Marketing Rounds—a Podcast by Freshpaint

Healthcare marketing teams are under pressure to do more with flat budgets, rising acquisition costs, and growing scrutiny around privacy. Search is getting more expensive. Proving impact is getting harder. And the playbooks that work everywhere else don’t always translate to healthcare.

Marketing Rounds is a podcast series hosted by Freshpaint CMO Ray Mina that explores how experienced healthcare marketers navigate those constraints—and still deliver results.

Across each episode, Ray sits down with operators who’ve moved beyond last-click thinking, built multi-channel strategies, earned executive buy-in, and figured out how to measure what actually matters. The question driving every conversation is simple: Can healthcare marketers achieve growth, measurement, and compliance all at once?

The answer, consistently, is yes—but not the way most teams expect.

Why Marketing Rounds Exists

Healthcare marketers aren’t short on tactics. They’re short on frameworks they can defend—internally and externally.

Marketing Rounds exists to surface real-world thinking from people who’ve already faced the trade-offs, made the mistakes, and earned the trust to change how their organizations grow.

If you’re trying to move beyond Google dependence, prove impact across channels, and do it all without putting compliance at risk, these conversations are for you.

Marketing Rounds Episodes

Marketing Rounds is published weekly. New episodes explore how healthcare marketing leaders navigate growth, measurement, and compliance—one decision at a time.

Start with the latest episode or jump into any conversation below. Each episode stands on its own, but together they map what it actually takes to move beyond Google-dependent strategies in healthcare.

Then subscribe to get notified when each episode is published—and to keep pace as the series builds toward a complete picture of modern healthcare marketing.

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Episode 1: From Ad Impressions to Lifetime Care: Measuring What Really Matters with Jeremy Rogers

Optimizing for the first appointment is easy. Optimizing for lifetime care is not. In this episode, Jeremy Rogers argues that healthcare marketing breaks down when teams treat acquisition as the goal instead of the starting point. Drawing on his work at Indiana University Health, Jeremy reframes growth around share of care—how often patients stay, return, and move through the system over time—and explains why last-click metrics and single-funnel thinking can actively push organizations in the wrong direction.

The conversation explores why healthcare demand shows up in bursts, how capacity constraints change what “good growth” actually means, and why first-party data is the only way to connect marketing activity to real outcomes like retention, service-line expansion, and long-term health impact. It’s a pragmatic playbook for leaders who know Google still matters—but also know that sustainable growth comes from building patient relationships that extend far beyond the first visit.

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Episode 2: The Hidden Cost of Last-Click Thinking with Blair Primis and Brian Gould

Last-click attribution makes healthcare marketing look efficient—until you follow the patient past the click. In multi-location networks, Blair Primis and Brian Gould argue that most “performance problems” aren’t media problems at all; they’re operational leaks hidden by dashboards optimized for clicks instead of attended visits.

Drawing from orthopedics and urgent care, this episode breaks down the real healthcare funnel—booked → attended → experienced → returned—and shows how missed calls, front-desk variability, and arrival experience quietly destroy ROI while search and PMax take the credit. Blair and Brian reveal how they reoriented measurement around attended appointments, used brand to stabilize CAC even in high-intent auctions, and learned when to slow down marketing because operations couldn’t keep up. It’s a hard reset for teams still optimizing last click—and a practical framework for leaders who want performance marketing that actually holds up in the business.

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Episode 3: How to Grow Multi-Location Care on a Flat Budget with Allison Horn

Capturing intent on Google is easy. Creating demand before the search moment is not. In this episode, Allison Horn argues that healthcare marketers who put 85-90% of their budget into Google Ads aren't building growth strategies—they're competing for scraps in an increasingly expensive pool of high-intent searches. Drawing on 19 years in healthcare marketing and her work building infrastructure for 120 dental practices at Imagen Dental Partners, Allison reframes performance around real business outcomes—show rates, case acceptance, production value—and explains why form fills and last-click metrics leave money on the table.

The conversation explores why demand creation strategies like community partnerships, strategic direct mail, and local sponsorships outperform national campaigns when paired with proper measurement, how Allison deployed direct mail in rural Minnesota that drove 106% new patient growth (and had to pause because practices couldn't handle more demand), and why multi-location healthcare requires local trust built through grassroots presence—not corporate brand plays. It's a practical framework for marketers who know Google still matters but understand that sustainable growth comes from building preference before consumers even start searching.

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Episode 4: How the Digital Front Door Drives Healthcare Growth with Adrienne Woods

Tracking website engagement is easy. Proving marketing drives patient revenue is not. In this episode, Adrienne Woods argues that healthcare marketers who optimize for time on page, bounce rate, and form fills aren't building growth strategies—they're celebrating proxy metrics that have zero correlation with the outcomes that matter. Drawing on her work as VP of Digital Strategy at Hackensack Meridian Health (a 17-hospital system), Adrienne reframes the digital front door as performance infrastructure—not a UX project—and explains why the gap between digital engagement and attended appointments is where most healthcare marketing optimization dies.

The conversation explores why measuring success means tracking "the right person to the right physician at the right time" (not impressions or clicks), how Adrienne's team reframed contact center calls as "leads we paid money for" to change operational partnerships, why they'll turn off campaigns entirely rather than market physicians without scheduling capacity, and how full-funnel visibility from paid ad through EMR-confirmed arrival transforms marketing from cost center to measurable growth engine. It's a practical framework for marketers building the Four A's (Acquire, Activate, Access, Adoption) who know digital engagement still matters but understand that sustainable growth comes from connecting marketing spend to patient encounters—not website sessions.

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Episode 5: How Channel Myopia Is Undermining Payer Marketing with Jeric Griffin

Paid search dashboards are lying to healthcare marketers—and most don’t realize it until growth stalls. Drawing on his work leading paid media at Blue Cross of North Carolina, Jeric Griffin dissects why 80% of the “performance data” marketers optimize against is structurally flawed, how channel‑by‑channel experiments doom CTV, display, and social to look ineffective, and why paid search should be treated as a demand capture engine—not the hero of your growth story.

The conversation walks through a practical framework for multi‑channel orchestration (awareness → consideration → conversion) and shows how small, 5–10% pilots with multi‑touch attribution can reframe CTV and upper‑funnel campaigns from “nice‑to‑have” to financially defensible.

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Episode 6: Why Search-First Payer Marketing Is Hitting a Ceiling with Craig Blake and Aaron Mauck

Payer marketing has spent two years doubling down on a playbook that was working for the wrong reasons. In this episode, Craig Blake (Agency Growth, Amsive Health) and Aaron Mauck (Chief Research Officer, Oboe Healthcare Insights) make the case that the search-volume spike payer marketers rode through the last two AEP cycles was driven by market disruption—plan terminations, benefit changes, displaced members with urgent questions—not sustainable demand expansion.

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Episode 7: Multi-Channel Marketing That Finance Actually Believes In with Scott Orstad

Healthcare providers didn’t hit a search strategy wall—they hit the limits of intent itself. In this episode, Scott Orstad (VP of Marketing, Catholic Health) breaks down how his team built a multi‑channel program finance actually believes in by treating Google as just one piece of the mix: sequencing infrastructure before spend, tiering channel launches by market, and taking credit only for what they can prove so brand and performance can grow together on flat budgets.

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Episode 8: Why Multi-Channel Healthcare Marketing Fails (Even When Everyone Agrees) with Lauren Leone & Rich Briddock

Multi-channel strategy doesn't fail because healthcare marketers don't believe in it — it fails because the organizations running it lack the infrastructure to protect it when pressure hits. In this episode, Lauren Leone and Rich Briddock (Chief Growth Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, Cardinal Digital Marketing) draw on years of pushing clients beyond intent channels to diagnose the two failure modes they see most: teams that never meaningfully start, and teams that keep reverting. Their framework: measure upper-funnel campaigns on their own terms, audit whether your $200 CPA is hiding a $1,000 marginal cost, and build budget allocation commitments before the bad month arrives — not during it.

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Episode 9: Coming Wednesday March 18th!

Subscribe to get notified as soon as new episodes are available → YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

About Freshpaint

Marketing Rounds is presented by Freshpaint, the performance infrastructure healthcare marketers rely on to grow without sacrificing privacy.

As healthcare teams move beyond Google-dependent strategies, they need more than tactics—they need data they can trust. Freshpaint helps marketers safely connect marketing activity to the outcomes the business actually cares about, from booked appointments to attended visits, while meeting the strict privacy requirements healthcare demands.

By bringing performance and privacy together in one platform, Freshpaint gives teams the confidence to invest across channels, prove what’s working, and protect their strategy from compliance disruption.

Learn how Freshpaint helps healthcare marketers turn privacy into a performance advantage. Talk to an expert today.

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