What we talked about
Stewart Gandolf explains how Healthcare Success helps healthcare organizations grow through integrated marketing across digital, brand, patient experience, referrals, and PR. He shares why he started the agency in 2006 as a “hobby” after years consulting with small practices, and how early bets on content, blogging, and SEO helped them build the business. Stewart contrasts the past, when many doctors resisted marketing, with today’s more competitive, investment driven landscape shaped by consolidation and private equity.
Show notes
Stewart Gandolf built a 40-person healthcare marketing agency by starting it as a hobby in 2006, betting entirely on content and SEO before anyone in the industry was doing it seriously. Twenty years later, he describes AI search as the single most transformative shift he has seen, and says inbound leads from ChatGPT now convert at a noticeably higher rate than Google leads ever did, because the AI is recommending his firm rather than listing it alongside competitors.
What we covered
- Healthcare Success was started with no clients and no traditional outreach, just a blog and SEO investment at a time when most healthcare organizations thought marketing was inappropriate or unnecessary. Gandolf describes doctors who paid $1,000 to attend his speaking events and then spent the weekend arguing that marketing should be illegal.
- The six growth levers Gandolf uses with every new client: brand strategy, digital marketing, traditional media, patient experience, physician referral programs, and PR. If forced to pick one for the fastest results, he says paid search on Google remains the most predictable driver of new patients.
- AI search is now Healthcare Success’s top service offering. Gandolf notes that ChatGPT usage is growing roughly 20% week over week and is already in the 4–6% range of healthcare searches, with prospects coming in saying “I’ve heard such good things about you”, a level of trust they never saw from organic Google results.
- The most common mistakes he sees healthcare organizations make include hiring at the wrong level (expecting one junior person to handle SEO, design, writing, and paid search simultaneously), ignoring metrics, and failing to notice that competitors are actively building referral networks and winning over their referring physicians.
- Doctor referral programs are a separate and often overlooked growth channel. Specialist practices depend heavily on referrals from primary care physicians, and those relationships are built through dedicated physician liaison staff, not marketing campaigns. Gandolf has seen entire referral bases quietly erode when a competitor moved into the market and started cultivating those relationships directly.
- Brand is the foundation that makes everything else work better: digital marketing, recruiting, referrals, and now AI search visibility. Gandolf points out that brand includes every patient touchpoint, how the phone is answered, how long they wait, how they are followed up with, and that Google reviews, which doctors initially despised, are now essential to how patients choose providers.
About Stewart
Stewart Gandolf is the CEO of Healthcare Success, one of the largest independent healthcare marketing agencies in the United States, with around 40 staff serving multi-location providers, telehealth companies, addiction treatment centers, SaaS companies, device makers, and health systems. He also hosts the Healthcare Success podcast and publishes a blog at healthcaresuccess.com.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartgandolf
- Website: https://healthcaresuccess.com
Episode 119 of the PreVetted Podcast.