Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Wednesday, everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the co founder and managing director here at BWG Connect where a networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of organizations who do exactly that with networking knowledge share together to stay on top of all the different topics, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be that shaping a lot around the digital ecosystem right now. And when the same topics come up over and over again, from different organizations, we put on an event like this. And so you know, welcome everybody, a couple of housekeeping items as we get started. First off, we're starting three to four minutes after the hour in just so you know, we're going to wrap up with three to four minutes in the hour to go as well, we're gonna give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. The other thing, we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, you can drop it into q&a, you can drop into the chat, you can always email them to me, Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And we can handle questions as though we want to we want to answer those real time. So as they pop up, just drop them in there and we'll handle it. And with that, we're gonna go ahead and kind of kick this off. So there's a lot going on in healthcare right now. And we've had a lot of conversations even with the Hileman team all around the, you know, the different technology that's popped up the different tool sets, but a lot of what's going to coming up is what does the team look like? The handles marketing in the healthcare space as we look into the future, everybody knows tons have changed over the past couple years and how everything's been handled, and how the the team needs to look and so you know, Tom, you've been a great friend, partner supporter, the network. If you want to jump in real quick, a little bit about yourself and the Hileman Group, that'd be great. We also have Vineeta here, and she's gonna jump in with an introduction on herself as well. But Tom, I'll kick it over to you to start us off.

Tom Hileman  2:04  

Aaron, Thanks for Thanks for starting with me. I know Tomi's always going to try to dial in here. Tomi Galin, so if we were able to connect her in as well. So Tom Hileman President Hileman Group, we we work with healthcare organizations to help them connect with patients and physicians primarily through digital channels. So often our clients are asking us questions around not only the mahr tech, but how do we organize the people in teams? So I'm really pleased today to have that conversation with you, Aaron Vineeta. And hopefully we can get Tomi on a connected as well. Vineeta, would you mind introducing yourself?

Vineeta Hiranandani  2:35  

Or Good morning, everyone. I'm Vineeta Hiranandani. And I'm the VP of Marketing and Communications at El Camino Health. We're a health system in the San Francisco Bay area, we have two acute care hospitals and a bunch of the ambulatory clinics spread throughout the South Bay, offering primary care, urgent care and specialty care services. Before coming to El Camino health, I lead Marketing and Communications at Brown and Toland physicians. And prior to that, I have a background in brand marketing and corporate communications for other health care and financial services firms.

Aaron Conant  3:17  

Awesome, and in our last panelist is just kind of in transit right now. So hopefully, we can get Tomi dialed in. But if not, let's kind of just kick this off, you know, as a whole, Tom, I'll kick it over to you. And then we'll bring in Vineeta. Like, historically, you know, team structures as a whole. You know, Tom, you guys, you guys deal with a ton of organizations in this space? Like, what do you How are you seeing them evolve right now? You know, if you have like, I don't know, if you have a backward looking view on where, where they were at, you know, two to three years ago, and where they're at now. We'd love to hear your thoughts there.

Tom Hileman  3:51  

Sure. I mean, so healthcare, traditionally, we'll talk about maybe two or three years, and I'm interested to get Vineeta's take. But it's been very focused on the point of departmental kind of approach to marketing. So pretty traditional in the organization, the marketing department relative to the kind of departments and, and the functions that they that they serve in the organization. So I would say that's historically kind of where we've seen that. Over time, we've seen a couple of evolutions of the marketing departments, we're seeing them go, sometimes the centers of excellence around skill sets, and the basis of those are or is whirls around customer segmentation. Who are we talking to? And how are we organizing and as Pete focuses, those are a few of the examples of kind of what we've seen and where we're going with it. But Vineeta, I know that you're pretty passionate about this. I put a lot of thought in so I'd love to hear your

Vineeta Hiranandani  4:41  

thoughts. Yes, in fact, from my experience, I've seen marketing organized in health systems, more around marketing communications. So that's looking at things like website content, advertising have collateral and events. And over time as business drivers have changed and moved more experiences to digital healthcare systems have had to reorganize marketing to include more digital talent and tools on the team. And also I'm seeing a lot of times organizations have outsourced to partners, and I'm seeing more in sourcing and building institutional knowledge across teams.

Aaron Conant  5:34  

So when you think about it, from that standpoint, like that pendulum is, is shifting, do you think that's because, you know, organizations as a whole are just, you know, are coming more up to speed on the requirements and the needs that they have. And then they can staff it because I just think about even, you know, just in healthcare, but across multiple industries, that's what's happening right now, the finance sector as a whole banking industry, you know, even you know, traditional, you know, CPG, and companies launching their own direct consumer sites, you have this pendulum that's, you know, shifted, you know, to, hey, I need to outsource a bunch of stuff, because I don't really need know what needs to be done. You know, it coming back to like, hey, actually, we just need some guidance, you know, in some assurance and what needs to be done, but we can train a lot of this stuff in house.

Vineeta Hiranandani  6:22  

Good man, you know, I was just gonna say, I mean, sometimes it comes down to the data. So if you have multiple partners, and you've outsourced different things, and they each have different sets of data, there's been this need to centralize data, and to really look at a 360 view of the customer. And so based on some of those needs, I think organizations have started to bring things more in house to have access to their data in a timely way. And to understand it, and you know, having to call four or five different agencies and piece it together is not is not helpful.

Tom Hileman  7:06  

Aaron, actually, I think Tomi's talking Yes, exactly. He's gonna say, Join. So Tomi, unfortunately, we're working through some technical difficulties. So thanks for bearing with us. Would you mind introducing yourself? I think your audio only at this point, but Oh, you want to introduce yourself? And then jumping

Tomi Galin  7:21  

in? Yes, sir. I'm happy to can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, loud and clear. Right, I'm so sorry for the technical issues life on the road, right. It's just never exactly as you plan. But I'm Tomi Galin on executive vice president of strategic planning, marketing communications, at Community Health Systems, we operate 48 distinct healthcare systems across 16 states. And, in within those health care systems, we have 83 hospitals and about 1000, other outpatient sites of care. So really building out integrated healthcare networks and full continuum of care services in our market. And sorry to join late and I did not hear all of the conversation that transpired just before I joined, but I think you're talking a little bit about what what's in house, what's out house. And I think that as changed a lot over the last several years. And it's evolved again during COVID. So for us, you know, prior to COVID, going back to maybe 2017, or 2018, we really began to think about what can we build inside within our team? What do we need to buy from outside of our own organization in terms of services? And a third component? Where do we bring in consultants to teach us so that we can learn the skills, the strategies or skills, the technologies that we need to be self sufficient and succeed for the long term? So we've been on that pathway, and I think that we were doing a really great job before COVID, we had begun to bring in creative services we had taken over all of our digital advertising, we had built out additional types of of skills and brought in new technologies. What happened during COVID was interesting, because we saw that, you know, a lot of our team members would have other opportunities because of remote work opportunities. And and as we all saw for a long time, you know, you could write a ticket in healthcare marketing, you could go anywhere, jobs were open everywhere. And we can we were concerned about an exodus, we were very fortunate to maintain a stable workforce. So we've been able to continue our journey and really what we are attempting to do is build inside whatever we can buy what we have to and use that third model, use experienced expert consult Since to teach us wherever that is possible, and that's working really well, for us, and I think part of the reason is that, you know, we have a really committed team of a really smart team that's willing to expand their roles and responsibilities and learn new skills as well.

Aaron Conant  10:18  

Awesome. Love it. Tom would love to hear your your thoughts there, too.

Tom Hileman  10:22  

No, I mean, I think Tomi's right on target. It also depends on the I think the sophistication, sometimes the size of the organization, of how much you're able to insource versus outsource. So as an agency, a lot of our clients lean on us for a strategy and expertise is to tell kind of where's the market moving and anticipating part of that, and then also helping in certain areas that they may not have in house skill sets, or the expertise on and teaching and training. So I think as agencies, it's important that we, that we evolve our roles and the value that we provide to folks and fill the right fill, what works best for each of those health systems. And also, in particular, I think one of the things that happened previously Vineeta, you alluded to this a bit was your data was everywhere, right? So And my belief is that the, the health system should always own and control all of its own data. And agencies can help or third parties can help kind of analyze, manage, or provide operational things. One of the things that Tomi's done is try to centralize those systems and those data's within that. And that way, you can control your own destiny and get a more complete view of your customers, as well as manage and control the data that's really your own, and not have to rely on other folks unless you want to. Right. So I think that's been something that folks have sometimes held data hostage a bit. And that's not a very good model for health systems in general. So a couple

Aaron Conant  11:47  

questions that came in. And so we're going to try we'll tackle these as they come in, you know, so one I want to tackle, which is what are some of the and I'll kick it off with you, Vineeta. And we can kick it over to Tomi, you know, what are some of the newer roles that you've established on your teams in the last one to two years that you didn't previously align headcount for? And then, yeah, I guess we have three questions in now. So we'll keep rolling, but that what are the, you know, what are some of the newer roles that you've established on your team in the past one to two years?

Vineeta Hiranandani  12:16  

Yeah, so one of the newer roles that there wasn't headcount for is director of marketing operations and technology. So I mentioned earlier that the team was that I walked into was more traditional healthcare marketing. And we were very dependent on outside vendors for, for marketing technology. So in this need to be able to have a single source of truth and centralized data, it was very important to have this leader on my team, we're actually going through a transformation from an old system to a new marketing technology stack. So having that skill set in house was mandatory, if you will. So that's a new role. Another role, you know, when we look at doing campaigns and a big part of campaigns have moved to digital, was to make sure that the director of marketing had a digital background. So we brought someone who has that expertise, and successfully in another category, launched campaigns going through the sales funnel, and being able to show performance. So those were skills that we didn't have in our lifecycle as a marketing function, and we brought those in. So one was an existing role, but looking at it in a different bent. And another one was a new headcount that we were able to add on.

Aaron Conant  13:51  

Awesome, Tomi would love to hear like, you know, are there new roles that you've had to establish on your teams? Yes,

Tomi Galin  13:59  

and as a large healthcare system, you know, with community hospitals spread across the nation, we had marketing directors in each of those facilities. And we still do have marketing teams in each of those facilities, to manage a lot of what needs to be done in terms of Community Relations, and also media relations, helping us with the marketability of services. So ensuring that if we're going to mark it, same day appointment somewhere, they're really being offered, so working very closely with our operators to make sure that we are in a condition state for marketability. But we've added the following roles at the corporate level, and that is we've added we operate across four regions. So we've added four regional marketing directors these are fairly you know how to level roles within our organization, and they are increasingly taking on responsibility for the advertising and, you know, marketing strategy. De, so that the local marketing teams can do more of those community relations than what you have to do with the boots on the ground. So that's a strategic move. On the functional side, we build out an entire creative services team to try to rely less on the outside resources. So we've added graphic designers, content, development people, as well as project management, because we have a lot of moving parts across our organization. And then on the other side, we did you know, five years ago, we outsourced all of our digital marketing today, we manage it all in house. So we built up that team. What we also were able today to do is take eager, very smart and capable team members, and teach them new skills and new functions. So we've been able to move people up within the organization, which always thrills me when we can develop talent. And we've been able to do that. So functional areas would be on the creative services and digital marketing and project management side. Those are the ads over the last, say 344 years. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  16:17  

Awesome. So a quick question that comes in for so we've got a bunch to get to, but this one was just in regards to that previous questions. Question for Vineeta. For your marketing director role was that marketing operations specifically, or operations as it relates to patient experience?

Vineeta Hiranandani  16:33  

And question, it was marketing operations, specifically. So as we implement our new marketing technology stack across the marketing team, we have to work in new ways to deliver campaigns. But in addition, and just add building off of what Tomi said, there were two other roles that I added that I forgot to mention. One was a project manager type role, which really is working across the functions. So as we work with HR it, and patient experience, we needed a project manager within marketing and corporate comms to work with other teams. And the second role is analytics. So as we're getting more information on a web analytics role, so that was someone in the team that we've that we've found a lot, it was a lateral move, if you will, with a promote a little bit of a add on. So analytics, roles, operation, project management roles, or other new roles that are needed.

Aaron Conant  17:43  

In So Tom, I'm going to kick it over to you. Number one, the project management role, I think, is an awesome role that I mean, I'm talking to 20 or 30 organizations a week. And there's a lot of conversation on this right now. And that's one that's overlooked. But the importance of it is phenomenal at what's out. That's awesome. I just taken a quick note there. You know, Tom dealing with a bunch of organizations, like, you know, have you seen any new ones, like project manager, like pop up? And then also the next question that comes in? Do you have a ratio for number of in house marketing team members, or number of providers? I just taught you work with enough people. I would love to get that perspective. So I'll

Tom Hileman  18:24  

answer the first one. The second one is, is depends on organization, I'm sure Tomi will have a lot to say about that, given the nature of her organization, as well. But yeah, project management actually writing some notes here. One of the things that we see in marketing right now, substantially is the building of cross functional teams. Vineeta alluded to that a little bit, and Tomi did as well. So typically, for having success across the enterprise. Marketing has to partner with patient experience clinical, like you're gonna do online scheduling, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point here. To be successful there, you really need to be tight with the operational and clinical folks, as well as your IT or technology department in house. And then patient experience depending upon the nature of how your organization is. So one of the things we did actually our agencies build out our way that we call it project operations, but Project Management Office PMO kind of thing. Vineeta alluded to that Tomi as well. I think that's a critical function for folks to build out. Because then these interdisciplinary worlds, it's the only way to keep people what not the only way but a really good way to keep people aligned, and kind of on target to meet the needs of the overall organization and not the needs of the departments individually. And I think that'd be a conversation while the laters departmental silos and whatnot. So project management is an area and there's a few skills in that classic project management, business analysis, breaking the problems down and understand the requirements. And then of course, quality assurance usually goes into that as well. Because if you're going to have any kind of multiple departments working together, we have to make sure it all fits and functions, the way it is a couple other areas that we've seen people adding on data and analytics. So data science and analytics, depending on the size of your team scenario that you might work with third party to provide, or you may bring some of that functionality in house, you certainly want the data in your walls, as we talked about before, but those are some skill sets. And then Vineeta alluded to this before and told me about as well as the marketing operation or mops that we call it. Mar tech and Mark martec Architects and marketing operations pieces are our areas, we see growth with a lot of our clients as well. So those are kind of my perspective on it. In terms of numbers of providers, I'll kick it over to Tomi and love to get her thoughts because she has a very distributed organization she can observe speak to that, you know, better than I can.

Aaron Conant  20:46  

Yeah, Tomi I'll phrase it two different ways for you, because there's two different questions, but I think they go right together. So you have this ratio for number of in house marketing team members per number of providers. The other one is kind of just, it allows the how do you find the balance of staffing, internal resources versus external resources? trends or forces behind that? So? Yeah, Tomi love to hear your thoughts.

Tomi Galin  21:10  

Yeah, well, we don't look at number of providers and say, That's the ratio for a number of marketing people, we don't approach it that way, we really do look at the overarching needs of our various markets, and what needs to be within the market itself. So you know, in some of our markets, we have a smaller footprint, or in a smaller community, very rarely, are we the sole provider in a community where usually a more competitive markets, but in a market like that, where maybe we have one or two hospitals and a medical group, and then maybe some other outpatient services, we might just have a single marketing director in that market. But what they have is the resources of the corporate team, and I don't want to send the wrong message about the corporate team, we are a very lean corporate marketing team, we are we are not a lot of bodies, what we are is an extremely productive team. And so those centralized resources are available to all of our markets. It conversely, if you look at one of our larger markets, where maybe we have, you know, eight hospitals within a region and, you know, three or 400 employed providers and, you know, quadruple that in terms of independent physicians that are working within our healthcare systems and a large outpatient footprint that spans a large geography, we're gonna have a larger marketing team in that market. And obviously, we have, you know, providers that we need to help grow their practices, and some of that's primary care and some of that specialty and we might have urgent cares and freestanding EDS. So in those markets, we're going to have a larger team working, but they also have advantage of all of the centralized resources. So they don't have to figure out how to do digital advertising, we will do that. For them. Their role is to really help us understand what's the growth that you're trying to drive in that market? And which of our enterprise programs do we need to plug in to help you? And then also do do we need to customize them in some way that's specific to your needs in your market. And if you look at CHS, most of our markets are our medium sized markets, you're going to find cities like Birmingham, Alabama, and Tucson, Arizona, and Knoxville, Tennessee. So that gives you a perspective of of where we operate. And, you know, the size of our markets and the competitive nature of our markets. In many of our markets. It's a, it's a to healthcare system race and some of our markets, we might have four or five healthcare systems. And then, as I said earlier, you know, in some of our markets, we may be more in an outlying community, where we're not often the sole provider, but but there's, you know, we are important community asset because we are the place to go for health care, in terms of insourcing versus, you know, staff resources versus using those on the outside. I think we are so careful about choosing our partners on the outside that they're always additive, that they are, you know, invested in our success. And I would say that, you know, we have someone an equivalent member, probably at the corporate level of staff that support us on the outside from the inside, so probably not 5050, maybe more like 6040. So our advertising agency is certainly has account support for us and media buying support for us and our work With Hileman as we're, you know, building more programs in our marketing automation system, you know, they have resources across their organization that support us. So we rely on that expertise. And we think it's very important. But we're really careful to be sure that that everybody who's supporting us that we're paying for their services, because they're part of an outside agency, that we're getting value out of that. And it's not something we can do ourselves.

Aaron Conant  25:32  

Awesome. Love it. Love it, I want to I want to kick a question over to Vineeta. And again, I'm going to combine just a couple that have come in. One is what areas for your team? Are you seeing the biggest growth or demand for? Right communications, digital advertising, technologists, whatever it might be? That goes with one that came in over the q&a? Which is which channels are you focusing on? And which would be new for your business post? COVID? So kind of, I think those kind of go together as a whole if we can tackle two birds with one stone that would be

Vineeta Hiranandani  26:06  

that'd be great. Okay, so I think the first question is what demand for services, I think, is what you asked. Right?

Aaron Conant  26:14  

Yeah, what you know, what areas for your team? Are you seeing the biggest growth or demand for?

Vineeta Hiranandani  26:20  

So one of the areas are is really around campaigns that support patient acquisition. So or creating interest. Because one of the things being a smaller health system is also managing, marketing, generating awareness, interest with operational capacity. And, you know, that's interesting dialogue that that marketing works with operations on, we had just wrapped up a, a successful campaign targeting women of childbearing age for our maternal child health service line. And that was a great process of really getting insights around the target consumer segment, understanding their journey, and using the marketing media mix in an appropriate way, along with working with the service line on operations, to manage what what capacity and how they could process, people coming through the funnel. So that's an example of something that we get asked for, from the business. The second question you asked was, was it media channel optimization? I'm not sure

Aaron Conant  27:43  

what channels are you focusing on in which would be new for your business post COVID.

Vineeta Hiranandani  27:47  

So the maternal child health, the mother baby campaign was an integrated marketing campaign. So we looked across all channels, we are doing a lot we've upped our investment in paid search. And that's actually been something that is doing really well for us across multiple service lines. We had another campaign that has gone for the year for primary care. And we looked at, you know, the fall open enrollment with, you know, a very clear call to action on sign up with one of our primary care physicians. And again, there's that balance between marketing and operations on can the business manage the capacity of people who are coming in interested in that service? So there was a big sem component to the primary care campaign as well. So sem has been something that we've reinvested in. Awesome, I would,

Tomi Galin  28:48  

if you don't mind, I would love to jump in on this question. And, you know, we're seeing some really significant shifts in terms of what our organization is asking of us. And I would highlight two of them. But with this background, we've been working really closely with our operations team for a long time to ensure marketability of services and that the consumer pathway is going to be delivered in the same way that we market it. So if we're going to say you can get in today, same day appointments are available, you can schedule online, that really when the consumer goes to schedule that appointment online, or call and say I need to be seen today that they're going to be able to do that. So we've been working on the operational aspects for a long time. What what has sifted in recent months and maybe over the last couple of years during COVID have been two things. We are being increasingly asked to identify where are the opportunities for growth? How do we improve our competitive position in the market, so not just how do we reach consumers and bring them in, but how do we think about it what our locations be? And how should we stand up operations and what partners that may be said we form in our markets. So we're very involved on the strategic side of growth, which I think is important because it gives us so much more insight as we start to build the campaigns that, you know, help us to acquire new patients and build brand awareness. The second shift is that increasingly, we are being asked not just to acquire new patients, which has traditionally been our role and responsibility, right? Growth. But we are now being asked, how do we reach our existing patients and ensure they are choosing us every time they have an opportunity or need for health care? How do we become not just a preferred provider by reputation, but the easiest way to to come back in which means often that we're reactivating pieces, we're reminding them when they've had a gap in their care when a screening is due, when they qualify for something that that they hadn't qualified for before, like a Medicare, you know, welcome to Medicare visit. So outreach to existing patients is, I think, a frontier that Hospital and Healthcare marketing teams and physician practice marketing teams will increasingly be asked to play an important role in and this is an I'm so passionate about this one, because not only is it good for our health care systems, but it is good for our patients. So often, it is difficult to navigate the healthcare system to know what you need next. So the more we can help patients to get to the next appropriate care setting, to not miss important, important screenings and appointments, the better for all of us. So I embrace that stuff. And I think it's in all my years of working in healthcare, I think it's the most exciting opportunity that we've had a part of, you know, an opportunity to come to the table and play a part in

Aaron Conant  32:04  

it Tom I saw Yeah, died in your head a bunch there. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Tom Hileman  32:11  

No, and then Tomi was reading my mind a little bit there. I think one of the so we often are, people bring us in on patient acquisition a lot. So when we work with more clients like Cleveland Clinic, or Vanderbilt, they want to drive new patients. But the biggest shift that we've seen agree with Tomi is really one of our most of our key initiatives this year around loyalty and retention, and reactivation. Because we have, we know that we have all as we've digitally acquired these patients over the years. And I share Tomi's passionate on this, we need to make sure they're getting the care that they need, right. And we now have more information from an EMR and CRM and Mark and marketing platform perspective than we ever have. And with the with the limitations of access due to COVID, or providers, our ability to get the most at need, or highest risk folks in for the care is really something that marketing can take a seat at the table at for, for really that level of patient care that we all should be giving. So that's really exciting. The difficulty is how do you do that? And how do you do it at scale? Because there's a lot of data and there's a lot of work there. And I think artificial intelligence, machine learning can really help us in that space, to really figure out what's the best next thing to say to our patients or engage them with. So I 100% agree one of the other areas. And Tomi leading this as well as we're marketing can really be at the strategic table is, as we look at expanding whether it's new facilities or new practices, given what we know about marketing in those areas, we can help target those as Tomi alluded to, but also come up with expected demand, and what does it cost to drive that demand by these known campaigns executions that we put together? So for looking to expand into a new area, or new geography, what's it going to take to actually get the demand that we need for our practices there, or for our specific services, or specialties that we have within that. So I think as we we've become so in tune with data and understanding, I was arguing that marketing understands the patients as well or better than anyone because our because of our desire to communicate our need to communicate to all of them and understand who we're talking to, and what's important to them. I think marketing is a really unique position to sit at the table and help and help drive growth. That that leads

Aaron Conant  34:32  

in perfectly to a question that comes in and I think it also gets to a little bit around the the silos that you're mentioning Tom, so we'll get to the silos, you know, question that I think well this will lead into it says one of the aspects that makes the job of marketers and health systems especially challenging is that the marketing sir is that marketing serves many different internal stakeholders. Which stakeholders do you find are most important for marketing to serve? Is it the head of the Medical Group service slynn leaders, CFO, finance, etc. And do those stakeholders need different results from marketing? You know, CFO wants increased sales medical group wants to reach patients, and etc. So what stakeholders do you find to be the most important? Throw it out there who wants to handle this stop? Yeah, who

Tomi Galin  35:22  

do you want me to go first? With his? Yeah, that'd be awesome. This is not going to this is not going to answer the question the way that you posed it, but the most important stakeholders, the consumer. And I think we all agree to that, that, you know, our role in marketing is really to think like act like, consider what does the consumer need and to to build our programs around that. But in all fairness to the question that you asked, I mean, I think that for us, in our marketing team, our our stakeholders are everyone who is trying to grow. And it starts with the CEO of the company, or the CEO of our healthcare systems in our markets, you know, what are your objectives? And what do you want to grow. And then from there, do we have your buy in for the various initiatives that we are going to deploy, and we really believe that we have to sit at the right hand of the CEO and marketing in order to understand the goals and the objectives of the organization and to develop our programs in a way that achieves that and so that we have that backing? You know, I work in a very, very large healthcare system. And we're still battling some of the same things that we were talking about 10 years ago, physicians have expectations around how they want their advertising to be deployed, what channels they want to use, they aren't always the most effective channels, though, I want to give the physicians that we've worked with an awful lot of credit, I think that they do understand the way healthcare decisions are made now and that they are interested, very interested in their presence online versus, you know, in more traditional formats, because they understand that's where healthcare, consumers are searching for services and where they're making their decision about which providers and which services that that they will choose. And they do have choice. I think for us, you know, it's really important on the provider sides, for us to help them understand what we're doing, and what that achieves. So the data story is incredibly important. The the strategy, the methodology, there's a whole lot of time that gets spent with anybody in operations, or anybody who's delivering clinical services for which we spend time energy and money promoting those things to understand our approach. So lots of stakeholders out there, consumer number one for me, CEO, number two, and then anybody and everybody that we're trying to help grow, they are the next most important stakeholder in my opinion. Awesome

Aaron Conant  38:21  

Vineeta, we'd love to hear your thoughts there as well. And then I want to jump into the silos side of things.

Vineeta Hiranandani  38:27  

Yeah, I would agree with Tomi, I mean, really, our ultimate stakeholder is the consumer, the customer, or the prospect of customer and really helping them to find the care that they need with where they are in their journey, which is talks goes to the silos part, because we approach it from different departments. And we don't take a outside in view, often. So I think the role as the head of marketing is really to remind people, but when I think about internal stakeholders, I mean, the one that comes up to mind for me is really operations. And it's not just the CEO, CEO of each of your business units. It's the entire operational team. And so when you start to look at the customer journey, and how we are bringing consumers into our brand experience, it's very important that they the operations folks understand the ramifications of different messages that we're putting out campaigns we're doing, and how are we actually delivering on that brand promise? So I think they're a very important stakeholder and partner quite frankly. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  39:42  

So just to jump into I'm gonna stay with you Vineeta hear just a common barrier we often hear in healthcare are on the team silos, how are you addressing those with your teams?

Vineeta Hiranandani  39:51  

Yes, the silos are an opportunity area. I think for Most organizations, you know, one of the things that we've done is create cross functional team alignment through a shared goal. So that's one thing. Another thing too is sharing, you know, I said the outside in the consumer insight. So if you have a colleague, walk the shoes of the consumer and the customer, and help to understand and have them understand what the consumer is going through, they have a new appreciation for how marketing can help them to be more successful. So I think education is a big part of it. And having that shared goal, that those are things that can help remove silos,

Tomi Galin  40:47  

I would add, that we have, we have silos within our own department, as well as with other departments within our organization. So I think it's really important, you know, to be sure that our entire department and the various work teams in our department understand the work that each other is doing, and how, what we're doing has to fit in with what each other is doing. So so that is, we have a lot of, we have a lot of touch points to and we learned during COVID how important those quick cuddles are. So very, very frequently. You know, there's a huddle almost every day for me. And sometimes it's my marketing leadership team. And sometimes it's the digital team. And we might get together for like 15 or 20 minutes. But it's so everybody understands what's going on. And because many of our team members are working remote, either part of the time or all of the time, you know, we have to we have to be intentional about the connections that we have, and how we share information and ensuring that you know, everyone has access to information within the department. And then in terms of the silos with the other organizations, it really comes down are the other departments within our organization, it really comes down to in Miami, in my opinion, to building the right relationships. I think that, you know, those silos exist until you become an invaluable part of everybody else's team, when they're like, oh, we need to have marketing at the table for the you know, what we need to bring in the communications team for what we're doing. And we get pulled in because we built those relationships. And because we provide value. And because we're intentional about staying in touch with our colleagues about what they're working on. And, you know, it is really easy to just get frustrated with the silos, I think it is up to marketing to over and over and over again, break down the walls, and go to where our partners are, and continue to be in their world as much as possible, you know, to the point and hopefully to the point that they want to be there.

Aaron Conant  43:05  

Yet, Tom that love to have you chime in? No. I

Tom Hileman  43:09  

mean, I agree. I think one of the most under or overlooked things in healthcare is the need for interdisciplinary work between the teams, and then change management. So I think humans are horrible at change management. We're tribal, by our nature, right? And so there's them and there's us, right. And so the idea is that that's where the departments come from, or that the silos come from in my world, right? And I think where Tomi is going is relationships, right? So if you build it, it's hard to push yourself in the relationships into areas, it's much easier to be pulled into them. Because at that point that you're granted some authority, I think, where we see most of our successful clients in terms of breaking those down, breaking those walls down, is where they invest in the relationships and time and helping this other, helping the other departments understand how they can bring value, and helping them solve the hard problems, right? So if marketing can say, hey, access is a problem, right? Or scheduling is a problem. Well, how can we help we can communicate to the consumer help educate, help inform, we can maybe help on some of the UX or streamline the customer experience through that and endpoint some of that and it's been easy to point out the outside looking in world. It too often the everything thing things are designed around an inside out world, like discharge papers, perfect example. No customer has ever said I need discharge, right? So we think about the words that we use, right? That's the inside term. Then how do we how do we orient that towards customer? So I think the silos are about building relationships with with people that in other areas, showing that you can prove out provide value and if you do that, they'll always ask you back everybody wants adds the person in the organization who can solve problems at the table because I know that work will get done. And I think showing that meaningful value is one of the most important things marketers can do. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  45:12  

Tom, we'll leave it here with you. Just as to everyone on my team is required to be adept at Project Management for exactly the reasons that Tom was stating. What kind of project management platform do you recommend? I guess on Monday,

Tom Hileman  45:26  

my shot? There's a lot of them. I don't know if any, there's work front. There's a lot of Asana is when we run as an agency, we work with probably half a dozen because our clients have those. So I don't think there's, I guess the purists might argue there's one that's better than another. No, certainly some of the ones they mentioned that are better platforms. My perspective, I think the more important thing is that you use one, and you consistently have a process around it. So typically, my experience tools aren't magic bullets, right. So getting a new tool is often an opportunity to create some change management. We've seen clients successful with all those tools, quite frankly, and Workfront, and a few others. So I think it's important that you have those, and then you consistently use them and you agree to all parties who are involved in how we're going to use these things. And then you don't bring a sledge hammer, to tap in a thumbtack, right. So sometimes the tools can be too big. And we can get too stuck in the process of that side. So I agree they're important. And I wish more of our clients had them. Because it allows us some consistency and some efficiencies and how we work. But I think the more most important is you get something and then you all agree on how we're going to use it. And what we're not going to use it for and then execute is more important than the specific tool itself. Yeah. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  46:44  

Love it. I'm going to kick this one over to Vineeta. And then the next one, I'll kick over to Tomi. So the first one is regards to any recommendations, any recommendations for attendees that have smaller marketing teams? What are the most vital roles that you would seek first? You know, how can a smaller team leverage technology and or external resources for impact? And that kind of goes into another question that also comes in in your current marketing organization? Where do you see gaps in skills or areas that you'll need to upskill or learn new skills in order to in house? certain capabilities? So I guess we can take both sides, Vineeta start with you. Like, are there gaps there? How do you handle it, the smaller marketing team, and I think even Tomi was noticed, like even it sounds like they're really big, but they're a really lean team. So, you know, Vineeta? I'll start with you first.

Vineeta Hiranandani  47:35  

Yeah, our corporate marketing and communications team is a very small, lean team. So you know, it's really trying to understand what do you INSOURCE develop? And what do you access through partners, I think it's important really to have the digital marketing skills, and the strategic marketing skills in house. You know, as you see where healthcare is going, and how competitive it is on lower acuity care, you need to really have the insights in acquiring consumers and understanding where they are in their journey and how to keep your brand alive. So I think that's important. The other thing too, I think that is going to become more important is analytics. So once you have access to data through martec platforms, what do you do with it? What are the key insights? And how do you apply that to building your brand or supporting patient acquisition and retention strategies? So analytics is another role. You know, one comment that was made around data sciences, you know, we're not in our size and journey to bring that in inside. So we actually at access that through partners, and we've done some testing, you know, we talked about helping patients to find the care that they need. So we've done pilots around finding people who are at risk for heart disease and breast cancer and doing targeted campaigns to invite them into a conversation with us to take care of their health. So I think depending on the size of your organization, and what your business goals are things like data sciences you can use through a partner. So did I answer those all your questions there Aaron?

Aaron Conant  49:29  

Yeah, I think so. And we'll kick it over you know to Tomi and then we'll kick it over to Tom and we're going to be right just about a time so I'm gonna have a couple rapid fire for you Tom. But you know, Tomi, you know, from a, you know, current marketing organization standpoint, like gaps or skills, like how are you? How are you managing what needs to be internal versus external?

Tomi Galin  49:54  

Yes, I agree with Vineeta data analytics is so incredibly important because we really have to understand, you know, not just what results are we achieving, but what do we have to do to to achieve better or different results. So that using the analytics to be able to optimize our activities, our campaigns, our various work that we do is incredibly important because all of us are being asked to do more with less. And so we have to make it go further. So I would say the place where I see the biggest potential for growth within our team moving forward is data analytics, we can partner sometimes with our internal stakeholders to be able to get some of that information. Sometimes we rely on our outside partners. But I think that if I were to guess where the next roles on my team, where the next spurt of growth would be, it would really be on the data analysis, and then what to do with that data. So the optimizations that are possible as a result of what we understand,

Aaron Conant  51:02  

yeah. Awesome. And we're getting, you know, right to about time here. But Tom, I want to come to you for key takeaways, but first, a couple rapid fire questions to make sure we get to them. How important is video marketing and brand storytelling, in your opinion for marketing strategies?

Tom Hileman  51:19  

Really important, right? And you have some really great assets in a health system like some of the top physicians, clinicians or researchers that you can tell stories with. So there's different ways to do it, and definitely wasn't an expense. But I would say video should always be part of your stellar storytelling platform. And that's, that's where much of the new emerging trends are going. And that's up. If you look at the numbers, people are consuming more and more video.

Aaron Conant  51:42  

Awesome. The next one is who is typically the source of information regarding operational capacity for the marketing team. We struggle with this a little bit made out disconnected home office in our offices scattered throughout the state.

Tom Hileman  51:54  

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know Tomi in Vineeta can do this. Most of the time, it's from my experience, the people who learn lead the service lines, the business side of that, that's usually where it comes from. Sometimes there's a central officer who maybe over the medical ops and things like that. So there's depending on the organization, it's there's, there's different places for it. And Tomi, you're very distributed organization. So I would assume that there's different regional and local components of that. Yeah,

Aaron Conant  52:24  

so you know, as we kind of wrap up here in the next like, minute or so Tom, any, like key takeaways, and again, thanks, everybody, for sending in the awesome questions. Obviously, Tomi, if needed. Thanks so much for being such great panelists and being open to answer. You know, all these questions we've thrown at you over the past hour or so, you know, if anybody wants connections post college just reached out more than happy to make those, Tom key takeaways, as we wrap up here, and the next minute or so.

Tom Hileman  52:48  

I mean, I think from my perspective, I really think I like what Tomi and Vineeta has said about us the outside in and the consumer being the end, judge of what we do, right? So if we think we always orient our thinking around the consumer, whether it's a patient or a physician provider, when you think about that, too, as marketers will always win. So I think that thinking that external view, and making sure that we put the customer at the center of what we're doing will be the ultimate arbiter. So

Aaron Conant  53:16  

awesome. Well, Tom, Tomi, Vineeta thanks again for your time today. Look for a follow up connection from us. We'd love to have a conversation with you also more than happy to connect you with any of the panelists today. If you're looking for any kind of advice or help in this space whatsoever. Tom and the team at Hileman Group are fantastic and come highly recommended throughout the network. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. Hope everybody has a wonderful Wednesday, everybody take care of stay safe. I look forward to having you at a future event. Alrighty. Thanks again, everybody.