In a recent chat on the Simply Be Found Huddle podcast, hosts Rob and Dean sat down with Jake Sucoff, founder and CEO of Patient Procure. Jake’s agency specializes in healthcare marketing, helping physicians and medical organizations build effective marketing strategies through a combination of high-level planning, AI integration, and global talent. On this episode, he debunks some of the biggest marketing myths.
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This Huddle’s Special Guest
Jake Sucoff is the founder and CEO of Patient Procure, a results-driven marketing agency built specifically for healthcare providers. From physicians to hospital groups, Jake’s work is all about helping healthcare organizations build smart, sustainable marketing engines that actually drive patient growth.
What we really appreciate about Jake is his no-nonsense, practical approach. He focuses on what works—combining strategic organic content, local SEO, paid ads, email campaigns, social media, and website development—all under one cohesive strategy. It’s not about fluff; it’s about building a system that performs.
One of the things that makes Jake’s model so powerful is how he blends AI and automation with a global team of marketing pros. Patient Procure operates with a distributed talent network from across the world—places like the Philippines, UK, Canada, South America, and Eastern Europe—all aligned on delivering top-tier marketing support for healthcare brands.
A big thank-you to Jake for joining us and sharing some truly valuable insights. We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation. Want to connect with Jake? Here’s where you can find him:
Key Takeaway From This Huddle
When it comes to the age-old debate of organic versus paid strategies, Jake makes one thing clear: most marketing myths are built on blanket advice that doesn’t work for everyone. While organic marketing—especially local SEO and Google Business Profiles—typically offers higher long-term ROI, the right mix varies by business. The key isn’t choosing one or the other; it’s figuring out where your audience is and building from there.
Debunking the “Master One Channel” Myth
One of the most persistent marketing myths is that you must master a single channel before trying others. Jake disagrees. His approach is rooted in how people actually engage online: “You need to be where your audience already is—not where someone told you to start.” Instead of narrowing focus too early, Jake recommends: Identifying where potential customers spend their time, Establishing a presence across multiple platforms at once, Running experiments to see what gains traction, and Doubling down on what delivers results.
The Truth About AI: It’s Not a Magic Wand
There’s another marketing myth worth busting—AI as a replacement for real content creators. Jake and the team agree: AI is a helpful starting point, but not the final product. Smart marketers use AI to brainstorm, draft, or unblock writer’s block—but always bring human editing to the table. Why? Because personal experience, storytelling, and local expertise can’t be automated. As Rob puts it, “Nothing inside of marketing comes easy.” If you’re relying on AI to do all the work, you’re settling for average.
Email: The Overlooked Power Channel
Among all the marketing myths, the idea that email is outdated is one of the most damaging. Jake calls email marketing one of the most underutilized tools in the small business toolbox. It’s inexpensive, direct, and algorithm-proof. People rarely change email addresses, making it one of the most stable communication channels you have. A few email truths worth remembering: Unsubscribes are not the enemy—focus on the ones who stay. Your newsletter doesn’t need to sell—include community news, tips, or stories. Email builds lasting relationships better than almost any other digital tool.
Getting Content From Busy Experts
In industries like healthcare, one of the real challenges is content creation. Most professionals didn’t train to be marketers. That’s where Jake’s system flips another common myth—that creating content has to be time-consuming. Instead of asking doctors to write articles or make videos, his team simply interviews them. From that one conversation, they generate: Blog posts, Social posts, LinkedIn articles, Short-form videos, and Email newsletters. All the physician has to do is show up and speak—Jake’s team handles the rest.
Done Is Better Than Perfect
Another marketing myth worth tossing out: that polished equals professional. According to Jake, audiences are more tuned into authenticity than ever before. Content that’s “too perfect” can come off as cold or even fake. Slight imperfections? They actually build trust. “Done is better than perfect,” Jake says. Don’t let perfectionism kill your momentum. Get it out there—because you never know which piece will make the biggest impact.
The Role of AI Images (When Used Right)
AI-generated images often raise eyebrows, and rightly so. While Jake cautions against using them to represent real people, he sees their place in visual marketing. Smart, ethical use cases include: Stock photography for websites, Event promotions and branded graphics, Creative content like “action figure” versions of clients, and Mood boards or visual concepts for designers. The key, as always, is using tools in ways that support the human story behind your brand.
What Really Matters: People First, Tech Second
At the end of the day, busting marketing myths means returning to what matters most—real people connecting with other real people. Technology, when used intentionally, can help your business stand out. But it’s your voice, your stories, and your community presence that turn visibility into trust—and trust into results.e’s approach to healthcare marketing, you can find him at patientprocure.com.
Now Here Are Some Facts About Marketing…
It’s not easy. And if you think your business has potential that you’re struggling to utilize, Rob, Dean, and the Simply Be Found community will help you out. Check out our pricing and see what we can do to help you grow organically.
Transcript
- 00:00 | Intro & Meet Jake Sucoff of Patient Procure
- 01:20 | Ads vs Organic: What Actually Works?
- 02:50 | Local SEO & Google Business for ROI
- 04:00 | Organic Social: What Small Businesses Miss
- 05:45 | Over-Perfecting Content Kills Momentum
- 07:30 | Email Marketing & Building Customer Trust
- 10:15 | Why Copying Competitors Fails
- 13:00 | Using AI + Global Talent Effectively
- 16:45 | AI Content as a Starting Point, Not the End
- 20:30 | Voice Search, LLMs & Search Rankings
- 25:00 | Email Newsletters & Staying Top-of-Mind
- 31:00 | Evergreen Content & Automation Tactics
- 39:00 | The Real Power of Raw, Imperfect Content
- 44:00 | Social Media’s New Role in SEO
- 47:00 | The Truth About AI-Generated Images
- 52:00 | Final Thoughts & Where to Find Jake
00:00 | Intro & Meet Jake Sucoff of Patient Procure
Rob (00:01): Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle where Dean and Rob talk about everything business related. Today we have our guest Jake. Jake, how are you doing today?
Jake (00:06): I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me guys.
Rob (00:09): Awesome. Can you kind of introduce yourself, what you kind of do to the, you know, to the listeners and people watching and all that stuff, and kind of give them an overview of what you do before we kind of go through and start talking?
Jake (00:19): Yeah, for sure, happy to. My name is Jake Sucoff. I am the founder and CEO of Patient Procure. Patient Procure is a marketing agency that helps physicians, hospital groups, any kind of healthcare organization build out their marketing engines. So we do everything from managing organic social media to running paid ads, doing SEO, email marketing, website development, really whatever our clients need we do for them. And I do all of this through a combination of high-level strategy, trying to leverage AI and automation as much as I can. I know that’s become a mega buzzword everywhere today, but it is something that we try to weave into the fabric of my agency. And then also I leverage distributed talent extensively, so my team is all over the world – lots of folks in the Philippines, in the UK, in Canada, in South America, Eastern Europe, everywhere, and that’s been a major unlock for me in my business.
01:20 | Ads vs Organic: What Actually Works?
Rob (01:20): Sweet. I love it. And now Jake, I didn’t look before we got started and I don’t think you are because I know most of our agencies that use us… I don’t think you’re using SimplyBeFound.com yet, are you?
Jake (01:25): Not yet.
Rob (01:28): Well, you should really think about that. But I was like, man, I’d look like a real jackass if I didn’t… I didn’t see it on there, Rob, but we have so… we have a lot of people on there and we have a lot of people… But no, but so Jake, when you’re doing all this stuff, do you find organic is the best way, best approach? I mean, I heard you say something about ads. I mean, we talk about ads, we don’t really do ads with ourselves, but you know, use that for a push or a little bump. But what’s your thought? I don’t want to put you on the spot because…
Jake (01:52): No, please put me on the spot. I love being on the spot.
Rob (01:55): I’m putting you on the spot that I think the organic is the best way to go, or ads are kind of there to help you get a little push, or if you got something new to get some things… What’s your approach on that?
Jake (02:22): The short answer is I wouldn’t be comfortable saying something is the best. It’s my job to work with each client to figure out exactly what they need and then make recommendations based on that. That being said, organic is likely the highest return on investment that you’re going to get, and specifically local SEO, Google My Business, and then, you know, on-page and off-page traditional SEO is something that is going to require a fair bit of upfront effort but then you get to benefit from for a very long time.
02:50 | Local SEO & Google Business for ROI
Jake (02:53): And if you’re writing articles the right way and if you’re optimizing your Google business profile and focusing on local SEO the right way, you’ll have articles that, you know, once a year you should spruce up, but you’re not going to have to do anything major to make sure it stays at the top of the rankings. So I think that yes, local and organic is the way to go.
There’s, you know, if we’re talking about organic social media, people can get lost in the sauce there and really overthink it and really overinvest in that. And I think that it’s kind of table stakes today. Every business needs to be some kind of media company to some degree. They need to be putting out content, but if you’re a small business, you need to understand that the content you’re putting out is more to introduce your brand to customers and create a sense of trust and some validation. It’s not going to be a giant means of acquisition. You’re never going to be competing with Mr. Beast and the largest content creators in the world who do this for entertainment. You need to do it so that your customers, when they find you, they can get to know you a bit better.
04:00 | Organic Social: What Small Businesses Miss
Jake (04:04): And that’s why, you know, when you ask me what’s the best, you know, it’s kind of a double-edged sword, but we have the tools to leverage all of these pretty easily right now. And I think there’s a lot of conventional wisdom around finding one channel, really focusing on that, really becoming a master on that before moving to others. And I would push back on that a bit. I think that, you know, first of all, you need to figure out where your customers are hanging out, and that’s where you need to be. So if you understand that all of your people are on Facebook, you want to be focusing on Facebook, Facebook groups, you know, Instagram… It depends on who your customers are. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be taking content that you’re posting on Facebook and Instagram and putting that on LinkedIn or on YouTube or on TikTok or wherever your people are.
Rob (04:45): I was just having a coaching session on that, and they’re like, “I only have time to write one.” I know I’m supposed to go through… they read the whole book from Gary Vee, I can’t remember what that’s called, but when he talks about how to be able to put everything into… write it separately for each and every network. Like, “I only have time to write for one.” I said, “Well, you pick the one that you think the most customers are at, and you have your same post go out to the rest of them because you might catch somebody that’s there.” It’s no different than going to a lake and putting a lure in the, you know, into the lake and going out and casting over and over. Well, if you move just a little bit over, you might grab one, might change spots, might grab one at the same bait but not have it there.
So in my opinion, it’s definitely that to where if you don’t have time to customize each one, you should send it out everywhere because you don’t know who might be watching. You don’t know if that network is going to be your next one because I’ve watched it and I’ve seen this in the medical field some… I’ve seen it more probably in restaurants and contractors for my career, but I’ve seen them to where…
05:45 | Over-Perfecting Content Kills Momentum
Rob (05:50): Everybody today is on Facebook, for example, and then next week they’re all over here on Twitter for some reason, or X if you go by the new terms of it. But I mean, you never know what is going to shift or what Google update or Bing update or what new AI is going to come out. You never know what’s going to be out there, so you have to make sure you have that term everywhere. And I think a lot of agencies have really kind of screwed themselves over over time by focusing just on Google because there’s so much more than just Google as well.
Jake (06:20): Yeah, I agree with the vast majority of what you just said. I think that you need to experiment. That’s the entirety of what makes marketing work. If you pick a lane and you stay there and you don’t ever iterate, you don’t ever change, the chances of your being successful are minimal. But if you, like you said, cast a wide net, if you focus on a few different channels, you’re much more likely to figure out what’s going to be successful. And then yes, if you are posting on X and LinkedIn and Instagram, and you see that the vast majority of your engagement is coming on Instagram, then yes, overemphasize Instagram, focus way more on that. But until you know that, you’re working on assumptions, and so you need to be experimenting.
Rob (07:01): Yep. And I mean, probably one of still one of the hardest things in the marketing world for that is the data sucks, really. The technology has moved so fast, especially with how AI’s changed it. In my opinion, the analytics still haven’t caught up to it. It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me in aspects. I mean, some things are still like, especially like the podcast world. Some… we were just having a conversation with a guy yesterday about…
07:30 | Email Marketing & Building Customer Trust
Rob (07:33): The whole podcast world analytics… some of that stuff doesn’t get updated for a few days.
Jake (07:39): Yeah, it’s wild how little data you can get about podcast reach, and each platform is a walled garden and they don’t want to share their data with anybody else. And when I was running my own podcast, it was extremely frustrating to try to figure out exactly how we were doing in comparison to our competitors. But, you know, to some degree that can be a competitive advantage. And it actually, I feel like people are, especially in marketing, overly concerned with copying what other people are doing and focusing on other people’s work as opposed to thinking about what is authentic to them and what they believe is going to resonate with their own target market. And you’re probably better off to just focus on your own work than on other folks.
But look, I totally understand, you know, wanting to look at the biggest players in the space and and try to analyze what are they doing and what’s working for them and how can we implement the same thing. I mean, obviously some of that is going to be effective, but, you know, I’ve never… I’ve never had good results with that, with copying other people, with going through and trying to copy somebody else.
Rob (08:37): Yeah, I’ve never had good results with that ever. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t… you know, I’ve worked with clients that are seemingly offering the same service, the same product, and use the same methodology for producing content and had wildly different results. You never understand exactly why specific things are going to work and others are not. And so that goes back to experimentation and being authentic because there might be little nuances in the way that you speak and your messaging and and your aesthetics of your brand that resonate with people a different way. And those people are going to respond to a different type of content than your competitor’s audience is going to.
Rob (09:20): Right. And competition is a good thing. And I mean, I love our competition. I love having as much competition as we have out there. It’s one of those things to where you have to… you have to make yourself unique so you get your ideal customer because your ideal customer could be completely different than theirs.
10:15 | Why Copying Competitors Fails
Rob (10:15): I was coaching an agency once and he used a piece of software, I think it was SpyFu at the time, would go through, grab everybody’s what the competitors were using for ads, and then he would just copy that inside of the ad campaign. And that’s what he was selling off. And he goes, “I’m not getting any results.” And I’m like, “For one, you’re going to cost yourself a small fortune by doing that. For two, you have to make yourself unique. You can’t… it’s not… you can’t just clone somebody and go ‘I’m going to change a business name and boom, it’s going to get all this business.'” That’s not the way marketing works.
Jake (10:45): Yeah, and I mean, you have to be unique in some aspect. And he didn’t like that very much. He goes, “But this is how I know.” I’m like, “Oh, that just is… I mean, I might even… I might push back a little bit on that.” I mean, I agree that I think competition is great. It’s validation. And when you’re pitching yourself, generally you need to pitch your category, not your business first. You’re probably having to sell somebody…
When I talk to people, most of the time I’m talking about marketing as a whole. It’s not, why me, me… It’s not Patient Procure, this is why I’m the best. It’s you guys need marketing, this is why you need marketing, this is why it could be helpful for you, this is where I would start, this is what I would focus on. And then as we move, you know, down the patient or the client journey, then I talk more about myself and my own services.
But I think to a certain degree, if you have competition, you definitely need to differentiate in some way. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can differentiate just in terms of your service and the way that you communicate, in your level of quality. Like, there’s ways to differentiate where you can say, my competitor is offering this, I’m offering it, except I’m, you know, you’re just going to enjoy working with me more than you’re going to work with them. And so, like, there’s definitely a need for differentiation, but I don’t think… it depends on what you do.
I mean, I think about myself. I run a marketing agency for healthcare providers. There are so many marketing agencies for healthcare providers. And I’m not going to go out and say, like, yes, as I said before, I’m trying to weave AI and automation into my company wherever I can. I’m trying to find the best talent overseas that’s less expensive than people who I’d pay stateside. I try to be accessible for my clients whenever I can be. I’m not gonna say that nobody else does that. I don’t know, they probably do. Well, there’s too… there’s too many people in the space. But but it doesn’t matter because I know that people are going to love working with me. I’m going to deliver an extremely high level of service. And I found that to be enough.
People, you know, so I back to focusing on your own work. I think it’s really easy to get caught up in, what are my competitors doing and and how can I be better than them? The reality is most of your competitors are probably not going to exist 12 months from now. You go and you look at a website and it makes them look really official. That you don’t have any insight into what are their margins, what’s the corporate culture like, are people happy there, are these people going to actually be in existence a year from now? If you put your head down and you work hard and you make sure that you’re executing and you’re delivering a high level of service, you’re almost certainly gonna outperform anybody who you who you see as competition.
13:00 | Using AI + Global Talent Effectively
Rob (13:06): Well, that’s where telling your own story and going through and being able to make it about you and just doing what your what your gut says is right inside your market, I think goes hand-in-hand with all of that. What were you going to say, Dean?
Dean (13:17): Oh no, I just was… you know, you were talking about trying to make yourself look unique and using the AI piece. Do you find that some of the people out there are using AI just too much? I mean, and they’re not getting enough original content? I mean, I mean, we, you know, we use people that aren’t necessarily the best copywriters in the world that help us, but they’re… they’re there to give that human aspect. But the problem is, is you have to have some input from the… the your clients as well to tell their story and how they can help their customers. You kind of along that line as well?
Jake (13:42): Yeah, the short answer is yes. People are, in many cases, overutilizing AI and not doing enough to take the quote unquote “AI slop” and and use a human to edit it to not just make it more readable and make it seem more human, but also inject that experience part that you’re talking about, to actually inject that differentiator from the client into their articles.
You know, I think like any new technology, people are going a bit overboard. They they are lazy, and they see it as a way to create content at scale. And that’s all true, but look, I don’t have much to add to that. If you’re not updating it, if you’re not making it more relevant, if you’re not making it more specific to your clients, then I have no doubt that Google and LLMs that are that you’re hoping to rank on and and have featured in Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini and whatever, they’re going to absolutely get wise to purely AI-generated content. And so, yeah, 100% you need to be putting in a few rounds of edits.
That said, I mean, I use it extensively every single day in in so many aspects of my business, but it is an entry point. I think that there’s a difference between going to Chat GPT and saying, generate this piece of content and then just publishing it immediately. So for instance, I use it for job descriptions a lot when I’m hiring, and it’s incredible. I mean, and I’ll… it will give me a nearly finished product. But there’s a huge difference between taking that and immediately posting it to a job board and running through it and humanizing it, making it shorter because it’s probably way too long, looking at taking out the irrelevant bullet points, editing ones to make it just more appropriate and correct.
So it obviously has a place. It’s going to have a place forever. I think it’s changing… I know it’s changing the entire world. It’s changing the entire marketing landscape immensely. But yeah, you need to be careful about not over-using it.
16:45 | AI Content as a Starting Point, Not the End
Rob (16:45): Well, and I think… I think AI is going to be overused. I think it’s a great assistant to be majorly being able to take out the low-level work. It speeds me up. It… I use it intensively every day. I’ve actually have a system that I created that I might end up marketing at one point if it ever gets to the point of being able to do that, to where I have Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude and Grock all argue with each other to be able to come up with an answer and fact check each other. And it takes longer to get an article, but I mean, I have got one big one that I’m working on right now that it’s been on it for two days, and it’s still having an argument with itself. And I’m like, it’ll… it’ll figure it out and get to where it is. I’m like, I love where it’s headed. It’s built everything out. So I’m like, awesome, we’ll see what ends up happening. It’s probably the biggest one I’ve ever sent over for request.
But as those tools start to come out, as you have AI… So it used to be back in the day, we we’d rely on having, you know, the more articles and everything you put out, the higher your SEO score. Content was king. And that kind of changed to where quantity… I’ve seen a change inside of, you know, quantity versus quality versus how long your articles are. Don’t really seem to matter in most of the networks anymore because it’s looking for that human touch that’s in there.
Because you give any marketer a tool and make it easier and you bring in the lazy people up to the… to the field, I guess is how I’d word it, they’re going to overuse the hell out of it. They’re going to ruin it for everybody unless you are willing to go through and put some work into it because nothing inside of marketing comes easy. It’s not… it’s not an overnight click. I mean, you might be able to get that with some ad campaigns, but you’re going to spend a fortune on it. But you have to actually put some work into it, know this is what’s going to happen. You have to do some testing to figure it out because nothing happens overnight unless you’ve done it before.
Jake (18:02): Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that having the ability to use LLMs as a first draft, as a way to get you started is a great use of the technology. But if you’re… if you’re overusing it, you’re not going to stand out from anybody else. And you’re right, it’s absolutely happening already, and it’s only going to continue to happen. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how the large companies combat that. It’ll be really interesting to see.
Rob (18:29): We work with a lot of the healthcare industry for being able to get on voice search and being able to do all that. Are you seeing a rise in that for what you’re doing?
20:30 | Voice Search, LLMs & Search Rankings
Jake (18:42): Yeah, I mean, it’s top of mind for everybody, trying to understand… I mean, more on LLMs than voice search. And we found that, first of all, I get a lot of clients who come to me and say, “Oh, this person told me that they spoke to this person and they have the silver bullet for getting found on Chat GPT or on Claude. Like, why aren’t you implementing the strategy yet?” And I have to just, you know, rub my temples and be like, “If anybody’s selling you this, then they’re completely full of it.”
And, you know, we found that the normal traditional ways that we rank on search engines are the same, you know, methodologies that are helping to rank on LLMs or be recommended. So that’s what we’ve been doing. I don’t believe… I’ve read many, many articles at this point about trying to be mentioned in LLMs, and I just don’t believe that there are true methodologies yet, other than like you just said, doing the work, writing high quality, relevant content that’s extremely targeted towards your client’s target audience.
Rob (19:54): Well, it comes down to like, for the voice search, comes down to your local SEO, making sure you’re on the right networks, making sure you’re in the right spots. I mean, all that’s going to be what’s going to be important also for any of your AI search pieces because I mean, that’s where it’s pulling that data from. It’s another data source. It’s building three… I look at that as three different pillars. So or we look at that as three different pillars: you have authority or you have content, you have authority, and then you have trust. And they kind of all talk to one another. And we talk about a tree all the time for how we… all the branches are, but everything is connected. And all AI has done is basically connected everything more now than it’s ever been connected inside of there.
So if I go back into the 90s when I started this, it was a total different game than what it is today. And some of the principles have came back. It’s like anything, it kind of does that teeter-totter and comes back and forth where all that stuff is, for my opinion, for what that is.
And as far as getting those phone calls and getting people saying, “Hey, guess what, I heard about the newest, greatest thing over here. You know, this guy showed up and he had this really super fancy report, and he shows that you’re not doing everything you’re supposed to.” My… my response to that over the years has always been, “Well, he’s trying to sell you, so his… his tools working well because who knows where he pulled that data from? Who know he doesn’t have access to your actual accounts? He doesn’t have that. Because I mean, that’s a huge… that’s a huge factor into the whole piece.”
Sorry about that guys. I’m having a coffee—
Dean (21:41): Are you okay over there?
Jake (21:45): I’m doing all right. For some reason, something just… says I think my allergies are getting like yours.
Rob (21:50): See, you got to get the mute button like I have on my mic.
Jake (21:54): I need to get closer to it though. I have the butt too far away.
Rob (21:56): But anyway, you know, allergies in Colorado right now suck. I mean, and then it triggers my asthma on top of it. Happens every year. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I’m not.
Jake (22:08): At least you get 300 days of sunshine. So you got that going for you.
Rob (22:13): Exactly, exactly. What are the biggest challenges you’re seeing right now inside of the market for any of the healthcare side of things? Are you seeing new things public?
Jake (22:27): The biggest challenge is… well, on the paid side, there’s lots of algorithmic changes. We’re finding ourselves in a position where we need to experiment a bit more with different strategies. And some of our tried and true haven’t been performing as well. And that’s where having an experienced team to come in and be able to experiment and iterate is really important.
I mean, that’s kind of the same across organic social as well. I mean, we’ve seen a couple accounts where we were seeing extremely good engagement just drop off, you know? And that’s the rub with any of these platforms that you don’t own.
Rob (23:05): You know, if… if Meta, they control what updates they’re doing on their side or what tests they decided to run today.
Jake (23:10): Exactly. And then, you know, there’s… this is a pretty good time of year. We’ve gotten past the holiday push where we’re no longer competing with the election traffic. We’re no longer competing with the holiday traffic. And so now tax day is over, so you got that out of the way.
Rob (23:35): Yeah, it’s been pretty smooth sailing until October when everybody, you know, has to go through and do their extensions that they decided to do.
Jake (23:41): Put it off.
Rob (23:42): Guilty. I’m not… I’m not going to change. So if the IRS is listening to this, I’m not going to change my stuff. I have all my stuff ready. I know where my stuff is, but I’m terrified. I’ve been doing it for so many years. I’m getting an extension. Why would I change it now?
Jake (24:00): Totally. I mean, this is why I prefer SEO and and email marketing because they’re channels that you own. Their channels that… I mean, look, I mean, Google did recently implement a bunch of changes that affected traffic for all sorts of websites all across the internet. But generally speaking, if you’re putting out good content, you’re going to rank. And for email, people never change their email addresses. No algorithm will affect your deliverability as long as you’re putting together quality emails and you’re reaching people who want to hear from you. You’re going to get good results over the long term. It might take some time to dial in your strategy and to understand your voice and create good templates and have good design. But over time, I love email as a strategy. I think that it’s one of the most underrated and used least utilized services.
25:00 | Email Newsletters & Staying Top-of-Mind
Dean (25:00): So when you’re talking about emails, Jake, I’m… I’m back, guys. I’m done coughing my head off. Sorry about that. Anyway, welcome. When you’re talking about your emails, we’ve… we’ve… we’ve had some conversations about newsletters. Where do you think newsletters fall on that? Is that a good way to stay in communication with your clients through… if they’re allowing you to do emails? I mean, it’s really not a good cold email process, but it… but staying in contact with your… your customers or whatever. Where do you… where do you put that in your…
Jake (25:30): Absolutely, it’s essential. It should 100% be a part of everybody’s strategy. But I think there needs to be a couple caveats. The first is that you can’t be afraid of folks unsubscribing. If people don’t want to hear from you, that’s totally fine. You want to get in touch with the people who want to hear from you. You also have to be ready for someone to opt you out and not… and you have to have a thick enough skin to go, “Okay, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen.”
As long as you’re not spamming people, as long as you’re earnestly trying to put out content that’s going to help people better themselves and their lives in whatever market you’re in, then yes, you need to do it. It’s… especially in the service industry, this is a… a quality, not quantity game, right? Most service providers can only handle a certain number of clients anyway. You want to be in touch with people that want to hear from you.
And so I think that people are afraid to bother the end consumer, and rightly so because we’re all consumers. We all are getting inundated with spam phone calls and spam emails and… and text messages. And yes, that happens. And at the same time, I think that with marketing for whatever reason, there’s… consumers all want to… I’m making a huge generalization here, but I often hear from my friends and my… and my people who are not in the industry that marketing doesn’t work. They hate hearing from everybody. They never… they never click on an ad. They never do this. And yet we see results, and yet it continues to drive business for millions and millions of small and large businesses all across the globe.
So there are people who want to hear your message. You just do need to be thoughtful about what are you putting out there. And I think that if you’re too afraid to get your message in front of your client, then you haven’t dialed in your messaging strategy enough, or you don’t feel strongly enough about your business. And you know, then you need to do some soul-searching about why… what it is in your messaging and… and why it is you don’t feel strongly about putting your business and your services in front of people.
Rob (27:38): I think email’s a hidden gem that a lot of people have forgotten about. And it’s one of those things to where it’s ROI is through the roof because it’s cheap to go through and send emails, especially if you have it set up right. And you’re not doing a spam, you’re not going out there and, you know, totally killing your whole entire email server. You can do it right. You can actually build your business up, especially B2B and then the service industry like chiropractors and that type of thing. I’m not too sure a dentist would probably be someone I’d want to hear from all the time, but I… I really don’t like my dentist that well, but then, whole another… whole another conversation.
Jake (28:25): I think it goes back to viewing yourself as a media property or at least viewing your business as having a media arm and understanding that every email that goes out doesn’t have to be about dentistry, for instance. It’s not all about teeth cleaning. What are the things… back to what we were talking about earlier, every… there’s a great concept called the personal monopoly about building… it should be… it is really about personal brands where you are a… a unique output of the circumstances of your… of your nature and your nurture and your interests. And you are a unique human being that has a… a diverse and unique set of interests that nobody else has. And it’s really important for you to key into what are these things that… that make up who I am that can very easily be translated to your business.
said, “That means that many people got to see your business name, came to your website, and some of them have left their contact information and done business with it.”
But that’s all eyeballs, and it doesn’t have to be about your business all the time. It can be to where you are talking about that community involvement, no matter… I mean, it’s kind of like joining the chamber or joining the BBB or any of those types of organizations. Having that community feel, bringing up what your community is doing and kind of talking about some of that brings people in, and it brings those eyeballs in. Even it’s not… even though it might not be exactly what you’re selling, but then they can also see your, you know, your call to actions inside of there to take action on your business. And that’s some of the cheapest advertising you could possibly do. So I agree with you 100% on that. Kind of a long-winded answer on that.
Jake (31:57): No, you don’t get long-winded.
Rob (32:00): So me get long-winded? I’d never be that.
Jake (32:02): I’m not ever…
Rob (32:04): What’s the point of podcasts if not to be long-winded?
Jake (32:06): There you go.
Dean (32:10): So, so Jake, a lot of our… we call our clients, we call them members, but a lot of our members, they always say, “Well, we can’t help you with content. We really don’t know.” Do you find that in the medical field too, like they… these very intelligent people, they know their industry, they know all these things, and then they say, “I don’t know what to write about or talk about to help you with… with ideas.” You have to coax that out of people as well? I mean, to get people to… to talk about themselves and how they can help their… their customer base? You get that every single day?
Jake (32:35): Every single day. Yeah, for healthcare professionals in general, they went to med school to treat patients. They didn’t go to med school to be content creators. And so they… I mean, first and foremost, you know, my… my physician clients are in, you know, they’re in their offices, in their clinics and their hospitals performing surgeries and treating people. And so they don’t have a lot of time in the first place.
And I mean, there’s a lot of issues. There’s some amount of analysis paralysis where they’re not… there’s so many topics they can talk about, so they’re not sure which to… to choose from. There is this, you know, perfection or… or striving for perfection that a lot of them have, where I’ll get videos and they’re trying to do a two-minute video with complex jargon about conditions and treatments in one take. And so they’ve done it 80 times because they… they’re like, “No, I’m going to get it this time. I have to hit every point.” And I’m like, “We can fix that in editing. Just… just record one long video and send it.”
Dean (33:42): Anyway, okay. Yeah, I mean, for… for one of the things that we do for our physicians is try to facilitate interviews between myself and them where I will pick a topic. I will tell them what we’re going to be speaking about, you know, and we’ve done all of the keyword research. We know what their pillar topics are. We know what they’re trying to rank for. We know what their services are. And so we have campaigns based on whatever specific patients we’re trying to get in front of or what referral we’re trying to get or what treatment we’re trying to sell more of. And we’ll interview them.
And I’ll ask them questions, and it’s the easiest way to get the answers I’m looking for. They’re more casual, so it flows a lot more freely. They speak at length, and I have a lot of… content to… a lot of raw content that I can work with. And then I mean, the name of the game for us is all about repurposing.
Jake (34:36): I… I will record a long video of my clients speaking about a topic, and then we take out the transcript. That becomes a blog post. It becomes a lot of short form posts, carousels on Instagram or longer form on LinkedIn. And we’ll take the long video, we’ll chop it up into short form. We’ll put that on YouTube shorts. We’ll put it on Instagram reels. We’ll put it on… on LinkedIn in some cases.
But just understanding that they need help, they know what they’re talking about, and that very specific expertise is exactly what’s going to build trust with a prospective patient and get them to book an appointment. I need to sit there with them and get it out so that I can do the rest for them. And so it’s just a… it… it takes it from being a very daunting, overwhelming task for them and just saying all you got to do is show up and speak, and I will take care of the rest. And it’s been very effective.
Rob (35:44): No, that makes total sense. I’ve used that piece inside of my big marketing agencies for… I mean, simply be found, it’s a little bit different just because they get it through email and chat support. But I mean, I… I’ve… business owners struggle at what to be able to talk about, what to do.
I mean, before we tal… hopped on this call and started this podcast right now, I mean, we were talking in the green room about, you know, Dean’s one cousin that, you know, they have a coming soon page, but yet they’re trying to get their website to be perfect. We… we get stuck in these loops. And we’re… I think one big thing a lot of business owners really think, and I… I’d put this to some of your medical side… your doctor, your big doctors and everything probably aren’t going to have it… your chiropractors would probably fit into this area, your vets might, but they get into that set where they want everything to be absolutely perfect. They want to be engaged. They want to be involved in that process. And they end up overthinking and overanalyzing, and they have this big picture brain of what they see and vision inside of the whole thing. And they could never get there because it’d be like any of three of us trying to design a website. I could design a website today and go look at it tomorrow and have five more suggestions to it.
I mean, it’s a never-ending process. So you can always… just because you published it doesn’t mean it’s going to be that, you know, end all be-all, and you’re stuck with it forever. You have to update it, tweak it, look at the data, see what the data is telling you of what needs to be changed, look at your heat maps, look at all that stuff on your website. So then you’re making an educated decision on what needs to be tweaked to get the results you’re looking for.
Yeah, I mean, that’s… that was almost even worse back in the 90s when I was doing website development because these guys would go, “Well, I don’t know what I want.” And they would… they freak out over the technology even more. Now it’s more about the design, about the content, and they start going through and start watching all these different gurus on YouTube, which some of them have some really good points, but some of them… they… they couldn’t cut it as a web developer, so they started making videos about it. And some of it is… I guess the best way of putting that.
And just because you designed a website, you know, once doesn’t mean you could do it. I talked to a computer guy the other day, and he was like, “Well, you know, I… I designed my own website. I do computer repair. I could build websites for people.” And I’m like, “Oh, like, you… you… it’s not just, you know, throwing it together and hoping it goes.”
That’s like the field of dreams. If you build it, they’ll come. That’s not the case with a website. You could have the most gorgeous website in the world. If you don’t point anybody to it, you’re never going to get the results you’re looking for.
39:00 | The Real Power of Raw, Imperfect Content
Jake (39:00): Yep. I see that all the time with content production. In most cases, in the vast majority of cases, done is better than perfect. You never know… you just never know what piece of content is going to… is going to outperform. And… and you see anecdotes about this all the time where people spend hours and hours on research and carefully and meticulously planning a post, and it gets 10 likes. And then they just wake up and they write some anecdote about their dog, and it gets a million likes. It… you just never… you never know what is going to have that viral potential. And so you’re definitely better off just publishing.
And it’s… it’s a muscle. You got to… you got to work it out. You got to… you have to just get into that habit of putting stuff out into the world and understanding that it doesn’t matter if it bombs. You’re likely going to have to post ceaselessly for many years until you get any amount of success. And you got to be comfortable with that.
Rob (39:40): And bad public… and some of my worst publicity out there has been some of my best publicity. I mean, I’ve thrown videos out that I didn’t mean to hit send on, and they did really super well. And I’m like, “All righty then.” Because what you see inside of there and it’s probably why I love blogs and video so much in the marketing world is the fact that it could sit there dormant for months, get almost nothing, and then one day it just takes off. Yeah, all of a sudden it became a related term, and you had no idea why or how or what ended up making the stars align that day.
I’ve always found that to be one of the most fascinating things inside of marketing and why organic marketing is probably one of my favorite things before that reason, is you never know exactly what’s going to take off in that moment.
Jake (40:34): It’s true. And in general today, people are very comfortable with UGC and looking at something raw that hasn’t been overproduced and edited. And so it’s… it’s never been easier to just slap something together and put it out there.
Rob (40:47): It’s because they’re looking for real, right? With all the AI, with all the AI content, with all the fake stuff that’s out there and not being able to tell the difference. When they can tell somebody’s real and they made a mistake, it… it relates to it.
So there’s a whole entire… I was watching a video on this recently about how the human brain has that as a mechanism. And it’s starting to develop that more because it’s a defense mechanism to know if something’s a threat or not. When something’s absolutely perfect and there’s no mistakes inside of a script, there’s no ums or a or any of that, it now trigger… it’s… they’re starting to find that triggers this, you know, reflex inside of the brain or mechanism that says, this could be a threat because it might not be 100% real, and it might be deceiving me in what the message is, which is absolutely crazy because… I mean, we’ve been watching movies and all that stuff that’s been perfect, but we expect that when we go to it for entertainment purposes. When we’re trying to learn something and make a decision, we’re not looking for that. We’re looking for something we can trust.
Dean (41:59): But that’s… so… so Jake, I’m gonna ask this question. I know it changes everything all the time. You know, it depends on a business. I get that. I always like to always hear other marketers’ perspectives on the frequency of putting stuff out there. Do you have… do you… you know what I’m saying? I know every industry, every demographic is a little different, but do you kind of have like a… just a general rule that you would recommend for people? Say you should put this, you know, update your blogs this many times, you… you know, you know, put out Facebook ads or do Google posts, you know, whatever. Do… do you kind of have like a… a… without giving away your… your secret sauce, if you will… do you… do you have kind of recommendations that you always like to tell people?
44:00 | Social Media’s New Role in SEO
Jake (44:00): I mean, the biggest recommendation is it needs to be good. And if it’s not good, it shouldn’t go out. And I know I just got through… we just got through this whole part about saying done better than perfect. But I guess what I’m trying to say, it’s not worth publishing every single day if it’s going to be garbage. It’s better to post things that are higher quality.
You know, there is that threshold of… is this going to actually attract people? I think the likelihood of… of small businesses going viral is very low. And so you’re probably looking more to, as I said before, connect with your customers on a deeper level. And so if you’re putting stuff out that you’re comfortable is going to add value, then I think that that’s great.
If you want to get into specific numbers, I mean, I struggle with this all the time. We have an added element here also of where social media is now starting to contribute to SEO. When you’re… when you’re googling things or you’re looking for things on… on Bing or Brave, Instagram posts are popping up or TikTok posts are popping up. And so for certain industries, when you have… for some of my physicians, for example, when they have so many conditions that they’re treating and so many treatments that they offer, we’re putting out, you know, minimum 3 days a week of posts that talk through, you know, the entire funnel, you know, very high level education. Are you suffering from this condition? Here’s what it’s about. And then more to, you know, what are the treatments? What are the treatments that we offer? How do we offer these treatments? And then why is our practice so special? And we put that out aggressively.
Now I have a giant content team, so we know that every post that’s going out is high quality. It’s been vetted. It has custom graphics. So we know that it’s going to be good. If it’s… if it’s going to be… if it’s going to be just AI slop and it’s going to be really obvious that you’re just publishing every day whatever you can generate on… on Chat GPT, it’s… it’s not going to get the results that you’re looking for.
So I… I would… I would aim for, if you’re start… if you’re a solo operator and you are… you’re thinking about getting started with publishing on social media, you should pick one topic, one platform and start and… and aim to just get one good piece of content out and go from there. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed and think, “Oh man, if I’m not posting every single day, the algorithm is not going to favor me. It’s not going to promote my posts. I’m not going to get in front of people as much.”
I would not… it’s… it’s a lot to focus on. I… I think you got to trust guys like yourselves or like me to get that organized and put together a schedule and a calendar and make sure things are going out consistently. If you’re a solo operator, I’d focus on just starting. Get something out that you’re… it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be great, just good enough that you don’t think you’re gonna embarrass yourself. And put it out there and then see if you can get into a habit. Start with one a week, then try to get to two a week, and then see if you can grow from there. But if you’re finding that you’re dedicating so much time to social media that it’s taking away from the actual work that you’re doing, then you need to get some help.
Rob (46:23): Yeah. And I… and I think more than looking for something that’s good, I think where you’re going with that, Jake, is… I think you’re on the right track. I think it’s a matter of not looking for… rather if it’s good, if the spam score’s there, if it’s authentic.
Jake (46:36): Yeah, that… that’d be more of the terms.
Rob (46:41): Now because… better… better put that way, right? Because if you’re just taking what’s AI generated and you’re there now to be able to… if I was going to talk to a solo operator, I’d probably take that to the level of go get something like… we have our social media suite, so I’m… I… I like it best, but you go get a Hootsuite, you go get a Buffer, who… whatever social media spot you can get, a tool like that.
47:00 | The Truth About AI-Generated Images
Rob (47:05): Do your evergreen content, spend a weekend, just get your evergreen content, get it on a repeating schedule to where it’s not the same thing every single day, but to where you have variety of content so that way, if you’re not doing anything, that system is built out for you so that way you’re going through and you’re being consistent on your message, and you have good quality content all the time. And then whatever you could post as the week goes on or the month goes on or whatever, then you can add to that content.
And that content should be things like, I just solved XYZ problem for this type of person in this area. And that’s really more service area. I guess you could use that probably in the health care work… in healthcare, a lot too. But then you’re talking about real things that are… real things that someone might search for, and you’re adding to your evergreen content. That’s how I kind of… my… my kind of approach as you’re thinking about that.
Jake (47:44): I think that’s a really great way to organize it and to ensure that what you’re putting out is in line with your… with what you’re offering and who you’re trying to get in front of.
Rob (47:52): Right, because… because then you’re putting something out and with technology today, I mean, you can use AI. It wouldn’t take you a whole weekend to write a whole year’s worth of evergreen content.
Jake (48:02): 100%. Just make sure that you’re injecting your authenticity and personality into it.
Rob (48:07): For sure, exactly.
Dean (48:09): Well, Jake, go for it. One… one more question, just one more thought real quick, then we’ll… Your thoughts on AI-generated images, where do you think that’s falling for value? Taking a world of a turn in the last couple weeks. Things have gotten smarter.
Jake (48:32): Yeah, I mean, still short term, I hate them. I… I think that it’s, you know, back to what Rob was talking about earlier with uncanny valley and… and how looking at these images can often elicit these feelings of disgust. I think that if you’re posting them, and it is… look, it’s all about use case, right?
If you’re posting them… I can’t stand looking at these… these AI headshots that are obviously AI. And it’s… it… look, the person just looks off. I mean, I had one recently where there was a woman I was working with, and she was using these. And we met, and she looked absolutely nothing like she did in her AI-generated photos. And I immediately didn’t trust her because I felt like I had been lied to.
If you’re just looking for stock photos for a website, I think that’s totally fine, right? If there are… if there are, you know, if it’s for an event that you’re putting together and you want to spin up a graphic… if it… as long as it’s not trying to deceive people and make them think that this is you or this is a situation that’s real, I’m fine with it.
But I… to, you know, Rob talked about this extensively. The reality is going to trump AI. I think as AI gets more prevalent and used in more places, the… the human nature of business is going to become more and more important. And so if you’re trying to use AI to take the place of that, you’re not going to be successful.
So I think there’s a place for it, like there is for everything. I mean, I think it’s fun. I think if you’re posting about it… I’ve been seeing these like… action figures of clients go around, which I think is fun and cheeky.
Rob (49:47): Yeah, yeah. I think it’s… that’s cool. It’s saying, “Hey, check out my action figure.” Like, that’s… that’s totally cool. That’s, you know, hopping on that trend is fine. But I think that if you’re using it to… to show… to… to take the place of a human activity or a place that should be you, then you’re not going to see the results you’re looking for.
Rob (50:11): I… I like the people… I try to put it in… is this person left me a review? And they give it a name? And the person I can tell is AI generated? And then I’m like, “Oh, Jim.” Just like… kind of when they use stock photos like… I like I said before inside of this conversation, marketers don’t ruin anything good. And that’s where they’ve ruined the living hell out of that whole piece.
There’s a lot of them that have used it over the years, and some are worse than others. And I mean, it’s always been something to chase. But I would say that the AI generation for images has gotten a lot better. I think it has place. You have to be very careful with that you’re using it. But if you’re working with a graphic designer, and I think every graphic designer should be using AI and getting some ideas from it because it’ll come up with some pretty damn cool ideas at this point of where you could take something and sometimes it’ll even throw it into a vector file to where you can pull it into Photoshop.
52:00 | Final Thoughts & Where to Find Jake
Jake (52:00): Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like that’s the… that’s the headline of this entire talk is use… use AI the right way. Don’t overuse it. You know, make sure you are… you’re thoughtful about its application.
Rob (52:12): I mean, it’s one of those things to where I think that’s a big piece is that using AI as an assistant, getting rid of the low-level assistant kind of area and make it to where everything’s more at a high level to where you can look at that, no matter if you’re talking about content, video, or any of your graphic stuff. Now granted, I have never seen a video that I really liked except for entertainment purposes come from an AI. I tried it for some people talking, and it just… it’s… it’s kind of like… trying to get it to talk as yourself.
Jake (52:45): Gets my voice right, sounds like me. It just doesn’t have the right pitches and doesn’t have the mistakes that I make. And it… it’s not me. It… it can’t replace you.
Rob (52:51): Totally. I mean, maybe one day it will, and that’s going to be even scarier. And the… our brains aren’t going to have a huge fit, try to figure that one out. But I mean… that’s absolutely crazy to think about. But… but Jake, if anybody wants to find you and wants to get to more information on you, how would they do so?
Jake (53:17): Check me out at patientprocure.com, and you can shoot me an email or give me a call from right there.
Rob (53:24): Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there any… any questions you had for us? I… I forgot to ask that.
Jake (53:30): No, I think this has been great. I really appreciate your time, and this has been a great interview. And you know, I’m excited to learn more about Simply Be Found.
Rob (53:38): Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Jake (53:42): Thanks, guys. Take care.
