How to Differentiate Your Brand in a Crowded Market

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: You know guys, we always– on Ignite, nearly every time, we’ve got to talk about HIPAA compliant marketing, yada, yada. This time, we don’t, but we still get to talk a lot about brand and consumer experience and how to attract really cute clients. This is going to be a blast. Jennifer, welcome to Ignite. What’s going on?

Jennifer Rusk: Thank you. It’s a chilly day here in New York, but happy to be here and looking forward to talking about an exciting category that so many people are passionate about. They love their animals, and just like kids these days. Yes, it’s a fun category to talk on.

Alex: We won’t be talking about how to find the animal’s care. We work with a lot of vet groups on the care side. We get to talk about how to put them into a resort.

Jennifer: Correct.

Alex: Man, when we talk about pet resorts, I just go straight to like, “Are they staying in the Cancun Maya or the Rosewood Mayakoba, or where are they staying?”

Jennifer: There is a range.

Alex: We’ll talk about it in a minute. Jennifer, tell our five listeners, where have you hailed from, even before NVA, stuff like that, and your experience.

Jennifer: Sure. I have about 15-ish plus years of marketing experience. I actually started my career in retail at Target. It really got a great grounding in brand, customer experience, how you tie business strategy to consumer needs and wants. From there, transitioned into CPG at Chobani. That was a great other– very customer passionate brand, talking about stories and a great founder story. Then have also had experience at Marriott in the hospitality space, thinking globally how you transition brand stories to both large scale messaging to get consumer awareness as well as local plays, which really transitioned nicely into the work at NVA.

Pet care, pet resorts, it is a blend of hospitality service and customer experience, both for the pet as well as for the human caregiver. It was a great way to blend all that experience into the role.

Alex: I love it. You’ve been around very different industries. At the end of the day, it’s all client acquisition, and NVA may be a little different because it’s local. No, same as the hospitality stuff. You’re just dealing with OTAs instead of some other issues and they probably had with the pet resort aggregators and stuff like that. That’s fun. Tell us a little bit, we’ll focus on the NVA thing because that’s more relevant to our five listeners than anything else. I loved, by the way, hotel marketing. We used to have a bunch of hotels. It was very, very fun, and happy to be in healthcare.

Tell us a little bit about NVA. What was the purview there, and what was the size? Then we’ll start talking about marketing tactics, strategy, stuff like that.

Jennifer: Yes, sure. NVA, it’s a vet services roll up, and the bulk of their ownership is in actually the veterinary healthcare space. Traditional, general vets, emergency vets, and specialty vets. The resort business was significantly a smaller footprint, but still a really strong business. We had about 160 resorts nationwide. About half were under the PetSuites of America umbrella. The other half were mom-and-pop brands that had been acquired over the years. We ran them holistically under one marketing team that did acquisition paid media, websites, or social, that sort of thing.

Then the local resorts were responsible for promoting themselves with their own Facebook accounts, on Instagram accounts, local events. We helped feed them information through Sprout Social, et cetera. They were really the ones humanizing the brand at the local level to day-to-day interact with their communities.

Alex: Yes. Awesome. Why did NVA embark upon this? Instead of just building out more clinics, why didn’t we go resort? Did we think it’s the continuum of care, the resort, “Okay, healthy, healthy, health”? Then when they have a need, they’re going to go to the clinic. What was the thinking then? Did it work?

Jennifer: I would say it’s a space right for streamlining, I would say. Pet resorts, pet care, dog daycare, boarding, training. When I say pet resorts, just to be clear, boarding, training, grooming, daycare, and then some retail. It’s a hugely fragmented space. There’s a lot of opportunity to apply the same business practices of what you see in the private equity world of that center acquisition to the resort space, bringing in super tight operations, helping on acquisition and sale, material costs for buildouts of kennels and infrastructure. I think they just thought it was a really great service line extension and ultimately something that complimented their services.

Alex: Do you think it worked?

Jennifer: Within the markets that we were in, it worked greatly. I think we were just on the cusp of having markets, not penetration, but in some markets, like Houston, Dallas, some of the Southern states, we had a lot of presence. We had really strong performance there, and honestly, strong, great performance across all our resorts. Whether or not it’s something that– it’s just a tough category because there are so many small, tiny ones that our teams did a great job. Extremely high, pet care quality, which I think is really, really important.

I think on that front, our employees loved working for us. The pet care was top notch, and we had really strong reviews for the consumer. In that front, it absolutely worked.

Alex: Yes. It feels good to work for a good group. When you feel good that NVA’s delivering, it’s like, that makes it fun to go to work. That’s not always the case. I love the private equity roll-ups, and that’s our entire business. It’s not always the case that the care is delivered. That doesn’t feel good thing. It sounds like the marketing team was running on both sides, resort and clinics. Tell us a little bit about what the marketing mix was digitally. I’m sure there’s lots of boots on the ground stuff.

Jennifer: Just to take a step back, within NVA, my team solely focused on pet resorts. There was a whole another team that focused on general practice and then spec ER. Actually, we shared agency support. We shared a lot of back of house information, but our teams were generally separate. There was some overlap, and there was starting to be more handholding around cross promotion, getting veterinarian offices aware of our services. There was a lot of that happening ad hoc anyway. If somebody needed overflow for boarding, we would absolutely support, but that was just really beginning as I was exiting.

Alex: Got you. Same internal teams for accountability, same agency. Very interesting. What was the mix on your side? What did you find to be really useful? Then we’ll talk a little bit about the tactics that did not work out so well.

Jennifer: I had an amazing digital team. I had a woman running really all the media, the paid search, paid social website, and a lot of the social media. She had really deep experience in that space. That, I would say paid search social was so effective for us, partly because I think that’s where a lot of people are looking, but absolutely, I give credit to the team and their skillset for really thinking critically around using consumer insights to tweak messaging, to tweak timing of when ads would be placed, all those things. As segmented as our business was, they did a great job of customizing it and in the most efficient way possible.

Alex: I know you mentioned also that they were able to split out national and local messaging and all that. Was that part of what you were just mentioning?

Jennifer: Nationally, we really focused on big picture themes. We call it like the Super Bowl, like spring break, summer travel. We focused on acquisition, promoting those upcoming travel seasons, membership rollout. We were launching new programs, and then we would help provide toolkits and resources to the resorts that they could promote via their local channel, whether it be email or social media, et cetera. It was definitely a blend of– we helped get people in the door with lead gen, and then they use their own resources to bring them across the finish line.

Alex: Yes, absolutely. Very cool. It sounds like you had an internal team of 52. You mentioned there was a woman that was running the digital stuff. Everybody always wants to know, how did Jennifer do it? What does the team makeup look like? Walk us through that, and then I’m going to get back to the digital acquisition.

Jennifer: We had about nine people at the headquarters level. One group was focused on the digital side and responsible for paid media, website management, social media plans. She had a team beneath her that was both doing tactical work as well as analytics to make sure that we were always just delivering the best marketing possible. Then another team that focused more on the brand management and the go-to market plans, like membership testing, the other, like the seasonal campaigns. That’s how the team was split.

Alex: That’s interesting. It wasn’t like total by function. It’s not like we had one marketing person and then we had one person on messaging and creating.

Jennifer: No.

Alex: You built it out a little different. That’s cool.

Jennifer: There was a lot of handholding. Everybody jumped in and helped when needed. It worked. It worked pretty well for the setup at the time.

Alex: You mentioned the digital acquisition stuff, a lot of advertising work, SEO work. When there’s a ton of competitors in your space, tell me a little bit about the competitive influence, top and bottom. You get it from the national, the local, what did that look like? Because then I want to segue into how did you use– in social differentiate, how’d you guys differentiate? First, let’s talk about the competitive set of what you were up against, because we debriefed earlier, and you had some really cool insights. I want everyone to hear.

Jennifer: I would say from a competitive perspective, there was a handful of national competitors, Camp Bow Wow, that sort of thing, that we always spoke to, that we tried to speak against. Then our resorts did a phenomenal job of comp shopping, and they had in-market information about exactly who their competitors were. Because a resort is maybe similar to a child daycare. You’re not going to travel 15 miles out of your way to go to a resort. It needs to be probably on your way to work, on your way to school, it needs to be in a path.

There might be two resorts near you, but one might be value, and one might be more luxury. We need to understand who actually we need to be talking to. We would actually take that cut and dry national list of competitors, and then integrate all these local secondary market competitors to get very locally specific about our ad work. Again, hats off to the team. Our agency were great partners too, but it was extremely customized.

Alex: Yes, that’s incredible. I love it, comp shopping. I hadn’t heard that. Comp shopping, that’s a good one. That’s a new one. What were they doing? Calling in and saying, “I just moved, what’s this–?”

Jennifer: Yes.

Alex: All right. Got it. The players, the competitive site, can be national players, but you also mentioned to me earlier, could also be like travel partnerships and stuff. This was super cool– you mentioning that there’s a lot of times marketers don’t think your competition can come from some different places. What’s one of those places?

Jennifer: I think generally just the landscape. It’s something that I thought about a lot when I was at Marriott too, because– I brought with me from Marriott, that hotels realize that people want to travel with their pets. More and more hotels are becoming pet friendly. They’re creating experiences, services, so people can actually travel with their pets, which didn’t used to be the case years ago. I think just generally, there’s more hospitality within the hospitality space to have animals on property.

Again, Rover is in that space, even like Facebook Marketplace, you can find places that are offering pet services in many, many different places. I think I was mentioning this to you, the Uber-Delta partnership, nothing’s been said yet, but Uber has such an incredible database of information, of customer history. I think merging that with a Delta partner, what other tangential services is somebody like that going to offer someday? Is it going to be pet pickup drop-offs to a daycare or to Delta’s premier pet transport business? I think it’s really interesting to see where the space goes.

Alex: Yes, that’s awesome. If you’re listening, maybe it could be you that’s chosen as a partner. It’s really cool to think of new activations and partnerships that could really skyrocket a business. That’s very cool. Being Atlanta-based and loving Uber, that was awesome to hear that. That makes my life easier. You get medallion qualification dollars from the Uber thing, so it makes my life easier. Kids don’t have to fly on the back of the bus, which they complain about every time we get on a plane, spoiled brats.

Then we talked a little bit about– sometimes marketers, we don’t think a marketing director will say, “Hey, listen, I got to do X, Y, and Z, so I can hit my lead acquisition targets, yada, yada,” and doesn’t think about the macro factors. In ’25, you had an interesting perspective on what 2025 could look like economically and how that could impact things. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jennifer: End of day– it’s been interesting to watch that when I was growing up, our pets were pets, and it’s really swung to younger generations are having children later and not having children at all, and they’re using their animals as an alternative substitute. However, I think that pets are very expensive as well, pet food, vet care, daycare. It would not surprise me if there was less of a humanization trend in 2025, and we swung back to a point where people don’t feel the need to put their animal in a daycare or spend the most in a resort setting.

Instead, the puppy’s going to be fine being home for a day by itself, or we’ll just have the neighbor kid for $10 walk it. Just like macroeconomic factors, that who knows how things are going to play out this year, I think people might just be thinking about spending their money a little bit differently, and maybe their pet will continue to take a little bit more of a second place over other needs in their life. It’ll swing back to more of a want versus a need.

Alex: I love how you’re thinking. I mean this is like CMO style thinking when you’re thinking about the macroeconomic factors, and then you’re correlating that into what is the business strategy, and then marketing will enact that. If we want to sit at the same level, CEO, COO, CFO, like we have to say macro is going to be this. What if they’re going to go downstream, right? Maybe they’re going to just have somebody watch the kid. What if we have entry-level offers? What if we built out a satellite thing that is no frills?

That’s very cool. I love that Jennifer is looking at the macro stuff because that could inform a wedge that any business could get into to stay alive and just try to get every type of client, whether it’s down on the socio status or not. I think that’s really cool. I wish more marketers thought about what the economy is doing before we just start trying to hit lead acquisition targets. You also mentioned about society changing a little bit. What is something you’ve seen on marketing that’s totally changed like the way you think and probably the messaging and how you go to market with any of these businesses you’ve worked on?

Jennifer: I think now more than ever, social media and everything digital is like a blessing and a curse, right? We can reach so many people so quickly, but people also can end up being very emotional online because there’s no emotion there. It’s almost more important now than ever before to be building true relationships with your customer, making sure the customer experience is there ahead of time in a retail space if you had brick and mortar, and being more than having a voice beyond just selling to somebody.

Because something that we found was– we spent a lot of time on reputation management because we had a lot of customers that were absolutely thrilled with what we did and their pet care. Once in a while, you would get somebody that was pretty upset. The way that those can amplify, right or wrong, it can be really detrimental to the business. I think that the algorithms are only getting smarter to get people to engage, right or wrong. That’s something that I think about is– I call it paying it forward with messaging and customer experience.

The farther out ahead that you can get with building goodwill with people, that will just anchor people into your brand and your product in a healthy way. They’ll be less likely to go to that negative mindset.

Alex: I like what you’re saying, Jennifer. Yes, social media– it is the biggest blessing and curse that has happened to society. There’s no doubt. Everybody has about a three to second time span. I like where your head is at. Go back to running the business the right way as if there was no social media. Treat your employees right. Gee, the clients right. Do great follow-up. Make sure the patient experience, client experience, when they come in the office, matches you said online. I love that. Then you have deep roots within the community, and one negative Nancy doesn’t bring the whole ship down.

Yes, very cool. I think this year could be the year of like, “Let’s go back to running good businesses. A lot of the marketing stuff will take care of itself.” 

Jennifer: Because it doesn’t matter if you’re generating a thousand leads, but you don’t have time to follow up with any of them. All you’re doing is you’re annoying all the people that took the time to submit an email, and then you never hear from them. Maybe focus in– They don’t have to be like, “I had written notes every week,” but there are things that you can do to be authentic.

Alex: Yes, absolutely. That drives me crazy when the feedback loop is not there. It bugs me. There’s a lot of technology that out there that can help you. Guys, you keep blaming your marketers and your marketing agencies for not enough leads. 9 times out of 10 is not our fault, nor the in-house marketer’s fault. It is your call center’s fault or somebody else’s fault, knobs that drove too many leads to places with no capacity. FYI, Jennifer. Okay, one more question because I got to get you. I told you we then 11:30 Eastern, right coast time. What are you most excited about this year, marketing trend or otherwise?

Jennifer: Oh, boy, that’s a good one. I excited to see with TikTok. I know TikTok is back, but I’m excited to see– I think there’s going to be a little bit more pushback in digital. I think that especially younger generations are really interested in experiences, physical media, walking around the city. There’s so much more out of home, and there’s so many more pop-ups. I really hope that there’s more of a focus on connection in real life or just authentic communication and conversation with people beyond just Facebook ads. That’s something that I’m really hopeful for.

Alex: Experiential marketing, back and bone.

Jennifer: Back and bone.

Alex: I love it.

Jennifer: I think there’s enough tools now that-

Alex: You can track it.

Jennifer: -you can track it, you can validate the importance of it, you can prove the business worth. It doesn’t have to be fireworks on top of the building. It can be something tiny, but I think there is some interesting now. I think old is going to be new again.

Alex: Yes. Just like me. Not you. Me.

Jennifer: Oh.

Alex: I meant me.

Jennifer: The light’s good right now.

Alex: Yes. Oh my God. The cholesterol deposits in my eyes. I’m with you, dude. The digital stuff is so overwhelming. I was sitting watching TV the other night, we were watching Landman, and I got served an ad on Paramount for HIPAA compliant software. That’s how specific they’re getting. Even on the TVs, they’re out of that, right? Like, OTT. They certainly HIPAA compliant software.

Jennifer: It’s crazy.

Alex: Right? I think you’re absolutely right. At some point, we just want to get away from all these devices and experience a brand in person. Thank you.

Jennifer: Yes. Thank you.

Alex: Jennifer, for the–

Jennifer: Thanks, it was a pleasure.

Alex: Non-AI answer on the trends. We went the other way with it. I love it.

Jennifer: Awesome.

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