Physician Thought Leadership as a Marketing Strategy | EP 12

In this episode of Health Care Marketing Edge, Tim Bouchard, Owner/CEO of Luminus and Russell Simon, Principal Consultant at RMS Health Advisors, discuss the importance of physician-generated content and how it can be leveraged for effective healthcare marketing. They explore the challenges faced by physicians in creating content, the significance of establishing a unique theory of content, and the evolving landscape of PR opportunities in healthcare. Russell shares insights on building trust with physicians, techniques for content extraction, and the metrics for measuring success in content marketing. The conversation emphasizes the need for healthcare professionals to engage in thought leadership to attract new patients and enhance their practice’s visibility.

Tim Bouchard (00:00)
Welcome to Health Care Marketing Edge, where we share stories and strategies to grow your practice. I’m Tim Buchard from Luminous, a health care marketing agency specializing in helping practices acquire patients and grow their practice. Today, we’re diving into something that I know practices struggle with, turning your physician’s expertise into consistent thought leadership content. Our guest is Russell Simon, principal consultant at RMS Health Advisors, who’s going to show us how to extract that valuable insight from busy clinicians and turn them into PR opportunities, new patients, real business growth for your practice.

If you’ve ever struggled with this, this episode will definitely get you the bones of a framework that you need to get started. Russell, awesome to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on. Why don’t you tell everyone a little about who you are and what you do?

Russell Simon (00:43)
Tim, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. I think you just told everyone who I am and what I do, but I’m, no, I have a consulting practice, marketing consulting that focuses on healthcare, both physician groups in a B2B context and a lot of physicians who have gone off and started their own practice. So helping them develop their practices and attract more patients. I’ve been working for doctors for about 15 years now.

Tim Bouchard (00:48)
That’s it, we’re done. Let’s wrap it up.

Russell Simon (01:11)
So I can’t believe it’s been that long. Before that, I had careers in journalism and politics, a lot of which I’ve brought into this. think some of it informs my work today. But right now, just really happy with the independent shop, working directly with physicians on their practices.

Tim Bouchard (01:31)
Cool. You believe strongly in the physician-generated content side of things. Why do you believe it’s so powerful in how you’re helping people with that and what they get out of it? And do you think it’s underutilized right now? Is that something that someone can really capitalize on?

Russell Simon (01:47)
I mean, it’s clearly underutilized, although it’s not like rocket science. think everyone knows it’s better to have content with a name and a face to it than kind of generic corporate content, right? Like no one is really going to disagree with that, but I’ve worked within a lot of really big organizations that have big marketing departments. And it’s just kind of like easier at the end of the day for marketing departments to churn out the more generic type.

Tim Bouchard (01:57)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (02:17)
content because they don’t have to run it by the physicians. They have to interview the physicians. know, the physician’s time is so scarce that they just in the long run find it easier to write normal blog posts. Okay, fine. But they’re making the trains run and keeping things moving in the marketing department. But people don’t read that stuff that much. And it always ends up with like a more generic voice, right? So far, I’m not saying anything that

Tim Bouchard (02:22)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (02:46)
anyone’s not aware of. ⁓ What I’ve been… Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (02:49)
Isn’t that part of the trouble with this? We all know this,

we all believe it, but there’s definitely some bridge or chasm that everyone thinks exists to getting to the point of doing something about it.

Russell Simon (02:58)
Exactly.

Exactly. And what I’ve been able to do, I worked within a very large physicians group for many years as a director of content marketing. And within that group, and now what I’ve been able to do is bridge that divide. Like how do we consistently get content out of the physicians that they like and approve of with their name and face attached to it?

⁓ that is compelling, that people actually want to read, that actually helps build trust. Trust in them as a physician, trust in their practice as one of the leaders of it.

Tim Bouchard (03:39)
What do you think the limiting factor is? I ⁓ actually came across you through networking, but you introduced me to your sub stack. So you have a whole article right up about this. It’s fairly recent within the last couple of years. And you go pretty directly after the idea of where the hang up is. Is it on the physician executive side or is it on the marketing team side?

Russell Simon (03:46)
Hmm.

Tim Bouchard (04:04)
who can kind of bear the responsibility to like take the first step and get over themselves? I don’t know if that’s a good way to put it, but like you’ve obviously written about this. You want to start there and then maybe we can build on that for how they can actually dig in.

Russell Simon (04:18)
Yeah, you’re right. You’re referring to an article on my Substack from about a year ago where I said the limiting factor is the physician’s time. Burn. Yeah. No, but I love working with doctors. I’ve always really enjoyed working with doctors. And one of the reasons is because they personally realize their time is very valuable and should be spent elsewhere.

Tim Bouchard (04:29)
burn

Yeah, for sure.

Russell Simon (04:46)
They don’t

try to do my job for me, right? Like they want the marketer to do the marketer’s job. Okay, fine. But when the marketer comes to a physician and is like, well, I need your help with something. Then both of them are running up against the limitation, which is the physician’s time. So yeah, they need to, mean, there’s both, there’s, give and take on both sides, right? And I go into this in the article, like how do you begin to.

consistently produce content given that limitation. And I ran through it in the article, but let’s, you want to jump into that now, right? Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (05:24)
Yeah, sure. Just

let’s do some high level Cliff notes.

Russell Simon (05:28)
Yeah, I mean, there are, there’s writers on the internet, first of all, who are writing like every day. And you see this in politics and people who write columns, sometimes it’s a daily column, sometimes it’s a weekly column, and they’re consistently churning out like a thousand words a day on a particular topic. And I feel like a lot of people might look at that and wonder, how this person must be a savant. They must be, you know,

Writing must be so easy for them. They must be like a nonstop idea generating factory. And that’s not actually true. Like what they are doing is they have a very clear theory of the world and how the world works. And they are running the week’s events or the day’s events through that theory and just asking themselves, does it confirm my theory of the world or does it not? And if so, why?

Like all the answers are acceptable, but this means they’re not having to come up with ideas all the time. It just means they’re like matching what happened up against their preexisting ideas. So, ⁓ like in healthcare, for example, my old group had a theory of physician groups that a physician group is going to be better if all the physicians are owners in the group. So that was their whole thing.

They were like, we can do hospital contracts better. We can provide better care. Our leaders are more invested. And it’s all because our theory of running a physician’s group is that it’s better when they’re owners. Now look, every other physician’s group in the country where not everyone is an owner would disagree with that theory of the world, which is fine. Like they have their own reasons why they’re good at what they do. But this can just inform a lot of our content. So news and events would come in.

We get updates from our hospitals, challenges with contracts, ⁓ new health systems that we’re trying to go into and new regions. And we can just kind of run it through our theory, right? And there was a book I read. I don’t want to name check too much, but it’s Peter Thiel’s book, which is his book on business, Zero to One.

which I read a long time ago before Peter Thiel was very like hot button in politics. But in zero to one, he just said, you have to ask yourself, like, how do you come up with a theory of the world that you can hang your brand on and that you can hang your content on? And you ask yourself, what important truth do I agree with that not very many other people do? And the one I, the example I just gave is just like an example of that. We believe X.

Tim Bouchard (08:21)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (08:22)
Not that many other people believe that and that’s our whole brand and that’s what we hang our content off of.

Tim Bouchard (08:29)
it makes it really easy

to think about, you know, I think one of things that hangs people up, things that hangs people up too is they see everything all at once. say, too much, can’t deal with it. But if you narrow it down, it actually makes the runway a little bit more manageable to take steps on versus trying to just like pluck things off of a big tree or something like that. And from a brand standpoint that you brought up too…

Russell Simon (08:42)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Tim Bouchard (08:54)
That’s kind of what it all centers around too, the belief that someone should connect to you because you believe that. That’s where trust starts to build from. That’s where content ⁓ uniformity starts to, relatability starts to come from. So that’s a big deal too on the brand side.

Russell Simon (09:10)
Yeah, I mean, every physician who starts their own practice, like they did it because they saw a big problem that they thought that they could maybe fix somehow with their own way of doing things. And part of what I do with my clients is help them clarify what that is. Right. Like, why did you start this company? Because you thought a particular thing was broken in the industry X or you thought patients were not being served.

because why, you know, and you thought you could do it better because you’re bringing certain way of doing things to those patients. I’ve a few integrated medicine clients, for example, who clearly started their practices because they felt that healthcare was broken in some way, that it wasn’t personalized enough, that it was too focused on satisfying the insurance companies.

And they have a theory of how they should be delivering care to patients. You know, it should be data-driven, but holistic and personalized. And everything we write about can just kind of be hung off of that. You know, a new study comes out about, you know, different genome types. Well, does this confirm your theory of how patients should be cared for or does it conflict with it? And as long as you’re writing honestly about that and publishing it and distributing it.

that’s going to build trust with patients. It’s going to support your brand. It’s going to come back to you in the form of, ⁓ readers and visibility and perhaps other people asking you to come on their podcasts or to give you an interview. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s, so there’s a lot of downstream benefits to doing that.

Tim Bouchard (10:53)
Yep.

Yeah, we had an episode two, I had someone on, we were talking about social media. It’s a very light touch, very high level platform, but you can bring some of this to that. But I think another bigger thing now with even shifts and things like search and AI and just general brand distribution, the PR side is making a huge swing comeback ⁓ because it’s not just, I mean, this can still be part of the strategy, but it’s not just publishing blog posts that might be about like,

how to get over, you know, flu A this season or something. It’s more so about how many different third party actors want to hear that unique perspective and theory that you’re talking about bringing to the market. So it’s not just another person saying like, oh, well, this is the flu and this is what it is. It’s like, you know, here’s how we address this type of thing that we treat.

Russell Simon (11:51)
Yeah. And I mean, the meaning of PR opportunity has also become, I think, broader. used to be like a physician would come to me and be like, I want to be in the Wall Street Journal. I’d be like, that’s fine. We can pitch them. But like, what about a podcast, like with an audience that’s like exactly the people you’re trying to reach instead of just like the most prestigious newspaper you can think of? know, and obviously media has become so much more diffuse.

Tim Bouchard (11:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (12:19)
⁓ The nature of PR opportunities has really opened up and publishing online is absolutely the first step, ⁓ I think, to getting yourself those kinds of opportunities.

Tim Bouchard (12:32)
especially if it’s third party too. If you can publish through third party platforms, you not only get a better like credibility along with that publishing, anyone can publish on their own website, articles, pages, resources, whatever it is. But if you get third party validation through that publishing, not only does it boost your credibility signal, but it boosts your search signal and visibility signal too. So that’s a big deal. ⁓ How do you have that initial conversation with a…

Russell Simon (12:34)
Yeah.

It does.

Tim Bouchard (13:00)
⁓ physician executive to get them to buy into that. It takes time, it takes energy both in physical contribution and mental contribution. How do you get them to buy into that?

Russell Simon (13:13)
Yeah, I mean, that’s a little bit of the dance, right? And I think it’s definitely helped that I’ve done it for so long and that I know healthcare so well. I mean, at this point I’ve ghost written for, I don’t know, dozens and dozens, at least a hundred physician executives over the past 15 years. And I can speak to them about their business on a level that they are probably not quite used to.

from the person that usually gets assigned this side of the role, which is like a junior marketing copywriter or something, which is fine. Like they need to start somewhere and learn the business, but I’ve been ghostwriting a really long time. I remember a few years ago, I was referred to a potential new client and I got on a Zoom call with them. They were chief medical officer for a group and very well known nationally. And…

he actually joked halfway through the zoom call that he felt like we were on a first date. And, you know, we, that’s what it is though. It’s like, we’re going to work together for hopefully years, which is many of my clients have been working for many years with me and we’re going to to build trust with each other. And because I’m going to hopefully like be an extension of your brain, ⁓ speak to you on

Tim Bouchard (14:17)
Yeah.

Russell Simon (14:37)
a semi-regular basis, you either monthly or quarterly or whatever it is, and help you express your thoughts and your worldview in writing. So, you know, you have to approach it with that mindset, I guess, and build your expertise over time and be able to, I mean, I really empathize with the doctor’s play, especially the ones that start their own companies. Healthcare’s quite messed up. There’s a million problems to solve.

⁓ no one has the right secret sauce to solve any of them. but they’re all trying, you know, and I’ve been able to come into conversations with physicians and just communicate that, that I understand their work and why they’re doing it and that I can help them build, build their business and spread, spread their ideas to a bigger audience.

Tim Bouchard (15:32)
That’s a perfect segue for where I wanted to go next, which is the first date. No, it’s building off of that. How do you structure the content extraction from them? So you just, you really did segue into it. It’s, you know, you are acting as an extension of their brain. You’re writing at a certain competency and expertise level that makes them comfortable with it, but you still have to work with them to get the seeds for that. Are there any things that you’ve

Russell Simon (15:38)
Hahaha!

Tim Bouchard (16:02)
done that make it easier or suggestions you have for people in that position to be able to work with someone like you or us or whoever is doing their technical writing for them.

Russell Simon (16:11)
I mean, I have very open lines of communication. You know, I’m chatting and texting with the clients often. And I think ideally what happens is they become comfortable with sending me whatever it is they’re reading about or watching. And that’s what I try to encourage right off the bat. I say, what do you read on a daily basis? I don’t care what it is. What do you watch? What do you listen to?

What voices do you trust? You know, what’s the thing that stuck out to you over the past few months that you read that made you think differently? I told you I was a journalist in my first career and this is definitely part of that skillset that you have to bring into ghost trading for physicians. You have to be able to ask them questions like this and just get them to open up a little bit. Once you’ve established all that first date stuff and you’ve got that out of the way and so now you’re in the relationship,

you have to get this two-way information flow. I’m gonna send them news articles, say, do you think? I might text it to them, and I want them to send me stuff like, hey, this was interesting. And I don’t let them get away with, what are interesting. I’m like, what do you mean interesting? Do you agree or do you disagree with the article? Yeah, with the point of view. ⁓

Tim Bouchard (17:27)
Yeah, what’s the first thought? What are we building off of here?

Russell Simon (17:33)
And I’m building a mental model of how they approach the world and how they ingest information and process it and what their response to it is. And I’m usually interviewing them on a monthly basis, you know, for half an hour, an hour ideally. And usually they feel like they’re delivering to me word salad, like that their thoughts are completely incomprehensible and they don’t know where that conversation headed and they have no clue.

Again, that’s part of what I as a journalist originally am here to do, which is make sense of everything and find where the story is and pull out the threads. But eventually after six months, year of working with someone, I know how they think and I know how they’re likely to respond to new news. And at this point I’m being much more proactive and saying, hey, this came out. I think we should do a piece on it.

Here’s what I think the piece should say. Do you me to get started on that? And then I send them the draft.

Tim Bouchard (18:35)
man, that’s probably a really comfortable flip for them at that point too, because it’s probably when they first start, even though you’ve developed the right relationship and trust ⁓ bridge between the two of you, they probably still feel like a lot is on their shoulders still to bring the right things initially. And then when that flip happens, it’s probably just like a, like right off their shoulders.

Russell Simon (18:54)
Yeah. Another thing I’ve seen is, you you have organizations sometimes with multiple, many multiple physician partners in them, multiple physician executives, and you need to find the one that’s bought into this way of doing things, or at least curious about it. And others won’t be, but once you have one, ⁓ you can then build on that to, bring in other voices in the company. I find physicians to be naturally competitive.

Tim Bouchard (19:17)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (19:23)
They don’t like to see their colleagues getting all the glory. And I don’t like to see that either. I want to work with as many people in the organization as have something to say.

Tim Bouchard (19:23)
for

Spread the wealth. Is there anything that ⁓ is out there that you’ve seen, know, or easy things for people to look to from within their expertise or their practice theories that they can pull from low-hanging fruit, ⁓ more high-level content stuff, where you’re talking about is very technical, in-depth, and pointed to go out in the market? Do you see ways that they can even just look at their daily activities or practice philosophies that they could pull easier things out just to get a ramp up?

Russell Simon (19:37)
Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (20:05)
Let’s say they aren’t working with someone as great as Russell Simon.

Russell Simon (20:08)
Well, then you should call Russell and start working with him now. I mean, it’s like if you ask a screenwriter, ⁓ where should you get started? I think you should probably read a lot of screenplays first. Or if you ask a YouTuber, how should you start a YouTube channel? Would you watch YouTube channels? And I think probably the first, maybe this is.

Tim Bouchard (20:10)
Ayy!

Russell Simon (20:35)
what you asked or maybe not. So feel free to stop me, but you should be reading other physicians. You should be reading ⁓ news about your work and just trying to pay attention first of all to what other people are saying and how they’re saying it. And if you feel so moved, just engaging, lightly commenting, sharing, reposting. I mean, you’re reading it somewhere. So

There’s this capability on all the different platforms to do that. And get comfortable writing your thoughts down on one of those platforms, you know?

Tim Bouchard (21:15)
steps and also know what the market is engaging with too. You’ll be able to tell just face value, what things people are resonating with, what things aren’t. Some people will look like they’re talking to a wall. Some people you’ll look at, that’s clearly AI written. And then some people will have like some really interesting, unique thought and you’ll see tons of comments and shares and engagement on it. And those are really good indicators that that’s the style.

Russell Simon (21:17)
Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (21:44)
of thought that resonates with people. And then from there, just then you’d have to decipher, this a patient facing thought or is this a network and provider facing thought? Right. Is it going to resonate with referral partners or the people that you’re trying to serve?

Russell Simon (21:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The thing that AI cannot do, and I’m not sure we’ll ever really be able to do this, is literally describe your own experience for you. So like I’m sitting in a room, it’s this temperature. like AI doesn’t know that because it’s going on right now. And so when you are a physician watching and engaging with your colleagues or, you know, someone writing or delivering content online, ask yourself, does this match with my own personal experience?

Tim Bouchard (22:09)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (22:28)
in your work and in your life. And that’s something that AI cannot answer for you. They don’t know what your own personal experience is. So that’s a good place to start.

Tim Bouchard (22:38)
Yeah, when you get these wheels in motion, what types of things are you looking for to see if it’s hitting the mark or doing something for the practice or even just the physician executive?

Russell Simon (22:48)
You mean in terms of feedback and metrics and tracking and…

Tim Bouchard (22:51)
Yeah,

yeah, just gut check. Is this doing things for us out in the market? How are we, how is it supporting us?

Russell Simon (22:58)
I mean, ultimately you want patients to book time with you to come in. I mean, that’s the bottom line for a lot of the physician practices I’m working with. And that’s the number we’re tracking every month. And sometimes you can draw a really straight line from your content to those bookings. I mean, the tracking tools that have always existed online can help you do that. ⁓ I must say that

Tim Bouchard (23:01)
Yeah.

Russell Simon (23:27)
In the past 18 months, something has happened to metrics that I’ve never seen in 15 years, which is they’ve started diverging, right? Marketers used to track traffic to the website and views and things like that, and using them as like upstream indicators of downstream metrics that they want to see later on, such as leads coming in the door, new patient bookings, et cetera. And I’ve actually started to see these diverge in a…

Tim Bouchard (23:39)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (23:55)
I don’t know if you’re seeing that, Tim, in the work you’re doing.

Tim Bouchard (23:58)
Yeah. Yeah, I’ll say something

about this when you say something about it.

Russell Simon (24:02)
Yeah. I mean, it’s because I mean, Google was always kind of trying to keep people on Google, not send people through to the websites. And now that like LLMs are starting to grab market share away from Google in terms of people are instead turning to Claude and chat GBT and perplexity to get answers instead of trying to Google them. The same exact thing is happening, right? They’re just staying on Claude and staying on chat GBT to get the answers.

So you might not see traffic coming to you, but your brand is still, your brand is not out there in the either. And the AIs are reading your blog and reading your content or your newsletter, or even listening to your YouTube videos in order to inform the way that it’s going to deliver advice to people who are asking it for advice. So the newsflash is you’ve got a new reader. It’s AI. ⁓

And you just have to be cognizant that the tools are going to be one of your readers and that they’re really important.

Tim Bouchard (25:08)
And to circle back on one of the early points in our conversation, the PR side improves the third party citation count and the topical relevancy. And from an AI mentioned standpoint, it’s not just going to look and say like, ⁓ this practitioner has a good website with lots of good information. That’s a sole point of publishing. If that publisher is also mentioned or that practitioner is also mentioned on five different local news websites or a video on YouTube from one of those news channels or

Russell Simon (25:14)
Yes.

Tim Bouchard (25:37)
the local business or health association periodical, is going to say, ⁓ topical and relevant and widely trusted, and then pull that in. And you’ll see traffic go down, oddly, ⁓ but conversion rates go up on websites. And you’ll say to yourself, none of this makes sense, but that’s what the new reality is, and that’s what you’re just alluding to. And then also you start to see a shift on the marketing side.

Russell Simon (25:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.

Correct. Yep.

Tim Bouchard (26:03)
which is a little weird in healthcare because we have to keep some things separated from Google and some things within Google. But on Search Console, you can look at brand mentions and brand searches that even don’t result in clicks. But if that number starts to increase on the brand or physician’s name, then you know that there’s some movement out there that people have heard this name, they’re looking for the name, or they’ve heard the practice, they’re looking for the practice. And you might not get the clicks, but you might see some trend lines on the actual keyword impressions.

on the search console side. That’s Google specific, not really AI specific, but it’s definitely a new type of trend. It used to be seen as like a vanity metric, but there’s only so many ways to measure things that aren’t directly tracked. And in our world, we’re trying to decouple healthcare from Google anyways because of all the new privacy and HIPAA and PHI regulations that are out in the country now.

Russell Simon (26:47)
Yeah, yeah, I second all of that.

Tim Bouchard (27:01)
⁓ Even from an actual tracking standpoint, things are getting a little bit more gray than they were black and white. ⁓ is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you wanted to make sure you contributed to the conversation before we wrap up?

Russell Simon (27:14)
I don’t think so. That was really good overview. think we covered most of it. I second all the things you just said only to add that it’s even more competitive. It’s a point I made in the post, which is that marketers used to go after like the page one of Google for which there were 10 slots on page one. But now if you ask, know, chat GBT or Claude, like, Hey, I need an integrated medicine physician in

Tim Bouchard (27:30)
Mm-hmm.

Russell Simon (27:44)
area that specializes in this, it’s only going to give you two or three recommendations. So you’re going after fewer slots basically. And all the things you just said are true. Traffic could go down, but conversions could go up. ⁓ But the world we’re walking into now is one that I view as even more competitive because they’re just not going to give you as much opportunity to get in front of the

the right customer, the right patient.

Tim Bouchard (28:16)
Yeah, and also ⁓ patient inquiry quality might go up as well. If you really do have that sole perspective in theory on your practice, your practicing ⁓ angle, and your place in the market, it will bring the right people even more, which not only will your conversion from a website lead or an inquiry go up, but your actually first appointment conversion percentage will go up and be healthier to you that way.

Russell Simon (28:44)
Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (28:46)
Yeah, this was this is an awesome conversation. I loved the topic. I always like this topic because it’s such a trust building industry that if you don’t get the people that you need to build the trust with involved, you’re you’re missing out on one the strongest things you can do for a practice. So it was really great to talk through this with you. Thanks for breaking down all the different ways that you help people with it and how you guide them through it. Would you like to tell people a bit more about you, where they can find you and go from there?

Russell Simon (29:15)
Yeah, thanks for having me on Tim. My website is RMS Health Advisors. That’s my initials, Russell Mac Simon. So rmhealthadvisors.com. And you can see my consulting practice there and go read the newsletter from there and reach out if you have any questions.

Tim Bouchard (29:34)
Yeah, check out the sub stack. All right, cool. Listeners, if you want to get started on communicating and promoting your practices, unique expertise in the market and take it to the next level, check out our Patient Pipeline Blueprint session. It’s a workshop to uncover how you can attract new patients, convert more inquiries into appointments for your practice. Learn more luminus.agency slash blueprint. And lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to Healthcare Marketing Edge on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. Russell, this was awesome. Thank you for coming on and I’ll see everyone else on the next episode.

Russell Simon (29:35)
Yep.

My pleasure, Tim.