Webinar recap: Proven strategies to drive net-new patient growth

In today's healthcare landscape, simply increasing budgets isn't enough to win and retain patients. Learn how marketing leaders at high-growth organizations use data to fuel sustainable growth in this recap of our recent webinar.

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The modern patient expects more than high-quality care; they want the entire experience to be personalized and seamless, from the start of their search for a provider to their post-visit follow-up.

Carefully tailored, patient-centered care often means better outcomes and happier, more loyal patients. But personalization takes expertise, coordination, and resources-and not just a bigger budget.

In our recent webinar, "Turn data into demand: Proven strategies to drive net-new patient growth," marketing leaders from high-growth healthcare organizations shared how they're combining market intelligence with consumer insights to fuel sustainable growth.

Here's a recap of the key insights from the session:

Racing for quick wins can stall growth

Marketing and strategy teams understand the value of getting patients in the door, both for short-term revenue and long-term growth. In an increasingly consumer-oriented market, a welcoming digital front door and other personalized engagement tactics are critical.

But a strategy that over-relies on quick wins and fixates on the associated key performance indicators (KPIs) can put healthcare organizations in a holding pattern: patient in, patient out, and no trajectory for growth.

For instance, low-funnel marketing efforts-retargeting campaigns, search engine marketing, drip campaigns, etc.-can help you build returns on investment (ROI) quickly. However, failing to build brand awareness and preference simultaneously will soon result in a dried-up customer base. As growth stalls, your cost to acquire new customers rises and eventually will outpace any ROI.

You should aim to reduce friction points across your onboarding experience, but not at the expense of demand generation. A glimmering digital front door is only useful if you already have strong search positioning and brand awareness. This near-term solutionism will keep you from reaching the 'quiet majority'; the 95% of consumers who are clinically relevant but not yet in-market.

Ideally, your brand should offer prospective and current patients a holistic journey, making it intuitive and effortless to transition from awareness to decision to advocacy. Top-of-funnel marketing through display ads, social campaigns, content marketing, and sponsorships/partnerships should all tie seamlessly into the lower-funnel engagement, on through the scheduling, onboarding, and post-care experience.

Building a better patient journey that supports long-term growth means moving away from short-term KPIs-ad clicks, sign-ups, downloads-and toward brand equity, market share, and lifetime value.

Know where to look for growth indicators

The right KPIs aren't just marketing metrics; they're early indicators of strategic growth. Whether you're tracking your team's performance or looking to convey the value of your work to the C-suite, consider these KPIs. When they move, so does baseline revenue, margin, and enterprise value:

Branded search

One of Google's latest metrics is especially useful for healthcare marketing teams interested in gauging brand recall and market preference. Branded search is a measure of the number of users searching for your brand within a set period after viewing your ad, whether or not they clicked it. This can be a powerful indicator of organic patient volume, which in turn drives baseline revenue growth.

Direct traffic

Pay close attention to the number of users who come directly to your site, as this metric indicates market share capture without media spend.

Organic social

Organic social metrics like impressions, reach, and engagement rate are reflections of trust and community engagement. Efforts that boost these figures can support growth without cost and build affinity in target populations.

Retention rate

In healthcare, retention and acquisition are two equally critical sides of the same coin. Keeping patients in-network and reducing churn helps to lower the cost of conversion and builds their lifetime value.

Email response rate

Engagement with your email campaigns demonstrates the audience relevance of your messaging. Higher response rates often mean improved marketing ROI and accelerated pipeline performance.

Phone answer rate

In an era where most calls find their way to voicemail, phone answer rate can signal brand trust and inbound interest. Every answered call is an opportunity to boost conversion and reduce patient leakage.

Build a long-term strategy for your unique population

To build meaningful growth while driving margins, you need to start upstream with a baseline of awareness and a thorough understanding of your market and its highest-opportunity segments.

Population intelligence that combines clinical and consumer insights-like clinical propensity, social determinants of health, and media channel preferences-provides a solid foundation to begin building trust in your brand. With these insights, you can create content for specific audiences that educates, engages, and improves relevance and recall.

Your prospective patients should know and trust your brand before a medical need arises. Clinical propensity models can help you predict these needs before they surface, making it easier to identify and prioritize higher-risk patient segments for outreach.

You can also use population intelligence to target and personalize engagement efforts for lapsed or likely-to-switch patients currently within your network. (Remember, it's cheaper to retain an existing patient than it is to acquire a new one.)

Financial and payor intelligence offers an additional layer of strategic context. With margin data and insurance coverage insights, you can plan service line growth around the segments with the most favorable coverage or reimbursement rates.

Get deep population insights today

For a closer examination of these strategies, you can watch the full session here (eHealthcare Strategy & Trends membership is required).

Want to start building a strategy that maximizes long-term growth while boosting short-term ROI?

Definitive Healthcare offers the clinical, consumer, and market-level insights you need to spend more efficiently, drive growth, and reach the patients who can most benefit from your care. See how our Population Intelligence, Market Intelligence, and all-payor claims data fit seamlessly into your current workflows and systems by signing up for a demo today.