Expert Marketing Insights to Grow Your Behavioral Health Business

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Stewart Gandolf

Welcome. Welcome to our session, our very cozy, very intimate session. So hopefully we can all get to know each other and be giving each other hugs by the time we’re done. So, we’ll be very, very comfortable together. I’m Stuart Gandalf, I am CEO of Health Care Success, and our session today is called Expert Marketing Insights to grow your Behavioral Health Business.

Stewart Gandolf

And as you guys know, the industry we have today is evolving. It’s incredibly competitive. And what do you think will be more next year a little more competitive or less. Right. It’s more competitive every single year. If there’s anything constant at all in our world about behavioral health, marketing is it’s competitive and it gets more complicated every year.

Stewart Gandolf

So, we’re gonna try to keep things very relevant to you. And the concept behind this when we are talking, to the team here with invest was I wanted to share insights. One of the things that I talk about a lot with our team that we’ve been fortunate enough to create over the last 18 years, I’ve always just trying to find specialist people that specialize in what they do, just like, you know, health care.

Stewart Gandolf

You have nephrologist orthopedic surgeons and origins in our world. And, as you guys know, you have SEO or local SEO or a paid search or paid social or writers or of rounders. So, I brought along a couple of my colleagues that I work with all the time for absolutely expert of what they do. And so, the goal today was to talk about some of the relevance that we think are most relevant to your category.

Stewart Gandolf

And by the way, when I say category, it could include addiction, autism, getting disorders, mental health, teens. We work with all those different kinds of clients. By the way, this is mental health category is our largest category overall. So again, this I’m not the star today. I usually get to do most of the talking. But today I’m the moderator.

Stewart Gandolf

And I brought, like I said, some really strong, strong people to this panel, will be available during this pandemic and talk later. So, we’re going to talk today about, Paul as our head of account services client services. So, he leads our client services team. So, he works not just as the, strategic head of that team, but he’s one of the rare individuals I know, who is a brander and, strategic digital marketer.

Stewart Gandolf

Those are usually completely different things. So, Paul, Grazer and that’s Paul. And Josh is a long term player in this industry. He was fortunate enough to be he’s been working in addiction for years. Some of you guys may recognize him. He had the great fun and ATP to describe, the shutdown and logit script and all that.

Stewart Gandolf

So welcome guys. So, I would like to start off by adding a comment that I want to jump straight in. The first thing I want to bring up though is I feel like we’re all here and that’s great.

Stewart Gandolf

And that’s what I thank you for coming on the second day, which is always a little challenging, but I would argue that the marketing has such opportunity, like in other specialties, like for example, dermatology or dentistry, they get marketing addiction that we find that it is a lifeblood of many of their businesses. And I would argue, even if it is already the lifeblood of your business, it can do even more.

Stewart Gandolf

It’s just can be that powerful to growing the value of an institution or to growing, patients, obviously. And so, we have financial people in here today. We have people here on the provider side. So, it’s a lever that’s commonly underutilized. So, I can’t talk about everything we know today. So, we’re going to talk about instead today about two really critical things.

Stewart Gandolf

Number one we’re going to talk about branding. From the perspective of how does that support everything else. So, Paul this is like Paul is really passionate on this. Or you guys want to talk to Paul for hours. Just go for it. Paul.

Paul Knipe

Yeah. Well, when you think about branding, specifically in the behavioral mental health space, it’s important to reset on what a brand is. Sometimes they’re big notions of what a brand is or should be. Is it a logo? Is it your message? No, it’s a set of ideas. You know, there’s a quote from Michael Eisner that a brand is a thousand little gestures that you can enrich or undermine cumulatively over time.

Paul Knipe

So, what does that mean? I mean, a brand ultimately has to be every touchpoint with a prospective patient. Their families, and what does it feel like to them? It’s not an expensive process. You know, we know that big, highly accountable public brands, notable brands have to think about their presence, their strategy. But ultimately, a brand can be a collection of your core ideas, your stake in the ground.

Paul Knipe

And I just wanted to start with that because that’s important. Because if you can differentiate yourself, if you can determine what your organization is based on in terms of its principles, and if you can properly identify your audiences, then you’re in a much better position to think about digital channels, period.

Stewart Gandolf

So, Paul, a lot of times people get confused, and we say branding and thinking logos and colors and logo type like I have a brand. We did that like years ago. Tell us what you see and why you feel that, how that continuum becomes real.

Paul Knipe

You can’t really define those aspects of a brand. The tangible, concrete elements of a brand. Until you’ve actually done that thinking on where you’re different, how do you stand out from the rest of the landscape? If you can do that, then you’re one step forward in thinking about how a digital strategy of attaining patients, reaching out to people, building a meaningful connection actually happens.

Paul Knipe

A brand is ultimately about creating trust, credibility, authenticity. And when you do that well, you got a little bit of a framework for how you develop a creative strategy. You can think about the color palette, you can think about the messages that stand out. But all of those tangible things that people think a brand really is about are not really possible until you establish the framework of what the brand represents, what does it stand for?

Paul Knipe

What does it stand against, and how does it make people feel?

Stewart Gandolf

So Josh, talk about from the, your world, the branding side of your world because you’re in paid search. Like, who cares about branding and paid search, right? That’s not true.

Josh Weum

Well, brand consistency is very important. You know, wherever you’ve got messaging, if it’s your paid media, your ads, your video content, your website, it’s all got to be consistent. And that means everyone on your team needs to be aware of what that brand message is really attuned to that in every piece of your marketing, it needs to be reflected.

Josh Weum

And not just that, but for a lot of companies, there’s a bit of siloing when it comes to that. Not every piece of the company is really in tune with what the brand messaging is currently. Alignment key there. And another aspect of branding in the paid media world is refreshing. You know, if you’ve got a brand identity today that’s very resonant and it’s working very well.

Josh Weum

It’s something that has to be reevaluated often. And, you know, there’s key aspects to that when it comes to the paid media world. You’re, you know, for this industry, paid search is critical. We’re looking to get people in the door. And, you know, that brand messaging has to be consistent from the paid media side all the way to the SEO.

Josh Weum

And then of course, the website and everything else you’ve got going.

Stewart Gandolf

So, support one of the things we talk about a lot internally and when we’re working with clients and speaking is the idea of a living brand. And so, talk about, I guess, you know, what is the living brand clearly. And some of the benefits of having a living brand.

Paul Knipe

So, I think a lot of people think of a brand as being the static thing. You set your brand guidelines, you set your messaging guidelines. You have sort of an idea of who your audience is. But there’s a rigid, somewhat static approach to how you express it. Whether you’re doing social ads, whether you have a website, maybe you have a booth at a conference.

Paul Knipe

There’s consistency. But the truth is, is that there’s no one audience you have. If you’re reaching out to prospective patients or their family members, you have to think about how your brand needs to adjust and adapt to them their values, their different mindsets. It’s not the same thing. So you have to personalize the brand. A living brand as a concept adapts and responds to the needs of its audiences.

Paul Knipe

And what that really comes down to is having an understanding of social channels, marketing channels, and the messages that are appropriate for those channels to deliver it. We do a lot of work with YouTube, with video, and honestly, sometimes we need to be able to adapt our marketing strategies across a range of different audiences. A living brand gives us the flexibility to do that.

Stewart Gandolf

So yeah, I would like to add to that. The idea here is if you have a brand and for example, your colors are blue and white or whatever, if you’re advertising on TikTok or you’re advertising on Facebook or Instagram, the way that’s expressed has to be very different. If you want to actually have people stop and look at your ad.

Stewart Gandolf

So the living brand in today’s digital world is really vital to be appropriate to the audience that you’re trying to reach and where you’re actually able to, respond appropriately. And then, of course, demographically, all those different things. So, Paul, on a, we’re going to move away from branding in a moment here, but like, let’s talk about just from an SEO perspective, how does a consistent branding help or hinder the SEO in your experience?