Healthcare Marketing Storytelling: SEO and Persuasion Tips — Tips in Ten(ish) Minutes

0:00:06.8 Kirsten Lecky: Well, hello Larry. Welcome to WG Contents: Tips in 10 minutes. I’m so excited to have you here with me today.

0:00:13.6 Larry Bailin: I’m excited to be here.

0:00:14.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. So Larry is, some of you, most of you probably know who Larry is, so he is the CEO of Single Throw Marketing. He is the author of one of the bestselling marketing books: Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From? I actually read that book a long time ago before you and I even met at a conference, and is coming into HCIC as a fourth-time speaker at the conference. So we’ll see him here in the fall. So we’re excited to have him join us today.

0:00:39.4 Larry Bailin: Yeah, I’ve learned that that’s actually a record. There hasn’t been…

0:00:42.0 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:00:42.3 Larry Bailin: Anyone that’s keynoted four times at HCIC.

0:00:45.0 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. Well, it was a really good… Well, it just tells you that whatever you’re saying, is something that people wanna hear. So I think we got a lot of value out of it last time. And I know the topic sounds really interesting for this year, too, so I’m sure you’ll have lots of great feedback, so.

0:00:58.0 Larry Bailin: Yeah and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Great group.

0:01:00.2 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, it is a great group. It’s a lot of fun. One of the things that you and I talked about a few years ago when you last spoke at HCIC I remember we were standing at the booth and I think you and I were talking about the art and science of SEO and good content and striking the right balance between the two. And you made this comment, “It’s not just about being found, it’s about being chosen.” And I’ve used that a lot in conversations, and I always give you credit ’cause I think that’s just real powerful words there. So given today’s challenges with generative search and online tracking challenges and foggy attribution data, perhaps no words have ever been more true for healthcare marketers today, in terms of balancing and striking that right balance between being found and being chosen. So let’s start there. What would you suggest, what kind of tips would you give to our healthcare marketers to maybe… What should they start doing more of, and what should they start doing less of to really get the results that they need to reach their consumers and their patients?

0:02:00.3 Larry Bailin: Sure. 60% of my clients are in healthcare, in various stages in healthcare, whether they’re practitioners or manufacturers, but they’re all in healthcare. And one of the things that they do focus heavily on is getting found. They do all the things. They’re doing their paid search, they’re doing their organic SEO, they’re doing social media, all the things that need to be done. But where it falls short typically is all their competitors are doing those exact same things as well. So you can’t get to a point where whoever has the biggest wallet wins, it’s just not… There’s also relevancy, there’s other pieces that fall into place. So really “get found, get chosen”, came to me because those… I started to determine those are two different skill sets. That getting found and getting chosen are often not the same person that can do both.

0:02:46.8 Larry Bailin: So, getting chosen to me seemed to be the harder of the two, the one that really makes you think, the one where you need expert writers and marketers, and professional persuaders. I’ve become a big fan of saying that everyone in marketing needs to be a professional persuader. So if there’s a muscle that you’re gonna work on and flex, it’s that persuasion muscle. How do I get somebody to do something in that moment? And the very first touch, you mentioned attribution, so the very first touch is where you get the least amount of time with that potential customer.

0:03:18.1 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:03:18.4 Larry Bailin: So, and every time that they take the next step, you get a little more time, a little more time. So we’re fighting not for positioning, but we’re fighting for time. We’re fighting for a little more time to make our case.

0:03:29.8 Larry Bailin: So that means we have to be extremely concise with what we say. And AI is a wonderful tool. It’s extremely helpful and it’s going to be wildly helpful in the future. However, it needs to be infused with someone that’s also a persuader. It’s great at writing quick little… If I need to write a greeting card, I’ll probably do wonderful with just using AI. If I need to persuade a potential customer, I need to… What AI doesn’t know that my customers know, is the mathematics of the perfect customer.

0:04:01.6 Larry Bailin: What’s the formula? What makes them the perfect customer? Average age? Where do they live? What’s important to them? All these things. And then boil that down to a very concise statement that gets them to say, “Oh, okay, I wanna lean forward, I want to take the next step, I’m going to click,” and then what’s the next thing I’m going to say to them?

0:04:21.1 Larry Bailin: Because typically what I find is even if somebody shows up, they’re just not saying anything that’s persuasive. They’re just saying what they wanna say, or talking about their brand or talking about themselves, but they’re not answering the questions that their potential customers have. And questions is that key thing. What are the questions?

0:04:36.4 Kirsten Lecky: Right. Yeah.

0:04:37.8 Larry Bailin: A very simple search for the thing you do, Google will tell you that PAA, people also ask. People also ask these things. These are all the questions. Answer those questions and you’ll start to persuade people more, you’ll start to get that click, you’ll start to show up more because Google wants the right answer there. It all works together, but almost start, kind of a little T. S. Eliot, if we start at the end, that really should be the beginning.

0:05:03.3 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:05:04.1 Larry Bailin: It is what are the questions? What’s my answer?

0:05:07.7 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:05:08.3 Larry Bailin: Another thing I think you’ve probably heard me say is, “People search for the problem, not the solution.”

0:05:13.6 Kirsten Lecky: Yep.

0:05:14.8 Larry Bailin: Because they don’t know what the solution is. So, if you take all that into account, you’re now really fighting to get that click. And it’s really hard nowadays.

0:05:24.0 Kirsten Lecky: So, talk to us a little bit about tips for storytelling. Like, what is the power of a story, and is that part of the equation? I know there’s a lot of information and data out there about even how the brain responds to storytelling. Do you talk about that with your clients and how do you use that in your work?

0:05:39.1 Larry Bailin: We do it to a degree. And you’re a master at that as well from a writing perspective and telling stories and pulling that information out to people. And that’s what we try to do with our clients, is to pull the value propositions, like, “Why do I need you? Why would I say yes to you, and why would I say no to you?” So understanding all of those, those are all elements of your story.

0:06:01.8 Kirsten Lecky: Right.

0:06:02.7 Larry Bailin: I’ve always been a big believer that nothing sells better than a story. If you tell someone a story, they’re leaning forward, they’re engaged, but the critical element is they need to see themselves in the story. They need to see themselves… Stories have beginnings and ends and middles and plots and there’s a flow, there’s a nice flow to a story.

0:06:22.1 Larry Bailin: What’s the story? Again, even what you say, and I keep going back to Google, because you get the least amount of time with someone. You have one sentence, 60-some odd characters, that’s all you get to say a thing. What’s the story? What’s the perfect sentence to say to somebody to get them to take the next step? Because although you do get more time, you can just as easily lose somebody. And then they’re back to a gigantic list, they choose someone else, they never find you again. So getting this wrong, getting this flow wrong, and trying to ask too much of someone, or not giving them what they were looking for in that exact moment, is very detrimental. The…

0:07:01.6 Larry Bailin: One of my favorite examples of how to tell a story or at least how to craft a sentence, is the movie: The Princess Bride.

0:07:09.8 Kirsten Lecky: Oh, great movie.

0:07:10.8 Larry Bailin: Yeah. A great movie. One of my favorites. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word inconceivable, but I’m always looking for an opportunity…

0:07:20.1 Kirsten Lecky: [laughter] yeah.

0:07:20.2 Larry Bailin: But there’s this… There’s one character in “The Princess Bride”, and he, throughout the whole movie, he says this one thing. He says, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.” He says this to almost everyone he meets that he believes is the person that killed his father. He’s on the hunt for that person. That sentence is a masterclass. In telling a very quick story, there is not…

0:07:43.0 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:07:43.1 Larry Bailin: If you took one word out of that sentence or added one word, it would be ineffective.

0:07:47.3 Kirsten Lecky: Right.

0:07:47.3 Larry Bailin: It has four elements that every single sentence needs, every story needs. The first is a greeting, he says, “Hello.” “My name is Inigo Montoya.” So it has an introduction. Three, it has situational relevance, “You killed my father.” Four, there’s an expectation. It ends with the expectation, “Prepare to die.”

0:08:05.4 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:08:05.4 Larry Bailin: That is the most perfect sentence. That’s the most perfect story. It has everything it needs. And again, if you’re gonna tell a story, if you’re gonna put something in front of somebody, it has to be so perfectly crafted that if you take one word out, or added any other word, it will not have the same effect.

0:08:24.0 Kirsten Lecky: Well, I think it also, because it is so short, it goes to your point around just the attention span, right? That we have the attention span of that of a goldfish; is that right?

0:08:33.9 Larry Bailin: That is true.

0:08:35.0 Kirsten Lecky: I think you’re gonna be talking about this at HCIC.

0:08:37.3 Larry Bailin: I am. I can’t say too much about it, but yes. I…

0:08:40.5 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. Anything you wanna share with our audience, teasers, things that we can be thinking about, or prepare for for your topic and your session?

0:08:50.5 Larry Bailin: It’s high awareness marketing strategies in a low attention span world. It’s a fascinating topic because it has a lot to do with evolution. It’s the evolution of the consumer. And when people say eight-second attention span, that’s typically attributed to Gen Z. And they do, it’s eight seconds. That is the exact same attention span as a goldfish. And although that sounds funny when you attribute the two together, there is a dramatic difference between those two things. There’s a dramatic attention span, that eight seconds that Gen Z has is so finely tuned. They are heads-down focused. They make decisions very very quickly. So that whole thing about getting to the point or “The Princess Bride” structure of a sentence, it is incredibly important. It is the reason that you’re seeing short-form content explode.

0:09:49.0 Kirsten Lecky: Got it.

0:09:49.1 Larry Bailin: And when you’re bombarded with thousands of messages a day, it’s an amazing skill set to have. And we all are developing and flexing that muscle. We’re all growing that muscle to be quicker at making decisions and getting… Wherever, the quickest is saying no to things. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes.

0:10:07.7 Kirsten Lecky: Right, right.

0:10:08.0 Larry Bailin: No, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, so one mistake is a no, and it could be a no forever.

0:10:13.9 Kirsten Lecky: Right.

0:10:14.5 Larry Bailin: Imagine if somebody chooses your competitor over you and they stay with your competitors, especially in healthcare, you don’t change providers all that often unless they make a mistake. Same thing with accountants and lawyers. Until an accountant pisses you off or makes a mistake, you’re gonna stay with that accountant. You’re gonna stay with your healthcare provider until… So you could lose that customer conceivably forever.

0:10:36.0 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:10:36.0 Larry Bailin: One misstep of not getting that story right.

0:10:41.2 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. So if you had to distill, ’cause I know you have a lot of knowledge and a lot of subject matter expertise to share, what would be like just one tip today that you could share with healthcare marketers to help them just in their strategies and in their efforts in reaching their consumers?

0:10:56.8 Larry Bailin: The thing I ask every single one of my clients. Once someone engages with our marketing firm for whatever it is, SEO, digital marketing, whatever type of marketing they need that we’re doing, no matter what type of business it is, I ask them the same… We sit down and try to figure out one thing.

0:11:13.5 Kirsten Lecky: Okay.

0:11:13.9 Larry Bailin: The mathematics of the perfect customer. So that Goldilocks customer center of the bullseye.

0:11:19.6 Kirsten Lecky: Yep.

0:11:19.9 Larry Bailin: Now, there’s many formulas because not every customer that you want to engage with is the center of the bullseye. I do want things that are left and right of center, top and bottom, maybe even on the outside edge of the dartboard. But there’s math, there’s formulas that go with that. What makes the person the center of the bullseye? ’cause if you’re gonna target somebody and you’re gonna work on messaging and you’re gonna put that messaging in front of someone, I need to know who that is. You need to know who that is. And it’s very…

0:11:45.4 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:11:45.4 Larry Bailin: It’s always surprising that… They really have to think about the math. They have to think about what that formula looks like.

0:11:50.6 Larry Bailin: Okay. Well, they’re this percentage male. If they’re male, they have a family, they’re this age, this is what they do for a living, this is where they live, here’s how active they’re, that’s a formula. When we understand that formula that’s targetable, that… And I also start to know what’s important to that particular person. I can create the math that expands it out. So what I would… My advice is always try to figure out the mathematics of the perfect customer, and then move to the slightly less perfect customer and slightly less, and adjust your marketing accordingly to that.

0:12:24.8 Kirsten Lecky: And revisit that too.

0:12:26.3 Larry Bailin: Oh, 100%.

0:12:28.1 Kirsten Lecky: Because it’s gonna change, but it’s been a good conversation.

0:12:30.4 Larry Bailin: It has.

0:12:31.0 Kirsten Lecky: And I know you have a lot more to share. And you’ll be with us at HCIC, so, I’m sure everyone will be excited to see you again. And, I appreciate you taking some time today to sit with us and talk about some tips.

0:12:41.9 Larry Bailin: No, thanks for inviting me on the show, and I look forward to seeing you in person again.

0:12:46.6 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:12:46.7 Larry Bailin: And looking forward to being at HCIC. It’s one of my favorite shows.

0:12:49.7 Kirsten Lecky: All right, sounds good. We’ll see you.