Creating a new Category in the Middle of the AI Revolution

In this episode, I sit down with Kristin Russel, CMO of symplr, to unpack how she’s building a unified brand in one of the most complex corners of healthcare — and doing it right in the middle of the AI revolution.

Kristin shares how symplr has evolved from a collection of acquired companies into the “backbone of healthcare operations,” and why that’s required not just smart marketing but category creation. We explore her concept of “branded demand,” how she balances ABM, demand gen, and opportunity marketing, and why she believes you can’t outwork complexity — you have to outsmart it.

From AI-driven personalization to surviving the shift toward AI-powered search, Kristin offers an inside look at how one of healthcare’s biggest players is keeping their marketing fresh, relevant, and human.

Key Topics:

• [00:00] Kristin’s untraditional path to marketing
• [03:00] The symplr story
• [09:30] Creating a new category
• [16:00] Growth marketing beyond new logos
• [21:45] The art of “branded demand”
• [26:00] Adapting to the AI search shift
• [30:00] Always On / Always Optimizing
• [35:00] AI in content creation
• [39:00] Personalization at scale
• [41:45] Kristin’s closing advice

Check out our full blog post where I break down Kristin’s approach to “Branded Demand”.

Interested in exploring how to build your brand? Reach out to me directly to schedule a no-obligation discussion. This isn’t a sales call—just an opportunity to talk through your LinkedIn questions and challenges.

Subscribe to The HealthTech Marketing Show on Spotify or watch us on YouTube for more insights into marketing, AI, ABM, buyer journeys, and beyond!

Full Episode Transcript

Adam Turinas: Hello, Kristin, welcome to the show. I’m so delighted to have you here. We’ve got some really interesting stuff to talk about, but to get started, tell us a bit about yourself and about Simpla.

Kristin Russel: Okay, well first off, Adam, thank you for having me. It’s, wonderful to be here and today and I’m really excited to, to not just talk about that, but to talk about marketing and all good things, marketing and healthcare.

So Kristen Russell, I have been with Simpplr for about four years now. I’ve been in marketing for. Long enough to know better. I could probably, go and do something other than marketing, but I have a kind of an untraditional path into marketing. I actually started as a speech writer ages ago for Jean, the Prime Minister of Canada.

And from that got into strategy. I did an MBA in international finance. I was a consultant, started a company in SaaS, in online banking and invoicing with ING Bank, ultimately selling it to those guys. So did, definitely did not come to marketing naturally. It was actually through product. [00:01:00] Product marketing, acquired a business.

I was running product and product marketing looks kind of interesting. I was like, Hmm, you know, these guys. You can tell a story, you can do things so much faster than you can from a product perspective. That, that was sort of my initial for like toe in the water. And from that, it just opened the doors into all things marketing, growth marketing, field marketing.

Thinking about positioning how you engage your customers. It was. Honestly, it’s just kind of been a fun little path that I’ve been on ever since. And in fact, actually since those early days, I’ve taken a lot of my lessons learned. I, I ultimately worked at Cerner, Omnicell, some health tech companies, Humana Quest Analytics.

But the last few years with simr have really kind of been been some of my favorite. Now at Simpler, we’re focused on making healthcare easier. that is kind of our DNA. We think of ourselves as the backbone of healthcare operations. we’re in nine outta 10 health systems, who trust [00:02:00] us to kind of cut through the chaos, cut through, the challenges they have, the silos that they exist in managing their contract, their spend, their workforce management, systems and solutions, quality and compliance.

Not only are we wi working with health systems, we also work with payers. and so, you know, top 400 payers working with us. we support them in provider data management solutions, compliance and credentialing. And then we’ve got a big book of business all around helping vendors move in and out of health systems.

So we call that access management bottom line. It is acute. It is non-acute. It is, we cover it all. but when we do well, our caregivers, who we ultimately kind of are the, focus for much of what we do. Our caregivers have more time to give care. And so that’s it. I mean, our North Star is really simple.

It’s all about, simplifying operations and multiplying impact

Adam Turinas: the clues in the

Kristin Russel: name. That’s right. And you better believe we lead

Adam Turinas: on that. It’s interesting to hear you [00:03:00] describe it because Yeah, I, I think everybody knows, right? SIM has been a series of acquisitions. I mean, how many, I dunno how many companies has have been acquired?

It’s.

Kristin Russel: It’s a lot. now I’ve been here for about four years. I think I’m, 11 or 12 acquisitions. But I will tell you, we’re not just growing through acquisitions, right? In fact, just having the acquisitions may seem like a sound business model, but it’s not enough and it’s not enough from a customer perspective.

Our customers need us to connect all of those different solutions to really ultimately unlock the value. In fact, just this last January, we launched our platform and so we’ve been hard at work over the last. Few years building the connective tissue between our different solutions and are actually building out what we call integrations between our different products to enable workflows.

So you can think about a talent solution and a staffing and scheduling solution. And now the opportunity to. Within your staffing and scheduling solution, organize [00:04:00] time for learning, organiz time for if you need to, recruiting all of the different assets as associated with really managing your work.

That’s what happens when we can bring our,

Adam Turinas: it is, it is a very difficult challenge. I, yeah. I started a health tech company and we sold it to Constellation. Canadian company, amazing Canadian company, and they’re fantastic at what they do. I mean, the return on equity is staggering. I think at one point it was like comparable to Apple, but they also.

Allow companies to sort of stay as they were acquired so they don’t force integrations. And so as a result of that, I didn’t stay along, around that right. Long after we were acquired. But as a result of their model, the cross sell. Is just not there. You don’t wait. you, they still sell us lots of different individual companies.

I mean, I think they’ve aggregated some of them. It’s not entirely true what I’m saying. But they haven’t done what you’ve done, which is they [00:05:00] acquired, way back when, doc Halo, which was one of our competitors, great, great product, you acquired find. Now those are companies that do different things and I’m sure you’ve probably covered, I dunno if it’s, you know, 10, 20, 30 different companies.

But to actually have them working together under one single message, right, and have that as one single face brand to the customers is really hard to do, you know?

Kristin Russel: almost like a ballet. So if you’ve ever seen a ballet, they make it look really easy. You bet There’s a lot of work on the backend.

We spend a lot of time thinking about our roadmap. We spend a lot of time thinking about our customer experience, what that looks like. You mentioned a couple of the solutions we’ve bought. Clinical communications is now what we call the old doc halo, simpler clinical communications. And now you can imagine having a clinical communications tool, a way to communicate with whoever is on staff.

It’s really enhanced when you know who’s on staff or who’s on the schedule. And so the connection points are really [00:06:00] important, but understanding the overall thesis for us, that is all solely focused on this healthcare operations space. So the administration the solutions that, you know, your health systems need to run to operate.

Then, like I said, I mean we can go after some really challenging problems with the solutions that we have. you brought up, find the onboarding and offboarding of clinicians in our world and anybody who’s listening to this, this is a healthcare marketing show. I mean, you guys know this is a super big challenge, particularly the offboarding piece.

Now onboarding. You bring on a new physician and they’re, you know, the clock starts ticking. It’s about $9,600 a day until they’re up and running. Sim credentialing, we’re the largest credential are in the medical space, and so getting them up is big part of it. Not just up but trained. They’ve gotta be onboarded, they’ve gotta be in the system for scheduling.

That’s, again, touching all of our different solutions. So the opportunity to [00:07:00] connect all of that as well as then offboard, those clinicians as they leave, help get them out of the systems from a security perspective. All of that really does come to bear from the different products that we’ve brought together.

I, I will tell you, you’re right from a marketing perspective, it’s a big branding initiative and it’s been ongoing. I it’s not, I won’t make any pro, I don’t want to give anybody kind of the vibe that, Hey, this is easy. I got boom, no problem, one and done. for the first few years I would show up at events.

We’d have simpler, we’d have all of our, you know, our, great solutions and our customers wouldn’t really understand who we were. They were associating us with. Simpler or maybe a vendor credentialing system, but not the product that they acquired that they’d done due diligence on, that they were actively using until we were able to migrate our user experience, our user interfaces, until we were able to really bring them that some of those connective tissues of the different products coming together.

And to be honest, until we’re able to really start invoicing them with the [00:08:00] names of our solutions, it’s really hard to just be on the front end saying, Hey, we’re all simpler. So it’s a. It’s a whole, you know, company effort to really bring these solutions together. So, bit of a playbook over time, but it’s taken some work.

Adam Turinas: So branding, obviously key priority for, for marketing. What are some of the other expectations of, of the role of marketing?

Kristin Russel: particularly for, simpler branding is a big one.

in fact, standing up the brand becoming simpler was important. So like you said, you call, you called it out at the beginning. We really grew in a variety of different ways, both organically and inorganically. And so that meant establishing ourselves. In a space where, honestly, when I started, I’ll never forget this.

I sat down with Russ Brazel, you know him I’m sure from Chime.

I sat down with Russ and talked a little bit about what we were doing, saying, you know, okay, we’re workforce management, provider, data management, contract spend, management. He’s like, yep, I got it. Quality. Yep. All in there. He said, you know what?

You [00:09:00] are. He said, you guys, you are the other budget for the CIOs. And I thought, oh my heavens, that is our category, the other budget. And so to go from that and create a brand meant we had to create a category as well. We had to create a space in which we could exist that made sense for.

For our buyers, and that meant creating this healthcare operations category. I can say we’ve created it now in part because I believe when you create a category. kind of have to have three things in place before you can say, yeah, I got it. One is, you’ve definitely gotta have the analysts talking about you.

Class now has their Healthcare Operations summit, which is super excited to be a part of that. We’ve got people with healthcare operations in their job title, so, you know, walking around talking about healthcare operations. And keep in mind, Adam. When we first started and we started talking about healthcare operations, everybody thought we were talking about the broom closet and the janitorial services.

So it is like major lift to get into this category. [00:10:00] And the third piece, which you know, we welcome is competition. And so we’ve got competitors now talking about their healthcare operations solutions and what they do. and so that was a big part of, pulling this all together.

So brand.

Category creation, a big part of marketing, but not the only part. You asked what does marketing do at sim? Yeah, so brand category creation. Brand category creation. We have product marketing, we have growth marketing, we do field marketing. I mean, it’s pretty traditional from that perspective. Bringing pipeline to the sales team is a big piece of our lives.

Adam Turinas: So I’m, curious as like the other budget, so the b the other other budget, the main budget is the Epic and whatever your other EHR is, but predominantly Epic.

Kristin Russel: That’s right. Cli the clinical technology piece. I would say the

Adam Turinas: clinical. Okay. Yeah. I’m curious how the. Complimentary. You are with Epic.

And the reason why I ask is that a lot of companies face this [00:11:00] issue ’cause I know we did. is if you’re selling to an Epic customer. If you, present your solution, you get one of two answers, one answer is that’s great. Let me just go see where it’s on Epic’s roadmap. Right. or the alternative is some would say that’s great.

Epic is fantastic. They do what they do really well. We actually want to go best of breed and we think you have something here which is different enough that we’re gonna consider you.

Kristin Russel: That’s right.

Adam Turinas: And you kind of had to figure out, you had to qualify the Epic customers based on that. So I’m curious is, you know, you, you are doing that across, you know, okay.

Across one big category that you’ve created, but it’s actually against probably. A hundred different use cases.

Kristin Russel: Right. You know, it’s interesting you talk about best of breed. So we would say while we have best of breed solutions that are absolutely class winners, we are actually an enterprise player in and of ourselves.

So by creating this, sort of moat around our solutions, by having all of these different solutions. We offer our [00:12:00] partners, our healthcare partners, the opportunity to double down with simpler to have that single vendor in multiple different areas across their portfolio. And to be honest in areas that Epic does not serve us.

we do compete with Epic in a couple of different areas, but we come at it from a very different angle. So we are not coming at it from the clinical medical record. We don’t have a clinical medical record. We do have your administrative solutions. We do have the kind of the focus on your staffing and scheduling, which I mean, your average hospital has what, 6,000, 9,000 different nurses that they’ve got a staffing schedule, your physician scheduling, huge area of complexity.

Epic’s not in. Credentialing. They’re not in the quality benchmarking solutions that we’re doing the O-P-P-E-F-P-P-E offering that we have, they’re not in the compliance the way that SIM is so we’re able to really come at it and actually have a very complimentary offering with Epic, I would say probably.

You know, maybe 80% of our customers are using Epic. And so we, work very [00:13:00] closely with them. We integrate with Epic, but we’re not really competing against Epic. it’s interesting, if you look at, one of the ways to think about it is in a larger health system, so in our enterprise accounts, our customers typically there will divide their IT into two areas and it is the clinical solutions.

But the other area is that administrative solution area. And that’s quite firmly where sim plays.

Adam Turinas: Got it. You’ve got your, essentially your beachhead within the organization and, and you’ve got a, a clear complimentary relationship.

Kristin Russel: That’s right. And cross selling is a big part of what we do. You know, if we have a toehold, we’re gonna offer more solutions.

We’re gonna bring a lot more value. cross upselling as well, the simpler solution set. But helping our hospitals think about breaking down silos with simpler solutions is a big piece of how we. How we show up in market. And with our platform, we’ve actually changed as well the segmentation and who our focused customer is.

And so we’ve gone from the [00:14:00] variety of individual solutions where I had about probably 10 different target audience bot, primary buyers, to really one single kind of overhead. Quarterback, the CIO, who is then also supported and obviously, individual enabling their counterparts, whether they’re the CHRO, the CNO, depending on the solution, you know, your med staff team, your quality team that’s looking at or using the simpler solutions

Adam Turinas: you are.

Over the course of this, podcast, we’ve talked with dozens, you know, prob close to a hundred different companies. You are one of the few that have as many customers as you do, like what you said, nine outta 10 healthcare systems, 400 payers. as well. Explain to me the role of growth marketing. ’cause it’s not about new customer acquisition obviously.

Kristin Russel: No, it’s, actually, it’s really interesting that you say that the complexity of selling into a health system though should not be lost on anyone. and there is some new customer acquisition. So while we [00:15:00] are firmly established in the acute care space, non-acute care remains very large area of opportunity for us.

First and foremost. Secondly, though, just putting that aside, within our health systems, typically what we find are the silos are so big that there’s an opportunity to communicate to the CHRO, for example, that number one, Hey, you’ve got a solution over here you can take advantage of, of more competitive pricing of, a different offer.

That making them aware that’s. Simpler exists that we’ve got an offering in their space that they can use to solve X, y, and Z. So really helping and supporting that cross-selling is probably the most critical area there. We still look at traditional measurements with our growth marketing team, we’re looking at how much can we bring into the funnel and then how are those opportunities moving down the funnel?

so that’s a critical piece of kind of how we show up in market. At the same time, we are really obviously pretty focused on account-based marketing and even more so opportunity-based marketing.

Adam Turinas: What’s the difference? We [00:16:00] were talking the other day, you said, a BM as part of what you do, but not everything.

and I can understand that and you said we view it as growth marketing equals a BM plus demand, gen plus Opportunity Marketing. H how, unpack that a bit.

Kristin Russel: So, you know, it’s interesting. I think when a BM first came around, everybody was like, whole hog. Here we go. We’re all in. And I do think that a BM is a really critical piece in the marketer’s arsenal.

Hands down, you’ve gotta have an a BM strategy. You’ve gotta be able to support your sales team. Understanding the intent, that our customers are presenting, but it’s not the only thing. And so one of the things that we’re also like, when I think about good old traditional demand gen. Going out. I need Adam to be aware that I’m here.

I want get you over to my website harder now than ever before. We’ll talk about that. I’m sure. I wanna get you in. I wanna, I want you looking at my products, understanding how I differ from the competition. I want you thinking and understanding the returns I can provide you, the value I can [00:17:00] give you.

In my own way. and so that’s kind of the traditional demand gen piece. And then the opportunity, particularly in an account like in a space like ours, we may have 3, 4, 7 different opportunities in any one account at a single point in time. So we are absolutely firing on multiple cylinders, especially with our larger, customers, and they’ll be in different stages.

Of their customer journey. They, we might also have accounts that we’ve just, or opportunities we’ve just closed, but we still wanna continue kind of that nurturing relationship because there’s complimentary solutions that we wanna be able to market and offer and ultimately sell and engage our customers with.

Adam Turinas: Yeah, I, imagine it gets really complex ’cause you could have. You could be marketing, find and or your credential. I didn’t

Kristin Russel: call that simpler directory, right there.

Adam Turinas: You gotta write that down. Not bad, not bad. As it came out, I immediately thought I

Kristin Russel: should say, you’re good. You got it. You’re good.

Adam Turinas: Simpler, direct.

So you might be marketing, you know, credentialing, provided directory [00:18:00] solutions in one part of the organization. And it’s an early stage, and in another part of the organization, you much might be much further along with the same people. And so it’s sort of how you, you’ve got not with

Kristin Russel: the same people, with the same CIO over top of the overall experience for sure.

and they’re gonna be wanting and, pushing to get the best value that they can from us as well. But you could think about, you know, our compliance officer working with one part of our solution set C-H-R-O-C-N-O, working with another. Suite of simpler solutions. And then, you know, altogether a different group that’s the med staff office working with a different set of our solutions.

That’s just one example. But those individuals do exist in silos. They’ve got different ways of doing business, they’ve got different ways of contracting. And to be honest, we have different ways of engaging with them as well.

Adam Turinas: I’m curious, how do you avoid crossing the streams so that the right people see the right message and then the CIO who might be seeing all of these messages?

You know, gets a sort of, maybe they get a different message. I’m really [00:19:00] interested in how you tailor that.

Kristin Russel: Oh my gosh, I wish I had the perfect answer for that. I certainly, I see, I mean, we have a product marketing team that’s phenomenal. Led by Mike Mast oversees this group. I should actually not give names away.

People are gonna be like, oh, I’m gonna hire you. But, uh, but Mike does a great job of, helping our product marketers think about who that ICP is, who is the individual contributor that we’ve really gotta focus on from a marketing perspective. And then our growth marketing team will take that and will create tailored campaigns hand in hand.

With our product marketing team to really make sure we’re attaching value from a digital perspective or a digital outreach perspective to those players. At the same time, obviously we’re working with our sales team and our enablement team to ensure they’re aware of one, the campaigns that are going forth, but also.

Who those ICPs are and how we can think about that. I mean, we arm our sales team with battle cards. We’ve got market intelligence. We think about the positioning. We think a lot about kind of how those individuals think, and it’s a two-way street. We’re [00:20:00] bringing that information back in as well.

When we do it well, it’s a conversation we’re having with the sales team.

Adam Turinas: Makes a lot of sense before we get onto the AI topic. you mentioned in a, I can’t remember. I, I saw it somewhere on LinkedIn. you said, this notion of branded demand, and I thought, I feel like I’ve heard that before, but I actually said, you know what, I’ve never heard anybody say that.

And it sound, it was very intriguing.

Kristin Russel: Oh, I love that. I’m so glad I got you, I got you. Excited about something. Yeah. I think about brand acquisition and branded demand, as complimentary a little bit. So, you know, when done right, I think even your lowest funnel assets, your ads, your webinars, your nurture flows can reinforce positioning, can reinforce value, and every touch point is a brand moment.

So when I think about branded demand, it’s really, and gosh, I mean, I just was talking with my, growth team about this the other day, and with our, we have an agency that helps with a lot of our, kind of our low funnel A or [00:21:00] top of funnel assets that. Those need to include the value nuggets that are going to engage the ICP, but it’s gotta look, it’s gotta feel like something you want to engage with.

Right? I talk a lot about kind of, guys and, gals or people in blue scrubs leaning over iPads. Kind of like a big no-no. We really push on our marketing to, to be different, to be unique, to be something that you’re like, oh, that’s kind of a cool image. And, and that alone can grab folks. Maybe if my, messaging hasn’t quite helped you, but I’m gonna take every opportunity I can to get your interest.

And I do think. We’re all human. you know, it’s interesting, I was just looking at some stats this morning. Our Instagram is, which four years ago I was like, very antisocial. But we’ve got some great folks in social. Our Instagram is growing and supporting our brand. It’s probably one of our fastest growing digital channels alongside LinkedIn.

Adam Turinas: Who are you trying to reach with Instagram?

Kristin Russel: With Instagram, we’re really, that’s really just. Fun moments of engagement of like, Hey, we’re [00:22:00] here. We’re your partner, we’re human

Recognizing that. The users of our software, they’re multifaceted. They’re not just a clinician that’s sitting in front of patients looking at nursing journals all day long.

They’ve got a life, they wanna do fun stuff. Our CIOs, may be interested in our golfers, the golf team that we sponsor, our vendors that we work with from a vendor acquisition perspective, maybe interested in fun of some of the funny clips. So it’s just recognizing that there’s many sides of.

Of that human and really having a digital program that approaches all of the different sides.

Adam Turinas: Yeah, that’s a very fresh perspective. I don’t hear that much in our, in our industry. And it, makes sense and that notion of branded demand, which is some quality of execution, right? I think that, uh, you know, brand awareness and brand consideration.

I think it become a bit of a dirty word in our industry. So, you know, demand gen is a little bit more really about that. and I, feel like we’re starting to come back to it’s [00:23:00] okay to talk about building the brand because if people don’t know who you are, what you stand for, and what you could do for them.

They’re not gonna download your forms.

Kristin Russel: Well, they can’t search for you if they don’t know you. You know, I think the other piece that’s really important, particularly in B2B is, you know, don’t forget that 95% of our audience is not buying right now, so I’ve gotta give them something memorable enough. That when they are ready to make that purchase or to go run the RFP or to start their search for X, Y, and Z, that SIM’s there.

It’s in their mind and they’re like, uh, you know what? I think simpler does something here. Lemme go check those guys out. That’s critical, especially in a world where you search can be, I mean, I can go search, I get the answers without even coming to my website. So I want to make sure that there’s some association with the brand so it’s not all just rolling through chat.

GBT.

Adam Turinas: I think this is a, good moment to kind of move on to a different topic around ai [00:24:00] and as we’ve talked about, it feels like we’re at an inflection point, two articles in The Economist this week, NPR, talking about how AI is impacting the way that people search and the way that people use the web.

Absolutely. I’m really curious, how is that impacting a company like yours?

Kristin Russel: It is. It is completely impacting our company. We talk about it all the time. We’re not just talking about it, we’re doing things about it. We had, um, so my marketing offsite in June, this was a big, area of focus for us to.

We have been spending some time understanding this and, I mean, Adam,

it’s changing like every two weeks. Like literally like two weeks ago I was looking at my GA stats and kind of web traffic and you’re like, wait a minute, hold on. It just, you know, take, took a nosedive.

It turned out to be a different algorithm in the way that we were tracking, but things are changing night and day, so you really do need to be on top of this.

and sort of thinking about it in our world, the way we’re looking at it, we’re taking a [00:25:00] heavy look at all of our digital channels right now, our owned digital channels, which is largely our website, but we own other channel. We have access to other channels as well that we certainly, you know, manage and, coordinate around.

And so looking at all of those different channels and thinking through what are the campaigns we’re running, how are we. Leveraging branded demand to really engage with our customers. There are things that simpler owns that we get to be able to kind of claw back from the generative engines that are going to be pushing other content forward.

Mm-hmm. And by that I mean. My products, the ability to offer unique insights about the solutions. You’ve gotta come to our website to see that, to see the products in action, to see the videos, to be able to, now I’m sure that’s gonna, that’s changing too, but we wanna get folks from interested enough in those answer engines that they’re going to come over to the simpler website.

So what we’re doing is we’re looking very closely at the. [00:26:00] All of the different channels that are leading to our site, we’re optimizing our answer calls, we’re optimizing our content, recognizing it’s going to be in these chat chief in these sort of different LLMs and thinking through how do we make that content engaging enough, but yet at the same time.

I’m, where we’re really pushing is the value that you, it can’t be high level. If it’s just high level content, it gets lost in the noise now more than ever. It’s gotta be specific. It’s gotta help your audience understand how you differentiate yourselves, and then really look to pull you in. With that.

Things like open houses, webinars, the old webinars back in a lot of different forms, like podcasts, like this one. But creating moments for people to kind of connect with us has been a really important part of this.

Adam Turinas: I’m curious to say, can you give an example of how that’s changing your concept?

I get what you’re saying in terms of. Using different media. ’cause you want to get, you want to diversify just from website [00:27:00] to YouTube and podcasts and different social channels as well. I think, you know, it’s interesting you were using, as you, you mentioned, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Yes. But can you give an example of how you might be changing the messaging so that you show up in the right way? In the, you know, in AI overviews, for example.

Kristin Russel: Yeah, so. Our little offsite back in June, coming out of that, we said, let’s start an initiative. We’re calling it a OAO. always on, always optimizing.

And now these are our old school always, you know, the, set it and forget it campaigns that everybody’s sort of, you, you’ve got ’em out there, you. We wanted to take a hard look at those. In fact, it’s just the core basics that weren’t performing for us the way we wanted them to. And so it was a matter of like ripping open all of those different from the website to the channels that lead us to the website, to the nurture streams that come out of those.

We wanted to take a hard look at all of those different elements using a lot of, you know, we’ve got a lot of great tools that help us understand how are people coming to our [00:28:00] websites. What kind of numbers, where are they coming from? Gave us insights into some of the answer engine pieces that we’re seeing and an answer engine.

So that is gonna be content that is very specific to simpler, but also very specific to unique solutions that we solve for, or unique areas. So like the Joint Commission has a specific ruling that SIM’s Quality Solution, for example, can address. We want content on that particular solution, how we’ve done it, how customers are doing it.

We’re gonna tie right into that piece and then connect that over into our solution marketing. Whereas maybe in a prior world it was enough to just talk about the solution. I’ve gotta talk about the latest. I don’t know, FSLA laws that are coming down the pike that are gonna impact 2025 rulings around fair labor.

So that’s the kind of high level content that we’re doing, but we’re also taking it across the board. So one. I’ve got product marketing working on very detailed messaging that speaks to the value that speaks to return for our [00:29:00] customers, particularly in this world. Right off the bat of the, big Beautiful Bill.

We’ve got that content coming in. We’re really looking at what do people need right now? From a healthcare efficiency perspective, from a healthcare operations perspective, and how does that tie into our different solutions with product marketing, creating the content, we give it to our growth team, who is building that into every single touchpoint.

We’ve got SEO working on as growth comes out with the campaigns as we build ’em on the website. It’s our SEO team that takes a hard look at that. I still use SEO, I’m gonna probably grow an alphabet soup at them pretty soon. Like a saggy or something. But they’re looking and using their tools.

we use a tool called BrightEdge, for example, that gives us, it’s got AI embedded in it, but it also lets us see. How are we doing on traditional search, direct search, answer generated search, the GEO searches that they’re coming from. It gives us that kind of insight in terms of where is our search volume and what are they going [00:30:00] to, and where are they spending the most time, what’s bouncing, what’s not?

And then each one of those areas, it’s a, it’s an AB test as we look to improve, and really think through as well, not just all of those pieces, but also things like our CRO. So I’m throwing a lot of, Alphabet’s stupid at you. But, you know, CRO, it has been another big area that we have doubled down on, particularly in light of everything that’s coming down with ai.

And again, that’s because once I’ve got somebody finally to my site, I’ve gotta get ’em converting. Yeah. And the faster, the more the tighter the conversion. The, we look at the assets that are our top converting assets, why, what images are in front of them. What’s on the side? What’s the content in the asset, what’s the messaging?

Anything that’s gonna lead to conversions, we’re doubling into those as well.

Adam Turinas: It’s so interesting hearing you talk it through ’cause you are actually making, you’ve helped me understand what’s going on with my own side. ’cause I tell you what I’ve seen in the last two years ago, 65% of our traffic came [00:31:00] from, from SEO.

in the last six months, it’s dropped to below 50. Right. And it’s gonna keep going down, right? But the thing which hasn’t changed is that the assets that were driving the most traffic are still driving the most traffic, right? There are certain things that, pillar pieces of content that are still, bringing traffic to the site and generating leads.

Equally, what I’m also seeing is, is I’m not seeing a fall off in the number of people that comes to the website and book a meeting. and I think that’s, it says that the mid funnel and the lower funnel, because we’ve actually improved, that I think is still working. I think what we’re losing is it may be a lot of the kind of junk that were, that was coming in through kind of long tail content that may be less relevant.

so I’m hopeful that, you know, even though the traffic, my traffic’s gone down that it’s still gonna keep converting at the same volume at a higher rate. But, I think, you know, the way that you’ve described it, you are moving very quickly. [00:32:00] I’m really interested in what Bright Edge does.

I hadn’t heard of that tool.

Kristin Russel: we’ve got a bunch Bright edge though, is Old school was an SEO tool. Now it’s, like I said, it’s evolved so that it’s more than just, supporting our SEO, but it’s also giving us, the indicators we need to understand where we’re generating the traffic.

And, I think the other piece is, as we look at this, the more authoritative we can be, the clearer we can be in our messaging and in our outreach. I mean, it is simple. It’s obvious, but it’s also even that is helpful in terms of bringing more traffic to the site. And then again it’s cr, it’s conversion rate optimization once we get ’em on the site.

Adam Turinas: What are some of the other ways that you and your team are adopting AI.

Kristin Russel: Well, certainly we’re using it ourselves. and, you know, and, supporting a level of efficiency, across the board. It’s definitely helping us, with our branded content, making sure we’re more on brand, on voice. we’ve got tools like Jasper in use here, at Simpler.

Our content team really thinks about that. Honestly, I think the role of [00:33:00] content is evolving, pretty quickly, and that’s been another area that, We’re still learning, we’re still like everybody else figuring this out. But you know, a year ago we had people who owned content and then’s content’s always been funky.

And you know, it’s like marriage counseling.

Adam Turinas: so it’s the form of speech writer, right? You start, yeah.

Kristin Russel: So like, everybody has a hand in content, particularly in marketing, but getting content created that’s on brand, that’s, you know, really gonna resonate with your audience and having like.

32 different product categories and, you know, so many different critical buyers involved in any buying decision means our content can be a little complicated and a little complex to create. And we want it that way. We want it, with depth and meaning. I think AI helps to support more content writers and the creation of probably better content.

At the end of the day, that’s going to be more on tone, assuming that the inputs. Are solid that we, you know, we’re not using AI to just create the content [00:34:00] alone. It’s a supporter, it’s an enabler so that we’re building, you know, real authentic, engaging content to start with. And then thinking about ways that we can transform that take a case study, build a white paper out of it, create a listicle or an infographic from the content that we created for sure.

Adam Turinas: Is it changing the work, the job that the content creators do? A hundred percent,

Kristin Russel: definitely. So I think your content create, the content creators are evolving as well. They’re becoming more of almost like a tech team. You’ve got different, you, I’m pushing content creation into different areas of the organization that maybe didn’t have content creation.

Requirements before the growth team loves it. They’re able to get a lot closer to content. They’re able to, you know, get a little bit more enhanced content. The content team is sort of like, wait, hold on a second. how is this all working? But in some ways it’ll alleviate them from lower, more tedious work to be a little more strategic and kind of up level.

At the end of the day,

Adam Turinas: they, they also, it, forces them to develop really good editorial [00:35:00] skills. Because of the challenge, I think with a lot of these tools, I’m a big fan of Claude, is that it keeps getting better at the way it writes. And so it’s really easy to go like, yeah, just, I read it a couple of times, it’s fine.

I’ll just post it. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. if you do that too many times, within a month, all your content’s generic. You have to force yourself, right, to edit it and to bring in, you know, back to the notion of branded demand. What else are you bringing to this so that it’s not just informative, it’s actually genuinely engaging.

Kristin Russel: You know, and we’ve been talking a lot, Adam, about like the top of the funnel, the front of the customer journey. as everybody probably on this podcast is thinking about it’s, not a one way street. particularly when you’re in nine out of 10 hospitals, there’s that entire point at which the customer, this group that you’re trying to engage becomes a customer.

And then we’ve got the whole back cycle of, you know, really marketing to our customers and, supporting, that customer journey. And that’s another area that we’re starting to lean into and understand even more effectively with [00:36:00] AI enabling us to really understand kind of our population, where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re looking for, how they’re connecting with us.

We’re just beginning on some of those forays, but I’m excited about the opportunity to scale our customer marketing in support of customer success of our professional services team, of our support team, and really thinking about how we. How we build out meaningful customer journeys for all of our different, simpler customers

Adam Turinas: and I think you guys do a lot around personalization.

Kristin Russel: We do. and that’s another big area from, you know, you talked about ai, we do a lot with personalization. we can do a lot more. looking at ways that we personalize our campaigns. We, are also, to be honest, looking at ways we even personalize that, that engagement upfront with our chat. Our chat bots on our website, not just for kind of new prospects, but for existing customers as well.

That’s a big area of, We’re leaning into, and to be honest, 2026 is gonna have a [00:37:00] lot of personalization moments. so stay tuned and look for that. I’m really excited.

Adam Turinas: I’m looking forward to it. I’m gonna learn from it and, commercialize it on your behalf in my,

Kristin Russel: I love it.

Adam Turinas: I’ll give you full attribution.

Kristen, you’ve been very generous with your time and this has been fantastic. We’ve covered a lot of ground. And there are so many Jens in this, but I wanna, you know, leave you with a, you know, a closing question, which I ask quite a few guests. I haven’t asked this for a while, but, uh, I wanna ask you this one, which is, if you could go back in time and give the you from the future one piece of advice, what would that be?

Kristin Russel: okay, so by the way, this, you should ask your chat. GPT. This, I’m just saying like, everybody who’s listening is small. Wait, what, what a great idea. But my favorite thing to do these days with my kids, I got teenagers, is to ask like crazy questions with chat GPT. Like, who am I and what do you know?

And what would I outsmart like?

Adam Turinas: Brilliant. I’m gonna do that directly after them.

Kristin Russel: So that probably would be like, anybody listening, go run [00:38:00] that test. That could be really cool. in terms of, you know, if, what would I go back and say? I think I tell myself you can’t outwork complexity.

you gotta outsmart it. And particularly right now with so many different things being thrown at us, I mean, I could work 24 hour days, but. it’s not gonna be better. it’s not gonna be different. It’s not gonna be unique. And I think outsmarting it and thinking about whatever the problem is and figuring out kind of the ways to engage and pull the team in more and more than, certainly even more than I already do.

That’s kind of the stuff that really, where the magic happens, it’s not any one individual. It’s all of us coming together. I have. A phenomenal team that I work with, marketing, sales, customer success. Tackle some really hard crap. I will be honest, Adam. It gets crazy over here, but you know, you know when you’re in the boat and you’re rowing and you’ve got great people with you and you’re all rowing in the same direction by gummy, you know, there’s some four foot swells.

But we do a pretty good job. And I think it’s [00:39:00] because we really try to outsmart, the challenges and, work together for our customers, for our employees, for our shareholders. Bj, our CEO always says, if we put the employee first, if we take care of the employees, the employees will take care of our customers.

and that’s a little bit of an example of kind of outsmarting, versus outworking.

Adam Turinas: That is, first of all, that’s a wonderful, wonderful piece of advice. But that also, that point about putting the employees first. you and I could do another whole, we’ll have to go back and do another on that, on that issue.

That’s awesome. Kristen, this has been fantastic. Really appreciate you taking the time with me today. And with that, I wanna say thank you and, you know, hopeful we’ll, we’ll get you back on the podcast in a year to say what’s, how’s it going? Yeah,

Kristin Russel: really smart today, aren’t

Adam Turinas: you?

Kristin Russel: All that stuff you said you were gonna do.

I love it. Adam, it’s been great connecting with you too, so I, appreciate being a part of the podcast. Thanks for inviting me, and I’d love to come back.