From quantity to quality: Rethinking healthcare marketing for long-term value

Why quality matters: Building trust in a distrustful society

In today’s environment – where skepticism towards healthcare institutions is at an all-time high – the gap between consumers and the health care providers feels wider than ever (John Hopkins Carey Business School, Edelman). This mistrust doesn’t just affect perceptions of a given brand or provider; it can directly impact health outcomes; when trust is lacking, patients may delay care, avoid preventative services, or disregard treatment altogether.

While not necessarily its primary job, marketing should be used as a tool to bridge the gap and rebuild trust. Effective techniques do not just promote services; they build credibility, demonstrate transparency, and convince consumers that their needs and values come first. Moving to a quality-driven, trust-building marketing approach benefits all parties by fostering connections, driving engagement, and ultimately, improving outcomes for both the consumer and the provider.

Defining quality: What to say, and how to say it

In the context of marketing, “quality” means more than grammatical correctness or an aesthetic design. It’s about delivering a specific message to a specific audience in specific places at specific times, with each touch curated to resonate and to either drive a specific action or build trust and brand equity. This requires understanding the target audience, and crafting each communication to be honest, accessible, and most importantly, personal.

Consider John, a rural Virgina resident who hasn’t seen a doctor in years. A generic email about low-cost scheduling might be cheaper to send, but it won’t necessarily convince him to act. A tailored direct mail piece highlighting proximity of care or a two-way text encouraging conversation with an agent might be the experience that would work better with John. Send both and explain how a doctor’s visit is likely to improve John’s quality of life, and you’ve transformed a generic outreach into a personalized invitation—one that feels relevant and actionable.

Now consider the type of insurance shoppers that would likely respond to a TV ad promoting a “$0 Premium” “No Risks” plan versus members that would be more swayed by a billboard stating, “Insurer A has been serving the Charlotte community for 15 years. We are committed to bringing the highest level of care to our members today and for years to come.” Will the TV ad outperform the billboard on applications? Probably. But will the quality or value of the members that enroll from the TV ad be as high as the members that enroll from the billboard? Probably not. And which ad goes further to rebuilding trust between the provider and the consumer?

The need for measurement: Quality marketing requires quality data and KPIs

High-quality data is a pre-requisite to running personalized marketing campaigns. In the John example, the team wouldn’t have been able to deliver the right message if they hadn’t known he 1) hadn’t been to a doctor in years and 2) lived in a rural area. And how did they know that? Data. Or how could the team even determine that the tailored direct mail plus 2-way messaging drove a response, while the generic email did not? Again, they had the tracking in place to tie marketing touch points AND desired outcomes back to John.

However, what if the team noticed that, in aggregate, the generic email campaign drove a greater number of responses than the tailored direct mail + 2-way SMS? What would they deem the better campaign? Just like the gimmicky “$0 Premium” TV ad versus the Local billboard, to say which is “better,” an objective or goal metric must be in place. What was the goal of the “get to your doctor” campaign? Appointments scheduled? Appointments kept? Repeat visits to the doctor? For the health insurance ad, was the goal to just drive as many new members as possible, to build brand equity, or drive high future tenure enrollments? It is critical that marketers set a campaign objective prior to launching, and that the campaign objective aligns with the overall business strategy.

Conclusion

Marketers in the health care industry face real headwinds in an environment where individuals are increasingly skeptical. Those who seek to foster trust through the messages and creatives they deploy should consider this simple list:

1. Determine what business goals a campaign is meant to align to and set KPIs accordingly (i.e. value vs. volume)
   • For acquisition marketing, “quality KPIs” could include total lifetime value (LTV) of new member sales, specific membership profile target, or even a longer term KPI of 12-month retention of new members.
     
2. Use messaging that is personalized to the consumer and/or that gives the consumer a reason to trust their company
   • Steer clear of relying solely on quick-win tactics that are effective at eliciting an immediate response from customers, and shift more into creatives that are meant to build credibility and consideration of the brand and product over time
     
3. Track the right metrics (defined in #1) to determine if campaigns have the desired effect
   • Remember, the desired effect will almost always take longer to observe within a value paradigm vs. a volume paradigm. When value is the goal, it typically also means that measurement will be over a longer time horizon than if measurement only required counting appointments, clicks, applications, etc. Be patient.

For many, this may be a significant shift in strategy that will require alignment from multiple parts of the organization and therefore take some time. But committing to a plan like this will pay off in higher brand equity, more satisfied customers, and almost certainly, more sustainable growth.