Driving Remarkable Results for Advanced Reconstructive Surgery Alliance

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: What’s going on, everybody? Y’all, I know you tuned in a few weeks ago and you heard from Ruchi on what we did for Idea. If you haven’t, go listen even if you’re not a DSO. It’s unreal, the strategy she dropped on us. Today, we’re going to be talking about another wonderful client of ours, ARSA, Advanced Reconstructive Surgery Alliance. They’re awesome, and they’ve got about, what, 30 practices under their umbrella?

Ruchi Patel: Yes. They have around seven to eight brands under them, and each of them have four or five clinics.

Alex: Awesome They are the most advanced surgeons when it comes to plastics and reconstruction out there in the country. They’re doing things like phantom limb reconstruction, then hand reconstruction. This team of surgeons is not your typical run-of-the-day plastic surgeons who are doing breast augs and facelifts, and stuff like that. They are repairing the most gruesome injuries, where that or however that may have happened. The keyword, strategy, when they first came to us to say, I don’t know if surgery is going to work because people, I don’t think, are typing in phantom limb restoration. Ruchi’s going to talk about when you have a less obvious keyword segment, how do you go after them? Ruchi, welcome back to Ignite.

Ruchi: Hey, happy to be back.

Alex: Yes, sure. Fake it till you make it, Ruchi.

Tell us about ARSA. They’ve got 30 brands, one of the biggest plastic surgery groups in the country. Give us an example of a service they’re going after, and then how we targeted that less known thing.

Ruchi: I think I’m going to harp on Plastic Surgery Center. It’s one of the bigger brands that ARSA helps, market and get new patient leads. They specialize in breast surgeries, implants, explants, anything related to that. When they first started with this account, we were, again, like the instinct that every media manager has, let’s go as high intent as possible. If somebody’s searching for a surgery, these are not people who are sitting here giving you advice, they’re actually people who are going to look at your reports, diagnose you, and recommend a very advanced surgery.

You’re way ahead in your medical analysis by the time you get to a group like ARSA. What we realized was I went to my doctor, they said that I’m at super high risk for breast cancer and I should get a test done. I learned about the test online and I try to understand what it means. What does a positive result mean? What does a negative result mean? You’re trying to learn everything about it. The patient journey starts way back. To capture somebody when they are trying to learn about the BRCA gene testing is when we need to get them into the door.

Because A, they’re getting the testing done. B, then they’re going to get a diagnosis done. C, they’re going to probably need to meet a surgeon if they require a breast implant or anything. With these kinds of surgeries, the earlier you capture the patient in the patient journey, the more the chances are that they’re going to stick with you in the long run till you help them get to a better place with their health. With ARSA, instead of going for just high-intent keywords, we are all over the place. We capture low intent. The ad copy is very, very informative. If somebody’s searching for BRCA gene testing, we actually talk about, it’s important to prioritize your health, and get the test done.

Just get peace of mind or get the help that you need today. You’re going to mid intent and then it’s about diagnosis. All the keywords out there are about, now I already know the results, what do I do next? Then the high-intent ones where I need a surgeon who can help me with breast cancer or all the other steps that come into it. For ARSA, all the brands that we are advertising for, mostly related to nerve compression surgeries, plastic surgery, anything related to that, the idea is every campaign has to be designed to approach the patient in the user journey at every step. That’s how we allocate the dollars as well.

Alex: That’s a genetic mutation like someone has, and it means you’re more likely to have breast cancer. We have landing pages that educate on that. Then when they know that we have landing– when they search on the head funnel, is it comparing providers at that point, or treatment paths?

Ruchi: Once you have a diagnosis, you are pretty much eligible to start talking to somebody about this.

Alex: Then they’re looking for a provider, they’re looking for a surgeon. Very interesting. All right, guys. That works. With the BRG, are you getting them into a funnel that we are reactivating through email education, or what do we do when they submit their information through the upper funnel?

Ruchi: This is a clear example of where you need to go into a full-funnel strategy. It’s something we are working on, but right now it’s all about the messaging. We are still restricted in search. The idea is to just meet them with different kinds of messaging at different stages of their journey.

Alex: Patient submits their information, then it gets passed on to ARSA, and then it’s their job to keep them in the loop, keep them in a patient funnel and educating them so that they come back when they are ready to choose a provider. That’s generally what we do with all these complex cases that they’re dealing with. Is find the initial trigger point. A lot of it’s injury-based too.

Ruchi: A lot of it is injury, yes.

Alex: Something happened and they need a facial or a hand reconstruction. What have we been on there? Injured?

Ruchi: It again comes down to low, mid, and upper funnel. Of course you have hand surgeons in New Jersey or orthopedic surgeons, but then you also havel my arm pain won’t go. It’s like when you look at the search terms. Again, think about it. If you were in a patient’s shoes or somebody who’s experiencing that pain, I would literally type in, I have a lump, it won’t go for two weeks. It’s a lot about thinking how a non-medical person would look at the symptom and then educating them from there about, you need a diagnosis, do not ignore this. This is a lump that could be concerning, could have signs about something bigger that you’re dealing with.

Alex: I love it. This is so important. This is actually getting patients the care they need before something more serious happens. Sometimes they know they actually need a surgeon, sometimes they just need education. I guess if you’re going, and you’re going to be targeting these upper funnel keywords and they’re like awareness and education keywords, you would need a really strong patient education system after the fact. It can’t just be lead [crosstalk] and we do nothing with it.

Ruchi: Then the good part is ARSA already has that in place.

Alex: They do.

Ruchi: Any organic lead, they don’t expect the lead to actually lead to a prop–

Alex: Surgery.

Ruchi: Exactly. It takes almost five to six months to actually close a lead. They already have the systems in place where if somebody comes with a concern, their call centers are trained. They have virtual consultations with the doctors across the country where they can actually talk to the provider and understand their concern, get a professional opinion. All ARSA needs is for an agency like Cardinal to help them drive the good qualified leads, find the right people at the right stage of the funnel, get them to their door, and they do all the hard work.

Alex: Makes sense. A big shout out to Red Spot Interactive. They have built this whole CRM. It tracks everybody all the way through. They actually know from the leads we drive, how much revenue was booked because of the CRM. Red Spot Interactive. Jason, great guy there. That’s important to understand. The other thing I’m thinking here because they can pull patients from anywhere in the country and just blanket the country with it.

Ruchi: Again, it is about understanding the business. Some of the brands, for example, IFAR, they have such specialized surgeries that people come from Canada, people come from Middle Eastern countries to actually get this surgery. Once they get diagnosed, they fly in specifically for the surgery. They have such world-class surgeons for some of the specialties that are targeting is across the states. We are targeting Canada. We are targeting some of the Latin American countries because they, through their past existing client portfolio, they’ve noticed that there are so many people who are actually flying from other countries. When somebody’s sitting in-

Alex: Very specific procedure.

Ruchi: Exactly, yes. If they’re sitting in a different country and they are researching for brachial plexus surgery, when ARSA shows up, they know exactly that there is somebody who specializes in it and they are the person I want to–

Alex: Ruchi talked about this on our previous episode of Ignite, but understanding the business, guys. Tougher, newer platforms that don’t understand where their revenue data is going to come from. The first thing in any kind of advertising, PPC, Facebook, billboards, whatever it might be, is understanding where your patient revenue is coming from for different service lines and then working on targeting that. I didn’t know, so Cardinal’s global. Cardinal worldwide, everybody. That’s very interesting. What other nuances? I can’t believe we’ve made this work. ARSA’s grown like crazy, backed by Webster. Ruchi, only you could have done this. I thought it’d be too tricky because their procedures are really specific.

Ruchi: Oh, I know a lot of fancy words.

Alex: Now you do. I love that we’re helping people that have a mutation for breast cancer get ahead of it and not get cancer. I love that. That’s near and dear to all of our hearts here. What else with ARSA’s very specific and different that we’re doing?

Ruchi: I wouldn’t say different, but I would definitely say substantial. If you look at the ARSA website, talking about IFAR does 20 different types of specialized surgeries that I assure we haven’t even heard the names of, most of them. If you go to the website, it is very informative because of the business they are in. They have to inform the people. You look at the website and I was intimidated the first time I got there. I’m like, this is a lot of information. I know I’m dealing with phantom limb, but where do I start? Where do I go from here, right?

In conjunction with StrategyCo, we’ve developed some really amazing landing pages specifically for paid traffic based on the funnel. Now if you click on an ad from a mid-funnel strategy and you go to the page that we created specifically for paid traffic, it’s amazing. If you look at, we have a place– as soon as you enter the page, you’ll see multiple places for your patient to convert. If they already know what they are coming from, you have a form on the right-hand side.

There’s a phone number on the top, which again, is very common for all of them. What I do like that they added was two different embedded videos. One about their providers, provider talking about phantom limb. I am an expert. I am somebody who actually researched and came to the website. I’m the one telling you how to deal with phantom limb. Then you scroll down. Again, there’s a lot of information just to make sure that the patient understands, or the user understands what ARSA does. Then you have small embedded videos about patient testimonials.

Alex: You got provider service-type stuff and then patient testimonials.

Ruchi: If I were ever doing something as personal as, or not even personal, like something as huge as a nerve surgery, I really want to know what happened with other patients. I want to know how they were treated because it’s not just about the service, it’s also very personal. I want to go to a place where I genuinely feel taken care of. I think we nailed it with the landing pages for ARSA and we made sure that the user experience was very friendly, comforting, and informative all at the same time.

Alex: Good work, Strategy Collective on that as well. Matt and Dhavani, great people over there. Great team. That’s interesting. Guys, if you’ve heard anything from Ruchi, it’s that you got him on PPC really smart, and the computers aren’t doing everything yet. Not even close. We do that well. Ruchi does that really well, but it’s also messaging, landing page copy, education, especially with these higher acuity things.

I even think low acuity, like Durham groups probably think, I can bid on Botox filler and that’s good. I’ll send a belated page and they’ll convert, but you’ve got thick competition there and they probably do want to see the providers and hear from patients because the Botox person next door just shut down. Now you don’t want to go get Botox there. This is good and relevant information. Thank you, Ruchi. You all heard from the best. Hit her up, except for job offers. She’s smart. She’s the best. We can’t thank you enough. We appreciate it.

Ruchi: Awesome. Thank you.

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