Measure What Matters, Then Make It Human With David Sanchez

A frontline nurse turned founder changes how we think about “marketing” by treating it like care extended. David Sanchez, RN, shares how clinical empathy, clear language, and the right tools help healthcare organizations and educators reach the people who need them most. We unpack the journey from ER shifts to launching a recovery program and a patient-first agency, then translate that experience into steps any small team can take to grow with integrity.

We go deep on foundations that matter: setting up GA4 and Google Tag Manager so every call, form, and booking is measured; reading customer journeys to see what actually drives action; and editing pages for conversion instead of chasing shiny redesigns. David explains how keyword research becomes education, not fluff: answer the exact questions people ask, reduce jargon, and publish helpful content that boosts dwell time and trust. We connect personas and funnels to message fit, showing how to speak to awareness, consideration, and decision without confusion.

You’ll leave with quick wins you can ship this week: a 16-minute usability test with a real ideal patient, one concise educational article that answers a top-searched question, and a clean, prominent call-to-action that reduces friction. If this conversation helps you rethink growth with empathy and evidence, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so others can find it too.

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Transcript

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Welcome & Guest Introduction

Jackie Pelegrin 0:01

Hello, and welcome to the Designing with Love Podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, instructional designers and educators. Welcome to episode 102 of the Designing with Love Podcast. I'm thrilled to have David Sanchez with me today. David is a registered ER nurse turned entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of Digitalis Medical, and the founder of Miracle Recovery. With extensive frontline experience in ER surgery and psychiatric care, he blends clinical empathy with ethical patient-first digital strategy to help healthcare organizations reach more patients. Welcome to this show, David.

David Sanchez 0:47

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Jackie Pelegrin 0:49

Yes, I'm so glad we got connected and I have an opportunity to really expand what my listeners learn and how they're able to grow their own businesses and learn from what you've done. So I think it's really wonderful to have you on the show.

David Sanchez 1:03

Great.

Jackie Pelegrin 1:04

Wonderful.

ER to Recovery Founder: The Pivot

Jackie Pelegrin 1:05

So first, your path from ER Nurse to Founder gives you such a rear view of patient needs and growth, which is so exciting and I love this part. So what sparked your shift into healthcare marketing and how did that shape Digitalis' medical mission?

David Sanchez 1:19

You know, it was kind of an interesting journey because I was working in the emergency department helping people. And every day, this would have been 2009, 2010. That was when uh bath salts and and spice and all these other synthetic drugs started really hitting the market where I live. Well, I was working in Phoenix first, and then I transitioned up to northern Arizona where I live in the Prescott area, and I was really surprised. I was seeing just as many overdoses and people that needed help with substance abuse, even in the small town where I live. It's a county of only 200,000. And so I really felt like I needed to do something to make a difference. People were asking for help to detox or they were overdosing, and and I was like, man, I need to, I really need to help these people. And and I'm a Christian. I go to church and I went and talked to my pastor. I said, I really feel like I I'm called to do something to make an impact in these people's lives. And to do something more than just being a nurse to give them a list of AA meetings. And so um he said, Well, let me talk to let me talk to the church council and see what we can do. And so uh the church got behind me and together we launched this uh this program, which was called Life Transformation Recovery. Eventually it shifted into miracle recovery. We rebranded, but we've now we've been saving lives since 2014, now impacting people and and helping men get free from substance abuse, from drugs and alcohol. And it was through that that I ended up getting into marketing, which is a crazy thing, but yeah, I didn't know it's the most competitive healthcare specialty. And so as I was trying to help people, they had to know more about us. So I got a team, an advertising marketing team together doing videography, working on social media, search engine optimization, Google and Facebook ads, and that's how people were finding us. And and I was working with an agency,

Building An Agency to Reach Patients

David Sanchez 3:20

but they just weren't doing a great job. And I I couldn't figure out what they were doing and how they were helping us, if at all. And eventually I said, you know what, we've got to do it ourselves. We I just gotta learn how to do it. We've got to figure it out. And it ended up being very effective. So um after what I learned, I ended up just saying, you know what, it makes more sense. Other other people, if it was this hard for me to find help with marketing and advertising, other people need this too. And so I ended up starting an agency, Digitalis, and and now we help other healthcare organizations get more patients and help them with a lot of different things, but it's basically everything that they need in order to drive new patients in, educate patients, and really to be more visible online.

Jackie Pelegrin 4:06

Wow, I love that. And it provides that holistic care that they need. Um, and it also helps the the business, the those different businesses, right? The healthcare businesses, to run more efficiently and to be able to be there on the front lines with the patients so they don't get bogged down with the everyday business and they can actually focus on patient outcomes, patient needs, right?

David Sanchez 4:29

Exactly.

Jackie Pelegrin 4:32

Yeah.

David Sanchez 4:32

Because most health healthcare companies uh that are kind of smaller to mid-size, they really don't have the budget to hire full-time marketing people. So it makes sense to hire an agency to help to fill all those gaps, meet those.

Jackie Pelegrin 4:44

Right. I love that. And that's what we do in instructional design. We look at what it where's the need, where's the gap, and how can we fulfill that? How can we make people's lives better? So in the helping professions, that's what it's about too. You're you're working to make people's lives better and help them, like in the case of addictions recovery, helping them to not only get through like a t 12-step program or AA or something like that, but you're helping them to also live a life that's fulfilling. And so they don't go back into um into that relapse. You want to help them sustain that long term.

David Sanchez 5:18

Yeah.

Jackie Pelegrin 5:18

Um, and I know about enough about counseling to know about relapse prevention and all of that. So, you know, you and I could we could definitely talk about all those things. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the psychiatric part of it and yeah, and all of that. So it's amazing. I love that. So I love how you found that need and you really looked at not just the healthcare part of it and patient care, but you looked at the whole the whole business approach. And that's holistic in nature and what you did. So uh you found a need and you um you said, how can we fulfill that and how can we make it better? Um, because you weren't you weren't getting your needs met as a business with a marketing agency. Yeah. And I I have a marketing background. So when I hear that today, it's just like, oh, that's that's kind of sad because I I was actually gonna go into market research and and go into marketing. Yeah. So when I hear that, it's just like it's a little bit of a bummer. It's like, yeah, I guess there's not enough help out there for businesses.

What Marketing Really Means in Healthcare

David Sanchez 6:14

Yeah, you know, it's alright, it is pretty sad because when you first say the word marketing or advertising, people think of like um like a used car salesman who's trying to rip people off automatically. Right people, that's what comes to mind. But really, marketing is just being able to make your voice heard or being able to speak in in the language of the people who need your help. That's really what it is.

Jackie Pelegrin 6:35

Right.

David Sanchez 6:35

Speaking directly to those people in a way to communicate how you can help them.

Jackie Pelegrin 6:39

Exactly. Right. Connecting, you know, what they need, yeah, to how you can how you can help them and making it um applicable to them and making the language clear and yeah, and some sometimes because sometimes medical terminology can be confusing at best. And so definitely.

David Sanchez 6:55

It's a whole other language.

Jackie Pelegrin 6:56

Exactly. Being able to make it clear and understandable for for those that need the care and they don't get bogged down in the terminology, I think is is so important. So making it clear and actionable, I think, is so so key for them. And right, um, yeah, and and especially nowadays, there's uh people's attention spans are shorter, right? So being able to grab their attention and show that it's value there's value added for them, I think is so important. Yeah, I love that. So let's connect the the clinical insight that you have with those practical choices that you've made with your business.

Clinical Insight Meets Channel Strategy

Jackie Pelegrin 7:30

How does your nursing background change how you research, write, and pick channels? Can you maybe share one quick example from a search to a booked visit, possibly?

David Sanchez 7:40

Yeah, well, a lot of it is just really understanding understanding people. Yeah, from being a nurse, I there were certain tools that I used, like certain softwares, uh, Medscape would be one of them that it would use for as a reference material if we're trying to understand a disease process or for typical um treatments for a certain certain disorder or what have you. And so um through that and then getting involved in advertising, I discovered that you can actually like let's say you're um let's say you're a pharmaceutical company or a medical device company that wants to target doctors. Well, unless you were a nurse, you wouldn't know that, or a doctor, you wouldn't know that that's actually a group of people. So you can target specifically people that only use that app on Google Ads or YouTube ads. Right. So just really having deep knowledge of an industry, it really helps you to know how to target people to be able to make them aware of a solution you provide to help them.

Jackie Pelegrin 8:41

Wow, that's great. And that can translate into the kind of work that uh, you know, that I do as an instructional designer, knowing your target audience, knowing what they need and how to meet them where they are and provide those. Uh so I think my listeners will really connect to that, and those that are in education too will connect to that really well and kind of hear, hear that, you know, that similarity and how having that ability to do that and know a segment of a population is so important, right? Yeah, exactly.

David Sanchez 9:11

Yeah, speaking of the thing. Yeah, there's yeah, it's not one size fits all, but understanding who they are, what tools they use, how they work, the language they speak, uh, the terms they use, all of those things really give you insight and you can use that to your advantage when you're trying to communicate to them.

Jackie Pelegrin 9:29

Right, absolutely. So whether it's marketing and advertising or it's creating educational materials and being able to uh create a pamphlet or a flyer to get to, you know, that that in a way is marketing and advertising too, because you're you're being able to market the services of the of the organization and you're also educating them at the same time. So it's dual, right? It's education and it's advertising and marketing all in one. So it's it's interesting when something like that, like a flyer or a pamphlet or a handout, can be they can serve multiple purposes in a company or in an organization as well.

David Sanchez 10:05

Yeah, yeah. Education is really a huge part of it. Uh, and we do something called keyword research in search

Audience Targeting & Education As SEO

David Sanchez 10:10

engine optimization or SEO, as they for short, as they call it. Uh so that's something that I mean, there's a lot of tools out there. Uh Google Google's uh search tool is is free and it's really easy to use. Answer the public is another one that's free that's super easy to use. And what you can do is is look on those tools and find out what terms related to a certain subject people are searching for the most. And then answer questions related to that term. Right. And as you do that, that's gonna make you a lot more visible online. So you can put that on your blog, you can make LinkedIn articles about that. So you're answering questions that people would uh they need to know the answers for that, and in that or even a YouTube channel for education, educational material, because knowing the questions people ask is half the battle. Because there's there's questions sometimes that they're not even sure that they need to ask or what terms they need to use are the correct terms, but educating them in that it really helps and puts them at at ease and helps them go a long way in what you're doing.

Jackie Pelegrin 11:13

Wow, that's amazing. I love that, David. You know, it kind of reminds me of when I was watching uh since we're both Christians, uh, you know, I don't know if you watched the the chosen series uh or not. But yeah, it's really neat because they just came out with the Bible roundtables for season five. And uh one of the things that uh Dallas Jenkins, who's the he's the one of the creators, well, he's actually the main creator of it, but he's also one of the writers and he's the director. So he has many hats that he wears. But this kind of relates to something where he was mentioning in episode one of the Bible roundtable where it was back in season two, but it they uh the the Bible app, they actually contacted him and they're like, hey, all of a sudden we have the spike in searching for Nathaniel, and they couldn't figure out why. All of a sudden, all these people were searching for Nathaniel in the Bible app. And so they they figured out it actually related to that one episode in season two where he called him, where he's like, you know, I saw you under the fig tree. And so they were trying, so people were trying to search for who was who's Nathaniel, who was he? And they were trying to find out more information. So it kind of relates to that, like right yeah, like there's a need, and then they noticed a spike and they were like, What's the correlation? And then they figured out it was, oh, because the that chosen episode was showing that we're gonna be able to do that. And that's what related to that. Yeah, so it kind of ties back to that, you know, uh that need that people have. And um, and you look for those patterns, right? And you look for for what people are searching for and what their their needs are. And then what they ended up doing after that is they built a whole entire series in the Bible app for the the chosen series so people could dig into it deeper and they have educational videos and everything. So that sparked a whole entire series of uh of Bible study. Um there. So it's really neat. And I was like, wow, it just reminded me of that where, you know, and I was like, yeah, you wouldn't have you wouldn't think that uh it would correlate to it, but then it makes sense, you know, if you have something where someone wants to learn more about something in the medical field and they're just not sure how to go about that. That's a great way to do that, just to kind of look at what's what's the common denominator in that that factor, right? That's yeah, that they need. And then you you build something around that or you you figure out how can I meet that need and how can I help them become more educated about that. And yeah, so it's pretty neat to have that. I love that example. That's great.

Keyword Research & Content Paths

David Sanchez 13:45

Too.

Jackie Pelegrin 13:45

Yeah, connecting into that. Great.

David Sanchez 13:47

Yeah, I like that.

Jackie Pelegrin 13:48

Yeah, that's wonderful. So many of my listeners, and you probably are familiar with this of being on tight budgets, it can be hard when you're running a business. So, uh, what are two to three key ROI moves that you think a uh clinic can make first, such as conditions-based local SEO or a Google profile business tune-up? And why do you think those are so important to make?

David Sanchez 14:47

Well, first of all, I would say measuring things correctly is is half the battle. So that way you know where your traffic is coming from on your website, how are people getting there, what are the pages that are converting the best. Those are those are all really important uh information. So just getting the analytics and reporting set up correctly. It doesn't take too long, just getting uh someone who knows how to install Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to your website is super helpful. So that's one of the biggest things. And as far as the KPIs go, um click-through rate from your from the pages um to your website is huge, and then also conversion rate is huge. You want to know that for each page. Like if your home page is not converting well, and the conversion rate, by the way, is is the percentage of people, like let's say if a hundred people come to your website and land on it, what percentage of those actually end up contacting you? Could be a phone call, it could be submitting a form, whatever your uh final goal is. For me, it would be like somebody scheduling a call with me. So that's that's critical. Those those are really important. Um click-through rate, conversion rate, and those would be for the specific pages that you want them to do. So if you like the contact page, the about us page, and the home page would be the most likely ones. Or if it's like an e-commerce website, let's say someone's buying a course, it'd be the course enrollment rate. Those would all be really valuable.

Jackie Pelegrin 16:12

Absolutely, right. Making sure that yeah, that people aren't just visiting and then leaving, but they're actually converting and and doing something in action, like you said, filling out a form or um, yeah, or taking that next step and and contacting through the through that channel somehow, whether it's a phone call or booking an appointment, right?

David Sanchez 16:31

Yeah, yeah. Also, if someone's um on your website and you're selling something to them, if it's e-commerce, like buying a course, the cart abandonment rate would be really important too. A percentage of people put something in their cart and then don't actually purchase. Right. There are a lot of there's software's out there now that you can actually retarget those people with email and text campaigns, you can retarget them with ads, specifically speaking to them. Hey, I noticed your cart's not, you know, you didn't you didn't purchase your cart, you you got our course but you didn't buy it. And you can talk to them directly through that. So that's that makes it really powerful.

Jackie Pelegrin 17:07

Wow, I love that. That's great. Yeah, and I think that helps for for a lot of different areas because like for me, I I just switched over my uh my podcast website to Podpage, and Podpage is made for podcasts, which is great because it has all the has Google Analytics built in where you can set up Google Analytics and they have all kinds of different ways that you can engage. It has a guest intake form like what you filled out and a way to leave a voicemail and all kinds of great engagement techniques. So it's nice when it's not just static text, right? Or images, but they actually get to interact with it and you feel like they're that there's value to what they're and there's they stay longer on the website too, right?

David Sanchez 17:49

And exactly. Yeah, that's dwell time. That's what we call dwell time. If it's educational related, dwell time is really important because the longer people stay on the website, either viewing material or reading material, that tells Google that your website's important to them, it matters to them for not just showing up and then leaving, which is called a bounce. You want your bounce rate to be as low as possible and your dwell time to be as high as possible.

Jackie Pelegrin 18:11

Oh, okay. So you want that to that number, that

From Spikes to Strategy: Pattern Spotting

Jackie Pelegrin 18:14

dwell rate to be as high as possible. I like that. Wow, that's great. Yeah, so like a website like mine that um, you know, where I have the uh my RSS feed feeds into the podcast website so they can listen directly on the website without having to go outside of it and then the blog. Each episode has its own page. So Podpage does a really good job. I think they they're smart with their SEO.

David Sanchez 18:39

That's really good. Yeah, I'm not familiar with it personally, I haven't heard of it before, but from what you're telling me, it sounds really good.

Jackie Pelegrin 18:44

Yeah, it's really neat. And they have even feed you can I can even I've done this, I've connected my LinkedIn so that when an episode comes out, it'll automatically post to my LinkedIn. So I don't have so it saves me some time. So uh there's even some time-saving strategies, right? That we can utilize. Um, AI technology. Um, some a lot of these uh websites have that. I does Google Analytics have something like that, like uh some of that AI technology built in where you can automate some of some of that or anything?

David Sanchez 19:16

Uh they do automate a lot of the reporting. And GA4 is the new version, just came out a couple years ago.

Jackie Pelegrin 19:21

Okay.

David Sanchez 19:21

And there's a lot of reporting in there. It's actually a lot deeper. The tracking is more accurate and there's a lot more depth to what's in there than there was with the older version. Yeah.

Jackie Pelegrin 19:30

Yeah, that really helps because then you can make those smart decisions, right? And figure out do I need to rebrand the website or is it a certain page that I need to repurpose or something like that without having to do a complete overhaul of the website. Because it's it's hard because you you're it's hard to tell what what area, like you said, are people coming and going and what area are they staying longer and where can I improve that? And that really helps.

David Sanchez 19:55

Yeah, there's really it's really uh there's a story in there. Uh when you have a website and you're you're not quite satisfied with it, but you don't know what to do exactly. There's some really important tools that are helpful inside uh Google Analytics because just making something newer and more attractive doesn't automatically mean it's going to convert better and turn into more customers or or clients. And so it's important to be able to analyze that information in there. Uh the new GA4 does have a really good feature uh that shows the customer journey, which is super helpful. So it shows it shows how people are first coming on the website in the middle of the journey, then the end when they're actually making the decision to contact you, and it shows you how they're doing that. So, like let's say the first time they heard about you was organically through Google, and then in the middle of the journey, they're visiting you on social media, and then at the end of the journey, it could be another ad or a retargeting ad, or maybe um visiting your website directly because they've already been there and now they're they're ready to make that decision.

ROI Basics: Analytics & KPIs

David Sanchez 20:59

Those are just a couple examples, but and it does give you a lot of insight to show you what's most likely to be effective and how you should target people in where they're at in their journey of becoming a customer of yours.

Jackie Pelegrin 21:11

Wow, I love that. That's great, David. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with uh empathy maps and journey maps, but that's uh something that they do quite a bit in in marketing and business. And we also do we also use those tools in instructional design because it helps to understand our target audience and needs we do as part of a needs assessment and needs analysis.

David Sanchez 21:30

So that's good.

Jackie Pelegrin 21:31

Yeah, so it seems like those tools at when you were talking about that, the customer journey, that's uh similar to what a journey map is. You look at what are they thinking, what are they feeling, what are they doing? It's like four quadrants think, feel, do, and say. So it's really cool because then you can kind of uh do that market analysis and figure out what are they what are they thinking when they come to my website? What are they feeling? What are their feelings that do they feel calm? Do they feel you know energized? And you know, things like that. You know, are they positive feelings or not so much, right? Yeah. And then you can look and see what they're what they're doing and what they're saying about it. Are they telling their other friends or are they just you know keeping, yeah. So it's kind of neat to have that quadrant and then it has like a person's head in the middle of it, and you just kind of and then they also have empathy maps where you look at their their journey and what they do along the way for that. So it's it's pretty neat to have that in marketing.

David Sanchez 22:27

And um, so I'm not sure if you've used those tools or if you've seen them, but uh not exactly identical to that, but very similar because it's so important that we view it a lot of times more as like a funnel, or there's the outside the funnel, top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, bottom of the funnel. Basically, marketing is like a like a big funnel. It's people outside of it don't know about you and they're gathering information. There's the top where they're starting to learn more with some interest, and then finally all the way at the bottom is they're ready to make an actual decision. And at each stage in that, there's different needs, wants, desires, levels of of knowledge, uh, terms that they use. So you need to communicate them according to that in each stage.

Jackie Pelegrin 23:06

Oh, wow, that's fascinating. I love that. Yeah, I think they and they even have these uh these templates available on play on places like Canva, so you can tailor them.

David Sanchez 23:17

And I think there is something like that, marketing related, like what you talked about, that funnel where you can do that because Canva has marketing materials and all kinds of things that you can exercises you do to be able to like whenever I create an ad campaign, uh it's very important to do those exercises to really make sure you intimately understand the person, their needs, their language they speak, and everything.

Jackie Pelegrin 23:38

Oh, wow. I like that. That is so cool. And do you even sometimes create a persona as well uh as you're doing that to kind of create like uh uh an individual, they're not they may not necessarily be a real person, you can name them if you want. Sometimes I'll tell my students, I'm like, when you're going through the needs analysis, create a user persona and figure out who who your target audience is. And then even if you want to create an avatar, create an avatar and put it on your desk. And as you're creating those educational materials, you look at that avatar in that persona and you say, This is who I'm doing it for. So do you do things like that too, like create a persona sometimes?

David Sanchez 24:16

Yeah, I don't create an exact avatar with naming the person and giving them an exact age, it's more a category, more like a genre of a person. It's more like a profile.

Jackie Pelegrin 24:25

Like a profile, yeah.

David Sanchez 24:26

Yeah, and it's it's more related to their values than anything else, not specific traits like a specific age.

Jackie Pelegrin 24:32

Right.

David Sanchez 24:32

More of a range, like say 55 to 75 for years old, female or whatever. Right. Debbie, 70 years old, you know what I mean?

Jackie Pelegrin 24:40

Yeah, exactly. And in a picture, yeah, yeah. So exactly. It's more,

Dwell Time, Bounce, & Site Experience

Jackie Pelegrin 24:44

yeah, it's more of that persona, that uh yeah, that more of that opportunity for you to see what am I tar what what kind of person am I targeting?

David Sanchez 24:53

Exactly.

Jackie Pelegrin 24:54

Yeah, to see where their where their needs and their wants are. So that's great. I love that. That's that's wonderful. So um we as we know, proof and ethics really matter in many industries and here especially. Um so how can you give us a uh can you give us a brief uh case snapshot, like a starting point, one tactic and the outcome? Um which metrics do you watch and how do you keep it HIPAA safe?

David Sanchez 25:20

Um there's a there's several different things. Um one of the biggest things is people are doing advertising. You want to make sure that they're communicating with the patients in a way that is keeping their privacy safe. So um you can't have them in ads without their permission. And you really should document that and have it on file. It should be a contract that they sign saying, Hey, I'm giving you permission to use my my likeness in in marketing and advertising materials. So that's really important. Also, the communication is really important. You you want to make sure that they're that all of their information is definitely uh secure and and passwords, password secure. Um there's been uh quite a few provide healthcare providers that have gotten fined uh tens of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars uh because of using Google Calendar for patient appointments or texting them on phones that are not secure, don't have uh password protection on them. So it's not that hard. And there's so many systems out there to help keep you safe. It's just it doesn't make sense to put yourself at risk like that.

Jackie Pelegrin 26:32

Right. Yeah, and to take yeah, to take that risk. I when I heard you say that uh using Google Calendar, I thought, oh wow, yeah, that's that's not good or anything. Yeah, that's yeah, that's asking for trouble. It is, yeah, because uh, you know, we think about other industries too, like the military and uh government and things like that. They can't just yeah, they can't use Google Calendar or anything like that, right? Or send an unsecured text. Or so if if it's true for government, it's probably yeah, I think it would be true for healthcare too, especially with HIPAA compliance. Um, that's such a such a huge part of it. Um like with counseling, you know, telehealth, things like that, that that's such a huge thing now with with telehealth, making sure that the connection is secure and that uh that the the patient is aware or the the client's aware, right, of of what what's being shared and what's not being shared and making sure all that comp that legal compliance is in place as well. Yeah.

David Sanchez 27:32

Very important.

Jackie Pelegrin 27:33

Wow. Yeah, definitely. So I wanted to do a quick bonus question. I love I love these bonus questions because it kind of gives a little bit extra to my listeners. So I wanted to offer everyone kind of a quick win this week. So what's a single 16-minute fix on a website or a Google business profile that most reliably boosts qualified inquiries?

GA4 Customer Journeys & Decisions

David Sanchez 27:55

Okay, I would say the biggest things. Um I'll give three things.

Jackie Pelegrin 28:00

I love it.

David Sanchez 28:01

The biggest thing is making sure that your website converts really well. So this is uh this falls in the category of customer research. So find somebody who is your ideal customer or patient, a real person, and literally have them go on your website and tell you what they don't understand. What they what they want to do. Ask them what they want to do. So when you go on the website, what do you want to do? What questions do you have? What what questions are not being answered on that page? Would you contact us? Is it easy to c to use? Is it easy to contact us? Right. And then if you just ask them those questions, watch how they literally record. They have screen recording softwares, they can record how they use the website and answer all their questions and make it as easy and simple as possible, clear and simple as possible. Does the language make sense to you? Are the words logical that we're using on the website? So just doing that and then making all those fixes according to that person. It could be multiple people, and that's fine, but make sure that person is in your in your category of your ideal customer, because that's gonna go a long way in just making sure that your business works online. Next, I would say would be focus more on your Google business profile because that's probably the most neglected area for SEO search engine optimization, just to make sure that you show up on Google without ads. And so you want to maximize that. So you can go inside of it, and there's a list of services if you're a service provider, and you can list every single service that you provide. So if it's a doctor's office, you would say like any specialties that you have, the types of patients that you serve, very specifically because it's like a mini website and it's on the Google domain, and it links to your website. So it's very powerful, and you get much, much more visibility if you do that. And obviously make sure all your uh all your contact info is accurate on there. Your name, address, phone number, uh website address. And then just maximizing that really makes a huge impact, filling out all that information. Another thing that you can do is making sure that you're listed on all the the local listings. So, like you've got Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, all these places have massive authority. And so creating profiles there on those, all those link back to your website, and that gives your website huge authority. But the problem is they're so hard to get on and create those listings. It just makes most sense to automate that. And there's a tool on SEMrush called SEMrush Local. It's S-E-M-Rush.com. And SEMrush Local, it's a they list you on the 70 most popular, biggest websites, website listings. And it actually goes out to hundreds of different ones. So you end up paying like 20 bucks a month. And it and it's very powerful and it automates it. It takes

Personas, Funnels, & Message Fit

David Sanchez 31:04

the information from your Google Business Profile and sends it out to all those places all at once. Wow. It's very powerful. That's amazing. Hundreds of hours. Yes. So I highly recommend that.

Jackie Pelegrin 31:16

So it's it's important to make sure that you've got all those different elements in place so that you maximize your website and you maximize your search engine optimization. Yeah. You don't want you don't want a website that's just sitting there collecting dust, right? You want it to be active and engaging. Yeah. And to and to go from visits to conversion. So it's so important to have that. Wow. I love that. Yeah, it's interesting how you mentioned those uh those big um advertising, you know, areas like uh, you know, that they it's hard to get into those. It's uh it's kind of you know, I wish they would make it easier to get into them. And yeah, it's a pain sometimes.

David Sanchez 31:55

Yeah, yeah, because they have some of them have triple verification, like Apple Maps, you gotta use your Apple ID, verify it with the email and with the phone number, and it's just a bear.

Jackie Pelegrin 32:04

Wow. My goodness. So they have the triple the triple hoops you have to jump through. Yeah, exactly. Instead of two factor, it's three-factor, right? Wow. Yeah. And I guess I can I can understand in a way, but uh in some senses, it's like uh, are you making people jump through too many hoops to get there if they're trying to authenticate and all this stuff? Yeah. That's it can sometimes be a deterrence more than a help sometimes. Yeah. So balancing out the security for the convenience, it's it's one of those things that I think I think these businesses need to do a better job of because I think they've clamped down so much on the security that now they've uh they've created barriers that I don't think they intended to create, but I I think it ended up doing that. And your example is is uh is a key in that, you know.

David Sanchez 32:53

Yeah, it makes it a lot easier because even when you do that, it makes you show up on on Amazon's voice search and also Alexa. So that's really helpful.

Jackie Pelegrin 33:01

That's amazing. I love that. It's kind of like with the podcasting, you know, they have the RSS feed, and then you can get listed with all the different podcasting platforms out there. Um, but it can be hard to list yourself on all of those. So thankfully they have a tool like BuzzSprout that I use that and it makes it easy because all I have to do is just go to each one and get listed, and then I just give my RSS feed and then I just verify it with my email. And yeah. So they at least there's ones out there that make it easy. So yeah, I love that.

David Sanchez 33:32

Buzz Sprout's really good. There's some other ones too, but that's the one that I've used the most because it automates so much of it.

Jackie Pelegrin 33:38

Yeah, it's really great. So it helps when it comes to getting listed, you know, on those things. So yeah, that's kind of a good example of it too, where they try to make it as easy as possible.

Ethics, HIPAA, & Safe Comms

Jackie Pelegrin 33:49

And then your RSS feed is your you're basically your one-stop shop where all your content lives, and then it just funnels out. And so it's really neat because I've even seen you mentioned the Google, the Alexa and um and all of that. And I've seen some people listen to my podcast on on Alexa, and I'm like, oh wow, that's great. I love that.

David Sanchez 34:09

Cool.

Jackie Pelegrin 34:09

You know, you don't expect that, and then all of a sudden you see in your analytics, you're like, oh wow, they're listening on there too. So nice. Wow. So it's neat. So it's like you wonder, did they say, uh, you know, Alexa, I want to listen to a podcast on this, and then it just came up. I don't know, but it would be interesting to dig into it a little bit further and see, you know, those are those are fun things to look at when it comes to analytics.

David Sanchez 34:31

And yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Jackie Pelegrin 34:32

Yeah, it's neat. And then can you also see like where um where some customers like what their region is, and then you can kind of target to that region? Because I've heard even for like podcasts, you can target people to a region. So is is that something you can do with the analytics as well, is kind of see do I is my target audience in on the West Coast or are they Midwest and you know, and and that as well. Does that help?

David Sanchez 34:58

Yeah, you would see that with if they're watching on your website. If if you go into GA4 and Google Analytics, you can see you can see exactly the city that your people are that your website visitors are listening from.

Jackie Pelegrin 35:09

Wow, that's great. And even like your conversion too, for those that have services or products in your system. Wow, that's great. Because then you can maybe uh do a targeted ad campaign, right? Or targeted marketing for that that region and really hone in on you know what their needs are. And so if it's a rural area, then you can target your services or your uh products to that that area and make sure that you meet that target market as well.

David Sanchez 35:39

Exactly.

Jackie Pelegrin 35:39

Yeah, I like that. And then hopefully they share it with others and they spread the word, right? Through that. Yeah. I that's great. I love that. So kind of the the last question as we wrap up. Uh for listeners who want to build a values-driven business, what's one next step they should take in the next seven days?

David Sanchez 35:58

Next seven days. Just one step.

Jackie Pelegrin 36:02

Oh, or you could do three again if you want. Yeah. I'm a little bit more. Yeah.

David Sanchez 36:08

Yeah. Well, if we're we're talking about marketing, I would say the three biggest things that you could do to get more visibility. Um which industry are we talking here?

Jackie Pelegrin 36:19

Oh, it could be anything. It could be healthcare, it could be education. Yeah. So yeah, I think we could cast a wide net if you want. Or zone in. Yeah.

David Sanchez 36:28

Let's do that. Let's do that. Okay, so let's say it's a yeah. So there there's a I'll do three or four. So the first thing would be get listed on all the local listings, like I mentioned with a Semrush, maximize your Google business profile. Um, do a press release on something that's an exciting service that you offer or somebody that you helped. A press release really creates

Quick Wins: Site Fixes & GBP Tune-Up

David Sanchez 36:49

a lot of um a lot of um a lot of links that go back to your website from news websites, which give you a lot more authority and more visibility in different places. And then another thing would be to launch a small ad campaign. It doesn't have to be high budget, but even just maybe $500 per month can give you a lot more impact. If you already have a lot of organic traffic, then retarget the people that you've already that have already been to your website. So that could be either Facebook ads or Google ads. Or if you're if you're a service provider, start some Google local services ads. So these are very inexpensive and very valuable because AI is built into it. Um these are something that's new just in the last few years. Uh service providers like lawyers, doctors, um, home services providers that they have access to in most places in the US now. So what this is is Google certified. You get a little badge next to your name, it shows your your reviews. Uh-huh. And these are guaranteed by Google that that you're going to be a good provider. And so it gives you more credibility. And a lot of times, it depends on the industry, but a lot of times people are paying between $20 to $50 per click per times each person's actually contacting you. Oh wow. So it's actually it's actually better than per click because like per phone call, it's like $20 to $50 per phone call. So it's it's very reasonable compared to the standard Google ads.

Jackie Pelegrin 38:23

Oh wow, that's great. So you really get to target that in whoever you know your target audience is. I like that. And provide those, yeah. And having that verified symbol, right? And and knowing that those those uh reviews are verified, I think that, yeah, you're right. It adds credibility to what you're doing. So that's that's great. They know it's not just a one-off type of business, but they they have that credibility and they know that they're they're going with a trusted organization or trusted company.

David Sanchez 38:54

So yeah, it's more difficult to get on there. It takes about one to two weeks because they required you to submit, like if you're a contractor, to submit your your license number and your insurance documents. So only the only people that are advertising on there are the really good ones.

Jackie Pelegrin 39:11

Wow. So you know that they've gone through the necessary steps to get there. So it's not, yeah, it's not just anyone that gets on there. So that's great. I like that. Yeah, those are great tips. I love those. So thank you so much, David, for sharing your experience and practical strategies. For my listeners, I would like you to pick one idea from today that David mentioned, tune up your Google Business profile and a trust building profile page, or publish one clear patient education article. I think that would be a good thing to do, and then put it in motion this week. Um, so keep charting your own path, measure honestly, and iterate with empathy. So, is there anything, David, you wanted to share, like how people can find you before we end today's episode?

David Sanchez 39:52

Yeah, sure. The best place to find me would be on LinkedIn, just David Sanchez RN or my website, digitalismedical.com. I'm always available to schedule a call if you want to learn more about marketing or you want to help make a free marketing plan. I'm happy to help you with that.

Jackie Pelegrin 40:08

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I'll make sure to provide those links in the show notes so people can connect with you. And I look forward to us staying connected too and having you back on the show anytime to share more of your ideas. I love how you've gone from uh, you know, from the you know, you still have that patient-centered approach, so I love that, but you're able to help more more businesses in their marketing, so it's great. So I love that you've got that market approach too to everything.

David Sanchez 40:35

Great. Well, thank you for having me on. It's been a great time.

Jackie Pelegrin 40:37

Great, thank you so much, David. I appreciate it. Thank you for taking

Local Listings & Automation Tools

Jackie Pelegrin 40:44

some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review, or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference, and I'm truly thankful for you.