Swaay.Health Podcast

We let ChatGPT be the third host

Brittany Quemby and I decided to try something new. We asked ChatGPT what it sees most often from healthcare marketers and then tried to guess the answers ourselves. Think of it as “AI says… and Swaay responds”.

We asked four things: the most overused word, the city people plan events around, the conference they’re researching, and what they’re actually using ChatGPT for.

Brittany and I had a friendly competition to see who was more in tune with ChatGPT.

I expected “workflow”, “clinicians” or “burnout” – they’re everywhere in press pitches, booth copy, and websites. Alas, the most overused word turned out to be “innovative”. It’s a word that everyone loves to use to describe themselves, but as Brittany put it: “It’s a word that really says nothing and if everybody’s innovative, then nobody really is.”

Both Brittany and I were hoping to see less popular cities appear on the list of places that healthcare marketers are searching for when planning their own events. Sadly it was major conference cities like: Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and San Diego that topped ChatGPT’s list.

While the answers were not surprising, we learned something important. We should’ve asked about planning their own events, separate from the big conferences already in those cities. ‘Planning events’ was just too broad.

Something similar happened with our next question, all the usual large conferences showed up: HIMSS and HLTH, but also a few that are specific to healthcare marketing like HCIC, HMPS, and (surprise!) Swaay.Health LIVE.

At first Brittany and I were proud, but after we filmed the video, we started to think that maybe it wasn’t a good thing we appeared on the list. Why? Because if people are turning to ChatGPT to learn more about our event then we have not done a good enough job educating our target audience about it.

The answers to this question were as expected…except for one. Content creation, of course, was the top use-case. Event planning and marketing strategy were also popular, but it was personas that caught us by surprise. Using ChatGPT to help with developing and testing personas is an excellent use of the technology and it was very encouraging to see it as one of the top uses for the platform. I did not think it was something a lot of healthcare marketers were using it for.

I was glad to be wrong.

The biggest takeaway from this fun exercise: prompts matters, but the follow-up thinking matters more.

Any marketer that has been at a startup knows the moment when the founder story that once opened doors and got people excited starts raising eyebrows. What felt authentic and scrappy during the startup phase begins to feel tired and a bit risky when scaling. The challenge is recognizing when founder-centric branding stops being a springboard and becomes an anchor.

Swaay.Health sat down with Sue McCluskey, Partner, and Carey George, Founder and Creative Director, at Goods and Services Branding (G&S Branding) to talk about founder-led branding, founder stories, brand strategy, and what changes as healthcare organizations grow and scale.

What This Conversation Revealed

McCluskey put founder stories and founder-centric branding in context: “It can be an amazing thing, especially if the founder is super charismatic or just embodies the uniqueness of a brand. Where it starts to get risky when it’s a larger organization with more at stake.”

Here’s why.

“When the company becomes publicly traded [or has become a recognized name in their field], if the founder makes a misstep, then there’s a cascading effect of trouble. Shareholders get upset. Board of directors freak out. The public can freak out.”

There is a potential for antics of the founder which were once seen as rebellious or daring to now be seen as reckless or tired. This is amplified in healthcare where audiences are risk-averse and brand credibility is easily damaged by controversy.

George sees many startups, and some scaling companies, confuse brand stories with a brand strategy.

“Most of the time companies come to us and lead with ‘we need a brand story’,” said George. “What we try to tell them is that a brand story is not a strategy. You need a strategy. The brand story is just part of that strategy. Just telling your brand story, just writing your founder’s story isn’t enough. It may win you a pitch competition, but that’s only going to take you so far.”

In the beginning, a company’s origin story and the founder’s journey make for a compelling narrative. Tied up in that narrative are the foundational elements of the company. Everything is aligned and works together. When you are a young startup, these stories may be enough to help generate interest. However, as George points out these are just stories and not a cohesive strategy.

As a company matures a cohesive brand strategy is one of the things that provide separation from young startups. Cohesive brands generate the trust signals that healthcare buyers react favorably to.

Both McCluskey and George both caution against completely jettisoning all elements of founder-centric branding. Why? Because as AI usage in marketing increases, the value of human connection and credibility also increases

“You can publish all the information you want,” explained George. “But you’re going to have to get out into the public. You’re going to have to go to forums, conferences, talk to the media, and be real people in front of the media saying real things. People want to see people live.”

George’s ‘real things’ means more that just the origin story or founder opinions that served a startup company well. However it does not mean completely benching the founder from all public appearances. They can still be a face of the company (ie: not the only face), but they need to diversify their public comments to include meaningful comments on the industry and customers.

Very soon, presence will be a key differentiator.

How do we know when our founder-led brand is starting to create risk instead of trust?

What replaces the founder story as a brand matures without losing authenticity?

How should healthcare brands balance human visibility as AI-generated content increases?

Learn more about G&S Branding at https://gsbranding.com/

Website dashboards are looking very different these days. Traffic is down. Once reliable buying signals are fading away. Why? One big reason is the the nature of search is changing and healthcare marketers need to adapt quickly.

Alexis Pratsides, Global Head of Digital at FINN Partners, sat down with Swaay.Health to talk about the rapid evolution of search and what it means for healthcare marketers trying to protect trust, relevance, and demand in a world increasingly moving towards AI-driven discovery.

“What we’re seeing is the top of the funnel is moving off of your website now, and it’s into the LLMs,” explained Pratsides. “All the research and all the activity that people undertake as they are starting out on a journey to do something, that is happening off your site.”

The alarming consequence is that website traffic is dropping for healthcare vendors, precipitously in some cases. However, there is a silver lining.

“Interestingly, the conversion rates are increasing now,” continued Pratsides. “That’s because the traffic that ends up on your website, having already done their research elsewhere, is ready to do something and are highly engaged.”

Your dashboard looks worse at first glance, but if you tune your website for these visitors who are further down the funnel, then your revenue pipeline will be stronger in this new search environment.

“Generative Engine Optimization or GEO is bringing together the disciplines of SEO and Public Relations [PR],” said Pratsides. “You need to be thinking about how they interact and work together to then get visibility bumps within the AI algorithms.”

According to Pratsides, coverage of your customer success stories, executive thought-leadership, and  company announcements, particularly if they are covered by trusted, publications with high authority in healthcare or the general public, can help boost your company and your content to LLMs.

“The LLMs seem to be favoring the really big branded, authoritative places online,” said Pratsides. “These are the media outlets that our PR colleagues are working with every day.”

“We’ve proven with some testing that the LLMs favor really well-structured pages,” revealed Pratsides. “They like bite-sized, digestible chunks of content. So, if you can have a subheading and then a small chunk of content, often that will just get almost entirely cited in the answer to people’s questions on those LLMs.”

For marketers who want their organizations to be cited by LLMs, creating content that is shorter, more structured, and more consumable is a must. It is no longer about keywords, rather it is writing content that matches how people are asking questions of LLMs.

For veteran school healthcare marketers, Pratsides words should be comforting. In this new world of GEO, what matters most is well written content that takes into consideration what the audience is looking for. It also means that getting earned (and paid) media coverage has tremendous value once again.

It’s hard not to chuckle because this is a classic marketing playbook, just modernized for LLMs. Put another way, what was valuable decades ago is just as valid today.

Time to dust off that old playbook.

*Editor’s note: Partsides shared a lot of fantastic insights and recommendations in the interview – too many to include in this written article.

If website traffic is declining, how should marketing teams judge performance without losing credibility internally?

How do PR and content teams need to change their working model as AI-driven search becomes more influential?

What content changes actually improve visibility in AI-driven search without increasing workload?

Learn more about FINN Partners at https://www.finnpartners.com/

FINN Partners is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

The healthcare search landscape is changing fast and AI is at the center of it.

As a follow-up to our incredibly popular Search UnWebinar earlier this year, I sat down with Lacey Reichwald, Director of Marketing at Aha Media Group, to unpack some of the biggest questions we didn’t have time to address live. We explored what’s actually driving visibility, traffic, and trust in this new era of search.

From AI-powered search results to the renewed importance of PR and brand consistency, the conversation offers practical guidance for healthcare marketers navigating growing complexity — without burning out or chasing every new trend.

AI-driven search is increasing brand visibility through impressions on search results pages, but that doesn’t always lead to clicks. Structured content like FAQs supports visibility, while human-led thought leadership and real stories are what drive meaningful traffic.

With AI-generated content everywhere, authenticity has become a differentiator. Content rooted in real expertise, human insight, and lived experience performs better with both audiences and search engines.

Third-party credibility is increasingly important as AI tools prioritize trusted sources. Earned media and reputable coverage now play a direct role in search visibility and authority.

Audiences encounter brands across AI tools, search, social, and media, often simultaneously. A strong, consistent brand helps both people and algorithms recognize and trust your organization.

People now “search” across Google, TikTok, YouTube, and AI tools, often without realizing it. Marketers should focus on showing up where their audience already looks, rather than trying to be everywhere.

AI hasn’t replaced strong marketing fundamentals. Tell real stories, build trust, and lead with expertise. The brands that win will focus on clarity, credibility, and connection, not shortcuts.

Missed our live Search UnWebinar session? No worries, find the replay is here.