd: For each brand and service.

Alex: That’s an incredible job. I want that job after this job. Hopefully, they fire me from that job [crosstalk]. I think there is nothing. It is cool to use our marketing powers for good, and you can sleep while doing it. You used to work at an agency, so you know the value of being in healthcare now, very fun. All right, all digital media rolls up to you. It’s getting complex patient journey. What do you focus on with your media this year?

Todd: I think the most important thing for us when we think about media is the audience and understanding the audience. The best strategy in the world fails if it’s not reaching the audience the way that they want to be reached. One of the things that people around me are sick of hearing me talk about is what I call the platinum rule. We are all raised on the golden rule, do unto others, and treat people the way you want to be treated. The shift I’m trying to make is the platinum rule. Treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated. How I want to be treated has nothing to do with how you want to be treated. Let’s focus on them.

How that translates into media is understanding where our patients are and recognizing that it has to be different for every service line. For some service lines, let’s just say orthopedics or ENT, those are much more transactional, people can– We have a walk-in clinic, you can just go in without an appointment, and you show up and say, I have a stuffy nose, or my ankle hurts, or what have you. There’s a level of conversation that we have with them. That’s much more about here’s where you can go, and talking about ease of transaction. When you elevate to the more complicated procedures, the bigger, longer processing, then that’s where, because we know they’re going to need a referral, then we have a different conversation with that type of audience.

The other thing I would mention is ties directly to media is recognizing that many of the patients we have skew older, which makes sense to younger people, they’re invincible. They don’t necessarily need healthcare, and if they do it likely is because of a stuffy nose or a twisted ankle, [unintelligible 00:09:20]. If our patients skew older, who’s responsible for their care? Are we speaking to them? Are they the ones making their own appointments? Or, might there be an opportunity to reach an audience that’s making these plans for their parents?

We’re trying to think about things like that. Who is the audience? Who’s the patient? Who is the audience that we’re speaking to that’s responsible for that patient? Is it the patient themselves? Might it be a caregiver who’s younger? We know, we hear so much about the sandwich generation, people caring for their kids and their parents. There are a lot of them out there. That’s another avenue that we’re approaching, but all of it comes back to

understanding the audience, understanding how they respond, what channels they might respond to, and speaking to them, meeting them, not just where they are, but how they’re willing to be and how they might be receptive to the message.

Alex: I love it. The platinum rule, guys, treat patients how they want to be treated. I had not heard that. Todd coined it, put a trademark in when we put it as the headline of this conversation. I love it. That is so important to put them in your shoes. The sandwich generation is getting tougher and every year that goes by, we’re responsible for both sides. It’s exhausting. Think about it. What he mentioned was something that’s low acuity. Urgent care, whatever. PCP, that’s mostly about access and making sure appointments are available all the time or walk-ins avail, whatever it is.

Then the higher acuity stuff. Do we need to go through a provider or referral? Do we need to educate more with patient testimonials? Put your feet in the seat of your patients and then create content based on that. When you think about your media, you guys are huge. You’re spending a ton, I’m sure, on paid social and PPC and all that fun stuff. We don’t have to give secret sauce, but are you shifting more into one channel? How are you measuring the whole thing and the effect on all of them? I just did an attribution posted on LinkedIn and it has me even questioning how a bigger group would do it like you guys.

Todd: It’s a good question. One of the things you have to keep in mind for us, it’s maybe not unique to us, but we like to think it’s a unique challenge that we face. That is, everyone has heard of USC, but you yourself hadn’t necessarily heard of Keck Medicine of USC.

We don’t have a problem with recognition of the university that we’re affiliated with and we’re so much a part of, but we’re number three in our market. Numbers one and two happen to be in the top five in the nation with UCLA and Cedars-Sinai. It’s pretty rare that USC, the University of Southern California, would find themselves not just an underdog, but distant third in a market as small as LA. It’s as big as LA, but as small as healthcare in LA, if you think about it. That presents many, many challenges.

In terms of where we’re trying to reach people, I think that’s been one of the things that we think about. You combine what we just talked about with that platinum rule of understanding where they happen to be, what channels are they using, what channels might be– What might they be more receptive to. It goes back to thinking of it as absolutely service line-dependent.

There are some service lines that are tied to a specific location. We’re in Orange County here, for example, but we only offer specific services in Orange County. Those specific services in Orange County, maybe people are more receptive to out-of-home. When they’re in the mall, they’re on the streets of Newport Beach, they recognize people that they see on the billboard. We have great competition down there as well. That might be an out-of-home play.

In other parts in LA, proper, in the City of LA, maybe we’ve to include some out-of-home. Maybe we have to think of it more broadly because we’ve got 10 million people in our area. They’re using every single channel from local media, local television and radio to TikTok. We’re trying to speak against service line by service line, look at each one individually, understand the audience for that service line and say that “Okay, that audience is receptive to– They’re a little bit younger. Maybe they’re too younger, they’ll be open to TikTok.” This other audience, they’re not as young. They’re going to be more likely to [unintelligible 00:13:11] print and out-of-home, et cetera.

Without giving away any secret sauce, I would just say we have to be in all the channels, but not for every service line. We have to be very service line-specific and focus in that audience and where they are receptive to receiving our message.

Alex: Back to the platinum rule, everybody. Back to the platinum rule. That is totally service line and market-specific. You’re in Newport Beach. Yes, everybody is outside all the time. That’s the point. You’re going to have a totally different play. Real quick, two-second answer, how do you measure effectiveness for a service line? You’ve got so many things. You’ve got out-of-home, you got all of these traditional channels. You even mentioned [unintelligible 00:13:46] is still alive, everybody. I like-

Todd: It is.

Alex: -you can touch it. Print works. Everything works if you do it right. What’s your number one KPI first service line?

Todd: For a service line, ultimately, I think we tie that back to things like cost per lead. To me, that’s a pretty powerful one. Obviously, when we’re running out-of-home, we can’t really attach out-of-home to some cost per lead. Anything we do that would be deemed as somewhat upward funnel, we pair that with a lower funnel like a search, that sort of thing, or some level of programmatic advertising or social.

Nothing that we do with that’s upper funnel isn’t paired with something that’s lower funnel. Cost per lead is an incredibly important metric for service lines for us, and then looking at the trends over time for cost per lead. The hard part with cost per lead again is, do we include the cost of that billboard or that side of the mall, et cetera? To do it right, we have to.

Alex: You have to. You have to.

Todd: Yes. We can’t compute ROAS without the entire S. The entire ad spend has to be incorporated into that. That’s what we look at. Again, service line by service line, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. We have attribution modeling on a relatively small scale. Nothing like when I was on your side of the business, the agency side, where we had far more tools that would stay at our disposal for attribution modeling.

We have a little bit of that and we’re getting smarter, I would say, about that. It just takes some time and budget, frankly, that it’s harder to come by. Otherwise, driving down those costs per lead and just understanding again that every one of them is a unique business. Every service line is a unique business.

Alex: You can’t have ROAS without the S. You have given me so many taglines, Todd. I love them. Give me all my LinkedIn posts for the next six months. It’s great and it all has to be bundled together. National leadership is going to ask. If you just come and say, “We spent this on search CPL is this.” They’re going to say, “Yes, but didn’t you have this all out-of-home and billboard and print thing going on? Come on, schmuck. Give me the whole thing. I know I spent this much money. How much is the whole thing?”

Guys, I think it’s also okay to say we did that last month. You won’t see that effect for the two months. I’m giving you the PPC-CPO right now. Next month, yes, I’ll roll it all in. I think it’s fair to say it would take a month or so to start having traction. I only got you one more minute, so I only have one more question for you, Todd. What is a hot take controversial opinion? What is something in healthcare marketing you should be paid more attention to that it’s just not?

Todd: Oh boy. Something we should be paying attention to that we’re not. I would argue that it’s those channels that you– You mentioned Print. I think that’s one that people have put to bed a while ago because we all want to be digital marketers. Believe me, I want to be a digital market and that’s everything to me. I would say don’t sleep on Print, particularly in a local market.

The other I would say is that with the advancement of digital out-of-home, don’t sleep on out-of-home. I think that the technology that’s come out with out-of-home– LA is a car market, so out-of-home is real here. I would love to tell you that all forms of digital out-of-home things like Uber [unintelligible 00:16:37] are big here. The hard part is everybody owns their own car here, so Uber is not quite as affective. As much as I love the TikToks and Instagram and everything else and we do a lot there, I would just say, don’t sleep on those channels that feel a little bit more traditional between out-of-home and maybe even some Print and direct mail for that matter.

Alex: I love it, guys. A lot of you guys are running large multi-site provider groups, not just a hospital or health system in one location. You have to know the markets. If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from this is, know your market really well. Todd just said everyone has a car, the Uber stuff is not going to work. I love it. You have something that you believe in, Todd, that really matters and trying to get shared influencers. We think of these influencers out there, Instagram and whatever, but you think of influencers differently. Can you give me your take on that?

Todd: To me, it’s all about building trust. Influencers can be any age. They don’t have to be bastards of selfies and that sort of thing. They can be any age. The idea of influencers is to build trust. That is the most important thing. In other types of marketing that are not healthcare, maybe an influencer can be about, “If that person did it, I want to do it.” That’s not the way we think about influencer now. It’s more, again, build trust. People have to trust you. It’s literally they’re trusting us with their lives in many cases.

When we think about influence, again, as you mentioned it that the start, patients can be great influencers, not because they’re out there saying we’re great, but more just saying that they trust us. Hearing that someone trusts us and is willing to express that level of trust goes such a long way. That’s about the best influence that we could ever hope for.

Alex: There are many ways to acquire a patient, guys. There are many ways to acquire patients. The best way to do that is through building trust in local community. That can come right out of your own organization. I absolutely love that. Influencer is not just for super selfies. My wife is a super selfier, [unintelligible 00:18:37]. Todd, this was awesome.

I love to talking to someone that is in charge and doing digital marketing. This makes me want to do so much more of it. It was awesome, man. You shared some things I hadn’t heard before. I always learned from these, but I honestly learned a lot from you. This is awesome. Hope the rest of your day goes on the left coast and you have more of it left than I do. It’s already 2:00. It’s 5:00 AM for you guys over there. I’m back inside. Todd, thank you for joining us on Ignite, my friend.

Todd: Thank you. I appreciate it. Fun chat.

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