Elevating Behavioral Health Marketing with Limited Budgets with Mari Considine & Cari Burke

💡 Episode Summary Behavioral health marketers know that outspending private equity-backed competitors isn't an option. But that doesn't mean conceding the market. In this episode, Ray Mina sits down with Mari Considine and Cari Burke of Acenda Integrated Health, to explore how they rebuilt their marketing function into a cross-functional growth engine. They dig into how Acenda shifted from brochures and local referrals to a data-driven, experience-obsessed strategy, why tying every KPI to business outcomes unlocked buy-in that marketing metrics alone never could, and how their Brand Experience Design Lab is closing the gaps between digital promise and in-person reality. 👉 Check out the actionable guide based on this episode: https://www.freshpaint.io/blog/winning-on-small-budgets-with-mari-considine-and-cari-burke ------------------- ⏱️ Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Cold open ‍01:46 - Acenda Integrated Health and the shifting behavioral health landscape 04:15 - Pre-COVID marketing vs. today: From brochures to digital 09:29 - Competing without outspending: Content, creativity, and nimbleness 14:58 - Building the Brand Experience Design Lab: Cross-functional buy-in 21:42 - What the brand lab revealed: Patient journey gaps and internal referrals 36:54 - Building a playbook: How to start your own brand experience program ------------------- 💬 Quotes ‍“One of the shifts that Cari and I really made, and it took a very long time, was to take all of our KPIs, all of our metrics, and tie them to our strategic plan and individual business goals of the organization.  It helped us with finance, so we were able to get some yes’s on some things we might not have gotten before. Because again, we could show the return. But not just the return that marketing likes to see, because again, we were showing that. We just weren't showing it in the way that our business partners, our finance partners like to see. It's about making sure that we're speaking the right language because our language just falls flat with our business partners at the organization.  We really formalized what thought leadership looks like at Acenda. And the goal is to get our clinicians to participate in our marketing campaign language, in our blogs, in our content, internal, external, getting them to showcase their expertise on external websites and at conferences.” – Mari Considine “ Our data is only as good as what it's doing to for the programs. We could say, We got this many impressions and this many clicks and this many people on our website. But, if that doesn't result in people using the program services and booking those appointments and becoming a patient, it was all for nothing. I think that's where we are going to be able to see the results, based on the efforts that are going to be put forth, by seeing that increase across the board.” – Cari Burke ------------------- ‍🔗 Links: Connect with Mari Considine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariconsidine/ Connect with Cari Burke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cariburke/ Connect with Ray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymina/ Learn more about Freshpaint: https://www.freshpaint.io/ Learn more about Caspian Studios: https://www.caspianstudios.com/