Meet our guest:
Ahava Leibtag is a passionate advocate for clear healthcare information, but also the person you want to sit next to at a dinner party. As the founder and president of Aha Media Group, an award-winning healthcare content marketing agency, she continuously pushes the field of healthcare content to use plain language and the latest in digital strategies to educate and inform audiences.
Ahava is the author of The Digital Crown and was inducted into the Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame in 2020. Her master’s thesis from Georgetown University was a critical comparison of Dirty Dancing and Save the Last Dance. Ask her about it the next time you meet—she’s the woman with the hot pink hair and glasses listening to Taylor Swift.
Learn more about Ahava Leibtag on Linkedin.
My learnings from the episode:
- Clarity as a Competitive Advantage. Ahava emphasized how plain, jargon-free communication is essential in healthcare marketing. 80% of healthcare executives prefer clear, straightforward content because it respects their knowledge while cutting out unnecessary complexity. It’s not just about simplifying; it’s about building trust—which is absolutely crucial when it comes to healthcare decisions.
- Tailoring Content to the Audience’s Journey. One thing Ahava really highlighted is how much the audience’s knowledge level shapes the kind of content they need. For instance, a patient who has just been diagnosed needs empathetic, easy-to-understand information, while someone researching specialized treatments might need more technical, in-depth resources. Understanding where your audience is on their journey—and mapping your content to meet them there—is so critical in healthcare marketing.
- Generative AI’s Place in Healthcare Content. Ahava shared her team’s experience testing generative AI tools, and while they found it helpful for brainstorming and outlining, AI just can’t match the human touch when it comes to delivering empathetic, nuanced content. In healthcare, where 62% of consumers are less likely to trust AI-created content, this gap becomes even more critical. AI might be a great assistant, but it’s nowhere near ready to replace human creativity and empathy.
These were my key learnings from this episode. Ahava’s perspective on blending clarity, empathy, and strategy really got me thinking about how we can continue to build trust and deliver meaningful content in such a complex and evolving space.
Looking to share your experiences?
We’re always looking for guests! If interested, email us at podcast@diacreative.com
Read while you listen:
[00:00:00] Ahava Leibtag: We have a checklist of things you should be thinking about when it comes to AI. Um, as you can tell, we’re very nerdy. I love that. Well, we, we want to be the thought leaders. Like I, I, our mission is to make the business of healthcare easier through clear communication. So we want to set the best practices.
[00:00:18] Andreea: Welcome to Pioneering Perspectives, a DIA creative podcast, where we explore marketing insights from regulated industries. Join me as we chat with real professionals navigating these complexities today, uncovering their stories and their savvy strategies for marketing success.
[00:00:35] Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pioneering Perspectives. Um, my guest today is Ahava Leibtag. She is the CEO of AHA Media Group. Thanks so much for joining us.
[00:00:46] Ahava Leibtag: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
[00:00:49] Andreea: So tell me a little bit about AHA Media Group, what you do there. Where is your expertise in healthcare marketing?
[00:00:56] Ahava Leibtag: Sure. So AHA Media Group is a content marketing agency that focuses on healthcare. Our tagline is, it’s all healthcare content all of the time. And, uh, I unfortunately had a life threatening illness in my early thirties, uh, that led to a chronic condition. So when I was looking for information about how to get treatment, what doctor could help me, I was very perturbed by what I found online as somebody who had, you know, majored in English and was a former journalist and worked in communications.
[00:01:26] And I decided that I really wanted to focus on creating clear content. Empathetic content for people who were in crisis. And so that started about 20 years ago. And then of course it was like, I started when I was 15. So, and then, um, I, I quickly realized that there was a market, not only for that approach to actual writing content, but all kinds of content.
[00:01:53] And so as the web has grown and changed, we’ve sort of been, you know, beating the drum on, this is the way you have to talk to people. And not only people who are. Consumers of healthcare, but also B2B executives who are making the decisions that are affecting consumers at the, you know, at the end of the line.
[00:02:13] So really passionate about the work that we do and, and, you know, excited to talk about content and content strategy, and then the changing nature of what’s happening because of AI and search.
[00:02:23] Andreea: Yeah, so it’s interesting, a lot of times in this podcast we talk about the three P’s, patients, providers, and payers, but you actually have like a fourth because you’re talking to the executives that make these decisions about what content’s going out there.
[00:02:37] So can you talk a little bit about how you. How do you speak to these different groups and especially this new group that we haven’t really explored much?
[00:02:44] Ahava Leibtag: Yeah, so I think the important thing to remember is that people start out as novices and then they become experts depending on how much skin they have in the game.
[00:02:54] So the Nielsen Norman group calls this their, you know, the One of the best UX companies in the business. And they’re setting the standards for user experience. And they talk about something called shared communities of practice. So if you talk to birders, they’ll use words like birdwatchers that none of, what are you talking about?
[00:03:14] And if you talk to quilters, right. And community, you become a part of, there are words that they use that. You’re really not familiar with, but as you become more integrated into that community, you really start to understand the language around it. A lot of people think that’s jargon, but that’s actually not what jargon is.
[00:03:31] Jargon is just using like, words like comprehensive and multidisciplinary and words that are designed to impress. So when we’re talking to executives, we want to use the words from their shared communities of practice, things that they understand, patient revenue cycles, you know, um, donut holes, you know, pharmacy benefit managers.
[00:03:51] These are all things that you can use with them and you don’t have to explain them, but you don’t have to put all this filler language around it to make it sound like you are better than anybody else. Clarity is actually a competitive advantage. What we did research, uh, last year that showed that healthcare marketing executives, healthcare executives prefer plain language 80 percent of the time.
[00:04:15] And that’s for demo, downloading demos, um, you know, reaching out to a company, downloading a white paper. So. I think that that’s the difference that marketers and communicators really need to understand. You can write using sophisticated terminology because people are educated in this business. You know, when you talk to an accountant about accrual versus growth, sorry, accrual versus cash, you don’t need to explain what that is to them.
[00:04:41] But somebody, the first time I learned about that as a business owner, I was like, what? So there’s two ways to keep your books. I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. So there’s, um. That’s where I think that marketers get confused a lot and they confuse jargon with just technical terms that people know because they’re part of a community that understands those terms.
[00:05:02] So that’s how we think about talking to these different audiences. And then we try to think about where they are in their journey towards learning about this. So when somebody is researching a particular kind of healthcare software, you don’t need to explain what it is because the fact that they’re researching, it shows that they’re already in the game.
[00:05:20] But if you’re talking to patients about a particular condition that they’ve just been diagnosed with, you really have to lead them on the path of, let us explain what these terms mean to you so that you can become for a lot of people, unfortunately, part of that community, and then feel more confidence when you’re actually talking to your healthcare provider.
[00:05:42] Andreea: One thing that really stood out for me with what you’re saying is, is that clarity thing, which I think we struggle with a lot in healthcare because frankly, like things are complicated, it’s not simple. And so how do you actually refine things down to clarity?
[00:05:55] Ahava Leibtag: Yeah, so one of the things we talk about is actually thinking about the way people think, which is semantically people think in questions and answers.
[00:06:04] Right? How do I, where do I? So that’s one of the first ways that we teach people how to write for clarity is just by thinking in terms of questions. The second thing we talk about is breaking things down into steps. This is progressive disclosure. It’s an adult learning theory. This is how people learn.
[00:06:20] So, you know, step one, download this form, step two, fill it out. Step three, this box will do this. This box will do that. And I think that When you’re explaining something very complex to people, it’s okay to say to people, this is complex. And the nature of everything that we can describe to you at this point is this.
[00:06:41] Now you’re actually going to have to have a conversation with a human being. And that’s okay. We’re not, we’re not designed to understand everything through written communication through video. That’s not eventually business. And care gets done, keep person to person. And I think that that’s another thing that marketing communications people forget.
[00:07:02] They either give people not enough information or they give them too much information, sort of the Goldilocks complex. And so really understanding your audience and where they’re at in their journey, I think is a really critical part to figuring out what do you say? And what do you not say? I’ll give an example.
[00:07:18] Um, For academic medical centers, they operate on something called an acoustic neuroma, which is a tumor in the brain that can affect, you know, the ear and, and, and both neurosurgeons and otolaryngologists who are ENT specialists have to, you know, get in there. And For the educated customer and consumer, they want to know about the different approaches that these otolaryngologists and neurosurgeons are using because they actually are reading different academic medical center sites to understand which doctor should I choose.
[00:07:52] That’s the educated, sophisticated patient that doesn’t go on the homepage of the Acoustic Neuroma page that goes into a page or part of the site that says different approaches we may consider in your treatment. And so that’s also part of just understanding. How deep do I want to go? Well, for some patients, they want that information and for some, they don’t.
[00:08:11] So as long as we label it as, you know, very appropriate to what the content says, then I think that you can really give very, very specific information as clearly as possible. You can also put it in a video or an animation. People don’t have to click on the play button if they don’t want to.
[00:08:28] Andreea: Yeah. There’s a lot of pressure as a patient to, to, especially when you first Get identified that you have something or you you and now you have to make this important decision of like who is the right physician who is the right medical group, you know, so I wonder how do you, how do you determine what is the best way to communicate that you talked about animations videos text, like, how do you actually like, get that across so that I feel confident that I’m making the right decision for myself as someone who’s like, not really a medical expert, but has to now make a medical expert decision, right?
[00:09:03] So it’s
[00:09:04] Ahava Leibtag: actually a privilege, right? To, to be able to understand that well enough to make the right decision about which doctor it is. I think you, if you have a complex medical condition, sometimes you have to go to like five to seven providers before you get the right diagnosis. It’s really complicated.
[00:09:21] And if your health insurance is complicated, it’s even more so because you have to, your primary care physician is going to send you to one person. And then You may have to go to another person very often. You know, we tend to think that people really want to make these decisions for themselves, but a lot of people actually want their primary care physician to tell them what to do.
[00:09:41] And they want to find a quarterback provider. Who’s really gonna, I really trust my oncologist. They’re going to tell me the right people to go to. I really trust, you know, my endocrinologist, he’s going to tell me, you know, who to go to. I really trust my, you know, my geriatric specialist. They’re going to tell me which podiatrist is the best podiatrist.
[00:09:58] So I think that when people are looking at providers, some people really do want to get into the information and some people are just going to listen to who tells them, but we this year did research on what people look for in provider bios. So you can download that from our website at ahamediacroup.
[00:10:15] com. And what we found, you know, a lot of, um, Our clients are constantly like worried about like putting in their doctor’s education and their fellowships and everything they’ve published and it turns out what people or their hobbies or their pets or their children and you know what it turns out people really don’t care about providers what they care about is how the provider thinks about delivering care.
[00:10:39] Which is the classic marketing rule, right? What’s the number one thing people care about? Themselves. So they don’t care about the doctor as a person. They care about the doctor as the way the doctor relates to being a doctor and how they’re going to care for them. And so I think that when you’re trying to talk about something that that’s Nuanced with, with a provider, that’s a great chance to use a video.
[00:11:01] That’s a great chance to use a quote. That’s just thinking about, okay, what’s the kind of emotional impact that I want this information to convey and thinking about what format is best for that. So when we think about those types of things, that’s what we’re thinking about. Is this just a fact that we can write?
[00:11:18] Is this just a blog post giving people like a list of how to get your kid to eat broccoli? Okay. Is this a more complex thing that we have to sort of make an emotional connection with people, then that’s where we start to look at, okay, what other kinds of content might work here. And it can still be written content, but it may be an interview that’s, you know, has a, you know, transcript attached to it, or that’s been cleaned up, or it may be, you know, a quote that you pull out from a doctor or story that they tell about a patient relationship.
[00:11:46] That, that’s what we’re looking to accomplish.
[00:11:48] Andreea: Yeah, that’s what really powerful content can really do, is connect you almost on that person to person level before actually meeting the person themselves. That’s really interesting. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of research, too, on the different ways of content connection and that.
[00:12:05] Is there anything that you’ve found is really interesting in your most recent research?
[00:12:10] Ahava Leibtag: Well, what we’ve had, so this was a re that we did this first research in 2017 and then we repeated it now and what we found is, is that more and more people are looking at, um, doctor’s ratings online and they’re looking at their reviews and they’re not asked, word of mouth has become less important, um, than, you know, it used to be.
[00:12:30] It’s still important to people. Like I said, I still think there are people who really just, you know, want their provider to call the shots or want to find, you know, somebody will tell them which doctor to go to. I belong to a WhatsApp chat in my neighborhood. And I would say like four times a week, somebody is like, somebody know this doctor, does somebody know this dentist?
[00:12:47] You know, it’s, it’s constant. So it got to be so much that we actually created a Google spreadsheet. So you could just go in and like, look at what other people have asked for. But, but, um, So that that actually the change in the norms were actually really surprising to me, but it actually kind of made me a little bit sad because if you look at that research against the surgeon general’s research around loneliness, what that tells me is that actual person to person contact is dissipating.
[00:13:15] And we’re really just trusting like online strangers to tell us which provider to go to. So, that that’s how I interpret that data. I have no factual data to back that up. I like, you know, people, we had 532 adults respond to our survey. Every single one of them may be in like 17 different great friendships, but, um, I think that it tells us something about the way people want to find information and use it.
[00:13:39] Andreea: That’s where my brain was going to is that I think we have less trust and less relationships. And so where do you go to this, to this magic, this magic tool, the internet?
[00:13:48] Ahava Leibtag: Yeah, I also think that there is times where people have shame around whatever is going on for them and they don’t want to ask a friend and that’s okay.
[00:13:55] Also, um, you know, that I think that that’s, you know, So, um, the, one of my friends was telling me that, you know, that’s something that I actually am known in my community as somebody who you can ask about these kinds of things. Cause you know, I’ve like interviewed every doctor in the country, basically. If I haven’t interviewed you yet, call me up.
[00:14:10] So, um,
[00:14:15] You know, about she has IBS and I said, why don’t you call? Like I have a GI chronic condition. I could have like given you like every gastroenterologist in the DMV. And I live in Washington, DC. And she said, um, I didn’t want to tell you that I was going through this. And I’m like, yeah, I get that. A lot of people feel that way.
[00:14:31] They, they have shame around what’s going on. And so they don’t ask. And they’d rather go online and get that information. And so I think that that’s a nice way to frame it, which is that now this information is publicly available to people and they don’t have to ask. They don’t have to feel that shame.
[00:14:46] Andreea: Yeah. With all of the content that you’ve been putting out and kind of where the, the internet is heading, AI obviously is, is a, is a big, I don’t know, cloud over content. I don’t know where Put it or a tool. Uh, so where do you stand with AI and content? Sure.
[00:15:02] Ahava Leibtag: So first of all, when we talk about AI, it’s such a huge universe.
[00:15:05] So let’s, let’s like, you know, get it down a little bit. So when you talk about the cloud, you’re talking about generative AI, which can create quote unquote content. Right. Um, but there’s all kinds of AI that powers things and we’ve been using it for years. For example, like Amazon, when they tell you like people bought this.
[00:15:21] And they also bought people who bought your book also bought these books. That’s AI that’s, you know, that kind of thing has been going on for, for years. So I think that it’s important to really look at generative AI and chat GPT and, you know, Gemini and those Dolly and all those kinds of content generators.
[00:15:38] So we actually got into this pretty quickly when it was released. Um, I put together a task force in my company and we actually have a knowledge center on this, on our website that you can go and read. We have a checklist of things you should be thinking about when it comes to AI. Um, as you can tell, we’re very nerdy.
[00:15:58] I love that. Well, we, we want to be the thought leaders. Like I. Our mission is to make the business of healthcare easier through clear communication. So we want to set the best practices. And the only way to set the best practices is to understand what’s going on and do the research. So, um, so we, we, we did a lot of, you know, experimenting with it and understanding it when we developed an AI policy where we do not use it to create content, because in the beginning, You couldn’t find sources.
[00:16:32] You couldn’t. Um, it wasn’t the paid version was connected to the Internet and we only use the paid version because otherwise they can use your content. And we, you know, we’re in health care. We have to be very careful about what we feed into any system, um, to protect, you know, our clients. So what we found was that.
[00:16:52] It, it just couldn’t do the same thing that a human writer could do. That’s what we thought. So we actually tested it out and we had one of our writers interview a nurse practitioner, uh, at an academic medical center about how patients needed to get ready for a specific kind of appointment, what, what they should bring, what they should know, how to educate themselves about it.
[00:17:13] It was a very specific kind of blog post. And then we recorded the interview and we had our writer write a piece of content. We had ChatGPT write a piece of content without the interview, just giving it a very long prompt about what we were looking for, as well as the style guide of the academic medical center.
[00:17:33] And then we fed the interview into ChatGPT. So we had three different articles to look at. The first, the first one that we did with the ChatGPT and just the prompting, we didn’t even show it to the provider. It was so terrible. Excuse my French, but, and, um, the one where our, so then we had the provider look at two different versions and did not tell her which one was provided, created by ChachiPT and which one was created by the writer.
[00:18:02] And she liked the writers better. She said it was more empathetic. It gave more information. It was really, really valuable. So that to us sort of was one case study, obviously N equals one is not perfect, but it was a start for us of what would really work well. Um, When we talk to the people that we create content for, and they have seen content from other agencies, they see content from their own writers, you know, there’s just a level of sophistication that a human brings to healthcare content.
[00:18:33] That I don’t necessarily know that a human writer can do that a chat GPT can do. I experimented with it for the past year. So I’m actually giving a presentation in Boston next week. I, the presentation is called, can you teach chat GPT to write like your CEO? Because I’m really busy. And my marketing manager is always wants newsletters from me and things like that.
[00:18:55] And I was like, well, maybe we could teach them. They had, they came up with a have a bot. That’s what they called it. They want me to teach it how to write like me. And I felt like I was in a passive aggressive relationship with a toddler. Like I really could not get her past like a really bad eighth grade writer.
[00:19:13] I just couldn’t do it. Like, I just could not figure out how to get her to do it. Now I have an incredibly distinctive voice, and this is what I’m going to say at the end of the talk. I have an incredibly distinctive voice, so it’s hard to copy, but if your CEO doesn’t have an incredibly distinctive voice, Then you shouldn’t be putting that content out anyway.
[00:19:30] So I think that that’s, that’s what we’ve learned about generative AI. Now, do we use chat GPT all the time for other things? All the time. It really does help. It’s a great, you know, when you feed it interviews and then you feed it the finished content piece, you can ask it, is there anything that we missed in the interview that might need to be in the finished content piece?
[00:19:49] You know, you can feed it a content brief and get a great outline going. You can use it to ideate. You can’t use it one time and get it to do what you want it to do. You really have to prompt it. You have to learn to work with it. You have to learn to coax it. You have to use your own human mind. Sometimes I feel like I can do it faster on my own, but there are many tasks that I don’t want to do that.
[00:20:11] I just want like somebody to come up with for me pretty quickly. Um, I always do one project a year. So I just finished a big content strategy project for a client. And. I was actually finishing up the report, uh, before this interview and I, um, asked it to do one part of the report for me. And it just was like, this is not helpful.
[00:20:33] Like it, I mean, it was a great starting point maybe. And maybe if I had spent like an hour talking to it, I could have kind of gotten what I needed. I was like, you know what? I’m just going to go and do this myself. So. It has tremendous potential to help people, I think, and especially for people who have like rote jobs where like they have to write like job descriptions or award announcements or like stuff that’s like really formulaic.
[00:20:56] I think it’s a great thing. Um, I would not ask it to write a blog on why your kids should eat broccoli because I just don’t think it’s there yet. And I don’t know that it can really Ever convey what we wanted to convey and 63 percent of people don’t trust AI in a healthcare environment. If they know that it’s written by AI, they won’t trust it.
[00:21:21] So you have to ask yourself, like, what are you going to do with 63 percent of your audience? Do you want to assume that they’re not going to trust you? So that’s, that’s my take on generative AI. Now there’s a whole other thing going on with AI and search. And that I think is far more interesting for marketers to be thinking about and contemplating.
[00:21:40] And that’s this idea that when you search something, AI overviews will try to give you a answer to what you’re looking for, which goes back to that whole semantic issue of like, how do I, where do I, when do I, that people usually think about. Now, the problem with the AI overviews is that they usually take three sources and blend them together.
[00:22:03] But every translation is an interpretation. So you have no human being with any editorial oversight looking at this to make sure that it’s appropriate and good and factually correct. So that leads us into a real problem. This information is a real problem, particularly in health right now. You know, you and I are sitting here a day after an election where, you know, it looks like Trump is gonna, you know, ask RFK to take some important health position.
[00:22:35] Which is, you know, whatever you want to think about that, you can think about that. But this is a man who has very clearly said that he thinks vaccines are dangerous and harmful. And there’s evidence based medicine and science that says that that is actually not true. So you’re getting into these really complex ethical questions about using machines to explain things to people when there are nuances involved in that subject matter.
[00:23:02] We also know that AI is created with bias. It’s programmed with bias. So then how do you deal with that element of it? And it can be biased in many different ways, right? Like it, I think it said Hitler was a good guy at one point. It also, when people were asked, like, um, Taylor Swift has a line in one of her songs about, you know, she wants to jump off of high places.
[00:23:24] Harry Styles did a number on her. And um, if you looked at like Google and you asked it, like, should I jump off the Golden Gate Bridge or like what bridge should I, I don’t remember the exact specifics, but it was like telling people to do, I mean, eat rocks. Right. It had like that. So that’s where I think, you know, when you ask Google about it and they’re like, yeah, we know it’s going to make mistakes.
[00:23:46] We’re training it. And it’s like, okay, that’s a pretty big gamble, but you know, so anyway, so those are the things that I think that marketers should be thinking about. They should be thinking about what that means for their content and how they need to write their content so that they get captured in those AI overviews and that their content is a hundred percent factually correct so that they can trust it when it shows up there.
[00:24:07] Andreea: Yeah, you covered a lot with, with everything, like the entire journey. In a lot of ways, I’m wondering, when you talked about that 63 percent that doesn’t trust AI, do you feel like that’s because of, of, because of all these jokes and memes about all the, you know, generative search responses coming out? Is it older from back, like when Watson first came about and that was being used in healthcare and there was resistance, or do you just kind of feel like it just, This bot, you know, everything’s the Terminator and everything’s gonna kill us, and so I can’t trust anything.
[00:24:39] Right,
[00:24:39] Ahava Leibtag: so first of all, that is a recent stat, and actually I can open it up for you and find it. I know exactly where it is, but I also think that the reason that people don’t necessarily trust it is because they don’t understand what it is and how it gets created. So it feels like a black box. And so when things feel like a black box to people, particularly in health care, if there’s nobody to explain it to them so that they really understand how it works.
[00:25:07] Why would they trust it? I totally get that. And so from my perspective, I think that that’s probably part of what it is. Um, okay, here it is. It’s from Hootsuite social trends, 2024 consumer survey, 62%. Sorry, I got that wrong. 62 percent of consumers say they are less likely to engage with and trust content if they know it was created by an AI application.
[00:25:32] And then a I use in health care marketing. Um, you know that that becomes then the question of trust. And how do we make sure that people really trust our content?
[00:25:42] Andreea: Well, because trust becomes the big thing. That’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time with content. It’s like, you have to build content that builds that trust without the person to person, without having a trusted resource to go to.
[00:25:53] So, obviously, like, if I feel like AI just means it’s making stuff up, it’s telling me to jump off a bridge or eat rocks or all these other things, then I certainly am not going to trust it with understanding how my colonoscopy works or how this new drug or diagnosis works. Which
[00:26:09] Ahava Leibtag: is actually kind of ironic because if you ask it how your colonoscopy works, it could probably answer that really, really well.
[00:26:15] My human writers have written that a thousand times. They don’t want to write that kind of content anymore. What they want to write about is why the colonoscopy is so important, right? So using it for persuasive, important healthcare education, I think, is really where it’s at. But people still don’t want to read that, I think, because Again, interactions happen from human to human.
[00:26:36] And so the idea of a machine informing you about something that’s happening with your health, which is the most important thing to people, uh, I think is, is scary to them. I’d like to point out Skynet became aware in 2029.
[00:26:54] Andreea: So we have that on the, on the timeline to look forward to. So people have
[00:26:58] Ahava Leibtag: seen those movies and they scare them, you know, like, Hello? Like, why are we? Why are we letting this happen? And yet we can’t progress as a society. I think if we don’t have more technology to crunch big data, to help streamline things, like I think the hope of AI is, is very powerful.
[00:27:17] Chat GPT was released. I think it wasn’t really ready for prime time. I think that the open AI and Sam Altman and all that stuff. Sort of clouds, what’s really happening back that Google was afraid of their first AI product and pulled it down. You know, you hear about stuff like that and you’re like, like, are we really in a terminator scenario?
[00:27:37] But the more and more I use it, the more and more, I just feel like my COO, Kim has a great line. She says the future is a lot farther away than you think.
[00:27:44] Andreea: Yeah, I feel like I’ve heard something similar where it’s just like certain things. Innovations happen faster than you think, but like getting to that final product actually takes longer than you think.
[00:27:57] Ahava Leibtag: Right. And also innovations happen faster than you may think, but adoption of innovation takes time. Especially in health care, like think about a surgeon learning a new technique. You know, you got to practice a lot of times before you feel comfortable cutting into a human body with a different way than you’ve ever done it before.
[00:28:12] And so that’s true, I think, for marketing. And I think it’s true for a lot of industries. You know, we We We chase a bright and shiny object, but then when we start using it, we may think to ourselves, like, is this really the answer to the problems that I have? I once had a hospital, a woman who was in charge of digital at her hospital, say something really brilliant.
[00:28:31] She said, my bosses want us to use generative AI to create content. And we have found that it’s terrible. What I really need AI to do is tell me where all the broken links on my website are, and then go in and fix them. And that’s what I think is like, so classic about so many of these tools. Nobody asked people what they really need.
[00:28:49] They just went and created something they wanted to create. And, you know, that’s. That’s fine and dandy. I mean, I do think they’ve changed the world and certainly a certain corner of it, but there are so many other things that marketers and communicators need. And so all this focus on AI frustrates me a little bit because it takes us away from what the fundamentals should be and what’s really important about what we do.
[00:29:12] And so that that’s where I would like to say to people, everything you use as a tool, use it wisely.
[00:29:18] Andreea: Yeah, the, the AI being the shiny object. I mean, that’s been a consistent problem even before AI, you as you know, running an agency, the shiny object has always been a challenge with anyone you’re working with.
[00:29:29] And this is absolutely the shiniest object right now. But taking it a step back, like using AI Not to write content, but to actually empower you to know better about how things are performing, what’s working, what isn’t working. Um, it sounds like that is actually probably a better use of everyone’s time.
[00:29:50] Ahava Leibtag: Well, actually, you know, so in training, I have about what was amazing was that when I fed her every newsletter that I had written for, you know, six months, she was able to come back. She, she was able to come back and tell me exactly what made my voice so distinctive. Like her analysis was spot on. But then she couldn’t then replicate what I do.
[00:30:13] And so what I think that it’s exactly what you just said, like, so when I have analysis issues, I feed it to her because she not a have about, but Chachi Petit in general, because I feel like it does a great job of analysis. I’ll tell you a great place. We’ve used it. If you’re an agency owner, you’re going to love this when we fill out RFPs.
[00:30:33] We feed the original RFP in and then we feed our RFP in and we’re like, where did we miss? What didn’t we fill out enough? What could we talk more about? So. You know, I think when you do things like that and you think about how it can really help you be more productive at work and save time for you, one of the places that I would absolutely go to it for his analysis.
[00:30:54] Now, again, sometimes it comes back and I’m like, what, but, um, you know, it can be very, very helpful. And then it also gets you to think in ways that you might not have thought before. One of the things that I really think about. It’s a kind of like a wingman. And I think that sometimes like when you’re brainstorming with your colleagues, somebody says something and you’re like, that’s a terrible idea.
[00:31:13] Well, you don’t say that you think it in your head, but then that terrible idea might actually lead to a really good idea. Sometimes misdirection is helpful. And so sometimes I’ll ask it for ideas and I’m like, you, this is bad, but now I’ve got a great idea. And so I think that that’s also a really, you know, it’s like any teammate.
[00:31:32] Sometimes you’re going to get something great. Sometimes you’re going to get something mediocre mid, as my kids would say. And sometimes you’re going to get something absolutely terrible, but that terrible thing might not be a waste of time.
[00:31:42] Andreea: I like, I like the wingman concept. I I’ve been thinking a lot of AI, generative AI as, as my assistant, like something that I can toss things over and get things back.
[00:31:51] Um, there was one other thing that you mentioned earlier on, uh, about your neighbor, not wanting to talk about their IBS because of, uh, feeling shame and discomfort. One other place that I’ve seen AI getting more incorporated is feeling like a safe place to talk about things that I don’t want to talk to other humans about because I’m embarrassed.
[00:32:13] Have you explored that at all and what do you think?
[00:32:15] Ahava Leibtag: So I’ve, so the way that I’ve explored it is I followed very carefully a lot of these studies that like the VA has done with like vets or like the voice analyzer to figure out where people are in stress and those kinds of things. Again, if there’s human oversight, I feel really comfortable with it.
[00:32:33] But I struggle with the idea that people are actually talking to a bot to get advice about what to do. That’s weird. You know what I mean? Like, are we really that lonely of a society? You know what? I’ll tell you, I’ll give you a great example. On Reddit. You can go on Reddit. And you can say like, like there’s been so people magazine has like, it started to become obsessed with Reddit because like, I see these things in my feet about how like woman asks people, if she’s overreacting to what happened at her wedding.
[00:33:02] And it’s great. Like people should be engaging with each other. If they get embarrassed, like, okay, there’s, there are places to go where you can talk about this stuff. But I don’t know, from a mental health management perspective. It could be, I’m 49 years old, so it could just be that like, I can’t, you know, I can’t handle it for that, you know what I mean?
[00:33:23] But I don’t know, I just, I just don’t feel, I feel like I’m very open and very flexible about it and very open minded about its uses, but the idea of it being used to mentally, to manage other people’s behavioral health is concerning to me, without some sort of human oversight as a part of it.
[00:33:41] Andreea: Yeah, I could see that it and I kind of like that you’re pulling out like, is that how lonely we’re getting like, maybe this is something we should be pushing away from because we need to move away from this like loneliness epidemic that we’re slowly getting ourselves into.
[00:33:55] Ahava Leibtag: Yeah, I think the horse is out of the barn on that one so I don’t think that we can pull away from it but I think that we can. What I do think is very fascinating is I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but like Google released a commercial during the Olympics. Yeah. About how this father had AI write a letter to his daughter’s favorite athlete and they had to pull the ad down because like people made such fun of them.
[00:34:17] And then Apple also, like somebody said, um, Apple’s changed their logo from their tagline from think different to stop thinking.
[00:34:28] And you know, it’s these tech companies think like, Oh, let’s put AI in all of our products. So people will think that we’re cool. And people are coming back and saying, Like that head of digital strategy said, that’s not what I really wanted. That’s not what I really need. You know what I need? I need to like, when I put something in Google maps, like, why can’t it figure out where I am?
[00:34:47] Like, let’s get the basics here. Do you know what I mean? Why like, you know, those are the things that I think that, you know, people really want things that are going to make their lives easier, like, You know, it’s so funny to me how like it’ll say that certain things are available and things like Yelp and things like and then you go and it’s like not what you really needed it to be.
[00:35:06] So I think we’re a little far away from using it from for everything. Um, but do I think it could fix certain problems? Absolutely. If it makes people feel less lonely, I think that’s good. I think what it becomes, what becomes terrifying is what if it starts to go off the rails and hallucinating and it tells you like, pick up a gun and go kill everybody.
[00:35:23] Like that’s not going to be helpful. Now a person could tell you to do that also, but hopefully that’s less, you know, both are very unlikely scenarios, but they are things that we have to consider.
[00:35:35] Andreea: Yeah, it feels like pulling it back to almost what your core philosophy was, that content is, should be about how do you connect with people and really understand their needs and speak to that.
[00:35:46] It’s like technology should also be looking at everything they do from that same context. It’s like, how do I add value to your life with what I’m creating? Right,
[00:35:54] Ahava Leibtag: so I define content as a conversation. So that’s exactly what you’re saying. So it’s, it’s a conversation that you’re having in a networked marketplace.
[00:36:02] And which means that everyone can see the conversation and everyone can have the same conversation and, you know, people who need the same kinds of information can eavesdrop on the conversation and find out what they need to know. But ultimately it is exactly that. It’s an exchange of ideas and information.
[00:36:18] And when marketers are smart about content marketing, they’re thinking about building relationships with their audiences, not just getting them to buy their products or services.
[00:36:28] Andreea: Do you feel like when you’re looking at content, especially like if you’re hired to just do one thing, but it is more of that relationship, how do you, how do you piece together what content you need to build that relationship and how many pieces and, and how does that all look without overcomplicating things?
[00:36:44] Ahava Leibtag: Right. So I have a business of 60 people. So I unfortunately don’t do a lot of that work anymore, but I will tell you about the content strategy. I mean, I think it depends. So, so. What you’re talking about is really a business question. What are we really trying to accomplish? So Joe Polizzi, I was once at a conference and they asked him, what’s the most important thing a content marketer can do, and he said, figure out how your company makes money.
[00:37:08] And so you might be in a not for profit, you still need revenue, or you might work for the government. You still have, you know, standards. You have to reach to whatever Congress said you have to do, or, you know, what your boss tells you you have to do. So everybody has business objectives and goals that they need to meet.
[00:37:22] And so before we even look at like, how many pieces of content do we need to create and how do we build that relationship, what we’re trying to figure out is what’s the business problem we’re trying to solve, because really great content strategy is an overlap. It’s a Venn diagram of two things. Helping users accomplish their tasks and helping businesses accomplish their goals.
[00:37:40] So it’s not a great conversation. If you’re not doing both of those things at the same time. Now, sometimes you are just helping users accomplish their tasks. And sometimes you are just helping the business get to its goals, but the magic happens when those two things happen together, people don’t visit websites because they They want to learn more about revenue, patient management cycle, figure out if this is the right product for them.
[00:38:03] So if they’re trying to figure that out, then how are we going to have a conversation that helps them get there as quickly as they want? And so that’s really where that, what you’re talking about, about the building trust and that kind of thing. And then there’s a lot of different channels that you can use, you know, LinkedIn, educating people about things that are going on.
[00:38:20] Email marketing is huge. Having your own own list is I think the most important thing a marketer can have right now. So those are all the different ways that we think about it. But I think really just like stepping back and just, what is the business objective we’re trying to solve for? Because if we don’t answer that question first.
[00:38:40] The rest of it just doesn’t really matter. It’s just creating, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. I actually was once in a meeting. Um, this was for a financial services company. It was before we, um, just focus solely on healthcare. Cause I tried a few other industries and I was like, this is really what I’m passionate about.
[00:38:58] So this is what we’re going to do. So I, I, um, we were in the meeting and we were talking about creating blogs on saving money for weddings and saving money for a baby. And then I was like, okay, so what is the call to action? Like which financial services products can we lead them to? So that, you know, savings accounts, whatever it was, you know, and they were like, well, from a regulatory and compliance perspective, we can’t put that into the blogs because, you know, you’re not allowed to do that.
[00:39:26] So I was like, so why are we writing these blogs again? And they’re like, well, I have to just, I, he goes, I need a proof of concept to show content marketing works. And I’m like, yeah, sure. Dude, you’re not allowed to use. Why are you talking? You’re not allowed to do that for this kind of thing. So let’s, what are we really trying to solve for?
[00:39:45] And you know, what we were trying to solve for why he has a job, not how to help people save. How to get people to use this financial services place to park their money so that they can save for a wedding or a baby. And that was, I think, that story, I tell that story a lot because I think it’s really, um, illustrative of what happens in modern business 90 percent of the time.
[00:40:10] So that, that’s really the question you always have to ask for. It’s like, what business problem are we trying to solve for?
[00:40:16] Andreea: Content is so trendy and everybody’s like, Oh, we just need content. We need more content. And now we can make so much content and it’s so easy and everything should be content, content, content.
[00:40:25] But, but actually stepping back to think about how, what is, what’s the purpose for the business? How does it affect the business? What do we do? Have you any, considering you also played in other spaces and content, did you find anything unique that you would advise our listeners specifically looking at healthcare content, moving from other industries into healthcare content?
[00:40:45] Ahava Leibtag: Yes. So first of all, regulation is very important in healthcare, so you better know it backwards and forwards or have somebody who understands it and is able to help you with that. Always have an interview with compliance first, make friends with them first. They’re the most important people in the room and don’t you forget it.
[00:41:01] Um, the second thing that I would say is that unfortunately healthcare is very often propelled by the subject matters of healthcare, not the subject matters of marketing. for listening. So in consumer product goods, the guy who designed the bottle that the foundation goes in doesn’t tell the marketer how to market the bottle in health care, the doctor or the physician executive, or, you know, tells them how to market it.
[00:41:31] And so that that becomes very complex because. You know, or like the software engineer who created the software, it’s like, you kind of have to have really, um, what I like to call clarifying conversations with clients around you practice evidence based medicine. We practice evidence based marketing. Let me walk you through our choices and show you why we made the choices that we made.
[00:41:56] And very often people are very, you know, easy to work with once you explain it to them. But I always tell people doctors cut into other people’s bodies. Do you know how you kind of have to think you’re a god in order to do that? Like, imagine doing that to somebody. Like, like, I can barely like file my own nails, you know?
[00:42:16] So that’s where it’s really important to think about knowing your stuff so that when you’re talking to these people, you really can stand your ground and do a great job. And then the third thing that I would say about healthcare is that it’s very, very vast. And it has a lot of different corners. Um, that if you want to be a specialist in it, you kind of have to get to know in order to be, to be good.
[00:42:46] And so one of the things we always tell clients is like, we have writers who have written about, you know, the donut hole and PBMs and supraventricular tachycardia. And I think that the more special, you know, they say the riches are in the niches. I think the more specialized you can get at the different parts of healthcare, uh, the better it is.
[00:43:02] Um, you know, we, we think that we can do really great.
[00:43:11] Um, and so that’s what I would say it’s, it’s a very vast industry and it really, you know, if you’re a medical device writer and you know how to write about medical device and med tech and that kind of thing, you’re going to stand out from a writer who writes about like consumer health and that kind of thing.
[00:43:26] It’s just the way that it goes.
[00:43:28] Andreea: That’s an absolutely keen balance I found because when I was working in diagnostics and medical device, it’s not the doctor that we had to listen to, but it was the inventors of the product and the science team who were like, no, but you have to talk about this feature.
[00:43:41] And I’m like, nobody cares about that feature. I know you’re excited that you made it, but like. It doesn’t get to the, it doesn’t matter to the results. I want the results.
[00:43:50] Ahava Leibtag: So the person who cares about it is at the pitch meeting. See, this is where people get it wrong. The people who are doing the research on that thing are not the people who care about that.
[00:44:00] What they’re looking at is the business thing that this medical medical device is going to bring, you know, faster operating turnaround times, you know, better labor usage, you know, easier supply chain management, whatever it is. So those are the people that are looking at that stuff. stuff. But then when you come into the meeting, there are going to be people in the room who are going to say, how do you do that?
[00:44:20] How, like, tell me how you do that. And that’s where you need the engineers. That’s where you need to be able to explain that. And the whole conversation is wrapped around. So in most places, they put that kind of content on the website. The person doing the research doesn’t understand it. And then in the, in the pitch room, the salespeople don’t know how to explain it either.
[00:44:40] And so now nobody’s happy. So that’s where it all comes back to what we talked about at the beginning, which is really understanding your audience and where they are in the cycle of buying. I will say a fourth thing about healthcare that I think is an interesting thing is that everyone ignores the salespeople and the salespeople always know the most.
[00:44:56] So if you haven’t talked to your salespeople lately, those are the people you should be talking to because they’ll tell you what your audience really wants. And those are where the best ideas come from, in my opinion.
[00:45:07] Andreea: I just had an interview with Kelly Fidler and she was saying the same thing that that her core audience is the sales team because they’re the ones that have to go and repeat what you’ve written in the marketing.
[00:45:16] So of course it matters that they understand it and they know how to use it and you understand how they have to use it. 100%, 100%. So given the state of content today and obviously where technology is going, where do you see the future of content marketing in healthcare?
[00:45:34] Is that a tough question? Besides the
[00:45:38] Ahava Leibtag: Terminator crystal ball here, I know,
[00:45:41] Andreea: um, besides the Terminator coming up in 2029, um, , where are we headed?
[00:45:47] Ahava Leibtag: I actually think that it’s gonna be, um, it, the path, the path will be paved by what happens inside of healthcare. Healthcare itself is changing rapidly and changing.
[00:45:58] Um, there the pressures on healthcare providers are really starting to crumple at the system. Um, you know, you have reduced labor shortages. Doctors are bowing out of the system. You have, um, you know, increased, uh, payer complicated cost structures. The government is starting to be like, what is happening here?
[00:46:18] Um, then you have, you know, the cost of prescription drugs and the math. And when I said prescription drugs, I’m not talking about like the antibiotic you go to get at CVS. I’m talking about like the things that they pump through Patients with cancer, you know, complex drugs, supply shortages across the globe.
[00:46:36] Um, so I don’t think that we know until we know what happens in healthcare. And then once we know what’s really happening in healthcare, we can adapt. Here’s, here’s a perfect example, but it seems so simple when our labor shortages, our clients come to us and say, can you write employee feel good stories so that the people who are looking to get a job here feel like this is a great place to work.
[00:46:59] There you go. That’s the business problem that they need to solve for, and that’s how content is going to help them do it. And so I don’t think the future is about what the future of content is. I think it’s about what the future of the healthcare industry is.
[00:47:14] Andreea: Yeah, I could see that. That, that’s so powerful.
[00:47:18] And it’s so interesting how your role changes based on what they need and where they’re having the shortages. Well, one
[00:47:24] Ahava Leibtag: of the things I always talk about a lot is, um, Darwin said it’s not the strongest of the species that survives or the one that’s most, um, intelligent. It’s the one that’s most adaptable to change.
[00:47:38] And so, you know, I always say like one of the things I love about my job is that I’m going to run a different company tomorrow than the company I ran today. And that’s true in healthcare also. It’s always changing. You know, the, the, the, the patients change, the doctors change, the science changes, the technology changes, the regulations change.
[00:47:57] So the market around it changes. So, you know, you gotta be ready for the next thing that gets lobbed at you. And again, I think going back to the basics of fundamentally serving the people’s needs and serving the business needs are the way that you do content. Well,
[00:48:10] Andreea: do you feel like. As a healthcare professional or a professional in the healthcare space, which would also include you and me and, and others, but do you feel like there’s a responsibility to put out more and more and more truthful content that is digestible and understandable, or do you feel like everyone still just needs to focus on what their immediate job or focus is?
[00:48:35] Ahava Leibtag: Oh, that’s a good question. Yeah. Um, Both maybe, you know, I think if you’re getting paid by a company, it’s your responsibility to do what they ask you to do. Like that’s just integrity. Um, but if you yourself feel like this is something that you really care about and you want to do, I mean, I find a way to do both.
[00:48:53] I believe in it and it’s my job, but, um, I don’t know that more content is better content. I think smart content is the way to go. Really understand the audience, how they talk, how they listen, what they think about, what they care about is going to make the difference. There’s a lot to be said for putting out really good information, but if it’s not with the audience in mind, then they’re not going to pay any attention to it.
[00:49:18] Again, I need AI to fix all the backlinks, you know, the broken links on my site. So, you know, you kind of have to news Jack and catch a wave of when a health care When something coming up in health care is important, um, you know, I remember when they were arguing about abortion during the debate and they were talking about like after birth abortions.
[00:49:40] You know, things like that are so emotionally charged. I mean, it’s just like doctors exist to help people to think that it’s just, it’s like so insulting to a doctor to say that to them. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, it just, and then you look at all the rhetoric around it. And so, yeah, there should be people out there being like, let me tell you about after birth about.
[00:50:02] It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. So things like that make me really, really angry, but I don’t know how you change people’s minds without changing their hearts first. And I think that that requires a level of openness to difficult conversations that in this country, we seem to have shut down.
[00:50:23] And so we’ve got to get there first before you can change their minds.
[00:50:27] Andreea: And I can see how that’s very frustrating for doctors and, and why a lot of them are leaving because why, why, why stay? And they’re not leaving because
[00:50:36] Ahava Leibtag: of that reason. They’re leaving because the paperwork that they have to do and the constant interaction they’re being asked to have with patients is challenging.
[00:50:43] It’s not the missing. I don’t think it’s the misinformation part. They’ve had that their whole lives. You know, people would walk old wives tales. I mean, that’s literally what saying vaccines don’t work is. It’s, it’s, it’s not an old wife tale. It’s a new wife tale or whatever. You know what I mean? But, um, you know, I’ve said things to doctors and they’ve been like, the research doesn’t really show that.
[00:51:04] And I’ve said, well, the research doesn’t show that, but that’s the experience that I’m having. And so I’m going to push back on you and say, like, is it possible for us to have a conversation where we say the research doesn’t have that doesn’t show that, but this is what’s happening to me. And it’s really interesting when you say that to a doctor, I’ve been doing this for 20 years.
[00:51:25] I’ve had a chronic condition since. It’s 2007. I have the ability to do that with a doctor. How many people really do though? So that that’s meeting my second career. That’s what I should do. I should just like wait outside of a doctor’s office and then go in with the patient and be like, okay, let me explain to you what this person.
[00:51:48] Andreea: You’re the new patient advocate. A lot of, a lot of people I think need that. I, I, especially younger. I feel like once you kind of hit your forties, you, you found your voice and you’re, you’re willing to fight for what you know is right. Health wise is right, but I can tell you for a fact, like younger when I, especially when I was younger, I was like, Oh, okay.
[00:52:06] So, so I’m, I don’t think that’s right, but, but you said it is, and you’re the doctor, you’re the authority. So I’m going to, and I,
[00:52:11] Ahava Leibtag: and doctors do not have a problem with you pushing back on them. As long as you do it in a respectful way, which is any professional ever. I mean, yeah, you might meet the odd cranky, like don’t, you know.
[00:52:21] Don’t question my authority, but that person is not really practicing medicine
[00:52:25] Andreea: anymore. They’ve retired. Thank you so much again for joining us for everyone listening. This was Ahava Liebtag, who is the CEO of AHA Media Group. Where can they learn more about you or about
[00:52:35] Ahava Leibtag: AHA? Sure. So you can learn more about us at ahamediagroup.
[00:52:39] com and you can learn about me on LinkedIn. And um, you can always email me at ahava at ahamediagroup. com. I’m always happy to answer questions. Very cool. All right. Thanks. Take care. Bye.
[00:52:52] Andreea: On this podcast, we talk to professionals in the medical marketing space from content creators to healthcare executives, shaping patient experiences.
[00:53:01] There’s something to learn in every episode. So I like to end with my key takeaways. In my conversation with Ahava Liebtag, a few things really stood out to me. First, clarity as a competitive advantage. Ahava really emphasized how plain, jargon free communication is so essential in healthcare marketing.
[00:53:22] She shared that 80 percent of healthcare executives prefer clear and straightforward content. It’s not about oversimplifying, but really more about respecting your audience’s knowledge while removing unnecessary complexity. This isn’t just about being understood, it’s about building trust, which is crucial when you’re dealing with healthcare decisions.
[00:53:44] Second, tailoring content to the audience’s journey. One thing I hadn’t considered as deeply before is how much the audience’s level of knowledge shapes the kind of content they need. For example, patients who are newly diagnosed require empathetic, introductory information. In contrast, someone researching a specialized treatment might need more technical, In depth resources.
[00:54:08] This balance between educating novices and engaging experts is what makes healthcare content so unique and so challenging. And that’s why it’s so important to map out your audience’s journey with every marketing initiative you do. Finally, generative AI’s place in healthcare content. Ahava shared her team’s experience testing AI tools, and while they found it useful for brainstorming and outlining, AI fell short on delivering empathetic, nuanced content, particularly in healthcare where trust is everything.
[00:54:40] 62 percent of consumers said they’re less likely to engage with content created by AI. It was a reminder that while AI can be a helpful assistant, it’s no substitute yet for the human touch, where empathy and trust are on the line. These were my top takeaways. Ahava’s perspective on blending clarity, empathy, and strategy in healthcare content left me thinking about how we can continue to build trust in this evolving space.
[00:55:07] What stood out to you? Want to learn a little bit more about personas and how that fits into the buying processes in healthcare marketing? Well, you’re going to love our next episode where we talk to Rhonda Blaschke, where we dig into her understanding of personas, how she’s communicating value, and navigating that complex buying process that’s typical in healthcare marketing.
[00:55:25] Well, that’s the end of our episode for today. If you work in a regulated field like medical, legal, or finance, and want to share your own marketing insights, email us at podcast at diacreative. com. And if you’re looking for marketing support, well, that’s exactly what we do. Visit diacreative. com, D I A Creative.
[00:55:44] com any other info you might need will be in the show notes, including all links mentioned in this episode. Thanks for listening.
