Local SEO and AI Search for Clinics

Chris Hutchins (00:00)

Welcome back to The Signal Room. I'm Chris Hutchins. My guest today is Darcy Sullivan. She's the founder of Propel Marketing & Design, a digital marketing agency that has helped clinics improve their online visibility for more than a decade. Darcy specializes in local search engine optimization, AI search visibility, and helping clinics adapt as patient search behavior evolves. So today we're gonna separate some hype from what clinics actually need to be able to be visible when the patients are going AI first. Darcy, welcome to The Signal Room. I'm really excited to have you here.

Darcy Sullivan (00:33)

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Chris Hutchins (00:35)

Tell us a little bit about your company and the things that you're specializing in.

Darcy Sullivan (00:39)

Absolutely. So, like you said, I'm the founder of Propel Marketing & Design. We have been in business since 2011. And around 2018, 2019, we started to see that we're really picking up when it comes to working with clinics and focusing on SEO. So at around 2020, we kind of niched down and gave that all our full heart into that audience. But you know, it's interesting because it's one of those things where you hate to show your age, but you're like, I've been doing this for longer than I haven't been doing this. But I remember, you…

Chris Hutchins (01:13)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (01:14)

…know, coding in college and learning about human-computer interaction in college. And back in the very late 90s, early 2000s, we were already talking about AI. We were just talking about it slightly different and the technology…

Chris Hutchins (01:30)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (01:31)

…has just continued to change and improve, change the behaviors behind the way people search. And to me, I just find it so fascinating.

Chris Hutchins (01:42)

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember back—I don't know, I can't even remember the years, but when we started to have Google finish our sentences, we were like, "Oh my God, this is crazy."

Darcy Sullivan (01:51)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, went from a time when you would have typed in "Facebook CEO" to now when you would say, "Who is the CEO of Facebook?" You know, that shift alone when we started to see a voice search and now like you mentioned before, people are just changing the way they search and they want to have a more customized search. They're looking for what matters to them, not just general information.

Chris Hutchins (02:21)

But you've been working in the healthcare space for quite a long time, as you mentioned. Yeah, talk about what you've seen that's maybe the most consequential now for clinics and practices and what do they need to be aware of. Because I think that there's a lot that people aren't understanding, especially right now, because you've mentioned the AI visibility piece of it.

Darcy Sullivan (02:39)

So I think what's really important is a layered approach and knowing that you're gonna have people that are gonna search the way you would traditionally search, but you're also gonna have people that do a deeper dive. So what we wanna do is make sure obviously that your potential patients trust you, but also that Google and these other AI search options trust you, right? I mean, there's so many AI terms out there that I don't want to start like going through them all between AI, AEO, LLM, you know, all the alphabet soup of it all.

But the main gist of it is that people are changing the way they search. You know, they could be going to Grok or ChatGPT and saying, I am looking for a specific service or I suffer from a specific ailment and I'm looking for a clinic that takes my insurance. Or we've seen I like this style of how this one clinic treats stuff, but they're not in my area because I'm away for the summer. Who in this area has that same type of offering?

That's completely different than just going in and typing a specific type of clinic near me. They're getting very…

Chris Hutchins (03:55)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (03:55)

…specific and they want to make sure that their needs are being met and if they're investing in their health, that they're doing so with an organization that they trust and that they're getting a service and a treatment plan that aligns with what they think they are suffering from.

Chris Hutchins (04:10)

Right. You've got a whole other area of focus. We mentioned you know the Clinic Marketing Podcast. How has that been able to help you to adjust and adapt when you're talking to clinic owners and folks that are really heavily focused on patient acquisition and search? What are some of those things that you've noticed that are in terms of where things are at with the transition?

Darcy Sullivan (04:30)

Yeah, well, I love the idea of podcasts as we're speaking on a podcast right now because it especially like with the Clinic Marketing Podcast, we take like little topic by little topic. So it's like, hey, right now we're gonna talk about this one little thing. Right now you and I are talking about AI search, which is a huge animal in itself, right? But it kind of breaks down to a couple different things.

It breaks down to making sure that your website isn't a brochure website, that it has all the information that's needed, that you're sending Google these trust signals or any other search platform that you're sending trust signals, which comes from reviews that reflect the services and the conditions that you treat, not just five-star reviews. Because if you offer a specific service or treat a specific ailment and the internet is covered with reviews that showcase that wording that puts you as the authority figure.

Then we also have your Google Business Profile listing, which is what controls your Google Maps listing. And most clinics don't give enough love to that simple platform or they think of it more as a traditional social media platform when it should be treated differently.

Chris Hutchins (05:43)

Yeah, and it's interesting because I'm sure that a lot of the traffic you're getting from the organizations now is 'cause they're realizing things have really shifted, which kind of brings us to a change that's really happening in real time where the patient's first search may not lead to a website at all.

Darcy Sullivan (05:58)

Mm-mm.

Chris Hutchins (05:59)

Walk us through the patient journey now and you know, how can Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity, et cetera, shape a decision before the patient reaches a clinic website?

Darcy Sullivan (06:09)

So before we talk about that, I think it's important to note that we have what we call our NAP: our name, address, and phone number. This was traditionally what we called our citations online. They have to be congruent…

Chris Hutchins (06:18)

Okay. Right.

Darcy Sullivan (06:21)

…throughout all of the listings online because even if you are suggested, if there's a mismatch on your location or how somebody can contact you, and especially if they're not necessarily ending up on your website, if they're just taking that initial action, to either click a book button through your Google Business…

Chris Hutchins (06:38)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (06:38)

…profile, or they see your phone number when they've done an AI search, we have to make sure that it's in alignment with the correct listing of your business. So you have that. Then you have…

Chris Hutchins (06:51)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (06:51)

…again making sure that you really have the credible content that's going to help you rank. So we've got those trust signals, we've got the citations, we've got the reviews, we've got content in using the words specifically that your target audience is using when they're searching is going to help you show up. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't use what I call doctor talk because you're still…

Chris Hutchins (07:13)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (07:14)

…you know, you want that sense of credibility, but you also need to make sure that you are using the verbiage that your target audience is using.

Chris Hutchins (07:23)

Let's talk about the search visibility a little bit more in terms of how these transformations that are occurring through AI, how does that differ in terms of how things are ranked versus how they've been historically? Like you mentioned, the five-star ratings, Leapfrog and CMS star ratings—things are different no matter what's going on in that space?

Darcy Sullivan (07:41)

Things are different because search is different. And, you know, I gave that example early on about how, when voice search came about, like you went from doing the search of "Facebook CEO" to "Who is the CEO of Facebook?" So now we have people used to be focused really heavily on specific keywords and making sure that they were ranking for the type of clinic they are near me or the type of clinic they are in name of city. And now we have to expand that.

And that sometimes is really hard for people to wrap their heads around because it's so new. And it's a change from their old goal. And their old goal was a little bit easier because you either knew we're sitting at position one or we're sitting at position 20. But now when you say, well, some people are searching for these terms, other people are searching for other terms and where they're searching and how they're searching is just unique and different.

And that's one thing that with Google Analytics or whatever analytic data you have in place can really help you understand which pieces of content are really guiding specific searches and which of those into quality leads or appointment booking.

Chris Hutchins (08:59)

Right. So what determines whether a clinic is named, cited, summarized accurately, or left out of an AI-generated answer? 'Cause I think the citation versus visibility aren't necessarily the same, right?

Darcy Sullivan (09:11)

Right, so again it's gonna depend on the search. So let's just say you offer a specific treatment. If your website really showcases that you offer that treatment, not just like a little paragraph or a sentence about it, because some clinics are like, well, we have a page dedicated to it, and that page has three sentences on it. That's not going to compete with a clinic that has detailed information about that specific service and has reviews and videos and images and goes into more detail and has reviews again, mentioning that specific service.

That's what's going to get you cited. Now, in addition to that, we are seeing that social media is playing a little bit of a role. Little bit, not as big as it used to, but oftentimes clinics aren't necessarily posting to their social media in a way that highlights again the services that they offer and the conditions that they treat. Those also send small signals. So we've got your website being up to date, your website, all the basic SEO still really matters. Your website needs to have local schema.

It needs to be able to load quickly, it needs to be mobile-friendly, it needs to be user-friendly, and of course something we didn't talk about, but it has to be able to guide them to the best action that you want to take. Sometimes that can even be a little muddy. So people if they do end up on your website don't oftentimes book because they get distracted or they don't see the obvious solution to taking that next step. So there's a lot of little things that go into it.

And also, you know, are people going to your website? Is your website credible? So we've got all of that stuff. And making sure, because this is where the other side of AI is, that you aren't using AI to write all the content on your website. Because I mean…

Chris Hutchins (11:08)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (11:09)

…that's going to drag you down. AI is amazing as an assistant, but there's a lot of clinics that are just relying too heavy on it to create content, and the content then either doesn't sound authentic, doesn't sound trustworthy, or doesn't sound specific to what they offer and their method of offering or style of doing business.

Chris Hutchins (11:31)

What would lazy AI content look like?

Darcy Sullivan (11:33)

So obviously the em dash and the bolding…

Chris Hutchins (11:36)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (11:36)

…of some words and the repetitious style of just especially if you ask it to create multiple pieces of content and you haven't given it your brand style guide or you haven't done any activities to say, note the style that we wrote in on this specific piece of content. Now from an idealization stage when you're coming up with the ideas, it's great to use it as a source. If you're working through some stuff, it's great to use it to help you organize your thoughts to see if you missed anything.

But if you're relying on it, it's garbage in, garbage out. And it's gonna be the exact same thing with just a couple different words than the clinic next to you that you're competing with. And I always say you're never gonna be the best in your industry if you're doing exactly what somebody else is doing. So you can't…

Chris Hutchins (12:22)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (12:24)

…move forward if you're just relying on it at that level. And what I see happen is either clinics get it right and they're like, well, we have specific templates designed, we use it for this stage, we use it for this stage, we work with it, we go back and forth with it, we make sure that it's using our tone of voice, we make sure that there's a human involved that fact-checks everything, that revises everything, so it sounds authentic. That's the right way to use it.

The wrong way to use it is just, hey AI, create a piece of content for me. The other wrong way to use it is to ask it for SEO advice or ranking in AI because we've seen it give some of the worst advice.

Chris Hutchins (13:09)

But in your mind, where's the tipping point where you really ought to have some like I don't know if you want to call it a human in the loop or just a built-in pause for a decision to make sure it's really clear and understandable how we're defining, you know, where that boundary sits?

Darcy Sullivan (13:23)

I think it's pretty much at every step of the way there should be a human involved in it. Now, we've talked about AI when it comes to search, but also, you know, I feel like AI is such like that popular terminology that it's being used every which way. Like…

Chris Hutchins (13:39)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (13:40)

…now, if we think about leveraging AI tools, let's just say for your review collection, right? There's a big difference between setting up an AI system that goes out, asks for reviews, asks it in the right way, which the right way isn't just, hey, will you leave us a review? It's, "Will you share what brought you in today and how your experience is?" Right? If you ask it like that, all of a sudden you're getting this amazing feedback that includes the services, the conditions that's gonna help take you to that next level.

So I think that, you know—and we've got AI bots that are on the website that start the initial conversation in some cases. So it's hard to group everything as AI and say where should the human come in, because there's all different types of elements when it comes to the AI marketing. But there should always be a human overseeing it, especially before anything gets published that's associated with your business to make sure it's actually in alignment with your core values.

Chris Hutchins (14:41)

If a clinic's never evaluated its AI search visibility, what would the first audit look like?

Darcy Sullivan (14:45)

Right. So one of the easier, simple ways to just get started is to log into an AI source, whether it's ChatGPT, Grok, make sure that you're doing it in a way that it doesn't think that it's had a previous conversation with you, and ask…

Chris Hutchins (15:02)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (15:03)

…it who around here is the best clinic for fill in the blank. You know, depending on what you typically feel like you should be ranking for. And if you see that your competition's coming up, look at their online presence, look at their content plan, look at their reviews. And…

Chris Hutchins (15:20)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (15:21)

…really, you'll see a lot of those trust signals where they've got better reviews than you do. They've got better content on their website than you have. Or more…

Chris Hutchins (15:31)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (15:32)

…detailed, lengthy content that specifically relates to their business instead of generic content. And we find that companies that really hone in on this are just dominating AI search. Now, another thing to note is it also depends on who your target audience is. There's a certain demographic that are more likely to do AI searches than maybe an older demographic that's gonna stick to what they know and feel comfortable with. For example, my parents aren't gonna go on AI to do a search.

So for them, you know, depending on who your target audience is, you need to decide where you need to focus your energy.

Chris Hutchins (16:13)

I think this is getting into a place where it could be a lot more of a challenge for people if they're not thinking about making some moves relatively soon. Because I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just thinking about this in the terms of, you know, some kid in a mom's basement starts playing around and starts realizing, hey, I could really kind of drive a lot of traffic and they just start playing with it.

If they actually are starting to gain traction and they're watching things move from a ranking standpoint, and they just double down on that I mean that kind of puts the urgency on a different…

Darcy Sullivan (16:42)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (16:43)

…level for organizations to start taking a look at this. They shouldn't really be waiting, should they?

Darcy Sullivan (16:47)

No, they shouldn't be waiting. But also that kid that you're talking about, what level of intelligence do they have, especially specifically about the services and everything medically related? You know, their level and their knowledge might just be super basic and what they've searched online for because they're repeating this for every other company. So this isn't the old, like remember when social media first started out and everybody's just like hire a kid to do it because kids know social media. That's not what you want to do with AI.

You want somebody that's experienced, that understands how it's evolved from traditional SEO. That's not just going to promise you the moon or do something quote unquote behind the scenes to make it happen.

Chris Hutchins (17:36)

Talk a little bit about how much time should they be thinking is required to get somebody up to speed to be able to do this or at least to be able to have a rational conversation with somebody like yourself to be able to start coming up with a game plan to make progress with this.

Darcy Sullivan (17:50)

Well, I think that, doing a little bit of research, listening to this episode, looking at a couple other online resources will help you have an intelligent conversation. I think the biggest takeaways are I always say whenever you're gonna talk to somebody about any type of marketing, if they try to talk over your head, if they try to say they're gonna do things behind the scenes.

Yes, there is some programming behind the scenes that does need to be done, but if they say they're gonna charge you a monthly fee to do quote unquote something or to drive traffic doing something that sounds a little weird. Question it, always question it. So I would say that, you know, listening to this episode, listening to a couple other episodes, we've got a lot of episodes on the Clinic Marketing Podcast that do deeper dives into specific elements that could really help people understand things more as well. But then you're able to have that intelligent conversation.

And if you are having a conversation with an agency, it's okay to play dumb. It's okay to say, well, what does that mean? Well, what does that mean? Well, what is that gonna do for us? And the other element is like, we want to make sure that it ties in with your overall marketing plan. Your AI search plan ties in with your SEO plan. Your SEO plan ties in with your content plan on your website, which then should tie into your email marketing campaign and your social media marketing campaign.

Everything should work together and be cohesive.

Chris Hutchins (19:13)

Talk a little bit about some of the data sources that are necessary and what are you finding in terms of where organizations are, what do they understand in terms of scope and the kinds of resources and data sources they could actually use and leverage.

Darcy Sullivan (19:26)

Well, I find personally that a lot of clinics when they're reaching out to us, they don't have that data and the metrics in place when it comes to marketing, which always breaks my heart. Or they're just like, well, when we ask somebody when they call in to make an appointment, they say, well, they found us on Google, but they don't know. Does that mean that they came through their ads, or does that mean they came through organically, or was it the Google Business Profile, or was it Google AI Overviews?

So having a good analytics system in place, which would be your traditional Google Analytics, is going to start to give you that information. Google Analytics years and years ago was a lot more simpler to understand. We always suggest like if you have a simple website, there's another system called Clicky that you can also add that just really boils down and just takes the information that you really need that makes it easier to understand.

So having metrics in place, making sure that you understand your campaigns making sure that things aren't getting mismatched, meaning that I see oftentimes a lot of people are running ads, but they're running them to general pages on their website instead of specific landing pages geared directly towards a specific campaign. So taking all of that into account and really knowing your numbers, looking at your Google Business Profile Insights, looking at your Google Analytics, looking at that information will help you understand, get a better idea of what is or what isn't working.

Right now, I do think that in the future, Google Analytics is going to get better with the way that it supplies information about which AI sources traffic's coming from. Clicky does a really good job of that. And you know, there's tons of expensive resources out there. But in most instances it's better for a clinic to turn to a marketing agency than necessarily investing in those more advanced and sophisticated systems that are gonna do way more than it needs it to do when they just probably should partner with an agency.

Chris Hutchins (21:30)

Talk about the difference between what you know an organization might do just as a healthcare provider versus…

Darcy Sullivan (21:36)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (21:36)

…the things that you would do when you're coming at trying to solve the problem that they have. So maybe talk a little bit about…

Darcy Sullivan (21:42)

No.

Chris Hutchins (21:43)

…how you think about it and the types of things. Now you don't need to give away secrets, but I mean there's some numbers, there's some sources, there's a balancing act that you're playing to advise them and where to go and what to do…

Darcy Sullivan (21:54)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (21:55)

…first. Maybe talk about that a little.

Darcy Sullivan (21:56)

So first we talk with them and we say what typically brings somebody in for the first time, right? Because once you have a patient, it's easier to keep them repeating. And we say, what are the most profitable services that you offer?

Chris Hutchins (22:14)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (22:14)

We combine that with who's your target audience. We combine that with looking at keyword research and keyword data so that we know what terms people are searching for, the search volume on those, how many people are actually searching for them, and then what types of searches are those? Because there's some search terms that might have more people searching for them, but they're only doctors that are searching for them. What are your patients actually searching for?

So we go through all of that and we say, what are the new services you plan on offering in the near future? What do you feel like people should know about you that they don't currently know about you? So there's all these little things that add up into what we decide should be the direction that we take first because we typically like to get people some quick wins because that makes you feel more confident in keeping things in motion.

Chris Hutchins (23:06)

What are some of the things that you look for? First of all, validate that there's a real demand for what they're talking about versus, it's just something that they feel is important within their overall market. If they just think that they need more. But I mean, there's also things that come into play in terms of first of all the volume and the demand that's there, but also, you know, where there's maybe an oversaturation in a particular market. I mean these are nuanced things that you have to think about.

Darcy Sullivan (23:29)

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Because we have like keyword difficulty, like how hard is…

Chris Hutchins (23:36)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (23:36)

…it to actually rank for some of these keyword terms? So typically if we want quick wins, we want to find something that is highly searched, but easier to rank for that aligns is going to be as profitable for you as possible.

That's the sweet spot and then building specific content around it, not just going to AI and saying, hey, write some content around this, but creating a detailed plan around meeting what people are searching for, what you offer, and again the ease of getting you quicker wins when it comes to ranking for some of those keyword phrases.

And I do think people kind of get hung up or they can be frustrated, especially if they have been looking at analytics, because over the years you might start to see the number of people that are visiting your website might go down a little bit because it's not showcasing that you are showing up in AI searches. It's not showcasing yet the new wave.

Chris Hutchins (24:34)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (24:35)

And I do think in a couple years or hopefully maybe later this year, there will be a product on board that's good for the end user to see all of that data in one place in a really simplified and budgeted way. Right now that doesn't necessarily exist and things are gonna continue to change. So…

Chris Hutchins (24:55)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (24:56)

…and we have all these other touch points. Like you look at even when you look at Google Analytics, you see, was it somebody that came to your website for the first time? Or are they returning? Because you've got to be able to…

Chris Hutchins (25:06)

You know.

Darcy Sullivan (25:06)

…differentiate that to determine which campaign is working as well. So there's a lot involved in it.

Chris Hutchins (25:12)

What would you suggest to them in terms of where are things that you can actually look at once you're if you're gonna start doing something, like where would you be measuring it? What are the types of things that you would measure that they should be thinking about? Because they probably aren't measuring it now.

Darcy Sullivan (25:26)

Yeah. So I would say basics look at your Google Analytics. Look at where your traffic sources are coming from. Because again, a lot of people I find a lot of clinics are spending money and paying for ads that are giving them zero return. And if they were to take some of that money and put it into SEO optimizing for now and optimizing, you know, we say SEO and we mean SEO and AI search because that's where the evolution's headed, that they would see a better return on their investment.

So they should be looking at who's coming to their website, what the sources are from, and start having conversations, whether it's internally or with external resources, to say, does this seem right? How can we get this better? And you know, oftentimes we see like people are throwing money at ads for example where it's just their brand name. And so they're getting clicks and people are booking, but they're returning visitors. And they would have booked anyways if you hadn't spent the money on the ads because they know like and trust you already.

So it's understanding that and then also understanding yes, you are going to need a couple more touch points potentially. Somebody might search on AI, do the very sophisticated search, and then go to your website the next week. And that would be a still a first-time visitor to your website, but they've done the research somewhere else. So it's a balancing act, and you do need to know some of those data points.

Chris Hutchins (26:54)

But with the AI search engines, they're gonna favor specific targeted types of questions as you've indicated.

Darcy Sullivan (27:01)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (27:01)

If somebody's got a big brand but they're not doing that work. What is that gonna look like for them?

Darcy Sullivan (27:07)

Yeah, so an interesting example of that. We work with a lot of clinics that are whatever the type of clinic it is, and then city is the name, like city, type of clinic, right? And for a while from an SEO standpoint, it was like, well, that's a no-brainer. Somebody types in the type of clinic they're looking for in the location, they're automatically up higher. But now…

Chris Hutchins (27:27)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (27:27)

…with the way that search is changing, specifically those companies need to focus a little bit harder and stronger because they haven't needed to before because they were…

Chris Hutchins (27:38)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (27:38)

…relying heavily on that branded search that just aligned with a traditional specific search. I think we've already seen kind of the days of the tricking of the system have come to an end because, you know, there were some what we call black hat, like, you know, things you used to be able to get away with that would move the needle that now just don't work.

Chris Hutchins (27:59)

Right. This goes into where do we go from here, I'd just love for you to talk a little bit about what the work is that is going to help organizations to prepare. You mentioned over the next 24 months what are some of the things that you are expecting that AI is going to drive in terms of what patients are looking for and how they approach it…

Darcy Sullivan (28:17)

Yeah, so I would say that the easiest thing you can do today is rearrange the wording that you are using for collecting reviews. Because that's just gonna take you five minutes, right? But we…

Chris Hutchins (28:29)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (28:29)

…see so many people that just are like, will you leave us a review? And that's not gonna help. That's not gonna send those trust signals to your patients and to Google and just for overall quality of marketing materials. Then we have making sure that your website is secure, that it's mobile-friendly, that it's designed properly. Those traditional SEO things still matter. And then from there, it's really that amazing content because we've seen this for years. When you've really put time and effort into quality content, it helps move the needle more.

And this is just another way of AI searching your website and pulling. Like it might go down to the bottom of one of your pages and pull a section from that. So I think some people get hung up on like, well, we want to make nice short pages for people to read. People scan, AI scans, Google scans. We need to make sure that we have things set up in the right order. And usually that requires reaching out to somebody who specializes in it to give you at least some direction that relates specifically to your organization.

Because, like I said, like we see a lot of people that are like, well, I ran this AI scan. And I'm like, well, that AI scan is suggesting some things that might have been good for a restaurant, but not for healthcare. So your niche is really where you need to focus and you need to make sure that whoever's assisting you understands that and how to market that versus just a general like, let's get you set up so that you get found on AI because they need a clearer understanding.

Chris Hutchins (30:04)

Right. And I think these things are game changers in terms of what the outcome is from the search. So you know seeing an answer inside of a search engine is very different than producing the first website visit, right?

Darcy Sullivan (30:16)

Yeah. They're different experiences. They're a broader experience. I think that this is almost you can kind of think about it, not exactly like social media, but social media changed things, obviously. Social media changed the way brands went to market. And I think this is again just that evolution of SEO because it's still, if you've been doing SEO the right way for the past five plus years, you're headed in a much better direction than somebody that was just a clinic that was just coasting.

Chris Hutchins (30:49)

So what should healthcare systems and their marketing teams be looking at now, so that they're not actually trying to catch up and react in a couple of years when the ship has kind of gotten halfway across the ocean?

Darcy Sullivan (31:01)

Well step one is to do an audit and the audit is looking at what content do you really have on your website? What content are people coming to? What content are you missing? Look at the analytics, what pages are people visiting, what pages are they not visiting? There are more sophisticated tools like I mentioned before, but they're usually not tools that a clinic is going to invest in that it's easier to turn over to a marketing agency to say, can you run reports? Can you look at this? Where are we ranking for specific terms?

Where can we find ways to improve our AI search? And again, fundamentally making sure that it really truly ties into your overall marketing campaign and that you're not just trying to do something behind the scenes.…

Chris Hutchins (31:46)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (31:47)

…those are some of the core key elements. Making sure that if you include some of those amazing videos on your website that you actually have text with them, that you have that formatting set up the right way so that Google and AI searches understand your content. All of these things…

Chris Hutchins (32:01)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (32:02)

…are factors. And it's not just like do this one thing and you're gonna rank. It's a combination of a lot of different things.

Chris Hutchins (32:10)

And it's really understanding where things are going and what things are going to be impacting how you show up. So all these social media platforms, they have their own—we'll call it algorithms…

Darcy Sullivan (32:22)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (32:23)

…and that actually are going to drive the activities being monitored and the direction it's gonna go. This is very different in its nuance. Just inherently they're very different depending on the platform?

Darcy Sullivan (32:35)

They're very different. And when we look at AI, we have to remember that it can be conversational. So when somebody says, hey, I'm looking for a clinic around here that offers fill in the blank, okay, search level one. And then they continue the conversation. Well, but do they accept my insurance? They do. Well, are they open on the weekend? They are not. Well, can you look for somebody that is? Well, do they offer this too? Well, are they located like this?

So one of the biggest things step zero is to really truly identify your target audience and make sure that you can get into their head and understand what matters to them and what matters most to them to make sure that you're showcasing that your business is in alignment with that.

Chris Hutchins (33:22)

Maybe talk a little bit about the time invested to really understand those things and 'cause I think there's an important distinction between someone who's really focused and an expert in this space versus people who are just trying to figure it out to run their business.

Darcy Sullivan (33:34)

I mean we're in there day in and day out. So you're talking about hours upon hours, plus reading articles, plus testing things, plus…

Chris Hutchins (33:43)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (33:43)

…tracking what's working for other clients. But we do find that even though just how you mentioned, like Facebook has a different algorithm than Instagram, Grok has a different algorithm than ChatGPT, than Perplexity. But we do find…

Chris Hutchins (33:57)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (33:57)

…that when you put forth, especially the clients that we work with, when we put forth the best SEO and gearing it towards AI, that they rank on all of them. At least, there's definitely similar searches that they're just dominating it for because their approach is just slightly different than their competition. You know, you don't have to be 80% better at this. You just have to be five to ten percent better than your competition to win, right?

Like, so if you take action now, you're gonna be in a better place to start ranking better in those solutions and be that resource.

Chris Hutchins (34:34)

One more question 'cause there probably are some things that your marketing team really doesn't have to do anymore if they're pivoting and thinking about it properly. Is that what your experience is? And what would you suggest that they take a look at if they think that's probably an area they have to pay attention to?

Darcy Sullivan (34:50)

Well, everybody has a different skill set. Right.

Chris Hutchins (34:53)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (34:53)

And so you've got a different learning curve. But when it comes to where can they stop spending their time? You know, if they see that social media is just not driving any traffic, they can pull—it's really looking at the analytics.

If they see that spending X amount of money on ads, which we see a lot of times and one of the reasons that we're not an ads company, is that they could pull some of their resources, their time and energy away from that and put it more towards organic because those are quality, better leads actually drive real booking appointments, that's important to note. Every clinic's gonna be different. It's not like we can say, hey, stop mailers completely because for some clinics, mailers still work.

It's not like we can say, hey, pull back on social media because for some clinics, social media still works. It's really looking at the data and then making those decisions. But when it comes to leveraging AI you can definitely leverage the use of AI to help you complete your tasks faster, which gives you more room to either educate yourself or develop more marketing initiatives.

Chris Hutchins (36:05)

Right. I'm just into this stuff. I've learned a lot talking to you today.

Darcy Sullivan (36:07)

Me too.

Chris Hutchins (36:09)

Where do people find your agency? Where can they get your podcast?

Darcy Sullivan (36:13)

Yeah, so the podcast is the Clinic Marketing Podcast. The website is propelyourcompany.com, and you can find us on Instagram at PropelYourCompany. Those are the main resources. But yeah, on the website, they can book a discovery call, they can watch free trainings, there's tons of resources on there to help them any way they need help.

Chris Hutchins (36:33)

Awesome. I can't thank you enough for being on the show. So I strongly encourage you to reach out to Darcy and her team. It's good to have partners you can trust who can dig into this while you're trying to run your organization because it's just daunting enough. For listeners, you will have all this information on the episode notes. Again, Darcy from me to you, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and I love the work that you're doing to help healthcare organizations.

Darcy Sullivan (36:56)

Well thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Chris Hutchins (36:59)

That's gonna do it for this episode of The Signal Room and I will see you next time.

Chris Hutchins (00:00)

Welcome back to The Signal Room. I'm Chris Hutchins. My guest today is Darcy Sullivan. She's the founder of Propel Marketing & Design, a digital marketing agency that has helped clinics improve their online visibility for more than a decade. Darcy specializes in local search engine optimization, AI search visibility, and helping clinics adapt as patient search behavior evolves. So today we're gonna separate some hype from what clinics actually need to be able to be visible when the patients are going AI first. Darcy, welcome to The Signal Room. I'm really excited to have you here.

Darcy Sullivan (00:34)

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Chris Hutchins (00:36)

Well before we jump into the stuff that makes me geek out a little bit, let's talk about you and where you've come from and what led you to do what you're doing now. Tell us a little bit about your company and the things that you're specializing in.

Darcy Sullivan (00:48)

Absolutely. So, like you said, I'm the founder of Propel Marketing & Design. We have been in business since 2011. And around 2018, 2019, we started to see that we're really picking up when it comes to working with clinics and focusing on SEO. So at around 2020, we kind of niched down and gave that all our full heart into that audience. But you know, it's interesting because it's one of those things where you hate to show your age, but you're like, I've been doing this for longer than I haven't been doing this. But I remember, you…

Chris Hutchins (01:22)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (01:23)

…know, coding in college and learning about human-computer interaction in college. And back in the very late 90s, early 2000s, we were already talking about AI. We were just talking about it slightly different and the technology…

Chris Hutchins (01:39)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (01:40)

…has just continued to change and improve, change the behaviors behind the way people search. And to me, I just find it so fascinating.

Chris Hutchins (01:51)

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember back—I don't know, I can't even remember the years, but when we started to have Google finish our sentences, we were like, "Oh my God, this is crazy."

Darcy Sullivan (01:59)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, went from a time when you would have typed in "Facebook CEO" to now when you would say, "Who is the CEO of Facebook?" You know, that shift alone when we started to see a voice search and now like you mentioned before, people are just changing the way they search and they want to have a more customized search. They're looking for what matters to them, not just general information.

Chris Hutchins (02:30)

Yeah, that's an interesting part of what we're facing. I think over the last decade or so, I remember working on some different initiatives just for this kind of searchability and visibility that you're mentioning. I think there was all kinds of crazy discussions around what we should actually be indexing to. So should we be using, you know, the government standard kind of stuff? You know, how do we normalize things?

We're using natural language processing, normal, you know, human thought in terms of, instead of, you know, saying a melanoma, talking about cancer, or, you know, just kind of doing…

Darcy Sullivan (03:00)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (03:01)

…those transformative kind of exercises so that we're using instead of clinical terms we're using what we call clinical focus terms, which is just a higher-level roll-up that makes sense to people. But you've been working in the healthcare space for quite a long time, as you mentioned. Some of the things that have happened over the last decade or so have been pretty significant. But I think there's probably some, I would say, high-level themes that kind of indicate a significant shift.

Yeah, talk about what you've seen that's maybe the most consequential now for clinics and practices and what do they need to be aware of. Because I think that there's a lot that people aren't understanding, especially right now, because you've mentioned the AI visibility piece of it.

Darcy Sullivan (03:41)

So I think what's really important is a layered approach and knowing that you're gonna have people that are gonna search the way you would traditionally search, but you're also gonna have people that do a deeper dive. So what we wanna do is make sure obviously that your potential patients trust you, but also that Google and these other AI search options trust you, right? I mean, there's so many AI terms out there that I don't want to start like going through them all between AI, AEO, LLM, you know, all the alphabet soup of it all.

But the main gist of it is that people are changing the way they search. You know, they could be going to Grok or ChatGPT and saying, I am looking for a specific service or I suffer from a specific ailment and I'm looking for a clinic that takes my insurance. Or we've seen I like this style of how this one clinic treats stuff, but they're not in my area because I'm away for the summer. Who in this area has that same type of offering?

That's completely different than just going in and typing a specific type of clinic near me. They're getting very…

Chris Hutchins (04:57)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (04:58)

…specific and they want to make sure that their needs are being met and if they're investing in their health, that they're doing so with an organization that they trust and that they're getting a service and a treatment plan that aligns with what they think they are suffering from.

Chris Hutchins (05:13)

Right. You've got a whole other area of focus. We mentioned you know the Clinic Marketing Podcast. How has that been able to help you to adjust and adapt when you're talking to clinic owners and folks that are really heavily focused on patient acquisition and search? What are some of those things that you've noticed that are in terms of where things are at with the transition?

Darcy Sullivan (05:33)

Yeah, well, I love the idea of podcasts as we're speaking on a podcast right now because it especially like with the Clinic Marketing Podcast, we take like little topic by little topic. So it's like, hey, right now we're gonna talk about this one little thing. Right now you and I are talking about AI search, which is a huge animal in itself, right? But it kind of breaks down to a couple different things.

It breaks down to making sure that your website isn't a brochure website, that it has all the information that's needed, that you're sending Google these trust signals or any other search platform that you're sending trust signals, which comes from reviews that reflect the services and the conditions that you treat, not just five-star reviews. Because if you offer a specific service or treat a specific ailment and the internet is covered with reviews that showcase that wording that puts you as the authority figure.

Then we also have your Google Business Profile listing, which is what controls your Google Maps listing. And most clinics don't give enough love to that simple platform or they think of it more as a traditional social media platform when it should be treated differently.

Chris Hutchins (06:46)

Yeah, and it's interesting because I'm sure that a lot of the traffic you're getting from the organizations now is 'cause they're realizing things have really shifted, which kind of brings us to a change that's really happening in real time where the patient's first search may not lead to a website at all.

Darcy Sullivan (07:01)

Mm-mm.

Chris Hutchins (07:02)

Walk us through the patient journey now and you know, how can Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity, et cetera, shape a decision before the patient reaches a clinic website?

Darcy Sullivan (07:12)

So before we talk about that, I think it's important to note that we have what we call our NAP: our name, address, and phone number. This was traditionally what we called our citations online. They have to be congruent…

Chris Hutchins (07:22)

Okay. Right.

Darcy Sullivan (07:24)

…throughout all of the listings online because even if you are suggested, if there's a mismatch on your location or how somebody can contact you, and especially if they're not necessarily ending up on your website, if they're just taking that initial action, to either click a book button through your Google Business…

Chris Hutchins (07:41)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (07:42)

…profile, or they see your phone number when they've done an AI search, we have to make sure that it's in alignment with the correct listing of your business. So you have that. Then you have…

Chris Hutchins (07:54)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (07:54)

…again making sure that you really have the credible content that's going to help you rank. So we've got those trust signals, we've got the citations, we've got the reviews, we've got content in using the words specifically that your target audience is using when they're searching is going to help you show up. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't use what I call doctor talk because you're still…

Chris Hutchins (08:17)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (08:18)

…you know, you want that sense of credibility, but you also need to make sure that you are using the verbiage that your target audience is using.

Chris Hutchins (08:26)

You know, I don't know why I didn't think of this before the first time we talked, but having worked on the provider side of healthcare for a number of years, one of the things that was always problematic is the inconsistent way that data was captured. Especially when we're dealing with referring providers, what are you finding as you're engaging clients in terms of the readiness of their data? 'Cause I think I don't know of an organization I've ever worked with that's had everything just at a really fantastic structured state where there's consistency all the way through.

That referral piece in particular is just really a messy concept for most organizations.

Darcy Sullivan (08:59)

Yes, I haven't seen a system in place that I would be like, this one clinic has it down pat that I would…

Chris Hutchins (09:07)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (09:07)

…say that's the model you should follow.

Chris Hutchins (09:09)

Yeah. We've had the same kind of conversations around fax numbers too, which I still can't believe we haven't got everybody working on two-factor authentication stuff because…

Darcy Sullivan (09:17)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (09:17)

…I mean let's be honest, I don't really think in twenty six we should be that dependent on the fax machine, but yet we still do have that issue. Let's talk about the search visibility a little bit more in terms of how these transformations that are occurring through AI, how does that differ in terms of how things are ranked versus how they've been historically? Like you mentioned, the five-star ratings, Leapfrog and CMS star ratings—things are different no matter what's going on in that space?

Darcy Sullivan (09:44)

Things are different because search is different. And, you know, I gave that example early on about how, when voice search came about, like you went from doing the search of "Facebook CEO" to "Who is the CEO of Facebook?" So now we have people used to be focused really heavily on specific keywords and making sure that they were ranking for the type of clinic they are near me or the type of clinic they are in name of city. And now we have to expand that.

And that sometimes is really hard for people to wrap their heads around because it's so new. And it's a change from their old goal. And their old goal was a little bit easier because you either knew we're sitting at position one or we're sitting at position 20. But now when you say, well, some people are searching for these terms, other people are searching for other terms and where they're searching and how they're searching is just unique and different.

And that's one thing that with Google Analytics or whatever analytic data you have in place can really help you understand which pieces of content are really guiding specific searches and which of those into quality leads or appointment booking.

Chris Hutchins (11:02)

Right. So what determines whether a clinic is named, cited, summarized accurately, or left out of an AI-generated answer? 'Cause I think the citation versus visibility aren't necessarily the same, right?

Darcy Sullivan (11:14)

Right, so again it's gonna depend on the search. So let's just say you offer a specific treatment. If your website really showcases that you offer that treatment, not just like a little paragraph or a sentence about it, because some clinics are like, well, we have a page dedicated to it, and that page has three sentences on it. That's not going to compete with a clinic that has detailed information about that specific service and has reviews and videos and images and goes into more detail and has reviews again, mentioning that specific service.

That's what's going to get you cited. Now, in addition to that, we are seeing that social media is playing a little bit of a role. Little bit, not as big as it used to, but oftentimes clinics aren't necessarily posting to their social media in a way that highlights again the services that they offer and the conditions that they treat. Those also send small signals. So we've got your website being up to date, your website, all the basic SEO still really matters. Your website needs to have local schema.

It needs to be able to load quickly, it needs to be mobile-friendly, it needs to be user-friendly, and of course something we didn't talk about, but it has to be able to guide them to the best action that you want to take. Sometimes that can even be a little muddy. So people if they do end up on your website don't oftentimes book because they get distracted or they don't see the obvious solution to taking that next step. So there's a lot of little things that go into it.

And also, you know, are people going to your website? Is your website credible? So we've got all of that stuff. And making sure, because this is where the other side of AI is, that you aren't using AI to write all the content on your website. Because I mean…

Chris Hutchins (13:11)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (13:12)

…that's going to drag you down. AI is amazing as an assistant, but there's a lot of clinics that are just relying too heavy on it to create content, and the content then either doesn't sound authentic, doesn't sound trustworthy, or doesn't sound specific to what they offer and their method of offering or style of doing business.

Chris Hutchins (13:34)

That's a perfect lead into where I wanted to go next. It's really the temptation that might exist out there to use AI to move faster. And the whole concept of misuse, we hope it's not gonna be an issue in healthcare, but if you find out that you're way behind and you're seeing a drop in volume, for example, there might be a temptation to overreact and try to move quickly. Talk about that a little bit. How are things being identified?

Because I think inherently looking at social media, there's some weird phrasing that's kind of formulaic from what I'm noticing. I'm sure you are too. But what would lazy AI content look like?

Darcy Sullivan (14:07)

So obviously the em dash and the bolding…

Chris Hutchins (14:10)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (14:10)

…of some words and the repetitious style of just especially if you ask it to create multiple pieces of content and you haven't given it your brand style guide or you haven't done any activities to say, note the style that we wrote in on this specific piece of content. Now from an idealization stage when you're coming up with the ideas, it's great to use it as a source. If you're working through some stuff, it's great to use it to help you organize your thoughts to see if you missed anything.

But if you're relying on it, it's garbage in, garbage out. And it's gonna be the exact same thing with just a couple different words than the clinic next to you that you're competing with. And I always say you're never gonna be the best in your industry if you're doing exactly what somebody else is doing. So you can't…

Chris Hutchins (14:56)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (14:58)

…move forward if you're just relying on it at that level. And what I see happen is either clinics get it right and they're like, well, we have specific templates designed, we use it for this stage, we use it for this stage, we work with it, we go back and forth with it, we make sure that it's using our tone of voice, we make sure that there's a human involved that fact-checks everything, that revises everything, so it sounds authentic. That's the right way to use it.

The wrong way to use it is just, hey AI, create a piece of content for me. The other wrong way to use it is to ask it for SEO advice or ranking in AI because we've seen it give some of the worst advice.

Chris Hutchins (15:43)

Right. Yeah, it kind of leads up to a line that we have to just be aware of. And I think that's what is responsible versus permissible. I think in healthcare particularly, that's kind of a line that people care a lot about, particularly the clinicians. Like, "First, do no harm" is the Hippocratic Oath. And I think most organizations do a decent job of that, but I don't know that everyone understands that from a delivery standpoint when you're dealing with the administrative support, marketing functions or other types of functions in the health system.

Darcy Sullivan (16:10)

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I do think that it's just so new that people don't necessarily know how they should and shouldn't use a tool.

Chris Hutchins (16:20)

Right. So thinking about where the line is. Like so with an automation function, there's always this—you kind of hit an area where like, yeah, this could go either way. But in your mind, where's the tipping point where you really ought to have some like I don't know if you want to call it a human in the loop or just a built-in pause for a decision to make sure it's really clear and understandable how we're defining, you know, where that boundary sits?

Darcy Sullivan (16:44)

I think it's pretty much at every step of the way there should be a human involved in it. Now, we've talked about AI when it comes to search, but also, you know, I feel like AI is such like that popular terminology that it's being used every which way. Like…

Chris Hutchins (17:01)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (17:01)

…now, if we think about leveraging AI tools, let's just say for your review collection, right? There's a big difference between setting up an AI system that goes out, asks for reviews, asks it in the right way, which the right way isn't just, hey, will you leave us a review? It's, "Will you share what brought you in today and how your experience is?" Right? If you ask it like that, all of a sudden you're getting this amazing feedback that includes the services, the conditions that's gonna help take you to that next level.

So I think that, you know—and we've got AI bots that are on the website that start the initial conversation in some cases. So it's hard to group everything as AI and say where should the human come in, because there's all different types of elements when it comes to the AI marketing. But there should always be a human overseeing it, especially before anything gets published that's associated with your business to make sure it's actually in alignment with your core values.

Chris Hutchins (18:02)

We've talked—some of the things people need to be aware of in terms of where some of the boundaries are. But let's shift a little bit and talk about the results that you're seeing now and some of the things that you're seeing be really effective. If a clinic's never evaluated its AI search visibility, what would the first audit look like?

Darcy Sullivan (18:18)

Right. So one of the easier, simple ways to just get started is to log into an AI source, whether it's ChatGPT, Grok, make sure that you're doing it in a way that it doesn't think that it's had a previous conversation with you, and ask…

Chris Hutchins (18:35)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (18:36)

…it who around here is the best clinic for fill in the blank. You know, depending on what you typically feel like you should be ranking for. And if you see that your competition's coming up, look at their online presence, look at their content plan, look at their reviews. And…

Chris Hutchins (18:53)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (18:54)

…really, you'll see a lot of those trust signals where they've got better reviews than you do. They've got better content on their website than you have. Or more…

Chris Hutchins (19:04)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (19:05)

…detailed, lengthy content that specifically relates to their business instead of generic content. And we find that companies that really hone in on this are just dominating AI search. Now, another thing to note is it also depends on who your target audience is. There's a certain demographic that are more likely to do AI searches than maybe an older demographic that's gonna stick to what they know and feel comfortable with. For example, my parents aren't gonna go on AI to do a search.

So for them, you know, depending on who your target audience is, you need to decide where you need to focus your energy.

Chris Hutchins (19:46)

I think this is getting into a place where it could be a lot more of a challenge for people if they're not thinking about making some moves relatively soon. Because I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just thinking about this in the terms of, you know, some kid in a mom's basement starts playing around and starts realizing, hey, I could really kind of drive a lot of traffic and they just start playing with it.

If they actually are starting to gain traction and they're watching things move from a ranking standpoint, and they just double down on that I mean that kind of puts the urgency on a different…

Darcy Sullivan (20:14)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (20:16)

…level for organizations to start taking a look at this. They shouldn't really be waiting, should they?

Darcy Sullivan (20:20)

No, they shouldn't be waiting. But also that kid that you're talking about, what level of intelligence do they have, especially specifically about the services and everything medically related? You know, their level and their knowledge might just be super basic and what they've searched online for because they're repeating this for every other company. So this isn't the old, like remember when social media first started out and everybody's just like hire a kid to do it because kids know social media. That's not what you want to do with AI.

You want somebody that's experienced, that understands how it's evolved from traditional SEO. That's not just going to promise you the moon or do something quote unquote behind the scenes to make it happen.

Chris Hutchins (21:08)

It just elevates the conversation, I think, for people that are listening to this. Because we talk about upskilling a lot of different contexts, but this is a different animal. And yeah, there's probably depending on the size of an organization, they may have somebody that's exclusively focused on marketing. What level they're at, I'm sure you see, all kinds of different levels, but the proficiencies of yesterday are very different.

Talk a little bit about how much time should they be thinking is required to get somebody up to speed to be able to do this or at least to be able to have a rational conversation with somebody like yourself to be able to start coming up with a game plan to make progress with this.

Darcy Sullivan (21:44)

Well, I think that, doing a little bit of research, listening to this episode, looking at a couple other online resources will help you have an intelligent conversation. I think the biggest takeaways are I always say whenever you're gonna talk to somebody about any type of marketing, if they try to talk over your head, if they try to say they're gonna do things behind the scenes.

Yes, there is some programming behind the scenes that does need to be done, but if they say they're gonna charge you a monthly fee to do quote unquote something or to drive traffic doing something that sounds a little weird. Question it, always question it. So I would say that, you know, listening to this episode, listening to a couple other episodes, we've got a lot of episodes on the Clinic Marketing Podcast that do deeper dives into specific elements that could really help people understand things more as well. But then you're able to have that intelligent conversation.

And if you are having a conversation with an agency, it's okay to play dumb. It's okay to say, well, what does that mean? Well, what does that mean? Well, what is that gonna do for us? And the other element is like, we want to make sure that it ties in with your overall marketing plan. Your AI search plan ties in with your SEO plan. Your SEO plan ties in with your content plan on your website, which then should tie into your email marketing campaign and your social media marketing campaign.

Everything should work together and be cohesive.

Chris Hutchins (23:06)

Yeah, but I think healthcare has an interesting challenge in that space in a variety of ways. I just remember going through some really difficult things transitioning when we're bringing on a new provider organization into a health system, for example. The level of access they've had is pretty broad usually. So people having to go through this transition where they're starting to figure out how do we plug into this larger enterprise kind of a model.

But I think that the interesting things that I've just been playing around with and stumbling on are ones I'm sure you've been dealing with for years. But talk a little bit about some of the data sources that are necessary and what are you finding in terms of where organizations are, what do they understand in terms of scope and the kinds of resources and data sources they could actually use and leverage.

Darcy Sullivan (23:52)

Well, I find personally that a lot of clinics when they're reaching out to us, they don't have that data and the metrics in place when it comes to marketing, which always breaks my heart. Or they're just like, well, when we ask somebody when they call in to make an appointment, they say, well, they found us on Google, but they don't know. Does that mean that they came through their ads, or does that mean they came through organically, or was it the Google Business Profile, or was it Google AI Overviews?

So having a good analytics system in place, which would be your traditional Google Analytics, is going to start to give you that information. Google Analytics years and years ago was a lot more simpler to understand. We always suggest like if you have a simple website, there's another system called Clicky that you can also add that just really boils down and just takes the information that you really need that makes it easier to understand.

So having metrics in place, making sure that you understand your campaigns making sure that things aren't getting mismatched, meaning that I see oftentimes a lot of people are running ads, but they're running them to general pages on their website instead of specific landing pages geared directly towards a specific campaign. So taking all of that into account and really knowing your numbers, looking at your Google Business Profile Insights, looking at your Google Analytics, looking at that information will help you understand, get a better idea of what is or what isn't working.

Right now, I do think that in the future, Google Analytics is going to get better with the way that it supplies information about which AI sources traffic's coming from. Clicky does a really good job of that. And you know, there's tons of expensive resources out there. But in most instances it's better for a clinic to turn to a marketing agency than necessarily investing in those more advanced and sophisticated systems that are gonna do way more than it needs it to do when they just probably should partner with an agency.

Chris Hutchins (25:56)

Talk about the difference between what you know an organization might do just as a healthcare provider versus…

Darcy Sullivan (26:01)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (26:02)

…the things that you would do when you're coming at trying to solve the problem that they have. We talked about the temptation to try to move quick and automate things, but…

Darcy Sullivan (26:12)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (26:12)

…there's really specific ways that you're determining what content to focus on. So it's not random. You do all these services, let's put content out there for all of these things and we can knock it out in a day. That's not what you're talking about. So maybe talk a little bit about…

Darcy Sullivan (26:25)

No.

Chris Hutchins (26:26)

…how you think about it and the types of things. Now you don't need to give away secrets, but I mean there's some numbers, there's some sources, there's a balancing act that you're playing to advise them and where to go and what to do…

Darcy Sullivan (26:37)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (26:38)

…first. Maybe talk about that a little.

Darcy Sullivan (26:39)

So first we talk with them and we say what typically brings somebody in for the first time, right? Because once you have a patient, it's easier to keep them repeating. And we say, what are the most profitable services that you offer?

Chris Hutchins (26:57)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (26:57)

We combine that with who's your target audience. We combine that with looking at keyword research and keyword data so that we know what terms people are searching for, the search volume on those, how many people are actually searching for them, and then what types of searches are those? Because there's some search terms that might have more people searching for them, but they're only doctors that are searching for them. What are your patients actually searching for?

So we go through all of that and we say, what are the new services you plan on offering in the near future? What do you feel like people should know about you that they don't currently know about you? So there's all these little things that add up into what we decide should be the direction that we take first because we typically like to get people some quick wins because that makes you feel more confident in keeping things in motion.

Chris Hutchins (27:50)

This is kind of related, but maybe a little bit different. But I've not worked close to marketing teams within the healthcare systems you know historically, but there's a set of things that you should want to be able to measure. So it's not because someone says we want to emphasize this, we want to grow this particular practice, this kind of specialty, what are some of the things that you look for? First of all, validate that there's a real demand for what they're talking about versus, it's just something that they feel is important within their overall market.

If they just think that they need more. But I mean, there's also things that come into play in terms of first of all the volume and the demand that's there, but also, you know, where there's maybe an oversaturation in a particular market. I mean these are nuanced things that you have to think about.

Darcy Sullivan (28:30)

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Because we have like keyword difficulty, like how hard is…

Chris Hutchins (28:37)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (28:37)

…it to actually rank for some of these keyword terms? So typically if we want quick wins, we want to find something that is highly searched, but easier to rank for that aligns is going to be as profitable for you as possible.

That's the sweet spot and then building specific content around it, not just going to AI and saying, hey, write some content around this, but creating a detailed plan around meeting what people are searching for, what you offer, and again the ease of getting you quicker wins when it comes to ranking for some of those keyword phrases.

And I do think people kind of get hung up or they can be frustrated, especially if they have been looking at analytics, because over the years you might start to see the number of people that are visiting your website might go down a little bit because it's not showcasing that you are showing up in AI searches. It's not showcasing yet the new wave.

Chris Hutchins (29:36)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (29:36)

And I do think in a couple years or hopefully maybe later this year, there will be a product on board that's good for the end user to see all of that data in one place in a really simplified and budgeted way. Right now that doesn't necessarily exist and things are gonna continue to change. So…

Chris Hutchins (29:56)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (29:57)

…and we have all these other touch points. Like you look at even when you look at Google Analytics, you see, was it somebody that came to your website for the first time? Or are they returning? Because you've got to be able to…

Chris Hutchins (30:07)

You know.

Darcy Sullivan (30:07)

…differentiate that to determine which campaign is working as well. So there's a lot involved in it.

Chris Hutchins (30:13)

You know, just the example you gave, understanding who's coming back for the second time. I don't know that people think about I certainly didn't until I started to have to look at it for my own business that the things that are behind the scenes in a website, there's a lot of stuff that you see on the surface, but there's a lot more behind it that people aren't aware of.

I can imagine this stuff is probably going over some people's heads when you're having the first conversations, but what would you suggest to them in terms of where are things that you can actually look at once you're if you're gonna start doing something, like where would you be measuring it? What are the types of things that you would measure that they should be thinking about? Because they probably aren't measuring it now.

Darcy Sullivan (30:50)

Yeah. So I would say basics look at your Google Analytics. Look at where your traffic sources are coming from. Because again, a lot of people I find a lot of clinics are spending money and paying for ads that are giving them zero return. And if they were to take some of that money and put it into SEO optimizing for now and optimizing, you know, we say SEO and we mean SEO and AI search because that's where the evolution's headed, that they would see a better return on their investment.

So they should be looking at who's coming to their website, what the sources are from, and start having conversations, whether it's internally or with external resources, to say, does this seem right? How can we get this better? And you know, oftentimes we see like people are throwing money at ads for example where it's just their brand name. And so they're getting clicks and people are booking, but they're returning visitors. And they would have booked anyways if you hadn't spent the money on the ads because they know like and trust you already.

So it's understanding that and then also understanding yes, you are going to need a couple more touch points potentially. Somebody might search on AI, do the very sophisticated search, and then go to your website the next week. And that would be a still a first-time visitor to your website, but they've done the research somewhere else. So it's a balancing act, and you do need to know some of those data points.

Chris Hutchins (32:19)

I wonder what this is gonna look like or you know as things continue to evolve, because you know, you might have a big brand name right now. And you know, that's been doing a lot of heavy lifting for you. But with the AI search engines, they're gonna favor specific targeted types of questions as you've indicated.

Darcy Sullivan (32:35)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins (32:36)

If somebody's got a big brand but they're not doing that work. What is that gonna look like for them?

Darcy Sullivan (32:41)

Yeah, so an interesting example of that. We work with a lot of clinics that are whatever the type of clinic it is, and then city is the name, like city, type of clinic, right? And for a while from an SEO standpoint, it was like, well, that's a no-brainer. Somebody types in the type of clinic they're looking for in the location, they're automatically up higher. But now…

Chris Hutchins (33:01)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (33:02)

…with the way that search is changing, specifically those companies need to focus a little bit harder and stronger because they haven't needed to before because they were…

Chris Hutchins (33:12)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (33:13)

…relying heavily on that branded search that just aligned with a traditional specific search.

Chris Hutchins (33:18)

Yeah, that's gonna be an interesting thing to watch because to your point, you're resting on a reputation in a brand that's very well established. If you're ranked, in any kind of a national ranking in particular, you're accustomed to winning in whatever space that you're talking about. And I can't emphasize this enough. What you're doing is incredibly important, Darcy, and I think people need to really be hearing you loud and clear. I'm certainly gonna do everything I can to make sure people are thinking about this.

And they're gonna call an expert like yourself because the days of being successful as a hobbyist I think are rapidly coming to a close in some of these areas. This has got to be one of them, I think.

Darcy Sullivan (33:52)

I think we've already seen kind of the days of the tricking of the system have come to an end because, you know, there were some what we call black hat, like, you know, things you used to be able to get away with that would move the needle that now just don't work.

Chris Hutchins (34:07)

Right. This goes into where do we go from here, I'd just love for you to talk a little bit about what the work is that is going to help organizations to prepare. You mentioned over the next 24 months what are some of the things that you are expecting that AI is going to drive in terms of what patients are looking for and how they approach it 'cause I think as they start to see the AI it's gonna cause them to have a shifted mindset, I would guess.

Darcy Sullivan (34:30)

Yeah, so I would say that the easiest thing you can do today is rearrange the wording that you are using for collecting reviews. Because that's just gonna take you five minutes, right? But we…

Chris Hutchins (34:41)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (34:42)

…see so many people that just are like, will you leave us a review? And that's not gonna help. That's not gonna send those trust signals to your patients and to Google and just for overall quality of marketing materials. Then we have making sure that your website is secure, that it's mobile-friendly, that it's designed properly. Those traditional SEO things still matter. And then from there, it's really that amazing content because we've seen this for years. When you've really put time and effort into quality content, it helps move the needle more.

And this is just another way of AI searching your website and pulling. Like it might go down to the bottom of one of your pages and pull a section from that. So I think some people get hung up on like, well, we want to make nice short pages for people to read. People scan, AI scans, Google scans. We need to make sure that we have things set up in the right order. And usually that requires reaching out to somebody who specializes in it to give you at least some direction that relates specifically to your organization.

Because, like I said, like we see a lot of people that are like, well, I ran this AI scan. And I'm like, well, that AI scan is suggesting some things that might have been good for a restaurant, but not for healthcare. So your niche is really where you need to focus and you need to make sure that whoever's assisting you understands that and how to market that versus just a general like, let's get you set up so that you get found on AI because they need a clearer understanding.

Chris Hutchins (36:16)

Right. And I think these things are game changers in terms of what the outcome is from the search. So you know seeing an answer inside of a search engine is very different than producing the first website visit, right?

Darcy Sullivan (36:29)

Yeah. They're different experiences. They're a broader experience. I think that this is almost you can kind of think about it, not exactly like social media, but social media changed things, obviously. Social media changed the way brands went to market. And I think this is again just that evolution of SEO because it's still, if you've been doing SEO the right way for the past five plus years, you're headed in a much better direction than somebody that was just a clinic that was just coasting.

Chris Hutchins (37:02)

So what should healthcare systems and their marketing teams be looking at now, so that they're not actually trying to catch up and react in a couple of years when the ship has kind of gotten halfway across the ocean?

Darcy Sullivan (37:13)

Well step one is to do an audit and the audit is looking at what content do you really have on your website? What content are people coming to? What content are you missing? Look at the analytics, what pages are people visiting, what pages are they not visiting? There are more sophisticated tools like I mentioned before, but they're usually not tools that a clinic is going to invest in that it's easier to turn over to a marketing agency to say, can you run reports? Can you look at this? Where are we ranking for specific terms?

Where can we find ways to improve our AI search? And again, fundamentally making sure that it really truly ties into your overall marketing campaign and that you're not just trying to do something behind the scenes.…

Chris Hutchins (37:59)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (37:59)

…those are some of the core key elements. Making sure that if you include some of those amazing videos on your website that you actually have text with them, that you have that formatting set up the right way so that Google and AI searches understand your content. All of these things…

Chris Hutchins (38:14)

Yeah.

Darcy Sullivan (38:15)

…are factors. And it's not just like do this one thing and you're gonna rank. It's a combination of a lot of different things.

Chris Hutchins (38:23)

And it's really understanding where things are going and what things are going to be impacting how you show up. So all these social media platforms, they have their own—we'll call it algorithms…

Darcy Sullivan (38:35)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (38:35)

…and that actually are going to drive the activities being monitored and the direction it's gonna go. This is very different in its nuance. Just inherently they're very different depending on the platform?

Darcy Sullivan (38:47)

They're very different. And when we look at AI, we have to remember that it can be conversational. So when somebody says, hey, I'm looking for a clinic around here that offers fill in the blank, okay, search level one. And then they continue the conversation. Well, but do they accept my insurance? They do. Well, are they open on the weekend? They are not. Well, can you look for somebody that is? Well, do they offer this too? Well, are they located like this?

So one of the biggest things step zero is to really truly identify your target audience and make sure that you can get into their head and understand what matters to them and what matters most to them to make sure that you're showcasing that your business is in alignment with that.

Chris Hutchins (39:35)

Yeah, I think one of the things I want to make sure people are hearing is there's enough nuance in them. Facebook and Instagram, for example, would be kind of in sync, but it just may not be the case in terms of how…

Darcy Sullivan (39:44)

No. Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (39:45)

…the algorithm works. But those are just two that should be pretty closely aligned. But there's…

Darcy Sullivan (39:50)

Yeah.

Chris Hutchins (39:51)

…multiple of them and I don't know that most people have the curiosity to go study all of them. But in your work, this is one of the things that your organization is doing because you can't really be effective in all the different channels without having to understand how they operate. And maybe talk a little bit about the time invested to really understand those things and 'cause I think there's an important distinction between someone who's really focused and an expert in this space versus people who are just trying to figure it out to run their business.

Darcy Sullivan (40:20)

I mean we're in there day in and day out. So you're talking about hours upon hours, plus reading articles, plus testing things, plus…

Chris Hutchins (40:28)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (40:29)

…tracking what's working for other clients. But we do find that even though just how you mentioned, like Facebook has a different algorithm than Instagram, Grok has a different algorithm than ChatGPT, than Perplexity. But we do find…

Chris Hutchins (40:42)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (40:43)

…that when you put forth, especially the clients that we work with, when we put forth the best SEO and gearing it towards AI, that they rank on all of them. At least, there's definitely similar searches that they're just dominating it for because their approach is just slightly different than their competition. You know, you don't have to be 80% better at this. You just have to be five to ten percent better than your competition to win, right?

Like, so if you take action now, you're gonna be in a better place to start ranking better in those solutions and be that resource.

Chris Hutchins (41:20)

One more question 'cause the tendency that people have when things are changing like this, there's really two different things I see. The one is that we're like, well, this isn't something we're gonna put another X number of people on. We're just gonna add it and people should be able to absorb it. But conceptually I understand why people think that, but the reality is there's enough evolution and specialization that's required to do this stuff well. That there's gotta probably be a trade-off.

And I don't mean a trade-off in the traditional sense, but there probably are some things that your marketing team really doesn't have to do anymore if they're pivoting and thinking about it properly. Is that what your experience is? And what would you suggest that they take a look at if they think that's probably an area they have to pay attention to?

Darcy Sullivan (42:04)

Well, everybody has a different skill set. Right.

Chris Hutchins (42:06)

Right.

Darcy Sullivan (42:07)

And so you've got a different learning curve. But when it comes to where can they stop spending their time? You know, if they see that social media is just not driving any traffic, they can pull—it's really looking at the analytics.

If they see that spending X amount of money on ads, which we see a lot of times and one of the reasons that we're not an ads company, is that they could pull some of their resources, their time and energy away from that and put it more towards organic because those are quality, better leads actually drive real booking appointments, that's important to note. Every clinic's gonna be different. It's not like we can say, hey, stop mailers completely because for some clinics, mailers still work.

It's not like we can say, hey, pull back on social media because for some clinics, social media still works. It's really looking at the data and then making those decisions. But when it comes to leveraging AI you can definitely leverage the use of AI to help you complete your tasks faster, which gives you more room to either educate yourself or develop more marketing initiatives.

Chris Hutchins (43:19)

Right. I'm just into this stuff. I've learned a lot talking to you today.

Darcy Sullivan (43:21)

Me too.

Chris Hutchins (43:23)

Where do people find your agency? Where can they get your podcast?

Darcy Sullivan (43:27)

Yeah, so the podcast is the Clinic Marketing Podcast. The website is propelyourcompany.com, and you can find us on Instagram at PropelYourCompany. Those are the main resources. But yeah, on the website, they can book a discovery call, they can watch free trainings, there's tons of resources on there to help them any way they need help.

Chris Hutchins (43:47)

Awesome. I can't thank you enough for being on the show with me. Having worked on the inside of a healthcare organization. Doing data and analytics, some marketing focused efforts supporting different parts of a company that are in different markets. It's given me a really deep appreciation for the expertise that you bring to the table.

For listeners out there, if you're in a place where you're starting to hear some of these things tossed around, AI, AEO, GEO, whatever the abbreviations or acronyms might be, it's probably a good idea to pick up the phone or reach out, look at the websites, dial in for some of the podcasts so you can get some help. All things are not equal and I think we know inherently in the healthcare space, particularly where there's so much nuance in the different tech stacks that everyone's using.

There's a lot of things that make it difficult to know which thing to do. So I strongly encourage you to reach out to Darcy and her team. It's good to have partners you can trust who can dig into this while you're trying to run your organization because it's just daunting enough. For listeners, you will have all this information on the episode notes. Again, Darcy from me to you, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and I love the work that you're doing to help healthcare organizations.

It seems like everything's kind of working against us from a regulatory standpoint, all the pressures are there. Trying to pay healthcare organizations less money for services they operate. What you do is invaluable. And I thank you for that and for being on the show.

Darcy Sullivan (45:02)

Well thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Chris Hutchins (45:05)

That's gonna do it for this episode of The Signal Room and I will see you next time.