19 MINHealthcare Marketing for Independent Practices: The Team Behind the Results
Independent practices often struggle with marketing—not because they lack ambition, but because they lack time, specialized expertise, and a strategy that adapts as their goals shift. This episode pulls back the curtain on Tebra’s professional services team to show how marketing built specifically for healthcare actually works.
Samantha Bergquist talks with Kirby Kushner, Director of Professional Services; Valerie Cook, Senior Manager of Customer Content and Design; and Maya Raymond, team lead for shared services. Together, they explain what makes Tebra different from local agencies or DIY tools: a team of specialists who understand both marketing and healthcare, working as an extension of the practice rather than a vendor.
The conversation covers how the team builds strategy from kickoff through quarterly reviews, ensuring every blog post, ad campaign, and social media plan reflects the practice’s current priorities. Valerie describes how content is designed to answer patient questions while supporting SEO and building trust. Maya shares a detailed example of how targeted geo-optimization turned underperforming Google Ads into a significant source of new patients for a Massachusetts cardiology practice.
The episode makes the case that results come from people, not platforms—and that the right partnership means someone is thinking about a practice’s growth every day, even when the practice can’t.
- Quarterly performance reviews uncover shifting priorities and improve ROI—schedule a kickoff and quarterly check-ins to adjust budgets, keywords, and targeting from real performance data.
- Publish FAQ-driven blog posts that directly answer patient search queries tied to services you want to grow; those posts boost local SEO and convert trust into appointments.
- Narrow paid-search geo-targeting to top-performing zip codes or neighborhoods instead of a broad radius—performance-driven geos often raise conversion quality and cut wasted ad spend.
- If your team lacks time or expertise, partner with a healthcare-specialized marketing team that acts as an extension of your practice to avoid costly trial-and-error and keep clinicians focused on care.
- Use AI to scale routine content and reduce human error (post libraries, drafts), but keep human review for clinical accuracy, tone, and trust-building.
Samantha Bergquist is a Product Marketing Manager at Tebra and the host of Tebra Talks, a podcast focused on the realities of running an independent healthcare practice. In this episode, she leads a conversation on how Tebra's practice marketing professional services team supports practices with strategy, content, and measurable performance. She guides the discussion across kickoff, ongoing optimization, and the balance of people and technology in delivering consistent marketing outcomes.
Kirby Kushner is the Director of Professional Services at Tebra, leading the strategic direction of the company's marketing professional services and aligning work to a practice's business goals and long-term growth. In this episode, she discusses the time and expertise challenges independent practices face when managing marketing on their own, and how Tebra functions as an extension of the practice team. She also shares how Tebra's healthcare-connected team and evolving approach—including the use of AI—supports scalable, personal service delivery.
alerie Cook is the Senior Manager of Customer Content and Design at Tebra, overseeing creative and content strategy that helps practices communicate clearly with patients while improving online visibility. In this episode, she explains how blog and content programs are designed around patient search behavior, practice positioning, and trust-building. She also outlines how cross-team workflows—like shared editorial calendars and ongoing collaboration—help maintain creativity and consistency as practice goals change.
Maya Raymond is the Team Lead for Shared Services at Tebra, overseeing day-to-day execution of marketing services and ensuring strategies are implemented smoothly and measured for impact. In this episode, she walks through the customer journey from kickoff calls to quarterly performance reviews, including how teams adjust budgets, keywords, and direction based on results. She shares an example of optimizing geo-targeting in Google Ads for a primary care and cardiology practice to improve conversion performance and expand successful learnings across other services.
