Marketing Must Knows for Healthcare Companies with Justin Crawmer & Scott Miscall of Webtek Interactive

Are you a life sciences start-up founder and want to bring your business to market, but don't know how? Marketing is something that is ever-evolving but should be part of every business' strategy.  In today's episode, you will dive into marketing strategies, testing, industry regulations, and more in the healthcare sector with Jason and Scott from Webtek Interactive. Webtek Interactive is a full-service marketing agency that works with enterprise clients. They specialize in digital strategy for companies in the Healthcare and wellness space.

About Justin
Justin’s background is in marketing online businesses and technical sciences. He’s consulted with over 300 businesses worldwide and worked in-house for companies like CHG Healthcare Services and Skullcandy.

About Scott
Scott is an entrepreneurial Kiwi with 20 years of experience in organic search marketing. Beyond partnering with healthcare companies, Scott’s interest in the life sciences extends into biohacking and life extension.

About Webtek
Successful marketing in today’s ever-changing, online landscape requires multidisciplinary skill,  proven strategy, and perfectly executed development. Luckily, we’ve got the team and the tools for the job. (In fact, this is kind of our whole deal.) 

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency with offices in Salt Lake City, UT, and Austin, TX. Your goals are our goals, and with our decades of expertise, we’ll help you meet them. We handle the complicated stuff—all you have to focus on is minding your business (we’ll mind it,  too).

 Links

Webtek Interactive: https://webtek.co/

Justin Crawmer | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justincrawmer/

Scott Miscall | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmiscall/

Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/

Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast

Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8

Music by keldez

Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/

Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast

Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8

Music by keldez

Transcript

[00:00:21] Kelly Stanton: Hey everyone thanks for joining the show today. I'm Kelly from Qualio and I'm your host here at From Lab to Launch. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and give us a review on apple or Spotify we'd love that and you'll help new listeners discover the show. If you wanna be on From Lab to Launch, please see the application linked in the show notes. We've had a lot of people reach out to us. we're over about 50 interviews now with these innovators in life sciences. And it's been a lot of fun we really enjoy connecting with you guys. 

[00:00:48] Kelly Stanton: Joining us today we have Justin Crawmer and Scott Miscall co-founding and managing partners of WebTek Interactive. WebTek Interactive is a full service marketing agency that works with enterprise clients. They specialize in digital strategy for companies in the healthcare and wellness space.

[00:01:06] Kelly Stanton: Justin's background is in marketing online businesses and technical sciences. He's consulted with over 300 businesses worldwide and worked in house for companies like CHG healthcare services and skull candy. Scott is an entrepreneurial Kiwi with 20 years of experience in organic search marketing, beyond partnering with healthcare companies. Scott's interest in the life sciences extends into biohacking and life extension.. Let's bring them in. 

[00:01:34] Kelly Stanton: Hi, Justin and Scott. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today. 

[00:01:38] Justin Crawmer: Hey Kelly, thank you very much for having us. 

[00:01:41] Kelly Stanton: So tell us a story behind WebTek Interactive and how you came to specialize in healthcare marketing.

[00:01:47] Justin Crawmer: Okay. So it's funny, cuz I actually was working for a, big healthcare staffing company called CHG Healthcare. When I was there, I was managing seven different brands and doing all their SEO and PPC. And through that I had, you know, some pretty big budgets that I was able to work with and I would bring in, you know, different partners to help us with fulfillment on, on the SEO strategies.

[00:02:08] Justin Crawmer: I worked with agencies from New York and Chicago to outsourcing to India and everywhere in between. And I met Scott online actually, and he just stood out head and shoulders above everybody else I worked with. So Scott's really a genius when it comes to SEO. And we just really clicked personally and, had a really good you know, kind of professional and personal relationship right from the beginning.

[00:02:28] Justin Crawmer: So, he and I our initial relationship started through working for staffing company, CHG healthcare helping seven different brands grow to you know, attract doctors and, connect them with hospitals for about 150 different specialties. Nice and we, yeah, that's where we met. And then it's funny because we actually formed a partnership and filed taxes together for like three years before we actually ever met in person.

[00:02:53] Kelly Stanton: It's the way of the world today isn't it. With all this remote work stuff. I worked here at Qualio for quite a while before I ever met my executive team face to face. So it's, it is different. 

[00:03:03] Kelly Stanton: Complicated and nuanced topics like healthcare and life sciences can be challenging to communicate to an audience. Do you have some examples you could share with us on how you've addressed those kinds of challenges?

[00:03:15] Justin Crawmer: Well, let's see, I would say that one thing that, that generally we find in the healthcare space is that people initially start by looking at their symptom or the problem that they've got. And then they work their way through an educational process where they start then looking for the actual treatment names and eventually the doctor that they're looking for, or the solution that they're looking for, whether it's a piece of med tech, or if it's an actual treatment or facility that they're looking for helping them to find the solution to that problem.

[00:03:42] Justin Crawmer: It, it always starts with the symptom and then they work their way through. So, you know, in order to really understand, if you're trying to sell a product, you really need to understand your audience from the very beginning, like who is the ideal person that you're trying to attract.

[00:03:55] Justin Crawmer: And a lot of times that audience could be multiple personas. Sometimes you're attracting in B2B audience, as well as a B2C. It kind of depends on who you're trying to attract in, in terms of how you shape the messaging. We have some clients for example, that attract in some of it they're trying to sell directly to the hospitals, as a solution where they're gonna, you know, roll out as their official protocol and the same product, they also then try to, to rebrand it in a different way and sell to a consumer market. So depending on who you're selling to, you have to have different messaging to kind of address different problems. And the other thing too is when you're, when you're dealing with copy on the web, for example, you even within the same audience, you're gonna have different types of people you know, we call them personas and sometimes people are gonna be wanting to know a lot of detail. And so you have to include that information, but on the web, you really need to make it in a way where it's really digestible quickly using things like headings and bullet points and things like that that allow for the person who's more of a skimmer to find the information that they're looking for.

[00:04:54] Kelly Stanton: And definitely keeping all of those things within the boundaries of label claims and all that good stuff too. 

[00:05:00] Justin Crawmer: Oh yeah. There's HIPAA. There's all sorts of like, this is a really highly regulated space. Of course we have some, for example, cannabis is a super regulated industry that we work with in the health and wellness space where we have to be super careful about all the laws and all the claims and you can't call to the dispensery you have to call it a pharmacy. And there's just all kinds of nuances around regulations that we be super aware of. 

[00:05:19] Kelly Stanton: Definitely. That's a lot to keep track of.

[00:05:22] Justin Crawmer: Yeah. 

[00:05:22] Kelly Stanton: How can life sciences and healthcare companies working to build these life saving products stand out with their marketing.

[00:05:30] Justin Crawmer: Let's see, Scott, do you wanna take this one? I don't wanna put you on the spot, but is this something that you wanna address? 

[00:05:35] Scott Miscall: Well, you know, the consumer and the audience is different in a lot of these spaces, you know, whether be biotech, healthcare, life sciences in general, from a supplement company to, you know, medical devices to telemedicine. I mean, they're all very different and they all need their own unique strategy to get visibility. For the audience and their consumer. So, it's really on a case by case basis. You know, what we would do for say a medical device company would be completely different to what we'd do for say telemedicine or supplements or something like that. So really it would be on a case by case basis on what that client really needs and, you know, testing marketing strategies also is very important. You know, you a client may come in with a very focused way of how they want to present their business.

[00:06:23] Scott Miscall: And it may just not work and they are not, you know, they're resistance to change and going down a different path, you have to AB test everything especially in organic search. I mean, in that kind of situation, you have to be flexible on, on what you're putting out there from a marketing perspective.

[00:06:40] Justin Crawmer: I would say that the way that we really approach this, you know, I think it's really important that we, kind of take a step back and say, what are the goals? From the very beginning, that's what we really address from as the very step one is what are the goals? And usually that's gonna be leads or sales or combination of both. When, I mean sales, I mean like online e-commerce sales revenue generation through the website.

[00:06:57] Justin Crawmer: So when we, when we establish the goals right front, then we can then identify the ideal client or the, you know, the, the audience, like I mentioned before, once you understand who the audience is and the personas within that audience, then you can get into keyword research. And once you start understanding, you know, what types of keywords people are looking for, and we look at, they'll just tell you really fast.

[00:07:18] Justin Crawmer: We look at four different factors. We look at the estimated search volume and Google will give you this inform. Trying to get it for different keyword tools too, but we'll understand what is the estimated search volume of the phrase? How competitive is it? Meaning number of index pages in Google where the client is currently ranking, meaning like how close are they right now to being within a traffic driving position.

[00:07:36] Justin Crawmer: And then there's a fourth factor we look at called consumer intent, which is, really's not really a metric, but more of a feel of like how likely are they to actually want to, you know, convert. Turn into a client for you. So we really do approach it from a top down of like, what are the goals? And then walking through the entire strategy based on the keywords.

[00:07:54] Justin Crawmer: And then, like Scott said, even if we think that we know what the keyword is, it really helps to test it. Like, let's say we're doing an organic strategy. It does help to run some paid strategy around it. Running some paid search will allow you to test the different keyword phrases test the different landing pages in the messaging that add copy and the offers.

[00:08:12] Justin Crawmer: There's all those types of things that allows us to test if we're flexible. And really, we get surprised sometimes by the types of phrases that actually end up being the money phrase, the phrase that actually really end up attracting in the high dollar clients or the ideal clients that, that these clients are looking.

[00:08:26] Kelly Stanton: Gotcha. How has the marketing landscape for healthcare clients changed in the last few years and what are current marketing trends you're now seeing in the healthcare space. 

[00:08:36] Justin Crawmer: Well, I'll take this and I'll let Scott take it too. I, don't wanna be over speaking here too much. But yeah, it's changed so much.

[00:08:42] Justin Crawmer: I mean, COVID has, has drastically changed the way, like, I mean, not just the medical industry, of course. I mean, everything changed with COVID in terms of how people just approach remote work and how they approach remote healthcare and how they're searching online for things in, in ways that they weren't prior to the pandemic. So I would say for sure, that has changed a ton just in terms of how people are trying to find the solutions to the healthcare. You know, that, that they're, that they're challenged with. Scott, do you wanna add anything to that? Well, 

[00:09:11] Scott Miscall: yeah, I mean, surviving the pandemic, I mean, you know, holding onto existing customers while still building brand value and trying to connect with new customers.

[00:09:22] Scott Miscall: I mean, it was a very crazy crazy I mean, 2020 was crazy from a marketing perspective, you know, online searches went up like, I think 60% from like, From 2019 to 2020, just on people, you know, looking for, I mean, we are all locked down in a pandemic and like what, you know, it was just it was just crazy, but you know, for us, I mean, business wise, it was both.

[00:09:50] Scott Miscall: Bad and good. We made new relationships that were of value. I think a lot of companies panicked right at the beginning of COVID. We worked with companies that let the whole marketing departments go. 

[00:10:01] Scott Miscall: It, wasn't great for some comp, some people who got fur load and stuff like that.

[00:10:06] Scott Miscall: But I, I, I think End. I mean, you know, stay at home orders, deliveries, internet sales really saw during the, the pandemic. And it was I guess, you know, taught everyone. New ways to survive. And especially in life sciences, you know, more people took supplements like vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C during that period than ever before in history, you know, it's like, it was the most in demand products on Amazon.

[00:10:33] Scott Miscall: I mean, it was ridiculous, so the, the pandemic reached new highs for everything. It kind of set new limits and yeah. I'm glad we all survived. 

[00:10:43] Justin Crawmer: I mean, there, I would say there were some other things too that I think were, were kind of, unique to that period of time too, is that a lot of times when we're doing link building and creating content which we place on third party websites.

[00:10:53] Justin Crawmer: So just really quickly, there's a, a big element of SEO. That's called link building or off page SEO, which is a really gaining popularity votes in Google's eyes, from quality neighborhoods. Let's just put it that way really simply, but it's something that has to be done. And, and we actually had a lot of.

[00:11:09] Justin Crawmer: Healthcare related websites that wouldn't accept any content if it wasn't related to COVID. And that was the demand of COVID content was just so high that we literally had to write all sorts of angles around COVID just over and over and over in terms of how to like, and if we wanted to have any chance of getting placed on healthcare type blogs and things like that. There's another thing too. That's quite interesting. That happened also in terms of just you know, Google's like censorship and all kinds of things like that, that also started happening in terms of like what content was being displayed.

[00:11:39] Justin Crawmer: And that's not a topic that we probably need to go too deep into, but that was definitely also something that, that changed really uniquely is when people would search for certain things related to. You know, vaccine or things like that, that there was censorship. And there was, there was different types of ways that, that Google was handling certain search queries that is kind of unprecedented as well.

[00:11:59] Kelly Stanton: That's interesting. Well, and I was just thinking too, now you guys primarily focused here in the U.S. Or are you focusing around the world? 

[00:12:07] Justin Crawmer: Yeah, we have, we have global clients for sure. But for the absolute most part we're in the U.S., we do have, you know, client, we have some like, you know, therapist in the UK.

[00:12:16] Justin Crawmer: We have some international clients more in the b2B spaces that we're in, not necessarily as much on healthcare, although we do have a lot of, like, we do have one company who's a healthcare global healthcare staffing company. So we do have a, a good mix, I would say.

[00:12:29] Justin Crawmer: But overall it's we have a wide scope of clients here in the U.S. 

[00:12:33] Kelly Stanton: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cause , you know, I know from past life experience you know, that certain things can't be marketed directly to consumers in certain areas of the world. Right. And so you start getting into some of that you know, just was thinking about with, you know, talking about the links and all that kind of stuff and, and the shift, thanks to COVID for all of us to, you know, Google search everything.

[00:12:54] Kelly Stanton: Right. It just had me, I, I, I was curious. What was the impact of that sort of behavior in some of these countries where as a pharmaceutical company, for example, I'm not allowed to market directly to a customer. You know, how does that all play into it? 

[00:13:09] Justin Crawmer: Yeah. I mean, every industry's a little different and I'm sure Scott can add more to this, but I, I would say for example, I mean, going back to the cannabis space, that's another area that we have to only use certain strategies.

[00:13:20] Justin Crawmer: Like we cannot do any pay per click advertising at Google has specific. Types of categories, you can include like, cannabis CBD, a bunch of different supplement kind of, ingredients and things like that. You can't go after. So if that's your industry, you have to find organic strategy that will actually allow you to find relevance or for people to find you in Google for the types of search phrases that you're not actually allowed to like target.

[00:13:42] Justin Crawmer: Right. So , you have to come up with these ways and keeping it above board, doing it in a legit in, in like a, in a legit way where you're creating valuable content on certain topics, but you actually can't really put those, like the word cannabis on your web. Like, well, you can put cannabis, but you can't put like dispensary, but you want to, because most people will actually look when you look at the search volume in the cannabis space people don't call it The cannabis pharmacy, they call it a dispensary, like the numbers, white, like very clearly show that that's the phrase that you would wanna be relevant to, but you can't include that word on your website.

[00:14:14] Justin Crawmer: So you have to come up with these alternative strategies of how to get relevancy without actually implicating yourself at all. 

[00:14:21] Kelly Stanton: Interesting. Well, so what predictions do you have for the future of life science and healthcare market?

[00:14:27] Justin Crawmer: I'll let Scott take that one. 

[00:14:30] Scott Miscall: it's the B2B to versus B2C. I mean, they're both very different markets very distinct audiences. And they both differ in scale cost communication, marketing sales, and logistics. So, you know, you kind of have to treat both of them very differently. I think there's some really interesting things that are happening in the B2C with you know, especially with like social media what's happening on Instagram and TikTok.

[00:14:56] Scott Miscall: You know, a lot of brands are trying out those spaces. I think you know, bypassing you know, Google and the reliance on Google and, and Facebook to, to get sales. So I think that's very interesting, you know, the things that are coming out of there again, just organic is the easiest and inbound marketing you know, producing high quality content around what you are selling is always, I think the best strategy and the best strategy to start with. And that's why, I mean, there's still so much value in organic search marketing. And I would say you know, you know, just focusing on the benefits of what, the product that you are selling to the consumer. I, I think that and developing trust. And I would say that's also a pretty big factor now.

[00:15:44] Scott Miscall: And I think also again, COVID has kind of put a, a real magnifying glass on that, you know, conveying trust with your consumer is I think one of the biggest things going. 

[00:15:55] Justin Crawmer: And, and I would maybe add to that too, in terms of you know, some of the trends, I, I feel like I've noticed a lot of emphasis on like mental health and, you know, companies, for example, even offering mental health days, they're becoming more, you know, benefits around like the telemedicine side of things through, through companies and just people being aware more of just wellness in general.

[00:16:16] Justin Crawmer: I think the pandemic has really brought that to light as well. And I think that's just continuing to shape the, the future of things. I think that you know, one thing that Scott mentioned TikTok for example is actually now the number one of traffic website on the internet that recently surpassed Google.

[00:16:31] Justin Crawmer: And Google's, haven't held that down for a long time, , over 10 years as a number one website, and now TikTok has surpassed them in overall visitation. So that's a really clear trend that, that people are going to TikTok for reasons why. You know, not just for entertainment value anymore, you know, it's a lot of times it's about learning something new or, you know, being inspired.

[00:16:52] Justin Crawmer: And those are the kind of the, the types of content that you wanna create for those types of channels is if it's not educating, inspiring or entertaining, you really shouldn't post it. That's a really good rule for you to, to kind of live by if you are gonna start to venture into something like a tiktok or, or any of that, like what we call, push marketing strategy.

[00:17:09] Justin Crawmer: We, you know, we talk a lot about push marketing versus pull marketing, push marketing is where you're actually pushing a message to an audience that you think is gonna be interested in what you offer. You know, that's gonna be things like email marketing maybe pushing some social media or. Video ads or something along those lines where you're, you know, targeting an audience and trying to sell them something you think they're relevant to pull marketing for, for example, is, is like search where they are looking for what you offer and you're just attracting them to you or being found by them.

[00:17:35] Justin Crawmer: So, you know, I, I really still feel like you wanna use both of them, but if you had to kind of choose which one's gonna be more relevant and, and more likely to purchase from you, and really where I would focus my efforts, I always preferring a pull marketing strategy. 

[00:17:50] Kelly Stanton: Yeah, it's interesting to think about TikTok as as like to me that feels like a place to go to escape the real world, you know, go be entertained. But you know, i was just having this conversation with my marketing team here yesterday. Cuz we were talking about, you know, a Facebook ad campaign and I was like, I don't wanna see work while I'm on Facebook.

[00:18:09] Justin Crawmer: Again, that's a push marketing strategy. And one thing that we really look at closely is what we call, well, not what we call, what Google calls a channel report.

[00:18:15] Justin Crawmer: And the channel report actually will break down all the different sources of traffic you get on your website. Right? So whether it's social email paid search, organic search, referral traffic, direct traffic, all of these different channels will have their. Like, the way that they engage with the website will be different.

[00:18:32] Justin Crawmer: So when you look at social media, as a, as a channel, generally, it's gonna have really low engagement metrics and really low conversion metrics. The things that you're really looking for in terms of like real value of the traffic. I mean, yeah. You get a lot of impression. Like they see you a lot that you may get a lot of traffic, but once they land on your website, classically, what happens with social media traffic is it's gonna have a really high bounce rate, meaning a single page visit, meaning they land on web one page and bounce. Or they're gonna have a really, and, or they're gonna have really low time on site, low pages per session, meaning they only click on one or two pages before they leave. And the conversion rates. Pretty atrocious with it. Usually when you look at the site average for conversion. And conversion, just to clarify as like, if somebody does what you're wanting them to do, whether they call you email you contact form you or buy something.

[00:19:18] Justin Crawmer: Those are conversions generally. The conversion metrics are nowhere near as good on social media. As you, if you compare it to something like, you know, SEO, for example, cause SEO is people looking for what you offer, they land on your site. They're super interested. They come into the page that Lila looking for, and you're not trying to sell them anything.

[00:19:35] Justin Crawmer: They're actually looking for what you offer. So you're just educating them and hopefully, you know, kind of getting enough trust where they wanna reach out to you. So yeah, I would say that the, the different channels definitely come with different you know, kind of, traffic, like qualities, I guess.

[00:19:48] Justin Crawmer: So, it's really good to build, to reach an audience that, that, you know, wasn't really thinking about you, you can, we can reach a lot of people that way, but understand the numbers are gonna be really different as, as, as when you look at percentages of engagement and things like that as attract when you're attracting people to you.

[00:20:05] Kelly Stanton: Gotcha. Yeah. And keeping that in perspective I suppose, is, is, is important because. If you could go back and tell yourself something at the start of your career, what would that be? Justin 

[00:20:16] Justin Crawmer: I would say specialize. I mean, that's that, I think that we've gone kind of the full gamut of, we were really, really specialized in SEO and then kind of grew naturally into of course content and development.

[00:20:28] Justin Crawmer: And, and again, naturally with paper click, because they all go really. Together. But then we started having a lot of requests for all different types of marketing services. And we were, I mean, we're good. I mean, we're savvy technical marketers, but we, we don't want to try to be everything to everybody. We know what we're extremely good at.

[00:20:44] Justin Crawmer: And we actually partner with a lot of other agencies to do fulfillment with SEO. And I think that that kind of going down the path of exploring kind of everything is something that I. Is just specializing in, in what, what I do really well, I think has been something that I've kinda learned to lean into.

[00:21:00] Justin Crawmer: So that's one thing I would tell myself. 

[00:21:02] Kelly Stanton: Nice Scott, same question. 

[00:21:05] Scott Miscall: Yeah. I would say exactly the same thing. Double down on what you're good at. You know, when you start your career, you're kind of running around like a headless chicken for a couple of years and you know, you really need to.

[00:21:17] Scott Miscall: your stuff together and, and double down on what you're good at and just specialize. Specializing is probably the most important thing. 

[00:21:25] Justin Crawmer: And we even pick certain industries, you know, like we, we know we're good in certain industries for like, for example, healthcare is our number one industry.

[00:21:31] Justin Crawmer: Cause we just know it really well. We both have our own personal interest in it as well. That's another thing too. I would, for sure. I would add to that if you're asking for two answers but I would say also follow what you follow, what really resonates with you, like what you really love and where your passions are, and also, and build your work around that.

[00:21:49] Justin Crawmer: You know, it's, it's important that now for me and Scott, both, we have our own very unique interest in the health and wellness space. I'm a sound practitioner and a musician I'm really obsessed with like meditation and mindfulness and yoga and all those kind of things. And so that for me is a very strong personal interest.

[00:22:03] Justin Crawmer: So naturally I love helping clients be found for that. And also patients who are looking for resources and looking for answers for, you know, PTSD, depression, all these different you know, elements that are, that are affecting communities and, it's just our the world in general helping people find solutions and create content around it and helping provide value for people who are looking for resources.

[00:22:24] Justin Crawmer: To me, that's a personal passion and it's really nice cuz then I can work with clients who are doing their work with that and I can help support them. 

[00:22:33] Kelly Stanton: Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. It's a, it's so important to feel like you're making a difference 

[00:22:38] Justin Crawmer: yeah, definitely. Yeah. 

[00:22:40] Kelly Stanton: Well, where can people go to learn more follow along and connect with you guys?

[00:22:43] Justin Crawmer: Yeah, so I would say probably the best place to start is our website, webtek.co. WEBTEK dot co you can also find us on Instagram. You can find us on Facebook and LinkedIn and all those, all the socials, but you can, they're all linked in through the footer of webtek.co and that's a really short address for you to remember

[00:23:01] Justin Crawmer: So I would say start there. You could always Google mine or Scott's name and we can provide some links for you as well. We have a lot of, you know, client testimonials and things like that that I think would be helpful for people to kind of listen to what it's like to work with us from real clients. And we'd happy to jump on a call.

[00:23:16] Justin Crawmer: One thing that we do with our clients maybe before we get started is we do a nice job of kind of doing a discovery and research and background that even if we just give you that information, I think would be really valuable for you. So feel free to reach out to us. We always love support.

[00:23:30] Kelly Stanton: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today, Justin Scott, it's been a real pleasure chatting with you guys and yeah, we'll look forward to seeing more from you in the marketing space. 

[00:23:40] Justin Crawmer: Cool. Well, thanks. Thank you so much.