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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
[00:00:09] Rachel Elsts Downey: There's a fun saying that I totally appreciate, which is, in marketing there are no emergencies. But in healthcare marketing isn't just a buzzword because it's actually survival. Every message, every touch point, every mistake, it either builds credibility or it breaks it. And that's why I called James Furbush.
[00:00:29] He spent his career bridging content, demand gen and customer trust to help healthcare brands grow with integrity. So I asked him, in a space where trust can literally mean life or death, how do you think about earning and sustaining attention as a healthcare brand?
[00:00:57] James Furbush: Hey, Rachel. I got your voicemail. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. It's such a big question. I had to really kind of give it a good think. When you're talking about building trust and sustaining attention, as a marketer, particularly in our industry, selling to hospitals and health systems, I think about attention and I think about trust a lot.
[00:01:21] Two things came to mind and have been sort of percolating in my brain. The first is something actually my mom said to me all the time growing up, which is, it takes a lifetime to earn someone's trust, but it only takes a second to destroy it. And of course, she was talking about just being a good human.
[00:01:45] But I think that in some ways, has shaped how I think about marketing to healthcare executives quite a bit because, in some ways that lifetime of earning trust means showing up day in and day out, being helpful, being thoughtful, being useful to your prospects, giving away so much without asking or expecting anything in return.
[00:02:13] And she's right when it only takes a second to sort of destroy trust with someone. And as a marketer, it's so easy to do that. You send the wrong email, you invite someone to the wrong event. There's obviously a million ways to ruin trust between someone as a marketer.
[00:02:29] The other thing that I think about, this is actually kind of weird, but it's actually a quote from Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum when he said, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. And I think a lot of marketers forget about the should doing something . For me,
[00:02:48] we say no a thousand times before we say yes. You know, as a marketer, there's a natural tension between getting someone's attention and earning someone's trust. Having the right to their attention and I think that tension is something that good marketers need to work through and resolve.
[00:03:08] Because, anyone can get attention these days for all the wrong reasons. I think we've all been on the receiving end of an automation sequence or something like that where you're like, what is this? And why is this being sent to me and why am I being invited to this event?
[00:03:24] This has nothing to do with me. I don't care about your product. I think about those things. I think about everything that we do is geared towards, " is this gonna make someone do their job better? "Is this about our buyer and not about us? And I think as marketers, it's up to us to set that boundary and uphold it and, manage that tension for the organization. Because sales and executives, they wanna sell. They want to try to get people to buy. Their boundary might be a little bit less, but I do think, if you let that boundary get erased, then
[00:04:02] you can end up doing more harm to your brand than you realize. And so I think I would just encourage people, give as much as you can and hold the line, know where that boundary is for you, and make sure you communicate it and make sure you are giving freely as much as you can with no expectation of anything in return.
[00:04:26] And if you do that, it's the long game and it's a slow game, but you will build and earn trust every day that you show up with your buyer. And eventually, when you do need to make an ask, when you do need to do something, you'll have earned the right to do that. You'll have earned the right to invite 'em to an event and get face time with them, set up a discovery call, whatever it is. And I promise you, they will be there. They will be more willing to do that for you if you show up and you take the time to earn their trust first. It's so easy to
[00:05:00] get carried away on the attention part as a marketer, here's my hot take, here's my new POV. It's so easy to get caught up in the attention part of that equation, losing sight of the trust part. And to me trust is so much more important as a marketer, particularly in healthcare.
[00:05:21] Hope that helps. Love to hear what you think. Cause I think this is such a huge and important question that marketers need to grapple with these days. Peace.