How to Build a Brand Patients and Clinicians Love

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 going on, everybody? You know we’re always in for a treat, but not often do we get the biggest and best groups in the country. Not always and not often, so this is a very special treat. We’re going to talk about a variety of different things from patient access to patient experience and also patient acquisitions, also workforce recruitment and all kinds of good stuff. Y’all are going to hear from a superstar. Meg, welcome to Ignite.

Meg Dietzel: Thank you. So excited to be here.

Alex: We’re starting off with a lie. All right, Meg.

Meg: Never. I’m excited to be here. I listen to your podcast.

Alex: You do listen. All right, guys, we found one of our three listeners. I told y’all one day we would get one on here. We love it. Meg, this is where I’ve learned a lot of the tips and tricks that I brought to the agency as through learning from all you guys that are on the front lines of marketing at the actual provider groups. This is really cool for not just the audience, but myself. I love learning. Meg, tell them where you hail from and where you work.

Meg: I work for Confluent Health, which is a musculoskeletal health company, full spectrum. Our headquarters is in Louisville, Kentucky, but we are in almost every state throughout US.

Alex: Wow, huge. How many is it? It’s location-based. I’m so excited. How many locations do we have?

Meg: We have over 1,600 sites of care for PT and OT. We have owned clinics. We are working with hospital systems. We also have a network. Then, of course, we have our prevention side, our Fit for Work and WorkSTEPS business which is employers to try to prevent injuries, but support along the way if injuries do occur.

Alex: I love it. I love it. Your job there is what?

Meg: I’m the chief marketing officer.

Alex: So it’s all your fault. All right. We love it.

Meg: Most exciting job in the company.

Alex: It is, and the most stressful. Definitely the most stressful. We have lots of fun stuff to get into. Tell us about your team structure. I want to get into that first. What have you kept in house? What is your team structure? Everybody always wants to know, what’s my first hire? Then as we get to Confluent size, what do I need to be hired? Think about what would your first hire be and then what’s your team structure? Help everybody understand.

Meg: If you’re all right, I’m going to go a little bit inverse, tell you my team structure and then I’ll back into maybe what the first hire would be. Confluent Health is a house of brands. You do not see a Confluent Health name on any clinic out there. We support over 50 plus brands in an agency model. We have this internal agency. They come to us for graphic design, PR, social media, content, all kinds of support that they want to use to support their brand in the clinics.

We also have a team of folks that are out in the field. Boots on the ground, business development with position referrals out there. Then we have their leadership team rolls up under me as well. We have two sides of the house. Then, of course, we have comp support as well as the company continues to grow and gets bigger, this has become definitely an emerging need to have really strong internal communications and employee engagement.

Alex: I heard this from someone else, insource the brainpower, outsource the horsepower. You’ve done insourcing of both. You have an internal agency. You’ve got the brains and the horsepower and everybody’s coming to Confluent for whatever they may need and your team’s executing the whole thing. If you were to start with one hire in Confluent’s early days, what would your first hire be? Specialist, generalist, creative, me, SEO, comms, what would you do?

Meg: A generalist. I think we did start, my predecessor was a team of one. Then I think she brought in a couple of generalists and then we have slowly gotten more specialized. We absolutely use agency, especially on the digital side of over 50 websites, a really strong web partner. Paid media SEO. We still use agency. If I had to hire, and I was a team of one, I would probably hire a generalist that can help me manage all the different components.

Alex: If you only had one hire ever, it would be Caitlin. I know the answer to that question.

Meg: Just more recently, and she’s been fantastic. Absolutely. As we start to think about how we talk about Confluent Health, which has not really been done, she has really helped us with that.

Alex: Why are you? Because of M&A? Why are we now starting to do more broad comms stuff in PR?

Meg: I would say all of the above. To have a seat at the table, whether it’s with working with APTA or legislation on Medicare and all of the paperwork and headaches that it is to try to see patients better and faster. We need to have a seat at the table when we talk to healthcare systems. They need to know who Confluent Health is. Most people don’t understand our size, and we’ve purposely held back on that. We really want to push forward our brands, but we can do both. That’s what we’ve started to do. Continue to promote our brands who see patients, but also want to make sure that the healthcare system understands who we are.

Alex: Fun. As you get bigger, you get a whole new set of problems you have to like lobby in so many different ways. That’s fun. All right. Meg, let’s get into it. What is the biggest trend you’re seeing? It’s early 2025. What is the biggest trend you’re seeing currently in the healthcare space? Where’s your attention going?

Meg: It’s going towards recruiting and really employee brands. We’ve historically spent a lot of time focused on patients, patient acquisition, making sure our local brands are well-known in their communities. There is a healthcare shortage. We know this of clinicians out there. Everybody’s fighting for the same graduating school. We spend a lot of time on what our employee brand is, making sure that we have the same level of thought, strategy, content that we do on our consumer branding.

Really all positions from front office staff to our PTs, we’ve really been focused on clinical. We can’t bring in more patients unless we have PTs to see those patients. That’s been a huge focus this year.

Alex: I love it. There’s the acquisition of talent and retention. We’ll talk retention in a second. Acquisition, what are we doing differently this year than we did prior? What have we focused more on? Give me the text.

Meg: We hired someone. We have not had someone solely focused on recruitment marketing. We hired an expert in-house from healthcare. It’s this mix of come work for one of our partner brands, but also you get the benefits of Confluent Health. We have really developed and honed our strategy on the benefit of working for a company that’s the size of Confluent Health, but having local leadership, local culture, what it means to work in that local brand. She’s really, I think, refined our digital strategies of where we need to be. It’s very market specific and she’s been writing content and focused on helping. Some of our areas are more critical than others or have more needs than others. She’s getting specific within each of those markets on the best ways to bring in talent.

Alex: That is so interesting. Guys, you heard what Meg said. It’s all about the local market. Without someone dedicated, that would be really hard to be a fit. You’re in 50 states with 1600 points of care. What do they do? I think Fit For Work is one of your brands. Do they go to Fit For Work and they say, “Hey, I’m going to create beautiful employer brand mini site that talks all about being in this state”? Is that what they’re doing with the local flavor? Is there other things you have to do to make sure you seem local?

Meg: Yes. I’ll go into the example here because Fit For Work business is a little bit different. I’m talking about hiring clinicians, right? We have ProRehab here in Louisville. It is. It’s making sure that it’s, first of all, understanding who is ProRehab in the community and what are their needs. Then in some areas it’s going back to digital strategies that you need to show up on Indeed and Google and other strategies that– social media is a stronger point. It’s understanding the market, how many PTs are available, how many jobs are out there, and then building a plan to try to bring in. Just because we’re in Louisville doesn’t mean there’s clinics all over the place. Where are folks that fund in their communities and where do we need to bring talent?

Alex: It’s still fun. They don’t have to be digitally savvy and think about the B2B play. That’s a cool job. I would want that job. That’s fun. Do they also coordinate internal comms to the current clinicians for retention or is that a separate function, separate person?

Meg: Separate function, separate person, but works really closely, both on my team, both really connected and the retention piece. We’ve been talking a lot about that this year. It’s one thing to bring in great clinicians, but we also need to continue to communicate them, make sure their experience is what we promised them when they came in the door and keep them. That sits somewhere else on my team, but we’re really connected.

Alex: Y’all just send simple email updates to everybody at the company, right? Is that the main thing?

Meg: Yes. Teams channels.

Alex: I love it.

Meg: We’ve been talking about that a little bit, but yes.

Alex: Internal comms. I just had a conversation with Sarah Berger at MedVet and internal comms is such a thing. It’s not something that– we’re only a hundred people, so I never think about it. I just send an email. Everybody is like, “Whoa, bro, that wasn’t enough. What is the thing around this thing?” Internal comms, I’m learning, is a really important function at a larger company. Kudos to you guys for dedicating people to it. Okay. Let’s talk patient acquisition priorities. What are you focusing on this year? Where’s the attention going?

Meg: A couple things. Content always. I won’t say that’s a new focus, but patient centered, clinically rich content. We have the job. I always say I came from the dental industry, so if your tooth hurts, you go see your dentist, nobody else. If your back hurts, there’s about seven different places you could choose to go. We are constantly trying to educate our patients on why you should start with PT. We also work on a lot of content to re-engage patients. They come in for that back pain and then they have a knee replacement and maybe this physician refers them elsewhere. We want to make sure they know that if they saw Eric for their back pain and loved Eric, Eric can also take care of them for their knee replacement. I would say content around all of that is a big area of focus.

Then another piece I would say this year is we have a new Confluent Health website. With having 50 local websites, one of the challenges is optimizing so patients can find that. It can be very expensive having that many websites. We were still doing that on the local level, but also optimizing our Confluent Health website to get patients in and then back out to the clinic in their area.

Alex: It’s almost 50 plus one. You’ve got the Confluent-

Meg: Yes.

Alex: Okay. You’re trying to engineer it both ways. Are you going to end up tucking in all the brands or are you going to keep Confluent, that’s going to be separate, everybody maintains their 50 domains and brands in perpetuity?

Meg: Everybody maintains their brand. It’s really important to our culture that people feel like they have their own presence.

Alex: I love it. It also helps a ton with M&A when doctor gets to keep his own. I love what you said, clinically-rich content. I’m going to steal that. That’s going to be the title here, I can already tell. I’ve been preaching this for a long time, just creating more of the same, this AI-driven stuff with no MD involvement, guys. You’re never going to rank and it’s never going to convince anyone. In your space, Meg, it seems to be moreso about education. That you don’t just go to PT when you tore your ACL. You can also go for prevent– is that a big struggle, is the education on teaching patients when and where and not waiting for the thing, because they don’t know it like dentistry?

Meg: Yes. We talk about PT early all the time. It’s as soon as that ache and pain starts, get in to see your PT. We do have to educate people on that. I’ve just been sharing with someone recently. I have three kids, they’re all in sports. Prior to coming to Confluent, if something hurt, I’d wait till it got real bad, then I’d go see the pediatrician. Now, we go right into our PT. They’re helping us right on the front end to get through whatever the ache and pain is, and they’re back out on the field or on the court as soon as possible. I consider myself fairly well-educated in national healthcare approaches and remedies. I had no idea that was an option for me or something I should be doing. Yes, that’s absolutely something we’re focused on.

Alex: I love it, and it’s educated. That’s expensive because then you have to run media and all that stuff to educate a patient base and they could end up going anywhere. Is that like part of it? You hope you get followed organically. How do you think about balancing great content with educating the market, not just benefiting Confluent?

Meg: I would say a lot of our strategies, if it’s a new patient acquisition, we’re focused down the funnel. If they know they need a PT, that’s where we focus. Where we want to educate most is in our clinics and then in reactivation emails, email campaigns, things like that. Multi-touch points to try to get them back in and educate them.

Once they’ve already seen us and had a wonderful experience, have a relationship with their PT, then we have this captured audience that we can talk about when we can send them materials, evidence-based, like “How do we know that this works?” They’ll engage with us in that way. I would say further up the funnel, to your point, it can be very expensive and it’s very risky of will they even land in our clinics?

Alex: So interesting. Someone comes in for like ACL tear recovery. Are you putting them into separate journeys and buckets? Do you have CRM? Do you have any kind of automation systems? How are you keeping everybody on their own like, “I’m not getting back pain for my knee thing”?

Meg: We’re getting there. I would say that’s an opportunity for us. We’re getting there. We have a data warehouse that our EMRs feed into and we can slice and dice data in different ways, but it continues to be an opportunity for us to make sure we get the right content to the right people.

Alex: It’s so hard. We have all the HIPAA compliance stuff to deal with and you have to be careful not to intimate what condition someone has. I tore my ACL. I went in for the ACL recovery from the local hospital system. Then since then I’ve gotten no communication from them, no education, no nothing.

Meg: Oh, wow.

Alex: I’m playing basketball again. Of course, the knee hurts. I have arthritis in the knee. Nothing. They could have reactivated me. I’d be back in for PT and get all– Then apparently, now I’m hearing that I have to get shots in the knee and stuff that will delay the arthritis. There is all kinds of ongoing stuff that could be happening that they’re missing out on because no ongoing education is happening.

Meg: What I’ve learned is that generally, the industry looks at it as a course of care. I want you to come in and take care of your ACL and then you move on. Versus, again, coming from dentistry, I want you to come see me every six months, get your teeth cleaned. When things break, I’m going to fix it. You are with me for life. I would love to continue to move us in that direction that you have a PT for life. They’re your musculoskeletal health primary care. They’re here to help with every ache and pain. It’s an opportunity to continue to get people in the door. Pain, one out of two Americans have pain. It’s a huge problem. There’s so much opportunity for us to continue to educate and keep folks connected to our therapists.

Alex: Now, it’s like sometimes the macro stuff gives us, I hate to use the PT term, tailwinds. Everybody trying to get away from opiates, this is good news for PTs. Like, hey, don’t deal with your pain in that way. Come in here. We can change the way that you move so that your elbow doesn’t hurt. This is cool. For patient acquisition, I love that we’re talking about patient retention because if your LCV increases, it means you can spend more on acquisition. Being focused on educating is great. What are your favorite tools, strategies for patient acquisition? What’s working best?

Meg: For patient acquisition?

Alex: Yes.

Meg: Google.

Alex: Still is.

Meg: Google Labs and Google My Business profiles. That’s where we focus primarily. Again, further down the funnel, it’s PT, physical therapy, near me. People that know their need. I love to get to the point where I’m like, “Does your back hurt?” Then they come right into us. Quite frankly, there’s a lot of patients out there with pain. Then the other Ps, it’s so expensive to be able to capture those type of keywords.

Alex: Yes. They’re looking for injections. It’s usually not the right thing. Dental is different. In dental, you have a very educated and had already been rolled up, and people know how to do search. PT’s not there. A lot of the behemoths still don’t really know how to advertise and direct access. You still have this thing where Google is enough, guys. If you’re listening to Meg, like I got a call this morning that someone wants to run display targeting conditions and MPIs. Bro, you haven’t even solved PPC and SEO looking at your site right now. Guys, you don’t have to get fancy. Meg is running the biggest thing in one of the biggest industries in America, and it’s Google. The answer still can be Google and that’s okay. Don’t feel like you need to go fancy on everybody.

What is a trend you’re seeing? We talked about retention marketing. We talked about recruitment marketing. Do you think AI is going to play in? What are you concerned with over the next year in marketing? Is there anything that’s keeping you up at night?

Meg: I think AI is here to stay. I’ll tell you what, I’ve been using CoPilot a lot the last six months and just the efficiency of it has been amazing. I no longer have to take notes when I have meetings. CoPilot listens and it gives me my notes. There’s things out there that like, well, that’s a great tool. Definitely should use that. I think having 50 websites and you can’t put the same content on every website. I’m hoping it iterates similar content. There’s ways to use it.

I’ve been doing interviews this morning, though, to bring somebody on the team and hearing their perspective of AI. One of them said, it’s not a replacement for a brain, and it’s absolutely not. I want people that are great writers and can put out great original content. I think we’re a little bit foolish if we don’t use it to help us be more efficient and optimize our time. I’m excited to continue to learn and grow ways we can use it.

Alex: It’s not going to take our jobs, not yet. It’s going to take the humans that don’t use it’s jobs. I think that humans are safe for a while. Also because we will just fight against anything that’s going to destroy our jobs. We’re going to stay employed for quite some time. What is a hot take, Meg, that you think a lot of marketers are focused on in healthcare that you think is silly and they should pivot elsewhere? What is something controversial you’re saying, like, “Why do I hear all about this when it actually doesn’t matter?” Is there anything that irritates you that you see out there?

Meg: Yes, I would say social media. I wouldn’t say it doesn’t matter, but I would say, I think that people tend to think if they’re big social users, then they think that that’s where all their patients should come from or will come from. The data does not say that. It’s great for community and maybe people go find their PT clinic on social, and we’ve got a really strong social presence, but I don’t want to over-index there. Usually, when I’m working with brand new partners, that’s the first thing they want to talk about, is social media and how we’re going to help their social media. We’ll absolutely help you, but that is not going to bring patients in your door.

Alex: I love it. Meg cuts right to the chase. You’ll get that question from smaller practices because it’s their brand. It’s the only way they show the community. Like, your posts on Facebook don’t matter, I hate to say. You need patients in the door and your patients aren’t seeing that post and that you aren’t. That’s cool, guys. You heard it from Meg. Meg, if you were to pivot one thing you’ve done in the last few years, what is it, and what would you have done differently?

Meg: Wow, that’s a really good question. We did a huge brand project with the Confluent Health brand. Ambition, purpose, I’m so proud of that work and we’ve launched it. I think you always learn. If I knew what I knew now, I probably would have moved faster. We’d have launched our website faster. We just had some bumps in the road. I’m like, man, next time I’m doing a brand project– I just learned a lot. It’s a lot of technical details of working with agency and launching and launching internally and externally, but I could have done it smoother. I’m going to take those notes with me for next time.

Alex: All right, there you go, guys. The brand thing can slow things down. I got one final question for you. When you’re looking at a lot of marketing directors, not big CMOs like Meg yet, they’re wondering, what are the KPIs? How do I sit at the business table and become a CMO? In my opinion, it is understanding some of the business stuff. What are the KPIs? What are most important from the business perspective that you think a marketing director should pay attention to?

Meg: We’re here to bring patients in the door and then help retain them. All your KPI is related to that. Referrals, new evals, and then I would say on the cost to hire, on the talent side, we’re tracking that. I think people try to have this huge suite of KPIs. I would say have three, four, five that really move the needle and stay really close to what can influence those and change those KPI.

Alex: I love it. You heard cost to hire. I had not heard that one before. It’s interesting because usually there’s a CHRO and they’ll take over hiring guys. It’s not always going to be like that. Marketing can help with recruitment quite immensely like Meg has demonstrated here. Cost to hire and then how many patients are we bringing in the door? Net new, reactivated, LTV, and cost to acquire a new patient. It can be that simple. Then you’re a CMO like Meg, right? That’s the next step after that.

Meg, this was awesome. I learned a ton from you. I’m going to take away some of your buzzwords, we’re going to steal them. We’ll probably put “Trademark by Meg.” Meg Dietzel, thank you so much for joining us on Ignite.

Meg: Thank you, Alex. It was awesome. Appreciate it.

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