Healthcare Marketing has changed dramatically in the past decade.
There was a time when practices relied solely on location, word-of-mouth, and referrals, but things have changed.
Patients these days are tech savvy and often begin their decision-making journey online.
Search engines, social media, and review platforms have become the new front door to your hospital or clinic.
How do you acquire these patients? The answer is simple- You just need these three things. At our agency, we ensure that we deploy these three things for all our clients.
The three things are: Visibility, Relevance and Persuasiveness.
If you’re a practitioner who’s still working with old-school marketing agencies, maybe it’s time to rethink.
Healthcare marketing is not about “quick clicks” — it’s about building trust, relevance, and predictable patient flow.
This article will change the way you think about marketing your clinic or hospital in 2025.
Patient Journey and it’s Relevance in Healthcare Marketing
Before becoming a patient at your clinic, each person typically goes through the following stages:
Stage 1 – Awareness:
This is the time they discover that you or your clinic exists.
- They may find you through a google ad while searching for something relevant on google.
- They may find you through a Facebook Ad while casually scrolling Instagram during their lunch hours.
Stage 2 – Consideration:
This is the phase where they start comparing you to other service providers.
They compare your:
- Website
- Google Reviews
- Pricing
- Social proof
- Social Media Handles
- Infrastructure
- Physical Proximity to their location
Stage 3 – Decision & Booking Consultation:
After doing enough research they decide to book-in a consultation.
This visit shapes trust, satisfaction and the likelihood of converting into a paying patient.
Stage 4 – Treatment:
If everything goes well, they start their treatment with you. It is here that they experience your services deeply.
Stage 5 – Retention and Referral:
When patients are satisfied with their overall experience, they keep coming back to you.
They also refer their friends and family especially for routine procedures.
Your marketing strategy should be designed around all these stages and not just the first few.
What this means is:
- You should be running Google and Meta Ads to create awareness in the market. This will lead to more and more prospective patients discovering your practice.
- You should have an optimised website, a google my business listing with at least 100+ Reviews.
- You should have optimised social media handles with before-after photos, patient testimonials and photos of your clinic.
- You should have a Google map listing embedded on your website and the direction link included in your social media’s link-in-bio.
This is just an overview and not an exhaustive list of things.
As a specialised healthcare marketing agency we optimise our clients’ marketing strategy around all these 5 stages (and not just lead generation).
Data and it’s Importance in Marketing Your Clinic
When it comes to marketing your clinic or hospital, intuition and guesswork should not be a part of your dictionary.
Instead, you should read and analyse data to make data-driven decisions.
This means self-analysing and asking questions like:
- Which channel is getting me the most patients at the least cost?
- Which channel is getting me the highest value patients?
- What percentage of my inbound leads are getting converted into walk-in appointments?
- How does my follow-up frequency affect my conversion rates?
These are just examples and there could be many more possibilities.
So, don’t make marketing decisions based on intuition or guesswork. Rather, analyse and trust data and act accordingly.
Without measurable data, you’re flying blind. Don’t do that.
With that being said, it’s time to understand what are the key components of a rockstar patient acquisition system.
Core Components of a Data-Driven Patient Acquisition System
At Grey Mattr, our Hospital Marketing framework has six main components.
1. Data Capture & Conversion Tracking
Before we analyse data, we need to capture it efficiently.
So, we set up systems to record every touchpoint — Ad Views, Clicks, Website Visits, Form submissions, Phone Calls generated, WhatsApp messages received, etc.
This happens using tools like
- Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag
- Meta Pixel
- Softwares that track and record calls (e.g. CallRail)
- CRM with lead source tagging (e.g. HubSpot’s CRM Tool, Zoho CRM)
This tools allow us to know and track exactly where each patient comes from and where are they in their patient journey.
It helps us decide which marketing methodology is working in our favour and which one isn’t.
Without data capturing and tracking in place you shouldn’t be investing even a Rupee on ads or paid media.
2. Audience Segmentation
Yes, we all want more patients, but not all patients are the same. Some are in for routine procedures whilst others are looking for more expensive treatments.
Moreover, different departments might need different marketing approaches. For e.g. an Orthopaedician would need a very different marketing strategy compared to a Cosmetic Dentist!
That’s why we need to segment our audiences based on:
- What kind of treatment are they interested in – Regular v/s High ticket
- What’s their conversion potential – Emergency v/s Elective procedures
- What’s their lifetime value potential?
There could be more possibilities.
3. Targeted Campaigns
Rather than running generic “Best Dentist in [City name]” ads, we prefer speciality specific campaigns.
This helps us customise our language according to the target patient.
This also helps us understand which speciality and which audience demographic is giving us more traction.
Some examples of speciality specific campaigns would be:
- Dental implants for over-40s in South Delhi
- IVF awareness for newlyweds in Mumbai
- LASIK for young professionals in Bengaluru
This makes ads more relevant to the target patient and increases the chances of conversion.
We deploy this strategy not just with ads but also with the organic content.
4. Conversion Optimisation
Yes we want a lot of clicks but at the end of the day we want booked appointments. So 100 clicks would mean nothing if there’s not even a single booking.
That’s why we recommend:
- Enriching the landing pages with clear CTAs, patient testimonials, details of the treatments.
- Sending WhatsApp Follow-ups within 5 minutes of generating the lead.
- Incorporating EMI/Payment Plans (Post-pay) to increase the chance of booked appointments.
- And so on…
Doing all this would increase the chance of the click getting converted into a booked appointment, and that’s what we want.
5. Automation & Follow-Ups
We recommend deploying automations to:
- Remind patients of upcoming appointments
- Re-engage no-shows
- Offer check-up reminders after treatment
- Send reminders for follow-ups
This reduces leakage in your funnel, and encourages old patients to come back for long term health benefits.
It’s a win-win.
6. Performance Dashboards
Once you get into doing all this, it’s easy to get side-tracked or overwhelmed, owing to the complexity of these systems.
You’re a doctor after all, not a marketing specialist.
That’s why, Performance Dashboards can come to your rescue.
You can create or ask a staff to create clear monthly reports that include the key metrics like:
- Patients acquired per channel (Meta, Google, Instagram Organic, Facebook Organic, WhatsApp Organic, SEO).
- Cost per new patient acquisition (CPA).
- Return on Marketing Investment (ROI or ROAS).
- Cost per Lead (CPL) specific to lead generation campaigns.
This helps you to have a birds eye view of the entire marketing system without getting overwhelmed.
These are the six components that are required for a successful marketing strategy implementation.
We use the same framework for all our paid clients, so trust me, you don’t need anything else other than these six.
Our Recommended Platforms and Tools
Each tool or platform mentioned here has a specific purpose.
These are the most important ones and there might be a need for more depending on the use-case.
Platforms for Lead Generation
Meta Ads — Ideal for awareness and lead generation.
- Meta ads are the most cost-effective channel to get leads generated.
- You need to understand that the people who see your ad on meta aren’t very hot buyers, so don’t expect them to jump out of their couch to get their appointment booked.
- They have a long awareness and consideration phase and won’t usually convert very soon.
- You will require a team that can follow up with them repeatedly over the next 5-7 business days.
- Suggested daily budget- Rs. 500/- to Rs. 1000/-
Google Search Ads — Captures high-intent patients searching for services.
- This is usually more expensive than meta ads but the lead quality is slightly higher.
- That’s because since these people are in search of a particular treatment or solution, their journey from awareness to consideration to conversion happens usually in minutes.
- These leads are very likely to book appointments and turn up for them with minimal follow up.
- Suggested daily budget- Rs. 1500/- to Rs. 2000/-
Google Display Ads — Great for retargeting.
- Retargeting or Remarketing is a specialised method with which we can show our ads to people who visited our website and/or engaged with our ad but didn’t take any action.
- It’s an advanced advertising strategy that’s crucial to bring the cost per lead down- because people usually don’t convert the first few times they see our ad.
- Here’s how this would work:
- Whoever visited our website in the last 30 days would be shown these 5 ads which would increase their conversion chances in the times to come.
- Retargeting works on the principle that most people don’t convert right away and require multiple touchpoints.
Practo/Justdial — Can have, but not mandatory.
- Don’t get me wrong when I say that these tools are a “can have” but not “must have”.
- These are essentially marketplaces where people can search and choose a dentist from a list on their page.
- Since these platforms are search driven platforms that you have no control over, you have no proven methodology to rank at the top of these, unless you pay them the big bucks.
- So, for routine lead generation these can be okay, but for high ticket patients and specific type of lead generation, marketplaces should be avoided.
Tools for Tracking & Analytics
To track and analyse metrics, you will be required to setup the following tools:
- Google Analytics 4
- Google Tag Manager
- Meta Pixel
- Hotjar
CRM & Automation
CRMs maintain a record of the leads and also track the conversion stage they are in.
As stated earlier in this article, HubSpot and Zoho CRM are great options since they have a free plan to start with.
WhatsApp Business API
Signing up for a WhatsApp Business API allows you to operate your business account using a web interface with a verified profile (green tick).
It also allows you to setup automations and chatbots, and assign chats to your teammates, both of which can be helpful especially if you are running paid ads or handling a larger team.
Interakt and Aisensy are two affordable options for WhatsApp Business API.
These softwares let you send automated messages to your leads and patients.
These could be promotional messages that they get after showing interest in our service, or transactional message that they get when they get a service from us.
The best part is that they are automated and operate even when you and your team are busy assisting patients or performing surgeries.
Landing Page Builders
When people see and click your ad they are taken to a specialised page called the Landing Page.
This landing page is different from your clinic website because it contains information only related to the service that was talked about in the ad.
Meaning, if a patient is searching for “Dental Implant Specialist near me” and they see and click through to your Google Ad, they will be sent to a specific landing page that talks about Dental implants.
This page will showcase you, your clinic, and your team as an authority in dental implants.
It will contain video testimonials of past patients, before and after clinical photos, Implant related questions answered in simple language and detailed explanation of how implants work and how they let you chew food just like natural teeth.
The whole job of this landing page is to build enough desire in the patient’s mind that they either call your clinic or submit their details so your team can call them. That’s it.
Since these landing pages are different from your website (which contains all information about your clinic), they are built using specialised tools like SwipePages, ClickFunnels or HighLevel.
To Conclude
Healthcare marketing has changed a lot in the last decade and things that used to work don’t work that well anymore.
The best way to acquire patients is by word of mouth but unfortunately, it’s not in our control.
The second best way to acquire patients is actually the best way now, because it’s on demand and in our control- and that is Performance Marketing