In this episode, Ray Mina embarks on a deep dive into the complexities of multilocation healthcare marketing with Blair Primis, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at OrthoCarolina, and Brian Gould, Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Patient Experience at vybe urgent care. They discuss the multifaceted consumer journey, the imperative of brand and experience in driving patient trust, and the critical importance of aligning marketing with operational capabilities. Blair and Brian highlight the significance of creating a consistent, spectacular patient experience from the first interaction to in-person visits. They share specific tactics and metrics, such as tracking paid ad spend to bookings and combining data from EMR and scheduling systems. The conversation also explores future strategies involving AI and technology, emphasizing the need for adaptable teams to navigate the rapidly evolving healthcare marketing landscape.
In this episode, Ray Mina embarks on a deep dive into the complexities of multilocation healthcare marketing with Blair Primis, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at OrthoCarolina, and Brian Gould, Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Patient Experience at vybe urgent care. They discuss the multifaceted consumer journey, the imperative of brand and experience in driving patient trust, and the critical importance of aligning marketing with operational capabilities. Blair and Brian highlight the significance of creating a consistent, spectacular patient experience from the first interaction to in-person visits. They share specific tactics and metrics, such as tracking paid ad spend to bookings and combining data from EMR and scheduling systems. The conversation also explores future strategies involving AI and technology, emphasizing the need for adaptable teams to navigate the rapidly evolving healthcare marketing landscape.
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“ The best thing we have had been going for a couple of years, is the ability to say, here's how much money we spent last quarter, here's exactly the return on investment we got, and here's precisely how we can dial this up and dial this down to scale. It has been easily the best performing metric or story to tell about how marketing dollars are actually driving growth.” – Blair Primis
“ I am combining the data from two systems, our EMR and our scheduling system. And by combining those together, I'm seeing a status for every patient who's come through. Whether a walk-in or an appointment or a call center schedule. Using our service, with Freshpaint and Google Click IDs, I can get to a lot of exact paid conversions. I can get to some organic conversions. And where we try to squeeze a little extra juice out of the lemon is, particularly with walk-ins, let's look at what each center is doing and where there's an opportunity to lower that cancel rate or improve that no-show rate.” – Brian Gould
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:07) - The importance of brand and experience
*(06:35) - Aligning marketing with operations
*(17:58) - Accountability in marketing
*(28:00) - Tracking and measuring marketing effectiveness
*(35:56) - Community engagement and brand relevance
*(44:55) - The future of healthcare marketing and technology
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Links:
Check Out the Actionable Guide Based on this Episode
Connect with Blair on LinkedIn
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
[00:00:00] Blair Primis: There's an evolution and I would, I would ask us all to think about this in healthcare. There's really a responsibility for marketing departments to become growth engines, to think about growth and to get up in the business, not to run ops, but to really prop up and support your operations teams to say, we have to have access.
[00:00:28] Blair Primis: So that the delivery of the demand and the patients we acquire have to be met with satisfaction. 'cause otherwise there is so much pressure on it to be a spectacular experience. 'cause everything up to that point has not been, simply 'cause we did not properly manage supply and demand.
[00:00:45] Ray Mina: Yeah. So everyone knows that healthcare marketing is extremely complex, but when I've gotten to know people like Brian and Blair and I learn about multi-location healthcare, I think that if there's another dimension of complexity, this is it.
[00:00:57] Ray Mina: And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about how do you grow in multi-location healthcare world, where the consumer journey is definitely not linear. Intent is high, but brands still matters and experience is something that's mattering more than ever before.
[00:01:11] Ray Mina: I'm super grateful to have, I think, two great minds in healthcare marketing join me today. I've got Blair Primis, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at OrthoCarolina with us. And Brian Gould, who's Vice President of Marketing Experience at vybe urgent care. Gents, thanks for thanks for being a part of this with me today.
[00:01:30] Blair Primis: Thank you.
[00:01:30] Brian Gould: Yeah, it’s good to be here.
[00:01:31] Blair Primis: Yeah. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:33] Ray Mina: All right, so I, I'm kind of gonna move from like high level and then, and then dig in a little bit with y'all here because I do want to make this practical for people. I want people to be able to walk away and, and be inspired and, and learn something from the experience that you've all had. That's the whole point of marketing rounds as a podcast.
[00:01:48] Ray Mina: So. Maybe a starting point for me as as, as the newb in the room who comes from B2B SaaS background. My perception is that marketing in general is not a straight line anymore, but in multi-location it's even more complex. Can you tell me a little bit about, maybe Brian, I'll start with you. Can you just tell me a little bit about the consumer journey in your world? Like, tell it to me as if I don't know anything about it.
[00:02:14] Brian Gould: So for consumers, the first thing you should know is our, a little bit about our demographics. We skew very young, tech savvy. Probably 85% of our visits start on a mobile phone, maybe more. And our patient population skews two and a half times.
[00:02:29] Brian Gould: Greater in their likelihood to rely on online information, including AIOs. So when we think about our journey, it's very much all the way into what we say online and how we deliver on that. When patients walk in. So the journey itself is, is uh, really almost like a courtship, getting to know us, getting to understand our brand.
[00:02:51] Brian Gould: So that's the one side of it. And then the other side of it is when they walk into the, the, the actual location, does the experience deliver on the promise of the brand, everything they've seen online?
[00:03:03] Ray Mina: How about you, Blair?
[00:03:04] Blair Primis: Yeah, I would say certainly the second part, I think, you know, it's getting familiar with our brand and then having a patient experience at at, at the, at the moment of arrival has to be, has to be spectacular.
[00:03:15] Blair Primis: The one difference on the front end for us is, you know, certainly for, for Brian at urgent care is clearly acute. Our ours is really not. There are acute orthopedic conditions of course, but, but for the most part it is not acute. This is. My shoulder has been lingering and bothering me for some time, and now it's at a ping threshold or I can't golf, which means I now have to be able to go get seen, and so it's this longer courtship.
[00:03:41] Blair Primis: I love that phrase, Brian. It, it's a longer courtship where it requires the brand side of our plan to really do a lot of heavy lifting because it has to be consistent. We don't know when you will need our services, and so we, we have a very straightforward. Right outta the textbook. Brands gotta work. And then performance has to follow.
[00:04:02] Brian Gould: I mean, one of the reasons I call it a courtship is because I think in the old days people just were at the bottom of the, at least with urgent care, bottom of the funnel, urgent care near me. How do I get that person? And nowadays that is not happening. The, the, the performance of paid marketing is falling and it really needs the halo effect of.
[00:04:23] Brian Gould: The SEO, the content, all those things that wrap around the page that say, this is somebody we can trust. And so yeah, you, you're seeing the same thing, right?
[00:04:33] Blair Primis: Yeah. And, and that's where I just don't, I'm just gonna double down on, on the experience of it all. I, I actually just think at the end of the day, we can all be leading edge and we can all be pioneering in how we think about a dollar spend and how we think about the next.
[00:04:48] Blair Primis: You know how to get ahead of AI and all these things, but the reality is like what will differentiate you in healthcare is the experience that, that it really is a full stop it. The best marketer we had is the patient that had a spectacular experience. Now, outcomes' notwithstanding, of course, we want to have terrific outcomes, but if the outcome is terrific as an assumption, the next thing we can deal with is just a spectacular experience.
[00:05:11] Blair Primis: So are we easy to use? Were we easy to navigate? Were we easy to communicate with? Were we easy to stop talking to? Like did it end in a final way? You know, how many times did you get an EOB? Or how many times do we not pay the first bill because the second one probably is gonna come back changed? It's like all this, like, we gotta figure that out. So I think the experience component of it is really where the priority will be as a differentiator for our brands.
[00:05:36] Brian Gould: You know, Blair, it's so interesting to hear you use the word easy. We have crafted our patient journey around a every step starts with. Easy to visit. Easy to trust, you know, easy to, easy to return.
[00:05:48] Brian Gould: Like there we have five steps and we've, we've laddered every subpart of the patient journey into five key areas that, where if we don't make it easy, there's, there are other options out there.
[00:06:00] Ray Mina: This is not starting the way I expected it to. Again, I'm the, I'm outside of this world, like I'm thinking I'm a mountain biker and a skier, and I'm thinking like, if I ever hurt my hip one day, I, I kind of know the brands that are out there that like, I I for through word of mouth.
[00:06:14] Ray Mina: Mostly I know the best orthopedic surgeons, and that's a long term, like courtship, but I think of urgent care and it's like I'm in New York visiting my family and my kid gets an ear infection. Where, where can I go? Near me? I didn't think you were gonna go there so heavily right away, Brian, with, with, with the brand side and the experience.
[00:06:34] Ray Mina: What, when you think that's a really complex journey and to me it feels like almost a, like a, like a different set of problems to solve, which is how do I capture that intent while also building the brand. What part of that journey, if you could put a finger on it, what part of the connecting that consumer journey is the hardest part for you? Like what's the hardest thing that you're dealing with?
[00:06:56] Brian Gould: The hardest thing I'm dealing with is actually something that Blair got to, which is, it got mentioned a couple of times. Really, it's the moment when that patient walks through the front door and it's that moment of truth. It's that chance to make the first impression.
[00:07:10] Brian Gould: It's that chance that it's to say. I've come to the right place 'cause everything I'm experiencing is exactly what I was expecting. And if it, and, and that's the moment where if it doesn't all click, I love that. It can. Yeah. And what we also see, Ray, is that if that moment clicks, it casts a really positive light on the rest of the visit, and patients are more forgiving of other little things along the way if it doesn't start out well.
[00:07:34] Brian Gould: Bathrooms are dirty. The clinician didn't spend enough time. I didn't get my printout correctly. It, it just, it kind of snowballs.
[00:07:42] Blair Primis: No, no. Yeah, and I'll go one step further, which is in many cases, we have for decades relied on the physician to save the crappy experience. Everything about it was so bad it took forever to get in.
[00:07:53] Blair Primis: We had to park in a parking deck. We, we just couldn't check in properly. Like my insurance thing wasn't right. I had to fill out 18 forms. And then when you finally get in the room, it's the doctor that romances and delivers this wonderful experience. And you were kind of hoping that they would seal the deal and allow for the forgiveness of it. And so like we got like, that is just so decades old and we have to get away from that. Have to get away from it.
[00:08:19] Brian Gould: That's really the second layer too, right? Because you, you've got the arrival experience at the front desk, but then I, I think you do get a teeny bit of a reset when the, when the clinician comes in and the, and, and, but it can't, you're right.
[00:08:31] Brian Gould: You can't recover from what happened upfront. I'm always in orientation. Well, this is like twice a month with a combination of clinicians and front desk folks and really easy way to think about is it's like a going out for to eat the food and the service. Both have to come together or you don't wanna come back.
[00:08:51] Blair Primis: Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to double back on the hurry. Your question too, Ray. One thing that I think is challenging for us is really it, I think it boils down to we can be really, really great at driving demand. Is the organization ready to accept the access? It is, it is really this dance of, you know, please don't ask us to get really good at delivering marketing successes, because what if it works?
[00:09:18] Blair Primis: If it works, we have noticed increased wait times, longer hold times, like please manage the supply side of it. So I think there's an evolution and I would, I would ask us all to think about this. In healthcare, there's really a responsibility for marketing departments to become growth engines, to think about growth.
[00:09:37] Blair Primis: To get up in the business, not to run ops, but to really prop up and support your operations teams to say we have to have access so that the delivery of the demand and the patients we acquire have to be met with satisfaction 'cause otherwise. There is so much pressure on it to be a spectacular experience 'cause everything up to that point has not been simply 'cause we did not properly manage supply and demand.
[00:10:04] Blair Primis: Like it is a really interesting moment in healthcare for that, where the growth engine really should be the marketing department or something of that nature.
[00:10:13] Ray Mina: When I was thinking about this conversation, I, I, I was kind of like, I know both of you, but I was really digging into your history and, and what you do today.
[00:10:21] Ray Mina: And I was thinking about what I do and we, we do different things like I'm in B2B SaaS, you're in consumer marketing, but here's what's really interesting about all three of us. I own marketing and product at Fresh Paint. You both own marketing and experience at your organizations.
[00:10:36] Ray Mina: And I think in a, tell me if I'm wrong here, but in a way what we're both saying is like, my product is a SaaS software platform. Your experience is product like that experience of services, and, and we both recognize the exact same thing, is like, I could be really, really good at the marketing part and creating narrative and brand, but if I fall flat on my face when I get you in the door, it's all for nothing.
[00:11:00] Ray Mina: My, my retention metrics are gonna be terrible. My LTV is gonna be terrible. No one's gonna be happy. And to, to your point, Blair, and this is one, one thing I wanna talk about is we overlook that part of like generating demand and be able to like service it. And then how much of that spend and how much of that effort is wasted. And does that, am I reading this right? Are we basically kind of talking about parallel universes?
[00:11:25] Blair Primis: I think you articulated it perfectly and, and I had not thought of it that way, but I'm glad you you brought it up. 'cause I think you, you, you're, that's, you nailed it. I think that's exactly the scenario.
[00:11:35] Blair Primis: We would peel it back and say, you know, all three of us have a growth mentality around it. You know, you have to build them both at the same time. I've gotta grow product excellence at the same time, become really great at ROAS. Like I just gotta really get good at it and build something great. It's the same thing here, like we've gotta really make sure.
[00:11:57] Blair Primis: You know, I, I, we, I, we occasionally, you know, once a once a month or so, we'll, we'll take a couple of hours and we will listen to our phone calls and, you know, we'll, we'll air it out. Like we air it out with the contact center and we'll be like, Hey, so this call right here, like, what happened? Where were we on this?
[00:12:15] Blair Primis: Where somebody's having a bad day, where they, what's the deal? Like this was at 10 o'clock in the morning and this is how we treated a potential lead. And I started using that phrase. This wasn't a patient on the phone. I said, we're here to deliver quality care. I get what our pro, our why or why is great patient care.
[00:12:33] Blair Primis: Yeah. But in this conversation, this is elite. We paid money to make the phone ring, pay for phone to ring, book a PA, book patient. So there's the metric and I think like, you really gotta think about this. Whether it's, you know, marketing and product, or whether it's marketing and experience, I think they are, they are the engine of growth.
[00:12:55] Ray Mina: We don't even have to have the conversation around like the, you know, how many times have we heard this story of like top of funnel, top of funnel, top of funnel, and you're like, give me a break. I get invited by, you know, investment portfolios to talk to founders. And the very first thing is they ask me is like, how, how do I get more top of funnel leads?
[00:13:14] Ray Mina: And I'm like, well, before we talk about that, let's talk about who, where, like, let's talk about some of these. What are you delivering to them? So we can all align here. The question I have for you, 'cause this is the part I don't understand, is we're all under this pressure. No matter what business you're in today to give, you know, get more for less, like just keep squeezing blood from the stone.
[00:13:35] Ray Mina: When you think about this combination of the marketing side of the house with the product, the experience side of the house. Where is the juice most worth the squeeze?
[00:13:45] Brian Gould: We have tools online that let us more readily dial things up and down, right? I mean, we could go into campaign structure and different channels and, but those are relatively easy levers to pull.
[00:13:58] Brian Gould: Where I spend most of my time is exactly what Blair was mentioning before, which is I'm trying to connect. The marketing expectations and the delivery of the care, and that's why I'm so glad that that function sits with marketing. So we can do almost a full spectrum of what's going on as the patient experiences us step by step.
[00:14:18] Brian Gould: So I spend my, I mean, marketing was part of my original title, but I would say I spend way more than half of my job on making sure that. I give people the tool, not just tools, but also explain to them why it matters. And part of it is trying to inspire each individual to recognize that like, I can't tell you how to provide great care, but I can challenge you to bring the best part of yourself to the healthcare experience.
[00:14:44] Brian Gould: So it's not an act of kindness that comes out of a manual, really. It's re it's you saying, I wanna be here. Helping patients is a privilege. I get to, I don't have to. And so what does that day turn into for you? Because you have that attitude and that's not an, that's not a revolution, that's an evolution. It takes time to get people thinking that way.
[00:15:06] Blair Primis: I'll add that I think specific to our area of the world. The southeast part of the United States, we are very fortunate to have a lot of growth going on in our, in our area of the, of the country. And I think that might be the area to really think about where we have to, to your point like Ray, where we have to like really try to make as much hay as possible there, the increase in competition that occurs because everybody knows we're growing so much is where we have to get really good at efficient spend in efficient time.
[00:15:38] Blair Primis: And so I spend a lot of my time not just on the experience or, or you know, getting better on the, you know, how do we continually drive down the cost per lead and, you know, all that great stuff. But at the end of the day, the end of the day, it, it really is just about making sure we're ahead of the game in terms of where we wanna market, how we think about our brand in those locations.
[00:15:59] Blair Primis: Can we get really good at forecasting and predicting what is the right place to be and the right things to do? How do we conquest? Candidly, how do I look at competition and try to do my best to siphon some of their, you know, patients to our, our, you know, our offices. So I think that's the real area. And, and like you, I'm not sure how to do it really well yet.
[00:16:22] Blair Primis: Like I'm still trying to figure out how to say 150 people moved to Charlotte every day. How do I make sure they all know who we are? Well, I go back to my very first statement is, which is those 150 people may walk and have no pain. So why do they give a crap about who we are? They don't care yet. So I gotta really think about a way to build a relationship with them, even when they do not meet us. What I refer to as not yet a patient. And so I think there's the opportunity.
[00:16:48] Brian Gould: Same for me. I mean, really we're, like I said, people don't need to come to urgent care every day. They just need to know where to go when, when they need us. So a whole, that's what the whole marketing challenge is and it's why all the patient reviews and experience matter. 'cause when that moment comes, we know they're gonna look online and that's the moment truth.
[00:17:07] Ray Mina: They, they need to know that if they're on Gino's near the Broad Street location, that the vybe is just around the corner if they eat too much cheese, steak and don't feel well.
[00:17:14] Brian Gould: Right. I was gonna say, there's a Philadelphia reference for sure.
[00:17:18] Ray Mina: It's the truth, right?
[00:17:18] Brian Gould: Absolutely.
[00:17:20] Ray Mina: I wanna come back to brand because I think this is something that like we don't talk enough about and the reason we don't talk about it enough because. You know, our jobs on, on the marketing and the product or experience. It's the, I think it's some of the hardest work in, in any, in any business.
[00:17:38] Ray Mina: And it's because everything we're talking about is like. Experience and brand all common sense. But everyone, everyone, like I go to a board meeting, what does the board wanna know about? They wanna know about like payback period. And they wanna know about AR growth rates and why isn't it high enough? And what's, why is, you know, why is GR not not above world class standards?
[00:17:58] Ray Mina: And so the thing that I want to talk about and I wanna get your feedback on, 'cause you said it Blair, like how do I improve ROAS? How do I make this more effective? What I struggle with is that in my world, like there's no way I'm going to that board meeting and it's never perfect. But man, we are fighting for perfect without being able to connect the dots to the data.
[00:18:18] Ray Mina: Uh, if I go to that board meeting and, and start waving my hand, I'm gonna get eaten alive. And it feels like a lot of healthcare marketing. It's still a little bit hand-wavy, like a lot of the conversions and a lot of the data that we're tracking is kind of still at the web level versus down to the actual revenue. Why aren't people like dying on that hill to solve that?
[00:18:38] Blair Primis: I agree with you, and I think that, and the phrase I began to use on the last year or so in, in earnest is I will tell our board, I'll say, hold me accountable. If I ever tell you we can't track something that the marketing department is putting out into the world.
[00:18:54] Blair Primis: Like it should be trackable, like that is perfect for us is we will get to a place where we can track virtually everything to in today's day and age, with trackable phone numbers and custom URLs and landing pages and microsites and data EHR. I just don't understand how we can't track virtually all that we do.
[00:19:16] Blair Primis: I may not necessarily have solved for how to track it all, especially on the brand side. But the goal or getting to perfect is to be able someday to come in with a slide that says, here's all the dollars we spend and here's precisely what drove the most. Now the engine, we have to show that off. Today is obviously what we do in the digital space because we have gotten very, very good at, you know.
[00:19:40] Blair Primis: Determining literally every month what our return on advertising spend is in the paid space. And I report on that every single month at the board meeting. Here is the exact dollars we spend for the for the month. Here's the exact dollars that our cost per lead was. Here's our cost per booking. Here's precisely the campaigns that worked.
[00:19:59] Blair Primis: And we track it all the way back to how we're modifying our, our, our campaign efforts and like we show them that. So the evolution would be to continue to get there and hold ourselves accountable to solving for that challenge. And I think if you can say that in front of the board, hopefully they give you, or your leadership, hopefully they will give you some grace in trying to solve for what has historically been a difficult thing to, to show them.
[00:20:24] Brian Gould: I think you can say it in front of the board too, Blair. 'cause many of the people on our board are also in the healthcare business and face some of the very same challenges. But I think what you said is right in as far as giving them those metrics that you can show and getting it back to brand, which is one of the, the elements of your, of your question.
[00:20:42] Brian Gould: You know, one of the ways that brand makes sense is because it lowers the overall blended cost of acquisition, right? It's a bit of a layoff. You know, we, we run a brand campaign because, and, or PMax or something because of how offsets a lot of the other expenses that we have on the, the traditional, let's say, you know, SEM
[00:21:01] Ray Mina: Wait, you're not, you're not putting a hundred percent of your dollars in Google search ads? What are you doing, Brian? Whatcha are you thinking, Brian?
[00:21:06] Brian Gould: You know, I've had, I've had more of a challenge. Because people recognize the phenomenal ROAS we're delivering, but we're still a cash constrained business and I can't go to the board and say. Gimme a dollar, I'll give you nine, I'll give you $9 of revenue.
[00:21:23] Brian Gould: Well, great, but we don't have a dollar right now because we're buying medical supplies and paying for salaries and all that. So, so that's the access piece.
[00:21:30] Blair Primis: Sorry to interrupt around, but that's the access piece. I mean, I've gotten very good at saying, you know, like, here's the deal. You know, we have, we have, you know, 15 providers that are averaging 30 day, week times.
[00:21:40] Blair Primis: How, here's how I view that. I view that as delayed revenue capture. That's all that that is. You see it as the patient wants to wait to see me, the doctor. I'm so good. My practice is so strong, they will wait for me. The reality is have we offered them an earlier appointment? If we did, they likely will take it, especially with generational changes.
[00:22:01] Blair Primis: Another thing about healthcare, it is commoditized. Dare I say this, in the, in, in front of our, our physician population, they have earned the right to be an expert in what they do. And I had a tremendous amount of respect for the training and the work they do to build a practice. However, the days of me or my parents saying, oh no, the doc, you've gotta go see Dr. Smith.
[00:22:20] Blair Primis: 'cause Dr. Smith. He is the one you will wait. He is the best. Great. I just do not think the generations that are trailing behind us think about healthcare that way. Quick, fast, get in, and quality is assumed. Meaning if we do not offer things quicker, why would I care about getting really good? ROAS and, and a better customer because all is making the problem worse.
[00:22:44] Blair Primis: So it really is this, you know, you, you lean on one side and the other side pops up. Like, we gotta get really good at balancing this effort. Otherwise we will consistently, you know, drive off the road. We'll never be able to stay down the center line.
[00:22:58] Brian Gould: Blair, my version of that is I've had to modify our campaign structure so that when a particular center does a bad job at taking online patients and converting them to completed visits. I stopped spending there and I start spending where, wow, I know we can get a better, and I've done that. I've actually turned one center completely off. Now the problem that is, if you micros size your budget around 16 or a hundred locations, it's not an efficient spend as a, if you have your marketing hat on, but from an operational point of view, it's great.
[00:23:33] Blair Primis: Wow. Talk about a motivator, like imagine if you were able to go into a meeting and be like, by the way, Main street and Main Street, we just turned you off. Good luck next month. Like, wow. Get your act together.
[00:23:43] Brian Gould: I report on that to the leadership team and, and to the board, and, and you hope you don't do that as a punishment.
[00:23:50] Brian Gould: You do that because you want the marketing dollar to be spent efficiently and you also wanna work with that center manager or however your structure is to say. We can pinpoint a couple of things here. How do we get better? And now let's try it. Let's try something new. And I think problem solving like that not only is, well, it's beneficial for the, the patients, but it, it creates a lot of comradery within the team itself.
[00:24:15] Brian Gould: Like they, we have resources. We're not out here on a limb. People will help us solve these issues. 'cause if you're a center manager, you've got patients walking in, you've got cleanliness, you've got a whole bunch of different priorities. And, and, and. You and I Blair think about patient experience pretty much every day.
[00:24:31] Brian Gould: Yeah. And they sometimes they're just thinking, well enough people show up for me to open the the center that day.
[00:24:37] Ray Mina: Blair, I think that's pretty bold. And I've had that conversation about like, well, why, why wouldn't you just shut off the spend on, in, in, in those service lines or those locations?
[00:24:50] Ray Mina: And people are like, no way can I shut off the spend? So you're you're, you're the, you're the spicy take on this podcast. You're like, I'm just gonna turn this off. Blair, what if, if you can't turn it off? What do you do? How do you, how do you manage that supply side constraint when you have the demand but you have supply side constraint. What, what, what do you do? How do you start to influence that?
[00:25:10] Blair Primis: Yeah. Yeah. And this whole, that's great Ray, and, and this will get back to this idea of like becoming a engine of growth for the org. So we will go to our ops partners and our colleagues and we'll say, here's what we're gonna do.
[00:25:22] Blair Primis: We're gonna put a policy in, place that says if a provider has over 10 day, week time, we now have the option to schedule that patient at a different location. And so we're not gonna turn off the spend for that location. Love that we're just gonna physically move the patient to a new spa. Love that. Or we'll create like a travel policy of sometimes, so bear with me as again, like into the weeds of our organization, but we have, you know, 38 locations and a hundred and, you know, 42 providers, we will begin to shift them around.
[00:25:49] Blair Primis: So one location of long waits, guess what? We'll can bring a provider from a short wait and move 'em to the building that has a longer one and see the patient at that location. So the patient still gets the same provider, but we actually have moved the slot to a different physical location for them. Yeah.
[00:26:05] Blair Primis: And it, it seemingly helps us get to a better balance of supply and demand and how we think about access in a proactive way. And that's where our experience, part of our team really can lean hard to say, here are some of the metrics. That we can look at, to your point about going in front of the board to say, here's the data that we'll show you.
[00:26:24] Blair Primis: This is likely not going to be a location. We will see whatever our growth target is, 4%, 5%, 2%. So what are we gonna do to maybe not as, not as, you know, spicy as as Brian, like, you're not gonna get anything, which would just be cool for me to say one day in a meeting. But I do think it would be interesting to say we're, we're going to not give you the revenue and we're going to give it to another office because the group will benefit.
[00:26:52] Ray Mina: And the consumer will benefit.
[00:26:54] Blair Primis: And the consumer benefits.
[00:26:56] Ray Mina: Yes, yes. You're so right about this, like the, it is not even for the next generation, just people in general, you're just putting friction in front of somebody to get to the thing that they want.
[00:27:05] Ray Mina: And we're not used to that anymore. Like it's, it's correct on demand, instant gratification and, and you're, you're going antithetical to that model.
[00:27:13] Blair Primis: Yes, exactly. Right. And, and maybe the, maybe arguably. You know, while we're all in it, it might be the most friction laden industry ever invented in the history of ISTs.
[00:27:25] Blair Primis: Maybe I can think of no other more friction laden air airline boarding. Yeah. Yeah. I mean exactly. Even they got to kiosks. Right? And we can scan a, and you can scam my phone to, to check in. We are just decades behind and 800 layers of friction. Yeah, it is. It is phenomenal how challenging it is to navigate that space.
[00:27:48] Blair Primis: So I agree with you. It's just friction it, you know, if this is where we are today and this is the goal, we just have to get to hear and it's like monumental change.
[00:27:58] Ray Mina: Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask for both of you? Can I ask to give our audience like a super tactical breakthrough from both of you? You, you said it, Blair is like, you're, you're going to die on the hill.
[00:28:08] Ray Mina: You're working towards a world where you can track everything so you can present to your leadership, your team, your board. What has been one of the biggest tracking breakthroughs for you that led to business outcome and strategy shift?
[00:28:23] Blair Primis: Yeah. I mean, for us it is, it is the direct connection between. Paid ad spend and booking and you know, we have a goal and a target.
[00:28:34] Blair Primis: You know, we have, we have a very particular partner we are talking to and working alongside to try to actually get to arrived appointments also. Yeah. Um, and, and. Yeah, it's critical because I think that would be a really fascinating final state of that. But hands down, the best thing we have had been going for now, you know, a couple of years, is the ability to say, here's how much money we spent last quarter.
[00:28:57] Blair Primis: Here's exactly the return on investment we got. Here's precisely how we, we can dial this up and dial this down at scale. It is, it has been, uh, easily the best, the best performing metric or story to tell about how marketing dollars are actually driving growth.
[00:29:16] Ray Mina: That's amazing. What about you, Brian?
[00:29:17] Brian Gould: So I am combining the data from two systems, our EMR and our scheduling system. And by combining those together, I'm seeing a status for every patient who's come through, whether a walk-in or an appointment or a call center schedule. I using our service with, with fresh paint and Google Click IDs, I can get to a lot of exact paid conversions.
[00:29:43] Brian Gould: I can get to some organic conversions. It could be better to be honest, but what I do every month is I lay this all out in a series of reports. It's why I know that that one location is not converting the same way as everyone else. We pay a special attention to status statuses, like no-shows or cancellations, and where we try to squeeze a little extra juice outta the lemon is particularly with walk-ins.
[00:30:09] Brian Gould: Let's look at how, what each center is doing and where there's an opportunity to lower that cancel rate or improve that no show rate. So I think we're doing as much as we can with the data we have, but like you say, Blair, I wish we could get a little more precise. We're also feeding this data back into Google, so we're hopefully making Google smarter with, uh, paid advertising.
[00:30:33] Blair Primis: Same, Brian, right? Like we're, we're having a lot of conversations with, you know, raised product team around getting to that arrived appointment, you know, and how do we look at. What technology stack and how do we have to lease together some partners to say this campaign drove an arrived appointment. And you know, that is, that would be the really, as close to the brass ring as you could get in paid ads.
[00:30:55] Brian Gould: You know, one thing we did is Google wants to prioritize phone calls. We don't find those for urgent care to be especially good drivers of conversion, just like searching for directions or, yeah, so we've tried to really focus in on booked appointments and it, it has cleared out a lot of the noise and, you know, it's, it, I, I can't say it makes it easier, but I can say it maybe is a little more direct.
[00:31:18] Ray Mina: You're just giving yourself more and more clarity around your decision versus like, I think someone, someone said recently at one of our Freshpaint events, it's like a train went in the tunnel and you know, a train went in the tunnel and out on the other end. You're like, is that still a train? That's like, that's what you're trying, you're trying to make sure that there's a continuity there.
[00:31:37] Ray Mina: I wanna shift back to brand because I think we're all, we, we all agreed at the very top, other than my quippy joke about like, you're not a hundred percent in Google. We all agreed at the top that like the, the engine here really is about brand and word of mouth. Like you're still gonna do performance marketing, you're still gonna have intent, but how are you gonna improve ROAS?
[00:31:55] Ray Mina: How are you gonna have a better blended CAC? It's because your brand is really strong. Brian, I, I was surprised 'cause I thought you were gonna be really heavily anchored in intent channels given urgent care. And I know, I know you still are because it's a high intent market in some cases, but it's a bit of a challenge because then how do you prove in a high intent market, like where, where does your brand work first show up? Like how do you, how do you prove that to the rest of the organization and your board?
[00:32:25] Brian Gould: Well, two things. Well, first, before I answer that question, I just wanted to say that you're right. We are a high, a very, an intent driven business. We offer services though that aren't intent driven, and so we try to balance out our marketing throughout the year.
[00:32:39] Brian Gould: We don't need to advertise those during cold and flu season, and they're probably not as relevant. But during the summer when kids need physicals and, and parents have procrastinated, we, you know, we lean into that. So our blended revenue that we assume on a per visit basis assumes over the course of the year we're gonna have PPDs and, and, and physicals at a lower cost and clinical visits that are at a much higher cost.
[00:33:03] Brian Gould: So all that, all that factors in, and in fact, part of what I think the challenge in urgent care right now is, is to find more of those opportunities. Products, especially with the way healthcare is changing, that will appeal to folks who maybe don't have the same insurance options that they once did. And that's what everyone's doing right now, including just leaning away for people or employers to self-fund the care a little bit and build volume through those kinds of programs.
[00:33:31] Brian Gould: And what, and tracking that all back to brand is when you get into those spaces, brand really matters. And, and I, I think it's important at the top of the funnel because. We on, on the urgent care side, operate in a sea of sameness. A lot of the urgent care names sound alike, quick care, ready care, fast care, and a lot of the colors are the same, red, white, and blue.
[00:33:52] Brian Gould: You know? And so we, we've leaned into a different name, a different color scheme. We look different 'cause we are different. We used to say that for a while and we've recognized that people need to make that instantaneous brand association. And I remember when I first started at vybe our, we designed our centers to look more like health spas really than, than healthcare facilities.
[00:34:16] Brian Gould: And I would, I would sit in a inside one of the facilities, maybe with the front desk person, I'd see people with their hands up to the window looking in like. What is this place and do I belong in that place? It looks kind of swanky, you know? In 2018 when, but when healthcare, you know, but post COVID, you know, the, the standards are up.
[00:34:40] Brian Gould: But, and that created one of the brand challenges, which is how do we show people in every area of the city that vybe is a place where they belong? And we've tried very hard to do that with our images. I love that. With our language. With the community events we do, because that's, we've, we've been specific, Philadelphia has great healthcare, but when you look at the concentration of PCPs, there are healthcare deserts and we've been in locations where people we're the, we're the only option.
[00:35:07] Brian Gould: People would bring their whole families to the waiting room. They'd plug into the charging stations, they'd, they'd get themselves coffee and they'd wait. And if that particular center were busy, we would say, we can, we can Uber you down to another center. Just it'll help be faster. They wouldn't leave because they had that neighborhood connection to the particular center.
[00:35:29] Blair Primis: That's so cool. Yeah, that is way cool.
[00:35:31] Brian Gould: We've tried to feature some local references in the way we think about our brand because we know those are community, call it a community outcome hub that is anchored in urgent care.
[00:35:46] Ray Mina: I love that lens where it's like, you know, from the outside looking in, it's a transactional service, but you're building a brand that makes it not feel transactional.
[00:35:53] Ray Mina: It feels a lot different than that. Blair, I think in your world, like we, you mentioned this earlier, is like people need to have preference for your brand sometimes long before they'll have a need for your services. Sim similar question to you, like how does, how does that show up? You know, how does that show up in the business results for you?
[00:36:12] Blair Primis: Yeah, yeah. The, the, the idea for us would be to, how do you create. A brand that enhances their lives, even when they don't need us for that enhancement. And so if we can fund a local softball team, if we can, you know, put on a, you know, support a local nonprofit in some way, if we can, you know, think about helping an entrepreneurship or an incubator group get started if we can actually.
[00:36:41] Blair Primis: Spend dollars to say, look at what OrthoCarolina is making possible in your community so that the community you live in is better tomorrow than it was yesterday. That can only be good for our business and the long play there. That is at the, you know, 3, 5, 7 year mark. If more people wanna move here, when those that move here, wanna stay here, add some point.
[00:37:05] Blair Primis: They likely will have an orthopedic need and we then can just capture that growth. And so the long term play here has been to say we need to be a member integrated into our community. So, and I use these words very specifically, our brand is relevant for them. It isn't necessarily just about brand awareness, it isn't just about recall.
[00:37:26] Blair Primis: It is about are we relevant? And they say, oh my god, OrthoCarolina is very relevant. Like they sponsored my kid's soccer team for three years now. If they don't even say, I went and had care, it’s like, oh, well no, they've been great. They, our kids' jerseys are, I've never had to pay them. Or they, they ran a scholarship program through our local high school system, or they helped fund, you know, this like, you know, community pickup or we created a five mile track, one of our river, a river adjacent parks.
[00:37:50] Blair Primis: We helped create like a walking track there that was entirely powered by W of Carolina. The obvious assumptions are you're walking, you're moving, you're physically active. There's a connection there. But the longer play is that we're making it, we're relevant to them even when they do not need our services.
[00:38:05] Blair Primis: So that as the city and the community and the population neighborhoods grow, they become a very, you become a very easy thing for them to choose. 'cause we are familiar, I'm not sure what the vybe stat status yet, where we're a cool place to come, which would be awesome if you need to come to our office.
[00:38:21] Blair Primis: But if, but without that in play, we're, we're getting closer to that. Which is, it is, it is a, a good experience. Because I think for Brian too, he would agree really in every healthcare setting, but specifically in, in our scenario, no one wants to come see us. You never want to be there.
[00:38:41] Ray Mina: Yeah, that's so true.
[00:38:43] Blair Primis: And if you are there, you are likely in really bad pain. You cannot move. You cannot walk. We were already starting from a place of it not being great. So you've really gotta overcome that obvious component, which is what are the small things? And, you know, seems silly and maybe seems like a decade ago, other groups did this, but having a coffee maker there, having wifi, like comfortable seats for non-patients like that stuff is critical because it, it, it, it is the, the experience already starts from a place of pain, pardon the pun. And you've just gotta make it less painful. That's the key.
[00:39:17] Brian Gould: That's so cool. And, and you're, you're right. Relevant is a really good word to use sometimes though. It's, it's like you, you've, you've described some pretty grand gestures and, and, and support and, and, and we're not able to, to extend to that degree, but sometimes it's just showing up.
[00:39:34] Brian Gould: 'cause at our entry level front door of healthcare, there are entire groups of people with, with specific healthcare needs and just showing up in an event. That catering to them means all the difference. Nobody else is here. And whether that's a, a community event in one of our neighborhoods, Rocktober Fest, it's a fun one to go to.
[00:39:54] Brian Gould: It's a big beer festival or, or an LGBTQ event that says, Hey, there's nobody else here except this healthcare. Or, yeah. So we've tried to be really specific about those, those things because it expands this what you and I, I'll use the word relevance again 'cause it, it, it is.
[00:40:14] Ray Mina: I love that. I, I recently connected with ex marketing leader at Nike Running who built the whole Nike running app and community, and y'all are basically taking a page out of that consumer playbook because they didn't create Nike running community to sell shoes.
[00:40:28] Ray Mina: They created it to create a lifestyle, which as a byproduct, they know that they'll have that relevance in in that tribe, in that world. The question that I always like. I think if that person, if she was on the call, we'd all be groking on like, yeah, no, duh. Like we have to do this kind of stuff. But then when you get that message, sometimes, depending on who your leadership is, when you have to go back to leadership and explain when they're all addicted to this last click attribution world, how like, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but like how do you demonstrate. That that investment is driving business outcomes. Like, you know, I know you're not, it's, you're not gonna connect this thing directly, but how, how do you report on that?
[00:41:11] Blair Primis: Yeah, so I, I think a couple of ways. You know, one of the things we tried to talk about is stratifying brand across the segments of our population that exist, and that is a measure of success, meaning, yes, mom, as caregiver, here's how we've embedded our brand into that segment. Youth athlete, here's how we've embedded our brand into that segment.
[00:41:34] Blair Primis: Pickleball, you know, joggers, like, here's how we've gotten into that segment. And so what I'm able to say is we had 15 segment targets that had loosely making this note, a million population in our community. Are we getting close to being relevant to that million people in those segments as best we can?
[00:41:54] Blair Primis: That's, we can measure it and the hope would be then our, and the phrase I like to use is, the brand is a turbocharger for your performance marketing. They're not segmented. It's just a turbocharger. So it just, the turbo kicks in and then when they get to the performance side, we can be really focused on it.
[00:42:15] Blair Primis: And really, I love that in, and so that's how we think about it. And so I will. I will openly talk about these segments of our community or these segments of our population where we have to get integrated into their lifestyle to steal the Nike phrase into the lifestyle for them, because that is where they're living.
[00:42:31] Blair Primis: They're living in this adult active community. I've gotta get in there. I gotta be in that space. Pickleball tennis, jogging golf, like I gotta be in that segment. Whatever that population is, however we can best get impressions in front of them is our best way to do it. It's our best way to measure it.
[00:42:47] Brian Gould: And our version of that sort of turbocharging or, or halo I guess is partnering with university health systems, going into apartment buildings, going again, it's very community, very local based.
[00:43:00] Brian Gould: But figuring out where, where are there pockets of people who need to, who need to find us? And the channels matter too. I was standing outside one of our clinics and I, I, I just visited for another reason and I, I saw an a, an elderly guy coming out. And so I, 'cause we skew so young, I was fascinated, like, you know, so is this your first visit to vybe?
[00:43:22] Brian Gould: And he's like, yeah. How did it go? It was great. Where do you live? Just right around the corner. I'm like, how could this, and I've been there for like a hundred years, right? So how, how could this be your first visit to vybe? And he said, I got your direct mail piece. And I'm just like, there you go.
[00:43:38] Blair Primis: There you go. And I will see too that there's a component of brand that is fun. And oftentimes people, it, it doing these fun things or having those fun like engagements where you're, you're at an, you know, at a festival and you're the only one there. Like it, it is a lot of fun and the key is to communicate to leadership.
[00:43:56] Blair Primis: It is also fun. It is a strategic, it is a strategic move and it is with intent that we're doing this work. Yeah. Oftentimes I think marketers run into the problem with those that are funding marketing as a lot of this is vanity, and I like the phrase you used phrase, like, we're waving our hands about the fact we were at this cool thing.
[00:44:14] Blair Primis: But it is. It is fun and I'm qshamed that it is, but it is with intent. That's right. That we're doing this because it is, it is going to build the rest of our, our success metrics all the way down.
[00:44:26] Ray Mina: I think you nailed this thing, which is like a lot of people have lost sight about marketing. Marketing is not sales. Marketing is meant to be remarked about, and you have to be able to rise above the noise to get there. But the way that you all are going about it is it's not haphazard. It has high in pension. Segmentation, clear ways to measure success, that drive to like ultimate down funnel. I think we get in trouble when we don't think through the salient motion of like, how does this connect to the business?
[00:44:55] Ray Mina: I wanted to use the last minute for the crystal ball moment. Man, like I, I swear if we get on this call again and you know, if we're all still doing this in a few years, we should. And I think that we won't even know the world that we're living in. I think that technology is gonna change so rapidly before the end of this decade that we can't even really wave the crystal ball.
[00:45:15] Ray Mina: But I, but I wanna ask you both to try with AI and with massive changes that are happening in advertising and the way consumers interact with brands. Like, how is that, how are you thinking about that? I know it's too hard to think to the end of the decade, but how are you thinking about it at least in a 12 month increment?
[00:45:35] Blair Primis: I think my first thought really kind of goes to hiring and building teams. I think it is around having folks who understand that that is the future challenge. They can embrace change, they can think about pivoting. They're open to innovation. Maybe they're, maybe they're willing to take risk at a higher degree than maybe I am or other people before me were.
[00:45:57] Blair Primis: And I think the, the idea that you've got the ability team who understands that is where we're going. You know, that's where the puck is going and this is where we are going to be, I think is critical to that. I think oftentimes organizations try to fit a new universe with the existing ability to travel through the stars.
[00:46:19] Blair Primis: That just doesn't work. We're gonna need a different type of rocket ship to get to Mars than we need to get to the moon. Wow. And to say that we're gonna use the same structure to do that is, is a little bit of like a leadership fail. Like shame on me for being like my theme team who I love and adore, they're terrific and they do great work.
[00:46:39] Blair Primis: Shame on me if I'm not bringing in new people or training them up in a way for them to be able to get to that future state. 'cause to your point, maybe more so than even social media though. The revolution, or candidly, even the internet, this might be the biggest one ever. Yeah. And so I don't know what's gonna come out of it.
[00:46:56] Blair Primis: So what I need is a bunch of teammates who also don't know, but are willing to go figure it out and pivot and learn and move and bob and weave. So I think it's a hiring and staffing need and, and, and methodology maybe.
[00:47:08] Ray Mina: Brian and I both smiled. 'cause I think that was a mic drop moment when you're like, we need a different rocket ship.
[00:47:16] Brian Gould: Oh, oh, for sure. And it started with the hockey puck, so I was like, maybe that's, it's gonna stay sports. I know. I'm like, this is amazing. I'm like, oh my God. I mean, I can, I, I need that sound bite. Even somewhere in between all those colorful images. Yeah. I, I totally agree. Blair.
[00:47:33] Brian Gould: It's, it's, I totally agree. It's the, it's the, it's the malleability, the flexibility of people to, to respond to these needs and in a way that still seems authentic and still seems connected to the basic human need for healthcare. We, the other side I would say is, maybe this is more for, for urgent care.
[00:47:53] Brian Gould: We are, as the, as healthcare becomes more expensive and access to care changes, there will be a greater and greater burden on. Urgent care to, I mean, we could, we could screen people into more acute settings. We could start taking people from more acute settings and stepping down. And so as I look into the crystal ball, I see that some of that happening.
[00:48:16] Brian Gould: I also see us retaining this idea of who we are and the people we serve and we help every day who are not there to get ice cream. As you said, they're there because they're, they're in pain. They're not feeling well. They need help. If we can, we can take their healthcare seriously, but not take ourselves too seriously.
[00:48:34] Brian Gould: I think that's kind of a new, a great combination and a way to think about how we go forward. 'cause it should be fun. It's a journey. And I, you know, like, just like you were saying, Blair, like if we're on this call in, in a co in a year or two, I think we're gonna be astonished if we look back at this conversation, I'm like, wow, we could, it's blowing our minds.
[00:48:53] Ray Mina: I, I truly immensely enjoyed this conversation. It was so fun. I, I thought it would go like this and we would just have like a great conversation and it was, yeah, it was amazing. I hope you both enjoyed it too.
[00:49:03] Producer: Today's episode is brought to you by Freshpaint. If you're a healthcare marketer, under pressure to do more with less fresh paint helps you stretch fixed budgets, prove what's working, and protect the strategies that drive growth. Freshpaint brings performance and privacy together in one platform so you can see real outcomes across channels and double down where ROI is highest. With Freshpaint, privacy becomes your performance advantage. Turn better data into smarter decisions, find more high value patients, and keep your growth plans on track. Learn more at freshpaint.io.