The future of healthcare marketing: AI, SEO shifts, and what’s next

Stewart Gandolf

Hello, everyone. This is Stewart Gandolf, and welcome again to our podcast and man. I just love doing this because I get to talk to some of the leaders in our industry people I've known for years, and today I have a couple of special guests that are truly leaders in the whole world of healthcare marketing, healthcare, Internet. They helped form where we are today. They were part of the sort of thought leadership. All this stuff we do today if you're not familiar with this came from somewhere, and Kathy Divis and Mike Schneider were 2 of the innovators in this field. So welcome, Kathy, welcome, Mike.

Mike Schneider

Thanks, Stewart, glad to be here.      

Kathy Divis

Yeah, thank you, Stewart. Those are kind words.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, for sure. Well, so I bragged about you a little already. But I would love you guys to share, you know, if you both could go kind of individually and talk about. You know quick version of your background and both Greystone and HCIC  see the kinds of things you do every day, and you know we could do a little origin story for a moment before we get into it. If you guys like along the way just to get a sense. We'll talk more about the conference later. But just to give people grounding if they don't know you, because, you know, I've been to your conference. I don't know at least a dozen times, but not everybody is like that. So, I'd love you to give them some feeling about it.

Kathy Divis

Sure, great. Well, I'm Kathy Divis, and I'm excited to be here on your Podcast for the second time. So, thank you for having me back. I am president of Greystone net. We started back in the really, the early 19 nineties, which is a little bit hard to believe as a Traditional Healthcare Marketing Company. We worked a lot with hospital systems. Providers had a variety of different services. But over the years we've kind of kind of settled into a very strong digital and Internet related niche, consulting and services and products. And our annual conference, which is the Healthcare Interactive Conference, which is in its 29th year this year.

So, we're excited.

Stewart Gandolf

That's great. And then Mike.

Kathy Divis

And we've been to all 29, although you've only if you went to 12, you’re kind of a rookie still, but that will keep you.

Mike Schneider

Yeah, right? Yeah. Kathy covered a lot. So, I'm Mike Schneider. I'm the Executive Vice President and I'm also a principal at Greystone. Kathy and I are business partners, and Kathy talked a lot about, you know, historically, you know where we started it. It's hard to believe I loved it when she said we were traditional marketing, because back then it was the only kind of marketing I mean, that was it, you know, billboards and yellow pages and all that kind of stuff. But we did. We got swept up in the in kind of like the tech side of things. And you know, as the Internet emerged, it became the light bulb went off for a lot of healthcare organizations. And you know, we started doing digital marketing is what we kind of refer to it as today. But we were a part of that from the beginning. So that's where we started. You know, the Healthcare Internet Conference, which is now the Healthcare Interactive Conference was the idea of getting people together to talk about it. Because, you know, at that time, for a lot of people, it was brand new. And so, there were a lot of questions as to where is this going to go? And is the Internet really going to be something, or is it going to be a fad that disappears? And I mean, it's funny to think about that now. But back then, I mean, people were really on the fence about it, like, you know, who's going to look at us online? Would a patient really go to a website to try and figure out, you know, which healthcare organization to go to, and that kind of thing. But as time went on, you know we saw content evolve. We saw the whole strategy behind it evolve, and the integration of traditional marketing and digital marketing. And then there was CRM. And so, if you think about the length of time that our conference has been going on. We've been tackling a lot of the, what is the current issue kind of issues all the time at the conference, and it's evolved to be, you know, very much of a I think, melting pot of what people are doing in hospital and healthcare system marketing. And what's coming up, I mean, that's always the big thing at HCIC  is like what's next, as you can imagine. I mean, our agenda is full of AI and SEO and a ton of other things. This year, you know, we had a lot of policy discussions, and so there are a lot of things, you know, that I think folks are dealing with now and wondering what's next, and that's kind of been part and parcel to our Conference for the last almost 30 years.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, and it's great. And I want to dive right into the conference just a moment before. Just to sort of cap the last comment. You guys just made. So, I remember, you know, I've been getting been involved with this business since the nineties as well, and you know, like in the back. In the day the doctors were really in charge, even at the hospital level, and there was very insular, everybody thought, like from their own point of view, it was really hard to think about

the rest of the world. And so, there was definitely like, I remember, you know, some of our mutual friends started documenting the 1st Facebook pages on hospitals. And it's weird now to think about that. But like, should we have a Facebook page? Why would we have a Facebook page, we're a hospital. And so how far things have come it took forever. It was very, very slow.

I remember trying to explain this to my parents because my mom and dad were like, tell me what you do again.

Mike Schneider

So, you know, I would say it's hospital and healthcare system marketing, and they're like, don't you just go where your doctor tells you to.

Stewart Gandolf

Oh, that is so funny! My mother, at one point goes is what you're doing legal. And then she saw she came and saw my agency. Finally, it made sense to her. She actually got to tour. We were before pandemic had beautiful office like, Oh, okay, now I get it. I think so. Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Kathy Divis

My mother is 88 years old, and to this day she says, I don't know what my daughter does, and she helps fill them up.

Stewart Gandolf

Oh, that's.

Mike Schneider
Oh, that could mean so many things. But okay.

Stewart Gandolf
Awesome. So, I ask, you guys both here cause like and people listen to the podcast and people who know me. And you guys know me for sure, like I love what's new? It's always been one of my things. I asked my former boss at the agency I worked at before I founded this one. What's my brand? Internally? He's like Stewart. You're always the innovator you just love what's new, and I do. I, you know, to for good and ill. I'll jump off the building and figure out how to fly on the way down, just because I decided I want to try to do that. So. I always love that. And I love that. The HCIC  Conference is great for that. And the stuff you guys are talking about this year. We're going to talk about your agenda this year is some of the exact same things we're talking about daily, internally to our audience, you know, as we're evolving. And you know, we're building a new train as it drives. And so, you know, like to me, I love, you know, interacting with people and networking there sharing our ideas, learning from others. And that's how you get to be good, right? Like, if you're really good, you can't just say you're a thought leader never actually go to anything and be insular. You have to like, actually talk to people. Maybe.

So let's talk about some of the things that you guys are going to expect to be big. And your agenda of some of the issues you guys shared with me in advance are not at all surprising to me. So the 1st one is like topic number one. I just actually committed to 2 webinars last night about this topic. You guys, just as a you know we do a lot of speaking the impact of AI on marketing and digital ecosystem. Tell me, like what's going on from your guys? Point of view, I have my own 2 cents later. But I'd love to hear from you guys first, like, what's happening with AI, what's happening in the digital ecosystem cool? And is it really as big as I'm telling my audience that this is that big like, tell me what you guys think.

Kathy Divis

I'll start at a high level, and then I'll let Mike kind of jump in but you know, I think AI has been a topic at our conference for a couple of years now, and last year I thought it was the big topic. But this year I know it's the big topic. And I really think we're seeing a maturing of the topic. And that's what excites me. Because you know, in the last couple of years some of the things that we were talking about is, am I going to lose my job? Is all the content going to be written by AI? You know those kinds of things I'm not saying that's gone away entirely. But we're really talking these days, and at least on our agenda, on how AI is getting incorporated into all the different parts of not only marketing a health system and a hospital system. But really the operational piece of it. So, we're going to be going deep into how it's becoming part of the ecosystem, I think, across the board.

Stewart Gandolf

That's great. And then, Mike, what would you add to that?

Mike Schneider

Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I couldn't agree more with Kathy, and it's really become more mature. But we're still not at the top level of maturity. And so, there's still a lot of discussion. And as Kathy alluded to, I mean, I think there are still folks who do wrestle with, you know. Is it going to take my job? And is it good or evil, and those kinds of things? But I definitely agree also that we have moved into the details of how AI is helping move marketing in healthcare and marketing in other industries, too. But at our conference is going to be marketing and healthcare forward. And there are a lot of things that AI does. So, it's funny because I it seems like the same thing that happened with the Internet 20 years ago, or whatever it's like when you say the word Internet, you know, we think about a website. But what we're really talking about is a lot of different things. It's SEO, and it's content. And it's integration with legacy systems. And so, if you get into the details of what the Internet is and what a website does. It's more than just at the high level of how does an Internet work? But it's really, you know, how does it? How does it facilitate what we're trying to do in our jobs? And that's where we are with AI. So, what is AI doing? It's agentic. AI, it's helping call centers assist agents to make decisions to help you select a provider or make an appointment. It's part of searches. So, you know, it's the whole idea that when you go to Google you don't just type in the keywords and get a list of websites. But now you also get an AI assisted

guide. Let's say, to answering your question and then moving you on to a site. If you choose to do that. It is creating content. But it's also integrating with your stack. I mean, I was just on a call this morning, and it was a great conversation, and we were talking about how.

if you look at a healthcare system and they've got a marketing stack, and you've got 20 different tools that you're using. There are AI tools that are integrating all 20 of those tools in what they're helping you do. So, they're helping you write the content and then

pick the right target audience in the CRM. And then make sure the content is written in a way so that it performs well and search engine and helping you decide to how you take the next step, and integrating with the links to you, know your EMR, so it's an integrator, and it's you know, when you look at how other industries are utilizing. AI, it's also almost like

your own personal assistant. I mean, you've got AI there, and you can ask it to help you solve a problem that you're dealing with. Pick the right marketing, mix or pick the right target audience, or, you know, pick the right strategy. And so, it's a lot of different things. And I think, you know, that's the thing that we're finding at the conference is that we do have.

let's say, 15 or 20 different presentations out of the over 60 that are going to be made that are going to be talking about AI, and for each of them we're talking about a different aspect of AI. So, it's not 20 presentations on the topic of AI. But it's 20 presentations that are all different in terms of how they're using AI.

Stewart Gandolf

So, I think that's really important. I remember a couple of years ago at your conference and a couple others. AI, when it 1st really became a thing that people were talking about every day and became from just an obscure topic to front and center. It was about the more basic things right, like, you know, for example, copywriting and visuals. And that was. And I would like to actually break this down a little bit, because I think each of these topics are worth exploring just for a moment, but the AI part of it as you would expect. It's kind of like, where are we? Right? We're just sort of grasping in space. What does this even mean? It wasn't. How do we take advantage? It's like, what does it mean? And how do we even like get our mind around it? And there still is some legitimate fear out there, like, you know, there are people, my team that study this stuff very deeply, who are very concerned what it means. It's a little bit like Skynet and the Terminator. Sometimes when you think about it so you know, when they start talking about like, you know, self-teaching machines like, Wait, what's that? A storyline in some movie I saw.

Mike Schneider

So.

Stewart Gandolf

There's a lot there. But on a more positive note, I would love actually to ask. You know, we're going to talk about the conference mostly today, but just in terms of your own business. What kinds of AI questions with the Graystone consulting side? Are people coming to you with like, what are the nagging fears that they're concerned about, or the nagging things that you're hope they're helping, that you guys can help them solve? Is it still like how to choose which website, you know, CMS, or is it much more about AI? And how does this stuff all fit together?

Kathy Divis

I guess I would say it's kind of all over the board. I mean to be to be honest with you, you know, when I look at it from I do a fair amount of call center related contact. Consulting. When I look at that, there's a lot of use of AI, other types of things in call centers. So, there's a lot of conversation about how can we, or how should we be using AI to front our calls to analyze our call quality, to review our performance. You know those kinds of things. So, there's all of that in the more general area of let's call, just call it marketing. I mean, I still think there's a lot of conversations around. What tools should we be using? What tools should we be using? For what purpose? How do we integrate if every if every tool in our stack, as Mike said a few minutes ago, has an AI component. How do we merge those things together? How do I make sure that what I'm using to help me develop content integrates with what I'm using in my CRM and those kinds of things. So, I think there's a there's a lot of just basic. How do I pick the right tool? What is the right tool. I think there's strategy, probably to back up a minute. It's probably 2 pro, 2 pronged. There's the strategic part, you know. What tools do I use? And why to achieve what goals? And then there's the tactical piece of it, the implementation. How do I integrate? How do I? How do I build these into my into my workflows. So those are the kinds of things people are coming to us with. In my opinion.

Mike Schneider

Yeah, yeah, I  agree. And you know, Stewart, you talked a little bit about it, but it but you we still have in our, and I think we will for a while still have people that are just, don't.

They're not a hundred percent comfortable with AI as a tool and how to use it. And it's mostly that fear of not really knowing how it works or what it is or understanding. You know whether it's going to take somebody's job or not. Those are kind of like the big barriers. And so. when we've got folks that are asking us for help and consulting. Sometimes people are on that end of the equation. It's just like, you know, how do I create the right guidelines for using AI in the organization. And how do we get started? And you know, how do we notate if we're using AI to help us write content? And so there's some of that I'll call it basic. But it's just like, you know, dipping your toe in the pool to get the ball rolling aspects of it. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, you know, we have clients that are coming to us saying, You know, how do we structure our website content as a semantic data layer to enhance the readability of the content so that it improves AI driven search visibility, you know. And that's a whole, you know different level of this. It's people that have accepted and are using AI and trying to then figure out how to best use the AI tool to fine tune it. It's like I've got AI writing content for me, but I want to have the best possible search outcome that I can in the content that I'm writing. So how do I leverage AI to help me get to that level? You know it's as Kathy talked about. It's embedded in a lot of tools. So, it's that whole idea of what AI tools do I purchase and buy on the outside, or use on the outside, like a you know, at the easiest example, something like ChatGPT, or copilot, or whatever. And then how do I make sure that whatever other tools I'm using have the AI inside kind of built in to how they how the tool utilizes AI so CRM platforms that have AI built into it to help you make better decisions about picking right the right target audience or the right marketing strategy.

Stewart Gandolf

Great man we need to hang out hopefully. We'll get to find some time. I know, you guys, it's busy, but your own show. We got to find some time to hang out, because this is what we're talking about every day. So just as a I have, I have to jump in on a couple of comments. Here one is, we have an A with our agency. I have an AI and Innovation Club every month, and we talk about the latest, and, in fact usually it's optional. Last month it was a 2 month mandatory meeting like we can't this no longer optional you have to be at this meeting. There's so much going on just to understand it. And our head of digital marketing Brandon, is sort of a master in this category, and so he's coming off the mountaintops with like the latest for the team to try to consume what they can. So, there's a lot there. And I think if you know the part about the jobs you guys such a rich topic you just gave me; I have to run with some of this. So, the job thing is real right? My daughters are both in entertainment. One's an animator, and she's thinking like, what does this mean to me when I'm starting my new career in a skill that people can reduce. So, there is some shifting that's happening there. And then, also, you know, like in any human species or any human population. One of my favorite models was in high or in college, I remember, was the diffusion of innovation. So, you've got. That's the one where you have the early adopters, the innovators, the laggards, the, you know, early adopters, mid adopters, late majority, whatever all that stuff. So that's the case anywhere, in anything, in any endeavor. When it comes to AI. There's a whole lot of people still that are in the, you know.

Kathy Divis

Denial phase.

Stewart Gandolf

Denial phase. Yeah, that's what.

Mike Schneider

Yes.

Stewart Gandolf

There over to the Kuva Ross model. Right? They're in denial. They're still fighting it. And there's other people that are just eating it up alive. And so again, I like this stuff. So ,I tend to eat stuff up and just kind of throw caution away, but not everybody's like that. And let's talk about an easy topic that seems easy on the topic that you just raised there. Mike would be copy. So, you know, in past shows everybody was talking about. What does this mean for our writing team? And you know I've heard people for some pretty big hospitals say, well, we're not looking to fire everybody just yet. But I mean, come on, let's be realistic. We probably won't need as many people in the future, right? So, there's that sort of double edged sword. But just writing copy is one thing, but you just talked about is something that we really embrace internally to leverage the team members that we have. So, we're not looking at, you know, firing people on our team. We're looking at giving them more for our clients with the same budget. So, for example.

when it comes to copy, you know, like, how do we integrate that with our SEO just to make it much stronger? How do we get the schema stuff all the things that you know we're labor intensive before and slow. How can we speed that up and get better content quicker? So, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about the writing side of it, because it's kind of like

step One. There's a lot of more sophisticated stuff we're going to talk about in a moment. But just the writing side. Do you agree? Do you still interest in that coming up at HCIC this year, you know. Is it about scaling is about cutting costs is about integrating with SEO any comments on that.

Kathy Divis

Well, I mean, everybody follows. I think the, you know, kind of mantra that you know. You have to write with experience expertise. What's that authority.

Stewart Gandolf

Board and trust.

Kathy Divis

And trust. Okay. So, you've got to do that, and you can. And that's going to require, in my opinion, some human interaction, particularly in healthcare. I'm not saying you can't have a 1st draft through on, you know, on something that comes from AI. But if you really want to become that authority and show up in searches and do those kinds of things. Then you're really going to have to put in your hospital expertise or your physician expertise. And you're going to have to show their experience and their authority and become that trusted source. So, I think it has to go deeper. I guess you know, it's 1 thing. If you're writing copy for an ad, it's maybe different. If you're writing, you know a little deeper content for your website. I think there's going to be human interaction absolutely. I don't know for how long. You know, I read something yesterday or saw something yesterday that said that you know a brief that a paralegal would do might take 5 or 6 weeks, and it takes 10 min on AI.

Stewart Gandolf

Wow!

Kathy Divis

And I mean, it's just amazing what they can. You know they can do now. Somebody still has to go back and make sure that it's accurate that the references are correct, that the references that they pull aren't, you know, made up or taken from us, you know something that's, you know, not trustworthy. So, there's still a role absolutely. But can it speed things up.

Mike Schneider

For sure, and we'll.

Kathy Divis

Absolutely.

Mike Schneider

I mean, I have an analogy. It might make us all uncomfortable. But I mean, if this was 1975 and not 2025, and you walked into a hospital, and there was a big let's say, senior staff meeting.

Somebody would bring their secretary to take notes and sit down and handwrite all the notes from the meeting, and then type it all up on a typewriter, and then make copies on the copy machine and then hand it out to people. So, they had notes from the meeting. I mean our meeting notes no longer essential in 2025. No, they're not. But we do a different way.

So, you can have a voice that listens to the meeting and takes notes, or we're all taking notes on our laptops while we're sitting there during the meeting, and people share it electronically. So, we've gotten more efficient and better at it. In that period of time. It doesn't mean that note taking disappeared. It just means that we use technology and efficiency to get better at it. And we probably know more that happened in a meeting than we did in the days that the secretary was just taking notes.

Stewart Gandolf

So, I got to share a fun fact on this. So, in full disclosure to our audience, like we are by one of our guests introduced us to Fathom. We use Fathom on our podcast because it makes it easy for our writer who's listened to the thing, but to understand the context better. And to make sure, we cover all the points. So, we don't just put up the fathom notes onto our podcast summary. But it does help her write it for sure it helps her write it better. And, Mike, I got to tell you for me. I think I'm a really good listener. I mean I do it for the meeting. I'm shocked at how much I miss when I go back and look at the fathom notes. I have a lot more bias than I realize. I hear things the way I want to hear them. It is really enlightening to go back and look at those notes, and so almost not all of our meetings we use Fathom with. We use a lot, but I use it for this. I'm using, you know, like we. We strongly believe that in our writing we don't do anything for clients. This just popped out of the machine. We have senior writers with 10 years’ experience in healthcare plus. And we think that's really important. But to idea, to think of content like content, gap analysis for SEO things like that that are really, really a lot of labor or things that we can get to where we need to go faster and deliver more value for our clients rather than less so again, our effort is not on saving money. It's more on getting more value for the same money and then I would say on the. But you know, in terms of my own use of AI for writing like I'm a writer. That's what I do. I'm like. It's 1 of those things, you guys. I'm terrible at a lot of things. But writing was a natural gift for me, like I'm good at that like a basketball. Horrible! But I'm good at writing, but I'm using AI a lot, especially for not for writing like stuff that's important, like I had roommate squabble with one of the parents of my kids in college that I had to write out and then build a case. And she, by the way, my, the other parent, was an attorney, so that one I had to write out personally. But if I'm writing a description for a webinar sometimes I'll ideate the idea of the name of the Webinar. I'll just tell the machine I wanted to cover these 6 points. Give me a rough draft, and so, like, you know, when I'm working at 10 o'clock at night to get, you know, a hand on speeding up the process of that I'll do that for sure.

And so.

Kathy Divis

It's stupid not to. Why would you not.

Mike Schneider

Right. And you know. I was just going to say, I earlier in the year I collaborated on a white paper with a group of folks, and we were writing about the topic of appropriately leveraging CRM to drive ROI for healthcare systems. And you know, I wrote mine like I always do like, you know, off the top of my head. What are the 5 things that you have to know? And but you know, I decided I'm going to go back, and I'm going to ask AI these questions. And AI came up with a couple of fantastic ideas that I hadn't thought of that were there like they were on the edge of what I was writing about, but the way that AI portrayed it I thought, that's a better way of saying it, so I think it made the white paper tons better. I didn't use you know what AI wrote word for word, but it helped me be a little more creative, and I think a little more strategic, because it helped me put the right words in there that were better than the words that I came up with.

Stewart Gandolf

I totally agree, like I'll do it. And I find here's what my summary of this is before I switch topics. Smart people, you know educated people. People in our world, just being keeping it real have a big advantage in our society, and the good news and bad news about this is this will further the gap, like, if you're already reasonably intelligent. And you're using this as a tool, you're going to be that much ahead of everybody else which career wise is great, maybe not so great for everybody. But it definitely is an enabler, and I do the same thing. I usually will come up with again. I'm like good at some things, not at others. I'm pretty good at the creative writing side and thinking through how to, you know, speak, and how to put together a story, but I almost always find one or 2 things that I would have missed that make it stronger. So, it's not like. But I'm not starting with a blank page either. Right? I'm not like starting with like, just do my job for me. No, I have a pretty good idea where, when I go, I'm just looking for input on how to make that tighter or like. For example, last night, when I was working one of these webinars they asked me, for you know, takeaways and these different things, and 2 of them I agreed on one of them like, no, that's all wrong, but you know it's like it's still. When I'm doing this at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, I really want it to be fast, and so it's helpful in that way. Let's pivot a little bit. You guys mentioned something else. You guys give me so much fodder. This is so much fun for me, you guys talked about the tech stack. So, we as an agency. And I may have mentioned this on previous podcasts. This year, I told Brandon and the rest of my digital team that this is the year that we're going to mature our tech stack because we've been using tech forever. You know, people outside would be investors that call us periodically are like they look at us as a tech, enabled healthcare service provider. And we are. We're not. We do create our own proprietary things. But we're also riding the rails of technology, right? We're not inventing WordPress. We're using other people's technology and leveraging that. But the you know, this year, I decided with AI, things have changed so much. We need to go back and look at all the tech stack, because there's some things we've been using. For example, our call tracking platform for years, and there wasn't enough change in the industry to warrant really going looking very deep. They were all pretty the same. But today, in the age of AI,

there's vast differences in the capability of various tools along the way. So, for us. It's a strategic imperative as an agency to number one. Pick best in class for our clients, which we've invested a boatload of time in, and then number 2 to gain efficiencies because we have to use these across the board because it used to be when people came to us. We just sort of adopt whatever text that they have. And if you think about efficiency, that's terrible, because we're not really mastering all these other techs, we want to come back with a strong position, saying, we've looked at them all. We highly recommend Use X for call tracking. We highly recommend use for

agents to answer phone calls, what is like along this topic and tech stack. Any additional comments you guys would have about, you know things that you think will be interesting in HCIC  and are, is our agency alone, or a lot of people thinking this way to update their tech stack.

Mike Schneider

I mean, I think a lot of a lot of people are. I think it's an always moving ball. You know what I mean, like when it comes to your tech stack. You can't be a healthcare marketer or any kind of marketer and not constantly be wondering. Do I still have the right stack. And are there things that could be better? And we're at that point as we've talked about kind of like an inflection point where AI is becoming a player in many of the automated things that we do. And so, I think it's imperative that people ask those questions. A lot of our clients are asking those questions. A lot of agencies are asking those questions, you know. Do we still have the right tech stack? If we do? Does the tool that I'm using leverage AI to the best capabilities, or it doesn't have to be AI. It could be. Are we integrating with databases in the best possible way, you know, using our CRM, and you know how CRMs integrated with databases 5 years ago is different than how it works today. So, are we using a tool that has the most updated technology or not? I think you have to kind of continually reevaluate that stack. And, obviously, you know, money is an infinite, and time is an infinite. So, you also have to pick your battles, you know. Where are my pain points for this year. And then for those pain points? Do I have what I need to help me

continue to move forward. And is it, you know? Are they on the edge, you know? Or do I need to start to look at something different?

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, I agree. I would just say that the to me it feels like Mike, that the toy box has been turned upside down like the differences between. So, I agree that you always want to look at your tech stack, and we always do and have. But the difference was more was smaller between the different platforms. So, a lot of times again, going back to like you always want optimal. But is it economically worth it in terms of time and money and attention.

But now, like, there's a huge vary, at least in my experience, a huge variation in quality like our previous standard call tracking platform has AI in theory, but it pales compared to other ones. So unfortunately.

Kathy Divis

You know.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, we'll look at that as another option for the budget conscious clients. But we're going to invest more for other clients. Go ahead, Kathy.

Kathy Divis

I was just going to say Mike and I watched or participated in a demo yesterday with a with a healthcare related company that that's doing front end call tracking a lot of agentic AI for healthcare. It's phenomenal what they're doing. And they have a lot of clients. It's not vaporware. And so, when I look at what that particular company is doing versus others.

there's a night and day difference, and there's there would be real value in moving someone in that direction, in my opinion. But then I think the other thing that I think that is coming down the pike for healthcare and probably has been for a while. Is this almost mandate to consolidate your technology? And so, there are a lot of organizations out there that are trying to weed out a variety of different tech platforms, so that they have, you know, one or 2 that they're supporting, not 22, that they're supporting.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

Kathy Divis

And so that's always that fight between best in breed and you know, single platform. And so, you know, I think that's another, and that's another battleground that's coming, you know. Do I take the very best at call tracking? Or do I take something that's less good?

But it's already part of something that the IT department is maintaining, paying for supporting that kind of thing. And I think that's a real battle that's going to be coming down the road.

Stewart Gandolf

I told her. That's where.

Mike Schneider

I'm sorry. I was just going to say, because I think Kathy's absolutely right. And the and that's where this idea of AI possibly helping you from a human. Whatever FTE support standpoint is really valuable, because I've got a client right now that has a stack of 20 different vendors that they utilize for digital marketing, and they've got one and a half people that are in charge of marketing, and so they don't get the most out of all those tools all the time, because they don't have the time or the energy to do it. But with AI they do have the ability to be able to go in and leverage a lot of tools across different platforms and help. AI helps them integrate some of that, and it also creates some differentiation, I mean. So, you get to a point where you say maybe I don't need this one. Maybe we're not using that one. So, to Kathy's point. I think there's also consolidation that happens.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it's really interesting. I'll move on into the next topic in a sec. But I remember watching the news years ago during one of the Iraq wars, and they were talking about the tanks had so much information the soldiers couldn't use it. It was just like flying at them in real time. So, they had to figure out how to curate that in the heat of battle. And that's really what we're talking about now. which is, you know. How do you, curate? What matters? What's noise and what matters? Because humans are humans, we don't have time to do everything. It's not realistic, like. Usually there's, you know, 5 to 7 things you need to fix that have enormous impact. And there's everything else I do want to go. I want to pivot a little bit to something that you guys had mentioned. That is the bane of our existence as an agency which is, you know, booking appointments like that has been the number one challenge in doing this for many years. Move on of like, we drive thousands of calls to somebody, and they can't answer their phone, or it gets put on hold for 10 min, or you know. Then finally, and of course. I used to get a big kick out of this when I was speaking. Live. What are the 2 things patients really want to be able to do online? And the answers were, communicate with their doctor and be able to schedule their own appointment. What are 2 things? Doctors and hospitals steadfastly don't want to let them do communicate with their doctors and schedule appointments online. And there's still some of that. And so, things are obviously better. But you know the, you know. Rather go down the rabbit hole of every potential technology. The one thing that's really exciting to me is. And Kathy, this is probably a Kathy question, especially, you know, with call centers. That's a very human high labor. Difficult business, you know, ebbs and flows Monday mornings at an urgent care. Chain is insane, you know. So, and you know, nighttime calls don't need to be answered. How do you triage this? Oh, there's legal liability, too, if we give the wrong answer, you know it's a lot with that. But the idea of AI bots being able to answer the calls professionally, correctly, being able to route the calls, and especially new patients, to give them an experience that you know, as everybody else gives them a good experience. Why is it healthcare can't like? I think that is a huge opportunity. So, for us this year I mentioned our tech stack. We are really drilling down on the call tracking platforms, and then we're also drilling down on this particular issue. You know not every client wants to adopt this yet, but to me it seems like absolutely essential. Are you seeing the same kind of level of interest, because there's probably 30 companies I'm familiar with right now that do. AI Bot answering for calls like, what do you think is the future? And where are we now? What's the future?

Kathy Divis

I think a hundred percent. It's the future. I mean, I really do. I mean the demo that I was just telling you about earlier that Mike and I saw yesterday was all about an agentic AI front end for our call center. And honestly, you know, they could probably answer way more than half of the questions that most people wanted. This particular demo that we saw integrated with epic. And so, as a real time integration with the epic schedule, and so somebody called and said, Hey, you know I've got an appointment on Tuesday. I need to cancel. The agent was able to walk them through. You know, changing the appointment that the digital agent was able to walk them through changing the appointment to an available slot a few days later. That's definitely the future. It's, you know, may take a while for some people to get there, but it's the way it's going. I have zero doubt about that.

Stewart Gandolf

So, there's also I don't know if you guys are familiar with this yet but like in the last couple of weeks of class action lawsuit against a big dental service organization. DSO, about the use of AI saying like, well, the you know, this call may be recorded wasn't enough that you're using my data in other ways. So, it'll be interesting to see if that slows the industry down, because

that's a scared. That's a, you know, sort of shiver along the.

Kathy Divis

Well in this this particular one, I mean, it's very real life sounding, you know. You'd be hard pressed not to know that it wasn't a live person. But it did answer with, Hi, I'm you know I'm you know, the such and such digital agent here to help, you, you know. So, I mean it was upfront about it. This is a digital agent.

Stewart Gandolf

I think that's a big step forward for sure. I'd be really, just ethically. It's a good idea to announce that.

Kathy Divis

Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf

Like, legally, so.

Kathy Divis

Yeah, no. But you do still have this. You have the same data issues that you have with any kind of collection system. Whether it's AI driven or not, I mean, it may be more integrated obviously. But agents have an awful lot of access to information, too, that can be parceled into other databases along the way.

Mike Schneider

This is a little bit of tangential information, but it's some, you know, in line with what we're talking about. One of the things we do at Graystone is we do some research. So, we have a research tool that's called G site. It goes on a hospital or healthcare system website and collects data about the user's experience. And then how that had an impact on their perception of that organization's brand. So, one of the greatest dissatisfiers. It won't be any surprise to you is not being able to talk to the doctor and not being able to make an appointment. But you have hospital and healthcare system websites or apps that say, make an appointment. Now it's like right there on the homepage. And so, you know, as a patient. You have an expectation. Right, you go, and you look at the page, and it says, Make an appointment now, and I've got a child, and I know my child has strep throat, and I just need some penicillin. So, you know, I go to the website and you find out, oh, but we don't make appointments for pediatrics, or we don't make appointments on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, or the next appointment that you can get is four weeks from now. And so

what we're doing is in inadvertently sometimes creating this huge dissatisfier by almost, I would say, you know, kind of like false advertising, not really. But you can't. Yeah bait and switching anytime. So, you've got to be able to find a way to have the right message with the right words about what you can do in terms of making an appointment. And to Kathy's point, I think that we can facilitate that better with tools like the one that she's talking about where, you know, we can make appointments in a more efficient way, or answer questions that are really easy to answer as opposed to creating, you know kind of a clog or a unsatisfying answer at the end, that you didn't get what you needed or you didn't get that appointment that you wanted.

Kathy Divis

What's nice about that is, then you can use your human agents for the difficult calls and for the difficult tasks.

Stewart Gandolf

That's right.

Kathy Divis

Things that need human, more human touch, and so that frees up that resource to do those kinds of things.

Stewart Gandolf

So, I want to pivot again just for the sake of time. Here. But one, I remember, I did a podcast with, I think it was Jim Marlino or Paul Mattson, somebody from Cleveland Clinic, I forget which one we talked to that particular day, but it was about Cleveland Clinic at the time made a pivot to insisting on, you know, appointments being made within 48h, and that's a leadership imperative that drives all the tech stack, right? So, the I don't know where they are today with that. But that's you know, you have to have the leadership support because the tech stuff doesn't solve it. You have to have the will to make these things better, then the tech can be enabled and really make a difference. The and a topic that's burning for us as an agency is the decline of traditional SEO. And this is probably the most important topic. I've been saving it toward the end for the A students to listen all the way through today. But the, you know, like in March, we can show to the day. We have data that shows to the day when AI overviews, Google changed the algorithm and AI overviews became the dominant, much more dominant. And in healthcare, about 35% of traffic evaporated overnight from organic. And so that is a monumental cataclysmic change. There are companies out there like HubSpot, which isn't a healthcare provider. But they had just a machine for SEO for any digital marketing topic you want. They lost, like, I forgot the numbers. But like 80 or 90% of their traffic recently over the last year or so. So, this is really changing things. So, this is something we talk about a lot in terms of and I'll save our own comments for future podcasts and webinars. But I'd love to hear what you guys are hearing about and expect to hear at the conference about, you know, how do you pivot in this new AI overview ChatGPT phase, both organically and with paid search

and other forms of digital.

Kathy Divis

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, because I've heard everything from SEO is dead to. It's not dead. It's just reincarnating in a different way. But and I just recently read, I wish I remember where it was. But that about 2 thirds of all Google searches now end in 0 click throughs.

Stewart Gandolf

Yep, it's.

Kathy Divis

So that's huge.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

Kathy Divis

I mean, and I see it myself. Personally, you know, I read the overview, and I go. Oh, okay, good but so I do think it's a big deal. I think I think healthcare obviously has to figure out how to become part of that trusted AI overview and how you can do that. And I do think that people who click through to some of the other options are probably more qualified. Because if I've read the overview and I'm still searching. I'm going deeper. That's probably a good thing. But yeah, it's a cataclysmic change.

Stewart Gandolf

Mike any comments on that.

Mike Schneider

Well, I was just going to say it is a cataclysmic change. It's a, but we have to think about where the ball is. And you know I think about it. It's the funnel. The top of the funnel is people that have questions and come to your site. And they're looking for information. And then they go through our website, or they go through the answers to the questions that they need to get to ultimately make a decision and convert. And so, whether that's making an appointment or paying a bill, or applying for a job or whatever. And that's something that an AI summary in Google can't do for you. It cannot make an appointment for you. It cannot apply for a job, that kind of thing. So, what we're talking about is, how do we create content that still drives people to our website to have them do the thing that we want them to do that ultimately shows that our marketing strategies are effective and that we're demonstrating Roi. And so, it's back to that thing about what we, I think said as we kind of started this topic. While I do think that you're having these AI summaries and 0 click search results that have an impact on us. At the same time, we have to begin. And we're seeing organizations that have begun to be more creative about how to affect those AI answers and create the right content that still shows up in the search for the people who didn't get their answer at that AI level. And that's where we can affect the top of the funnel. So, I think we have to think about what is it we're trying to do? How do we still do that in this environment that we're in. And then how do we still get them to the bottom of the funnel, where they're converting and doing the thing that we want them to do with our organization. And that's some of what's going to be talked about at HCIC . I'm still learning it myself, but it's definitely having an impact on our industry.

Stewart Gandolf

That's for sure. And it's funny from our standpoint. This is what we live in. This is the world we're we are at our agency are thinking about hourly, certainly, daily, and you know some of the hints that what we're seeing broadly is well, the only thing you have to do now is just be everywhere, and you have to truly be a thought leader. That's the biggest thing. I think that in a way, this plays into the strengths of some of our clients. Because, you know, like I, I get, you know, I've been doing my podcast for a long time. And you know I get invited as a guest periodically and a lot of times people ask me like, Well, Stewart, as an agency owner, how do you become a thought leader. It's like, well, 1st of all, know your stuff like in our world today. Everybody wants to be, you know, and just like I'm a thought leader. I just call myself a thought leader like you have to actually put in the homework. And I think you know, when you have respected institutions at least. Or you know, doctors, you can, you know, jump further to the front of the line by leveraging that thought leadership.

Kathy Divis

I mean that.

Stewart Gandolf

And that's really, really, it was important. Before you guys, I have a pie chart. I showed some of my presentations that shows like, okay, technology and content were important. And so was reputation. But now that thought, leadership and brand are really rocketing forward in terms of being important, and how do you manage that? And how do you make up, for, for example, with paid search, the losses you're just going to lose, but focus on the bottom of the funnel, and then going back to what you guys both said, you know. So, the high funnel stuff, you know so much of my searches. Now, like. I have Perplexity, a premium Perplexity that I got for free for being a LinkedIn, whatever I am. But the, at least now it's free. It'll cost me money, I'm sure soon I use the perplexity app for almost everything like it's on my phone right next to Google. And I use perplexity far more because most of my questions aren't buying intent like they could be anything, you know, like what really happened with blah blah. And it's like, you know, or this is a here's 1 of my favorites lately is because I hate listening to like. I don't have time. I rephrase that. I don't have time to listen to every podcast I want to. I'd like to wish I could listen because I love listening to them. But I can take the summary of the Transcript and ask AI to tell me what are the key points in seconds, like those kind of things are just fantastic. Couple of things before.

Kathy Divis

That is amazing, isn't it? Just to take a take a long document and ask somebody ask AI to just summarize it.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, that's just like in our world. That's really great a couple of things before I let you guys go just you know a minute on the growing importance of personalization and marketing and healthcare. Because, you guys, that's 1 of the things you guys are saying or you're seeing as well at your conference coming up.

Kathy Divis

Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of self-explanatory in many ways, but I think the deeper we get into everything and the way the the world is moving in the way the Internet and interact and digital is moving. Healthcare has to continue to become personalized. You know, I'm at an age where I don't need. You know information about birthing babies, you know. I don't need certain things in my life any longer, unfortunately, you know. So, you know. Send me content. That's specific to me. Send me information that's helpful and then help me do things quickly that you know schedule an appointment. Get my mammogram. Do that, get my test results. Those are the things that are, I think, are incredibly important, and the more that we can personalize

generic content that comes out as well as how. How do I work with my healthcare provider to get the things I need? I think that's got to be a high point for marketers and operations and healthcare.

Stewart Gandolf

Mike. Another comment on that.

Mike Schneider

Well, I was just going to say Kathy's right. There. There are, I think, about it the same way she's kind of talking about. There's kind of 2 ways to look at it. There's authenticated personalization, which is, you know, inside the firewall. I know that you're Stewart Gandolf, and I know that you're needing this, follow up appointment. And so, there's that experience. An experience we can control. And then there's the highly targeted personalization which is that I don't exactly know who you are, but I can pinpoint that you are in this kind of demographic category by the answers that you're giving me to my questions. And I. And it's more targeted content to you, which has, you know, higher level conversion rate. And both of those areas are seeing a lot of growth in the last couple of years. So, there's again at HCIC . We're going to have folks that are talking about both of those kinds of things.

Stewart Gandolf

And I think you know, it's just as we a couple other comments, and I'd love to hear

final thoughts from you guys. But the, you know. So that's going to lead a lot of people. Wait, what about HIPAA? That's another topic. You guys are going to be talking about digital tracking technologies. Those are crucial things that are not new topics. It was like the talk of the town. What a couple of years ago! 2023, especially 2022, 2024. But that, you know, I think again, it's like, eventually, people are going to figure out how to navigate stuff, although we have a major health system that won't put any pixel. Even with the tools like fresh paint. They won't do any tracking, they just won't. They're like they were part of a lawsuit. They're just not doing it.

Kathy Divis

So, it's like, that's a thing right? Just it's a thing. So, Torres.

Stewart Gandolf

It's yeah. It's a new reality. But I would love to hear any other hot topics or anything more about your conference. Get people excited from you guys, you know I'll be there to see you guys and great talk to you for all 3 min while I can. Between the other 100 people you have to talk to.

Kathy Divis

Well, the Healthcare Interactive Conference HCIC  is going to be in November, November 9th through the 12th At last, in Las Vegas, at Caesar's Palace. We're really excited. We're going to start on Sunday night with a welcome party and awards program, and then go Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and we've got oh, 60 plus concurrent sessions. 3 or 4. We have 3 keynotes, 3 main stage panel discussions and 10 really deep dive master classes. So we're we've got a ton of content to push out over that short, limited period of time.

Stewart Gandolf

Right, Mike.    

Mike Schneider

And the website for that is HCIC.net. So, if anybody is hearing us and they're interested in learning more about it, the website has all the information that has the agenda, how to sign up and how to get there, and how to make a reservation and all that kind of stuff. So HCIC.net is the place to go.

Stewart Gandolf

Great. And if you decide to go and you're a listener, make sure to reach out to me on LinkedIn, and I'll try to say, Hi! We get a few minutes together between sessions. It's a.

Kathy Divis

And you'll see Mike and I walking around the or flying around the conference the entire time. Stop us! Say, Hi! To us, too!

Stewart Gandolf

Kathy, you do look a little frantic sometimes.

Mike Schneider

Like, where's that coffee? And why don't we have another coffee urn.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, I mean in the most loving way possible. But it's a lot, baby, I tell you.

Kathy Divis

It is. It's a lot to manage. But we have a really good team behind us, so we're incredibly lucky.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah. Vegas is a great venue, too, like we haven't been doing it since Covid. We used to do seminars multiple times in Vegas, and it's just such a great venue to do.

Obviously.

Kathy Divis

No, it's fine.

Stewart Gandolf

Or seminars, and I think also the networking part of I don't know if you guys have any comments as we're wrapping up here, but the networking part is, and I would say honestly that I should have taken better advantage of that earlier in my career. I was so busy building our agency. I mean, I network. But there's so much such rich relationships.

Kathy Divis

You know it's.

Stewart Gandolf

That's the time it's like. Every time you go to these things it's better, you know people. Any comments on that part of it.

Kathy Divis

You know, it's so interesting. Today I got an email from a friend of mine, a colleague of mine who it came back, had just came back and seen this article about conferences should be adding hallway tracks that we need to have on hallway track, because some of the best conversations, some of the best education, some of the best fun that you have is when you run into people in the hallway between sessions and between events, and you have a conversation, and if there's a and I think it's, it's so true, because it's those you know, unsolicited kind of spontaneous

conversations that you have with somebody that you know says, Hey, I know about that, or even in the exhibit hall. You're standing next to somebody, and you're talking to a vendor or an exhibitor, and somebody says, Hey, you should think about this, too, you know, that's coming by. But those hall, that hallway track, you know, because we've got 7 tracks of education, everything from branding and social media to consumer engagement and tools and technology. But we don't have a hallway track of what are you going to learn when you're just chatting with people.

Stewart Gandolf

I love that. That's an innovative idea. I can.  

Kathy Divis

I wish there was a way to make it. Ha! You know, make it.

Mike Schneider

Auto.

Kathy Divis

And we.

Stewart Gandolf

I'll help let me volunteer. It's funny.

Kathy Divis

Figure out how to do a hallway track. We are looking at putting green this year, so maybe that can be the start of our hallway track.

Stewart Gandolf

The last time I was at your conference last year, like you know, in the middle of the meeting, you know, I'd be talking to someone like, you know, our mutual friend, Rob Klein, or and then a private equity Guy, who owns a couple of businesses. We work with walks by, and then somebody else walks by, and then, oh, have you met this person? And I would say, if you're, you know, newer in your career, and you haven't really done this stuff. I know it's a little daunting. When you're just getting started out to get to know people, because it's like I feel kind of lonely, especially if you're there by yourself, I would say, start talking to exhibitors. For one thing, they know a lot of them know everybody, and they can reduce you, and you can start learning and start talking, following the speakers. You know there's a lot that you can do with that. So, it takes time, but it's certainly a lot more fun when you know somebody when you go to a conference.

Kathy Divis

Yeah. And if you're an introvert, it's tough. I know that, you know, for some, but you know we're big believers that the exhibit hall is so important because the exhibitors are so knowledgeable about their niche and their part of the world. I mean, look at yourself, start. You know what you know about the agency and SEO and those kinds of things. You have a wealth of knowledge that someone in a smaller hospital or a smaller system doesn't have. So, you know, don't go in there thinking, oh, they're only going to try to sell me, or they're going to, you know. They're going to scoop me up, and you know that kind of thing. But going there with a learning, mind, you know, and you can learn so much from vendors and exhibitors, if you give them the opportunity to share their expertise.

Stewart Gandolf

Great awesome. With that. I'm going to close. Thank you. Guys

Kathy Divis

Cheers.

Stewart Gandolf

Nice talking to you. Thanks for putting on a tremendous conference and thank you.

We'll refer more business to you and hope to work with you in 3 years.

Kathy Divis

Hope we get to see a bunch of new faces there this year.

Stewart Gandolf

Good deal.

Kathy Divis

Thank you, Stewart.

Mike Schneider

Yeah. Thanks. Stewart.