Ignite: Healthcare Marketing Podcast

Healthcare marketers often know what needs to change. Getting the organization to act on it is the hard part. In episode three of The Strategists' Corner, host Rich Briddock sits down again with Ben Dutter, Chief Strategy Officer at Power Digital, to explore why the biggest barrier to better marketing isn't strategy. It's organizational change. Together, they unpack what actually drives resistance...

Your Meta targeting isn't reaching who you think it is, and your creative is why. On this episode of Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast, Cardinal President Lauren Leone sits down with Group Media Director Brandon Wilhelm to break down why creative is now the most important media decision you make. As AI-driven platforms like Meta and Google take over audience selection, the concepts and assets yo...

AI won't save a weak creative strategy, it will just produce more of it, faster. Cardinal's President Lauren Leone sits down with Sr. Creative Director Jean Zhang on the Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast to break down what it actually takes to make AI work in healthcare marketing. From Meta's Andromeda update to real production tests comparing AI video against traditional shoots, this conversati...

Most behavioral health marketers are talking to patients in a language patients don't speak, and it's costing them admissions. On Ignite, host Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing, sits down with Jennifer Munoz-Callahan, VP of Digital Performance at Promises Behavioral Health, to explore how behavioral science can transform the way healthcare organizations connect with patients. Dr...

Healthcare marketers are making major budget decisions based on attribution models that often tell an incomplete story. In episode two of The Strategists' Corner, host Rich Briddock sits back down with Ben Dutter, Chief Strategy Officer at Power Digital Marketing, to tackle the measurement problem hiding inside most healthcare marketing organizations. They introduce a practical framework that reor...

By the time a patient searches for urgent care, the marketing battle is already half over. On the Ignite Healthcare Marketing podcast, host Ashley Petrochenko, VP of Brand Marketing at Cardinal, sits down with Miriam Rose Lee, CMO of MainStreet Family Care, to unpack how urgent care brands win patient trust long before the search happens. Miriam shares the brand-building, local search, and reputat...

Perfect measurement is the goal. But it's rarely the reality. In this episode of Ignite, Cardinal's President Lauren Leone sits down with Scott Cameron, Group Media Director at Cardinal, to get practical about one of healthcare marketing's most common and least talked about challenges—running campaigns when your data is incomplete, inconsistent, or still a work in progress. From call tracking and...

Growing a DSO to 100+ locations usually means trading local soul for corporate efficiency. It doesn't have to. In this episode of Ignite, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing sits down with Britney Long, EVP of Marketing at GPS Dental to break down how her team built the marketing infrastructure behind more than 100 dental practices while still keeping every brand local and patient...

Your marketing strategy is only as strong as the team executing it. Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing Ashley Petrochenko sits down on the Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast with Kelly Perritt, Chief Marketing and Brand Strategy Officer at Horry Georgetown Technical College and a 20-year healthcare marketing veteran. Kelly shares the leadership principles she's used to build high-performing teams a...

If your patient acquisition strategy depends too heavily on paid media, this episode explains why brand trust is now the real growth lever. On this episode of Ignite, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing, sits down with Courtney Taylor, Senior Director of Brand Marketing at PDS Health, to discuss how one of the nation's largest healthcare organizations is using brand strategy to st...

Healthcare marketers are stuck chasing the same patients while retail brands are building demand at scale. In the first episode of The Strategists' Corner, a new series on the Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast, host Rich Briddock, Cardinal's Chief Strategy Officer, sits down with Ben Dutter, Chief Strategy Officer at Power Digital Marketing. Together, they break down what healthcare can learn fr...

Trust is no longer a brand message. It is the growth engine behind patient acquisition today. In this episode of Ignite, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing, sits down with Rachel Johnson, Marketing Director at Acorn Health, to break down how healthcare marketing is shifting toward consumer-led journeys where patients arrive informed, empowered, and already forming opinions before...

If your patient acquisition strategy depends on last-click performance, you're missing the system that actually drives demand. In this episode of Ignite, Lauren Leone, Cardinal's Chief Growth Officer, sits down with Lisa Fisher, Associate Media Director, Paid Social & Programmatic Lead, to break down why programmatic should be treated as always-on infrastructure, not a short-term campaign. They sh...

Healthcare marketing is entering a new phase where AI, data, and trust are redefining what actually drives patient acquisition. In this continuation of our 200th episode, we take the conversation further as Lauren Leone, Cardinal's Chief Growth Officer, sits down with our media, analytics, and creative experts who are in the trenches every day. They break down how AI, data, and platform shifts are...

Search alone is no longer enough to keep driving patient acquisition in healthcare today. In this special episode celebrating the 200th episode of Ignite, Lauren Leone, Cardinal's Chief Growth Officer, and Rich Briddock, Chief Strategy Officer, break down the biggest shifts changing how healthcare organizations drive growth today. From tougher attribution and rising media costs to full-funnel stra...

Most healthcare marketers trust the numbers inside ad platforms. The problem is those numbers often don't reflect what is actually driving new patients. In this episode of Ignite, Lauren Leone, Cardinal's CGO and Alex Kemp, Sr. Director of Analytics, break down some of the most common measurement traps healthcare marketers fall into. From blended CPA misconceptions to platform over-attribution, th...

Healthcare SEO is changing fast as AI reshapes how patients search and how answers appear in Google. In this episode of Ignite, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing sits down with John Vantine, SEO Director at GoodRx, who helped scale organic traffic from 4 million to 12 million monthly sessions. With more than 20 years of SEO experience, John explains how the rise of AI search and...

If you are treating programmatic like paid search, you are likely measuring it wrong and leaving growth on the table. In this episode, Evan, Cardinal's VP of Paid Media, and Lisa Fisher, Cardinal's Associate Media Director specializing in programmatic, break down what healthcare marketers actually need to understand about programmatic today. They unpack when it works, when it does not, and how to...

If your healthcare brand still treats influencer marketing like a one-off promotion, you are missing the real opportunity. In this episode, Ashley Petrochenko Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing sits down with Ella McMahan, Director of Brand Marketing at Spring Fertility, to unpack what it actually takes to build an influencer program in a highly sensitive, high-consideration healthcare space. With s...

AI tools are changing how patients search, but most healthcare brands are missing the real opportunity. In this episode, Caroline Adamek, Senior SEO Data Manager at BetterHelp, joins Ashley Petrochenko Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing to break down what AI visibility actually requires and why strong SEO foundations matter more than ever. They unpack how patient search behavior is shifting across s...

Referrals are no longer enough to secure patient volume, and healthcare marketers who ignore local trust signals are losing patients before the first appointment is ever booked. In this episode, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing talks with Ashley Pollard, Practice Marketing Manager at United Digestive, a multi location, PE backed gastroenterology platform. With more than a decad...

AI search is no longer experimental and it is already shaping how patients choose providers. On this episode of Ignite, Lauren Leone Cardinal's CGO is joined by Rob Sauter, Cardinal's SVP of Earned and Owned, to break down what the State of AI Search 2026 really means for healthcare marketers. He explains how platforms like ChatGPT and Google AI are influencing patient research earlier in the jour...

Healthcare marketing is entering a new phase: one where patient journeys are more complex, measurement expectations are higher, and confidence in growth depends on more than last-click reporting. In this episode of the Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast, Cardinal Digital Marketing Founder, Alex Membrillo, and Power Digital CEO, Jeff Mason, unpack how patient acquisition has fundamentally changed,...

In this conversation, Rachelle Kuebler-Weber, Chief Marketing Officer at AEG Vision, and Allison Lancaster, Associate Vice President of Marketing at AEG Vision, break down how a 500+ location healthcare organization rebuilt marketing to directly support capacity, profitability, and patient access. They share how AEG Vision moved from fragmented brand marketing to a unified, operationally aligned g...

Scaling healthcare brands shouldn't mean sacrificing local trust, but for many growing systems, that's exactly what happens. On this episode of Ignite, Ashley Petrochenko, Cardinal's VP of Brand Marketing, sits down with Kim Craven, Director of Field Marketing at Ethos Veterinary Health, to unpack how multi-location healthcare organizations can scale sustainably without losing the local relevance...