Build Your Marketing Foundation with Clear Goals & Strategy | EP 10

In this episode of Healthcare Marketing Edge, Tim Bouchard, Owner/CEO of Luminus, talks with Alyssa Luber, a commercial strategy and market development executive, about how defining clear goals and securing internal alignment must come before launching any campaign. Alyssa breaks down the four core marketing objectives every healthcare practice should choose from and explains why focus drives better ROI than trying to do everything at once. Together, they explore how patient-centric strategy builds trust, improves retention, and fuels long-term growth. If your marketing feels scattered or stagnant, this conversation will show you how to realign your team, your message, and your results.

Tim Bouchard (00:00)
Welcome to Health Care Marketing Edge, where we share stories and strategies to grow your practice. I’m Tim Bouchard from Luminous, a health care marketing agency specializing in helping practices acquire patients and grow their practice. Today, we’re talking about something that might sound basic, but is often overlooked, and that’s building a strong foundation before you even go to market anything. Our guest is Alyssa Luber, a commercial strategy and market development executive specializing in diagnostics, med tech, and women’s health.

Alyssa is going to show us why defining clear goals and securing that internal buy in comes in before any campaign or creative or messaging goes out. If you’ve ever felt like your marketing efforts aren’t really gaining traction, this episode might be what you’re missing. Alyssa, it’s great to have you here. Thanks for coming on. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Alyssa Luber (00:47)
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, Tim, thank you so much for having me today and happy Halloween. I like I should say that as well. Exactly. So it’s fun.

Tim Bouchard (00:53)
Yeah, it’s a Halloween recording day, yep.

Alyssa Luber (00:58)
But yeah, so my role in career has really been founded in the diagnostics and med tech startup space. So a lot of my work, as you mentioned, has really been around building commercial strategy and creating the market development strategy for a lot of

these novel technologies that we see in the space. so in the simplest term, my role is really about connecting innovation to impact. So bridging the gap between the technology and the real world adoption that we see it take place in our physician offices, our hospitals, our urgent cares, even our community health centers. so helping companies kind of bring clarity to the questions of who are the solutions for, what problem is it solving, and why does the technology or innovation

matter.

Tim Bouchard (01:45)
Yeah.

How did you end up getting so much into the idea that you have to have that foundation before you can even think about what your first steps are? mean, it kind of centers around the patient, but also there’s lots of questions you have to ask before you start making decisions.

Alyssa Luber (02:02)
Yeah, absolutely. I like to think of having your foundation as essentially giving you an initial direction. There is a lot of ambiguity and noise in the marketing space and healthcare space today. And so having a foundational goal gives you a sense of direction and a grounding aspect to help marketing.

Tim Bouchard (02:15)
yeah. Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (02:26)
or your marketing efforts, move the needle in the direction you want to go. you know, a lot of organizations will just jump into ads and flyers and digital campaigns and without any cohesive grounding or very… ⁓

messaging that doesn’t connect itself or relate itself back to the overall corporate mission. so having an alignment with the organization’s goals first really helps the marketing efforts drive a specific purpose and result in an actual measurable outcome, which is obviously the goal of any marketing strategy that we see.

Tim Bouchard (03:01)
So it’s not just as easy as dropping in some Google Ads and hoping that you get a whole bunch of phone calls.

Alyssa Luber (03:07)
Exactly, ⁓ not likely, but it’s why it’s so important. mean, a lot of the marketing efforts today, you know, it is a financial commitment to build up some of this visibility and awareness. And so having that sturdy foundation, make sure that every dollar and every message drives real sustainable growth and impact for your practice.

Tim Bouchard (03:27)
Yeah, I’m putting dollars towards things where you’re sending someone to something that isn’t, I guess, in the marketing world conversion worthy or doesn’t let’s just say it from the practice perspective or the patient perspective doesn’t resonate with them, doesn’t help them and doesn’t guide them. That’s basically throwing money at nothing because you aren’t going to get as much as you could back from it. So talk about some of the things that address that sturdy foundation so that if you do decide to take

promotional dollars out into the market that you’re not wasting them.

Alyssa Luber (04:00)
Yeah, absolutely. So the first step.

in kind of building that foundation is obviously defining that goal. And so in some of the experience I’ve had working with a variety of practices across the healthcare ecosystem, I’ve seen that their goals for marketing strategy kind of fall into one or four buckets. And so the first one being, you know, patient acquisition. So that’s all about visibility and reaching people who may not know you exist yet and, you know, giving them a reason to reach out and, you know, come to your institution.

Tim Bouchard (04:25)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (04:34)
or practice. The second bucket is service utilization. So focusing internally on the current patient demographic that you’re serving and shifting the patient mindset to see your practice as a more holistic source for all issues within the care continuum. So everything from a sprained ankle to pre-employment drug testing. So ensuring that patient is seeing your practice is that one stop shop. The third bucket is organizational credibility.

We see this a lot with up and coming organizations or independent practices that are trying to compete with some of the larger organizations in the community. Again, it’s pretty self-explanatory there, but it really focuses on positioning your practice as a leader and trusted resource in the community. And then lastly, our last vision, our last bucket is new service and kind of new…

Tim Bouchard (05:05)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (05:29)
opportunities to bridge the gaps in care in your community by adding on additional services in-house. So that’s new technology or expanding your clinical capabilities, you know, just in terms of hours or even bringing on ⁓ additional physicians with certain specialties, et cetera. And that may more often than not be a revenue driven initiative, but the main driver of that one is, you know, being able to fill gaps in care and broadening access. So, you know, all of these kind of overlap to in some degree.

but in most practices are going to want to address all four, but honing in on one, yeah.

Tim Bouchard (06:03)
Yeah, 100%. Give us all of it. Why

can’t you do all of it? ⁓ So that’s the question. Why can’t you do all of it?

Alyssa Luber (06:11)
Yeah, so it’s no one is saying and I’m not saying as well, you know that you can’t achieve all four. I mean, I get any

organization in the space is probably going to want all four and as mentioned, know, a lot of these strategies will overlap so you may reap the benefits of all four without necessarily intending to but the when you spread yourself too thin and this is you know across everything even a personalized professional when you spread yourself too thin you dilute the impact and so moving into this space especially when you’re talking about the healthcare space and the digital age where there’s so much information and everyone’s vying for you know individual attention and you know time it’s really important

to select a singular goal and it gives your team a sense of direction where your resources can be placed accordingly. So going back to the financial discussion, we want to make sure that every dollar that’s coming out of your business is being directed in a way that will maximize your ROI and maximize patient engagement. And so the phrase I like to use sometimes is, you have to specialize before you generalize. So sequence your growth strategically and once you are able to

build that one strong pillar that enables you to flush out problems, see what types of teams and resources your organization works best with, and then it enables a more streamlined capacity to grow and start thinking about new service lines to add on or building a new brand aspect for yourself.

Tim Bouchard (07:40)
Yeah,

we we do a blueprint exercise. It’s kind of funnel based, but it’s also like patient journey based. And we like to see where the gap is to you because that’s another way that you can figure out where prioritization should go. And a lot of times it is on the front end. Everyone I’ve said on this podcast before, practitioners are very smart people and they’re very good at their jobs. But when you bring that energy to the market, sometimes it becomes a little too much about the practice and not enough about

Alyssa Luber (07:46)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (08:09)
the patient ⁓ experience. And a lot of times what we’ll see is that there’s really good processes and feedback channels and things internally with the practice. But the external messaging is off or lacking. And then we end up seeing, you know, so then from there you can pick, you know, what are the things we have to connect with most with patients, allocate our biggest energy there, because that’s where our most opportunity is, and then start to fold in the other things along the way. And sometimes technology factors into that, too.

Alyssa Luber (08:10)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (08:38)
A lot of practices are still getting up to speed on their intake systems, EHR systems. Have you seen that effect where people might not be able to invest in growing a practice yet because they haven’t gone far enough into making themselves efficient and organized?

Alyssa Luber (08:57)
Yeah, so my, again, my experience have been… ⁓

grateful enough to work with a lot of novel practices that are opening their doors for the first time and more tenured organizations that span multiple states and that kind of facet or that kind of platform. And you really are right. that’s why it really is important to take that step back while you’re working through all of the conflicting priorities of an organization such as patient intake and ensuring you’re actually fully operational, the other component of just the billing and financial

Tim Bouchard (09:07)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (09:31)
aspect of it, ensuring that the reimbursement components of all these tests that you’re working on a new state, if you’re a new organization, are set up to the according. So your patient’s care isn’t a lagging experience. so having this kind of very thoughtful, very strategic ⁓ step-by-step approach to your marketing strategy can be very, ⁓ can seamlessly integrate into a wide variety of statuses to where you

who are in building their organization. So it’s kind of that nice component of it where you can have that opportunity to balance multiple conflicting priorities and still feel like you’re moving the needle on the marketing side of things.

Tim Bouchard (10:13)
Yeah.

And if you have all that stuff kind of contained in nice systems and platforms, it also makes that ⁓ long-term client experience and patient value over time too, right? Especially if you’re a routine care type of physician that needs to have people back for ⁓ annual visits or checkups or certain programs that they’re doing multiple visits, keeps them in.

the program, which is good for their health and also good for the practice from a growth standpoint. Can you talk about how to get everyone on board with the idea of choosing a starting focus rather than being a want everything at one time? How do you get everyone on board with understanding what the main priority should be?

Alyssa Luber (11:02)
Yeah, absolutely.

That focus comes from building internal alignment across all your entire, the entirety of your team. So sometimes when we take a look at, larger hospitals or health systems, a lot of the decision-making occurs on the C-suite level or, know, some of the higher ups, the operations, not necessarily the individual, with the individuals that are talking to patients every day, you know, the ones actually on the front line. And so one of the recommendations I always like to make independent of the size of the organization is insist

on in the beginning of your practice including the discussion and the voices of all individuals on your team. So getting their feedback from the beginning and creating those pipelines and pathways to have that feedback kind of come up the up the ladder is really integral to ensure that there’s not only buy-in to some of the new initiatives but that there’s a holistic view within the practice about what the priority should be in terms of patient care, how the brand

is discussed, how care is discussed, and it really just creates, as you mentioned, a more seamless experience, not only for the patients, but also the practitioners, the nurses, the physicians that are employed at these organizations. know, just like every individual across any industry, you want to feel empowered and proud about the mission that your organization stands for. And so those open lines of communication can really ensure that when new strategies

are rolled out or new service lines are brought on or new patients come into the practice, any barriers and challenges or questions that your staff may have have already been addressed and are dealt with, you know, kind of behind the scenes to not affect, you know, what the patient experiences.

Tim Bouchard (12:50)
Yeah,

one word that comes up on this podcast almost about a dozen times per episode is the word trust. And you can’t you can’t even start to have that ⁓ manifest without everyone being on the same page to deliver consistent patient experience between providers and support staff, you know, and seeing that kind of reflect in the feedback that comes back from patients and things like ⁓ post visit surveys and things like that. ⁓ Speaking of that, are there any types of measurables you look for to see if

Alyssa Luber (12:55)
Yes. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (13:20)
that is being implemented properly or manifesting itself properly in the outbound messaging.

Alyssa Luber (13:26)
Yeah, so when we’re looking at is, like, is there, are the patients feeling like they can trust the providers and the services that they’re receiving from practices? So. ⁓

Tim Bouchard (13:34)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (13:38)
There’s a few things. One, we can look at our patients coming back from multiple services. So talking about one of those earlier buckets that we mentioned of having the patient see your practice as this, I’m going to use the term again, but holistic resource for all of their care issues. So if that trust is there, you’ll see repeat visits for a multitude of different disease states or concerns. The other notion of that as well too, is you can see how the patient’s willingness is to maybe

engage in some new product lines. And so if there’s a new technology that providers are bringing on, if there’s any internal hesitation or discontinuity between, you know, the outcome or objective of having that technology in-house, but maybe the providers, the nurses and the other staff don’t really have that same buy-in, the patient’s going to recognize some of that discontinuity and that uncertainty and it’s going to create a barrier between the patient and the provider.

and their willingness to kind of engage in some of these new services, independent of whether or not that new service may be incredibly beneficial. When a patient goes into these service settings, they do look towards all the clinical staff as the experts on their care. And a lot of the times they’re coming in anxious and nervous with a lot of questions. so being able to meet patients where they are, both from a practical standpoint of just,

disease state or infection that they’re coming to address and emotionally really influences the overall trust and relationship that the provider and patient are able to have.

Tim Bouchard (15:19)
Yeah,

you you’d want to think that it would be as easy as solution X makes sense for, you know, situation Y. But it’s not a logical choice. lot of times it’s just as much about that emotional connection and being able to feel understood. And even before you talk to someone feeling like you’re already understood and that really does focus on getting that messaging for the priority goal that you have built around with the patient.

perspective is and then creating the assets around that digitally and for the first visit, maybe from a material standpoint ⁓ and a terminology standpoint to make sure that they all fit that patient narrative and not just the technical or ⁓ medical terminology that’s used. So can you can you talk about why that patient empowerment is so much more important than even just saying you might have the best equipment or

Alyssa Luber (16:03)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (16:18)
you know, the most certifications or the highest, you know, number of patients or longest amount of years in business. Like, why is the patient empowerment side so much more important?

Alyssa Luber (16:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And you touch on a good point. You actually reminded me of a of a

instance. And so I was working with an urgent care organization at one point and they were onboarding, it was a multi-state organization, so multiple clinic locations. You’re dealing with a lot of physicians, a lot of diverse patient demographics and populations, and a lot of different reimbursement landscapes. And the singular kind of notion that connected them all was they wanted to roll out a new piece of point of care technology. So it was same day ⁓ or same visit.

Tim Bouchard (16:44)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (17:04)
should say, tests and results. So really streamlining that patient journey. The technology itself was incredible, first of its kind. And when rolling out that initiative, the practice kind of took the approach of…

heavily focusing the marketing components and the messaging on some of the technical specs and the accuracy of the data or kind of doing these high level notions of this is the service we offer now. You know, we have competing priorities. We don’t really want to do this big upheaval. And they just expected because the technology is, you know, hypothetically supposed to speak for itself that there was going to be this incredible engagement in the community of, you know, new patients flooding in, current patients, you know, really wanting to take advantage.

of this new piece of technology. But after rollout, we started to see that that just wasn’t the case. And so there was a lag in provider and clinical staff adoption. know, there wasn’t a breadth of understanding of the service and patients were also used to this elongated, trustworthy testing paradigm, which, you know, unfortunately, they wouldn’t get the results in three or four days. But it was familiar for them and it was something that was natural.

to them and so without having the infrastructure in place to both empower you know I guess both sides of the fence one empower the the physicians and the staff you know speak confidently about the technology and really understand why this technology is so innovative not only for their workflows but the patient but on the flip side also not having the correct messaging to relay that same information to the patient so they just saw it as another flyer for some tests you know you go into the

Tim Bouchard (18:42)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (18:52)
sure you can remember going to the doctor’s office and you see all the pamphlets of all the different colors of the brands and everything and it’s not only overwhelming but it’s not in a digestible format or something that will really resonate for the patients that are coming in for that type of service and you know unfortunately it really is all too common and you know as we mentioned it’s you look at these technologies and these new opportunities as a way to revolutionize their practice but what everyone kind of forgets sometimes is that what the

Tim Bouchard (18:56)
yeah.

Alyssa Luber (19:22)
introduction of anything new, whether you’re a new practice in the community, you’re bringing on a new technology, or you’re trying to attract a new patient demographic, there’s always going to be hesitancy and questions in unseen barriers. And so it’s really important to think strategically prior to onboarding any strategy, what it would feel like to be on the patient side of things. And so that’s why the patient empowerment and really structuring your messaging around how not necessarily will the

or the technology or the workflow affect the patient from an operational standpoint, but how will it impact their livelihood? How will it impact them from a whole person standpoint, not just necessarily, cool, you can get this really accurate, really fast test.

Tim Bouchard (20:10)
And you mentioned how even the avenues that you communicate that have changed and that’s that’s happened in multiple ways, right? Like everything has become much more heavily digital over the last 10 or so years. Now there’s also many more channels that you can be playing in. And there’s also more systems that are doing automated outreach for existing patients to how have you seen even just like the patient behavior change over the last couple of years?

Alyssa Luber (20:30)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (20:35)
for when you do figure this stuff out and start to take it out into the market.

Alyssa Luber (20:39)
Yeah, absolutely. the change itself and the one that’s obviously most notable is everything is digitized. So a lot of the younger patients ⁓ are only seeking their health information online. You’ll see it a lot of times when they go into practice too, like they’re not reading the posters or the pamphlets, they’re looking for digital resources. They’ve become a more proactive consumer of their own health and the care that they want to. ⁓

Tim Bouchard (20:46)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (21:07)
to kind of consume. we see that actually as a huge shift, you know, post COVID, you know, the barriers and challenges that were kind of implemented as a way to, again, not necessarily just because of the pandemic, but it impeded patients capacity to access care of the traditional ways, you know, going to a hospital or going to visit your primary care physician in office. And with all the misinformation that kind of circulated in that time, patients had to take it upon themselves to be their own care experts. And so now when we look at

Tim Bouchard (21:23)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (21:37)
you know, how do we connect with these patients? How do we access them? It really is on the practices in these healthcare institutions to take a deep dive of what patient demographic are we serving and where are they going to get their information? You know, is it the busy college student who, you know, gets information from their, you know, college newsletter or TikTok or Instagram or maybe is it a, you know, busy, you know, individual, a busy professional?

who doesn’t really have time to go and scroll on social media, but they’re on LinkedIn a lot and they’re reading some online news articles. And so being very meticulous with not only language, but as you mentioned, where consumers in healthcare are accessing information.

Tim Bouchard (22:22)
Yeah,

the other ⁓ fun thing about the new generations, including the back end of millennials too, is we hate talking to people on the phone. So if you don’t have an adequate digital solution for getting information in a secure way over to a practice or scheduling a first visit or even just scheduling a call so you know, OK, I got to get amped up for this call. I’m not, you know, I’m not just talking to the front desk person like randomly on a Monday afternoon or something that that has to be something that factors into that too.

Alyssa Luber (22:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, it’s funny that you say that because it goes back to that empowerment aspect. know, the individuals want autonomy over their health care. so a lot of

change the practices can implement can really just start not only doing some of the paid advertisements, you know, with the right language, talking about things that, you know, they value like time and speed and discretion, but also making as much information available to them prior to the visit. So something I always think that’s undervalued is a really great FAQ, you know, and just constantly updating some of those questions so patients know what’s the testing process going to look like? What are, you know, the some questions I may have about symptoms or treatment?

Tim Bouchard (23:19)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (23:30)
and how can I get that information actually all before I even go in to speak with the provider? It makes them feel more comfortable and it actually builds that trust back with the practice of them understanding where these patients are coming from. And so making that information accessible and digestible and enables them to go into these practices confidently saying, this is what I need, this is the information I know, and I’m ready to have this conversation with the provider. But I’m in the same boat. I also don’t like making phone calls.

Tim Bouchard (23:58)
Yeah.

Alyssa Luber (23:59)
sometimes to my doctors or anything.

Tim Bouchard (24:02)
Fun technical note on that, too. The FAQs go a long way in terms of AI optimization, too, from a search standpoint, you know, because you are able to frame things in FAQs in the query based format versus the generic information delivery and messaging format. So it’s a little bit of a shortcut to get that type of content on there. So let’s say everyone buys into what we’re talking about, right? this sounds great. This is so smart.

Alyssa Luber (24:08)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (24:27)
Tim’s got good things too, but this is really Alyssa’s episode. ⁓ How does someone figure out which priority they should start with? Let’s like kind of wrap on that. Like where should someone start? How do they identify if it’s the patient acquisition or efficiencies in systems or utilization or new service line? Like how do they know where to start?

Alyssa Luber (24:47)
Yeah, so it will take some, looking inwards, know, so look, looking at, you know, your current data, independent of, know, what size of practice you are, know, patient volume trends, service utilization trends, referral patterns, patient feedback, if there is any, ⁓ what kind of, know, what health concerns are circulating in your community? Is there, you know, an increase in, know, STIs or is there, you know, a increase in whatever, you know, component or health concern that you’re seeing in the community. And so really honing in on

not only where you can bridge the gaps in care in your community, but also what is your internal team seeing? So this is a great opportunity to kind of bring in the frontline staff and get their feedback and get their input to brainstorm kind of collaboratively. Again, remember you can’t do everything at once, but picking that area and making sure, as we mentioned, it’s really patient-centric. A lot of the other benefits will kind of flow in.

as we establish that initial pillar.

Tim Bouchard (25:50)
Yeah, it really does help as soon as you can take yourself into that perspective and what’s most beneficial. How do we most clearly communicate that? A lot of stuff does really flow around that. It starts to dictate what channels you might be in, what community message resonates the best, how your staff and services line up with that. And that affects website marketing campaigns, internal scripting, phone scripting documents the whole night. And so it really is like a foundational piece.

Alyssa Luber (26:00)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (26:18)
going if it’s centered around the patient, you’re starting from a good spot and everything else falls into place. Is there anything I haven’t asked that you want to make sure everyone knows before we wrap this awesome episode up?

Alyssa Luber (26:22)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

⁓ Let me think very quickly. ⁓

I would say no, think we touched on a lot of it. I’ll just leave with, know, thinking strategically about outreach in an age where there’s so much noise is incredibly important. So ensuring that you’re really honing in and understanding, you know, what patient is coming in, who are they, what do they value, what do they need and ensuring that a lot of your strategy from a marketing standpoint is tailored to the patient. Because as mentioned, you the science will speak for itself, the new technology

Tim Bouchard (26:46)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Luber (27:06)
and new platforms and all these new digital resources will always help improve from an optimization standpoint your staff. And now we just need to find a way to relay that messaging to our patients in a way that’s digestible, in a way that resonates with them, and on a medium or a platform where they feel comfortable kind of receiving that information. But it may seem very inundating and kind of overwhelming at times, but take it a step at a time, find your priorities, and then as

you know a lot of the other great work will kind of just come in flow.

Tim Bouchard (27:40)
And there

are lots of great people that can help you do that if you need it. Speaking of that, this has been a great episode. But why don’t you tell people where they can find out more about you and connect if they want. ⁓ And yeah, go for that.

Alyssa Luber (27:44)
Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a LinkedIn. ⁓ It’s, think, just Alyssa Luber is the handle. And then if you would like to reach out via email with any questions about content or strategy or additional questions about my experience in the space, feel free to email me at alyssaluber.inquiry at gmail.com. Nice and easy.

Tim Bouchard (28:17)
Cool,

well thanks for this. All right, listeners, if you wanna get started on taking your practice’s brand and marketing foundation to the next level, check out our patient pipeline session offer. It’s a workshop to uncover how you can attract new patients and convert more inquiries into appointments for your practice. Learn more at luminous.agency slash blueprint. And lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to Healthcare Marketing Edge. We’re on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. And Alyssa, thanks again for being on the episode, and I’ll catch everyone that’s listening on the next one.

Alyssa Luber (28:19)
Yeah, awesome.

Awesome. Thanks, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Bouchard (28:49)
You bet.