Write for People, Win in AI
Write for People, Win in AI: Building Trust & Driving Patient Volume in the GPT Era
Patients don’t start with your homepage anymore, they start with GPT.
In this session, Jessica Walker and Lacey Reichwald share practical ways to write people-first content that builds trust with GPT—and converts real patients. Watch the recorded webinar below to learn how patient trust is built, and lost, in today’s AI-powered digital landscape.
Care Sherpa CEO Jessica Walker and Aha Media Group’s Lacey Reichwald unpack how patients are making decisions in 2025:
Not from your homepage, but from the content GPT, Reddit, and reviews surface for them.
This 60-minute session reveals how healthcare marketers and access teams can:
Show up in search with human-first content that builds trust
Convert interest into booked care—not just clicks
Avoid the most common content mistakes that cost patient volume
Our Presenters:
🎤 Jessica Walker
Founder & CEO, Care Sherpa
Healthcare growth strategist and patient access expert. Jessica helps healthcare organizations turn digital interest into real patient volume through trust-first strategy, operational alignment, and personalized engagement. Her focus: content that converts, and culture that keeps.
🎤 Lacey Reichwald
Director of Marketing, Aha Media Group
A healthcare content and SEO leader known for translating complex ideas into human-centered messaging that resonates. Lacey brings a grounded, thoughtful approach to AI adoption—helping teams scale content, build brand credibility, and maintain authentic voice without sacrificing clarity or connection.)
Webinar Transcript
Jessica Walker: Well, hello everyone, and welcome again to another one of our sessions related to all things GPT and GPT optimization. We are glad you're able to join us today and hear from another one of our friends.
Jessica Walker: Our friend Lacey from Ahava Medical Media Group is here to share a little bit more about content.
Jessica Walker: But before we jump in, just a quick reminder, we've been hosting these series since June. If you missed any of our prior sessions, they are hosted on our website. There's been a significant amount of interest going back to view some of our prior experts in sessions, feel free to join those and review those at any time. In addition, at the end of our cast today, I'll also share with you a QR code to request a copy of our toolkit.
Jessica Walker: Many of our great experts that we've had here far have been able to share best practices and resources and tools, those are available for you as well, and after every session, we'll upload new ones for you to use.
Jessica Walker: And lastly, before we jump in, I want to just let you all know, we are, due to popular demand, have been asked to host a series of educational resources for call handlers, specifically helping them understand how to manage the call for conversion. Our first in the series is going to be held in Nashville later this month, or excuse me, November, almost. find out more details about that on our website. In addition, Dallas is our next stop on this city center tour.
Jessica Walker: And we are finalizing details for our January and February session as well. If you'd like us to come to your town, and maybe visit you or some of your client partners, those of you listening, drop me a note. I'd be happy to consider that as we're scheduling these out for the next quarter of the year. Well, without further ado, I'd love to also welcome Lacey to join me today, and Lacey's prepared some great information.
Jessica Walker: Just a quick reminder, feel free to send in your questions via chat. We can answer them live while we're engaging, or at the end, we're going to do some Q&A as well, with Lacey sharing additional information for any of you that are interested to find out more. Lacey, I'll kick it to you.
Lacey Reichwald: Alright, thank you very much, Jessica. I'm really excited to be here and to talk about this. It's, definitely something that's on people's mind, which is how
Lacey Reichwald: Do we show up in search when search is no longer just Google? And we're gonna talk about that today. And, I do want to just mention off the bat that
Lacey Reichwald: We will be focusing quite a bit on Google, and I'll go into more detail about why, but that is still something I'm considering part of the GPT era, because there is a change in how Google is showing those results now, as more of an AI answer., just quick off the bat, Lacey Reichwald, Director of Marketing at AHA Media Group.
We are a content marketing consultancy that works exclusively in the healthcare space, and we work with a number of clients. I actually recognize some names, hello, everybody. And I'm very excited to be here and share this info with you today.
Lacey Reichwald: First off the bat, we have heard the sort of, clickbait or, even maybe rage bait title recently that websites are dead, or SEO is dead. And I'm here to tell you that search is not dead. In fact, Google is still seeing 8.5 billion searches every single day, and although there are now more searches on platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude, Google is not losing the number of searches to those platforms. It's almost created net new searches.
Lacey Reichwald: Americans, and this is a desktop using American's number, are searching Google more than 126 times per month. I think I'm doing that every single day, if you count my phone. And still, over 3 quarters of patients are doing an online search before scheduling an appointment., the content, even with AI search, the content that we create is more important than ever, because it's what informs those generated results that people are getting.
Lacey Reichwald: Another thing that has really shifted is search is no longer a channel. When we talked about search before, we really thought Google, we thought SEO. Now it's more of a behavior, and that behavior is really happening
Lacey Reichwald: all over the place. People are typing in their symptoms into ChatGPT, they're looking for answers. Help us all on TikTok and on Instagram. They're asking their Alexa or other devices for health information. They're relying on LinkedIn threads, even. And search is happening across the internet, and that information is also helping to serve these AI answer engines. It's not just about what's on your website, it's about what's out there about you and by you.
Lacey Reichwald: I'm gonna focus, though, right now on that SERP, the Search Engine Results page, on Google, and it's changed a lot. If you'll remember, 3-4 years ago, it was really a list of links. Sometimes we would have some ads above those links, or a People Also Ask box. Honestly, those links have been getting pushed further and further down the page for a long time, but since 2023 and the advent of AI overviews, those links are getting pushed down even further for a lot of searches.
Lacey Reichwald: Now what we have for an informational search breast cancer symptoms is an AI overview at the top, and you could click to expand this, and then there were some ads on this one. There aren't always ads, but there are sometimes. And then the links below are very buried, and folks are just getting the answers that they need right here.
Lacey Reichwald: We're seeing click-through rates go down because people are getting the answer that they need right here on this page. In some industries, they're saying up to 35% or 45% click-through rate drop.
Lacey Reichwald: We're not seeing that high of a number with all of our clients.
Lacey Reichwald: But interestingly, we just wrapped up some research with Klein and Partners that is going live next week in a webinar. And we found that 23% of respondents, this is advanced data dropping for you.
Lacey Reichwald: 23% of respondents said that they stop their search at this AI overview. They get the answer that they need.
Lacey Reichwald: They don't click on any links, they don't continue scrolling down the page, and it's almost a quarter, and that is, a little scary, but there's also some stuff that we can do to make sure that they're getting trusted results there.
Lacey Reichwald: Because I think that it might seem AI is hiding your content, but in reality, it's really amplifying what's available to it.
Lacey Reichwald: People often worry about AI giving the wrong answers, and that is a very good concern. There's definitely been some misinformation given about AI, especially… or given by AI about healthcare topics, especially early on, but it is getting better, and the best safeguard that you have is the content that you're producing.
Lacey Reichwald: I want to be clear that AI does not copy and paste what they find from your website. Sometimes they may pull in snippets.
But what it's doing, it's generative AI because it's generating an answer, it's predicting the next word in the sentence, it's basically a predictive text to answer your question based off of your intent.
Lacey Reichwald: It's still using the content that's available to it on the internet to create those answers. the more… and I'm not saying to flood the internet with content, but the more accurate and clear and structured content that we can provide to these engines by having that content on our websites.
Lacey Reichwald: The more likely that's going to be pulled into these AI-generated results, that people are seeing. And of course, just showing up in these results is not enough. That's not going to drive patient volume, right? People could be reading these results from all over the country who would have never become foot traffic.
Lacey Reichwald: But what it can do is help us hyper-focus on the folks who could be our patients, and I'm gonna also go through some, steps that go from, let's get the answer in front of people, to let's get those patients through the door.
Lacey Reichwald: All right, first up, this is a little task that I have for you. Maybe do it now, maybe not, wait until after this. Do a simple search in a AI platform of your choice. This is ChatGPT.
Lacey Reichwald: for a keyword or search terms that matter quite a bit to you and to your organization. Have you… if you haven't done that, I recommend it just to see what comes up.
Lacey Reichwald: If your organization does not show up, or if AI is getting those details wrong, you're definitely not alone. We're seeing a pattern where healthcare organizations are pouring their efforts into wellness blogs or treatment patients, which is really important work, but then they forget to update that foundational content about their services, their
Lacey Reichwald: doctors and their locations that these AI engines need.
Lacey Reichwald: to pull in that information., a search that I did, was for urgent care in Appleton, Wisconsin, and that's a very short search. You may want to go for a longer one, but it did pull up urgent care in the area. It listed addresses, phone numbers, hours, services. Notice I didn't ask for any of that information.
Lacey Reichwald: But because that information was available and structured on these organizations' websites, or in other places, honestly, it could have been pulling it from Google My Business, or another site. It was able to pull that in and answer that question for me right here., take a look at your results, see if you're showing up. If not, even ask the engine, why didn't you include this organization, or where did you get this information?
Lacey Reichwald: And that's gonna tell you a lot. This was a follow-up question that I asked on a question about best doctors. And I said, how did you arrive at this answer? And I wanted to learn about what your priorities might need to be to get the right content in front of the right people.
Lacey Reichwald: And it considered some sources that I hadn't really thought of. I thought it might pull Google reviews, or even reviews that were on doctors' or physician providers' profiles right on the hospital or health system website, and it didn't. It went to these trusted third-party sites, WebMD, Vitals, Healthgrades, but also top doctor sites and U.S. News and World Reports.
Lacey Reichwald: And I did ask a follow-up question to this, and I said, why did you choose these? And the answer was actually really smart. ChatGPT said.
Lacey Reichwald: Well, it's really simple for doctors to get negative reviews for something outside of their control, and they don't…didn't trust just any patient reviews., if it's a billing problem or even a parking problem, that can result in a negative review for a provider. But I think that what's important for us as content creators, as marketers, as people who want to get patients in the door, is are we showing up in these places?
Lacey Reichwald: Is the information that is on these sites accurate and complete and tagged and getting the answers to the right people at the right time?
Lacey Reichwald: It's a little bit trickier these days. I would say there's just more places where we need to be, but it's still about getting good content out there.
Lacey Reichwald: Visibility today is now earned through relevance, authority, and alignment with AI, and it used to be just earned through keywords. Or, honestly, paid, right? We could pay our way to the top of the SERP, and that's not the case anymore.
Lacey Reichwald: I want to emphasize something about your role in this, because I think it's really easy to look at this as a problem that affects, just the web team, or just the content team, just the SEO team.
Lacey Reichwald: But it's not a single role who owns this. It's really cross-functional. Writers, SEO, access teams.
Lacey Reichwald: Everyone shapes what patients see and hear, and everyone can create the feedback loop.
Lacey Reichwald: That helps feed this content., if you're taking calls, or if you're listening in on calls.
Lacey Reichwald: You can hear the way that patients are asking questions, and that information can really help the content teams who are then creating the content to bring those patients in the door. If you are on the SEO team, you can team up with your writers. If you're on the digital team, you can team up with your marketing team to make sure that all of your content is getting tagged appropriately, and that everyone can
Lacey Reichwald: and find what they need. no matter where you are in this ecosystem, I would say don't underestimate your impact. We're not just reacting to AI, we're all actively shaping what patients are finding and what that new search landscape looks like.
Lacey Reichwald: Now we'll get into some tips for you about how to write for people and machines. the webinar title, right, is… write for people, win with AI. And the truth of the matter is, is that AI engines serve up content that humans like. That's sort of the spoiler, the too-long-didn't read of this whole webinar. But there are still some things that we can do to make sure that the machines pick up the content that we're writing, and have a higher likelihood of it being served up to people.
Lacey Reichwald: first of all is structuring your content for AI platforms. This is Martha Van Berkel, she's the CEO of Schema App, and we actually just did a webinar with her, last week, Ahava did, on how to write for humans and machines.
Lacey Reichwald: And it was really interesting to see them go back and forth, because Ahava had the very, human focus, and Martha had the very machine focus, but they were really saying a lot of the same things.
Lacey Reichwald: The only piece that is very different and that humans don't really see or care about is schema markup. Schema markup is a little tiny bit of code that gets put on the backend of the website that tells Google and other platforms what type of content that is. It's basically tagging the content to say, this is location content, this is a physician's profile page, this is a treatment page. And that is a signal to Google and to the AI platforms that they've found what they're looking for and can more easily pull that content out.
Lacey Reichwald: this is a piece where if you're not on the digital team, you might feel your hands are a little bit tied, but it's a great opportunity for you to start having those conversations with your IT team, your technical SEO team, whoever would be responsible for this.
Lacey Reichwald: And just ask, hey, can we have a conversation about schema markup? We want to make sure that all of this hard work that we're putting into writing and creating the content is actually being seen by the people who need it.
Lacey Reichwald: Alright, let's go through a couple of examples of what type of content and the way that it's structured shows up in these GPT or AI search environments.
Lacey Reichwald: For this example and the next one, I'm looking at AI mode within Google., this is not just when you search and it gives you an AI overview at the top.
Lacey Reichwald: This is an actual separate tab within Google where it's encouraging conversational chat with Google, and you can ask longer questions, you can follow up with full sentences or even multi-step searches. It sort of bridges the gap between prompting and searching.
Lacey Reichwald: within AI mode, I asked, what are the early signs of colon cancer? And right here, it gave all of the signs. They're listed out. Number 1, change in bowel habits, and then three bullet points. Number two, blood and stool, and then 3 bullet points.
Lacey Reichwald: And you would wonder where are these results coming from? You could hover over the little link icon that's at the end of each sentence, and it would show you where that's coming from.
Lacey Reichwald: But also on the right-hand side, that drop-down that says Show All, these are the sources of the results.
Lacey Reichwald: I clicked through and looked at that whole list of results and wanted to know, okay, what kind of content is getting pulled into that very structured list of answers, and just took a quick look at Mayo Clinic's article and their symptoms listed out, very structured, very easy to read, are getting pulled out, not as exact copy and paste, but in snippets and parts of that AI overview. by structuring your content in a way that's easy for humans to read, which means Clear headlines. I know I'm looking for symptoms. Boom. There's symptoms. I can scan and find it on the page.
Lacey Reichwald: Short sentences, short paragraphs, and then bullets that are easy to scan and easy to understand. That's great for AI engines as well. Anything that creates clarity for patients, plain language, helpful structure, also creates clarity for AI.
Lacey Reichwald: Then as a second result, just to show a little bit different how, a different way that this can show up, another look in AI mode, what are the early signs of cancer? And we've got, lists… we've got a list here of those symptoms, unexplained weight loss, persistent fatigue, unusual lumps, and clicked through on this, and there was a UCSF Health article that I found really interesting. It listed all of the symptoms individually, which, if you don't need an additional explanation, and you just want a quick look at this list and see how many of these am I experiencing, you could get that here, and then further down on the page, there were more… there were more explanations.
Lacey Reichwald: One thing that we're seeing is that if you can do a dual pathway, meaning a really quick hit, here are the answers that you're looking for, for the people who just need it, and for the AI who's just pulling it. And then have that sort of second choose-your-own-adventure pathway that goes into more depth, maybe links to physician videos or patient stories, something that adds a little bit more of that human touch and that empathy to these results. You're going to be able to get both types of audiences, those that are looking for the quick answers, and those who want to dive a little bit deeper and get more information.
Lacey Reichwald: I'm gonna do a quick aside on where paid ads appear in AI search, because I know I showed that they're below the AI overviews, sometimes they're not showing up at all. What we're seeing right now is that when you ask, sort of just an informational question,” when should you get a second opinion cancer?” there's less likely to be an ad for that, because there's an AI overview, and it's giving you the answer right there. But if you ask a branded question, Mayo Clinic Cancer Second Opinion, I'm looking for a second opinion through Mayo Clinic, then you get those sponsored, or the sponsored search ads..
Lacey Reichwald: Thinking about if you are on that search team, the paid search team, thinking about, sort of, your branded strategy, and where your ads are showing up, and for what types of queries, if they're informational, or if they're transactional, or if they're branded, is a good way to think about that.
Lacey Reichwald: And I just overall want to really highlight that search isn't a silo. I know that in a lot of our teams, we end up being siloed, but this is a fundamental shift that we really have to make, as a industry, because when we were in control of Every aspect of search, It felt a little bit easier to do this, to say, paid search is doing their own thing, social is doing their own thing. But in reality, now search is all about visibility, and that means where you're showing up across the entire internet. That's your organic, your social, your paid, your AI overviews on Google.
Lacey Reichwald: Really, our teams need to come together and think about these things as a whole, a whole idea of visibility instead of their individual, sort of, tasks, because they relate to this.
Lacey Reichwald: The shift to AI-driven target, or AI-driven targeting, this is also for paid, but for organic as well, has been really frustrating for performance marketers, if you're looking for click-throughs, if you're looking for impressions, it can be really frustrating, and one sort of workaround for this, and something that we should really be thinking about, is
Lacey Reichwald: Being more specific with our content, it's really hard to target people based off of their individual demographics for a number of privacy reasons, but also because, targeting is just shifting with AI.
Lacey Reichwald: Using your content to do that is a great way to write for people. The first example here is prenatal care services. It's a very broad topic. It brings up a very broad number of answers based on location and previous search history.
Lacey Reichwald: But if you search prenatal care services for LGBTQ parents, you get very specific articles that are very specific pages that have that as the topic. if this is something that you specialize in, or whatever that, that area is that you specialize in.
Lacey Reichwald: Speaking directly to the people that you want to get in front of is going to help bring that up in these AI overview search results.
Lacey Reichwald: Another thing that is really shifting right now is the way that people are searching, and the words that they're using. In fact, in healthcare specifically, on average, people are using 10 words in each of their search queries.
Lacey Reichwald: gone are the days of diabetes diet plan, and now people are asking questions, what food should I eat to manage my diabetes? Or they're typing entire prompts, I was recently diagnosed with diabetes, these are some of my favorite foods, what are some alternatives?
Lacey Reichwald: ChatGPT, the average prompt length is 300 words.
Lacey Reichwald: Just know that people are searching for longer and longer phrases, and incorporating these entire ideas into your content versus targeting individual keywords is going to raise the likelihood of getting in front of the right people at the right time, in the right place.
Lacey Reichwald: And because of that, It's really important to not think about volume the way that we used to.
Lacey Reichwald: Zero volume does not mean zero searches. If you were to look up some of these long-tail keywords, treatment options for type 2 breast cancer, you would see in searchvolume.com that there were zero monthly searches. But if you actually search for that, there's an AI overview for it. The American Cancer Society is coming up as a result here.
Lacey Reichwald: National Breast Cancer Foundation right underneath that, don't think about keywords anymore in terms of search volume. Really think about your user's intent and the types of questions that they're asking.
Lacey Reichwald: Another thing that we need to consider is how we integrate our search strategies with our social strategies. again, moving away from that siloed approach and thinking about our whole content strategy as one piece.
Lacey Reichwald: As I mentioned, sadly, a lot of folks are now getting their answers right from social media platforms.
Lacey Reichwald: In fact, almost 70% of Gen Z says that they take medical advice from social media, even over that of a provider, and millennials, we're not that far behind there, with more than half of us saying the same thing.
Lacey Reichwald: it's really important for healthcare organizations to be present on these platforms, to be refuting misinformation, to bring in trusted resources to provide this information, because it is getting picked up, by Google and by, by some of these AI,
Lacey Reichwald: engines. I searched for something the other day on ChatGPT's new browser, which is Atlas, and it's basically, an entire browser of ChatGPT.
Lacey Reichwald: And, I looked up one of our common queries that we get asked all the time, and it came out with a YouTube short as an answer, a Instagram Reel as an answer, and then also a couple of different links., all of this information is getting pulled into these answer engines.
Lacey Reichwald: And it's really important, therefore, for us to show up across the board where your audience is looking. And that sounds a really big feat, oh my gosh, how do we create content across the entire internet?
Lacey Reichwald: Well, I'm gonna tell you the way to do it is through modular content., what we recommend to our clients and to healthcare marketers everywhere is to think about your content in terms of, long-form content that can be broken down into snackable content.
Lacey Reichwald: And the key to this isn't to write a blog post and then go back later and say, where can I pull snippets for Facebook? The way to do this is to write that long-form piece of content with this in mind.
Lacey Reichwald: In fact, if you're gonna be at HCIC next week, wow, is it already next week, or the week after? Ahava, our CEO, is teaching a masterclass on exactly how to do this, which is how to create modular content, build long-form pieces of content, and then pull those blocks out. And it's not just the, how do I write that, but also, where do I store that, how do I access it later, and how can AI help me rearrange those blocks later?.
Lacey Reichwald: If you're gonna be there, I highly recommend you sign up for that masterclass on Monday.
Lacey Reichwald: I have a couple of examples to share. This one here is from the Ohio State University, their Wexner Medical Center.
Lacey Reichwald: The example is a blog that they wrote about Narcan, and then how it was broken up over different pieces, or different places on the internet., we have a Facebook post, we have an Instagram post.
Lacey Reichwald: The short, or the reel that you see on Instagram was also replayed on YouTube, but with different copy underneath it, because it is important to hit your audience where they are finding this information. Then this information is really easy to be pulled into AI Overviews.
Lacey Reichwald: Having this kind of content across multiple platforms also signals trust to Google. It says, okay, we see that Wexner is out there publishing this information across platforms. It's really good content that we can pull into these answers.
Lacey Reichwald: Specific to YouTube, another tactic that is really important is to treat your YouTube captions as if they are articles or blog posts.
Cleveland Clinic does a great job of this, and I'm seeing it across almost every industry now. It's really easy to pull in the chapters, but making sure that you name those chapters as if they were the H2 in a blog, right?, what is diabetes-related retinopathy? That is something that you would see at the top of a section of a blog or a health library article. And having that right here means that Google and also ChatGPT or any of the other engines can signal, oh, that's the section of that video.
Lacey Reichwald: A similar thing happened to me, when I was using Atlas last week. I was searching for how to do something in HubSpot.
Lacey Reichwald: And right within the answer, there was a YouTube video, and it was queued up to that spot for the answer that I was looking for, because HubSpot had put these chapters in, right there in the caption.
Lacey Reichwald: and I'm excited to get to the part where I can answer some questions. I feel I'm just talking at you, but hopefully it's helpful. Another, or not even another, but really what's happening with all of this is that we're seeing a disappearing top of the funnel.
Lacey Reichwald: All of those places that people are getting the answers that they need, that's taking away our top of funnel traffic that we used to rely on much. Blog posts, even some FAQs and educational guides, health library content, that was all information that we could count on bringing in high volumes of traffic to us.
Lacey Reichwald: But… and now that click-through is going down, because they're getting their information right on the page. But one of the things I want you to think about is this was probably low-intent content anyway, or low-intent traffic.
Lacey Reichwald: If this traffic was never going to become foot traffic, then is it really that big of a loss that we're not getting those click-throughs?
Lacey Reichwald: The content, by the way, still does matter. I'm not saying don't publish or update blog posts or FAQs or that top-of-funnel content, because it's being pulled into those AI-generated answers. I'm just saying don't get hung up on the traffic loss here. Instead, look at your traffic to your more highly converting pages, where people are actually clicking to make an appointment or to learn more about a physician, focusing on that MOFU ( middle of funnel) content is really going to help, bring people in who are really looking to actually take action.
Lacey Reichwald: when you move from signs of ACL tear down to non-surgical treatments for ACL tears in young athletes.
Lacey Reichwald: You're gonna get much more specific content. Now, if you even add in, near me or a city name, this is where you're really gonna get those folks who are looking to make an appointment and take action, making sure at that bottom of the funnel and middle of the funnel that your content is clear, that it's structured, and that it has all of the answers they're looking for It's going to be really important.
Lacey Reichwald: All of this really… Pushes into this idea of trust. Getting people to trust and then getting machines to trust, a brand are really closely aligned.
Lacey Reichwald: We are living in an age where there is just information overload. People are not just searching, they're being inundated when you search for something. You don't even have to be looking for it the next day, and it's gonna show up on your Instagram feed or somewhere else. We're just constantly getting information, and making sure that your brand is a trusted matters more than ever. When someone's looking for care, they're looking for a source that cuts through that noise, a brand that they recognize, a voice that's clear and credible, making sure that your content is authoritative.
Lacey Reichwald: And that it is fact-checked, and that it is easy to find is the most important thing, just, some quick how-tos.
Lacey Reichwald: First of all, audit your online presence to make sure that you have consistent branding, messaging, and contact details across the board. I mentioned at the top of this, do that search, see what's coming up, find out what's out there.
Lacey Reichwald: encourage patients to leave feedback on review platforms. Although ChatGPT isn't pulling those in as trusted sources, people are still looking at that as part of their decision-making process., getting doctors featured in lists and publications, though, is a way to marry that with the GPT era.
Lacey Reichwald: Write authoritative and research-backed content, and have your author be somebody that is trusted. Having an author bio page that is a doctor, and having that doctor as the byline on an article increases the authority on that article.
Lacey Reichwald: And then, the biggest thing is when someone does land on your page now, or your site, they are more qualified than ever. You're getting a higher intent audience now on your website than you used to. Make it easy for them to make the next move. They should know exactly what's expected of them, and what's gonna happen when they do the thing that the call to action is asking them to do.
Lacey Reichwald: Alright, in closing, it feels there is much changing right now, but the basics still apply, and in fact, they may apply more than ever before. What we should be doing as marketing teams and as writers is creating something valuable to our audience. think about, how people speak, not how institutions speak, and what they're looking for. Optimize your content for where people are actually searching, take a look at how you're showing up in Google, how you're showing up in ChatGPT, but also what happens when you search your institution name and Facebook, or Reddit, or any other platform, and then being consistent across those platforms—your content needs to be specific.
Lacey Reichwald: Content should be localized and offer the differentiators that people are not getting in the AI feeds, that they want to click through, they want to read more, they want to read your patient stories, they want to understand your providers and what motivates them. Listen to the way that people are asking questions out loud, and then write the answers to those questions in the same way.
Lacey Reichwald: In these slides, we have a section for how to get started, and I know that we'll be able to send out the PDF of this after, but I would love to open it up to questions now.
Jessica Walker: Thanks so much, Lacey. And just a reminder, please send your questions in via the chat. We're going to keep sharing a few other things, as well, but just, I do have one that came in while we've been chatting, Lacey. the first question, can you elaborate a little bit more on how the longer prompts or user experiences, how that impacts it, how that looks in practice. Let's say someone is looking to have a mammogram, who's fearful of the process, how are they talking to ChatGPT about this, and how do we answer appropriately in our copy?
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, that's a great question. People are asking these questions with longer sentences, basically. They might tell a little story first, and then say, what does a mammogram look like? Or what should I expect at my first mammogram?
Lacey Reichwald: Now, if they are logged into ChatGPT, or whatever service they're using, or if they're not using temporary chat, then that platform is gonna remember a lot about that person, just Google does, right? There's a lot of data tracking that's going on. It's gonna know your location, and it may serve up more, localized results.
Lacey Reichwald: But the best way to show up and to get… give those answers is across multimedia. I would say if you have a video that answers that question, if you have a physician-written article that answers that question, if you have something super, super intentional. If you are searching for what to expect during my first mammogram, you might find a number of blog posts that just walk you through it.
Lacey Reichwald: But if I were to type in what to expect for my first mammogram, and even where my doctor is, and if there is a video that walks you through that process, says, this is what the exam room looks, this is what the machine looks, this is what you can expect, this is what it feels. That kind of content closely matches the user's intent that it has a much higher likelihood of showing up.
Jessica Walker: Lacey, we've had a couple more questions, but I'm going to kind of go off script here a minute, because what you just said actually exemplifies exactly something I was going to share with our attendees today. Let me share my screen.
Jessica Walker: Those of you following along at home, just as a quick reminder, Care Sherpa, we're partners with you in that last mile for patients, from the time that they show interest to actually get them to the procedure table, the treatment table, to show up for the consult., we've been tracking this issue when it comes to GPT optimization for quite some time, because it has impacted how patients are showing up, in terms of when we ask them, how did you hear, or how did you find our provider. And we've seen this trend over time. As a matter of fact, we have one provider that's now at 20% of their new patient leads come from GPT, and it's accelerating because now we're helping them think about optimizations with partners Lacey, right?
Jessica Walker: But real patient stories, and you'd think that Lacey and I planned this, and I promise you we did not. In this example, it was for an elective medical procedure, and a woman had found the practice, and as she was preparing, she actually called us to cancel her appointment, because she saw in her search in GPT, what do I need to get ready for?
Jessica Walker: related to having a driver, that it was a requirement working with the practice and the group in this treatment. she called to delay and cancel her care because she did not have the driver. Well, of course, in the conversation with her Sherpa, the conversation, she talked about the checklist that was referenced in the GPT search.
Jessica Walker: Unfortunately, it was an old checklist that kind of referenced that they had changed requirements since then, but that's what was showing up, and that's what she presented. as the Sherpa was able to walk her through the treatment overall and the updated information, then she was willing to have the consultation, and she was actually comforted in being able to continue with her schedule.
Jessica Walker: that conflict between what was out there that the GPT can find and observe versus what the patient had already made the decision, right, but it was impacting and giving them hesitancy to move forward. And those are just opportunities where if we're listening to our patients in the conversations, hearing the reasons for cancellations, and in this case, hearing the conflict between what is out there from GPT optimization versus reality.
Jessica Walker: This is a great time to think about how can we optimize our content, right, and make sure it's relevant in, as Lacey mentioned, the voice of a consumer, the voice of a person, to understand what do I need to know, what do I need to prepare for, and move forward.
Jessica Walker: Another really interesting story I wanted to share was, we had a prospective patient who found the practice because of a GPT in a search that brought them from localized outcomes looking for the services. But when she went to the website, she didn't see it listed on the website.
Jessica Walker: But as we dug in with her, it turned out it was the provider's video on social media that was presented to say that they offered this service. But the incongruence between what was on the website… she fortunately called, but we think about that for a minute, where she took the time to call to find out more. Some may not. As we think about all of our content that's out there, are we congruent across what our providers are talking about, the physician directory and their philosophies of care, etc?
Jessica Walker: What was additionally interesting about this story is that she came in with high intent. She was ready to move forward and have the treatment for her son. This was on a therapy-intensive side. But now, because of this incongruency, she was concerned that they didn't have the experience needed to efficiently treat her son. She was concerned that there wasn't expertise, as the provider talked about in the video, because why wouldn't it be on our website if it's something that he's talking about?
Jessica Walker: And, ultimately, what we were able to help point her to is that his video of, his writer profile, he also talked about it in there as well, we could help her see this was an oversight, we're moving forward to have it on the content, on the page, etc.
Jessica Walker: But those are those consumer buying decisions that GPT is helping us kind of expose both the incongruency and opportunities to optimize.
Jessica Walker: Fortunately, because we could help her carry that bridge over and demonstrate there is expertise, there is experience, and then ultimately get to that point, and the moral of the story for this one, and this provider specifically, this was a high-value cash-pay patient who was willing to travel across a significant amount of time because she's looking for this treatment in particular. And she got there because she first found it on GPT.
These hesitancy moments are really making a difference there.
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah.
Jessica Walker: Yeah, a couple other questions, Lacey, that have come in and see if you've got the, perspective on., where does Wikipedia fit in all this?, their hospital's Wikipedia page is terrible, they've not really paid attention to it, partially because they figured whatever it is, but now, is it important anymore?
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, I wanna… I definitely want to answer that, and can. I just want to quickly touch on what you just shared, because I want to highlight what you said about this was someone who called.
Lacey Reichwald: I don't know what the number is, but I'm gonna guess it's less than 1 in 10 that would have seen that incongruency and said, I'm still gonna call and clarify this. And, what a… I mean, what a great resource, first of all, for you to be able to point that out to them, because I guarantee they're fixing that on their website. But yeah, Wikipedia, this is an interesting question, especially given some recent shakeups.
Lacey Reichwald: There used to be, a really high, proportion of Reddit answers in these Google AI overviews, and in fact, there still are quite a few. Google said, we think that users want user-generated content. Reddit is often vetted in the sense that people will downvote things that are inaccurate or unpopular, but there's still a lot of danger in that. And Google… it hasn't been announced, but folks who are tracking it have seen fewer Reddit answers and more Wikipedia answers in those results.
Lacey Reichwald: I think that eventually we're gonna move away from all of that. I think that, and this is just my personal opinion, I think that some user-generated content might be pulled in, but probably with a caveat. I think that it's too dangerous, especially for healthcare information, for Google to keep pulling in these unverified sources.
Lacey Reichwald: I would say…Wikipedia is probably not a huge part of your patient journey. If it's ranking really high on, search, and there's some real misinformation in there, then I would say get that fixed. But otherwise, I wouldn't give it too much time.
Jessica Walker: I love that you brought up the Reddit example. those of you who've been attending all of our webinars, you'll remember one of our first ones, we were really highlighting how important Reddit was playing in the GPT optimization story, and you're spot on. That's part of what makes this whole thing frustrating, is that it's changing all the time, and those of us in the space, Lacey and I, are watching signals of, okay, wait, how am I presenting today, etc. Which is a good point that this isn't static, this isn't one and
Jessica Walker: done, but it is an ongoing part of your strategy, and how are you looking at it from a constant optimization? And then twofold, I'll bring back the consumer mindset. Even if GPT is not, and the GPTs and the AEOs are not bringing in the Reddit, I will tell you, we hear every single day when we talk to patients that they, when they're doing their due diligence on the treatment, the doctor, the clinic.
Jessica Walker: they're going to read it, too, because they're trusting, kind of, the mass voice, it's one that, as you think about it, that even if it's not helping us from the GPT, there's still a consumer value, and I'd want to, if it were me, I'd want to control part of that narrative and be a part of that conversation.
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, Reddit is tricky, though, too, because Reddit hates marketers.
Jessica Walker: Oof, yeah.
Lacey Reichwald: And they will come after you if it's obvious that you're from that organization and you're trying to play something. I think of Reddit as a social listening site. What are people saying? And then there are opportunities, though, maybe an AMA, an Ask Me Anything with a physician, or some other ways to get some content out there, but I would be careful.
Jessica Walker: I totally agree with you. And we've seen great success, too, when listening, right? Now we hear what our raving fans are talking about in there, and then how do you turn that into content in a way that helps you kind of… it came to you because of this treatment. That last story I shared with you, is a very specialized treatment, because of that, because of all the signals that were out there content-wise, how she got there. Yeah. Another great question came in., can AI access the content on the
Jessica Walker: blog that lives on their website, meaning the blog has a thumbnail that needs to be clicked into before the content shows up. I have a perspective on that, but I want to ask your thoughts on that, Lacey.
Lacey Reichwald: If it's indexable, if it's indexed by Google, then yes. If it's not, I would ask why. You don't want those blog pages to be indexed, but as, yeah, as long as it's indexable, then yes.
Jessica Walker: I was gonna go down that same path. One of the things we saw with a client when we were helping them optimize from their consumer journey was that their FAQs were all static images where they answered it as an image. that's an example, right? You're not getting any credit for that content out there. And those are the things that, working with a partner, your group or others that can help you think about.
Jessica Walker: How is content working to its biggest advantage for you? There are subtle things about how you put it on your site. I have heard the same thing. I've seen this new modeling on a few websites, where it's, they have the question, and then you click a click down, and then it gives you the answer. But when those things are not together in the sequence, the GPTs have a harder time associating this question and this answer, because they're in separate sections.
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, and there are some, dev things that you can do within those accordions, they're called, where you click and it opens, where they can be tied together, I wouldn't write that off entirely, but it is something you definitely need to work with your development team on to make sure that those things are together.
Lacey Reichwald: To your point about the FAQs, I was even just thinking, I was, I wonder if it would get pulled up in an image, result for Google, but I don't… I don't think it would without the copy there to support it. I would say if you have an image that you think can… can be served, an infographic or something, go ahead and include it, but you have to have that content there and tagged appropriately for the engines to find it.
Jessica Walker: Yeah, and it's one of the general rule, we've been talking with some of our partner providers, which is, yes, it may feel a setback that you have to go and rework this, but then the goal is, how are you making it easy for these engines to find you? If they have to dig, and it's going to take processing power, it's going to be a deprioritized resource, right?
Lacey Reichwald: Yes.
Jessica Walker: And don't sleep on the fact, too, that you can have it across different trusted sources, you brought up the example of, a trusted provider that has a high score, kind of, they know it's a credible source being able to repeat or recycle some of your content in these other areas, and then have it be out there. But again, it's all about how we make it easy and put it out there.
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, and I mean, honestly, it's not different from really good SEO practices.
Jessica Walker: Yes, amen.
Lacey Reichwald: all of this started, some of our clients were, oh my gosh, what do we do? And we were, we're already doing the things. We're already doing the things. And, they are showing up in AI overviews, they are getting the GPT traffic. Of course, things could always change, and everything is a little bit of a black box. We don't know exactly how ChatGPT is pulling in this information, or how…
Lacey Reichwald: Google is organizing this information, but far, it seems really good content strategy is the best practice moving forward. And the other thing I'll say is that it may feel a lot of work right now, but it's only going to get harder if you put it off.
Lacey Reichwald: I… I don't take the opinion that we're barreling towards a world with no websites, but I do see a future in which AI agents are doing things on your behalf.
Lacey Reichwald: And in order for those AI agents to do things on behalf… through your website, they're gonna need that structured content, they're gonna need that schema markup to know where to go and do the things, it's laying a foundation for the future, too.
Jessica Walker: I feel that's the word I've said the most over the last, 6 months, is schema markup, schema markup, and that's, it's introducing that into someone's language. Yeah.
Lacey Reichwald: And I didn't… I didn't say those words 5 years ago. No! As a marketer, never.
Jessica Walker: Well, while we were sharing, I did put a poll out there to ask a few of you to share, and thank you for those of you that participated. We had a pretty good kind of response. I wanted to get a feel, because I think it's relative to the next question I'm going to ask you, Lacey, of… first was, have you started to incorporate AI optimization into your strategy? And it looks about 60% of you said that you're just getting started, probably why you're here, I'm glad that you were able to join us.
Jessica Walker: But then, 20% said they've been doing it for a while.
Jessica Walker: But then the follow-up I thought about, too, is… and then where, is your leadership in support of the investment in AI optimization? It looked about 80% said your leadership is in support, and then 20%, no, we need to help them understand.
Jessica Walker: given those two things, I'd ask you, kind of Lacey, as a parting question. Number one, if we do nothing today, nothing before the end of the year, what should we do, X, to really start us on our optimization journey? And then the second part of that is, if that also requires investment, or in general, what's the best way to help our executive leaders get on board with this investment when there's a lot of unknowns yet?
Lacey Reichwald: Yeah, luckily, I think that the answer to both of those questions is the same. I would do that audit. It doesn't have to take a whole lot of time. You can really take 15 minutes.
Lacey Reichwald: Do some searches in ChatGPT on Claude, even in Google. Find out how your organization is showing up, how your competitors are showing up, get screenshots of that. Now you have a benchmark.
Lacey Reichwald: And then take that to your leadership and say, hey, this is the way people are searching, and we're not showing up, we have to make some changes in order to get here. And now you have those great benchmarks that you can look at in 6 months when you are showing up correctly in those spots.
Jessica Walker: Yeah, absolutely. And along those lines, I want to make sure everyone has your contact information again. Lacey is very active on LinkedIn as well. Here's a QR code to help find myself or Lacey. We're happy to engage in those conversations and help you with some of those insights, and I know you guys have done some great benchmarking along the lines, too, that you can help them interpret it and maybe package it into how do we get support, for that, yeah.
Lacey Reichwald: Well, I was just gonna say, we have been called in as the strong arm a couple of times, and we're very used to that. Sometimes, it's just the nature of being in marketing. You can hammer on an idea forever, but as soon as you bring in a third party to say the exact same thing, the executives will sign off on it, we're happy to help with that.
Jessica Walker: And I think that's part of it, where I think of those of us that have been in this space for a while, you said, it's the correlation to, the early days of SEO, the early days of advertising on Google, and, keywords.
Jessica Walker: Yes, and there are a few of us in this space that have been very brave and, putting our necks out there, and I do think what I've told my clients is that we're hearing it on the phone, we're hearing it from your patients. Your patients are there, it's just a matter of how do I get more of your patients to continue to show up by spending the time to optimize it.
Jessica Walker: Again, Lacey and my other partners that have joined us have been a part of sharing some great tips and tricks and toolkits. Lacey's tool will be added there later today, if you want to head out and request our toolkit that we'll share the best of from all of our prior presenters.
Jessica Walker: Quick shout out, Lacey and I will also be at HCIC here in just a short period of time. Would love to continue to engage. I'll be a part of an expert corner of a couple different solutions, when we talk about different best practices.
I think that's probably my favorite part of going to conferences, getting everyone in the room and being able to share our expertise.
Lacey, I thank you very much for giving your time and your expertise with everyone today, and we hope to see you on our next month's webinar.
Lacey Reichwald: Thank you!
Jessica Walker: Thanks, everyone.