2025: The year healthcare marketers lead a health movement

2025: The year healthcare marketers lead a health movement

Picture of Dan Lavelle

Dan Lavelle

Dan is Head of Digital Transformation and Chief Product Officer at Unlock Health

For years, healthcare marketers have given presentations at conferences about creating seamless patient experiences. We’ve developed and presented slide decks dissecting the elements of a great brand strategy and hyped up our latest creative efforts. We’ve stood at podiums and talked about the critical role of technologies like CRM, online appointment scheduling, and more recently AI. We’ve held them as the holy grail for ushering in a differentiated, digital-first experience for patients. We’ve managed new facility openings on a weekly basis. We’ve celebrated the miracle patient story. We’ve sponsored local sports teams and community events. We’ve hosted webinars to celebrate our campaign ROIs and hailed our marketing department as an investment center.

I truly believe we did all of this with the best intent. With pride for the health system brands we’re entrusted to build and protect. With admiration for the incredible patient and clinician stories we’re asked to tell.

We’re seeing trees and missing the forest

January is a time of reflection, planning, and setting intent for the year for many of us, personally and professionally. Let’s kick start the year with an important, yet uncomfortable, question. Have our collective efforts as healthcare marketers made a meaningful impact on the health of our communities? After all, this is healthcare. If we can’t answer this question with conviction, then let’s make 2025 the year we lean in.

As healthcare marketers, we’re naturally focused on KPIs. So, let’s start with a macro view of KPIs of healthcare in the U.S. We’re spending almost $5 trillion annually on healthcare, far more per capita than similar countries, and yet:

  • Compared to other high-earning countries, we’re at the bottom of the pack in terms of health outcomes
  • 90% of healthcare spending is on chronic conditions, many of which are preventable
  • In the last 20 years, obesity rates have doubled for adults and quadrupled for children and adolescents
  • Americans struggle to access affordable healthcare and many don’t have a regular doctor
  • Compared to other high-earning countries, we have fewer OB-GYNs and midwives, and double the maternal mortality rate
  • A majority of the US population perceives healthcare as a business, where incentives and best practices are geared towards corporate profit over community health

You might read these stats and think, like I did at first, that the system is so broken that there’s not much healthcare marketers can do. It would be easier to stay focused on our own strategies and performance metrics instead of connecting them to larger goals.

But the people have spoken, and they want more. They’re sick of rising costs. They’re sick of a sick-care system that treats conditions without addressing the underlying causes. They’re sick of being sick. Almost 60% of surveyed U.S. consumers indicated they prioritize their personal health and wellness more now than a year ago.

The consumer-led shift has begun

To quote the Broadway hit, Hamilton, “This is not a moment. It’s the movement.” 

There is a movement happening that will rage throughout 2025, and if we’re up for it, healthcare communicators and marketers can lead it. We can make 2025 the turning point for not just the U.S. healthcare system, but healthcare marketing too. John Singer sums up it up perfectly when he says, “The thing needed across the board is a different brand of executive communications and content able to articulate and propagate a new narrative.” Who’s better positioned to tell a new story in U.S. healthcare than we are?

KPIs are always going to be an important part of what we do. They help us understand what’s resonating with our audience, and they justify continued marketing investment. But we can stay connected to the bigger picture behind them. Patient acquisition and retention initiatives improve access to care. Content strategies connect to people through storytelling and can help educate them about staying healthy and managing conditions.

Your impressions, click-through rates, and conversions are more than performance measures, they represent your ability to reach your audience and spark change.  Each click, each lead, each qualified marketing encounter is something more. They’re a human. A human who aspires to live a healthier, longer, and more prosperous life. And we can help.

In coming weeks, we’ll use this blog series to dive into how healthcare marketers can:

  • Help close the health literacy gap that is a fundamental problem in U.S. healthcare consumerism
  • Use the transformative power of digital to engage consumers outside the four walls of the hospital
  • Blend technology and community activation to improve health
  • Use the untapped data sources at our fingertips to drive personalization

The best part of being in healthcare marketing is that every day we have the potential to change someone’s life for the better. That’s powerful stuff, so stay tuned.

Next steps

I challenge you to think of ways to make the most of the lane you’re in. I challenge you not to just consider how to attract and retain patients. Instead, focus on how to successfully engage with your audience to meet their specific needs and empower them to improve their health. As consumers. As community members. As people.

And watch this space as we talk more about the movement and how you can be part of it.

Unlock Health is the largest and most awarded marketing and advertising agency exclusively focused on U.S. healthcare providers. Deep expertise in the business of healthcare allows our full-service agency to blend bold creative with data-driven insights to connect consumers with care and make great work easier for our clients.