Healthcare Privacy Laws in Digital Media | Kara Rozek

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Kara Rozek, VP of Media at SPM Marketing. Kara leads SPM's in-house integrated media department. Her team of experts bring an intent-based and vehicle-agnostic approach to all initiatives. In her past life, Kara worked on large national consumer brands like Walgreens, Clorox, and Brooks Running. Today she is focused on the healthcare space, helping many local hospitals and health systems tackle the unique marketing and media challenges that they are facing. Kara, thanks for joining me today on Simpli.fi TV. Kara Rozek: Thanks for having me. David McBee: Absolutely. So healthcare, that's your expertise, and I do want to get into that specifically, but for our viewers who aren't necessarily interested in healthcare, can you briefly talk about the challenges and benefits of specializing in a single industry? Kara Rozek: Sure. So as you kind of outlined in my intro, thanks for that, I've worked in a lot of different industries and there's a lot of benefit to really being specialized within one. So within healthcare, we've been able, I spent my last five years here, really been able to really deep dive into the challenges and kind of the benefits that they're seeing. And there's some similarities across our clients. They all went through COVID together. They all have staffing issues and nursing shortages that are impacting the business. There's a big concern with where we are and health and people doing preventative care and missing those appointments and not scheduling them and becoming a larger issue health-wise. So there's a lot of similarities in that sense across the board, which really gives us a good expertise to really focus in and help our clients with those challenges. But there's also a lot of things that are unique, and that's where it kind of becomes fun. That's a little bit more of the challenge to make sure that, there's no way you could do a rinse and repeat because you have to have a different approach to solve these issues. Every market is different. Every client, while maybe similar, has a unique challenge on top of those kind of commonalities. And then you also have different audiences you're trying to reach. So it's really important to make sure that we have a lot of research at our fingertips. We do a lot of syndicated sources that I know a lot of agencies also have access to. But we also do boots on the ground interviews, even with staff to make sure that we're addressing the issues that they have. And looking at everything from target, competitive, what's unique in the market at that time. Politicals is a big issue that we sometimes encounter. And really customizing what our approach is, both from a media and creative standpoint, so that we are able to address our clients, and we don't get into that kind of issue of, well, you're in one industry, how can it be different? It's always different. Commonalities, but always different. David McBee: It sounds like it's really about their USP. You've got to find out what makes them special. Kara Rozek: Yes, that's exactly right. And everybody has something that makes them special. David McBee: All right. So what about media? What are some of the best digital tactics that you're using for healthcare? Kara Rozek: Sure. So in the last few years, I definitely have seen a lot of change in healthcare in terms of their comfortability with digital, especially in, I would say, probably the last five years. And one of the things that might be funny for some people to hear, but is table stakes and we want to encourage all healthcare providers to use, is really search. I mean, that's a foundational tool to make sure people who are actively needing a solution are able to find them. And it's something that we find that not all hospitals and health systems and health providers are really comfortable with or are using. So definitely a lot of opportunity there and a lot of success we've seen for our clients. But even beyond that, we've seen and we've tested all the channels and they all work for different reasons, again, what our goals are, who we're trying to reach. We've seen a lot of success with programmatic and working with partners like Simpli.fi because we are able to really identify a unique audience, maybe what they're maybe interested in from a healthcare standpoint, and make sure there's really a great message relevancy for them. So Connected TV has been really successful too, also in that same vein. Everything kind of has its place and role. But if there's one that people should make sure that their clients have or that they're using, that's definitely search. David McBee: So you mentioned programmatic. Of course, I'm interested in that, and I know that that's based on targeting and using data, but healthcare comes with specific privacy laws. So how do you deal with that? Kara Rozek: Yes, we definitely have a lot of regulations on our side and we want to make sure that we're following those regulations both for our clients, but even as consumers, we want to make sure our data is being used properly. And so we make sure that when we're looking at specific service lines and messages, the targeting that we're using is not identifiable to a specific person. We do work really closely with our partners. Again, Simpli.fi has been great to help us really ensure that the data we're ingesting in to use for targeting is not pinpointing or insinuating that somebody has a condition. So that's extremely important. But even beyond the programmatic space, I think the last 18 to 24 months has really highlighted some of the challenges the industry has and even uncovered some areas that we weren't really aware of. So Facebook has come to light with their issues around privacy and selling data and what's they're collecting, and that did include some healthcare data. So that has definitely been an eyeopening experience. And on top of that, you have Google. Google is not HIPAA-compliant, and their Google Analytics, which a lot of our clients and the industry, all industries, really, use as a base for analytics, is not HIPAA-compliant and they won't agree to be HIPAA-compliant. So it's looking for alternate solutions that are and are willing to take that risk and sign a BAA. So that's something that we're helping our clients kind of navigate. And I know just as an industry as a whole, they're all working collaboratively together to really tackle. David McBee: Well, I think you have definitely established yourself as the healthcare marketing specialist, so thank you for that. What is the one piece of advice you would give to anyone who's doing marketing for healthcare? Kara Rozek: Sure. I mean, I think any industry, whether it's healthcare or anything, the exciting part about being in media and marketing is that it's always changing, right? And it's never the same day to day, so you have to really be on top of it. And so reading industry newsletters, staying on top of what's happening in the news, it all impacts what we do, whether it's healthcare or consumer goods or running shoes, we all have to be aware and really stay on top of that. So got to be my biggest piece of advice. David McBee: Awesome. That's perfect. Well, thank you very much for being my guest today. I appreciate you. Kara Rozek: Well, thanks so much for having me. David McBee: And thank you, guys, for watching Simpli.fi TV as sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll catch you next time.