What Does It Take to Build A Great Healthcare Marketing Team?

Healthcare marketing is challenging.  Building a great team is key to having success in your healthcare marketing efforts. That’s why I was particularly excited to talk with Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser, Chief Strategy Officer at DirectTrust, about the DirectTrust team winning the Swaay.Health 2025 Award for Marketing Team of the Year (Side note: They also won an award for Article of the Year). In this interview, we dive into a number of healthcare marketing topics including some of the keys Wickenhauser has found when it comes to building a great team. Plus, she highlights some of the unique aspects of building a marketing team for a nonprofit in healthcare. We start off the interview discussing what it meant to her and her team to win both the Article of the Year and Marketing Team of the year at the Swaay.Health 2025 Awards. She then shares some of her keys to having a great marketing team and how at a nonprofit in healthcare you’re generally working with a small marketing team along with a number of contractors to be able to accomplish your marketing and communication goals. I love how Wickenhauser treats some of their partners truely as members of their team including inviting them on stage at the Swaay.Health LIVE conference to receive the award. Moving to some other healthcare marketing topics, I ask what she has learned about conferences by hosting the DirectTrust conference (I’ll be there this year if anyone else is going, sponsoring, or is near St. Louis and wants to attend). She explained how they’ve tried a wide variety of iterations of the conference from in person to virtual and even partnering with a complimentary organization.  Wickenhauser suggests that each modality can work, but they often achieve different goals. The online may be the most accessible and so it will reach the most people, but in-person events are great at bringing people together to connect. As we wrap up the interview, I ask her about what marketing efforts she’s found most effective. Plus, I’d have been remiss if I didn’t ask her how she sees AI affecting and impacting healthcare marketing. Check out my interview with Swaay.Health Award winner, Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser from DirectTrust to learn more about high performing healthcare marketing teams and related healthcare marketing topics. Learn more about DirectTrust: https://directtrust.org/