When Marketing Success Becomes Invisible
Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.
On today’s episode, Sara Payne is joined by Stewart Gandolf, CEO and co-founder of Healthcare Success, to explore an intriguing conundrum: when healthcare marketing works exceptionally well, it starts to become invisible, and that’s when organizations can get into trouble. With over 30 years of experience helping hospitals and health systems grow through patient acquisition and digital strategies, Stewart Gandolf brings seasoned insight into the mechanics of high-performing healthcare marketing engines and the all-too-common danger of taking success for granted.
This conversation draws inspiration from Stewart’s recent reflections on the paradox of effective marketing: the better it works, the easier and more effortless it seems to outsiders. Sara and Stewart dive into how this perception can lead leaders to undervalue the marketing effort, question investments, make the wrong cuts, or push for change without understanding what’s actually delivering results. Beyond the psychology and human behavior influencing these dynamics, they discuss the complexity of measurement, the importance of context and communication between marketing and leadership, and how AI is reshaping the marketing landscape.
Key Takeaways
The Paradox of Invisible Success
Stewart Gandolf explains that when marketing is consistently delivering results, it starts to look easy and can become “invisible” within organizations (00:17). This is especially problematic because leadership may forget the pain that prompted investment in the first place, lose sight of true performance drivers, or make changes that disrupt what actually works.
Recency Bias and the Illusion of Stability
Organizations often treat strong performance as the new baseline and quickly forget the strategic effort and resources behind it (03:22). Sara Payne and Stewart Gandolf discuss how “shiny object syndrome” can distract attention from high-performing channels (like paid search or digital acquisition), with leaders shifting focus to less impactful activities or trivial details once core metrics are humming along (05:18).
Complexity Behind the Curtain: Measurement, Attribution, and Human Expertise
It’s tempting to attribute solid results to simple tactics, but Stewart Gandolf highlights the underlying sophistication: from stacks of experts across specialties (SEO, content, paid search, traditional media) to advanced AI-driven call tracking and analytics (09:01). Organizations underestimate both the tools and expertise required for sustained growth when they aren’t directly engaged with the process.
Communicating Value to Leadership
Over-indexing on metrics without providing clear narrative and context can be perilous (10:29). Sara Payne notes and Stewart Gandolf agrees that it’s essential for marketers to be active communicators, translating data into stories and real-world impact that resonate with executive teams. Tactics like opening meetings with patient stories or supplementing metrics with anecdotes help remind leaders of the “why” behind the numbers (13:02).
Adaptation, AI, and the Future-Proof Marketing Team
The accelerating ease of execution via AI and automation means execution itself is becoming commoditized (26:19). What remains invaluable, according to Stewart Gandolf, is strategic thinking, contextual understanding, and specialized expertise. Teams and individuals who resist embracing AI risk obsolescence whereas those who integrate human creativity and experience with tech will continue to deliver outsized value, even as the marketing landscape transforms (27:18).
Whether you’re a healthcare marketing leader or part of an agency, today’s episode is a powerful reminder: the factors driving growth are rarely as simple as they seem. Don’t let success become invisible; unlock its story, advocate for its value, and keep evolving alongside your industry.
Thank you for joining the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.
About Stewart Gandolf
Stewart Gandolf co-founded Healthcare Success in 2006, but the agency was built on more than a decade of work that came before it.
Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Stewart was already inside healthcare marketing when the field barely existed as a discipline. Most healthcare organizations weren't marketing at all. Patients were treated as passive recipients of care. The notion that healthcare would become one of the most competitive, consumer-driven industries in the economy was, at the time, a fringe view.
Stewart held it anyway. He spent those years learning how healthcare markets actually behave—how patients and referring physicians make decisions, how trust and perception shape those decisions long before anyone books an appointment, and why organizations that understood human behavior would consistently outperform those that led with credentials and tactics alone. By the time he co-founded Healthcare Success, he wasn't starting from scratch. He was applying more than a decade of hard-won insight that most agencies never accumulate at all.
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Sara Payne [00:00:09]:
Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne. Here's the strange thing about marketing. Sometimes the better it works, the easier it looks. When marketing is consistently delivering results, it can start to feel almost effortless from the outside. And it becomes easy to forget how much strategy and ongoing work is actually happening behind the scenes. My guest today argues that this is exactly when organizations can get themselves into trouble. When successful marketing becomes almost invisible, leaders can start questioning the investment, focusing on the wrong things, or making changes without fully understanding what's actually producing the results.
Sara Payne [00:00:52]:
Stewart Gandolph is CEO and co-founder of Healthcare Success, a healthcare marketing agency he founded in 2006. He's spent more than 30 years helping hospitals, health systems, and other healthcare organizations attract patients and grow through digital marketing, paid search, and broader patient acquisition strategies. Stewart, welcome to the show.
Stewart Gandolf [00:01:12]:
Great, Sarah. Glad to be here. Um, it's always fun to be on somebody else's podcast, and that was a good intro. Good job.
Sara Payne [00:01:18]:
Oh, thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah, no, I'm excited to have this conversation. I think it, it's a good one for, for marketing leaders to, to spend time thinking about. And the framing really for this episode came from something that you recently wrote. You said that, you know, essentially when marketing is working really well, it could start to become invisible. From your perspective, what starts to happen inside an organization when strong marketing performance becomes The norm, if you will.
Sara Payne [00:01:46]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:01:47]:
So it's, it is, um, thanks again for referencing the article. And that article is based upon real-world stories and I may touch on some of them a little bit, but, you know, there's an old song when I was growing up, um, and it talked about, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
Sara Payne [00:02:00]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:02:01]:
So, um, that was a, I still remember the lyric and it's been, you know, a long time ago since I heard that. So what happens with marketing, it's really funny. People value You know, when you get into marketing, first of all, most people begin marketing campaigns or a lot of them because there's pain. There's nobody does anything unless there's pain. They like nice to have is great. We never actually make an investment around that. But when you get, when we're paying, suddenly things become a priority. So what happens with marketing oftentimes, you know, our agency is brought in or other agencies, other people are brought in when there's, there's pain.
Stewart Gandolf [00:02:34]:
We're not getting enough patients. We're not getting enough business. We're not getting enough revenue. And so all attention is focused on that. So what happens is during the pain phase, when things are happening and we're overhauling, we have the rapt attention of our client, or if you're inside, you know, your boss or whomever, because we're solving a problem. And so it's got really high priority. And when once we get past, you know, the chaotic side and everything's humming together, it's really easy to forget what things were like before because we're not in pain anymore. And so I just, some phenomenon I've noticed, and we can drill down based upon your questions here, but I've just seen that once marketing becomes, it becomes working, it's really easy to take it for granted.
Stewart Gandolf [00:03:17]:
And, um, but go ahead and ask me the next question and I'll kind of expand upon that as you like.
Sara Payne [00:03:22]:
Yeah. Well, I was going to just mention that there, I imagine there's like a recency problem here to some extent, right? Love this framing of like, you know, you're going to act when there's pain and less so when there's not, but also baked inside of that is like once something has been working for, say, 2 to 3 years, the organization starts to treat today's performance as now the baseline rather than sort of the result, right? So, any thoughts around that recency factor?
Stewart Gandolf [00:03:49]:
Yeah, I can give you a couple of things. Like, so, you know, we're all human too, which is fun. I just interviewed Dan Ailey, the author of Predictably Irrational. So we're not rational humans. We're just not. So we'd like to be, but we're not. And I remember reading that book years ago. And so I'll give you a great example.
Stewart Gandolf [00:04:10]:
This is not the one that inspired the story, but we have a client. It's our longest running client, great client. They've been with us over 15 years. And in this case, we work with a lot of healthcare. We work with manufacturers, hospitals, multi-location practices, different kinds of businesses. This one happens to be a series of clinics for a health system. And as is often the case in healthcare, the doctors are still involved. So, you know, what happens I've noticed is, uh, on a monthly basis when I attend these meetings, it's really easy to start talking about the paid search results, for example, which are generating new patients to this clinic for like $9.
Stewart Gandolf [00:04:47]:
So if you think about it, a new patient to a clinic is worth a minimum of, say, $150. So you've already built in, uh, what is that, a 15-to-1 ROI on your first—
Sara Payne [00:04:55]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:04:56]:
Visit minimum. And so, and, but what I find is after hearing the same report over years, it's very boring. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes money, but no, it's like, wait, did I say you're getting a 15 to 1 on your first visit? You're building your business. It's really easy for that to fall apart. And so then what happens is the shiny light syndrome. Well, let's talk about our social media. Like, you know, our last open house, we, you know, we, that, What was wrong with that? The photo didn't turn out well. I was like, photo?
Sara Payne [00:05:28]:
What?
Stewart Gandolf [00:05:29]:
No, 15 to 1. Did I mention 15 to 1? So it's really easy to take these things for granted and it looks really easy once you're done there. And so it is a recency effect because in the early days everybody was excited, but we're all humans and it's really easy to forget, okay, in the sea of activity, what really matters?
Sara Payne [00:05:49]:
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what it takes to really understand what's driving the results because sometimes it can be a sophisticated growth engine that's there, right? And sometimes it's hard to tell what's driving the results. In other cases, it could be a bunch of marketing activities sort of, I don't want to say strung together, but not as sophisticated that happens to be producing results right now. What are the signals that, you know, sort of that underlying engine is healthy, if you will, and we don't just happen to be, you know, seeing results right now during this period of time?
Stewart Gandolf [00:06:29]:
So there's an evolution, right? So I remember back when I started our agency in 2006, call tracking had been around, but it was still relatively new. So that's, you know, 20 years ago. And I was an early adopter. I jumped in on this like, oh my God, I can finally prove what I'm doing is working in a meaningful way. And then today we're using different AI-assisted call tracking platforms, which is like a whole different level. It's so much better. And so what happens then, we've had cases like this that are still like, get my eyes twitch over. We had a client referred to us by private equity a couple years ago.
Stewart Gandolf [00:07:07]:
Love them, great guys and gals. But when they referred me to their client, their property, the internal person wasn't bought in at all. He just wasn't bought in. He wanted to do something else. And so that was like, that's always a problem. The internal stakeholders aren't bought in. So anyway, the client pain worked. We sent 700 calls, inquiries, real inquiries to the office.
Stewart Gandolf [00:07:30]:
We went back and proved it, but nobody was answering their phone. And So now with AI-assisted call tracking, that'll put those things off. We can find out faster. So, and this is assuming you're doing everything right.
Sara Payne [00:07:41]:
So, right, right.
Stewart Gandolf [00:07:42]:
True. So if you're doing a less sophisticated stack, and by the way, there's nothing in here meant to be in any way negative. I'm just trying to be real with you, Sarah, like what I see.
Sara Payne [00:07:50]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:07:51]:
And, you know, like it's just hard doing this well at a high level is hard. Going back to the premise of this is it's easy to take this for granted. But it's really hard. There's a lot of people, like I'll share with you a version of the topic I talked offline. So, we had a client where this is another phenomenon we see a lot and I'm asking a question and answering a question and ask, but I think you'll like this. So, another phenomenon along this category we're talking about here is what I call being kicked to the kids' table. And, I don't know if you can relate to this, but when we It's, and again, this isn't just about our agency. This is pretty systematic industry-wide.
Stewart Gandolf [00:08:31]:
But when, you know, either the client or the boss first adopts the marketing, it has everybody's rapt attention. And so, you know, they're highly involved at the beginning, but eventually it's working. And so now we're not paying attention. And it's just a bad place to be because it's really easy to forget, wait, how much money are we making? But it's just really easy. So, and in that case, what the biggest issue was That they had a full team of experts. So, like in the world of healthcare marketing, another article we write about a lot is Healthcare Marketing is a World of Experts. And I'm sure you relate to this and other agencies and other people listen to your show. It's like, you know, we have on SEO, we have the technical SEO team, then we have the content team, then we have the content strategy team, and then we have local SEO is different.
Stewart Gandolf [00:09:15]:
That's a whole different person. I'm still an SEO. Yeah. Right? And then you've got paid search and you've got paid social. That's different. And maybe programmatic.
Sara Payne [00:09:25]:
These are all—
Stewart Gandolf [00:09:26]:
and then we have traditional media. So you have a team of doing all of that and you're replacing with somebody with no experience and you expect the results are going to be the same because it looks easy. So that's the challenge. And so I'm not saying this in a bitter way. I'm just saying this in a very factual way. It's really easy as a human to underestimate You know, what all those people do, especially if you're not engaged.
Sara Payne [00:09:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. And engagement is important. I wanted to talk a little bit about the interplay between a marketing team or a marketing organization. And when I say team, I mean the collective we, right? It includes agencies, right? It includes everybody that's part of the performance. The interplay between that and then the executive team or leadership team, that's an important, right, conversation and making sure that we're focusing on the right things. in those review meetings, right? And so, there is sometimes danger in over-indexing on metrics when we're talking to executives without the talk track, right, around some contextual things, right? If we're just talking about a certain metric, right, whether it's a cost per click or it's, you know, whatever it is, The expectation is that's just going to keep going up and to the right every single month.
Stewart Gandolf [00:10:43]:
Right.
Sara Payne [00:10:43]:
And I do think that sometimes perhaps the onus needs to be here on marketing in terms of our ability to actually communicate and translate the context of those results and doing a really good job of communicating that.
Stewart Gandolf [00:11:05]:
So, yeah, today we're just— I'm talking about human behavior a lot today. It's what the focus is.
Sara Payne [00:11:11]:
So it's the theme of the day.
Stewart Gandolf [00:11:13]:
Yeah. So the, um, that's really a good insight. And I think that comes with experience, Sarah, like that most people don't have that insight. So if you're in marketing, um, you know, you, most people assume if you're in marketing, you're a good communicator. That's not always the case. Right. And then if you look at the people that make up a marketing team, So you have these different personalities. Well, guess what? Like all those styles can be on an executive team.
Stewart Gandolf [00:11:36]:
So it's really possible if like, let's say, for example, your main client is a promoter that, or an expressive, and they just love big picture and they love fast. And then you've got an analytical explaining the process. And it's like, what was it? Zootopia where they have the sloths in their—
Sara Payne [00:11:55]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:11:56]:
Yeah.
Sara Payne [00:11:56]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:11:57]:
And they're going through like—
Sara Payne [00:11:58]:
That's my favorite meme ever. The slide meme.
Stewart Gandolf [00:12:02]:
I know it is a classic. So the, um, they're going through every data point like this and they're losing their audience. And so, you know, like that's where, like, and then oftentimes, and if you're doing a board meeting, you have to appeal to all these styles. And, you know, I've been doing this stuff for a long time, so now it's kind of instinctual. I'm not doing it consciously anymore. I just do it on purpose. But I think if you're earlier in your career and you haven't done this a lot, you really have to think about use that model, use a different model, but to recognize that the delivery has to vary. And even within meetings with the same people, it has to vary.
Stewart Gandolf [00:12:36]:
So some of the things that are really important is, and this model is number one, for sure, save the data. Obviously, that's going to be really important. Number two though, how can you bring it to life? And what's really funny, think about this, I'm in healthcare and doctors are trained not to pay attention to anecdotes, but they pay attention to anecdotes. So, you can share all this data, but then humanize it. I have a client, I love what they do. This is part of their culture. It's not just us, but they're a big, big business and they start every board meeting with a successful client story or a patient story to remind them why they're there.
Sara Payne [00:13:15]:
Yeah, I love that.
Stewart Gandolf [00:13:16]:
And humans love stories, right? We love them. So, find a story. And then going back to the 2-yard line problem, I remember this. I'll never forget this meeting. I flew out to this big oncology business back in the days when we did— by the way, since COVID nobody wants to see us face-to-face anymore. But back before that, they always did. And I flew out to meet the CEO and it's late. It's like 7 or 8 o'clock.
Stewart Gandolf [00:13:41]:
We had our pizza and we're still going through the numbers. And, uh, we still got to this 2-yard line problem and he was kind of like not believing me. Like, well, it turns out that, you know, with your permission, we recorded, um, some mystery calls. Let me hear the, let me show you the results. And it took 2 of those calls to hear it. And he goes, stop. So that went from a theoretical discussion to a real discussion really, really quickly.
Sara Payne [00:14:06]:
Smart. Very smart. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you're exactly right in that we have to appeal to different audiences in the room. We have to make sure we're telling stories around that because I think there is a danger in overreliance on metrics when it comes to performance and growth-driven marketing specifically. And, you know, there's an interesting paradox that we're talking about here is like you said it earlier, good marketers aren't necessarily always great communicators, but sometimes we are especially good at making complicated things feel really simple. And the whole theme of this episode today is like, perhaps sometimes we're victims, you know, of that when we make our own work look too simple, right? And so, making sure that we're contextually bringing in and connecting those dots, right? Yes, it may look easy and efficient and effective and simple in the day-to-day, but making sure the organization understands All of the insight, all of the analysis, you know, all the tool technology, right, that's going into it on a day-to-day basis.
Stewart Gandolf [00:15:08]:
I love that. So, it's an interesting topic that I don't think I've talked about before. So, it's a great, good choice on picking this as a topic. So, there's a couple of different things that are trade-offs. Number one is, in theory, nobody wants to know how the sausage is made, right? They really don't care. But if you never share how the sausage is made, then they don't appreciate how the sausage is made. So, it's a tricky thing because they do really want the results. But another thing that's fun is I have a strategist I've worked with now for like 3 decades since the beginning of my career.
Stewart Gandolf [00:15:41]:
I recruited her to work with me when I started this agency. And she remembered an article that I don't remember telling her about, but it's like changed her life. And it's funny when you see like, I don't remember even telling you this, but it's like there was an article I'd read that says, always let them see you sweat. And I think, so I forget who wrote that article, it's many years ago, but she still remembers that. And it's true. Like if you make it too easy looking, they don't see you sweating at all, then they wonder why they're paying you all this money. And I think our agency, if I were to be honest about one of our flaws, is we don't do a good enough job of letting MCO sweat. So for example, again, when you're looking at the value of an agency, we have dozens and dozens of very expensive tools we're using on their behalf.
Sara Payne [00:16:21]:
Mm-hmm.
Stewart Gandolf [00:16:22]:
Some guy with no experience suddenly replacing dozens of people on the team that all know what they're doing. They're also using all these expensive, highly sophisticated tools that can take months or years to really understand. And it's like they miss all of that. They don't even know that. And so, we're not saying it's hard because we don't want to be, first of all, also marketers, despite not all being great communicators. There's also the sort of stereotype, like, oh, you're always selling me, Stewart. You're just always selling me.
Sara Payne [00:16:51]:
Right. Right.
Stewart Gandolf [00:16:52]:
That. And then, uh, so you have to balance like, you know, chest thumping, but on the other hand, not saying anything ever is a mistake too. So it really is a challenge. I mean, human communication is hard and, but it's vital. And another thing that would, I would say that's a more sort of a very recent anecdote. We had a client that, um, you know, we've had for years. always a very intense kind of personality. You know, they admit it.
Stewart Gandolf [00:17:21]:
That's just the way they are, just super intense individuals. And when Google AI Overviews came out and for healthcare back in, was it March? Like across the board, healthcare websites lost about 30% of their traffic, like overnight, because Google—
Sara Payne [00:17:39]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:17:40]:
Finally started inducing in healthcare Google AI Overviews. So everybody, not just them, everybody saw it. And their question to me is like, why didn't you anticipate this and change everything in advance of this happening? And the correct answer is, number one, nobody on the planet did. We all knew change was coming, but how do you react to something before it's happened when you don't know what it'll be? And number two, would you have really allowed us to throttle everything that was working so well?
Sara Payne [00:18:08]:
Right. Great point.
Stewart Gandolf [00:18:09]:
On behalf of what might happen. Right. And like, actually, we would never let you do that. Like, exactly. So it's like, we have to keep it real. Like, that's like an unrealistic expectation.
Sara Payne [00:18:22]:
Yeah, I mean, great points. And this just makes me think, you know, a change to some extent is inevitable, right? Even when there is success in a marketing program, sometimes change is inevitable. So sometimes it's new technology. Right, new unexpected technology enters the frame, some new dynamics, some market-driven competitive challenge, whatever it is. Sometimes new leadership comes in, sometimes budgets get tighter, right? There's a budget cut. What are the things as a marketing organization or marketing leader we really need to be asking or understanding before we start pulling pieces out of a marketing system that is already performing, right? So some sort of dynamic comes in that says something here is going to need to change. And obviously this is a broad question, right? Because what we're going to do here depends on what is the change, what is the objective. But I do think that there is a sort of series of understanding questions to really Understand what is working well before we start thinking about, okay, we've got to do something different before we dismantle this thing.
Sara Payne [00:19:37]:
Let's make sure we really understand what's working.
Stewart Gandolf [00:19:39]:
So yeah, there's a lot of, that's a lot to unpack. So first of all, again, I'm thinking about real life clients because, you know, we have a fair number of them and there's different things that are always happening. And the stuff that happens with our agency is common across the board. Most agencies, when we sit down and talk about this stuff privately, over a glass of wine or a cocktail. These are pretty common things.
Sara Payne [00:19:58]:
Right.
Stewart Gandolf [00:19:59]:
But the, like, I'm thinking of a client right now that all the, our contact gets it. Like, he's like, wow, the marketing was profitable just by itself, let alone the halo value of everything we did. We know that it had a profitable ROI. So in this case, he's bought in, but You know, we haven't really, this is a little, usually we're involved with the executive team earlier, but we barely met the executive team in this since we haven't talked to them in like 2 years. So they're having financial problems and what are they cutting? The one thing that's generating patients.
Sara Payne [00:20:35]:
Hmm.
Stewart Gandolf [00:20:36]:
So they don't have enough patient flow. They paused our paid search campaign, which was generating positive ROI forever ago. And so, and now they're probably going to do something completely different. They didn't really understand that, like, so somewhere it was lost between like our data is showing clearly you're getting an ROI off of this data, but through the layers of executive management, it didn't. So some of the questions that you can ask, whether you're at an agency level, on the client side, or just in an internal marketing team is, you know, number one, what metrics really matter? You know, like, so usually in our world, if it's a provider, again, we work with more than just healthcare providers. But if it's a healthcare provider, it's going to be new patients. But it could be other things. It could be we want to make sure that patients are coming back for appointments.
Stewart Gandolf [00:21:24]:
So our recall schedules are really— that's a critical variable we're watching. Or we want to sell more of this service line versus that service line. That's an important metric. Sometimes there's unofficial things. Like in healthcare, there's often stakeholders that don't have any official power but have wild unofficial power. So, for example, at a hospital, you could have an orthopedic surgeon who brings in millions of dollars of business who doesn't have any official power whatsoever. But, if he decides, well, I think my social media guy should do this, everybody scrambles. So, it's like sometimes these things are rational, sometimes they're not.
Stewart Gandolf [00:22:01]:
And, I would just say if I'm looking at this, I think first of all, let's do the rational side first. Let's figure out what those things are and put a process together. And again, Sarah, this is easy to talk about. It's hard to do.
Sara Payne [00:22:13]:
Like, yeah, 100%.
Stewart Gandolf [00:22:15]:
I've been doing this a long time, so I don't have stuff all written down. I have a subconscious, you know, unconscious, unconsciously competent system where I ask most of the right questions by nature, but I don't have a checklist. I should, right? Where I make sure I ask all these questions because sometimes I'll forget. You can't rely on memory. So I would say if you're smarter than me at this, you'd probably come up with the right questions and create a checklist to make sure you actually do this. But, um, you know, having a checklist to make sure you're asking about these critical things in your process is a really good idea. And then the other thing is just, again, remember the human element because you mentioned another classic, classic new marketing person comes in. You know, it's like there's stats on this.
Stewart Gandolf [00:23:00]:
The odds of an agency staying the agency after there's a new chief marketing officer is about 20% at best.
Sara Payne [00:23:05]:
Right. Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:23:06]:
So it's really a difficult place to be. So, you know, uh, and then it's like, you know, the classic is the agency owner keeps calling the new CMO. There's no phone calls and they get an email.
Sara Payne [00:23:18]:
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:23:19]:
So that's just really hard to prevent against, but at least the more engaged you can be, the more realistic you can be, the more you cover the metrics that matter, the more that you bring the results to life, the more that you share how the sausage is made in an appropriate way. And at the end of the day, sometimes it's just unavoidable. I mean, it sucks, but it's just factual again.
Sara Payne [00:23:39]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Stewart Gandolf [00:23:40]:
I was trying to share some sort of— no, yeah, all this stuff fits together.
Sara Payne [00:23:44]:
Yeah, I mean, it's a super broad question. I think you unpacked it from a few different perspectives there. Um, and, and you're right. I mean, we're— a lot of the right thing to do in that situation is based on experience and expertise and therefore intuition, right? There. Like, it would be great if we all had the perfect checklist for every scenario, but that's just not the way the world works, right? And it's just being smart, being strategic at slowing down, being curious, asking the right questions, right? Taking the time to do that, which is why I think, you know, any new marketing leader, chief marketing officer, even if they have an intention of coming in, shaking things up, bringing in new agencies, maybe that they've worked with in the past, trusted agencies, I do think that they should give it a period of time. Maybe it's 3 months, maybe it's 6 months to, to really understand what's there and what is and isn't working before they go in and make, you know, massive, massive changes.
Stewart Gandolf [00:24:35]:
For sure. I would say also just some things to think about. Number one, and, you know, again, like one of the challenges we're getting into right now, Sarah, is the marketing attribution layer is so complex and it's not perfect. So it's really important. Like it's a lot better than it used to be. It's a lot better than form fills and 30-second calls or minute calls. But it's still not perfect. But to the extent that you're able, if you're working in a marketing department or you're working with an executive position reporting to the CEO or you're with an agency, is to at least make sure you have the best data possible.
Stewart Gandolf [00:25:11]:
And for sure, don't have data that conflicts with itself. And if that's the case, you need to explain why because nothing will cause a meeting to spin worse than having numbers that don't seem intuitive. Don't seem plausible, or the worst thing is they contradict themselves. Like that's just death to a, to a successful relationship. So I think that's really important to make sure that, you know, on top of everything else we said.
Sara Payne [00:25:35]:
Yeah. Well, we've talked about AI several times, obviously in this conversation, AI is making marketing easier to produce than, than ever before. And it really perpetuates this issue that we start thinking marketing itself is easier than it actually is. Because I think things can move at a faster pace, et cetera. Maybe one place to end this conversation would be like, as execution becomes easier, what becomes more valuable? And I'm sure you're going to, you know, it's some of the themes of things that we've already talked about, but would love to put that out there as our final question.
Stewart Gandolf [00:26:11]:
Well, we've actually used these words and I wish my head of SEO, Brandon, was on the call because he puts it really eloquently. These aren't my words, but I'll give you the idea. As execution nears the cost of zero, the value that remains is still in strategy and context and perspective. So that's why, like, you know, like for example, our agency does content and we, it's one of the many things we do. You know, agencies that are content only are struggling more because that's really a tough island to defend. If that's all you got, it's like it's under siege.
Sara Payne [00:26:47]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:26:47]:
So like, and in our website, our company with our content team, we haven't let anybody go. We're just working and delivering more value for the same number of people. And so, and we have even a podcast episode about how we use AI. Because like, here's the thing too, Sarah. If you say, for example, I'm a writer, I think AI is evil. I will never use AI. You have just made yourself functionally obsolete. You've just made yourself obsolete.
Stewart Gandolf [00:27:12]:
You've chosen.
Sara Payne [00:27:12]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:27:13]:
To be not competitive with the rest of the world.
Sara Payne [00:27:15]:
Yeah, totally agree.
Stewart Gandolf [00:27:16]:
That's a really dangerous place to be. But it's a double thing. Like, if you don't embrace this, you're going to be obsolete and you're going to be really, really obsolete soon. And so, it's a challenging place to be. So, I would say the AI thing in terms of going forward is like, first of all, there is some— AI does some things incredibly well. So, Um, but I think if you look at, um, you know, using AI for copy, it's like, okay, how can I scale this? How can I keep the soul? How can I keep the perspective? And so, but you know, so I look at myself as, you know, among the many roles I have as a writer, but I use AI all the time to write because it's stupid not to. Like, I'm still generating the, uh, original ideas, right? I'm still, and I also can do the research much faster. I can frame the idea better.
Sara Payne [00:28:06]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:28:06]:
I can do hypothesis testing. And it still has my voice too. I even, what I've done is like, if I'm writing a blog, and this isn't just me doing this, but I'll write, I'll work with the machines, I'll send it over to my editor. So, it's like there's humans involved at every step too.
Sara Payne [00:28:22]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Stewart Gandolf [00:28:23]:
I've actually fed the machine my book that I wrote to get my voice. And so, you know, I fed it the chapters that were the most relevant, and then I have to tell the machine, but this was written 5 years ago. I don't write that way anymore. I write it this way. So, So it's a way of taking the human element, leveraging with the machine, multiply it times every marketing task inside an agency or inside a client tech stack. So there are some places, but still, if we're thinking it forward, it's that context and that strategy that the machines can't do well. And that's where I think to stay competitive, I mean, nobody knows how this is going to turn out. But, um, so we don't know whether this is going to turn out, but the, I, I believe that I can tell you, I can't tell you who's going to succeed, but I can tell you who's toast.
Sara Payne [00:29:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:29:15]:
Yeah. Anybody who's not going to keep up is going to be toast. To succeed, I think you're going to need strategy, experience, and expertise that's specialized. And I can tell you that, you know, like, because we play at the mid to mid-high level of the market. You know, we're getting record numbers of inquiries. We're not seeing this big drop, but if I was on the low end of the market, I'd be much more worried. And especially if I had a commoditized thing.
Sara Payne [00:29:38]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:29:39]:
Like I said, I'm not saying— I have friends who own and lead content agencies. They're not going outta business either, but they have to adapt for sure because the business is changing. So it's a very crazy disruptive time and it's the kind of disruption like cars made to horses. You don't get a faster horse. Suddenly now you don't have to shovel manure. Suddenly now you have other problems to worry about though. So it's that transformative of a time. It's like the Bronze Age time.
Stewart Gandolf [00:30:16]:
It's a big deal. But I'll leave you with one thing that's a little positive that as we all sort through this new world, This is another meta— I'm big on metaphors as you're probably gathering. That's how I think in metaphors. So, the story is back when cells came out, India jumped, embraced cells faster than anybody else. And, the reason for that was, and you can see pictures of this, the Indian telephone system was this enormous rat's nest of wires, incredibly complicated, incredibly out of date. It was cheaper to embrace cell phones.
Sara Payne [00:30:49]:
Yeah.
Stewart Gandolf [00:30:49]:
So, the legacy was so bad, they were able to leapfrog over fixing the phone system to cell phones. Whereas in the US, we had a lot invested. It took years and years and years because the old system worked pretty well. So, think about, as you're thinking about your business, whether you're thinking about as your marketing agency or as a client or wherever, where does AI enable us to jump over that rat's nest entirely instead of— So, another metaphor we're talking about internally currently is our website build process, which is Excruciatingly human, lots and lots of moving parts, but the client doesn't pay for that, right? They don't really care how much the sausage costs you and they don't really want to pay more for— they don't want the Mercedes handcrafted Rolls-Royce. They want a car that moves quickly. And so in our case, the process isn't building a faster, I don't know, '70s muscle car GTO. It's building a Tesla. It's a whole different model.
Stewart Gandolf [00:31:46]:
It's still a car, but it's a very different way of doing things. So, I would think about that. How can you use it? Yeah, incrementally, but where are some big, big gains available?
Sara Payne [00:31:54]:
Yeah, love that. Great advice. I think that's a great place to end the conversation today. Stewart, how can our listeners get in touch with you?
Stewart Gandolf [00:32:01]:
Great. Well, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn, Stewart Gandolf, G-A-N-D-O-L-F. And then, um, the, uh, our, our website, our blog, our podcast are all located at healthcare success dot com. So awesome. Anyway, hey, Sarah, this was fun. I had fun today. This is a good, uh, good conversation. Great questions.
Sara Payne [00:32:18]:
Same, same. Thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Stewart Gandolf [00:32:21]:
Okay. Thank you.
Sara Payne [00:32:22]:
And thanks to everyone listening to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence because the future of healthcare depends on it. We'll see you next time.
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