AI in Healthcare Marketing: How Doctors Can Keep Patient Trust

Opening and AI Trust in Doctor Marketing 0:00

The answer is to, first of all, remember what is your why. AI can augment, but not replace. And when you try to completely replace, that's when the trust starts to erode and you can't do that. People trust you because of your, why as a doctor. More patients, more authority, and more freedom. I'm Brett Gregory, founder of Doctor Talks, where we're democratizing the creator economy for doctors. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Doctor Talks, I'm your host, Brett Greger. I am excited to have another episode of our DoctorTalks where we are helping doctors democratize the creator economy.

And I have with us Suzanne, who is a partner of Enrich Creative. We're really excited have you. we've got a great conversation today about how patients, can patients really tell whether messages are written by AI. So Suzanne welcome to the program. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. My name is Suzanne Duval de Adrien and I am a partner at Enrich Creative. We have been working for a marketing, branding and strategy firm and we work with primarily holistic health, food and community focused practitioners and organizations, helping them to really amplify their message and increase their impact.

This includes a lot of practitioners in the holistic health, as I mentioned, plant-based nutrition, lifestyle medicine, functional medicine.

Suzanne Duval de Adrien and Enrich Creative 1:28

All of those types of specialties, but working with them to create websites, brands, marketing messages that connect patient educational materials and program development. And one of our mutual clients that we both know is the Plantrition Project. And can you just tell us a little bit about that? Because I was so impressed when I saw that and you had a hand in creating their incredible marketing. Sure, sure. So we have been working actually with the plantrition project for upwards of 10 years now.

They're a longstanding partner and good friend of ours, our team. We have worked with them since the very beginning. They focus on helping to educate, equip, and empower healthcare practitioners with the important information about the power of nutrition. So again, we've been working with them since the very beginning, helping to create their conferences, their quick start guides, various pieces that they've put out. And now this year they're doing something exceptionally exciting is switching over to the power of the plate as their conference, which takes the nutrition conversation and also connects it with global sustainability and the environment and bigger picture of holistic health, not only for people, but for the planet.

And one of the founders and leaders of that is Dr. Scott Stoll that I've had the pleasure of meeting with. And I'm going to attend this conference, but you've been helping them grow over the last 10 years and they have hundreds of in-person attendees at the conference which is no easy task. Can you just talk a little bit about how you were able to accomplish that? Sure. Well, I mean, it's been a journey from creating websites and then, you know, obviously things to amplify the awareness of the event itself and help connect with the people that are really passionate about this topic.

So social media, all kinds of advertisements, place pieces, of all these good things. So, taking all of the different puzzle pieces of marketing, but really honing in the message to attract the right patients,

Plantrition Project and the Power of the Plate 3:34

clients, and customers and putting it together in a cohesive strategy. That's part of what you do. Well, today we're going to be talking about all things AI that's happening right now and how that is really affecting branding and marketing and your practice and consumer trust. And we talked about how patients can tell. So this is a podcast about building genuine connection in the age of AI-driven marketing. Let's talk about that. Can patients really tell when a message is written by AI? I'd love to say that all the time, yes, they can, but the truth of the matter is sometimes they There are some definite hallmarks that jump out with a lot of the AI content, but in general, it's.

it's kind of a tricky balance. There was an article in the New York Times here just a short bit ago that actually had a quiz for readers to take. Can you tell if this is AI or if it is human generated? And it was about split. So that was kind an interesting outcome on that. And so what happens when a patient can tell that some marketing message or any messages written by AI, what what happened when that happens? Well, it's, interesting because there's almost a psychological mind shift, right? So everything that's based on everything, that surrounding health, It involves a very deep level of trust.

Yes. And so we rely on the expertise of the practitioner because they've gone to school for this. They've trained through this, they got the end of field experience. When that gets taken out of the picture and you have essentially a robot or program or an algorithm that's creating content and somebody is putting their name on top of it. It completely eradicates what their expertise is and the real reasons why they shine and how they help their patients. I couldn't agree more. And if trust is medicine, is AI helping or hurting us?

My take is that right now it's hurting more than it helping.

How AI Affects Patient Trust 5:56

And that comes for me because of the rush to adopt. Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. We're at that stage where everybody's thinking, this is the greatest time saver that's ever been invented. Let's go ahead and use this. let's bring this into our practice. So it is literally taking that trust and just kind of shelving it there for a minute. And what do you tell your clients to do? So the doctors who everybody's being bombarded by, oh, you have to use AI now in your marketing, in you're messaging, your customer service.

What do tell them, what you do. There are ways to us it. Strategically, very strategically, AI should never be your full stop solution for creating language, creating marketing materials, any of those types of things, because they do represent something that's so core, which is your why, your personal passion for why you're doing this in the first place. You can't take that and ask again a computer program or algorithm to create that, and pretend that they're you and get that across successfully.

That connection is missed. They're never going to be able to speak in the same language that you are. because AI's primary role is to funnel everything and put it into a single stream. So it removes that individuality and all things, but used as a secondary or an augment to whatever that language is, whatever strategy is. Maybe if it's used to pull some resources, to put some research together. Maybe as a review, you know, is this succinct enough? Is this, does this make sense with the question that I was trying to answer?

Those types of things. That could actually be helpful because let's face it, not all practitioners are writers by nature. True. So going back to if trust is medicine, is AI helping or hurting the dose? The answer is to, first of all, remember what is your why. AI can augment but not replace. And when you try to completely replace, that's when the trust starts to erode and you can't do that. People trust you because of your, why as a doctor. So yeah, I really like that I was going to say a bit of an extreme example is recently I looking through some practitioner emails and websites and with the rise of some of these larger platforms that are AI based.

Again, to that point of them creating a funnel, these two practitioners had exactly the same language on their emails that landed in my inbox. And then I went to their website and it followed the exact same cadence. So that's a bit of an extreme example, but it did happen about a week ago, so it's possible. AI churned out a template. Yes. Are we teaching AI to sound human or are we training humans to sounds like AI?

Using AI as an Augment, Not a Replacement 9:13

That's a bit of an interesting question because I think the original intent was to train AI to sound human. But I do feel like AI has taken the lead at least momentarily and is training us. And that's mainly because we just by human nature are competitive. Sure. And so AI comes along and they've got this certain level of what they're putting out there. Well, we're going to try and keep up with that. So we'll try to match what AI is doing because we are perceiving that as kind of a better standard.

I think the tables have turned at least momentarily. Yeah. Has the obsession with efficiency made healthcare marketing less empathetic, would you say? I would say so for sure, because you've got a lot of these platforms and not just AI oriented platforms, but platforms like Kajabi, like Teachable, some of the ones that people are using to promote their programs and really different services that they're offering that are now, they've woven the AI into it, But then they are also pushing people to do more with less.

And now you've got a rise of sales funnels that started to erode into healthcare marketing, where practitioners are, and don't get me wrong, everybody needs to learn to earn an income, but they're now creating little things that are being sold on the website, which is actually distracting from the original intent of what they went to school for and how they are helping their patients. Right. Yeah. Amazing. Would you trust a doctor's brand if you knew their content was machine-made? Again, going back to if it's a hundred percent machine made, no, my personal take is no I would not.

If I know that a practitioner used AI as a supplement, then I'm more willing to, because I understand that people are not perfect, right? Everybody needs a little hand sometimes. And again, I'd rather my doctor be an expert in healthcare versus creative writing. That's why people like us do what we do. Exactly. So let's talk about how can physicians maintain authenticity while still using AI for content creation and outreach. I think that there's a couple of things that they can make sure that their including and there are things AI can't possibly know.

It circles back again to why is the practitioner doing this in the first place. Many of the individual practitioners that we work with are very mission based. they're very driven by their personal story and there's again no way that AI is going to come in and know what that story is. So that needs to be the core of the message that they are putting out. They need to answer a couple key questions about why would a patient want to choose them over another practitioner. You know, what are the most important points that the doctor wants to get across to their patients?

What do they want them to walk out of the appointment or the engagement with? And then how does that information that's being shared really relate and tie back to your overall goal as a patient care provider? So make sure to remember what is your why, mission-based, AI can augment but not replace, make to share your personal story.

Authenticity, Audience, and Storytelling 12:50

So what elements of like tone, language, or storytelling make patients feel like they are hearing a genuine voice? It comes down to actually patient care providers, practitioners need to take a step back and define who it is that they're trying to reach. They need to be intimately aware with, are you trying to reach a family? Are you tying to somebody that's in their mid-twenties, somebody in the sixties? And what are the things that are important to them? you know, what in their daily life, because again, everything is so varied based on where you live, based your economic circumstances, base on your general lifestyle.

So who are you trying to connect with and then put yourself in there shoes and that's who you need to speak to in a way using language that they can actually personally identify with. That's the root of everything, is that connection. Do you have any specific examples you might be able to share off the top of your head of clients and customers who you've been able... It sounded like you were talking about defining your customer avatar, which is what we would say in marketing speak, and you're really just defining what are your patient's pain points.

Do have specific example you could share? Yeah, there is actually one practitioner that I can think of off the top of my head. She's based in the South Carolina area and it's traditionally a less affluent area of the country that has unique health challenges, increased rates of heart disease, you know, all kinds of lifestyle oriented issues, but she wanted to connect with these people specifically around their blood pressure. And so she put herself in their shoes and the one place that they all were not afraid to go to, they were exactly excited about going to a doctor's office, but they weren't fearful of going the local barber shop.

And so what she did was she created, we worked with her to create a blood pressure log card so that when they went into the barbershop, they could easily take their blood, pressure, keep a log of it, and then also get some materials on maybe some recipes or things like this. And then the next time they go into their doctor's office, They've already got that blood-pressure log that they can show and it takes some of the pressure off. Amazing. For us, that was a great example of really thinking about.

That's not something you could do with AI. No. Yeah. Not even close. But that's amazing. And can you just talk a little bit about what was the process that led to that? Again, it was a lot of conversation about this is the area that I'm in. Conversation with patients or? With the practitioner herself. Okay. The practitioner. Really spending some time thinking about the neighborhood and the areas that she's in, thinking the daily habits of the people that live in that area. Again that is not necessarily fed into AI.

Yeah. You can make generalities, but the specific nuances. And then really a creative brainstorm, which the creative brain storm part of it, that is where AI could work. AI does great with that, but you have to feed it the right information, such as daily habits of patience. Exactly. Yeah. But so then the beauty of AI is that it can then cross-reference news stories, success stories. All of these bits and pieces. bring them together and say here's a couple of things you might be able to consider and then refine that and Then use that with our design skills be to translate that into something that they could stick into their pocket and be allowed and just Yeah, well that sounds like, you know, an easy kind of a straightforward use of AI that could be really successful.

What about where there's a, where's the ethical line between automation and manipulation and patient communication? I think it again comes back to things that are 100% AI driven and the practitioner's voice is removed. My personal take is that to me would be slightly unethical because you're hearing, you know, a very automated response versus what that practitioner actually

Practical Examples and Ethical Boundaries 17:28

can bring to the table or how they can serve and help their clients, their patients to be in better health. So I think that that's really where it's, if you turn everything over, I that where the problems begin. Let's talk about transparency and marketing. So what role does transparency play in marketing and should patients know when AI helps craft a message? I, think, that,that's a bit of a gray area that we're still working through to be transparent, transparency on transparent. Yeah. But I think that, you know, if you start to, or if there's plagiarism, which is kind of what I aligned with something that's a hundred percent AI driven and passed out under somebody else's name.

Um, I, that really does completely take it off the table. Uh, but I don't, and I that should be disclosed. because you've got a lot of, for example, the social media platforms that are now starting to pull in things where they want AI to be disclosed. There needs to a specific badge. Some of the platforms like LinkedIn will actually react to content that they believe is AI generated. Yeah. TikTok, Instagram, all of them are starting really downgrade anything that is they are detecting as AI created.

So I think that anything that's 100% from AI or maybe upwards of 75% is probably something that needs to be disclosed. But again, if you're using it for your brainstorming or you are using to maybe refine your language on a concept that you've already created, I'd think you might be okay because that base thought is yours. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So how do you coach physicians to balance AI assistance with real human empathy and presence? A lot of it is automate what makes sense. For example, some of the daily practice tasks can be automated and that makes absolute sense to do that.

Whether it's schedule appointments or sharing some information that they themselves have created, which I know echoes something that you all have just been putting out there into the stratosphere. But I think that using AI for that makes sense. Organizing your information on a website, kind of getting things into different buckets, that's another great use of it. the brainstorming and collecting research and things like that. But essentially, if we work with a practitioner who wants to integrate AI, we'll work them to find the opportunities where it does not remove that voice.

That voice stays consistent and we're still leading. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you have any other examples of your clients that you've been able, you had success with integrating AI into some of their marketing? We actually, there are a number of AI-based softwares that we are starting to support, helping them get out into the mainstream. Can you talk about some specifics? Well, it's more about, for example, this is slightly out of the realm, but for, example there, are AI almost, I don't want to say chatbots, they're automating the appointment setting process.

Is there a particular software that you're talking about right now? Not one that's commercially available. Not the one out there yet. So there are some things that are still in development. But as far as practitioners themselves, know, again, integrating some chat bots into their integrating the scheduling into there, and then integrating aspects of the EMRs into the websites, where maybe as soon as they go ahead and they sign up for an appointment, they receive one set of forms that needs to be completed and then passed back to give the practitioner the information.

It's a simple level where we're at right now with automating some of that process to take the workload off the practitioners. Because especially as a solopreneur, there's only so much they can do. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen some of the AI marketing tools like outbound email kind of marketing, tools, cold out bound email, like instantly.ai and Apollo.AI are ones that I'm seeing a lot of people using, not as much in the healthcare space. I am seeing that more in kind the wellness, health and wellness space, but there's still some, you know, those are examples of tools.

The AI tools that are becoming more and more popular. Yeah. And a lot of the CRMs, which are pretty much on the same par as an EHR and EMR, are integrating a little more AI tools as well.

Transparency, Automation, and AI Tools 22:48

So there's a lotta practitioners that are starting to use them, but then again, you start to run into that challenge of if you're sending out a cold email and it's written by AI, is that necessarily authentic? Right. Definitely. Are doctors who don't already use AI? Are they already falling behind, or is it just a myth? I don't know that they're falling behind. I think that there's an opportunity to explore what level of AI might work with their practice or with goals, but that's going to be very specific to the individual and to their practices.

It's worth a conversation to learn about what they are trying to achieve. Yeah. Now is AI, do you think AI is going to replace health influencers or quietly become them? Ooh, that's a good question. I don't think that AI at least I have my fingers crossed that I will never become a health influencer because there are so many different things being put into it and everybody's telling it the same thing. or the different platforms, the same thing. This is the be all end all solution. And that's very much on par with what's happening in general in our society where we have so many people competing and saying, this is a path to help.

That's the path. I think that AI. My suspicion based on what I know is that AI will reach a level and then it will settle into an augmented role where it's supporting as opposed to very safely. So at Doctor Talks, I've spent the last two years at a quarter million dollars building an AI tool that specifically amplifies our doctor's voices. the opposite of what we're seeing the large healthcare systems do in AI where it's like, just ask Google, where what were trying to do is to amplify the doctor's voices by taking all of the content from their podcasts, from there.

interviews that they've done from their website and allowing people, their patients that come to the website, ask them anything, and it saves them time and amplifies their voice and can help them set new patient interviews and that kind of thing. So we're trying to use AI in place to create a lot of leverage for the doctors. And that's where I hope to see AI going in that direction. Tell us, what are your clients' greatest challenges that you're solving for them right now? I think the greatest challenge, the most common greatest, challenge is again, being heard in all of this noise.

I, think that again there are so many voices saying this is the way to go or, you know, this shifting recommendations. It's kind of a challenge. There's a lot of confusion and I believe practitioners are trying to overcome that. I think they're trying to remind people in the world that we live in today, which is so fast paced and everybody trying just to get to the next step, that, we need to slow it down and we to return to some of the basics. We need be mindful of lifestyle and all those things that were taught as children.

to, you know, like I said, overcoming the noise, teaching patients to slow down and actually the conversion between this is what I'm telling you and this what you're doing in your daily life. What are you, what does the future look like at Enrich Creative in helping your clients solve their greatest problem?

Future of Healthcare Marketing and Closing 26:48

I think that it is actually very, very bright for us specifically. We have been known as Enrich, focused on this space since 2012. So we're coming up on 15 years of doing this. Congratulations. And we work specifically with people in the health space, people, in nutrition, food ingredient space and the community focused. I think for us, most exciting thing is aligned with where Plantrition Project is taking their conferences. Everything is converging because that is at the heart. Those three elements are at heart of health for everyone, for everything.

Yeah. I'm seeing the future look a lot more like getting people offline and whether that's into a conference, into the office, in to a retreat. where they're having a chance to have that face time and a larger amount of face-time, not your 15 minutes with your doctor, but that's what our doctors certainly want is to be able to spend the time to get to know the patients and that is what I'm seeing happening in the future. Well, thank you so much for that. Is there anything, where for any of our doctor's who are listening who want to give a hold of you, what's the best way that they can do that?

Uh, they can visit our website or I believe that LinkedIn is probably, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn because it's that instant connection, right? You're able to just start a chat and just started talking and go from there. We'll put those links to your website into LinkedIn in the description. So Suzanne, thank you so much for coming on. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share with our doctors today. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you at the Power of the Plate next month.

Looking forward