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.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Stuart Gandolf, his CEO of Healthcare Success, one of the most trusted healthcare marketing agencies in the US. Stuart has spent nearly two decades leading teams that help healthcare organization grow, patient volume,
Stewart Gandolf (00:10) you
Federico Ramallo (00:27) strengthen referrals, improve payer mix, and expand into new markets through data-driven marketing and measurable ROI. His work spans multi-location providers, telehealth, hospital, manufacturers, and pharma. He’s also a keynote speaker, author, and podcast host, known for turning complex healthcare marketing into practical playbooks that executives and clinicians can actually use. Stuart, welcome to the show.
Stewart Gandolf (00:55) Good, good bio and I didn’t write that so good job.
took me to work easy.
Federico Ramallo (01:00) Yeah, I I think that as a doer, right, it’s nice to hear all your accolades from somebody else, right? So that’s, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stewart Gandolf (01:10) Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Very good.
Well, excited to go through this today. So, leave me in Frederico and I will give you my best answers.
Federico Ramallo (01:19) Great, great, I’m honored to have you here today. So can you describe what healthcare success does and who does it serve?
Stewart Gandolf (01:28) Sure, so our company is Healthcare Success, is a leading healthcare marketing agency. When I say leading, I think we’re pretty well respected and for an independent we’re large. There’s definitely agencies bigger than us by a lot, but in terms of being independent, we’re one of the largest independent agencies that are out there. And so we have about 40 people. We work with multi-location providers. We work especially addiction, telehealth, you know.
all kinds of different specialties. We work with SaaS companies, device companies, some health systems. It’s a pretty broad mix. And most of our clients are looking to get patients. Some of them are looking for more doctor referrals. Some are looking for branding. It’s pretty varied. We’ll talk about this more as we get into it. But really, we’re a marketing agency, full service, integrated agency, which means we have to be great at everything, which is hard to do.
But I’ll describe that more as we get into this.
Federico Ramallo (02:23) Right, it’s becoming a jack of all trades, right? It’s challenging.
Stewart Gandolf (02:26) Yeah, like, well,
it’s a good way of looking at it. I we’ve been doing this for 20 years. And so to do what we do is people hire us because what we do is complex. It’s complicated. And they want a team that can do this. They’re not looking for something that’s very simple. They want a marketing partner. And so we just signed, you know, a multi-billion dollar corporation a couple of weeks ago that that’s what they want. They want the strategy. They want the email. They want to know they’ve got experts at every level.
And so there’s really in the world of agencies, there’s two basic models on this category. One is we just do this and that’s all we do. It scales well. We ask about that other stuff, go, la la la la la la la. I don’t want to know anything about it. The other agency says, we’ll do it, but to have the team that can actually pull it off is difficult. And it’s, have to be careful that you hire an agency that has the team to do it. Otherwise, you know, they’re trying to figure it out ahead of you. It’s not a good way to go. So today.
Federico Ramallo (03:06) Right.
Stewart Gandolf (03:21) You know, after many years of doing this, have a very strong team that can do most of what our clients want and everything they can try to score.
Federico Ramallo (03:29) Right, right, very interesting. So what problem push you to start this company?
Stewart Gandolf (03:36) I’m unemployable. I’m teasing. I’ve just always been an entrepreneur and some ways I was unemployable. I was always a good employee when I was an employee, but I always felt like I wanted to do my own thing. And, the, really tried to be a win-win guy, even when I was working for other employers. So I did a good job for that, but eventually this company came about as a hobby. So we, I was.
Federico Ramallo (03:38) Hahaha!
Stewart Gandolf (04:02) I was consulting on the road for about 10 years with little and average size practices. A doctor, two doctors, three doctors, a 10-doctor practice would have been really big for us back then. And over time, I became VPN marketing. I was a speaker. I was all around the country. And so I got really good at it, but then I got bored. And so 10 years after doing that, I quit.
But I hated leaving that experience, even though I was doing other stuff profitably, and it was fun to do new stuff. I was really, really had unique experience that you can’t get any other way. So I started this company as a hobby in 2006. We started out very small, my partner and me, and we took the company, we started it off with SEO before anybody was doing that. We started a blog before anybody was doing that.
I mean, it was around, but people weren’t doing it very effectively. And it was an experiment. Can I create an agency with nothing more than good content and good SEO? And we did, and we’re here 20 years later. Not the usual way to do it. And nobody thought we could do it that way, but we did.
Federico Ramallo (04:59) Right.
Right, right. Yeah, I I understand the joke about being unemployed, mean, unemployable, right? I think that at a certain point that happens because you outgrow any full-time employment role, right? So it makes sense to start your own practice.
Stewart Gandolf (05:09) Yeah.
Well, like the, when I started this company as a hobby, I was the equivalent of a chief, a fractional chief marketing officer. So I was back then, I was actually had the title vice president of marketing for three different companies all at once, which is, know, fun and profitable, very unstable, but you know, it worked. But as I completed those various projects, I was what I want to do next. And I think that the,
I look at it, I just got off the phone with a, or just got off a podcast with a chief marketing officer from a large hospital system. And as I’m talking to him, I think, wow, I don’t think I could do that anymore because politics and all the things you have to do that are beyond the marketing, to not be in charge would be hard for me. I’ve just been used to being in charge for so long. That’s a job that is a really hard job. Being a chief marketing officer, if you’re an independent, because you have to…
negotiate with so many stakeholders. You have to negotiate with the CEO, the CFO, the doctors, all these different people. So I really respect that. That’s why one of the reasons why I was joking about being unemployable. I like running the ship. I like doing it my way. I just do, frankly. Yeah, I just do.
Federico Ramallo (06:27) Right, Yeah,
the level of independence you can have as an independent agency is much bigger than, you know.
Stewart Gandolf (06:35) Yeah, but
you work like a dog, right? So the thing is, if you have that independence and it’s your own business, if it’s of scale, there are people that are really good at just making it into a company where everybody else does the work. And I have a fantastic team, but it is a lot of work. Like that’s the thing nobody tells you. Like there’s a lot to this. But I wouldn’t trade it. Like I said, once I took the control of the company, I love being in that position. It makes me happy.
Federico Ramallo (06:59) Right, right. And you can kind of shape your own future, right? You can shape your own destiny,
Stewart Gandolf (07:00) Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And that’s really part of it. And so, you know, we’re coming up on our 20th anniversary and I was interviewed today about that. Today’s been a really big interview day. I’ve had two podcasts, one interview and now we’re talking. That’s the fourth interview kind of thing I’ve been on today. But the interview is for press about our 20th anniversary. And there, you know, like the thing is really it’s all about being able to pivot, being able to change from one thing to the other as the marketplace changed.
We had to change. And so we’ve changed in major ways. Every year we change some, some years more than others. Right now we’re in the middle of one of our biggest changes ever in 20 years by embracing AI, by scaling up bigger clients. In the agency business as you bring in bigger clients, people don’t understand this, you’re also bringing in more complexity, higher demands. So there’s more revenue, but there’s more work. It’s harder. So.
We are in the middle of one of those periods of just a lot of change and good change, but it’s a lot of change for sure.
Federico Ramallo (08:03) Right, right. And the thing I learned through running my own agencies, being able to delegate and learning that nobody in the company is going to work as hard as a founder, right? And being…
Stewart Gandolf (08:15) Right. And
you’ll have to accept that there’ll be mistakes. And I mean, it’s not like I’m perfect, right? I mean, I make mistakes too, but not very often and they’re not usually bad. the… So, you know, I delegated something to one of my senior people on the weekend and it got done 50 % of what we discussed. That’s frustrating, but that’s part of being in a business. You can’t do everything. And like, if you try, you’ll burn out and…
Federico Ramallo (08:26) Hahaha
Stewart Gandolf (08:42) everything will just sort of wobble. So you need a strong leadership team, but humans are not perfect. So you have to figure that out and you have to figure out what matters for your time. And also I would say most entrepreneurs have stuff they like doing and tend to gravitate toward that and stuff they hate doing and tend to grab away from that. Fortunately, the stuff that I enjoy and gravitate toward is high value and is what CEOs usually should be doing. So CEOs at an agency at least should usually be doing
you know, the strategy, the thought leadership, the relationship building and the marketing. And, you know, other people should be, you know, managing clients on a day-to-day basis. Other clients should be leading the SEO a lot. But if you’re an SEO guy by background and that’s what you want to do, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself doing SEO all day. But that’s not what the company needs from a CEO. So it’s important that the CEO has, you know, the right skill set for the job.
and that they’re spending their time on the right stuff if you’re trying to build a business. If you’re trying to build a consultancy, you don’t need to. Like if you want to be a handful of people and be the expert in the room, then yeah, you can do that. But you don’t really have a business, you have a lifestyle business, and it’s really difficult to sell that too someday.
Federico Ramallo (09:55) Right, because everything depends on you. And if you’re not there, then the company is not billing. So it’s a glorified job, right?
Stewart Gandolf (09:58) Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It’s a harder job, but it’s still a job. I totally agree. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (10:05) Right. Right.
mean, even though you have an LLC or whatever in the middle, but still a job, Right.
Stewart Gandolf (10:13) So what
else would you like to know?
Federico Ramallo (10:15) So you talk a little bit about what feels most different about healthcare marketing today compared when you started.
Stewart Gandolf (10:23) That’s a good question. First of all, when I started a long time ago, healthcare in the US is very different. It was mostly independent practices. there was that. Number two, most independent practices or doctors thought that marketing should be illegal. They hated the idea. So people would spend $1,000 to come and see me speak and then argue with me all weekend about what you can’t do. I’m like, wait a minute, you came to see me speak. Why are you here if you don’t want to do this?
Federico Ramallo (10:39) Haha.
Stewart Gandolf (10:50) So was a really funny time. I used to spend a lot of time, and when I was back in the old days when I started this, just trying to make people feel okay with marketing at all. And the idea that you would invest money in marketing was like, wait, $100? I can’t spend $100. Like, no, you can just spend a lot more than that. So it was a very different marketplace. Today, I think most doctors, not all, but most doctors are open to marketing, especially younger doctors. They want to market.
The healthcare landscapes changed. When we were doing what we were doing back in the 90s, nobody was doing it. We were like the company that did marketing for individual doctors. I wasn’t aware of anybody else. If there was anybody, they weren’t of scale. When the internet came out, over time, lots of little guys came out, and big guys too, but especially little guys, targeting a specific niche within healthcare. And so we’d see agencies specializing in
I don’t know, dentist or orthodontist or whatever, and they might have a hundred dentists and they’re managing them all with these contracts of a few thousand dollars a month. And that’s a very, you know, it be a really good business, but it’s not what I wanted to do at all. And so that’s changed. so I say also in the U.S. we have private equity investment, that’s changed. And we have a lot of scaled organizations, that’s huge. So.
you know, businesses that are owned by private equity, but you know, think like business people, they want to make money. They’re open to spending money on marketing. They think about data, which is very different than where we used to be. So it’s much more investment driven, savvier, more competitive. I should say the, Federico, the, just because they’re large doesn’t mean they want to spend money on marketing. So
You really don’t know an organization until you know the organization. Some are willing to spend nothing, some are willing to spend a lot, some are very conservative, some are very aggressive. It just depends on the situation.
Federico Ramallo (12:43) Right, right. But it’s the perception of marketing is very subjective for each company, even big ones, right? ⁓
Stewart Gandolf (12:50) Yeah, because
some think that marketing is a really vital thing they need to do well. Others don’t think about it at all. Like we have a big client in the physical therapy realm and the CEO told us early on, like up until today, all we’d ever spent money on is lunches. So it’s like they’re just not used to spending money on marketing. Whereas other businesses, it’s like breathing air. It’s like, of course we market, we have to, that’s what we do to exist. So it varies a lot.
Federico Ramallo (13:15) Right, right. So when a health care organization says we need more patients, what’s what’s what’s your plan or proposal?
Stewart Gandolf (13:24) Well, like when we talk, first of all, when we’re speaking to a prospective new client, patients could be what they want, but they may want a lot of things. And so we start off with saying, there’s really six ways to grow any healthcare business. And so they are, number one, the whole brand and brand strategy, brand messaging, brand design is a category. Number two is digital marketing, which is where most people are interested in the day. Number three is traditional media like advertising or like TV, radio.
billboards. Number four is like the patient experience. How do you communicate with existing patients? Number five is how do you get doctor referrals? And number six is generating public relations and press. So, but if you ask like, well, if you had to pick one strategy that generates patients the fastest in most instances, it would be paid search. So I’m not saying paid search is the only strategy. I’m not saying it’s right for your listeners. I’m saying that if you had to pick one,
That was the right answer most of the time. Paid search on Google is currently the place to go for the fastest, most predictable result.
Federico Ramallo (14:25) Right.
Right, right. And how local are the patients? I think we kind of talked before camera about that, right? ⁓
Stewart Gandolf (14:38) Yeah, like patients,
well, first of all, it’s changing. So patients are still using Google ads in the billions and billions of dollars a month. They’re still spending a lot of money on Google. So I’m sorry, the patients aren’t spending money, but the sponsors of the ads are spending money. So patients are using Google ads a lot. Patients also go to Google profile, which is free to the company.
Google are also now though using Google AI Overviews, Chat GPT, and Gemini and other AI engines. And so again, today, as we’re talking, it’s still Google Ads with the primary driver for a commedia revenue. Over time, that’s going to change. It still will be important, but the share of people looking up on, like for example, Chat GPT is skyrocketing. It’s still small overall.
maybe four or 6%, but it’s growing like 20 % a week. So it’s it’s, know, 4%, then 5%, then 6%. So it’s growing and eventually it’ll be a very dominant force. And people are very interested in this market because it’s all changing for us. And then in terms of your actual specific location question, you know, it depends on what they need. If it’s something like really, really routine, people don’t wanna drive more than a couple of miles.
If it’s life saving cancer surgery, they’ll fly to another country. But most search is very local for sure. Like five miles in kilometers, what is that? Seven and a half kilometers or something.
Federico Ramallo (15:57) Right.
Right, right. It’s just, you know, 10, 10 minutes driving or, you know, something like that. Yeah, it’s it’s funny. I mean, sorry, I diverted a little bit here, but I’m from Argentina and we used to measure things in in kilometers, right. Or, you know, in the US miles. But here in Mexico, people talk about distance in minutes, you know. So they say, oh, 10.
Stewart Gandolf (16:13) Yeah.
I thought Los Angeles.
Where in Argentina were you from?
Federico Ramallo (16:38) So I was born in Buenos Aires and I grew up in Gran Buenos Aires, which are the suburbs outside of the city.
Stewart Gandolf (16:43) So
you have an Italian accent when you speak Spanish, or is that a different part of our?
Federico Ramallo (16:48) Well,
actually I grew up on the largest Italian community outside of Italy.
Stewart Gandolf (16:54) Okay, interesting. because I love the Italian… Sounds like Italian. It’s very specific. But not all of them, a lot of them for sure. From the Italian input.
Federico Ramallo (16:56) So, you ⁓
Yes, yes.
Lots
of passion, yes.
Stewart Gandolf (17:10) Yes, yes, I haven’t been there yet. I’ve been to
Colombia, but I’ve never been to Argentina, but someday someday.
Federico Ramallo (17:17) You should go, it’s beautiful. And I can recommend places to go. And it was…
Stewart Gandolf (17:19) Yeah. ⁓
That’d be good. I’m going to Spain
this year. We’re going to go to Spain for a month or two. So that’s going be fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (17:28) nice. Very nice. So my
what I understand and I don’t know if this is true because I haven’t been there that Buenos Aires is like Barcelona. You know, they have this arch, you know, the architecture, you know, I don’t know. mean, I know a lot of Italians, Spanish, Germans, you know, my my family or my mother’s side, they’re Polish. So.
Stewart Gandolf (17:39) Hahaha!
Federico Ramallo (17:52) I’m Polish as well. mean, a lot of people from different parts of the world, they migrated to Argentina. we have a very…
Stewart Gandolf (18:00) When did
you move from Argentina to Mexico? How old were you?
Federico Ramallo (18:05) So I moved when I was 30, 28, 29. Yeah, yeah, And so I was old enough, right? But…
Stewart Gandolf (18:09) ⁓ even though I’m trying to, OK. All right, very interesting. OK. ⁓
Federico Ramallo (18:20) But yeah, Argentine economy was really bad. They were applying tariffs to my services. And I was like, yeah, I have to find other places, right? And now I’m a Mexican citizen and it’s being a great economy, great country. I met my wife here and created our family here. I have a lot of appreciation for Mexico.
Stewart Gandolf (18:40) small world. Malaga
in Spain, I’ve already met somebody in the agency business that was from here that now lives in Malaga. He was actually, no, think he was from Argentina too. He was from Argentina. He moved here for years and now that he’s getting closer to retiring, he lives in Malaga. So fun fact. So yeah. Anyway, what else would you like to, what else can I tell you about marketing for healthcare? Happy to give you some thoughts.
Federico Ramallo (18:57) Nice, nice, very nice.
Yeah, sorry, we kind of digress, but it’s fine.
Stewart Gandolf (19:06) That’s what podcasts are for you’re allowed. It’s your podcast you do whatever you want
You make your own rules.
That’s what I tell people. Like, look, this is my podcast. I’ll do it however I want to. So it’s the way to do it.
Federico Ramallo (19:20) Right, right. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun doing this podcast because we can, you know, we can talk about anything and everything, right? Yeah. So anyway, going back to topic, what are the most common growth mistakes you see clinics or health systems make?
Stewart Gandolf (19:28) Yeah. Yep. Yep.
There’s a couple. First of all, if they’re smaller and less sophisticated, a lot of times they will either A, not invest in marketing at all. They only look at the cost of what stuff costs. They don’t think about the return on investment. That’s a very, from the first days I’ve done this through today, that happens. I they could be getting, so I’d say that’s first. The second thing that’s really common is hiring at the wrong level. So they might hire a chief marketing officer.
when they really need someone to do stuff, or they might hire a very low level person when they need somebody more strategic. So that is really, really, really common. They often will hire somebody very junior and expect them to be an excellent web designer, writer, SEO expert, paid search expert, logo designer, publicist, and by the way, drop off bagels to the doctor’s office when you have free time. Like it’s insane. So that’s a really common.
to hire the wrong person, the wrong title, the wrong job description. The final thing would be probably to not look at metrics. So we see that a lot as well. And they may do all of these things. mean, marketing in healthcare is not well understood. It’s often not respected. So, you know, on the other hand, what happens, I’d say one last thing. They underestimate their competitors. So, you know, the…
Let’s say a given organization just decides, I don’t believe in marketing and they just don’t even open their eyes to what’s going on around them. Meanwhile, their competitors do believe in marketing. They’re eating their lunch. They’re taking their business and you know, if they’re not, if they’re not even considering marketing, they have no idea the damage that’s even being done to their business. And they wake up someday, wait, what happened to all of our new clients? And you know, it’s like healthcare in the U S is complicated like it is everywhere, but probably more complicated here.
often unnecessarily so. So it’s not easy to attribute anything to anything specific. So they may not notice any difference at all for a long time, but certainly do I want my competitor to, do I want to show up when they’re searching for services or my competitor? Do I want them to think highly of me or my competitor? Do I want the patient or not? So I think that there’s oftentimes very much misunderstood
Federico Ramallo (21:45) You
Stewart Gandolf (21:50) what’s involved, how much should I fund, who do I need? And like I said, not only do they often hire the wrong person too low, they often hire the wrong person too high. So they hire a marketing, chief of marketing officer for a lot of money and they expect them to do everything. I was like, no, no, no, they just buy other people. Your expenses have just begun. Now you have to go buy a team, now you have to go buy an agency. And so the…
misinformed can spin it and get into a real problem pretty fast for sure. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (22:21) Right, right.
And being so local, as you said, it does become a zero sum game. Either one company wins or the other one wins that new client, right, or patient.
Stewart Gandolf (22:31) Yeah,
absolutely. So there is a battle going on quietly every day in the providers locations, whether they know it or not. That’s the thing. you know, like there can be another thing that happens sometimes is, you know, a company will come in to a marketplace and they’ll have a very skilled, they’re called physician liaisons, but their job is to get referrals from doctors. And so they’ll come in and find all the high referring offices and wine and dine them.
And the person that all these doctors are referring to doesn’t even know this is happening until suddenly they got a lot less referrals and like, well this other group moved in and I thought it would be good to try them too. And they’re doing a pretty good job. like, then they’re like unarmed. The whole market has changed. They don’t even know it. So yeah, those are very common things we see all the time.
Federico Ramallo (23:17) Right, right. Yeah, and I think that’s where you can come in and guide them where they should spend their money to be more effective, right? And be able to achieve their goals.
Stewart Gandolf (23:29) Absolutely. And another thing that we help them with, like most to do the stuff we do is pretty difficult to hire in-house. Like some companies will, they’ll have 20, 30 people in their marketing department, but that’s more the exception of the rule. so a lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll hire the expertise we have from our team on sort of a fractional basis. So for about the cost of an employee or two, you’re getting access to 10.
you’re able to reach the people that you need and then the services that you need change over time. Well, with an agency, it’s all the same groups. We just reformat it. like, yeah, that’s our job is to help lead our clients and have unsurpassed expertise at what we do. Like our job is to know what everybody’s doing and to be the absolute best. And if we’re not doing that, we’re failing. So we try really hard to stay ahead.
Federico Ramallo (24:19) Right, right. Yeah. And the timing advice becomes much more significant when you have this complex system between the market and the processes to implement the marketing, then, you know, and the budget associated with that and the impact that could happen or they could miss, as we talk about, right? So…
know, having the strategy becomes much more significant, right? Because it could be the difference between having a lot of revenue or not, right?
Stewart Gandolf (24:49) Yeah, for sure. you know, the, but I mentioned earlier, I this might be interesting to you and your listeners. There’s not always more patients they need. Like they may have, especially at multiple locations, they may have one location that’s slow, but they need to, they want to boost services in certain locations. So maybe they have plenty of locations, but they’re not spending anything. So it’s sometimes, or they’re not coming back, or sometimes we want to increase our brand awareness.
or sometimes wanna get more doctor referrals. So while usually more patients is a primary objective, it’s not always, it depends on the situation.
Federico Ramallo (25:24) I see. That’s interesting. I haven’t thought about multi-location. I don’t have to call it franchise. Maybe that’s not the right name, right?
Stewart Gandolf (25:33) Yeah, it
can be. Usually not in healthcare, but they can be. they may have some of these businesses now have a thousand locations. It’s all owned by the same company and the doctors at each location is a partner. So if you think about the work we do, what we’re doing is we are, we don’t have one client, we have a thousand clients. So we have to figure out how to scale and service it and, you know, give the amount of marketing love and budget towards the ones that need it and less towards the other ones.
Federico Ramallo (25:52) Right.
Stewart Gandolf (26:00) And so that’s all, that’s where this gets really complex fast, where you have, you know, a client with many locations, many different services. Sometimes they could have franchises. Sometimes they have customers. Like I just got an inquiry this morning from a large hearing aid manufacturer and they want us to help their clients. So I haven’t talked to them yet. I don’t know what they have in mind, but that’s even different. That would be not just one client, but many clients with many different locations.
So it gets complicated pretty easily. So it’s very important to have a process or processes to manage this business so that you can do it profitably and effectively for the client. Because a lot of companies fail because they jump into these complicated spaces, but they don’t have a team behind them to service the work and then it just crumbles. So you don’t want to do that.
Federico Ramallo (26:48) Right. Yeah. And the level of complexity creates a delay, right? So between the input and the output, and if you run to it…
Stewart Gandolf (26:52) Yeah, yes.
Well, but it could also be
mistakes. one of our clients we’re talking to now, our prospect of the clients came to us because their ad agency went a month spending all their money for their campaign on the wrong Facebook ad. So, and then the client found it, which is unforgivable. So they made good on it, but it’s the beginning of the end. And so that kind of mistake will kill the relationship in an instant. you know, it’s like, and the
When you’re buying digitally, the mistakes could be incredibly expensive. know, like some of these big advertisers may spend 10,000, $20,000 or more a month on paid search. So if they’re sending it to the wrong page, that’s a problem, right? That’s really a problem. So it can be a lot of money wasted fast. So yeah, the time is a big deal. And it’s also healthcare as your reputation. So a lot of things in healthcare, the reputation is also really important.
Federico Ramallo (27:40) Right.
Stewart Gandolf (27:52) and being factually correct. And in the age of AI, that’s even more important. So, you know, again, it’s just a specialized firm. Everybody has specialization, right? But within what we do, you know, the regulations, how do you scale it? How do you get the messaging right? You know, I was telling my CFO this morning, I reminded him, hey, what we do here is hard. This isn’t easy. You need very smart people and good processes and good technology to do this correctly. It’s not a simple business.
it’s exceedingly difficult. It took me 20 years, right? So.
Federico Ramallo (28:19) Right.
Right. I
think that’s your competitive advantage, Your level as expertise, nobody else has it, right?
Stewart Gandolf (28:26) Yeah.
It is true, that expertise really helps and it helps in winning clients and it helps with AI and search. right now we are getting record numbers of searches or inquiries from AI. And when they get inquiries from AI, they’re not just inquiring, they’re saying, I want to hire you because people have higher trust and what the AI is telling them than they did on Google. When Google gave them a list of options, AI is saying, you need to talk to this company. So it’s a different kind of conversation.
I mean, seriously, we got prospects calling us saying, I can’t wait to talk to you. I’ve heard such good things about you. So it’s like, it’s a big deal.
Federico Ramallo (29:03) ⁓
Right. Right. And you build a reputation through years.
Stewart Gandolf (29:07) Yeah.
Yeah, and you can screw it up really quickly. So we’ve tried very hard to maintain a good reputation. know, it’s what we have. It’s all we have. It’s what I’ve invested in all this my life into for the last 20 years since my kids were babies, right? They’re in college now. So it’s been a long time. the, you know, developing. But I think in anything people do, if you’re trying to be
in business, like you should shoot for the very best because even if you miss it, you’re still good enough. But if you’re shooting for average, you won’t survive. Average restaurants go out of business. Even good restaurants go out right? Average agencies go out of business. Like it’s, you have to be really, really good to survive, in my opinion, what I’ve seen.
Federico Ramallo (29:55) Right. And are you also helping your clients to do AI SEO, you know, getting on to the child’s GPT recommendations?
Stewart Gandolf (30:03) Yeah, that’s our number one thing. a couple days ago, I interviewed on my podcast, the guy who this book, he’s a leader in the industry. You know, we compare notes constantly, but that is our number one service right now is AI driven SEO for sure. It’s the number one thing we do. And that’s what everybody’s interested in. And it’s what we do really well.
Federico Ramallo (30:25) Amazing, amazing.
So let’s talk a little bit about referrals. It’s a big deal when you get a referral from a doctor, right? What are the ways to strengthen doctor referrals today?
Stewart Gandolf (30:38) So just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. in US healthcare and probably other places too, the primary care provider is kind of like the gatekeeper. People go to the primary care provider, the family doctor, and they say they do most of your work. Then all of sudden one day they’re, ooh, I don’t know what that is. That looks scary. You should go see a specialist. And so they refer them to a dermatologist, a gastroenterologist or whatever. So when that happens,
The doctor referrals are largely based, clinical competency is assumed. So doctor referrals are based on relationships of trust that are built over time. And so, but there’s a lot of factors that can influence who they refer to. And so that’s a whole area of expertise most people never think about, which is how to get doctors to refer to your practice. How do they get doctors to, usually general practitioners, how do you get them to refer to your business?
And so when we do that, we support those efforts through digital advertising, targeting those doctors. But usually there’s people on the ground who that’s their job is to build professional referrals. And so they drop into doctors’ offices. I don’t know if they have this in Mexico, but like we have pharmaceutical reps that’ll go to doctors’ offices to get them to prescribe. And in the same way, they will drop into doctors’ offices to get them to refer to another.
Federico Ramallo (32:04) Right, yeah, I mean, here you have these, well, different practices, right? But one of them is you go to a general generalist that refers you to a specialist, right? A similar system that you explained, And then you have…
you have these low cost doctors that are 20 bucks a consult, which is really great when you have the flu or something that you know it’s kind of easy to fix, right? So you can get a prescription and then you can get the generic alternative of the medicine, of the drugs. So… ⁓
Stewart Gandolf (32:42) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (32:45) So you get a really low cost of healthcare, right? Because a lot of people don’t have healthcare insurance, right? So that covers, you know. And then you have the payroll healthcare insurance, which is slow, busy, so, you know.
Even people that has that service available, they prefer to go to the cheap, generic doctor because it’s easy, faster and whatnot. And then in Argentina, we’re talking about Argentina before, they have a different system where instead of healthcare insurance, which is, you
The risk, we manage the risk when you’re broke, when you’re sick, right? ⁓ It’s a prepaid medicine where everybody pay and then you get access to all of the services. And then for anything that is non-critical, something that it’s optional, right? Then you have a waiting period, right? And then you unlock through the time you unlock it. And then the employer can call
Stewart Gandolf (33:25) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (33:45) pay 60, 80, 90 percent of that healthcare system. I think it’s a little bit better because instead of paying when you’re broke, their business model is committed to make sure that you stay healthy. So they provide checkups and…
Stewart Gandolf (34:04) it.
Federico Ramallo (34:04) analysis and whatnot because they want to keep you healthy because it’s better for the business model for them, It’s lower the cost for them, right? So it’s a different ⁓ mindset, I guess.
Stewart Gandolf (34:13) Yep. We have that in this
called value-based care, there’s a much we could talk about that for days. There’s a system like that here, but it’s where, you know, and there was something called the Affordable Care Act, which is known as Obamacare. And it’s kind of gone through a whole bunch of, it’s a long, long, long, long, long, long discussion.
Federico Ramallo (34:24) interesting.
Hahaha
Stewart Gandolf (34:38) At the core, that is keep people healthy, they don’t get sick, therefore there’s less cost. So it exists, it just isn’t. But what we call going for patients in the traditional way is called people service. And that still predominates healthcare. It’s like it’s much more prevalent in terms of cost. But it grows slowly, the other kind, but it’s definitely slow. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (34:58) Right, right. I mean, I think that’s a…
it’s a whole different philosophical approach to medicine, right? you know, I tend to, I mean, coming from Argentina and experiencing here this other system, I kind of prefer the prepaid healthcare because, you know, it’s, I mean, I haven’t experienced myself the Obamacare, so I don’t know, but, you know, this system in Argentina
Stewart Gandolf (35:06) Yeah.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (35:26) were great, right? Because you did, you was less friction to get healthy, right?
Stewart Gandolf (35:32) Yeah, I agree. But here it’s so complicated. There’s so many people involved, particularly insurance companies. there is a massive, massive amount of administration that has to go into it. Before we wrap up, let’s talk about something else that we talked about before. ⁓ You asked about the brand side of things. And I thought that might be a little bit interesting to talk about. We talked about some of the things that we get involved with. You know, our agency does
Federico Ramallo (35:49) sure.
Stewart Gandolf (35:59) all the digital services like paid search, paid social, programmatic, CTV, all of it. We do SEO, we do content and branding and traditionally, really almost anything that’s involved with marketing we do. But the brand part is something that, you know, some businesses really don’t think much about branding at all. Others think like about nothing else.
But the brand really is the center of everything. So if you have a good brand, the brand, by the way, includes more than just the logo and the name and the colors. The brand is every experience the consumer has with the provider. So if you start building a strong brand and you have that as a basis, everything else is easier. Your digital marketing is better. Your recruiting of patients is better. Your recruiting of doctors is better.
And even now today, your search on AI is better. So the brand, which, you know, a lot of people aren’t focused on the brand and we do branding. We’re not a brand agency. There are brand agencies that do nothing but that. It’s a big part of what we do, but it’s not all we do. But I think that’s something that might be interesting to your audience is that it all begins with a brand. Like the lead generation, the getting people to call because it’s just so much easier.
Would you go to a national health system that you’ve heard over many, many times or some guy? Everything else being equal. Chances are you’ll go to the, especially if it’s serious. Like now, if it’s not serious and like you mentioned $20 or something, then you’ll go to almost anybody. But if it’s serious, generally people will want a better established brand because they know they have something to lose.
Federico Ramallo (37:19) Right.
And the same thing applies for, you mentioned that, is the experience of every touch point. So even a bad design on the website doesn’t work great on mobile, or it has a typo, are you going to go to that doctor or a doctor that has attention to detail on their website, right?
Stewart Gandolf (37:55) All of it, the website’s important, how the phone is answered is the biggest thing that everybody struggles with. How do they check in? What does the place look like? What does it smell like? Are they nice to you? How long do have to wait? How do they follow up with you? How do they treat you? All of it, it’s all important and it’s all marketing and that’s another big change. In healthcare, nobody, when I started doing healthcare marketing, nobody was doing ratings at all and in fact, when ratings first became available,
I was being interviewed a lot. Like what do doctors say about this? I’m like, they hate it. But Google loves reviews, loves reviews, patients love reviews, get over it. It’s here to stay. And they didn’t want to hear that, but it was the truth. And I was right because Google loves ratings, patients love ratings. So all of it matters and that’s what makes it unique. But if you do it well, then it gives you a big advantage in the marketplace.
Federico Ramallo (38:26) you
Right.
Right, right. How many times have you seen companies don’t go in through their own experiences to check what things are working and are not working?
Stewart Gandolf (38:56) Um, a lot. mean, most don’t most are just caught up operationally, at least here. Um, you know, the, the, it varies, especially like the hospital side versus the multi-location practice side versus individual, they’re all different. But I always say, if you know one healthcare provider, you know, one healthcare provider, some really look at customer service and patient experiences, super high priority. Others secretly make fun of it. You know, not many of these days, but I mean, they really don’t think it’s important at all.
Some look at themselves as leaders in their community and their job is to make everybody healthy. Others don’t look at it like that at all. So it really varies a lot. But patient experience, the brand, are areas of opportunity to build a lasting reputation as a leading provider in your community.
Federico Ramallo (39:45) Right, right. Because that would have a much bigger impact on the branding than any other effort, right?
Stewart Gandolf (39:53) Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (39:56) What advice would you give to a younger self?
Stewart Gandolf (39:58) I would say listen more. When I was younger, I like to think I was pretty smart and I knew it and I thought I had everything figured out. So I was a little cocky and maybe a lot cocky. I don’t know if you have that word cocky in Spanish. Like very, very self-assured. Orgulloso.
Federico Ramallo (40:03) Yeah
Good show sir. Yes.
Stewart Gandolf (40:25) So maybe that’s the right word, I don’t know.
Federico Ramallo (40:27) In
Mexico, they say mamón, is, you know, cocky.
Stewart Gandolf (40:30) ⁓ Okay,
good. I’m on my own. I learned something new today. ⁓ So, Spanish word of the day. Anyway, I would say listen. Like it really helps to listen. You could advance years of knowledge if you listen. So I’ll give you a quick story. When I first got out to California from where I grew up, my friend went into entertainment and I wanted to work in entertainment. But every time I met
Federico Ramallo (40:35) Hahaha
Stewart Gandolf (40:53) who’s the people he worked with, the senior people, I talked like I knew everything and they never, know, I don’t know if they disliked me, but they sure didn’t adopt me. Whereas my friend came in very humble, asking questions about everything and they liked him, they wanted to help him. So it’s kind of like they felt like probably I’m guessing, well, if you’re so smart, you can go figure it out on your own. And it’s like, would have been so much easier to ask questions. I really, I’d say if you’re, if the younger self would be listen,
value relationships more. It’s not all just about being smart or working hard. Like relationships can really help you in life. And having the right relationships really matter. And I’m just now figuring that out. Like today I had another agency owner call me. She had a challenge with one of her, she’s trying to land another client and we’re bigger than, her agency’s bigger than hers and she respects what I say. So she called for informal advice and like I was pleased to give it.
but I never invested in relationships like that in the past. And I’m not looking for anything from that, but good stuff happens when you do that. So listen and add value to others.
Federico Ramallo (41:59) Amazing, Stuart, I truly appreciate it. Yes, I think it’s a great place to wrap it up. I truly appreciate you being here today. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Stewart Gandolf (42:01) That’s a place to head.
No, I just appreciate it, Benedicto. It was fun. I like sharing my knowledge. I do have a podcast. So if you’re interested in like learning more about healthcare and marketing, go to healthcaresuccess.com. It’s pretty easy to find and navigate your way to the podcast and sign up. We also have a blog that comes with that same subscription. So if you’re interested in this topic at all, you know, check out our website and we have lots of free resources for people that are interested in learning more.
Federico Ramallo (42:38) Great, and we’ll put it on the notes so people can go and check it out.
Stewart Gandolf (42:41) Yeah, I linked
our website healthcare success.com. That’s all I need. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Hasta luego.
Federico Ramallo (42:45) Great. Thank you.