The Mental Healthcare Consumer Journey

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Stewart Gandolf

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another podcast. This is the second in the series of a couple of or three podcasts we are creating off of material that Kathy and I have shared in recent conferences.

we're back feeling and looking at a little sleepy people.

Kathy Gaughran

Just me.

Stewart Gandolf

But back speaking at conferences, a lot of the stuff we talked to, we've been encouraged to ask that we spent a lot of time preparing for these meetings.

A lot of stuff we covered, even though it may have been about mental health or may have been about addiction or senior living, applies to a bright variety of our listeners and readers.

So, today we're going to cover a topic that Kathy discovered, the Mental Health Marketing Conference, right Kathy?

Kathy Gaughran Yeah, that's right.

Stewart Gandolf

This was Kathy's show, she'll be reading most of the talk in a day. And the topic is talking about patient experience and mental health, lovely.

we're going to be talking about the opportunities with mental health marketing and the challenges with mental health marketing. just as an opening, know, things have come a long, long, long ways since Kathy began this.

Back in the old days, several decades ago, Kathy and I used to lead seminars around the country, and we go, okay, psychologists, MFCC, LCSW, psychiatrists, we kind of know who was in their own, who were working in the mental health group.

And, you know, back then, it was all private practice, all very small, people would pay money to come to CSP and then tell us all week and long that it's unethical.

market that was always confusing to me, Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran

don't know if much.

Stewart Gandolf

But, you know, today, mental health has come a long way. It's big business. The acceptance in the public is big.

My kids spoke to a therapist today about a hassle she's having with one of her roommates. I don't not personally seeing a therapist, my kids wish I would.

mother brought a lot of her acceptance today, and Kathy is going to share some personal story about herself as well.

So, we'll be talking about marketing. We'll talk about mental health, but even if you're not in mental health business, these concepts will probably fly to your business in a big way.

So, Kathy, I'd love you to introduce Kathy Garan. I've worked there for a long time. She's our senior strategist here at Health Care Success.

Kathy, I'd love you to just introduce yourself and then share your presentation from Smash, and I'm sorry, from the mental health conference, and I'll interject some color commentary as I see.

Kathy Gaughran

Thank you, Stuart. So, as Stuart said, my name's Kathy Garan. I've been a strategist working on site storage for a couple of decades.

We've been very fortunate to be able to apply our passion around marketing and healthcare and help a lot of people over the years.

There's been a larger emphasis in the mental and behavioral health space in the past five or eight years, and I'm thrilled to be able to pay it forward.

I've been in recovery for a couple of decades myself, also a patient in mental health, and one of the things that I talked about at this last conference, we were just in Franklin, Tennessee at the mental health marketing conference, was the fact that I have been searching for a therapist for over a year and half.

I've got great insurance. in the Southern California market. There's lots of provisions available for me, but I just can't find that connection.

So, we're going to talk a little bit about that today, how to be visible for searches that are already happening, how to make sure your unique value proposition comes to the surface when you have an opportunity with

when looking for a solution. And the really critical parts on optimizing your online visibility and your online campaigns. So, we're going to be talking about all that today and sharing a little bit of our stories.

I'm just thrilled that that mental health has come as far as it has in terms of acceptance. So it shared, you know, a little bit about its family when I was younger.

I also have bipolar diagnosis. My mom used to just refer to me as hyper. So a lot of changes have happened and I'm thrilled that we have opportunities to treat our mental health issues and to be able to provide that for more people now.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it's an awesome opportunity.

Kathy Gaughran Yeah, that's part of that Cathy.

SCREEN SHARING: Kathy started screen sharing - WATCH

Stewart Gandolf

Personally, like, you know, I had anxiety as a kid.

Kathy Gaughran I didn't tell her that to a soul until probably 40.

Stewart Gandolf

Right.

Kathy Gaughran

Yeah, it's unfortunate that people suffer in silence and whether there's a sudden issue present, you know, one of the interesting things that I found at a recent.

Conference was that a lot of mental health providers are seeing patients with mental health primary and SUD historic. So, it's not even present anymore, but it's present in their history.

So, regardless of how a patient manifests to you, it's just important that we appear as a viable solution accessible with our arms open wide, and that will fit for them.

So, we're going to talk a little bit about how to position your practice, your messaging, and be available for the patients that are already in your market looking for solutions now.

So, I wanted to talk first a little bit about trends, 90% of the public think there is a mental health crisis in the United States today.

So, we have gained acceptance, not only in treatment, but also in conversation and dialogue. Half the young adults and one third of all adults report that they have felt anxious.

One third of could not get the. and mental health care services they need for whatever reason, when asked about specific barriers to accessing care, 80% cited cost, and more than 60%, just as Stuart said, cited shame and stigma as main obstacles.

And this is something that I love, again, to be able to participate in. I lose a lot of friends.

I've seen a lot of people lose their lives in addiction because of shame, trying to hide the fact that they were struggling, and it ultimately ended in their demise.

We know in addiction the only outcomes are hospitals, institutions, and death. And mental health is tied up in a big way.

So it's important that we are recognizing the crazy demand that's out there, and it's upsetting ourselves up to be visible and accessible to these people when they're searching.

The shortage of mental health providers is also prohibitive with 60% of psychologists reporting openings for new patients. And also, we're finding that a lot of our health groups, their recruitment is as important as their patient targeting. So, one of the things I was telling Stewart about, my daughter was just visiting last weekend, and she just finished her master's in psychology up in northern California and just found the job.

And she was describing to me her job search and how she went about it. And it's very unique to what I'm used to, to what a lot of other vertical health care industry see.

So, I'll be doing a podcast on that later on. Just really understanding how to target this demographic and position yourselves as the best place to work.

So, we'll look at that later on. There's this growing acceptance of understanding. There's also rising interest in alternative therapies such as mindfulness, meditation and yoga.

We're also seeing a much bigger adoption in teletherapy with advancements really stemming from COVID. Many people are also opting for online therapy.

Another trend is the integration of mental health services in the primary care settings. So that's also something which could provide you an opportunity to cross network with primary care providers or look to more difficult cases that they could then prefer out to you.

So, it could be a positive, it could be a competitive factor in your market depending on how you work at it.

trends that I was able to identify AI in clinical care in a variety of different capacities, psychedelics as medicine, very controversial.

people are seeing great success. Other people are not wanting to be early adopters. So, we'll continue to see that grow in this space.

Trauma informed care, blood tests for mental health, setting boundaries on social media, very important. Social media because selecting a mental health provider is an emotional journey.

Social media is a good complement to your campaign because of the high visual content and the ability to connect on that level.

So, it's a good complement to pay search. it can stand alone, but it's got to be a really tight campaign.

We have a fantastic social team that can help determine the best strategy and content to push, and then TMS obviously is huge.

TMS provides a program. What are the challenges with any repetitive visits? see this in mental health as well as physical therapy where you're giving a treatment recommendation, you diagnose and recommend a course of action, and patients don't comply with the total visits that were recommended.

They fall off during care, so one of the great things about TMS is it's got to start in a finish, so it gives them a little bit more of a mental reason to complete treatment with subsequently more visits.

So, there's been a big push on TMS recently. So, we look at the health care decision journey, and things have changed drastically, obviously.

There used to be very few media resources to choose. was from, we were typically looking at word of mouth, personal experience, physician, referral, friends, and family, maybe the yellow pages directory, preliminary online, but now it's completely different.

We've got online information, reviews, we've got opportunities to be able to push on a variety of different platforms. So, it's important that you understand your market, you understand what they're looking at, what they're reading, how they get their information, so we can be visible and available when they conduct their searches.

Stewart, do you any comments on this slide?

Stewart Gandolf

No, but it's just, it's so much more complex. mean, back in the old days, in fact, that advertising bubble in the old days was almost non-existent.

You and I helped create this sort of world of thinking about mental health as a business, along with others, of course.

But we were really groundbreaking back when we would advertise for, you know, mental health services. We were lucky to get our therapist just to ask their patients.

Kathy Gaughran

refer them to somebody.

Stewart Gandolf

So it's just come so far that, I mean, it's just kind of shocking, really, how far they it's hand in hand with the market's acceptance, which is fantastic.

Kathy Gaughran

So it means more people will get the health care that they need. They're also passing insurance. There's a couple new rules.

I know that there was one that the NAPI website just flew NATAP about healthcare coverage in the mental health care space.

there's gaining acceptance. There's gaining acceptance again just in conversation, which is just fantastic. some of that is our celebrity is coming out and having higher visibility and just people being more comfortable talking about their mental health.

So, finding a provider eight out of ten times the internet is where the first encounter between a prospective patient and clinical provider occurs, but it does not stop there.

Long before they decide on a health care provider, they search the internet, and we know that people are looking forward

at content, they're looking at your website, they're looking at reviews, the trouble is the entire process is increasingly complex.

They don't follow the traditional path from consideration to purchase and this purchase is far more emotional. So, we're looking at a more detailed funnel, we're looking at first awareness, creating market awareness.

We know that there is gaining acceptance, we know that there's awareness of mental health in the markets that you serve most likely what other competitors are out there, what messaging has been available to the consumers in that market.

So, what is the perception of their personal need and the opportunity to find a solution? Consideration, which is the start of that information search, evaluation and education, familiar with the options that are available.

Intent, that's when the choice narrows, and often the final decision starts to happen. The purchase is your first transaction, either encounter or an appointment.

appointment. Loyalty is on your back and presuming a positive and satisfactory patient experience. They can then be bonded to that provider.

That makes them much more likely to return and much more likely to refer. So the post-purchase behavior can include references, recommendations, and if you have an alumni program, referrals, and word of mouth.

So, it's an entire journey where they can then become your advocate. So the decision-making process, the added complexity of by the Social Health Institute comparing the then and now also mental and physical quadrants.

The mental considerations have grown from three basic items of personal experience, advertising, hearing from the brand, and word of mouth.

Also includes now online information, WebMD, the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, ratings can be found in a variety of platforms, patient reviews.

It's also representing those ratings and then also online patient communities. This picture is often more complex. When you add to the list, the provider's own internet presence is on history.

If they were to search any individual provider or clinician by name, YouTube blogs plus there's organic search results. So, there's a heightened level of complexity just finding a provider and then all of that additional information that's available on that provider or on your brand.

I also thought these were interesting observations on the demographics. We've got a much larger female demographic, almost 60% to male and then we've got that bell curve of the 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 representing the largest percentage of the audience.

We want to get in front of decisions that are happening in your market now. So making sure that you're optimized across all of your poll market.

which is where people will find you. So, we talk about push marketing and pull marketing. Pull marketing is being visible when people are searching.

They're pulling information down based upon a search query or a decision making process that they're engaged in. Push marketing is pushing your information at a likely candidate, either by using lookalike audiences or targeting.

So, your messaging is gonna be different between push and pull, but you want to optimize your pull before you really start to push.

looking at all of the different platforms that consumers have access to and messages that they're seeing throughout this journey and keep in mind tell out platforms over the counter solutions.

There's a lot of people vying for the solution for this patient. So important that your unique value proposition and that connectivity really shines in your campaigns.

So are there any comments on this one?

Stewart Gandolf

I just think that we've talked about a lot. where there's so many points of entry. Sumer is much more guided.

You and I talked about in another recent webinar about consumers are making their own decisions now.

Kathy Gaughran

Thank you very much.

Stewart Gandolf

With mental health, if you're a practitioner, even in just in the business, the idea of patient feeling empowered is something that's a good thing, right?

that serves in business too, because people are empowered whether you give it to them or not when it comes to choosing a provider.

So, all these different things that Api's been discussing and if you're watching the video version of this, you can see on the chart right now, but ratings and traditional media and online media and search results and all these things really matter.

And of course, once they came on board, they're still not done. There's going to have interactions with you, interactions with your institution, hopefully get followed from you.

So, it's just much more complex, more expensive, more cluttered, but there's just so much more demand and acceptance as well.

for all, you know, it's maybe a little more challenging. Well, it is more challenging, competitive-wise, because before there were no competitors, but the market is just exploded.

And that's why you see so much interest. And, you know, Kath and I woke up private equity and speak at private equity conferences fairly often.

This is probably the hot sector, mental health, including mental health, addiction, eating disorder, telehealth, you know, adolescent and teen health.

Like all these things are just hot commodities, not just from the business standpoint, but because there's a growing acceptance, clearly.

Kathy Gaughran

Right, right. And you also have residential programming, IOP, PEPH. So, there's a variety of different ways that they can get care as well.

So, a lot of decisions for someone that's addressing their mental health, that's the point. And that's the struggle and the frustration I always find myself in, is just there's an overwhelming amount of choices.

And it's hard to make a decision when there are. the choices that goes back to the factor of choice, Stewart.

All right, so four vital optimizations for required for digital marketing success. Stewart actually wrote this blog several years ago, and it's just a fantastic way of looking at all of the different areas of optimization when you're running paint search.

You've got consumer demand, making sure that there's demand market that you're marketing in, campaign management, landing page, and your conversion process all equal, optimal results.

So all of these things rely on each other for the greatest outcome, and we're going to walk through each step.

And then I have a final slide at the end with some recommendations for some additional trends.

Stewart Gandolf

Kathy, can I just add a quick comment on that, just to the vacation and you can drill down. So the point we make here is that these things are all equally important, and the results are multiplicative, meaning that if you can increase the effectiveness of 10% in any level, out the back end pops 10%.

So, if you're going to increase demand with traditional advertising and social media by 10% and you'll increase The effectiveness of the in the machine with Google ads for example by 10% I have a slide Sorry the jumping on it.

Kathy Gaughran

That's okay, but that slide is for you. So, we'll come back to that So again, most people tend to focus on only one of four variables.

They're right looking at the demand in the market Which miraculously will come through their door campaign management? Landing page or the conversion process.

So true optimization considers all four. So, let's take paid search Because it generates results quickly. This is always a go-to for most people when they're looking to drive volume It's a drives a low cost per acquisition and allows for real-time testing and it scales incredibly well So Google ads often form the bedrock of most digital marketing campaigns yet too often We see the clients focusing just on the machine

and the campaign management, but in reality, than the campaign management is needed to directly influence the consumer demand inquiry rate or patient conversion.

As Stewart said, to truly maximize your digital campaigns, each factor must build upon the other to compound campaign effectiveness.

We're going to lead up to what Stewart was digging into. So, looking at consumer demand, before you can start building and optimizing your digital campaign, you need to determine overall consumer demand in your market.

What drives demand? Consumer knowledge of your product or service, cost, desire, competition, habits and expectations. So, you need to understand how many people are searching for the solution you're offering and how they're searching for it.

At the same time, while consumer demand can seem largely out of your control, remember that we can always push the lever of push marketing and programmatic advertising to stimulate demand.

Then you look at campaign management. So, the management is a crucial part of any successful paid search campaign. It allows you to oversee every aspect and make real-time adjustments and maximize your ROI and your ROAs.

So that's your return on investment and your return on ad spend. Following our key elements of PPC, you must keep eyes on all of these for optimal campaign management and that's the keyword research and targeting, negative keyword research, ad positioning, geographical targeting, device targeting, scheduling, deciding when and where to run your ads, budgeting and bidding strategy, quality score, and then making sure you've got to be testing.

Hiring an expert to manage your paid search campaigns is always good investment. It's not something you want to try to wing on your own.

So definitely get somebody that's got experience in health care and especially mental health care because it's a very different approach, especially to anything retail, but even within the health care sector.

or mental health and behavioral health are a different animal. And then we look at our landing pages. Stewart, you want to speak to this slide?

I know this is one of your favorites.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, of course. Well, landing pages, with our team and our clients, I should say, people sort of get the idea of there's demand.

get there as an idea of our tech team working inside the Google Ads platform. Or, you know, meta Facebook, Instagram.

they get that there's technical things there's a million variables and it's all kind of like turning the switches of this great big soundboard to like, you know, work in the machine.

And then most people give it, they're going to give the landing page a second thought. And the landing page could be a specific standalone landing page.

It could be just the page you're driving traffic on a website. But this is a huge lever that most people underestimate.

So, they can work spend, you know, months and years trying to leverage that odd word. I'm sorry, the Google Ads campaign and the machine, but the page is hugely important.

So, what is the headline? Is it have a benefit? Is there an offer? Is the copy compelling social proof to make people comfortable?

Are the ads or the visuals rather relevant? Are the CTA's there? the page download quickly? Is there support copy?

What's the strategy of the page? mean, these differences aren't little differences. These differences can be, you know, 20%, 100%, 300%.

So, the difference in a bad landing page, for example, and when that works, can be utter failure versus a runaway success, but it's everything else being equal, so it's really, really important.

It's not just about being pretty, by the way, too. It's really approaching that page with absolute strategy and thoughtfulness.

Kathy Gaughran

Well, and you want both. You want the attractiveness to attract people to the page, but you want the page to work.

Stewart Gandolf

So

Kathy Gaughran

very critical to have all these elements and you can optimize it right so really when it's doing well you're optimizing continually inside the machine and the landing page as well right thank you and we look at the conversion process and Stuart and I have as we've talked have been in this industry for so many years and this tends to be a really weak link we do have calls that are increased that are coming in online we have a variety of different ways that inquiries are coming in but now that you stimulated demand driven consumers to a value added landing page targeted paid search ad and persuaded them to click call or fill out a form how were the injuries handled look at your practice like an upside down pyramid balancing on the end of the finger of the person answering your phone they are ultimately going to be responsible for the conversion of this lead when potential patients navigate to and take action on your landing page they intend to

make a purchase, optimize each and every opportunity. a few ways to increase call conversions, decide where the call should be handled, either a call center or at your local office.

Identify and train personnel specifically to convert sales calls because increase calls that are coming in off of your online advertising are gonna be a little bit different than a referred caller.

And not always to the liking of your phone staff. So, it's really important they understand the benefit of that caller, that call's gonna be a little bit different than what they're used to.

Use a CRM, a client relationship management tool, HubSpot Salesforce to be able to close, manage, it helps with And then we'll also help with your sales team if you have any B2B efforts happening.

Create a process for logging, tracking, and responding to every inquiry quickly. Timing is everything. When people are in a decision-making mode, you wanna try to capture them within that time period.

Stuart's always... and such a stickler about this. If we move on to something different, this me, this desire tends to be minimized.

So, we want to catch people while they're in a decision-making mode. So it's really important that you get back with them quickly.

And then create a call script that outlines for your staff how to address frequently asked questions. Don't expect your staff to win each and every time a call comes in, especially with shopper calls.

How to overcome common objections, whether it's pricing, insurance, location, provider, and how to win more appointment. So, make sure you train your staff or familiarize your staff with the importance of these calls.

They're the backbone to the success of the campaign. Even if they're handling inquiries coming in online, it's important that those inquiries are handled quickly.

If you've got a portal that those inquiries are coming through, also that's addressed quickly. So, it's important to close up this consumer journey.

with an appointment. That's their intent. They're reaching out to you because they have a problem that you have a solution for.

So, if they do not convert, their problem wasn't solved. So, they may be just moving on to a competitor.

So important also to have a follow-up protocol to be able to reach back out if they allow it. And I know mental health is far more sensitive, but the issue is this person still doesn't have a solution to a problem if they've left without scheduling that appointment.

So, we've created the need, we found the demand, created the need, answered their questions, and got them to call.

Now it's really critical that this call is handled the way that it should be. And we've got actually a couple of webinars on our website about phone protocols and phone shoppers.

If there's any issues in your practice, I encourage you to listen to that webinar because there's some great information in there to just make sure that you're closing this cycle that helps this consumer find a solution to the problem.

And then Stuart, your multiplicative effect.

Stewart Gandolf

So, you want to read us this line? Okay. Now that I stepped on your lines, okay.

Kathy Gaughran

There you go.

Stewart Gandolf

No problem.

Kathy Gaughran

We got it in.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah. So, to kind of come back to what I was, this is the part that I'm passionate about. And just as a review, the going back to the consumer demand is largely fixed, right?

So, you can't really change consumer demand, you would think, but then you can. So, with paid social advertising, with traditional advertising, which by the way, is not that I was just looking at some data today in the many millions of dollars spent in leading markets on traditional media for healthcare.

It's not that. So, the consumer demand is to be pushed marketing can influence that. Going back to the end of campaign and the machine part I described a little while ago, that's a thing, a landing page in the conversion process.

So, so again, what I was saying a little bit ago was increase each of these factors. first three by 10%, you know, a compounding rate, that's roughly 32% increase.

trees. But then let's say that conversion process is zero, everything is still zero. If you can double-triple all those things above it, but if that conversion process is zero, guess what?

It's still a zero. So that multiplicative effect works for compounding when things are going well, but it also works in a negative way.

For example, Kathy and business just tanked when they're one finance person with quotes. Great, because she wasn't just a finance person.

She had the charisma, the empathy, the understanding. She recognized that her job wasn't just about. Finance, her job was to help convert the patient since she just did it naturally, and they struggled and struggled and struggled because when that person left, there was no systems in place, and it was taking a lot during this call about how much these systems matter.

You're a little, you can rely on all sorts but all stars don't scale and so that's a real problem if you have all your eggs in a couple people's basket and you've got trying to grow a business that is a very scary place to be so just recognize that you know using another metaphor because this is the thing we see over and over and over again to the point where you know Kathy and I rock in the corner sometimes exhausted but the conversion process is so bad so often it's just I don't know disheartening because we do all the work and all this money and all this time to get that phone to ring and the calls come in through the online and then nobody ever calls them back and it's like no.

Kathy Gaughran

One of the challenges I think with that too to just sort of talk openly about it is that the if they're not answering the phones in a way that's going to allow them to convert these callers the suggestion to do that is calling them out is not doing their job right or well so it's a really

sensitive approach with your staff, because you're essentially telling them you have to do things better when they might be fantastic at their job.

So, it's just the way that I have recommended is to suggest that you call it a phone protocol, never call it a script, but a phone protocol that we think is going to help us convert shopper calls better and help us grow in the direction we want to, but that's really a challenge.

And Stuart and I've seen that over and over and over again with, they, we saw a huge orthopedic group that they were able to identify that they'd lost a half million dollars the year prior, but they would not make change with this staff because this woman, Dolores, had been there for 20 years and nobody wanted to rock her boat, so we get it.

But we just want to really stress the importance of that first engagement. I want that person to sound like they get me.

I want them to sound like this practice is the best place to go, and that can be achieved. It's just amazing.

of getting them in the right rhythm and really making sure that they understand that these calls are a priority.

If that communication doesn't happen, they tend to think shopper calls are trash.

Stewart Gandolf

And we don't like that, right?

Kathy Gaughran

So it's critical they understand the value of the shopper calls.

Stewart Gandolf

I do want to point out too, the model matters a lot. So different businesses like Kathy mentioned the call centers, which we may be talking about more in a minute.

But the model of the business, the way you set this up, the way you train, the way you scale is really important.

Like the idea of, are we going to just, if you have 100 locations, 100 locations freelance, how they do this problem, right?

So not a consistent brand message or experience. And then the other part of it is, you know, today with telehealth, part of it is to talk to a therapist for free or very low cost to establish relationships.

now you're not talking about, excuse me, administrative person, but the therapist, if they're not ever a salesperson, that wouldn't be either.

But to at least understand the principles so they can engage with the pay. which is faster and better or more effectively.

So, within the realms of being ethical, recognize that each of these businesses, whether it's telehealth, residential treatment, or other kinds of models, whatever's doing this and how it was done, you still have to think about these things, what is the right way to engage the patient?

How do we engage them in a way that's ethical, but effective too?

Kathy Gaughran

Right, I have one more slide. So, 13 essentials of behavioral healthcare marketing. This is, I did some research on this and I thought this was a good go-to list to finalize on.

Events to build the community, social media to build awareness, blocking to inform readers, direct mail to reach them at home, search engine optimization to gain visibility, Google My Business Profiles to bring local traffic, sponsor events to reinforce brand recognition, email marketing to Nurture Relationships website to convert PPC to

get results, rep management to build trust, networking to foster relationships and partnerships, and empower your sales team, whatever that looks like, whether it's your internal team answering the phones, whether you have liaisons out in the market, stimulating business from referrals, when patients decide to do business with you, when they decide to become a patient, that is doing business.

That's an exchange of commerce, so that's a close, and that should never also never be looked at as a negative because they need to ignite, and they need to get started somehow.

So, it's important that you build a plan and a strategy and then make sure that you're touching and firing on all pointed opportunities to get that visibility out there so that you're in front of the searches that are happening right now.

We know the demand is big and it's increasing. We know that we're gaining increase on health care insurance coverage for mental health and addiction.

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