What Consumers Want From Your Healthcare Podcast, ft. BayCare’s Jordana Taylor

Jordana Taylor (00:00):
We really are seeing this as an extension of our benefit to the community and that educational providing that health and wellness education. So our community is more educated about the different services and procedures and their own personal health.

Alan Tam (00:13):
Hello Healthcare. As a marketer myself, there’s really no shortage of channels or mediums for me to reach and engage my audiences. The challenge has always been how do I deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. For healthcare systems today, it’s an open green pasture with many still focused on broadcast and analog marketing. While most health systems are still setting up their digital marketing practices, Jordana Taylor, marketing manager at BayCare Health Systems is using podcasts to power her content marketing strategy. I’m excited to have Jordana here with me. Te on. Hello Healthcare. Welcome, Jordana.

Jordana Taylor (01:00):
Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

Alan Tam (01:02):
Yes. I’m really blown away with your strategy of using podcasts. I think it’s really innovative and revolutionary within healthcare. What kind of led to this really cool idea?

Jordana Taylor (01:16):
So necessity is the mother of all innovation. Our footprint within BayCare, it’s a, primarily a four-county footprint, so it’s a fairly large footprint and we have 15 hospitals, soon to be 16. And we were doing a lot of in-person physician lectures. So we were having seminars where we’d bring in a physician and he would talk about knee replacement or carotid artery or something along those lines, different services and procedures. We were reaching a key audience of the senior demographic … Sorry.
01:54):
Sorry, you’re kind of rambling. We were reaching a key demographic of the 60, 65-plus retired because we were having these in-person lectures at noon in the middle of a week, but we were missing some of the key audience that either could not attend an in-person lecture, so they were working professionals or busy parents, or maybe there was a topic that they were uncomfortable attending an in-person lecture, so maybe pelvic floor health or different prostate cancer or something like that. So we needed a medium that could reach them. And so that’s when we started looking what could that be, and podcasts presented themselves as a great opportunity to reach that untapped audience.

Alan Tam (02:37):
That’s really cool. That’s really awesome. What made you gravitate towards podcasts, say versus email or other types of digital channels?

Jordana Taylor (02:46):
Well, we know people learn in different ways. And so we did and we do have an email marketing strategy. So we have email content that goes out so people can read different health and wellness tips and facts. And we looked into video recording because that’s another option, but that was something that had a lot of labor intensity to it as well as a higher cost and to get the production value that you really want. And so the audio mechanism, we love podcasts because you were able to really take that health and wellness information on the go, it became more portable. And so instead of … We wanted this as a medium that we could reach those audiences that couldn’t attend. And so making it as easy for them as possible was really the goal we were looking at. And podcasts just really provided that portable information for people.

Alan Tam (03:39):
Awesome. So how long has your podcast been up and running now?

Jordana Taylor (03:42):
So we started in April of 2018, so pre-pandemic and then have continued now, so almost five years now.

Alan Tam (03:51):
Wow. That’s incredible. Did you see an uptake during the pandemic as more people-

Jordana Taylor (03:57):
Yeah. I was glad we started it when we did because we were able to build a nice library of podcasts. And so when it came time to the pandemic and then we had to cancel all of our in-person classes and events, we then had this robust library at that time, probably 80 to a hundred podcasts that we could tap into.

Jordana Taylor (04:17):
One great example how this worked is maternity classes. So when you’re going to be a new mom and you have all these questions and information that you want to get, so we had this robust childbirth classes programming that people could attend, and that all had to be canceled with the pandemic for out of safety reasons. And so we were able to pivot very quickly to the podcast. We already had several podcasts in English and a few in Spanish. We were able to build that library up more of these maternity childbirth classes. And so even though we weren’t able to offer the in-person, we were still able to offer them that information because it’s not just because the classes paused, the pregnancy couldn’t pause, they still need that information. And so we were able to then provide that resource to the community.

Alan Tam (05:04):
That’s amazing. I think that’s a very cool use case that you identified. So you’re on a podcast now. So I’m talking to you as a peer, and one of the biggest challenges I have myself with podcasts is how do I measure the effectiveness and success of it? You used one example of maternity, but in terms of proving it to your leadership, proving it to your team, what are some of the core metrics that you’re using today to justify the continuation of the program and the effectiveness of the podcast?

Jordana Taylor (05:38):
There’s a lot of ways that you can do to measure the success of podcasts with us, and it’s part of what the goal is of your podcast. So for us, it’s building a lot of that great health and wellness content. So we really are seeing this as an extension of our benefit to the community and that educational, providing that health and wellness education. So our community is more educated about the different services and procedures and their own personal health. So that’s a big factor for us. And so being able to have that good content that we can then repurpose in other ways. So we have the podcast, which is great, that audio file, but then we can use that in our email marketing, we can use that on our website, on our service line pages, or our hospital pages. We integrate it into our physician bio pages.
(06:24):
So if somebody’s looking for a doctor, maybe they’re not necessarily looking for that procedure or that topic that they’re talking about, but they can still hear the doctor talk and get that … because you can get a sense of somebody when you actually listen to them interacting with someone else. And so we’re able to repurpose it in a lot of ways. And so that in and of itself provides a huge benefit to the organization. In terms of the analytics, we measure interactions, so the plays, and downloads that a particular podcast has, that’s one mechanism and you can look at that in the first 45 days, the first 90 days of a podcast. We also see in the Google Analytics, looking at page views are when we put it on a certain page, do the page views increase? Are certain podcasts getting more traction than others? And so is there a particular interest, a topic that may be resonating more in the community and in case should we dig deeper into that avenue as well?

Alan Tam (07:21):
So across all these different types of areas where I can consume the podcast, I’m curious to hear which one has been most effective and highest reach for you.

Jordana Taylor (07:35):
In terms of the mechanism?

Alan Tam (07:37):
Correct. Is it Apple, is it Spotify? Do people go to the website?

Jordana Taylor (07:41):
It depends on how we promote it. If it’s just a straight podcast that we put out there without other touch touchpoints with it, so if we haven’t used it in social media or email marketing and things like that, typically, Apple Podcasts is where we get or those other third-party aggregator sites, so the Apple, Google, right, Amazon, things like that.
(08:04):
The podcasts that we’ve included in our email digest, so our health and wellness information, emails that we send out, they have articles in there, so some great information there, some other calls to action, and we always include a podcast and those which we drive, then people to our website, those tend to get the highest interactions. Absolutely.

Alan Tam (08:24):
That’s interesting. So they consume it on the website. So they’re listening online.

Jordana Taylor (08:28):
So they can play it or download it directly from our website.

Jordana Taylor (08:31):
And that’s where we see … If we see a number that spikes on our podcast, it’s usually because it’s been in an email.

Alan Tam (08:37):
Okay, fantastic. How do you get patients to subscribe to the content? Or is that something that you guys are doing today?

Jordana Taylor (08:49):
I mean, we do have subscribers. We’re not actively trying to get more subscribers. The tricky thing with our podcast is the topics are so broad, so it’s not where you have a lot of those other podcasts where they’re really on a niche topic. So marathon runners. And so that’s really the audience that you’re going for.
(09:10):
With us, it’s everything from the maternity to the senior health, men’s health, children’s health, everything in between. And so there isn’t any one-size-fits-all subscribers. So what we really are trying to do is get the content that from our research that we know consumers are looking to get more information about, and then trying to get it as you mentioned, in the open to the right people at the right time, in the right place, in the right way so that it’s there when they need it.

Alan Tam (09:39):
Makes sense. How does this compare to other marketing programs and campaigns that you guys are running?

Jordana Taylor (09:47):
It’s not in and of itself a campaign, it’s a tool in the toolbox that BayCare uses. And so we’re able to integrate it into a lot of our other marketing campaigns that we have as that additional resource. Again, as people learn in different ways, they absorb information in different ways. It takes what the seven touches for people to actually start to remember your brand. And so it’s another one of those tools that we use to help enhance the content and the information we’re putting out there.

Alan Tam (10:18):
All right. I’m excited. I’m excited about what you guys are doing and I’m sure that many of you in the audience who are listening are also very excited. So if I wanted to do this, where do I start? How do I even begin? Where do I look? What do I do?

Jordana Taylor (10:35):
Well, the first step is to figure out your why. So this is what you want to do, but figure out why it is that you want to do it. What really are your goals because oftentimes, this may be the right medium for what you’re trying to accomplish, but it may not be. And for us, we wanted to build that health and wellness library and information and we wanted to reach people that we weren’t reaching otherwise. We started with that why, and then this became the what and how that we did it. So starting with that and figuring out what your goals are, what you want to do. If it is a podcast, there are a million different ways that you can start it from starting it yourself and getting the technical equipment that you need. And there’s a lot of resources out there for that.
(11:20):
There’s different vendors you can work with as well that can help with the technical aspect of it and where you can be the content and provider resource, and they can handle all the technical production side. But I think figuring out really what your goal is, and then also getting buy-in from your organization. It’s not a small project undertaking. It’s not something that can be sort of done once in a while as you kind of see as the need arises. It’s something you want to have that consistency with.
(11:56):
So whether that be publishing weekly, biweekly, monthly, you just want to have that rhythm to it because people that do subscribe, will start to expect that new content to come out. And if it sits dormant for a while, then you kind of wonder what’s going on. So making sure that you’re able to have that buy-in from the organization and then that consistency.

Alan Tam (12:19):
Okay, so you’re definitely a pro at this now that you’ve been doing it for a few years, and I think that’s a great way to start looking at things. So once I figure out my why, what are some of the best practices and pitfalls to avoid that you’ve kind of come across in the past few years getting this up and running?

Jordana Taylor (12:39):
The biggest one, which seems so obvious, but sometimes those are the ones that you learn from is people can’t listen to your podcast if they don’t know it exists. And so at the beginning, we wanted to build that library so we would have those podcasts that people were looking but we didn’t do … It was a lot of grassroots and organic where we would just put it out in different ways but not actively promote it. And we also didn’t actively promote it to our team members.
(13:09):
BayCare is a large health system. We have about 30,000 team members, and so it was probably almost a year of us doing the podcast before we sent out in one of our team member newsletters to say, Hey, BayCare has this podcast. Did you know? And their response was, no, we didn’t know. So yeah, go to Baker Health chat, look it up. And it’s a great resource once people knew, but they didn’t know. And so making sure that you really do get that integration and make sure people know so they can listen to it, that was definitely the biggest lesson we learned.

Alan Tam (13:47):
So what was that first milestone that you had in terms of setting that goal and objective? Like, Hey, we got to hit X.

Jordana Taylor (13:59):
We didn’t really have the specific … I mean, it was exciting when we had our first month where we passed X Y, Z analytics, when we had 500 listens in a month or a thousand listens in a month, and then it’s like, okay, we’re starting to get now all of a sudden what was our … when we were excited to get a thousand and now we’re at 2000 a month and that’s the new norm and now it’s this next milestone. So it was just starting to see that consistency and that traction we were gaining. So where before it was like, oh, we put it in an email so it got a spike, but now we didn’t this month, so now it’s back to where the normal numbers, but when you’re seeing your levels are starting to be consistently where that was a place you were once just trying to reach for, that was really the exciting milestone for us.

Alan Tam (14:50):
Awesome. So now that you have that content, earlier you mentioned about pushing content to the right folks, obviously, maternity content to expecting mothers and so forth. How do you ensure that you’re delivering that content, the right podcasts to the right audience?

Jordana Taylor (15:07):
So we do a lot of research in looking at what our consumers are talking about and what topics are of interest to them. So we have a lot of different ways that we survey our consumers and our patients to get that information. We participate in a community health needs assessment, so we see what are the topics and the health concerns out there. We talk to our doctors and clinicians to say, what are questions that patients are asking you? What are the hot topics that are being asked all the time of you that are education that consumers may not have or patients may not have that it’s important for them to have when they’re trying to make a healthcare decision?
(15:48):
And so we kind of take all that information and start to sift through it and get it down to a list of podcasts that we can then start to reach out to providers to record and have them and get that information out there to the patients and to our consumers.

Alan Tam (16:05):
Are you also using data from the actual, I guess podcast listens or the total listens? How do you combine that with the research that you guys are doing to kind of the direction?

Jordana Taylor (16:13):
We are. Again, you kind of look at the metrics and take them with a grain of salt because again, the more people that know about a podcast, the listens are going to be higher, and so we look at what … The more you push a podcast out tech, the higher it’s going to be listened, so is that, are the listens higher because we pushed it out or is it higher because it’s resonating?
(16:37):
So you kind of looking at it with that, but then you can also start to see some of the podcasts that are month over month having higher interactions, it’s been a year since we recorded it, but it’s still in the top 10 20 of our podcasts. And so we’ll look at those topics and then say, okay, there’s something in here that is really hitting a nerve with people, they’re reacting to it, they’re interested in this. Is there another way we can look at this podcast or this topic and go deeper on the topic or go in a slightly different angle to continue to provide that information?
(17:10):
One of the categories that has performed very well, and that is not surprising that it’s been a huge need in our community is our topics on mental health and mental wellness. And so what is, how to cope with stress, how to manage your time resiliency, things along those lines have really been some of our higher-ranking podcasts.

Alan Tam (17:35):
On the opposite end of the spectrum, are there any types of content that you think would not be suitable or what types of content wouldn’t be suitable for podcasting?

Jordana Taylor (17:46):
I don’t want to say … because in podcasting in general, I think you can pretty much do any topic, but for our podcast, our goal, we really go back to the goal, which was general health and wellness topics, so topics that are shorter topics, so there are 10 to 15 minutes in length maximum that is really relevant to our community on those that health and wellness. And so as we talk about some of the more procedural topics, we don’t really go too far into that because that’s not really the goal of our podcast. We want to keep it more about the health and wellness and the conditions and how to live a healthy life and about different health conditions that you may have.
(18:27):
And so we don’t go too far into a specific “you’re going to have this type of procedure and here are all what to expect.” We go into it a little bit, but in a frame of how it impacts your overall health and wellness and not into promoting specific services or procedures because that’s not … It’s a marketing tool, but that’s not the ultimate goal. We’re not trying to sell you something. We’re trying to help you to live a better, healthier, longer life.

Alan Tam (18:59):
I haven’t had a chance to listen to your podcast yet, but what about kind of just condition education? I’ve just been diagnosed with diabetes, I don’t really know anything, do you have content that helped me understand, well, what is diabetes?

Jordana Taylor (19:13):
We do. We have a podcast on how to live better with diabetes.

Jordana Taylor (19:16):
We have one on pre-diabetes, so gestational diabetes in English, and soon to be in Spanish.

Jordana Taylor (19:22):
Again, those topics that are relevant to our community, I’m really trying to address them and the questions that they may have around those conditions.

Alan Tam (19:33):
That is awesome. This is the first time I’ve heard of multilingual podcasts. So it’s amazing you guys are doing that. What kind of drove that in terms of developing multilingual type of content?

Jordana Taylor (19:47):
Again, it always goes back to the community, and that is we have a large Spanish-speaking population in our area and our metro area, and so we wanted to be able to provide a resource for them really. We had already started recording a couple before the pandemic, a couple of the maternity podcasts, and then during the pandemic we expanded that and then started branching out in some of the other areas. So into heart, we have a couple there; in diabetes, we have Spanish podcasts. And so trying to get it in a couple of general … Surgery, we have a Spanish podcast as well. So seeing those areas that would be important for consumers and then making sure we had that content as well.

Alan Tam (20:30):
That must be really cool because then you can start seeing the trends between the different language and the type of content. Does that help you predict or improve some of the services and programs you guys are offering for say, the Spanish-speaking population versus the non-Spanish-speaking population?

Jordana Taylor (20:53):
We always go back to the research and listening to our community, and so it’s one of the other tools that we have in order to be able to gain that information and that insight. It’s been somewhat surprising. Even though we did record the Spanish podcast, we were somewhat surprised by how well they have been received in the community in terms of how many interactions, plays and downloads that we’ve been getting, because we really haven’t done a lot of robust marketing and push behind it. But they’ve still found that resource out there and it’s been a helpful resource. So that’s definitely something we’re looking to see how can we, again, get these podcasts to the right people that need this information. And so that’s something we’re continuing to explore.

Alan Tam (21:42):
That is amazing. I love that story. I’m assuming you also get, like you said, just a lot of data to help continue to drive your podcast program. So what’s kind of next for your podcast at this point?

Jordana Taylor (21:56):
Well, we recorded, let’s see, in PUSH LIVE last week or the week before our 200th podcast.

Jordana Taylor (22:03):
So that was a big milestone for us. So continuing to record, and now that we have built such a good library, it’s going to be about how can we refine it and continue to tackle topics and maybe do a few more series podcasts. So where we tackle one subject and go a little bit deeper into it with a 3, 5, 7-part series. Also, looking at how else we can continue to get the word out. We’ve been integrating it with our social media and email and the website, but what other opportunities are out there? We have patient waiting rooms. Is there a way that we can, instead of just having the TV on that, we can have the podcast different podcasts playing in there so we can provide that health and wellness, that good information.
(22:52):
We’ve explored or discussed possibly adding a video component to it to help enhance the content. So I think really there is no limit. We’re just going to kind of see where it takes us, but continue to look at the data and listen to our consumers.

Alan Tam (23:07):
Okay. Awesome. Look, Jordana, I really enjoyed our conversation, and I hope our audience audiences as well. You’re definitely on the bleeding edge. If they want to continue the conversation with you or to learn more about leveraging podcasts to power their content, what’s the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

Jordana Taylor (23:28):
Well, if they want to learn more about our podcast, I definitely encourage them to go to baycare.org or baycarehealthchat.org to be able to listen to our podcast and kind of see some of the work that we’ve done. There also is an email address that they could reach me at, and it’s baycarehealthchat@baycare.org.

Alan Tam (23:50):
Nice. I love that URL. So if any of you listening in the audience have any questions or just wondering how you get started, Jordana is a great resource for all of you.
(24:01):
Jordana, thank you so much for joining us today on Hello Healthcare.

Alan Tam (24:05):
Really enjoyed our conversation. For those of you that are listening, thank you for joining us, and until next time, hello.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
If you want more of the latest from Healthcare’s thought leaders, subscribe using the button below, or you can visit hellohealthcare.com to get updates directly in your email.