B2B Marketing Strategies for AI-Powered Healthcare Solutions | Benjamin Brown from Akasa

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us at pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Benjamin from Akasa, vice president of marketing with them. How are you doing today, Ben?

Benjamin Brown: I am doing great. Thanks a lot for having me.

Ernesto: It’s great to have you on and, well, I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Akasa is all about, so let’s kick it off with that. Ben, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Ernesto. Akasa is the leading provider of generative AI solutions for revenue cycle management, and there’s a lot to unpack there for those unfamiliar with our industry. Put a lot more simply, Akasa does AI for healthcare, specifically generative AI for healthcare. We can go into detail on what that is momentarily, and we focus on a niche area called revenue cycle management, which is essentially the process of communication between hospitals and health systems at large and insurance companies or payers. They have to work out the process of how bills are getting paid. How is insurance going to reimburse hospitals and health systems for what they do? And it’s this very long, very manual, time-sensitive, convoluted process that was absolutely ripe for AI to help streamline. So Akasa has come in with a suite of products to be able to support that and to be able to really make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. And so that way our listeners could get a good understanding there of the company. Ben, what would you say then is that key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely. So we work on the health system side. We work with very large health systems from across the country, and they employ teams of dozens to hundreds of analysts and team members that are responsible for doing what is essentially the paperwork required to submit cases for insurance to reimburse. And this paperwork, and I use the word paperwork lightly, this is all done electronically, but I’m just trying to boil this down into layman’s terms for those unfamiliar with this space to understand. This paperwork that the hospital has to submit has to be airtight. There cannot be any errors whatsoever. And there are so many moving parts that having no errors in this paperwork is a lot easier said than done. And there’s a lot of research that goes into making this paperwork airtight. So what happens is you have a process that, in theory, could take a short amount of time, but some of these analysts, they’re spending 20 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour or more for every single encounter that they need to submit. And that, of course, takes up a lot of time and a lot of work piles up. And at the same time, if this work isn’t done right, then insurance does something called denying that claim. And that means that the hospital doesn’t get paid on time, or a patient’s procedure cannot get scheduled in a timely manner because of things getting held up on the business side. So what Akasa does is it helps people work faster and hone in on greater accuracy, quality, and comprehensiveness of this paperwork they’re submitting. And what that does is it makes work go quicker, it makes people more efficient at their jobs, it allows health systems to be appropriately compensated for the work that they are doing, and ultimately for the patients, it gives them a better experience because, you know, if you need to get surgery, and that surgery can’t be scheduled until two months out, well, maybe now it can be scheduled two weeks out or two days out or what have you, because this bottleneck doesn’t exist.

Ernesto: Definitely. Ok. Awesome to hear that from you. And you did mention, right, that one of your verticals is healthcare. Is there another segment that you guys like to go for, or would that be your ideal ICP?

Benjamin: We focus exclusively on revenue cycle management for large health systems. We have one area of expertise for the time being, and we’d like to say that we do it very, very well.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Awesome. Great to hear that. And then, so then, how would somebody in the industry usually find out about Akasa? Is there a top-line acquisition channel for you guys?

Benjamin: Yeah, so because we work only with some of the country’s largest health systems, that’s a pretty small group of customers that we target, and those customers, or rather those prospective customers, there’s a lot to be said about meeting people in person. So events are a huge part of our business. We attend and speak at many of the country’s leading healthcare industry events. We’re very fortunate to have some very seasoned and accomplished revenue cycle executives on our team, people who have spent 10, 20, 30 years in the business, and now they’re working with Akasa. So they’ll speak at some of these events. We’ll meet them. Of course, my team will do a lot of supplementary work that goes into that, but it’s a lot of outbound marketing to draw in our target audience. Then my team employs a number of different tactics to nurture those individuals who we do get introduced to so that we educate them about our product, warm them up to it, and then eventually share details as they would like them so that they can really become encouraged, inspired, and motivated to adopt generative AI in order to streamline their business.

Ernesto: Perfect. Okay, thank you so much for sharing that with us, Ben. That way our listeners who are tuned in can go ahead and visit you. They could always check you out at akasa.com. What role does the website then play for client acquisition?

Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely. So you are correct. Akasa.com is where people do go to find us and to find out more about us after we meet with them. And then when I say events, by the way, that includes virtual events. So we just had a great discussion with Johns Hopkins on Beckers that appeals to the healthcare audience. We had a lot of great individuals who tuned in to that, found out about, okay, what is the impact that AI is making on healthcare? And then, oh, Akasa presented, let’s find out more about them. But in terms of what role does our website play? Our website serves to educate and inspire people toward the movement for generative AI. Generative AI is, if you’re not familiar with the term, chat, GPT is a perfect example of generative AI. You give it a prompt and it will then comb through huge amounts of text and then pull relevant information from that text in order to generate the answer and the context that you are looking for. So what our AI does is it delves into a lot of medical documents, and it will pull relevant information for analysts to use to complete the quote-unquote paperwork that they need to submit. But getting back to your question, people will go to our website to just, you know, they hear cool things about Akasa, they hear cool things about generative AI for the revenue cycle. They will go to our site to learn more about that, to ingest a lot of great resources that our in-house team has created to tell them all about the impact that this technology is making on healthcare, and then specifically the impact that Akasa has made on some of the great groups that we’ve gotten to work with. And then they’ll just continue educating themselves and they’ll find a quick and easy way to get in touch with a team member to explain more.

Ernesto: Awesome. So then, on that note, then, Ben, is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners as far as some website lead generation?

Benjamin: Yeah. So one is to make sure that you are matching the NACUA customer journey. These are very large deals that Akasa commands because these are just very large groups that we’re working with. So we know that someone is not going to purchase Akasa’s software in the same way that they might purchase a coke from a vending machine. These are decisions that require a lot of time, a lot of stakeholders, and a lot of critical thinking to determine how this could best be a fit for them. So we’re not going to be too aggressive in pushing that sale. We want to make people aware of our brand. We want to make people aware of our category. AI has a ton of buzz. Everyone is talking about it. But one of the biggest holdups with AI is, okay, it’s cool, but how is it going to help me make money, save money, and grow? So that is the initial question that we want to answer. We want to get them educated on our category and make sure that our web experience gives them that first impression of us giving them the information that they want. And then furthermore, as they dive deeper, we’re going to give them information that’s going to aid where they are in that customer journey. We’re not going to force terms and pricing on people before they’re ready for it. We’re going to just continue giving them that information, nurturing them, helping them through the thought process that they would naturally take in an engagement like this.

Ernesto: Okay, great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and to our listeners, Ben. And, well, let’s switch gears then a little bit, Ben, and let’s talk about you as a leader there at Akasa. You being the vice president of marketing. What are some key tasks you’d like to focus on your day-to-day work?

Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely. So I lead a very good team, a very experienced team consisting of product marketing, content marketing, operations, and analytics. And it’s really about making sure that the entire ship is moving in the right direction that we are going after our north star metric of sales accepted leads. So I’m really diving deep into the data to understand, okay, where are we, as it pertains to our lead goals and how are we supporting Akasa’s bottom line growth? So that doesn’t just stop at lead generation or even sales accepted lead generation. It goes toward aiding the sales team in getting each of these deals through the finish line and then equipping the rest of our teams with the materials they need to make sure that our customers are happy and will recommend us to others because it’s so important that we build our reputation given the stage that we’re at. We have world-class products, we have world-class partners, and it’s about empowering those world-class partners to be that voice, to say, hey, we’re leading the charge. These are the results that we have. We have achieved these results because of Akasa, and here’s why. So my team is responsible for basically empowering that voice, promoting that voice, and projecting it, and then just employing just about every stop that we can in order to push that. There’s a lot of, to answer your question specifically, one is content generation. What kind of content do we need to push out that is going to accelerate every aspect of the customer journey? How are we going to get people more excited to act quicker about incorporating generative AI into their operation? The next is, of course, on product. It’s establishing a very close relationship with product and engineering to understand what is coming down the pipe. How are these products working? What is the exact language that we can use to promote these products? And then how can marketing boil it down even further in order to make it more user-friendly? And how do we parse that out into the various stages of the customer journey then? The last aspect would be analytics, just making sure that we are focusing on metrics that matter and that we are making good use of our budget.

Ernesto: Yes. Okay, perfect. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that insight there from your day. And so, in between the times, how do you stay up to date with all the news in the marketing world? Strategies, trends, AI? Is there a preferred channel that you’d like to go with?

Benjamin: Yeah, there is no shortage of information out there, both a good and a bad thing, to be honest. LinkedIn is a resource that I constantly delve into. I’ve got some great relationships with marketing leaders across industries, great leaders in the healthcare world, and people are constantly posting content. I am not one to just skim through headlines. I like to actually read the articles to verify the content and I like to look at content from trusted resources. There’s a number of leading industry publications for both healthcare as well as just the marketing vertical in general, that I will find first from LinkedIn and then delve into on my own.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. All right, great for that insight there, Ben. And well, let’s switch to our next section then here, Ben, which is our rapid-fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Benjamin: I think so.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. Then first off, Ben, is what is the last book that you read?

Benjamin: The last book that I read, it was the biography of Steve Jobs. So yeah, really goes through his entire life as a biography does, but focuses on Steve Jobs both inside and outside of Apple. And just seeing how a visionary like that operates, it was pretty eye-opening and something that I found pretty intriguing.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay. I think I read it when it came out. So it’s a great read there for our listeners. Great mind. So awesome to hear from you, Ben. Next up then is if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Benjamin: Oh my goodness. Because generative AI is so top of mind for me, it would be a generative AI platform that can create content both in written and visual form with your brand voice and brand style. That to me is the biggest low-hanging fruit in generative AI today, where, yes, a service like ChatGPT can write a generic email that you would have to customize to your own brand voice. There are plenty of services out there that market themselves as generative AI for marketing. I have yet to see one that actually works. I would love to spend less time wordsmithing emails and blog posts and content like that. Less time creating slides. And for a service just where I could prompt it to say, hey, create a slide with these statistics using our brand style and have it just go, that would be perfect. I have yet to see it. I certainly hope it comes out sooner versus later.

Ernesto: Definitely. Yep. I would say that that’s a really nice tool there that maybe could compile that information with a click. And so then if there’s a repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Benjamin: I would say for our team, it’s writing press releases. So we are a publicly traded company, and so we have a responsibility to communicate with the market. We like to do it on a fairly regular basis. And the press releases are, they’re repetitive, but they’re also really rigorous. They have exacting standards. They require stakeholders to sign off from both the finance team, the legal team, and the executive team. And so if I could totally automate the creation and publication of press releases, that would be nice.

Ernesto: Okay, great. And then, well, lastly, then, Ben, you have a lot of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Benjamin: That’s a good question. I think the first thing that comes to mind is just trust the process. There have been a lot of great learning opportunities. I’ve had roles that have been incredibly rewarding. I’ve had roles that I would have wanted to land in but didn’t, and those actually resulted in even better opportunities down the road. So it’s something that I keep in mind on a semi-regular basis, is that for the most part, everything happens for a reason. And to just be the best that you can be every day and know that as long as you are putting forth that type of effort, good things will come.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. Well, Ben, thank you so much for being on with us today. But before we do end today’s show, Ben, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about Akasa?

Benjamin: Absolutely. Akasa is truly shaping the future of healthcare with AI. If you would like to find out more, visit akasa.com.

Ernesto: Perfect. Well, there you guys heard it. Transforming your revenue cycle with generative AI. Ben, thank you so much for being on with us today. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Ben.

Benjamin: Thank you.