Healthcare Inbound Marketing With Alex Membrillo

Alex:

For the majority of medical practice out there, they just need to be all over Google. They don’t need to be worrying about social media because SEO is where people are going and actually looking for care. Social media is where people are talking about things. And they’re really not talking to companies like you anyways, you know, they don’t talk to healthcare groups.

Sliman:

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to the Care Frontiers podcast. The show where we bring healthcare professionals to share with us their own experience running a successful medical business. Today joining me the CEO of Cardinal digital, a healthcare marketing agency, Alex Membrillo. Alex, welcome to our show.

Alex:

Hey thanks for having me, bud.

Sliman:

You are most welcome. I’m really excited today to speak a lot of about the SEO and the content marketing. But before we get deep into the the actual content, tell us a bit about you and about Cardinal digital on how it is helping healthcare providers.

Alex:

Yeah, so we started the agency 12 years ago, when I graduated from Georgia State University, and we’ve had a focus on healthcare since we started. In fact, we brought on a primary care group 12 years ago, one location, still a client, two location five providers now. So very proud of that. We just have a passion for helping patients find the best providers, we get a big kick out of that helps make the world healthy. And we could all use some more of that this year.

Sliman:

Definitely, Alex, I know you’re big on content marketing. And that’s a big part of your service suits. In Cardinal digital. Can you draw the line between these inbound marketing strategies? and other traditional advertising media/media commercials?

Alex:

Yeah. So there’s a big difference. I mean, traditional marketing is what we focus on. And the reason being is that with traditional marketing, you’re serving ads to people, but you’re really just serving them ads based on where they live or who they are, or their interest. But you don’t really know if they’re looking for a provider at that time. And that’s why I love digital marketing, specifically Google advertising. When someone’s going to Google, they tore their ACL or they think they tore their ACL, they’re going to go to Google and type in, have I tore my ACL, and they’re gonna find out they have, because they can’t move laterally. And then they’re going to type in orthopedic surgeon near me. And that’s the power of Google is I know what your intent is, and you are looking to find a solution to it. So all I have to do is present you with options being my clients. And if my client is the best provider in town, you’re going to become a patient for that. So that’s what I love about digital marketing, very quantifiable, but also, it’s need based. So I’m not just serving answer a bunch of people just because they fit a geo or demographic target, I’m serving a match because they want it

Sliman:

especially another aspect of it is that the leads are coming are warm leads. They are not like unqualified cold leads, this is another great aspect of digital marketing, especially search traffic. The Speaking of which, I know that most of your work is doing SEO and content marketing for healthcare Industry. The thing is in healthcare, Google treats, let’s say healthcare providers a little bit more strictly because of their, Your Money, Your Life (YLYM) policy, and you know, the healthcare is closely regulated industry. How do you approach marketing in healthcare?

Alex:

Yeah, absolutely. So everything has to be HIPAA compliant. We’re very serious about that. We only work with technology partners that are HIPAA compliant like Salesforce birdeye, podium callrail. So very important that we are only plugging into data sources that are HIPAA compliant. So there’s no funny business going on and our team is our team is also church. Our team is also trained on HIPAA compliance. So we’re not passing in a data bag that can be sensitive. With healthcare, you have to be careful, everything has to remain remain anonymous, and there’s certain marketing things that can’t happen like remarketing, you can’t serve remarketing ads to people that imply condition or symptoms. So a lot of things to be very careful with in healthcare. I applaud anyone that wants to get into healthcare marketing, just do your research. First.

Sliman:

You mentioned remarketing, can you dig a little bit deeper? Well, I think it’s really interesting. How does remarketing is strictly or banned in healthcare?

Alex:

It’s so important and so useful. You just have to be careful with it. Your remarketing ads can be served on Google network GDN. But they can only have generic like brand based remarketing ads there and Facebook where you can serve remarketing ads and if you have trouble with those two platforms go to AD roll and they

Alex:

You can run your remarketing ads, but a lot of power there in serving ads, right? You want to make sure that people that have been to your website are now getting reminded of you so that when they’re looking for care and evaluating the other providers in town, you’re staying top of mind. And that’s what a remarketing ad does. We make sure we show ads to people that have been to our website for 30 days, four times a day.

Sliman:

So it builds this brand awareness and in people’s mind. So speaking of this, what type of content that converts patients and how do you go about strategizing a plan for patient acquisition?

Alex:

Yeah, so the most important thing for multilocation medical groups your orthopedic or dentals, your urgent cares your debt, your dermatology, behavioral health, whatever it is, if you serve patients, the most important thing to do is to show up in your local area, let’s say you your your practice is in Atlanta, Georgia, best city in the world, you would want to show up for things like Atlanta orthopedic surgeon. In order to do that you need a page that is all about being an orthopedic surgeon, Atlanta keywords everywhere maps providers listed all that kind of fun stuff. I’m actually hosting a local SEO webinar, about a month I don’t know if this will be live by then. But check it out Cardinal digital marketing, look for the webinar and healthcare resources. And we’ll talk all about that. But basically, you want content that talks to the city and services that you offer.

Sliman:

So it’s more of a personalized approach to the marketing you’re planning?

Alex:

Yeah, very personalized. You got to be really specific on the area you’re going after him the type of services you offer.

Sliman:

Do you integrate any sales funnel and actual plan?

Alex:

Hmm, not really, because everything we do is pretty low acuity like someone looks for a dentist finds one, bam, they’re an appointment. So we’re not doing like long drawn out branding initiatives, patient awareness preference of witnesses now. So we’re not really doing funnel stuff. We’re just doing quick hit low acuity stuff.

Sliman:

So there is no need for this kind of marketing in the healthcare?

Alex:

You could be used as that high acuity healthcare may use that and get people in and use it long. It’s not really what we do, though. It’s just not our type of practice.

Sliman:

Okay, gotcha. So let’s talk about growth and the ROI. In terms of growth. What’s the ROI in on content marketing? What expectation? Would you set for medical professionals in terms of patient acquisition and ROI from from SEO and content?

Alex:

Yeah, I mean, the ROI is tremendous if you do it, right. And a lot of healthcare groups haven’t done digital in the past, and they’re so used to provider referrals. But what I would say is, I can’t tell you your ROI. But our clients are three to 600% in the first six months, generally, and it just increases from there, SEO will typically provide you your best long term return because the clicks are cheap. Once you rank really well, you’re just paying an SEO company, Google ads, Facebook ads, very good. But you’re renting the house, you always have to pay to rent the house or Google kicks your ass out.

Alex:

Or to know those things ROI is very good. But you need to give it six months with the right company and go from there very hard to say what it’s going to be for your practice, or whether you choose a good SEO company or not.

Sliman:

So six months is like the average time period, you have to wait until you see the results?

Alex:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Sliman:

Okay. All right. So how do you track your campaigns on the marketing campaigns?

Alex:

Oh, man, we track everything from rankings, traffic, and leads and then actual admits are patients so you can track them all the way through to find out if they actually became a patient. So we use things like Google Analytics, Data Studio, funnel, BigQuery, all this kind of fun stuff. You can also track calls through call rail, and emails to gravity and jot form so all of this stuff very highly trackable. And so, running kind of digital marketing, make sure your company is doing that for you.

Sliman:

Okay, though, what’s the what’s some of the metrics that you’d like to let’s say truck more on the double down on in all of your tracking metrics?

Alex:

Oh, man, I would love to know more about how many patients came from our campaigns that is the golden goose hard to find hard to find hard to find but those are the people that really really matters how many patients you drove and it’s it’s tough to know exactly so that’s what I would love to know more about

Sliman:

why though why this is metrics Exactly?

Alex:

Well, you want to know how many patients you actually drove from your campaigns and not just leads right like how many people actually came in and got care.

Sliman:

Ah, Okay, okay. So you have to once you know that you want to optimize for that?

Alex:

Yep, got it.

Sliman:

Alright, so to move on to from acquire patients. How can content marketing solidify healthcare businesses as authoritative brand in terms of branding?

Alex:

Well, It’s important that with patients; you want to be seen as the main caregiver in your town. In order to do that, you need to have content that really speaks to every symptom treatment disease service that you could possibly provide, so that you’re educating your patient base in your local area. So all kinds of content around everything you do in helping your patient get better, feel better, stay better, is super important. And that can help position you as the market leader through content marketing.

Sliman:

Okay, you just about positioning, do you do actually positioning in Cardinal digital?

Alex:

Nope.

Sliman:

So it’s only pure marketing?

Alex:

That’s it, we’re just looking to get patients, we do not work on the positioning, most of our company’s clients know their positioning, or have agencies that are helping them with that, or they’re too small to care, they just need patience.

Sliman:

So to transition a little bit to the some, let’s say common mistakes and pitfalls that brands do and fall into when trying to market their businesses. Why are some healthcare brands successful in content marketing more than others? What are the common mistakes and pitfalls?

Alex:

they stick with it is the number one thing they stick with it when they don’t have a ton of success in their first year, they stick with it, hire a different SEO company hire a different person, they stick with it, and they keep building content, and they keep building the right kind of content. That’s gonna be the main thing that will help these companies be successful. Just don’t give up. And they give up. They give up too quickly. I think.

Sliman:

So. Is there any older mistakes that might cause the failure in content marketing?

Alex:

Yeah, absolutely. Building the wrong kind of content. If you’re looking for patients you need to build, you need to build content that the patients care about, they’re looking to find you make it easy to do. So build those pages I talked about, don’t build nonsense that no one cares about. And so finding out what your patients are looking to understand in your area, is really important in building content around that.

Sliman:

Can you give us an example of a content that targets patients and content that convert versus a content that people don’t care about?

Alex:

Yeah, those location pages are the number one thing that’s going to be the most important stuff to create to get conversions. The second most important thing I would say is your mid funnel awareness type content of talking about different symptoms and how you compare to other providers in the area. That’s going to be important. Your least important are your blog articles. A lot of people don’t realize that but your least important are your blog articles. And and that’s important to know, because people just want to create a blog, you only want the blog after you’ve worked really hard to create all those location pages.

Sliman:

Mm hmm. So the blog content drive visitors to the local pages, right?

Alex:

Yeah, you got it.

Sliman:

So having like a wealth of experience in marketing at this point, you said the 12 years, right? what are you tired of in the marketing space, and what are some of the things that you you’re mostly excited about?

Alex:

Yeah. Well, what am I tired of? Not really tired of anything in marketing?

Sliman:

No, no. I mean, something that not you tired of, but something you see that bothers you so much for in the marketing space overall.

Alex:

Yeah. Companies putting too much investment in organic social media before they’ve invested in SEO and paid search. Organic social is okay if you have a big community that’s engaged, otherwise, you just need to be on SEO and, and Google ads. And for the majority of medical practice out there, they just need to be all over Google. They don’t need to be worrying about social media.

Sliman:

So why, though, why SEO more prioritized than social media?

Alex:

Yeah, because SEO is where people are going and actually looking for care. Social media is where people are talking about things, and they’re really not talking to companies like you anyways, you know, they don’t talk to healthcare groups. So it’s just not it’s not the right place for the majority of medical groups out there.

Sliman:

Mm hmm. So is there anything that you are excited about, let’s say in marketing overall, in healthcare and in something in that sphere?

Alex:

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a ton to be excited about marketing. One is healthcare still very far behind in terms of innovation and in marketing. So we’re bringing all of that to them. And, and that’s fun every day, bringing new tracking and analytics and tracking all the way through to a patient, very exciting for us, we take on bigger and better clients every day. And we think we’ve served from two locations to 400 and some of the largest provider groups in the country. So very fun and kind of never stopped learning. So it’s really cool. You know, we’ve we’ve gone from 10 to 30 something people and just over 12 months, so we have a lot of bright marketers here and I really enjoy learning from them every day. I’m still not tired of this job yet.

Sliman:

Alex, you mentioned that there is a this slow acceptance on the in in marketing for healthcare because healthcare is always behind that. Why do you think this is the case, especially in healthcare?

Alex:

Because they were reliant on provider referrals for a long time. And so that’s how they got their leads and their money, but that changed in the last 10 years. So they’re still catching up, and they’re still nervous about HIPAA compliance, but we help solve all that for them. Okay, so Alex, do you have any takeaways to share with the listeners? Yeah, listen, if you’re looking to generate more patients, do some googling out there, find out the basics. Cardinals constantly hosting webinars Roundtable, we have a great healthcare marketing podcast we’ve got maybe not as good as this one. Obviously Sliman has done a great job. We have a lot of content out there. Just do a lot of research and then if you hit a dead end, feel free to reach out to me.

Sliman:

Okay, thank you so much, Alex. If you have any questions, and you want to reach out to Alex, all his links are in the show notes. Tune into his podcast, ignite digital marketing. And if you’d like to know more and get more of digital marketing resources, visit Cardinaldigitalmarketing.com For more helpful marketing assets. Alex, do you have anything you want to add?

Alex:

No that’s it. Thanks for having me.

Sliman:

You’re most welcome.