From Brand Building to Conversions: How to Craft a Balanced Healthcare Marketing Strategy with Seth Goldberg

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

Alex Membrillo: What’s up, everybody? This is fun. We got Eastern Time Zone and Central Time zone for you today. We got Seth. What’s up, Mr. Goldberg from Nashville? How is everything going?

Seth Goldberg: Everything’s been really well. How are you?

Alex: I’m good. Your sun goes down super early in Nashville, because you’re right on the border of Eastern or is it super late? It’s early. It’s like 4:30, right?

Seth: 8:15, isn’t it?

Alex: No, in the winter. In the winter.

Seth: Winter, absolutely. It gets early. It gets a little bit too early. It gets maybe 4:30. You’re right.

Alex: We have the two most happening cities in America, in my opinion, joining forces today. This is awesome. For every of our seven listeners, in Nashville’s the most fun city, we will be there in October. Should you be in behavioral health, we are sponsoring conference and getting them believe. Seth, tell us, you have been at the biggest stuff most recently, a fractional CMO at [unintelligible 00:01:13]. How many locations? Like 700 locations or something crazy like that?

Seth: Aspen is about 1,100 locations across the US. In [unintelligible 00:01:21]

Alex: Oh my God, crazy.

Seth: Really focused while I was in Aspen, I was primarily and only focused on Motto Clear Aligner. Their new brand, if you will, of Clear Aligner. They are just launching nationally now. I was there for the past year plus, as you said, in a fractional role, really helping develop strategy both from a brand and creative strategy perspective, as well as media strategy and marketing strategy overall. Then really working internally with their sell, if you will, sell if you will, sell in Motto to their doctors, practice owners, et cetera, to get them excited about Motto and offering Motto, understanding the value that Motto can bring to their practices, et cetera. Then getting them trained up on the– I didn’t obviously get the training, but we were getting them trained up in anticipation of bringing the product, bringing the service to those 1,100 plus locations.

Alex: I love it. In two and a half years, it’s mild direct. You love aligners.

Seth: I love aligners which I guess never necessarily woke up one morning and was like, “I’m going to work on Clear Aligners.” It was definitely not a childhood dream to work on Clear Aligners. It was definitely not a childhood dream to work on Clear Aligners. It’s actually, I think a really fun and interesting category. I first got interested in Smile Direct Club a number of years ago. When they first came to market, I had worn Clear Aligners from another brand, one that many people know. As an adult, and I saw what it could do for my smile and my mouth.

I was really interested when Smile Direct Club came to market and said, “We can do this in a new way.” I was intrigued by how could they do it through Telehealth, et cetera. The other great thing, I think about Clear Aligners, I’m working on Clear Aligners from a marketing perspective is, yes, we straighten teeth. That does a lot of things for your mouth. It leads to greater oral health care, which leads to a greater overall health as well. Really, the other side of Clear Aligners is, when you talk to people who’ve gone through treatment about what it did for them, they do mention, by the way, it’s straightened my teeth.

What’s amazing is they start to talk about all the other things that straightening their teeth did for them, giving them confidence, getting them back out into the job market, the dating world, all of those things. It’s amazing the stories that you hear as a result of that, whether it’s at SmileDirect, whether it’s at Aspen with Motto, or even another different category, but in the wellness and healthcare space as well that I work on. Really being able to demonstrate that impact and understand it is super motivating and rewarding,

I think, as a marketer, because you’re not just doing something across most of health care really were able to impact people’s lives in really positive ways. It can be super rewarding and feel good about it. I often joke that at one time in my career, I worked on KFC, which was a really cool account to work on. I was in the head agency world still at that time. Did amazing work, was all really good. You’re selling fried chicken to moms and asking them to be-

Alex: We got Sunday buckets every Sunday, bro.

Seth: Very cheap.

Alex: We love KFC.

Seth: It’s important, right? We did great work. We moved business in the right ways. Being able to help people achieve new things and go after their goals and things in life, right? Do things like straightening their teeth is a very rewarding and fulfilling place to live as well. It’s been a cool place to be.

Alex: Medical marketing is marketing that matters, maybe.

Seth: Yes, exactly.

Speaker` 2: I had braces in high school, and I can tell you, if aligner were a thing, it would have saved me a lot of anguish. My dad on homecoming night, he goes, “Can’t you just take those off for the night? You look like–” and I was like, “Oh, man.”

Seth: Then it’s like, “Did you wear your routine?” The thing with medicine is, it’s commitment. What I’ve seen in this category is, especially with parents, is will my teenage son or daughter actually wear these things, and are they going to be responsible with that. There’s a lot of math that goes into it, whereas putting metal wires and brackets on your teeth, they’re there, as your dad noted for your-

Alex: I never thought about that, the commitment is hard.

Seth: Homecoming or elsewhere, they’re going to be there before your parents make it a semester, and they’ll be there for you. I’m not thinking. I haven’t heard about it. I think it just really probably depends on the teenager at that point, what they’re going to do.

Alex: My son has them in right now, and I can already tell his confidence is increasing. It is, it makes a big difference. All right, so the Aspen thing. We’ve got marketers and always wondering how do you tackle such an elephant. You can say one by the time, but you’re in charge of the B2B, and how do we get in front of the referrals? What’s our GTM link media strategy? Where do you start? How do you tackle this huge thing? Did you have a big team? Where do you put the priority when you have such a big initiative?

Seth: Yes. Look, I’ve been walking into Aspen in my role. Unfortunately, there was a team in place across Aspen marketing that really had been focused very much on marketing Aspen Dental. There had been a poor team that had been derived out of that organization and others that were brought in to really act like a startup, if you will, within Aspen to focus on Motto. I walked into really a very pre-existing organization and structure that we got to tweak a little bit, but really was in place and had the right resources. The way Aspen set up as well, they have centers of excellence in things around media or e-commerce, et cetera, that these guys are super at their jobs and know what they’re doing.

For me, though, walking into an org like that, we have to understand at the first and foremost, and this will tell you a little bit about how I think, but overall is the brand. What is this brand really about? I often think about brands as operating systems for an organization. Everything we do, every decision we make, the things we say, how we treat people, should all deliver on that brand promise that we have for this product, service, or organization. For us, with Motto, it was really looking at what is this brand about. A lot of that work existed, and it was little minor tweaks, really, to finesse it at the beginning.

Then we went out and tested a lot of messaging to really understand how it works. While we were testing messaging, we were testing media. Where were we investing? What was returning for us in the right ways? What were the goals we were setting by channel to make sure we were delivering on them? We were testing a lot of site experience on how much is too much information, how much is too little, what tools the folks need to make this decision, et cetera. Testing a lot of CRM. I found an email marketing and SMS marketing. I understand how does that move people through the funnel without really losing appointments overall. It’s all of those things.

It’s truly a test and learn environment to really get to what is this optimal mix. Even then, I don’t like to rest. It’s like, we get to an optimal mix, then let’s try new things, and let’s try to get even better always to what we’re doing. I was fortunate, like I said, to walk into a really cool, smart, energized team. I mean really smart and energized team. It was great to walk into that had this desire to work and make Motto super successful for the business. Then it was about who are we? Then we bring that to life and try new things. That was the work we did.

A lot of refinement, a lot of building, a lot of learning, and really getting us to a national rollout plan, which was part of the last part of my role. My lesson was really once we had those learnings, really defining this is who we are, what we’re going to be, and how we’re going to go to market, and then getting the organization both at the corporate level, but also all of the practices I’m really excited about we were bringing up.

Alex: There was a ton of pre-work before the lot. What would you say six months of identifying the brand and go to market strategy? What media? What content? Did it take that long?

Seth: Like I said, there was work existing. There was stuff in market already when I got an investment. I’m not the one that necessarily drove everything. When people gave me for me. Obviously, they made a great foundation and read me. It was two weekends. We spent probably about the first six months just testing and learning. We were putting things into market. We were in two DMAs where we were just really going hard at those DMAs, not understanding what was working. That was digital advertising, but it was also things like PR, right? What’s going to work? What’s going to get traction? How are we going to get the attention?

It was things like, obviously, social and influencers, learning, learning, learning and seeing what works. There was lots of media testing. That was about six months. We set things in motion, demonstrated to the org that there was demand for this product and that we could do it in the right ways. Then it was about refining, building those plans, building the plans to sell internally and get the offices really motivated, getting the right people with enhance them, behind the product and service to help motivate what we were doing from a technology perspective, and then really just prepping it for a national rollout.

This is an established organization, of course. They wanted to see a lot of brand right before they’re going to invest heavily in something. It was understandable that we were taking the time to do it the right way and make sure we got the learnings and we could prove that we could be really effective in bringing this product in.

Alex: What was with the influencers?

Did you use a tool, an agency to find them? What was the initiative there? Was it content? Was it partnership? How’d y’all do that?

Seth: We tested it while I was at Aspen and tested it a few ways. One was going direct to influencers through people on our social team within Aspen, reaching out to them, owning those relationships, contracts, et cetera. It’s a very time-consuming proposition. I will tell you at SDC, we had a team of folks who went up, SmileDirectClub is SDC, SmileDirectClub, we had a team of folks focused on influencers only because it is such an– I think in a category like Clear Aligners, it’s a very important element. It’s social proof, right? How do we get other people to talk about this for us?

We put both at Aspen and at SmileDirectClub, we would put influencers through treatment so that they could document those like mad experience, they could tell about what it was like. Was it painful? Wasn’t it? Where they seeing movement? Weren’t they? What was it like to visit the doctor? What was it like to go out to dinner? Now you have aligners in your teeth and you’ve got to think about how am I taking these out? I’m not losing them at dinner, all those things that people think about. That’s what we did. The majority of the influencer work we did was putting them in treatment.

It was having them document their experiences for us, both in our offices and outside. Then really how are we leveraging their audiences to get our message in front of them. As well as then how are we boosting, et cetera, how are we using the content in our channels, whether that’s on our site or elsewhere in our social channels, but it’s a really effective piece. There are agencies out there today that as I was leaving Aspen we were signing up with different agencies that actually are taking an affiliate model and putting that to influence our marketing as well.

The influencers essentially can become affiliates for your brand so they’re not just helping you get your word out, but they’re very motivated if you will, to drive action as well, because they’re going to get spiffed on that as well, obviously. We were finding, and we believed that would be a really impactful way for us to think about influencers, frankly, because we were getting, it was serving multiple needs or objectives for us as a brand. Getting the name out there, helping people understand what made Motto or SmileDirectClub different than others that were out there.

In the case of Aspen and Motto, ultimately how are we leveraging influencers to drive action. We wanted their audiences, not only to know about us, but ultimately we wanted them to book an appointment so that they were coming in to get stand and starting their journey with us.

Alex: You tracked it all the way through. Influencer actions. What a long-term approach because you have to get them in a dream in six months for them to see some movement, a literal movement.

Seth: The platforms, the beauty is if you think about affiliate marketing, which is often does affiliate marketing work or not? I’m one who says, I think it really depends on the category, product, et cetera, that you’re in. I think you’ve got to give it time. Affiliate marketing where it’s not going to happen overnight, but they’ve got the systems in place. As long as we could connect to their systems we were able to see those outcomes and they were able to help us on the reward side for the influencers as well. Clear Aligners, you’re making an investment in yourself.

You’re spending a lot of money. It’s not a decision you make overnight typically. Yes, it’s a long sales cycle, but if we can help influence that and deliver and demonstrate that something like an influencer, which frankly can be a very economical way of going to market can actually also start to drive actions for us. That’s a great thing to be able to demonstrate. Just, yes, they’re getting our name out there. We know they’ll do that really well. That’s, trust me, super important for us. If we can also see they’re going to drive action, you can–

Alex: Yes, butts in seats, they definitely do. My wife comes up with a new thing we bought every day because of someone else on Instagram, like I’m in the wrong business, so I’m very interested. I think we will. Do you need a budget like Aspen Dental or SDC to do influencer? It’s probably not the first place you would, you’d probably go PPC like media or what is that? That is like the next thing even, would you put PR before it? I’m so interested to hear the types of PR you were doing, how effective that was versus influencer.

Seth: Look, I think it depends on your audience. What are they going to be responsive to? Who are they going to listen to? Where are they going to get information, et cetera. For Clear Aligners at least, it made sense because this is, like I said, it’s not a quick decision I’m making, it is something I’m going to talk to my friends about others that have had experience for us. You didn’t always have to have new news with it. By putting them through treatment, that was the news that they could deliver. That is, influencers again, can be economical. They can also be very expensive. It’s also about the type of influencer and their scale there.

Alex: Did you have Kardashian?

Seth: We did not and we were not spending Kardashian.

Alex: What type of marketing tactic worked the best for y’all’s deployment of these model Clear Aligners? What do you think drove the most butts in seats? That’s how we’ll quantify the best.

Seth: Butts in seat, would be searched for sure. I am, there you go. Right. Keep me safe. What I would say is I’d be hesitant to say that search would work on its own, alone surrounded. We’re building understanding of the process, understanding of why the product is better than others, all of those things search probably wouldn’t be as effective. When you can tell that story and get people understanding you and then they go looking and we show up, they know who we are. They feel comfortable with us and we can get them to click and book an appointment. I’m weary.

I will tell you, I worked for a startup in the fertility space that really, unfortunately we had a lot of funding issues and the founders came to me and asked me to pull back everything we were doing with the exception of search. Fertility care, it’s IVF, et cetera, that’s an emotional experience. It’s a physical experience. It’s frankly a very expensive experience. You’re helping people start families. Conversations we had a lot around after that were will anyone choose a fertility doctor solely based on a search? What my rationale was-

Alex: No, I don’t think so.

Seth: -not when you’re spending that money, again, not when you’re getting pregnant, all of those things. Though it’s not my money and we had to do what we had to do. I will tell you, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s only because of marketing, but the organization that’s no longer around and there’s lots of factors for that, but I don’t think marketing was quite as effective after we pulled it, stripped everything away with the exception, really of search, and its own people. There’s lots of themes out there. If you’ve never heard of them, you can’t trust them.

Alex: You said names, not products. It’s not like it’s just model Clear Aligner. There are other Clear Aligners. I don’t know if model is that, different to where it was like in a whole new product, they had never heard of them, this aligner or anything. Not supposed to say the word, any of those things. It’s like, they just need to trust the Aspen brand, Motto, brand SmileDirectClub brand. Would you say even if it’s a lower acuity thing, it’s brand is still important, brand advertising awareness.

Seth: It needs to be bright advert, I think so much. That’s one of the things that I want to tap level set. I talk a lot about brand and I think it’s really important. I think that again, I go back to brand as operating system, brand is everything you do as an organization. Yes. Deliver back to a brand promise that’s been established by the org, but how do we act? What are the experiences? You may hear a Motto from us and then you may go check out our reviews on Google or elsewhere in the case of Motto. You want to see what are people’s experiences like.

I want to make sure that the experience you have in an office delivers on what we’re telling you in advertising so that then I go and check it out and there I read reviews for people like me. I get it. I might be looking, like we talk about brand as OS, even when it comes to HR and recruiting. If I go into a job review site, what are people saying about working at an organization? Again, are they treating people the way they tell us they’re going to treat you, et cetera? All of those things, the experiences I have in an office, all of those things are part of the brand.

There’s an element of brand advertising that I do believe still matters. I’m excited that we’re seeing more and more orgs start to talk about the importance of brand overall and brand marketing, et cetera. You’ve got to deliver on that. Otherwise, I think there’s a lot of names out there. If I don’t start to know what this brand is about, how they act, why they do what they do, I think it’s a little bit harder for me to make a big purchase decision. Clear Aligners, again, lots of money. It’s my teeth. I don’t want to screw with it because I don’t want to end up looking crazier than I already do.

All those things are going to influence that decision I’d make. Same thing with PR that you brought up before, right? What am I hearing about this company? Am I hearing about this company? Hopefully, am I only hearing good things and all of those things are going to help me make my decision. We don’t just make decisions because we want to, we tend to be irrational as human beings most of the time, but we need all of those other elements to help us make those informed decisions ultimately that are right for us as individuals.

Alex: I love how you reframe brand being the promise, the delivery, the reputation, everything that was the care of the access, everything there. Like we said, it was going to be to the outcome match what we were selling. I love that. I love that you also talked about your alignment with ops and say, we had to deliver in certain DMAs and all that stuff. Guys, if you want to get to the CMO level, you have to align with ops and the rest of the leadership. There are business goals. We are not just doing marketing for the sake of marketing. We have to be aligned, no pun intended to the actual business goal and everything tracked all the way through, which is hard with things like PR, but you’re able to do some influence and you really were able to track the old thing.

I assume some is general lift and a DMA at the end of the day, because we don’t know exactly what little thing did what, and that has to be okay. What have you seen not work well in healthcare services marketing? What would you stay away from at your next gig?

Seth: It’s a tricky question because I really think that it does depend on the category. It depends on the service and the brand a little bit. I still struggle a little bit with some of the brand stunts that orgs are doing, and I’ve seen it even in healthcare. Again, my experience on brand that I’ve worked on only. I don’t want to like kill the idea of brand stunts overall, because I think they can be effective on that but

they’re expensive.

There’s a lot of investment that needs to be done. I don’t think it’s something you can just drop in the world and then stop thinking about it. They do that when you start to create content out of them, and you start to engage people after them, et cetera. I think way too often what I’ve seen in the world as well as on stuff I’ve worked on, is that sometimes it is treated as like, let’s just put this stunt out there and hope it gets the PR and the interaction, and engagement that we want it to get. Most of the time it doesn’t. It’s like you get this blip and then you forget about it.

For me, that’s something that I still struggle with because you got to make sure it makes sense coming from your brand. You got to make sure it’s going to engage people in the right way. You have to make sure there’s some follow through so that it’s just not a blip. Frankly, I think most of the time they work best when they are somewhat ongoing and repetitive and you build this experience type. Not healthcare, but Red Bull does a really great job at this, because they do it over and over and over again. It aligns to who they are as a brand. A lot harder to do,

I think when we start to think about healthcare and obviously there’s the privacy issue still with like, well, people want to raise their hand to participate, but it’s much more personal in many ways than not. I’m not saying Red Bull is superfluous, but there are different roles in people’s lives Red Bull would play than a healthcare service.

Alex: No brand stunts. It’s not consistent. It doesn’t resonate. It’s just you’re there. Yes. It’s not impactful.

Seth: Look, I get why we’re still doing them and seeing them. Again, I just think it’s without all the right things in place, long-term plans in place, they’re really hard to see impact. Frankly, without the right ongoing plans in place, tracking impact of those, I think can be really difficult as well. Really bringing it back to that as the impetus for the measurement that we’re saying is a really difficult metric to get to. Before I invest a lot of money in any sort of brand stunt, I definitely would take a pause and really think about it and see, is this the right best use of the investment we’re about to make to reach the audience that we want to reach and get the outcomes that we’re ultimately hoping.

Alex: Unless you’re going to consistently have people jumping out of planes forever or sponsoring an F1 team, I don’t know that it’s the right place to be. What are you most excited about?

Seth: Like, I said, brand is very exciting to me and I feel like I’m seeing a lot more orgs that I’m talking to orgs that I’ve been at start to understand what brand means. Again, I think we as an industry and marketing industry overall had moved so far away from brand for so long with such a focus on performance that we forgot a little bit. I think what we’re starting to see is a balance again. I’m a big believer that we don’t ever go all in on brand and forget performance. We’ve got to find a balance to mix of the two to see how they work together and find that ultimate mix.

I am excited to start to see that people are investing in brand again, starting to understand the idea of brand and just advertising, et cetera. Other things I’m excited about, I’m seeing a lot more organizations start to invest in video content. Again, super important in my mind to help people educate commerce and services, right? To educate them on it, why it matters. Also to tell the story of how we do it better or differently than anyone else. Then not surprising, the other area that I’m excited about is seeing more and more healthcare influencers, that social group piece again, because we’re a rational is really important. If we can get people to talk about their experiences and talk about what it’s like to interact with product, service, et cetera, that’s gold. People will believe those that they follow.

Alex: My team is pushing me to get more into the TikTok affiliate creator, influencer space. I’m like, “I don’t know about this guys.”

Seth: You just got to find the right people. You didn’t offend it. I do, again, I said, I think it can be really impactful. Get people comfortable with the idea of what they’re about to go through, especially in healthcare and talk about the outcomes, and what happens afterwards and how positive it can be for them.

Alex: I love it. I think you’re spot on with the brand discussion. It was so easy to drive patient or customer volume with SEO, PPC for the last 10 years. All of a sudden, oh, you’re ChatGPT and Meta and TikTok. You’re educating yourself and TV and connected TV. It’s like it’s not easy anymore. I get really excited when I see differentiated healthcare brands. If you look like every other behavioral group, how are we going to separate on the PPC with three other PVCs? Oh, but we can just run ads. No, they’re going to look at three. They’re going to click through your sites. If there’s nothing different to them, if the care models the same, if your brand looks the same, dude, we got nothing guys. It’s tough and it’s more expensive. A lot of groups are being left behind because they’re like SEO and PPC game doesn’t work alone anymore. What did we do?

Seth: You got to build that story to the point when someone sees your SEO ad or et cetera, they already know you, they’re more apt to click on it. I can tell you like in different brands I’ve been in both in healthcare and outside when we do the right mix of both and we treat them right, and when we track the right metrics, because that’s important too. You’ve got to make sure you’re tracking all these things. Your investments in some mid and upper funnel work will drive efficiency in the lower funnel. That’s what you got to do. Again, that’s why you can’t think of the channels independently.

You’ve got to think full funnel marketing. You’ve got to think metrics across the board and not everything’s created equally. You can’t expect to see the right KPIs out of everything, but set those, track them every day to know how you’re doing and understand how they influence each other. Test and learn a lot, take out, put in. See how it’s impacting you and learn, learn, learn. We don’t live in a static world anymore, just like brands I don’t believe can be static anymore just saying that we are this. They have to evolve with the times. Channels are going to evolve as well.

Your audience is going to evolve and what they’re responding to, what they’re looking to listening to, et cetera, has been evolved. You’ve got to always be testing and learning and understanding it. Have a core program that works and then dedicate a bunch of your budget to that test and learn and have fun with it, and learn from your failures.

Alex: I love it. Take out, put that in. I can already tell we’ve got the tagline there for this episode. I love talking about brand in all the ways because it’s not cheap and it’s hard to get across. It’s like, everybody wants to know how that brand thing, the upper mid funnel stuff drove a lead like that CPL. I’m like, guys, it’s like overall lift. There’s a lot of education to happen there. Our client marketers and healthcare markets, they also believe this, I believe. It’s impossible to get leadership on board and just saying, guys, we spent X total and we got X amount of leads.

No, but what did this one do? It’s like, it doesn’t work like that anymore. Learn, learn, learn. The world is not static. Seth, they can find you at the Pilates studio and also on LinkedIn, right?

Seth: They can, yes. In my old age, I’ve been asked to become an apprentice at a Pilates studio. I’ve become a Pilates teacher and something I’ve been doing, like I’ve been practicing Pilates for a number of years now and really enjoy it. It’s done a lot for me. Yes, you can find me at a local Nashville Pilates studio or on LinkedIn. Thank you very much.

Alex: Look up Seth Goldberg, guys. It is Seth-M-Goldberg. I did the mega form a number of times my wife was teaching. I don’t know, that’s not exactly polite, I guess, but it is hard. I walked in I was like, “Where are the weights?” It was the hardest I’ve ever done.

Seth: People are like, “How hard could this be?” I have a friend who just came and started with me and she left and she said, “That was way harder than I ever thought.” Next thing she called me and she said, “I’m a lot sore today than I was for most work.” I said, “Well, nice work. We’re doing the right thing.”

Alex: I love it. We’ll come see you in Nashville Pilates, Seth. Thank you for joining us on Ignite.

Seth: Thanks, Alex. Thanks for having me.

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