Healthcare leaders embrace multi-channel strategies in theory, but implementation consistently fails when measurement frameworks, economic models, and incentive structures face real-world scrutiny. In this episode, Lauren Leone and Rich Briddock of Cardinal Digital dissect the critical failure points in multi-channel execution, examine what's at stake when these systems break down, and reveal the transformations that occur when teams finally achieve alignment.
💡 Episode Summary
Healthcare leaders embrace multi-channel strategies in theory, but implementation consistently fails when measurement frameworks, economic models, and incentive structures face real-world scrutiny. In this episode, Lauren Leone and Rich Briddock of Cardinal Digital dissect the critical failure points in multi-channel execution, examine what's at stake when these systems break down, and reveal the transformations that occur when teams finally achieve alignment.
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⏱️ Episode Timestamps
*(00:41) - Why multi-channel marketing fails in healthcare despite theoretical agreement
*(03:24) - Why marketing teams fall back on intent channels
*(10:21) - The 70-20-10 Framework
*(16:54) - Measurement frameworks and leading indicators
*(22:35) - Setting clear goals and understanding your audience
*(31:38) - Practical next steps and starting small
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💬 Quotes
“ We start oftentimes with, Can you tell us the capacity for new patients at your locations or by service line? So that it's not just this blanket, We need new patients everywhere. I think that creates really interesting channel mix opportunities. You might take a market where you're highly saturated, we do a marginal or incrementality test and find that search has really maxed its capacity and you need to start considering other channels. Then you may have an emerging market or market where competitive pressures are less or where there's population growth. There's just green space to be had and maybe you can rely on a little bit more of your bottom funnel there for the time being, and it's not this binary, my org does this mix or doesn't do this mix, but it's a lot more nuanced to that based on the business need.” – Lauren Leone
“ What we typically tend to find when we go into a new relationship is the life cycle or the stages of the goal maturity curve are often not met in terms of people might know that they need new patients, but they offer a variety of different service lines. They're not thinking about the different LTVs of those patients. They're just saying, I need 1,000 new patients at a $200 cost per acquisition, but they're not segmenting or there's no nuance between those different patient cohorts. And then it's oftentimes not measurable. They can't join the dots from, I'm spending here and I'm receiving X. What we are trying to work with them on is fundamentally what's the actual goal? And be more granular than just, I need this CPA. Actually know if you are getting someone on the dentistry side who's coming in for Invisalign, you shouldn't be looking at them the same way as someone who's coming in for a teeth cleaning. The value to your organization is significantly different.” – Rich Briddock
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🔗 Links
Connect with Lauren Leone on LinkedIn
Connect with Rich Briddock on LinkedIn
Connect with Ray Mina on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
[00:00:00] Lauren Leone: You think about the yo-yo of like attempting these channels and stopping and starting, and stopping, and you really need to have a commitment for an extended period of time to measure the tail impact of those channels. And every time you stop it, you, you halt that and you have to start over again. So you've got, you know, you've gotta have that commitment really baked into your plan and say, I am setting this money aside and consider it not available for my, you know, the, the fire that arises to get more patients in the door. It doesn't exist.
[00:00:41] Ray Mina: I don't think that this topic is gonna be controversial to any marketer alive that in order to like, touch all the surface areas of, of marketing inside and even outside of healthcare, you have to do more than just intent-based marketing. But every time that we try to stand this up, more often than not, it fails for a number of reasons.
[00:01:01] Ray Mina: So today I'm joined by Lauren Leone, who's the Chief Growth Officer at Cardinal Digital Marketing and Rich Briddock, who is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cardinal Digital Marketing to talk about the why behind this. So Rich, I've, I've known you and your CEO Alex for years now, and I know we're all aligned that like healthcare marketing is more than the intent channels that we talked about.
[00:01:24] Ray Mina: But Alex, I remember seeing Alex recently, and even, even he admitted that many times marketing teams end up falling back on intent channels like paid search and, and organic search. What makes it so hard? Like what, what, what, why is this so difficult for people?
[00:01:42] Rick Briddock: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, I, I think the, the most obvious answer to that question is those channels are the easiest to prove marketing budgets more so than ever need to be justified. I think with digital and everything that's been built up and, and, and obviously even fresh paint has these capabilities around advanced measurement and attribution, then we've, we've sort of created this perception that every dollar expended needs to be justified and, and needs to be measurable, and these channels are the easiest to measure.
[00:02:22] Rick Briddock: Oftentimes, and they, they have typically, they tend to have the highest ROI because they're the closest to conversion and oftentimes they are, to your point, the tried and true they are, the, the channels that marketers are the most comfortable with deploying and, and leveraging, they tend to to be a little bit more straightforward in, in setting up.
[00:02:43] Rick Briddock: And so it, it's sort of like these are, these are the easy wins. This is the low hanging fruit of the, of the marketing world and investing further of the funnel in, in branding or top of the funnel or category awareness. It, it's just a lot more difficult, not impossible, but it is a lot more difficult for, for marketers, especially if they don't have, you know, Masai resources to, to really justify what those results or what that activity is gonna drive in terms of results. So I think that's why a, a lot of folks stay away from it because a, again, it's, it's do more of what you know, and it's, it's the pressure to really adequately show the return on what your, on, what your activities are driving.
[00:03:23] Ray Mina: Yeah, it's not, it's not accidental. I think, I think revenue for Google Ads was somewhere north of like 250 billion last year. It's not accidental that, you know, it, that, that those, it's the single greatest marketing tool built probably in the history of mankind. Right. It's, it's so, it's so effective.
[00:03:40] Ray Mina: Lauren, I know, I know you work with, I know you work with clients and healthcare organizations who do, who do stand it up and, and I promise to the listeners we're starting on the negative slant, but I promise we're gonna move towards like, how do you do this effectively? But Lauren, when, when you get someone who's on board to, to move beyond intent channels, and then momentum ends up slowing even after you launch those campaigns, why, where does that happen? Where does the momentum slow?
[00:04:06] Lauren Leone: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Rich said it well on, on things like, as, as soon as the pressure dials up on, we didn't hit our new patient goals this month, or we're under capacity again, the tendency is just to immediately revert every dollar back to the thing that, that you linear, you know, you know, in a linear fashion can drive those.
[00:04:24] Lauren Leone: I think, you know, the other barrier that I tend to see, or where, where it can slow down is. You have this, these grand ideas, you know, the channel mix should be evolved, but there's more than just the. In platform activation that goes into it. I think a lot of organizations realize when they start to do this, that wow, we have to turn a mirror on ourselves and really dig into what our customers wanna hear at other points in the journey.
[00:04:47] Lauren Leone: And we have to do research and we have to develop messaging for consideration and awareness, and then we have to create videos and we've gotta create the assets to go along with it. And all of a sudden this. Can I set aside 10, 20% of my budget to go into another channel that seems really easy on paper, just becomes a lot more complex. Doing it well becomes a lot more complex.
[00:05:10] Ray Mina: I love that you said that. It's like in B2B SaaS, the equivalent is you have like a bad quarter and then everything reverts to, I just need more book demos, like throw everything else out because you know, this, this, this bottom of funnel thing is so critical. And sometimes that does work in the immediate term, but like you end up paying the price down the road, for sure.
[00:05:29] Lauren Leone: Yeah. I mean, you, you think about the yo-yo of like attempting these channels and stopping and starting and stopping and you really need to have a commitment for an extended period of time to measure the tail impact of those channels. And every time you stop it, you, you halt that and you have to start over again.
[00:05:48] Lauren Leone: Yeah, so you've got, you know, you've gotta have that commitment really baked into your plan and say, I am setting this money aside and consider it not available for my, you know, the, the fire that arises to get more patients in the degree it doesn't exist.
[00:06:03] Rick Briddock: And if, if you guys don't mind, you know, just something else I'd like to say on this. Another reason why we stole out in these activities is because. We're looking at it through the wrong measurement framework. Oftentimes, we're using the intent, intent-based, demand capture, yardstick to really try and understand what these other initiatives and campaigns should drive, whereas in reality.
[00:06:28] Rick Briddock: A, they often do, they often serve a different purpose, but b, that there's a, there's a better way to, to look at their contribution. And that is a more holistic way using things like media mix modeling, incrementality testing that go beyond that focus of just direct attribution and channel attribution.
[00:06:47] Rick Briddock: And I think, again, finally, the other thing that I build on that too, is. The way that you look at your demand capture and your intent marketing campaigns can also impact your tendency to overinvest in them as well. So again, we sort of fall into this trap, and Lauren and I see it a lot on our side of clients looking at a blended acquisition cost, and they're saying, oh yeah, well, I love paid search because paid search, I get a $200 cost per acquisition of new patients, and so I'm just gonna put money into it all day long.
[00:07:21] Rick Briddock: What they don't realize is they're on a diminishing return curve, and actually the next dollar that they're putting into paid search, their marginal acquisition cost is actually a thousand dollars, and they're losing a ton of money on, on that, on that dollar spent. And actually, they should be diversifying, they should be going further up the funnel because that thousand dollars that you've just taken outta search and put into TikTok campaigns, even though whole, even though from a platform attribution point of view, your TikTok CPA might not be lower.
[00:07:51] Rick Briddock: From a holistic point of view, your, your CPA is, is gonna be lower. You're gonna build up the brand, you're gonna reach a new audience. There's some really cool targeting stuff that you can do that you cannot do on search and in organic. And you're gonna, you know, you're gonna get, you're gonna engage further up in the, in the patient journey and in the health conversation.
[00:08:10] Rick Briddock: And so, you know, when that, when that problem aware audience or that audience that isn't quite looking yet still has some exposure to you when there is that moment. To seek out a, a healthcare provider, you're already firmly in the driver's seat in terms of consideration and choice.
[00:08:28] Ray Mina: I love that you went there because you know, I'm B2B SaaS guy and not B2C, but like a lot of these first principles are the same. And I put my product marketing hat on and I think about jobs to be done framework, like one job to be done is converting people at the bottom of the funnel. This tool is very good for it, but as you pointed out. It has limited headroom. Eventually they're gonna keep taking your money, but not necessarily get you better results.
[00:08:53] Ray Mina: It'll get you declining results. But on the other hand, there's a whole bunch of other jobs that marketers need to do. Like I just launched, you know, 16 new clinics in a new geo that has 5% brand recognition. Like intent channels don't necessarily solve that. Right?
[00:09:09] Rick Briddock: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, and, and you, you don't want to be competing at the bottom. Oftentimes, when nobody's ever heard of you, and you are an unknown quantity, right? Especially if you're new in the market, you don't have some of the things that really age you. And I'm sure Lauren can talk about the organic side more eloquently than I can, but you know, if you, to your point, if you've just opened 15 new practices and you don't have any reviews, how, how effective is your demand capturing strategy gonna be on organic?
[00:09:41] Rick Briddock: When someone googles you and you know you've got three, three reviews on Google versus your competitor who's well-known entity and has thousands of reviews, you're gonna lose that fight. So you've gotta go further up the funnel and, and educate these, these prospective patients. And, and like I said, you know, there's, there's some great ways to get really targeted in terms of finding that audience before they're even looking for you based on, you know, conditions, diagnoses, procedures.
[00:10:07] Rick Briddock: The prescriptions that you take. There's just so much more that you can do to play an active role throughout the patient journey than, than just being there at the, at the bottom trying to capture everything that's, that's coming your way.
[00:10:21] Lauren Leone: Yeah. Rich, I mean, you mentioned the, or you guys were talking about, you know, the new clinic as an example. I think the other thing I often tell people when you think about marginal inefficiency and diminishing return is don't wait until the moment when you know, you're maybe looking back on a set of data and realizing how marginally inefficient you are to even consider standing up a new channel. Because then you've got, you know, the learning curve on that new channel getting settled in and in the meantime what happens with all those marginally and efficient dollars?
[00:10:50] Lauren Leone: You keep spending 'em in a platform and you have nowhere to go. I think thinking about. Something like a 70-20-10 rule where, you know, maybe 70% of your budget is, is in that core reliable up until that point, you know, as far as you could push it. And then you've got, you know, your 20% that's maybe in what would my next best channel be?
[00:11:10] Lauren Leone: As I even can, you know, get close to approaching that diminishing return and how can I be working to build that to, to the, to the right KPIs, the right objective, the right job to be done. And then the 10%, you know, if, if you wanna experiment, if, if you do have the freedom in your organization to be on TikTok or run an interesting probabilistic audience through programmatic or something that, that maybe sounds really great but has an unknown impact.
[00:11:38] Ray Mina: I love that you just gave that simple framework. If I have a million dollars of spend, Lauren just said, you know, spend 700 K in the tried and true spend 20 in your best emerging channel and save 10% because you're gonna need another emerging channel down the road. I'm assuming that's approach that you take with your clients and, and trying to help them, like build more sophisticated strategies.
[00:12:01] Ray Mina: How have like taking some of these other things we just talked about, some of the pitfalls, like, oh my gosh, we've had a bad month, I've gotta revert back. So that 70-20-10 just gets obliterated or I don't know how to measure it. How, how have you all changed your approach with clients to like make this stuff stick for them?
[00:12:19] Lauren Leone: Yeah. I mean, Rich, you probably have some thoughts there. I think, I think the 70-20-10 rule applies to most organizations that have a realistic correlation between the budget and the outcome they're looking for. So if you're, you know, if you're trying to drive a thousand patients on a $50 budget like that, obviously that doesn't apply, but if you, you know, if you have a reasonable understanding of what it's gonna take to drive a patient, that that's a really good framework to apply there.
[00:12:43] Lauren Leone: I think, you know, when, when you get that pressure coming in, rich, what we tend to do is at least, you know, the 10% comes up for consideration of course. And you think about like short term, you know, what could I do with those dollars?
[00:13:00] Lauren Leone: I think you're also thinking at the, those points in time on opportunities across your channel mix to Rich mentioned organic, like where else can I focus a little bit of, of extra effort at that point in time to try to close that gap? Does it always have to mean the first thing I do is shut down? Maybe that growth channel that I'm making great strides in and I'm starting to feel really good about it.
[00:13:18] Lauren Leone: I really don't wanna undo all the progress that I've made in building this thing out. And then, you know, I think, you know, you've got the, rich. The, the thing that also I think tends to happen alongside those, those conversations, which is again, turning a mirror on the organization and saying, are you also doing everything you can do?
[00:13:37] Lauren Leone: Let's look at your phone answer rates, your conversion rates. Like if, let's solve this problem together. Don't just default to peeling back the, the investments that are helping you grow.
[00:13:49] Rick Briddock: Yeah, and I, and I think, you know, what is the, the definition of insanity is, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes. And I think a lot of our clients, the drive to diversify is because the approach in, in investing in a single channel is not working. And, and so the idea of reverting back to that and then expecting it to now work and to deliver what they need to, to deliver, we try and. Encourage them that, that that's not the approach.
[00:14:20] Rick Briddock: Just because, you know, just because you haven't found the, the perfect combination of media dollars today doesn't mean that, you know, by deploying and, and sticking to a robust testing roadmap, you will not find it in the next six to 12 months and you've just gotta stay the course. But I think I do. I, you know, just to reiterate, I think it is much more difficult to have performance driven clients.
[00:14:48] Rick Briddock: Focus on non intent based marketing strategies if they do not have the right measurement frameworks in place. So if you are going in and just saying, okay, we know what you really care about is new patients, and the only way that you can measure that is through, you know, pixels on the website or, or direct channel attribution, it's gonna be an uphill battle to get them to do some more of this top of the funnel stuff.
[00:15:14] Rick Briddock: And, and, yeah, so, so you really have to get the measurement piece in place first to show them that their assumptions are completely off base or, or not exactly accurate in terms of what they're thinking in order to help them diversify their strategies. You know, and it's, and it's not just even the allocation of marketing dollars, I think we work with a lot of organizations where the perception of what marketing drives versus the reality.
[00:15:44] Rick Briddock: It's significantly skewed. And so we're resetting their expectations of just, you know, actually marketing may only drive 15% of your new patient acquisition, but to their internal stakeholders, they think it's 95% right? And it's like, no, you know, like we've gotta, we've gotta recalibrate your entire expectation around what this function actually solves for, and then how we can make it better, right?
[00:16:09] Rick Briddock: Because if you don't actually know what it's doing for you. How can you then work to improve upon it? So that's not a large part of the, of the journey.
[00:16:18] Ray Mina: This is the thing that like healthcare is really stuck in, which is, I think at your scaling up conference you did a survey, it was north of 60% and Alex and I were both like, I don't, I don't even believe it's that hot.
[00:16:30] Ray Mina: It's, it's, we think it's higher than that, which is like they're still in last click attribution. I know, I personally know brands that are spending nine figures on digital performance strategies that are on last click attribution. So these things become like, if that's where you live, how, like, of course it's gonna show up in these other channels that are intent based or, you know, direct to visit, like you're, you're not gonna get a clear view.
[00:16:54] Ray Mina: So with that in mind, like. Where, how do we think about when we go, go to somebody and say, Hey, you need to rethink first before you do anything. You need to be clear about how you're gonna measure success. 'cause this way is not gonna show you the positive outcome. How do we need to think about those leading indicators?
[00:17:12] Ray Mina: What are the signals that we need to be able to measure, to show what are, what are ones that have been successful for you in in keeping the momentum?
[00:17:21] Lauren Leone: I mean, Rich, I can, let me start with some simple ones and then I know you've got like a lot of complex ideas. I mean, I think, you know, the, I, I think the other barrier for a lot of people is the leap from last click to whatever's next feels just like a mountain that they cannot climb.
[00:17:35] Lauren Leone: Whether it's a tech barrier, a conceptual barrier, they just kind of don't get it. I mean, I think the simplest place to start would be something like understanding whether it's. You know, through incrementality, a geo holdout test to deploy, you know, a broader mix. You wanna launch meta video, you wanna, you know, launch programmatic in a certain market to look at some of the KPIs you're already looking at in your last click attribution.
[00:18:00] Lauren Leone: But to look at the, the delta of those things compared to maybe the other geos where you're not running it, or a time period before or after, so. So when you think about KPIs, like click-through rates, branded search. Inorganic branded search in paid conversion rates, does having a touch point with a consumer earlier in their journey, video views on meta or, you know, potentially even like a click through to a page.
[00:18:22] Lauren Leone: Does that drive more people to search you by brand that's cheaper? Does that drive more people to click your ad when you are showing up in an auction? We love higher click-through rates. Does that drive more people to a, a higher percentage of people once they land on your site to convert?
[00:18:40] Lauren Leone: Those things all help. What will appear to be your, your bottom funnel, you know, search performance. But without the contribution of that other channel, we might not be seeing as much success out of those channels. I think that's like baseline if you have, you know, not, if you don't have the capacity or the MarTech to move to a more advanced model. That's a place I always tell people to start.
[00:19:03] Rick Briddock: I mean, I, I think there's, there's multiple different ways of, of looking at it, right? I think it's, it's trying to decide what kind of measurement framework best is, is, is best suited for you. You know, obviously like. What we see is you have some folks who are on the sort of media mix model side.
[00:19:22] Rick Briddock: They want to rely on correlation. They can't get the data that's required for multi-touch attribution. We have some folks who are far more skeptical of MMM and really they, they want an MTA solution, but then how do they handle walled gardens? Especially if you're going towards the top of the funnel and you're spending a lot of money on TikTok or meta.
[00:19:45] Rick Briddock: You know, you, it's very, very difficult or n on impossible to tie back that impression activity directly through an attribution model. So how do you, how do you equate for that? And, and so, you know, it really depends in terms of, of, of the bias of the client and then also the, the scenario, the, the, the limitations on the ground and also where the, where the expenditure is.
[00:20:10] Rick Briddock: As to what the right solution might be. You know, another interesting one in terms of measurement that we're starting to get more into, which I think is a big opportunity for us in, in 2026, is using claims data as a measurement solution for our end clients to say, you know, let's go back to the example that we were just talking about, right?
[00:20:36] Rick Briddock: Like, I just, I, I just went into a new market. I opened five locations. I know through the claims data in that market where people are going, right? I know that you know this, this provider has 40% of the market share. This provider has 30% of the market share. This provider has 20% of the market share, uh, and this provider has 10.
[00:20:56] Rick Briddock: And I know you know who providers are referring to of why they're, I don't know why they're referring to them, but I know who they're referring to. And so. With claims data as a measurement tool, not only can we tell them, even if they don't have the joined up dots, what's happening, we can tell them of the, of the 95 out of a hundred people that come to their website that they don't win.
[00:21:19] Rick Briddock: We can tell them what they're doing. Right? So it's not just telling them what, what they're getting, but it's telling them what they're not getting and what's happening instead, and then how can they make decisions based off of that, right? So. I think from a measurement point of view, there's, there's some really interesting stuff.
[00:21:36] Rick Briddock: I mean, I know that you guys also have an incredible, you know, end-to-end product from a measurement point of view that's ties into PMSs and EHR, and I know that's, that's specific to all marketing, right? Even, you know, obviously intent based marketing and, and more at the top of the funnel stuff as well.
[00:21:55] Rick Briddock: But again, I think it just comes back to which. There's no right or wrong answer, right? Like I think we, we like MTA, we like MMM. We don't really have a bias. It's, it's very situational, but whichever measurement framework you implement at the beginning of a expansion like this, you have to get internal stakeholder buy-in and alignment.
[00:22:22] Rick Briddock: Otherwise, this stuff will die on the buy. If you cannot get everybody to agree that yes, we believe in this, then don't do it because it will always get under.
[00:22:36] Ray Mina: Yeah. You, you, I think that's, I, I I wanted to make sure we spent some time to talk about like the playbook, like, and, and we just spent some time, Lauren, you had some really creative ways that you don't need any tech.
[00:22:48] Ray Mina: Like I don't, I don't have the worldview that you should go buy a bunch of tech immediately to solve your problems, but. What you both touched on is what are the problems that you have or what are the opportunities that you have? What are we trying to solve here? What would good look like? What's the North star we're driving towards?
[00:23:05] Ray Mina: And then working backwards from there to start to build. Like how would we measure that? How would we prove to ourselves and our leadership? How does, let's start there like. You know, we're speaking to the audience who's, who's anxiously waiting, like, what's my playbook on Monday that I'm gonna go run?
[00:23:20] Ray Mina: Well, one is thinking about this mix of 70, 20 10 as like a framework doesn't, doesn't have to be set in stone that that's your mix. But like, you can't put it all a hundred percent in intent if your goal is to move out. But the other part is first probably starting with your clients around what are we here for?
[00:23:37] Ray Mina: What are we trying to do? Like how do you, how do you guide that conversation? Or are people just really clear? At the outset of what the goal is.
[00:23:46] Lauren Leone: I mean, Rich, I think, I think we wish for clarity, you know, and I'm sure our marketing counterparts internally wish the clarity was stronger as well. I think you end up with an objective and you get to running a campaign and businesses change their focus all the time.
[00:24:02] Lauren Leone: Or businesses, you know, had a priority and you're making progress towards that priority and all of a sudden there's something else that is there. And how do you, not a bit drop everything you've been working on to go chase that day or week or months problem? You know, rich, I think everyone fundamentally in our industry, we know new patient acquisition, like people need more patients in their door.
[00:24:23] Lauren Leone: Whether that's, you know, new patients, repeat patients, extending lifetime value, stealing market share, like fundamentally it's acquiring that patient. You know, we start oftentimes with, can you tell us the capacity for new patients at your locations and you know, or by service line, so that it's not just this blanket, you know, we need new patients everywhere.
[00:24:47] Lauren Leone: And I think that creates really interesting channel mix opportunities. You know, you might take a market where you're highly saturated, you know, we do a marginal, you know, or incrementality test and find that search has really maxed its capacity and you need to start considering other channels. And then you may have an emerging market or market where competitive pressures are less, or where there's, you know, population growth.
[00:25:12] Lauren Leone: And so there's just green space to be had, and it doesn't necessarily mean your channel mix. Maybe you can rely on a little bit more of your bottom funnel there for the time being. And it's not this binary, my org does this mix or doesn't do this mix, but it's a lot more nuanced to that based on the business need.
[00:25:29] Rick Briddock: What, what we t typically tend to find when we go into a new relationship is this, the, the life cycle or the stages of the goal, goal maturity curve are, are often not met in terms of. You know, people might know that they need new patients, but they offer a variety of different service lines. They're not thinking about the different LTVs of those patients.
[00:25:54] Rick Briddock: They, they're just saying, you know, I need a thousand new patients at a $200 cost per acquisition, but they're not segmenting, or there's no nuance between those different patient cohorts and, and then it's oftentimes not measurable. They can't join the dots from, I'm spending here and I'm receiving x. So, you know, what we're trying to work with them on is fundamentally what's the actual goal, right?
[00:26:19] Rick Briddock: Like, and, and, and be more granular than just, I need this CPA. Like, actually no. If, you know, if you're getting someone on the dentistry side who's coming in for Invisalign, you shouldn't be looking at them as the same way as someone who's coming in for a teeth cleaning, right? The, the value to your organization is significantly different.
[00:26:38] Rick Briddock: And then to, to Lauren's point beyond those, those components, it's. How do we, you know, how do we have to then think about the investment strategy right to, to meet that need? Because I think a lot of times. The drive is, let me just, max performance, lemme just Max performance, but
[00:26:57] Lauren Leone: In platform performance. Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:59] Rick Briddock: In platform. Yeah. Or even, or even on their backend. Right? Like, let me just maximize ROI in Epic. But in reality, they have fixed overheads at this new surgical center that they opened. And even though it's gonna cost five times as much, they've gotta get patients in the door there. Right. And doctor spoke over at this mature practice, he doesn't really need the help.
[00:27:19] Rick Briddock: He's, he's kind of got it like, yeah, we could drive cheap patients there. But he's not even gonna be able to see them. So that's, those are the kind of things that, that we really need to, to take into account when we're, when we're thinking about goals, because oftentimes the information that we're operating off it, it just isn't enough to do what's right for the business.
[00:27:40] Ray Mina: I love that. Yeah. It's so, it's, it's very, it's so nuanced. I've had this conversation recently as well with the whole service line where marketing orgs are spending money on service lines that are like max capacity people can't even get an appointment. So looking, looking to more,
[00:27:55] Lauren Leone: That's the hardest dollar to spend.
[00:27:56] Ray Mina: Yeah. You're looking to get more. Yeah, more for less. One of the ways you can do it is just stop spending where you don't need to be spending. One of the things that show has been showing up a lot in my conversations with healthcare marketing leaders is. You know, intent is really good at capturing intent.
[00:28:09] Ray Mina: Like if you're, if you're in acute urgent care, this is a really good channel for you. But if you're an organization that's trying to be a bit more targeted, like you have Invisalign patients that you wanna reach, intent plays a role, but also there are other levers to go find those like higher paying patients.
[00:28:27] Ray Mina: If, is that, has that showed up for you both as well? Is that like that targeted versus capturing intent? Is that something that started to show up for you as well recently?
[00:28:38] Lauren Leone: Yeah, I mean, Rich, I think, you know when, when your patient, like you said there, there's categories where your patient is everyone, there's talk, therapy, dentistry, you know, just some of the basics, right?
[00:28:50] Lauren Leone: And there to layer on a specific audience campaign with a certain channel would probably cost you a marked up CPM and you reach the same people anyways. But when you start to think about. Whether it's a medical specific medical need, a, an a medical need that they don't even know they have, but maybe they're reaching a certain age or a certain, you know, point in their life.
[00:29:12] Lauren Leone: We've been working a lot in the eyecare space where, you know, these things tend to have a much higher propensity to affect that population, to start to create awareness. Amongst that population that you offer, A, this is the problem people like you are facing. B, these are some things to look out for to see if this is affecting you.
[00:29:30] Lauren Leone: And then giving them all that information kind of for free and to educate them, and then you're there for them when the need arises, because you have a high, you have a high confidence that that thing is going to affect that population or a large percentage of the population. That's where it's really worth spending the money.
[00:29:48] Rick Briddock: I would just, yeah. Build off of that and say, and I'll, I'll continue to use the same eyecare example. You know, we work with a, a, a client where, and I think this is especially true, where there are problems with the default treatment type and, you know, we work with clients that offer, you know, frankly more innovative solutions that have much better outcomes.
[00:30:16] Rick Briddock: But, both providers and patients are not aware. And so, and, and so, you know, obviously this is something that, that pharma has been been doing for years, right? Like a break breakout, new therapy, et cetera, et cetera. Intent based marketing doesn't really work there, right? Because when, when I get to the bottom of the funnel and I need treatment, and I'm typing in ophthalmologist near me.
[00:30:38] Rick Briddock: I'm not getting the distinction that there is one way to treat glaucoma. That is, you know, that has an efficacy rate of 50% and there's another way to treat glaucoma a better way. That has an efficacy rate of 85%, 90%. But I, I don't get that education because I'm just on Google typing ophthalmologist near me, right?
[00:30:57] Rick Briddock: And if my ophthalmologist doesn't know, then no one has the power in the room to be even considering that there is a better way to do this. And so I get left in a situation where I get a course to treatment, but it's not necessarily the right course to treatment. And then, you know, the chances of having the right outcome diminished.
[00:31:13] Rick Briddock: So I think in those cases, especially where it's a paradigm shift or it's a, a treatment modality that is constantly moving, that targeted approach where there is more of an emphasis on education and why the category or why this treatment type is so crucial in, in educating people and empowering them to be in the best possible position to, to make the right healthcare choices.
[00:31:37] Ray Mina: How do you start small there? Like if you're, if that's, if that's you, if you're, if you're listening to this and that's you or part of your business, maybe one of your service lines, maybe not the entire business is you and you're mostly in intent channels.
[00:31:51] Ray Mina: How do you start small? Like what does starting small look like? Be prescriptive, like what, what should they go think about on, on Monday when they go back to their desk?
[00:32:01] Rick Briddock: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think first of all, you know, have they done the, the fundamentals, right? Do they, do they have the goals? Are they measurable?
[00:32:09] Rick Briddock: Are they able to understand what their channels are driving, like, get through, you know, make sure they have the basics in place on the, on the audience side, do they have the personas? Do they know who their audience is? Have they done audience segmentation? Like have they got those kind of foundational pieces where they can say.
[00:32:26] Rick Briddock: Okay. I have this audience that I'm trying to reach. I'm on organic and I'm on search, and based on at least the calls that I'm getting in the call center, it doesn't seem like we're reaching the right audience, right? We're not, you know, these aren't people who are, are looking for us. Maybe they're, you know, the, the, the, the, the wrong modality completely, or they're just, you know, at a different place in the patient journey than where we need them to be.
[00:32:49] Rick Briddock: And then it's a case of, if you've already got that audience to find that you wanna reach. Then it's a case of going and trying to find someone who can deliver that audience to you. Is there an audience provider out there who would, who would be able to find that audience for me? And, and then can we serve against it?
[00:33:05] Rick Briddock: Where can we serve against it? When we are serving against it, can we measure, again, going back to measurement, right? Can we measure the impact of serving that to that audience? And then it's a case of, again, just I, I would start with a small pilot campaign, right? Doing it, building a campaign brief, figuring, being really deliberate about what am I trying to get out of this?
[00:33:28] Rick Briddock: What is my expectation? Knowing that this is something new that they've never done before. And really the mentality should be more around. To Lauren Point, earlier on the 2010, this is your testing budget. This is your learning budget. You're running this to understand, are people gonna click on these ads?
[00:33:43] Rick Briddock: Are people gonna watch these videos? If I'm driving them to a landing page, are they gonna engage with that content or do I have like. A, a lead engagement action at this part of the funnel that's relevant for them, that I can actually then get them to engage with on the side so I can generate some kind of lead generation or whatever it might be.
[00:34:03] Rick Briddock: Right? Or, you know, again, I go back to the, the claims data for some people who have access to that. Like, if I'm targeting HCPs about this new treatment modality, am I, can I blanket every HCP in that market? And then in the claims data, can I see a referral lift? Right. So again, just you've gotta be really clear about what you want.
[00:34:24] Rick Briddock: Get that campaign brief together. Either execute it yourself in-house if you have the capabilities or find the right partner. But if you're experiencing these issues right now and your marketing efforts and not getting the traction that you need them to, and you're not reaching the right audience, you should really quickly think about essentially expanding your horizons and your approach to try and engage with, with the target audience.
[00:34:50] Lauren Leone: Rich, you are the most productive human on a Monday I've ever met. That's a lot to do on Monday,
[00:34:58] Rick Briddock: I didn’t say I would do it.
[00:34:59] Lauren Leone: I, I'm saying ready what to do. I mean, Superman. I mean, everything you said is so valid and that is like the full journey. I mean, Ray, if, if I'm a marketer and it's a Friday and I'm like, what am I gonna do on Monday, I think. If you put yourself in the shoes of the audience, then I think if you haven't in, in quite some time spoken to a patient, a former patient, a current patient, a cohort of those individuals, just try to understand where that individual spends their time and gets their health information.
[00:35:26] Lauren Leone: I think that's, that data can be really powerful. And then going to a a, you know, a CFO or whomever you need to like get the buy-in from to say. Maybe, maybe 70% of my patients are in market and we can, we can continue to capture them there. It will not touch or break that thing, but there's this whole, whole other population that is not in market and we need to find another way to reach them.
[00:35:50] Lauren Leone: That's, that's maybe the population your competitors aren't tapping into either. Like that could be total green space for you. And so if you can schedule on Monday, a couple conversations with your patient advocacy team or who, whomever internally manages patient relationships and ask them to set up a few calls.
[00:36:07] Lauren Leone: Just get to know those people and how they found you and made that journey. That could be like a really simple thing to do on, on a single day.
[00:36:15] Ray Mina: I, I, I love that it's like marketing is part research. Like who, who are if, if you're that eye treatment that is more effective, who are my best patients? How did they find me?
[00:36:27] Ray Mina: Where can I reach them? And then it's part creative, like how could we creatively educate them? And then it's part experiment. And that was your recommendation of like, you don't have to put all your money into it, but like can you carve out some to run a pilot? And then it's part measurement. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to go buy a bunch of expensive software, maybe qualitatively, it shows up in the call centers.
[00:36:49] Ray Mina: Maybe it shows up as more branded queries, which is a sign that like some of these upper funnel things are working for you. And as you put it, way cheaper than. Paying in the Google slot machine for, you know, other, other queries. So I think that's really a practical set of advice. So yeah, thanks for, thanks for walking us through some like, you know, big rock things that you can do immediately and then this longer journey that you can start building towards if, if some of these experiments are working for you.
[00:37:16] Ray Mina: Thank you both for being a part of Marketing Rounds.
[00:37:19] Lauren Leone: Thanks for having us, Ray.
[00:37:20] Rick Briddock: Yeah, thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
[00:37:22] Producer: Today's episode is brought to you by Freshpaint. If you're a healthcare marketer under pressure to do more with less, Freshpaint 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.