How to Build a 2025 Marketing Roadmap: From Goal Setting to Strategic Testing

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.

Lauren Leone: Hey, everyone, welcome back to Ignite. We are in our final episodes of the year, rounding things out, and really trying to pull out some topics that we think are really important to set everybody up for success next year. I’ve got Evan Ilgenfritz, our VP of paid media, here to talk about roadmapping. Roadmapping, this is something that we as an organization do. I often hear in the sales process that clients love the idea of it. Then you get to the how to put it into practice. I think that’s where we want to have a conversation today. Why are the roadmaps beneficial? How do they help us keep our eye on the prize? How do they help us prioritize? Because there’s always so much we want to do.

Evan, we’ve got a new client coming in, and we’ve just gone through audits and some of the initial onboarding ramp up stuff. It’s time to sit down and really say what’s the roadmap going to look like for this client? Where do you start?

Evan Ilgenfritz: It’s a great question, Lauren. I think even before looking at the roadmap, the thing that we think is super important to what we do here at Cardinal is try to get to understand the holistic business goals a client might have, even if it’s not directly digital-related, because digital is either supplementary to different parts or it’s a piece of the whole. Our goal is always, how can we help digital help your whole business meet your goal?

When it comes to roadmapping, that’s the same mantra. The first thing we do is document and verify and keep updated a list of business-level and marketing-level objectives from both the client and from Cardinal’s perspective, as it pertains to their goals, what we think needs to be elevated to the top of the list. That’s really the framing device, because what we don’t want to do with digital is live a bit in a silo that we’re just doing this work, but we’re not connecting it to correctly the larger needs of the business.

Lauren: Yes. You get a digital goal where your marketing counterpart might say, “If we really need to work on efficiency, I need my cost per lead to be $130 and right now it’s $150.” That’s where we’re focused right now, but the business context or the business goals tell you what types of patients for what service lines at what locations. It helps you understand that efficiency level may be possible in some areas, but not others where they’re willing to pay more. There’s just so much you need from a context perspective.

Evan: Yes, absolutely. There’s things like frequently big items, like a business trying to expand into new markets and open new clinics or locations. Obviously, from a business perspective, that isn’t digital-related, spinning those up, hiring the right people, all the stuff they have to do there, but that’s an immediate flag that digital needs to be there to support, getting those early and often. We’re in Q4 now in the holiday season, even if that growth is earmarked for maybe Q3 even, we want to know about it now so we can start laying the railroad tracks down to get there.

Lauren: We’ve got the goals. We feel like we’re clear on where we’re going. That’s the context within which then we have to live and think about what comes next. What do you do? Where do you go next?

Evan: When we think about roadmapping, it’s multiple steps that are connected to each other. Again, we talked about setting the clarity on business goals and objectives. The next step is the roadmap items. Great, we’ve heard you. We understand where you’re going, what your needs are. Now let’s pivot our focus back to digital and work through and prioritize the highest impact items in the right order of the work we do as related to your business and marketing goals.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. We don’t really often want to put projects or initiatives on our roadmap, on our planning that are not connected directly to the goals that we’ve outlined. It’s important to stay organized and focused in that way and helps clarify those priorities when we’re turning those business goals into actions on the digital side of things.

Lauren: When we talk about, like you said, the priorities, the action items, that has to be rooted in the actual data from the marketing platforms, what we’re seeing in the feedback loop. Give me some examples. Are you putting on a roadmap like update budgets? Are you putting on a roadmap optimize these five keywords? What’s the scale of the types of initiatives that you think belong on a roadmap versus just like evergreen, every day, you should always be optimizing against X, Y, and Z.

Evan: Yes, that’s a great question. I think the trick is it’s important to stay focused. We think of the roadmap and the business objectives as the biggest, most important items, that when you work with an agency or you have a marketing team, there is an expectation that there is this boilerplate ongoing, I think you said evergreen items that we’re working on, which is pacing and monitoring the accounts and confirming performance and reporting on results. These are things that are expected and on a reliable cadence.

What we then want to do with the roadmap is not include that stuff. Let’s just identify and focus the team in on the new items that we need to move, really move the needle on as it relates to business objectives. That would manifest in items like, if we’re supporting new clinics being launched, we need to develop the strategy and the structure for the campaigns and then deploy them. These are big ticket strategy and digital items that we want to put on and identify on the roadmap.

Lauren: How do the analysts play into roadmapping? There’s roadmap items, like you’ve described, which I think are the business coming to us and saying there’s a need. There are things that we as the campaign leads see in the account. Let’s take, for example, we believe holistically across your $100,000 spend, that there’s waste because of geographic targeting. What are some examples that Cardinal drives, the client doesn’t come asking for?

Evan: Yes, that’s a great example. That’s why when we think about the business and marketing objectives, that it is this relationship. It’s both a representation of what the business, the client needs for their goals, but also what the marketing people are seeing and are elevating to major needs. That’s a great question with geography. In fact, just today was reviewing a client and noticing that we had targeting statewide or the client was operating on statewide targeting when they had a business that captures local recurring people coming in locally and more local radius targeting would be more appropriate.

That’s a huge shift, because now instead we’re dialing the performance in to really focus on what will actually drive patients and eliminating waste on areas where maybe, yes, it’s in the same state as where your clinics are, but if they’re not ever really going to come into the office, that’s an item that we need to assess. That, from your question, is a great item that would make its way onto the roadmap. It would be we’ve identified this potential waste and a need to reevaluate the strategy of geographic targeting and that we’re not only going to work through the strategy and work with the client to make sure they understand and are aligned and then we’re going to go through and deploy that.

Lauren: Evan, leaning in on the example we’ve been on, let’s just stick with the geography for a moment, it’s a collaborative effort, this roadmap. I think, at least in our great relationships, our client understands that and they’re part of us and we understand that, and we’re part of them. You’re not going to go just do a geographic analysis in a silo, you’re going to need what from the client? What is their contribution to this type of initiative? How does the data come into play?

Evan: I would say a lot of these items, when we elevate them to the roadmap to these bigger items, there’s always going to be multiple phases. One of those first one is confirming with the client. Using that geographic targeting example would be to say, “We’ve found this thing, potential waste has been.” However, we need to verify and make sure that works for the clients, that it actually makes sense.

There can be different licensing, state-level licensing restrictions that require that you can’t apply a radius and bleed into the nearby state. We have to understand, does this work? Does it meet their actual needs? That’s always the first step. Then we can go about really writing out the strategy and rolling out the updates.

Lauren: We verified that this is, in fact, the client doesn’t have a reason for state level targeting. We believe we’re wasting spend. Oftentimes these types of big initiatives then come with some sort of data requests. What might it look like in this case?

Evan: Yes, that’s great. Sometimes, it’s not as simple as just identifying potential wasted spend. We also need to make sure the client is aligned and understands and is able to look at the data to confirm that this works for them. That here might mean that we use analytics team or the data team to work with the client to pull. Do they have patient data that shows where they have come from in relation to a certain clinic, where they live, their zip code, right? To help us better confirm our hypothesis that say, “Hey, look, really?” Yes, of course, there may be some people that travel further distances in to come get your service, but if that’s 1% of your patient volume and we can see that based on where the patients have come from in the past, then that reinforces our strategy and makes it more clear what we should do.

Lauren: We’ve done all this work. We present a brief to the client that says, “This is what we believe the entire geographic targeting strategy for your account should look like. We didn’t just do it on this one state, we did it holistically. We want to make the following adjustments. We’ve got your buy in. We’re going to roll this out and then we’re going to monitor it and make sure it is, in fact, the thing that drives performance for it.” I think that’s a critical piece of the road mapping, is that feedback and validation loop. What does that look like and how does that play in?

Evan: Yes, 100%. Once we’ve made it through the phase of identifying a potential opportunity and then verifying through data that the client agrees with the strategy, now it’s time to really roll up the sleeves and, as you mentioned, come up with a brief, really outline what the plan is, how it functions, what the expectations are, and KPIs and all that. Then, of course, rolling it out. Then that last piece that you mentioned is crucial. This is not one of those things that we want to roll out and then check back in a year. Establishing that cadence we’ve rolled out a big change, what are the checkpoints that we have in place to verify performance? Is it continuing to work how we want and even get that folded into monthly reporting cadences until we feel that that’s-

Lauren: Evergreen.

Evan: That’s right. Until we’ve verified it and we, “Cool, let’s move on. This is the right thing. It’s working well. Let’s move on to another thing.”

Lauren: Yes. I think one observation about roadmaps that I’m curious your thought, it becomes a nice place, you can archive things in that you can like hide the rows, but it becomes a nice place to look back on the strategic pillars over a quarter, a half of a year, a year, do the clients see it that way? How does the team use it? Looking back and drawing bigger assumptions or insights.

Evan: Yes. I think that’s important that we at Cardinal use a spreadsheet build for the roadmaps, but any template is fine. I’ve seen it different ways. The key component here would be encouraging retention of those roadmaps over time, because when we look at, when you’re entering Q4 and maybe the kickoff of a new fiscal year or a new quarter, those are the things that we want to remind ourselves of, look at the performance again, and inform where we go next. That is crucial, these big items that we do, these initiatives, tests, and strategies that we roll out, that we have a repository to reference back to, otherwise we’ve lost the learnings, unfortunately.

Lauren: Yes. I think that’s key. It becomes a, “What did we learn memory?” guide as well for the client and for us. You mentioned our template is spreadsheets, Google sheets specifically because we like it to be shared, living, breathing with the client.

Evan: That’s right. Yes. We find that to be pretty easy. We want marketing team, agency, whoever’s leveraging it is in there updating it frequently. This is the document that we live by in terms of strategy. That makes it easier to work across teams and across departments and have it living and updated, but then also of course makes it easy for the client to leverage as well.

Lauren: I think that’s a good point. Of course we tend to use the examples in media because that’s your background, and I sit strongly, but the ability to see the bigger picture of what the owned and earned team is working on, the rolling out of landing pages to support the campaign initiatives that are coming up, the content strategy, like that all has to work together. In a solid multi-channel engagement, that would not just encompass media.

Evan: Yes, absolutely. Yes, you’re right. We have been largely speaking from the media perspective, but when we talk about, if you’ve got a marketing department that’s got multiple teams handling different channels or you’re working with an agency that has different teams on different channels, that that’s really important. We want to look at the holistic digital picture because they all rub elbows with each other.

There can be needs on the organic side that paid media can support in certain ways and vice versa. I think, particularly for a business to be able to see all aspects of the digital footprint and how we’re working towards, again, referencing back to those universal business goals and objectives, then we can really see how all the teams are contributing and it clarifies that we’re doing the right stuff.

Lauren: Evan, is it fair to say that the roadmap is synonymous with the test and learn mindset? Do you think those two things are one in the same? Are there differences there? What is the right way to think about test and learn?

Evan: I think that’s right. I think, really, any testing should be represented on the roadmap. I would say that we frequently will have new clients come in and we’ll take a look at what old teams or agencies have been doing and find that there is no testing visible. Any hit test– [crosstalk]

Lauren: That you can determine anyways, because no one set it up as a test.

Evan: That’s right. Yes. You can get a sense of that. The reality is probably that it, not a whole lot of true testing was occurring. Again, testing is super important for everything we do. In fact, even if it’s a really good idea, we probably want to approach it as a test first to verify limit risk, try it, confirm it, roll it out. That’s the method. In terms of the roadmap, I think testing is one of the most important things to have on the roadmap to make sure that we’re doing that, that we’re driving things forward. We’re challenging existing assumptions, but that’s the right place to have it.

Lauren: Do you have a framework you like to use for division of efforts, division of dollars? If someone comes to you and says, “How much of my budget or my energy should go into testing versus maintaining and running my core?” Is there any advice you would give? Like, “Always be looking at X percent of your strategy as going into testing”?

Evan: It’s a good question. There’s not one-size-fits-all answer. I would say that it’s important to be doing it. In a lot of cases, you’ll be doing testing that isn’t net new.

Lauren: [unintelligible 00:14:39] always add new channel equals [unintelligible 00:14:41]

Evan: That’s right. There’s a lot of testing that we need to be doing on just existing things that you’re working on. If you got search and you’re using certain bidding strategies, you ought to be testing that. That’s not really a net new budget requirement, but a hundred percent, it just depends on where the business is, how much performance they need out of their current strategies, what’s the level of risk that they’re willing to take to try something that isn’t proven. If you have a business that only has paid search and it’s time to start trying social or programatic, that’s the kind of stuff where, again, it’s hard to say, just depends on the appetite of the clients and-

Lauren: Back to the business goals, right? How much do I need to drive forward versus how much is what I’m doing giving the business what it needs? Therefore, I can do moderate test and learn because the primary objective is protect the core. I think the maturity of any digital program probably dictates it as well. If you’ve been spending a million dollars a month in paid search for 12 months, years and years even, you’re probably in a place where you’re pretty solid on that, and you can be testing into other channels. If you are newer in the digital sphere, your tests might look something– everything might in theory be a test because you’re really just figuring out like how to make the channel work.

Evan: That’s right. Honestly, too, when we talk about particularly those items that are expanding it in a new channel that hasn’t been run with unknown performance, those are usually come from a bit of an inflection point. It’s not just because we should or we want to, it’s more so, okay, search is doing well, but we’re starting to hit our heads on the ceiling in terms of how much we can expand. Then it’s just about risk management. We really ought to do this. If you want to keep growing here, the benefits here, the risks, let’s settle on a budget, a test budget that works for you. Then we can consider expanding upon that if the results are good.

Lauren: Evan, final thoughts, if you don’t have a roadmap and you are listening to this, whether it’s you yourself have a roadmap internally, if you don’t have clarity on why you’re doing what you’re doing with your digital dollars, what they’re trying to accomplish, how you’re moving through it, how you’re tracking it, what should you do? Where should you start?

Evan: I would say it’s absolutely essential, and everything’s connected in a chain. Start with true global business objectives, then move into, “Okay, let’s talk about objectives then in that context as it relates to digital. Great. Now let’s talk about the work we have planned and what prioritization we have to address these needs we have. I think it’s really tough to do if we’re not thinking about it that way or documenting it or reviewing it as a group with a client, and internally, I think you’re at risk of not really moving the needle in that way if you’re not approaching it like that.

Lauren: Get one set up. If you are listening and you’re like, “What template should I use?” We can send you an Excel sheet on a good place to start. Reach out, if that’s a pain point for you. Absolutely demand this of your agency, your partners. This is something that you should have with them. Evan, thanks for joining. I love Roadmap. I’ve got a sweet spot in my heart. Thank you guys for listening and we’ll see you next time.

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