Trevelino/Keller Partners with Serenity Mental Health to Boost Earned Media in AI‑Driven Healthcare Search, announcing a new collaboration that aims to amplify the provider’s evidence‑based treatments through strategic earned‑media placements and AI‑friendly storytelling.
The partnership pairs Serenity Mental Health Centers—a network of more than 35 clinics offering TMS, ketamine infusion and traditional psychiatric care—with Trevelino/Keller, a nationally ranked integrated PR, marketing and creative agency. The agency’s mandate is simple yet ambitious: generate credible third‑party coverage that can be harvested by answer‑engine algorithms such as Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs).
Why Earned Media Matters in Health
In the consumer‑centric health‑tech ecosystem, the first touchpoint is rarely a direct website visit. A 2024 Gartner survey found that 71 % of healthcare marketers expect AI‑driven search to be the primary channel for patient acquisition by 2025.
Search engines and LLMs prioritize content that is cited by reputable news outlets, industry journals and trade publications. Consequently, earned media has become a cornerstone of answer‑engine optimization (AEO), directly influencing whether a provider appears in the “featured snippet” when a prospective patient asks, “Where can I get TMS treatment?”
Trevelino/Keller’s strategy leans on this dynamic. By securing placements in national and regional business publications, health‑care trade outlets and lifestyle magazines, the agency creates a web of authoritative backlinks that AI systems can surface. The result is a higher probability that Serenity’s services will be recommended in AI‑generated answer boxes, bypassing the noisy paid‑search landscape.
Technology and Tactics
The agency’s playbook blends classic media relations with data‑driven targeting. First, it maps the editorial calendars of high‑authority outlets that cover mental‑health innovation, digital health financing and patient experience.
Next, it crafts pitch decks that spotlight Serenity’s differentiated clinical model—combining psychiatric expertise with cutting‑edge modalities like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and ketamine infusion.
To ensure those stories are AI‑friendly, Trevelino/Keller embeds structured data markup (schema.org MedicalEntity) in the press releases and works with journalists to include clear, concise language that aligns with common search queries. The agency also monitors AI answer‑engine rankings in real time, adjusting the narrative cadence to capture emerging search terms such as “non‑opioid depression treatment” and “remote mental‑health care.”
Industry Implications
Serenity is not the first mental‑health provider to recognize the SEO‑plus‑PR synergy, but the scale of the partnership is noteworthy. While firms like Edelman and Weber Shandwick have launched health‑care PR practices, Trevelino/Keller’s integrated model—combining creative production, media buying and data analytics under one roof—offers a more seamless feedback loop between earned coverage and paid amplification.
IDC projects that programmatic ad spend in the health sector will grow 15 % year‑over‑year through 2027, driven largely by the need to retarget patients who first discover providers via organic search. By establishing a strong earned‑media foundation, Serenity can lower its cost per acquisition (CPA) in paid channels, as AI‑curated answer boxes tend to convert at higher rates than traditional display ads.
What It Means for Enterprise Marketing Teams
For B2B marketers in the broader ad‑tech arena, the collaboration underscores three actionable takeaways:
- Earned media is now a data asset. Tracking the SEO impact of press placements is as critical as measuring impressions.
- AI‑ready content is non‑negotiable. Structured data, concise language and alignment with user intent boost the likelihood of appearing in AI answer boxes.
- Integrated agency models reduce friction. When creative, media buying and analytics share a single platform, the time from story ideation to AI‑driven distribution shrinks dramatically.
How Serenity Stands Out
Serenity’s clinical breadth—spanning traditional psychiatry, TMS, ketamine infusion and tele‑mental‑health—provides a rich narrative bank for media pitches. In contrast, many competitors focus on a single modality, limiting their story angles. The agency’s emphasis on “patient‑first” storytelling, highlighted by Chief Marketing Officer George Fischer, positions Serenity as a thought leader rather than a service vendor.
Comparative Outlook
- Edelman Health – Strong in crisis communications but less integrated with AI‑focused SEO.
- Weber Shandwick Health – Offers robust data‑driven measurement but typically separates creative production from media buying.
- Trevelino/Keller – Provides a unified workflow that blends creative, media, and analytics, specifically tuned for AI answer‑engine visibility.
Future Outlook
As AI assistants become the default health‑information conduit, providers that embed themselves in the AI knowledge graph will capture a larger share of the patient journey. The Serenity‑Trevelino/Keller partnership could serve as a blueprint for other health‑tech firms seeking to transition from paid‑search dependence to an earned‑media‑first acquisition model.
Market Landscape
The ad‑tech market is at a crossroads where privacy regulations, such as the 2023 U.S. Data Transparency Act, intersect with AI‑driven personalization. First‑party data is gaining prominence, but for health providers, third‑party credibility—manifested through earned media—remains a decisive factor for AI algorithms that prioritize trust signals. According to a Forrester study, 60 % of consumers start their provider search with an AI chatbot, and 48 % of those bots reference third‑party news sources when forming recommendations.
In this environment, agencies that can marry privacy‑compliant data practices with AI‑ready content creation will dominate the emerging “answer‑engine marketplace.” Trevelino/Keller’s approach—leveraging high‑authority press to feed AI systems—aligns with this trajectory and may prompt other agencies to develop similar integrated offerings.
Top Insights
- Earned media now functions as a primary SEO asset, directly influencing AI answer‑engine rankings for health‑care queries.
- Structured data and concise, intent‑aligned language are essential for stories to be harvested by LLMs and chatbots.
- Integrated agency models that combine creative, media buying and analytics reduce time‑to‑visibility and lower CPA in programmatic campaigns.
- Providers with multi‑modal treatment portfolios, like Serenity, enjoy richer story angles that differentiate them from single‑focus competitors.
- As AI becomes the default health‑information gateway, third‑party credibility will outweigh raw first‑party data in algorithmic trust scoring.
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