We Are, Marketing Happy - A Healthcare Marketing Podcast

Hedy and Hopp
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Healthcare marketing is always evolving, and We Are, Marketing Happy is here to help you make sense of it. Hosted by Jenny Bristow, CEO and founder of the healthcare marketing agency Hedy & Hopp, this award-winning podcast explores the latest shifts, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry today. Follow along, share with your team, and let us know what topics you’d like us to explore next. Learn more about Hedy & Hopp at www.hedyandhopp.com.

  1. HMPS26 Recap

    2D AGO

    HMPS26 Recap

    Our CEO, Jenny Bristow, and Director of Growth, Marissa Gurrister, have just returned from Salt Lake City where they were attending the recent HMPS conference (Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit). In this week’s episode, they recap their experience, describing the event as energizing and collaborative, an environment that fostered meaningful connections and professional growth. Key highlights from the conference included: CEO Communications Playbook: This session was notable for its "no-recording" policy, which encouraged vulnerability and candid discussion regarding professional leadership. AI in Action: This session outlined a shift in the AI conversation toward sophisticated, strategic implementation and process efficiency rather than fear of job replacement. Promise to Practice: This session focused on aligning brand strategy with patient experience through real-world case studies. Governing Patient-Facing AI: This session explored how health systems can effectively meet patients where they are regarding AI interaction. Brand Frankenstein: This discussion covered the emotional and strategic complexities of navigating joint ventures, affiliations, and rebrands. Epic Marketing Implementation: H&H presented a case study with Bayhealth, outlining a roadmap for improving patient experience and volume through technical audits and leveraging existing infrastructure. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Marissa: Email: marissa.gurrister@hedyandhopp.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-gurrister/If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    16 min
  2. Epic Marketing Services

    APR 10

    Epic Marketing Services

    This video features a discussion on the evolving role of Epic’s marketing and patient engagement tools within healthcare systems. The host, Jenny Bristow of Hedy & Hopp, introduces the company's new Director of Epic Services, Brandon Hallman, to discuss the intersection of marketing strategy and IT infrastructure. Episode Notes: The Epic Ecosystem Shift: Leveraging Epic’s functionality for marketing is a relatively new development. Historically, patient engagement was fragmented across various third-party tools, but Epic is increasingly providing a unified platform—acting as a "single source of truth"—to help organizations manage patient experiences. The Evolution of Cheers: Cheers has moved beyond simple patient communication to become a more comprehensive client relationship platform that includes CRM and CallHub functionality. While some in the industry have questioned the tool's sophistication, it is maturing into a powerful solution that integrates with other tools like Hello World. Consolidating Tech Stacks: Many health systems are moving away from third-party vendors like Salesforce and WebMD Ignite toward a strictly "Epic-first" mentality. This transition aims to reduce costs and complexity, allowing for more autonomous, synergistic communication between marketing and IT. Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and IT: Bringing marketing and IT to the table together during the planning phase to align on goals, security, and compliance is key to combatting the siloed nature of these departments. Hedy & Hopp facilitates workshops to help these teams prioritize campaigns, align on measurement strategies, and define roles. Strategy and Services: The agency approaches this space through three primary lenses: audit, strategy, and implementation. They also highlight the "UTM Connect" tool, which helps bridge the gap between digital marketing efforts and patient records in Epic to enable ROI reporting. Some advice for marketers struggling to navigate the Epic landscape: communicate early and often with IT, and treat the relationship as a translation process between technical requirements and marketing goals. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Brandon: Email: brandon.hallman@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-hallman-03074742/If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    16 min
  3. Paid Media Trends: Political Season

    MAR 26

    Paid Media Trends: Political Season

    Jenny Bristow, CEO & Founder of Hedy & Hopp, is joined by Miranda Ochsner, Director of Paid Media to discuss the significant impact of the 2026 midterm elections on healthcare marketing. Political ad spend is expected to exceed $10 billion ahead of this year’s midterms, presenting significant challenges for marketers, particularly when it comes to traditional channels, like TV and radio. They discuss these challenges and offer strategic advice for navigating the volatility of marketing during a political season. Episode Notes Since political campaigns typically have first-right access to advertising inventory across local TV and radio stations, other advertisers risk being “bumped.” No matter how far in advance you planned and purchased placements, getting bumped means your spots may be moved to less effective times of the day, like overnights, or removed entirely. This forces marketers to pivot quickly to deal with credits and reallocate budget. The following strategies can help marketers plan ahead, as the political season is scaling up quickly: Have a Plan B: Even the best laid plans need contingencies during political seasons, as inventory and political noise is largely out of your control. Think about scaling back or pausing tactics during the busiest weeks to ensure your message isn’t getting lost. Capitalize on Alternative Placements: Be flexible and consider adjusting daypart mixes. Shifting from highly competitive times to alternative slots can maintain reach even during a busy season. Diversify Media Channels: Beyond traditional local TV and radio placements, digital channels like online video and Connected TV offer additional control. Just be aware that additional control comes with additional costs, which are projected to increase by 20-50% in competitive markets. Prioritize High-Intent Tactics: Channels like paid search remain stable and effective drivers of qualified traffic, even despite potential increases in bid costs. Since political seasons are guaranteed to be unpredictable, focus on early, proactive planning to ensure a consistent, high quality presence. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Miranda: Email: miranda.ochsner@hedyandhopp.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandamochsner/  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    10 min
  4. Paid Media Trends: YouTube in Healthcare

    MAR 20

    Paid Media Trends: YouTube in Healthcare

    Jenny Bristow, CEO & Founder of Hedy & Hopp, is joined by Miranda Ochsner, Director of Paid Media to discuss the evolving landscape of YouTube as a critical platform for healthcare paid media. They highlight YouTube’s significant reach and unique advantages compared to other streaming and social platforms. With over 75% of the US population consuming YouTube content, it is the most-watched streaming platform on TV (surpassing even Netflix!) — making it a powerful platform for healthcare marketers. Episode Notes Strategic Advantages for Healthcare Marketers Patient Education & Discovery: Patients often use YouTube to research symptoms and self-diagnose before consulting a professional. Video content helps simplify complex medical topics and introduces expertise earlier in the patient journey. Targeting and Measurement: The platform combines the broad reach of traditional TV with the granular targeting and measurement capabilities of digital media.  Content Versatility: YouTube can effectively host various video formats, including repurposed Facebook ads or traditional 30-second TV spots. Retargeting Capabilities: YouTube allows for "in-platform" retargeting that enables healthcare marketers to deliver content, such as a multi-part educational series, to the target audience.  Paid and Organic Synergy: Paid media on YouTube can expand an organization's reach to new audiences, while organic content builds long-term engagement. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Miranda: Email: miranda.ochsner@hedyandhopp.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandamochsner/  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    13 min
  5. Healthcare Marketing Agencies: A Shopper’s Guide

    MAR 13

    Healthcare Marketing Agencies: A Shopper’s Guide

    In this episode, Jenny Bristow, CEO & Founder of Hedy & Hopp, unpacks the state of the healthcare marketing agency landscape, which has evolved a lot in the past few years! It’s important to choose an agency that understands the nuance of your organization and the challenges healthcare marketers face. Jenny explores three different categories of healthcare marketing agencies and the types of offerings they provide.  Episode Notes: Full-Service Agency: These agencies provide upstream strategy and branding, in addition to performance tactics. Their primary focus is on the who, what, and why. They thrive in market research, persona development, and messaging positioning. And, they have traditional capabilities, too. Performance Marketing Agency: These agencies focus exclusively on patient acquisition and retention, primarily utilizing digital tactics. Their goal is to drive appointments. Specialty Marketing Agency: These agencies are pros in content development, upstream research, direct mail, and website services. They are a great fit for organizations that want to focus in one area without a broader  need for full-service agency services. (Bonus—not an agency!) Tech Solutions: SAAS platforms provide extremely useful solutions, like CDP or analytics compliance, but don’t provide service. Maintenance and ongoing work falls on an individual organization, or an organization can choose to partner with a full service or specialty agency for support. Finally, Jenny offers some advice to differentiate between the full-service agencies, which is to ask about an agency’s roots. Many started as creative agencies that added digital capabilities later. Hedy & Hopp was built on a strong analytics, compliance, and performance foundation, and later added strategy and creative services. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    12 min
  6. AI Usage in Healthcare Marketing: Case Study

    FEB 27

    AI Usage in Healthcare Marketing: Case Study

    CEO & Founder of Hedy & Hopp Jenny Bristow is joined by Senior Digital Producer Suzie Schmitt to discuss a real-world example of AI and automation in healthcare content marketing: the creation of Hedy & Hopp’s in-house tool, Hoppywriter. They explore the tool's purpose in increasing efficiency and quality for healthcare marketing blogs, the technical and ethical considerations in its development, and how it ensures humanity remains at the center of content creation. The conversation highlights practical applications of AI to enhance—but never replace—human writers and the efficiency of their processes. Episode notes: Enhancing Human Output with AI: Hedy & Hopp's core philosophy for leveraging AI and automation is to enhance human output and efficiency—not to replace the creative work of humans. The Hoppywriter Tool: A custom-built tool designed to streamline the delivery process of healthcare marketing blogs. It empowers writers by providing all necessary information—high-value keywords, client voice, doctor information, and awards—in one centralized Google Sheet, using a Google App Script as the backend. Efficiency Pipeline for Content Creation: Hoppywriter integrates with tools like Wrike (project management) to pull in SEO keywords and client data, then pushes a fleshed-out brief to the writer, significantly cutting down the time required for editing and writing. Guardrails and Data Safety: Discussion on the critical guardrails for AI tools, including rigorous stress testing with edge cases and ensuring all client data is secure. Hedy & Hopp uses a custom Gemini ecosystem in a Google Cloud account, covered by a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), ensuring data is never used to improve the models and never leaves their data silo. Combating Content Repetition with the Jaccard Index: The Jaccard Index (a metric of similarity between objects) is used to establish a threshold for each client and campaign. This system automatically flags any blog topics or paragraphs that are too similar to past content, ensuring content freshness, which is crucial for complex healthcare topics that can easily become repetitive, like orthopedic surgery. Advice for Incorporating Technology: Organizations seeking to set up similar processes should utilize existing tools, recognize the power of low-code solutions like Google App Script, adhere to strict security protocols for API keys, and hold AI tools to the same fundamental requirements as any other vendor (e.g., antivirus software, web hosting). Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Suzie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzie-schmitt/  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    13 min
  7. AI Adoption with Content Marketing: The Good, the Bad, and the Practical

    JAN 23

    AI Adoption with Content Marketing: The Good, the Bad, and the Practical

    Jenny Bristow, CEO & Founder of Hedy & Hopp, is joined by Ben Riggs, Content Manager at Kettering Health, to discuss the current state of AI and content marketing in healthcare. They explore the healthy tension between the excitement and fear of rapidly advancing AI tools, how marketers are leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for content creation and strategy, and the importance of centering consumer trust in an age of AI-generated content. Episode notes: The AI Tension in Healthcare Marketing: Discussion on the "mind-blowing" capabilities and "alarming" risks of new AI video tools (like Arcads), and the fear of increasing distrust in the medical community due to easily generated, inauthentic content. Decreasing Consumer Trust Online: A new eMarketer report shows that consumer trust in online content is decreasing due to the quick growth of AI-generated content in written, video, and image formats. The Evolution of AI Application: Ben details moving from using AI for basic research and data aggregation to leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to investigate existing content and strategically find the "consumer gap" for new, relevant content. NotebookLM as a Productivity Booster: Highlighting NotebookLM as a helpful tool for content writers, describing its utility for safe, precise, investigative thought-partner conversations, writing long-form content, and creating podcasts to help easily digest materials. Prioritizing Foundational Marketing: Emphasizing the importance of strong basic SEO and practitioner practices (keywords, schema) before focusing solely on optimizing content for new AI strategies like GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). The Strategy of Dual Optimization: The Kettering Health team’s strategy is to "write both for humans and for humans using AI," prioritizing human-readable, scannable content that is informative and front-loaded with value. Re-Energizing Audience-Centric Content: The shift towards phrase-based search in LLMs has reinforced the need for robust persona development and audience-oriented messaging, proving that the foundation of effective content marketing remains "basic marketing" (user journey, messaging strategy). Looking to a Future of Trust and Responsible AI Adoption: Looking ahead, the hope is for the healthcare industry to adopt a definitive posture on responsible AI engagement, focusing on infrastructure and clear conversations about limits to ensure that AI utilization cultivates and maintains consumer trust. Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/ Connect with Ben: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bendriggs/  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

    25 min
  8. Epic UTM Connect

    JAN 16

    Epic UTM Connect

    Jenny Bristow and Vice President of Data & Technology Mark Brandes of Hedy & Hopp discuss their proprietary solution, Epic UTM Connect*, developed to help healthcare marketers bridge the long-standing data gap between digital marketing campaigns and patient acquisition and revenue within their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. They explain the challenges of achieving true marketing ROI in a privacy-forward world and detail how this one-time project allows for patient-level attribution and improved performance measurement. Episode notes: The Data Disconnect: Hedy & Hopp created Epic UTM Connect to help healthcare marketers overcome the persistent struggle to access and show true business impact data (patient appointments, revenue) versus engagement metrics marketers can break down by UTM parameters. What Epic UTM Connect Is: A tool that captures UTM parameters from digital campaigns, packages them, and securely inserts them into the Epic patient record. Achieving True ROI: The ability to track a patient's journey from a marketing touchpoint all the way through appointment and fulfillment to calculate the return on investment (ROI). Easy & Fast Implementation: The tool is fast and lightweight to implement and doesn’t require Hedy & Hopp to gain analyst access to Epic. Implementation only requires access to website analytics and the CMS. Technology & Compliance: The solution is HIPAA compliant and secure, leveraging the healthcare organization's existing Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Epic. It works with any web analytics platform (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Site Improve, etc.) by pulling data directly from the website. Use Case Requirements: The solution's effectiveness is dependent on the organization having a consistent and well-defined UTM parameter strategy in place. Attribution Limitations: The tool primarily provides last-touch attribution, meaning it will not capture the source of every conversion and will show gaps in the full multi-touch patient journey. Standalone Value: Epic UTM Connect is a standalone, one-time implementation that is valuable for improving visibility and does not require healthcare marketing teams to use other Epic marketing tools. Learn more about Hedy & Hopp’s Epic capabilities: https://hedyandhopp.com/our-expertise/epic-for-healthcare-marketing/ Contact Hedy & Hopp to chat with us about how Epic UTM Connect can support your marketing efforts: https://hedyandhopp.com/connect-with-us/ Connect with Jenny: Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/Connect with Mark: Email: mark.brandes@hedyandhopp.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbrandes/ If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others. *Epic®, Epic Systems, and related product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Systems Corporation. This content is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Epic Systems Corporation.

    13 min
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About

Healthcare marketing is always evolving, and We Are, Marketing Happy is here to help you make sense of it. Hosted by Jenny Bristow, CEO and founder of the healthcare marketing agency Hedy & Hopp, this award-winning podcast explores the latest shifts, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry today. Follow along, share with your team, and let us know what topics you’d like us to explore next. Learn more about Hedy & Hopp at www.hedyandhopp.com.

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