Swaay.Health Podcast

Swaay.Health Team

Welcome to The Swaay.Health Podcast – a podcast for healthcare marketing, PR, and communications professionals! We’re all about building a brighter future in healthcare through the power of community! Join us as we dive into the latest news, strategies, and trends from the brightest minds in the field.

  1. JAN 30

    Founder-Led Branding Works in Healthcare. Until It Doesn’t.

    Any marketer that has been at a startup knows the moment when the founder story that once opened doors and got people excited starts raising eyebrows. What felt authentic and scrappy during the startup phase begins to feel tired and a bit risky when scaling. The challenge is recognizing when founder-centric branding stops being a springboard and becomes an anchor. Swaay.Health sat down with Sue McCluskey, Partner, and Carey George, Founder and Creative Director, at Goods and Services Branding (G&S Branding) to talk about founder-led branding, founder stories, brand strategy, and what changes as healthcare organizations grow and scale. What This Conversation Revealed Founder-led branding ages faster than most companies plan for Strong stories without strategy create momentum—but not resilience AI is amplifying the need for visible, human credibility—not replacing it Founder Stories Build Momentum, Until They Create Risk McCluskey put founder stories and founder-centric branding in context: “It can be an amazing thing, especially if the founder is super charismatic or just embodies the uniqueness of a brand. Where it starts to get risky when it’s a larger organization with more at stake.” Here’s why. “When the company becomes publicly traded [or has become a recognized name in their field], if the founder makes a misstep, then there’s a cascading effect of trouble. Shareholders get upset. Board of directors freak out. The public can freak out.” There is a potential for antics of the founder which were once seen as rebellious or daring to now be seen as reckless or tired. This is amplified in healthcare where audiences are risk-averse and brand credibility is easily damaged by controversy. A Brand Story Without Strategy Eventually Collapses Under Its Own Weight George sees many startups, and some scaling companies, confuse brand stories with a brand strategy. “Most of the time companies come to us and lead with ‘we need a brand story’,” said George. “What we try to tell them is that a brand story is not a strategy. You need a strategy. The brand story is just part of that strategy. Just telling your brand story, just writing your founder’s story isn’t enough. It may win you a pitch competition, but that’s only going to take you so far.” In the beginning, a company’s origin story and the founder’s journey make for a compelling narrative. Tied up in that narrative are the foundational elements of the company. Everything is aligned and works together. When you are a young startup, these stories may be enough to help generate interest. However, as George points out these are just stories and not a cohesive strategy. As a company matures a cohesive brand strategy is one of the things that provide separation from young startups. Cohesive brands generate the trust signals that healthcare buyers react favorably to. AI is Making Human Credibility More Important Both McCluskey and George both caution against completely jettisoning all elements of founder-centric branding. Why? Because as AI usage in marketing increases, the value of human connection and credibility also increases “You can publish all the information you want,” explained George. “But you’re going to have to get out into the public. You’re going to have to go to forums, conferences, talk to the media, and be real people in front of the media saying real things. People want to see people live.” George’s ‘real things’ means more that just the origin story or founder opinions that served a startup company well. However it does not mean completely benching the founder from all public appearances. They can still be a face of the company (ie: not the only face), but they need to diversify their public comments to include meaningful comments on the industry and customers. Very soon, presence will be a key differentiator. What Healthcare Marketing Leaders Are Asking How do we know when our founder-led brand is starting to create risk instead of trust? Leaders tend to feel it first through subtle signals: smaller pipelines, longer sales cycles, tougher questions from risk-averse buyers, or internal discomfort about off-script comments. What replaces the founder story as a brand matures without losing authenticity? As organizations scale, credibility moves away from who started the company to how consistently the company delivers for customers, partners, and clinicians. Mature brands earn trust through aligned leadership voices, customer proof points, and disciplined messaging—not a single origin narrative. How should healthcare brands balance human visibility as AI-generated content increases? Automation makes content easier to produce, but it also raises skepticism. Leaders are realizing that real-world presence through panels, media interviews, and conference presentations has become a critical trust signal that no amount of polished content or origin story can substitute. Learn more about G&S Branding at https://gsbranding.com/

    24 min
  2. JAN 27

    AI-Driven Discovery Shifts Healthcare Marketing Funnels: How to Adjust

    Website dashboards are looking very different these days. Traffic is down. Once reliable buying signals are fading away. Why? One big reason is the the nature of search is changing and healthcare marketers need to adapt quickly. Alexis Pratsides, Global Head of Digital at FINN Partners, sat down with Swaay.Health to talk about the rapid evolution of search and what it means for healthcare marketers trying to protect trust, relevance, and demand in a world increasingly moving towards AI-driven discovery. What This Conversation Revealed The top of the funnel hasn’t collapsed, it relocated outside owned channels PR has quietly become a primary input to discoverability, not a supporting one Structure now determines visibility more than volume ever did Search Isn’t Sending Traffic Anymore. It’s Sending Decisions. “What we’re seeing is the top of the funnel is moving off of your website now, and it’s into the LLMs,” explained Pratsides. “All the research and all the activity that people undertake as they are starting out on a journey to do something, that is happening off your site.” The alarming consequence is that website traffic is dropping for healthcare vendors, precipitously in some cases. However, there is a silver lining. “Interestingly, the conversion rates are increasing now,” continued Pratsides. “That’s because the traffic that ends up on your website, having already done their research elsewhere, is ready to do something and are highly engaged.” Your dashboard looks worse at first glance, but if you tune your website for these visitors who are further down the funnel, then your revenue pipeline will be stronger in this new search environment. GEO Is Putting PR Back in the Spotlight “Generative Engine Optimization or GEO is bringing together the disciplines of SEO and Public Relations [PR],” said Pratsides. “You need to be thinking about how they interact and work together to then get visibility bumps within the AI algorithms.” According to Pratsides, coverage of your customer success stories, executive thought-leadership, and  company announcements, particularly if they are covered by trusted, publications with high authority in healthcare or the general public, can help boost your company and your content to LLMs. “The LLMs seem to be favoring the really big branded, authoritative places online,” said Pratsides. “These are the media outlets that our PR colleagues are working with every day.” LLMs reward clarity, not content sprawl “We’ve proven with some testing that the LLMs favor really well-structured pages,” revealed Pratsides. “They like bite-sized, digestible chunks of content. So, if you can have a subheading and then a small chunk of content, often that will just get almost entirely cited in the answer to people’s questions on those LLMs.” For marketers who want their organizations to be cited by LLMs, creating content that is shorter, more structured, and more consumable is a must. It is no longer about keywords, rather it is writing content that matches how people are asking questions of LLMs. Good Content + PR – What’s old is new again with GEO For veteran school healthcare marketers, Pratsides words should be comforting. In this new world of GEO, what matters most is well written content that takes into consideration what the audience is looking for. It also means that getting earned (and paid) media coverage has tremendous value once again. It’s hard not to chuckle because this is a classic marketing playbook, just modernized for LLMs. Put another way, what was valuable decades ago is just as valid today. Time to dust off that old playbook. *Editor’s note: Partsides shared a lot of fantastic insights and recommendations in the interview – too many to include in this written article. What Healthcare Marketing Leaders Are Asking If website traffic is declining, how should marketing teams judge performance without losing credibility internally? Leaders are being pushed to defend marketing impact while familiar volume metrics weaken. The focus is shifting toward conversion quality, pipeline influence, and downstream outcomes that better reflect how buyers now research and decide. How do PR and content teams need to change their working model as AI-driven search becomes more influential? PR is no longer a downstream amplifier. Earned media, executive visibility, and authoritative mentions are becoming primary inputs to discoverability, forcing tighter coordination between communications, digital, and content teams. What content changes actually improve visibility in AI-driven search without increasing workload? The biggest gains are coming from clearer structure, tighter sections, and content that mirrors how real questions are asked. Teams are finding that reorganizing existing material often matters more than producing net-new assets. Learn more about FINN Partners at https://www.finnpartners.com/ FINN Partners is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

    27 min
  3. JAN 26

    Leveraging Live Events to Build Trust

    It’s kind of crazy to think back to the COVID days when we wondered about the future of live events. It is clear now that people love to attend conferences to engage with their peers. There’s something about connecting with a live person that can’t be replicated digitally. We’re seeing that at our own healthcare marketing conference and the many healthcare IT conferences we attend each year. In a recent interview with Wendy Porter, Founder of Wendy Porter Events and Michelle Hogan, Executive Producer at OVC Productions, we got a chance to learn from their decades of experiences in the live events industry to hear how live events can be leveraged to build trust. We start off the interview with Porter and Hogan sharing why live events still matter and why events are still worth it even as budgets get tightened. The reality we’ve seen at Swaay.Health is that how you as a vendor execute at the event is really key to making sure the event is successful for your organization. After discussing the value of live events, I ask Porter to share what it takes to build trust with your audience. Needless to say, trust doesn’t just happen automatically even at a conference or other event.  Building trust happens by design and with real effort and planning. Hogan highlighted this really well when she shared some of the ways that your event design can directly affect the audience’s emotion and either build or hurt your credibility. Even though we were talking about live events, I couldn’t resist talking with Porter and Hogan about how AI is reshaping event production. As is happening in seemingly all areas of our lives, AI is becoming a great tool for event organizers. In fact, they’re even using it to avoid the near-disasters that every event organizer has experienced. That’s why we asked Porter and Hogan to share a story of a near-disaster they experienced and how they navigated to a better outcome. Start thinking about what you’d do if your party venue fell through last minute.  Listen to the interview to hear about that experience and how Hogan navigated it like a pro. As we wrapped the interview, we did a quick lightning round of topics around: one thing health marketers should stop doing immediately, the best event marketing thing they’ve ever seen, and one event trend to lean into in 2026. Check out our interview with Wendy Porter and Michelle Hogan to learn more about live events and how to make the most of them. Learn more about Wendy Porter Events: https://www.wendyporterevents.com/ Learn more about OVC Productions: https://www.ovcproductions.com/

    34 min
  4. JAN 23

    Building New Patient Bases and Revenue, Customer by Customer

    Health care lags behind many other industries in marketing (as it does in patient experience, data interoperability, and other areas). According to Ty Allen, President of Patient Experience & Growth at RLDatix, these other industries have been using what he calls “guerrilla marketing tactics” to pinpoint good candidates for highly targeted marketing. Allen’s firm, SocialClimb, was recently purchased by RLDatix. Using machine-learning data, his product can help health care providers determine who they should reach out to (“pinpointed marketing”), based on such factors as age, geography, and insurance type. Hospitals and health systems can change their revenue mix and fill empty slots in their doctors’ schedules by reaching new types of patients. Ultimately, they can improve revenues in an age of “margin compression” caused by rising costs and decreasing compensation. Allen distinguishes their type of marketing from brand marketing, which is more traditional. While he avers that the brand is still important, successful practices have to target the patients they want to attract as well. He recounts how, when SocialClimb started offering its AI-based solution four years ago, it was adopted by small practices of 100 or fewer doctors—practices that recognized the need for creative, aggressive marketing. The big hospitals at first rejected his product because they thought that it wasn’t worth their while reaching out to one patient at a time. One phenomenon that drives creative marketing is the recent “acquisition frenzy” of practices by large acute care facilities. Allen cites the statistic that 80% of doctors now work for big groups. Often, after the practice was bought, the staff was cut: marketing in particular. Naturally, results were disappointing. But now, the health care chains have started signing on to the strategies used by RLDatix. The new tools can let you know exactly what patients were attracted by particular tactics, and how much extra revenue was generated. One hospital spent $70,000 and earned four million dollars from it by using these tools over the course of somewhat more than one year. In our interview with Allen, we also discuss ways that web searches and AI are changing customer decisions. Allen says that potential patients—especially younger ones—want to know a lot about doctors before arranging a visit. A strong and complete web presence is crucial, but he doesn’t know yet all the ways AI will further transform patient choice and whether providers will have to adopt new strategies in response. Check out our interview with Ty Allen from RLDatix to learn more. Learn more about RLDatix: https://www.rldatix.com/en-nam/ RLDatix is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene

    27 min
  5. JAN 22

    The New Era of Search: What Healthcare Marketers Need to Know

    The healthcare search landscape is changing fast and AI is at the center of it. As a follow-up to our incredibly popular Search UnWebinar earlier this year, I sat down with Lacey Reichwald, Director of Marketing at Aha Media Group, to unpack some of the biggest questions we didn’t have time to address live. We explored what’s actually driving visibility, traffic, and trust in this new era of search. From AI-powered search results to the renewed importance of PR and brand consistency, the conversation offers practical guidance for healthcare marketers navigating growing complexity — without burning out or chasing every new trend. Here’s what stood out most: Visibility and Traffic Are Not the Same AI-driven search is increasing brand visibility through impressions on search results pages, but that doesn’t always lead to clicks. Structured content like FAQs supports visibility, while human-led thought leadership and real stories are what drive meaningful traffic. Authenticity Cuts Through the Noise With AI-generated content everywhere, authenticity has become a differentiator. Content rooted in real expertise, human insight, and lived experience performs better with both audiences and search engines. PR Is Regaining Strategic Value Third-party credibility is increasingly important as AI tools prioritize trusted sources. Earned media and reputable coverage now play a direct role in search visibility and authority. Brand Consistency Matters More Than Ever Audiences encounter brands across AI tools, search, social, and media, often simultaneously. A strong, consistent brand helps both people and algorithms recognize and trust your organization. Search Is a Behavior, Not a Channel People now “search” across Google, TikTok, YouTube, and AI tools, often without realizing it. Marketers should focus on showing up where their audience already looks, rather than trying to be everywhere. The Bottom Line AI hasn’t replaced strong marketing fundamentals. Tell real stories, build trust, and lead with expertise. The brands that win will focus on clarity, credibility, and connection, not shortcuts. Missed our live Search UnWebinar session? No worries, find the replay is here.

    11 min
  6. JAN 21

    Olmsted Medical Center Didn’t Play It Safe With Pelvis Party and That’s Why It Worked

    Healthcare often defaults to safety. Approved spokespeople. Carefully controlled environments. A standardized voice. But safety doesn’t connect with audiences – especially when the message involves something deeply personal, stigma, or a rarely discussed topic. In those cases, what protects the brand can distance the patient. What This Conversation Revealed Trust accelerates when marketing extends existing relationships instead of manufacturing new ones Vulnerability from the organization changes what patients are willing to say out loud Internal buy-in often follows proof, not planning What a Local Influencer Made Possible Brittney Strum, Marketing and Business Relations Manager at Olmsted Medical Center (OMC), joined Swaay.Health to unpack how a partnership with a local influencer turned into a trusted podcast for women’s health conversations, named Pelvis Party, and how their successful journey is helping to the organization be more bold. Why the right influencer is about alignment, not audience size Strum didn’t go looking for an influencer to amplify a message. She was looking for a collaborative partner. “What’s unique about Becky Montpetit [the local influencer OMC partnered with] is she already has a platform that she’s speaking from,” explained Strum. “We were already advertising on the platform. So we had that trusted relationship. Pelvis Party became an extension of that.” Becky also had personal history with OMC. “Because [Becky] had so many interactions with the health system, we have story after story after story that can be shared,” continued Strum. “She’s willing to share them because she really wants women to feel empowered about their healthcare journey.” Since trust already existed with both the OMC brand, Becky’s personal brand, and the audience, the partnership felt less like a campaign and more like a continuation of credibility that had been building over time. Patients respond when brands go first The tone of Pelvis Party – the podcast that was created by Strum, the OMC team, and Becky – was intentional. It mirrored the real-life conversations they were already having with friends about pelvic health. “Sharing our own stories, while it’s very vulnerable, is important because when people see other people sharing their experiences, they’re more apt to listen,” said Strum. “I think it just takes a little bit of vulnerability and recurring messaging to reinforce that.” By using choosing to show vulnerability on-camera, the podcast create speace for honest engagement. Audiences felt more comfortable talking about pelvic health – not just online, but with their physicians and friends. According to Strum, Pelvis Party made it “okay” to talk about a sensitive topic. It showed audiences they were not alone and gave language to people who had questions but did not know how to voice them. Proof creates permission inside health systems Pelvis Party launched quietly, without broad internal fanfare. “In the beginning it was a pretty quiet initiative to see if it was going to work,” admitted Strum. “I was going to be ecstatic with anything over 5,000 views.” They achieved that goal, but more the meaningful signal came from the community itself. “I’ve heard anecdotal feedback from patients that have come into the clinic and shared with their clinician – ‘I saw this episode on Pelvis Party!’” said Strum. Once the results and those stories became known, internal skepticism at OMC softened. “Now that we’ve been doing this for a while and we’ve seen the results, Pelvis Party has become the buzzword internally. Now I have a line of people who want to be on the show.” Success has given Olmsted Medical Center confidence to be creative Strum is convinced that had OMC played it safe, launching a pelvic health campaign led exclusively by clinicians, it would not have achieved the same reach or resonance. In hindsight, the reason is clear. Clinicians talk to the audience. Peers talk with them. That distinction determines how quickly trust is built. By teaming up with an established and trusted local influencer, OMC delivered a message that felt familiar and credible. The low-key, “homemade” production style reinforced that Pelvis Party was create by, and for, the community it served. This first chapter showed Strum and the OMC team that calculated risk can accelerate trust. With that foundation in place, Pelvis Party is now evolving in its next phase. As Strum’s put it: “Just try it. Don’t be scared to try something or to push an idea forward that you think is going to work.” Learn more about Olmsted Medical Center at https://www.olmmed.org/ Learn more about Pelvis Party at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pelvis-party/id1845746327

    27 min
  7. JAN 20

    ABM Starts with Buyer Understanding, Not Better Tools According to Outcomes Rocket Report

    Account Based Marketing (ABM) is scary and can be a drain on resources if it is not implemented thoughtfully. Many companies, therefore, avoid it or worse, are wasting significant time and effort on the wrong ABM strategies. ABM isn’t hard to get right, but it does take planning. Why Most ABM Programs Stall Before They Start Saul Marquez, CEO of Outcomes Rocket, joined Swaay.Health to unpack why ABM delivers such a strong ROI in healthcare and why so many teams struggle to see those results. The conversation covered what actually holds ABM back, how AI is changing how ABM can be executed, and why foundational strategy is a key to success. Key Takeaways ABM breaks down when strategy is missing, not because teams execute poorly. Most programs launch without a clear view of the buyer journey, leaving even well-run campaigns without a foundation. ABM feels expensive when it’s treated as a platform decision instead of a practice. Many teams delay progress by assuming ABM requires new tools, when focus and coordination matter more than software. AI is accelerating ABM execution, but it doesn’t replace buyer understanding. Automation improves targeting and analysis, yet documented personas and journeys remain the difference between efficiency and noise. Why ABM fails without mapped customer journeys One of the most revealing data points from Outcomes Rocket’s State of Account-Based Marketing Insights Report was how un-prepared for ABM companies are. Many teams are running ABM programs without fully understanding how buyers move from awareness to decision. “Only 17.3% of B2B marketers have fully mapped their customer journeys,” Marquez shared. “If you start doing ABM and you have not mapped your customer journey or getting your personas right, your campaigns will miss the mark.” Here’s the truth: healthcare buying cycles are long and multi-threaded. Economic buyers, clinical users, technical evaluators, and internal champions all enter at different moments. Each has different levels of influence and authority over the final buying decision. Without a shared map of how your buyers make their decisions, your marketing activity just fills space instead of creating momentum. Why ABM does not require enterprise platforms to work ABM carries a reputation for being complex and costly. Much of that perception comes from equating ABM with high-priced platforms. Marquez sees that misunderstanding stall progress before teams even give ABM a fair shake. “Most people in marketing get intimidated when somebody says ABM,” said Marquez. “They think you need to use Demandbase or 6sense. You don’t have to use them. In fact, most people running ABM programs are not using these platforms. ABM is accessible with your existing tech stack.” Marquez stressed repeatedly that ABM does not start with software. It starts with choosing which accounts matter most, investing in understanding your buyer’s journeys and building outwards from what you already have in place. How ABM 2.0 builds efficiency on top of strategy AI is changing how ABM is executed, but not what makes it effective. “Eighty-six percent of companies expect AI to increase the return on investment from their ABM activities over the next year,” stated Marquez. “With AI we’re becoming more efficient, more accurate, and more precise in our ability to target. ABM 2.0 is leveraging AI to get there faster and more intelligently.” Marquez was quick to point out that AI is an intelligent assistant for ABM, not master control. AI does not decide which accounts matter or why. That’s something that only Marketing teams can do in collaboration with Sales and company leadership. Why ABM focus and understanding matter more than scale The best ABM programs were not louder or more complex. Successfully companies knew which accounts mattered, how their buyers moved, and where attention was truly needed (and where it was being wasted). In other words, the key to ABM success is, and always will be, grounded in the reality of your buyers + business. Learn more about Outcomes Rocket at https://www.outcomesrocket.com/ Download the State of Account-Based Marketing Insights Report at https://www.outcomesrocket.com/blogs/state-of-account-based-marketing-2025-insights-roi-and-the-rise-of-ai Outcomes Rocket is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

    34 min
  8. JAN 19

    Balancing Personalization and Privacy in Digital Ads

    Healthcare audiences haven’t just tuned out ads. They’ve grown wary of them. The real risk isn’t low click-through rates. Instead, it’s the risk that hyper-personalization starts to undermine trust with patients, clinicians, and caregivers. Why Trust is Paramount That concern shaped a recent conversation with Rob Janes, Head of Product at AdButler. We talked about how healthcare organizations are monetizing digital experiences without crossing the line into surveillance, and why ending creepy personalization is quickly becoming a prerequisite for earning trust at scale. Key Takeaways More ads don’t build trust. Fewer, better-placed ones do. In healthcare, restraint earns attention. Clutter erodes credibility. “No creepy personalization” is how trust survives personalization at all. Consent isn’t a checkbox. It’s the boundary that keeps relevance from feeling invasive. Ads should feel discovered, not delivered. When advertising behaves like part of the experience, users engage without suspicion. “No creepy personalization” is a strategic advantage. Why ad frequency backfires in healthcare marketing The first place trust starts to crack is volume. Janes was blunt about how often healthcare platforms misread the relationship between impressions and performance. “You’d think that showing more ads means chances of getting more clicks, but that really isn’t the case,” he said. “More times than not, showing fewer ads will lead to an increase in click-through rate.” What AdButler saw across clinician networks and healthcare-focused digital environments was consistent. High-frequency ad models made users feel bombarded, not informed. Janes pointed to familiar consumer platforms as cautionary tales. “There are other ones like Meta where every third or fourth post is an ad, and you just kind of get bombarded,” he said. “People are sick of seeing it.” In healthcare, where attention is already limited and skepticism runs high, that fatigue shows up faster. Reducing clutter did more than improve performance. It is a signal of audience respect. Why consent-driven targeting matters more than precision That same sensitivity shows up even more clearly in personalization. Healthcare audiences can tell when relevance turns into monitoring. Janes described how one digital health organization made a deliberate decision to stop personalization from crossing that line. “They wanted to make sure that things that the user saw, the user consented to,” he said. “No creepy personalization. Like, nothing creepy.” The boundary was clear. Personalization was based on first-party data users willingly shared. And just as important, that data stayed inside the organization. “We are never going to share that information about you with the brands that are buying the [ad] space,” Janes explained. “We’ll use your data to show relevant ads, but your data doesn’t get shared somewhere else.” That approach preserved trust. Users still saw ads aligned to their needs, without the uneasy feeling of being tracked across the internet or retargeted in places they never expected. How ads can earn trust by blending into the experience Ending creepy personalization only works if the ad itself respects the environment it appears in. For Janes, the most effective healthcare ads don’t announce themselves with banners or interruptions. “A true innovative ad format just behaves like a part of the product,” he said. “It’s not something that feels like it’s bolted on after the fact.” Sponsored listings live inside content feeds. Promoted content follows the same structure as surrounding material. Janes emphasized that ads should feel discovered through normal use, not delivered through disruption. “If it doesn’t look and feel like it’s organic content, users are going look at it and go, ‘I’m just being advertised to’,” he said. “You’re going to lose trust.” When ads mirror the experience around them, users engage because nothing feels hidden or forced.  Why protecting trust is key Across these examples, Janes’ message is clear: practice ad restraint, run fewer ads, obtain + respect user consent and use ad formats that blend into the user experience instead of hijacking it. Learn more about AdButler at: https://www.adbutler.com/ AdButler is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene

    28 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Welcome to The Swaay.Health Podcast – a podcast for healthcare marketing, PR, and communications professionals! We’re all about building a brighter future in healthcare through the power of community! Join us as we dive into the latest news, strategies, and trends from the brightest minds in the field.