Healthcare digital marketing is at an inflection point—new HIPAA regulations, sustained low margins, and years of healthcare marketing tech debt are all catalysts in this shift. The pressure is mounting for healthcare marketing to evolve and transform into a more agile, high-impact, value-driven investment.
The expectation of healthcare marketing to do more with less is real, and digital healthcare marketing is at the forefront of this shift.
In 2024, the key healthcare marketing challenges—those most likely to impede your success—likely fall into one of 3 core areas:
- HIPAA readiness: Without the right technology systems and governance in place, there’s a good chance your healthcare marketing efforts are violating Protected Health Information (PHI) rules and putting your hospital or healthcare system and patients at risk.
- MarTech Stack technical debt: Healthcare marketing has spent the last few years writing checks for applications across the healthcare MarTech stack. Beyond HIPAA concerns, many of these solutions have fallen far short of promised outcomes. In some cases, the application itself is the problem. More often, poor implementation, improper use, and/or lack of optimization is the culprit.
- Patient journey friction: Patients are customers. They expect seamless interactions that help them move with ease throughout their journey. However, According to Press Ganey, “At least 50% of patients encounter operational friction.” This friction erodes patient confidence and reduces the hard-won impact of healthcare marketing efforts.
“Website banners that ask users to accept or reject a healthcare website’s use of tracking technology, such as cookies, do not constitute a valid HIPAA authorization.”
– Office for Civil Rights (OCR)
Overcoming healthcare marketing challenges in 2024 won’t be easy—but with the right strategy and fierce, sustained tenacity, it can be done. Performed with care, the resulting changes can lead to deeper trust from patients and better financial performance. To get there, healthcare marketing organizations must:
- Slow down and take stock: This may seem counterintuitive, but healthcare marketers need to better understand their risks and opportunities. This includes auditing the current state of their marketing ecosystem including data, technology, and processes. It’s also critical that they ensure compliance with Protected Health Information (PHI) HIPAA mandates.
- Align and prioritize: The healthcare marketing function has many stakeholders. Before taking definitive action, it’s best practice to ensure all stakeholders are aligned on the go-forward priorities and plan.
- Phase execution: While it’s tempting to tackle everything at once, it’s a surefire way to derail the entire effort. Examine your priorities and phase your execution for maximum impact and benefit.
Healthcare marketing is under pressure to do more with less. The competition in markets is fierce. Healthcare payers continually press for more favorable rates in both fee-for-service and Value-Based Care (VBC) arrangements.
It’s possible to do more with less and do it right. Here are recommendations for overcoming some of the biggest healthcare marking challenges in 2024.
Practice “First Do No Harm” Healthcare Marketing
“First do no harm” is a core tenet of medical ethics, and it should also serve as the mantra for healthcare marketing ethics. Healthcare marketing teams should always look to avoid efforts that put patients at risk and prioritize those that support patient benefits.
When HIPAA was enacted in 1996, it wasn’t prepared to address the nuances and complexities associated with the digital healthcare marketing advancements of this generation. It couldn’t possibly have anticipated the advancements we see today in digital tracking, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital advertising, and social media.
Responsible healthcare marketers need to evaluate and build a strategy that ensures PHI remains private and adheres to the latest HIPAA regulations. How restrictive you choose to be depends on your healthcare organization’s policies and some common sense—how would you want your data and tracking managed if you were the patient?
Healthcare marketing is touching patients more each day. The intentions are noble in that they often:
- Promote a healthier lifestyle
- Provide care options
- Make finding providers easier
- Allow convenient online appointments
- Empower patients to make informed decisions
However, the tracking and management involved in these positive efforts could result in negative outcomes if the data isn’t protected and responsibly used. For example, a simple provider search that leads to an appointment may expose a protected health condition that falls under PHI protections. How this data is captured, stored, and used is of the utmost importance.
“First do no harm” in healthcare marketing means looking at all of your digital marketing processes, strategies, and technologies to ensure they’re compliance-ready and support the commitments and obligations you have to your patients and healthcare entity.
Investing in upfront process and marketing technology audits can help you quickly identify and close gaps that pose threats to patient privacy and leave your healthcare entity open for litigation and a tarnished reputation.
Prune and Clean Your MarTech Stack
The term “tech debt” is well known in healthcare. Legacy systems and disconnected applications exact a heavy toll on healthcare IT and wreak havoc on patient-centered care efforts across the complex patient care journey. Healthcare marketing teams are now facing this same challenge.
Today’s healthcare marketing ecosystem is complex. It comprises all of the tools most other B2C and B2B companies use. Here’s just a short list:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
- Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Customer Data Platforms (CDP)
- Analytics and insights applications
- Digital advertising
- Personalization solutions
- Wellness applications
- Social media tools
- Online scheduling
- AI bots
- Health portals
Over time, many of these marketing and patient solutions have been added to solve a specific challenge or meet a certain need. This “piling on” effect creates a costly, disjointed system that’s expensive to operate and doesn’t deliver the desired outcomes. Getting a handle on this should be a top priority for healthcare marketers, especially as budgets get tighter.
To remedy these healthcare marketing challenges, here are three things you should do right now:
- Don’t try to fix the problem with more marketing technology. Don’t be fooled by shiny, new technology that promises to fix all your issues. It very rarely does.
- Run a MarTech audit to figure out what needs correct implementation, what needs optimization, and what needs pruning.
- Invest wisely in only those systems that add value to your healthcare MarTech ecosystem. The aforementioned MarTech audit will help you determine the right course of action.
These three steps will help you get your healthcare MarTech stack in order so you can improve the experience patients have with your healthcare brand.
Reevaluate Your Patient Experience Journey
Patient experience is more important than ever. It’s a complex journey that weaves in and out of care and intermingles with healthcare marketing along the way.
Today, patient experience is customer experience. Healthcare marketers need to redefine where they play and how they influence that experience.
It’s time to reevaluate your patient journey and ensure you’re building the right end-to-end, highly tailored and personalized experience for them. Ultimately, it’s about building a patient-centric experience while also addressing the regulatory and technical challenges already discussed.
In addition, the patient journey evaluation needs to examine:
- Today’s patient journey use cases
- Today’s baseline interactions
- The patient journey across all relevant channels
- Current level of personalization
- Level of interaction across marketing channels
- Patient experience expectations
- Current patient perceptions of the healthcare experience
It’s time to up-level the engagement and impact marketing drives throughout the patient journey. Done responsibly, this kind of highly personalized approach—based on a deep understanding of your patient demographic—will build brand trust and drive improved patient satisfaction.
Patient journey mapping is your best path forward. It’s an expedient, detailed way to align current patient use cases and expectations with healthcare marketing capabilities and programs. The insights garnered from this effort will give healthcare marketers the clarity they need to move forward and advance impactful personalization efforts.
Make Healthcare Marketing Your Competitive Advantage in 2024
According to Beckers Health IT, healthcare organizations will spend $12 billion on healthcare marketing in 2024. As of April 2024, the average margins were 3.8%. That means every healthcare marketing dollar spent will be scrutinized.
It’s time to turn healthcare marketing challenges into competitive advantages for your company and brand. To do this:
- Make sure you have a HIPAA-ready MarTech stack in place.
- Ensure every part of your MarTech ecosystem is directed towards integrated performance outcomes.
- Keep your focus on the patient experience, and consider it through the lens of consumer experience. Great experiences are highly personalized and deliver impact every step of the way.
BlastX Consulting has helped top healthcare payers and providers build personalization at scale, ensure HIPAA-ready systems are in place, and optimize MarTech stacks to alleviate tech debt and streamline marketing efforts. Together, we can do the same for you.
If you’d like to have a conversation, discuss a healthcare marketing challenge you’re facing, or need some advice on your next best step, we’re here to help. Just reach out to me—I’m ready to help.
