From Cost Center To Revenue-Driver: 4 Ways Healthcare Marketers Can Regain Trust In Their Organizations

As privacy rules have tightened, many healthcare marketers have written off e-commerce-style, data-driven marketing as unrealistic. But every quarter, they’re still expected to walk into the CFO’s office, explain performance, and ask for budget. When they can’t tie campaign performance to revenue, it’s not surprise CFOs start seeing marketing as a cost center instead of a growth engine.

But leading healthcare marketers are refusing to be victims of circumstance. They’re using innovative tech and tactics to develop privacy-first patient data strategies, measure revenue impact, and regain trust. 

Freshpaint’s Ray Mina recently had the chance to join Sherianne James, CMO of Heartland Dental, and Monu Kalsi, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Duly Health and Care, at Scaling Up for a discussion on how healthcare marketers can design a privacy-first patient data strategy and prove impact. 

The hour-long conversation was packed with insight, catch the recording here. But in case you don't have time to watch the whole thing, we've broken down the key insights in this blog post. 

For marketing to regain a seat at the table, you need to be able to tell the right story with data. So whether you’re flying blind or fine-tuning a working strategy, here are four key insights on how to take your patient data strategy to the next level. 

1. Establish a Privacy-First Patient Data Infrastructure

When Sherianne James walked through Heartland Dental’s patient data infrastructure, the chat erupted, and our jaws hit the floor. Having developed the ability to report on how patients are engaging throughout the funnel, the team can “connect investments in media channels to booking and visits, tracking all the way to the value that the patient creates,” she explained. 

It’s a tech stack that many healthcare marketers would dream of, but Sherianne insists it didn’t start out this way. When she joined, the team was stuck trying to analyze “leads and clicks.” The breakthrough came when they implemented a centralized patient data infrastructure, which allowed them to “stitch the pipes together” and begin connecting campaigns to booked appointments and patient value. 

A modern patient data infrastructure makes it possible to collect patient data from various sources, whether that’s an ad click, a website visit, or a booking, and share that with the tools that you use for analysis, CRM, and advertising without exposing protected health information (PHI). In practice, this means you can: 

• Build a complete view of the patient journey
• Understand how investments at different points of the funnel are driving revenue events, like booked appointments
• Optimize your programs based on results

Sharianne explained, “for each practice, we can deliver the return on investment of their media spend and help inform why they should invest more or less, or encourage them to open up more patient scheduling blocks and drive conversions. It's been a huge unlock for our ability to add value to the providers.”

2. Speak To Finance and Operations In Their Language Through Shared KPIs

Access to better data leads not only to better reporting, but also better communication. Many healthcare marketers fail to build trust with Finance and Ops because they speak to them in terms of vanity metrics, like impressions and clicks, instead of revenue. This presents a big risk —"It's like a duck in calm water,” remarked Monu. “You're floating, but your feet are going crazy below the water. They don't see that. They only see the numbers that they understand."

The way to reclaim the narrative, Ray noted, “is you need the data. That is your best shot at rewriting the story for your strategy." With clarity on how campaigns are driving the metrics that matter most, you can understand the business impact of your efforts and communicate them to leadership. 

A great place to start is by looking at revenue outcomes, like patient acquisition, appointment volume, and attended appointments; and efficiency metrics, such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and return on ad spend (ROAS). 

Monu put it well—“own a number, and make sure that you understand how you influence that metric. Once you establish that relationship and measure it on a regular basis, you can communicate it to your peers in finance or the C-suite. That's how you start to build that relationship."

Get More Out Of Your Google Ads Spend

There’s nothing leadership loves more than driving more revenue with less spend. 

For most healthcare marketers, that means optimizing Google Ads, as it often takes up the lion's share of paid marketing investment. Google Ads is certainly easier to measure than other channels, but if you’re not careful, PPC spend can get out of control. Here are three actionable strategies the panelists shared for improving Google Ads performance. 

Google Ads Is Intent Capture, Not Demand Gen

Many teams make the mistake of viewing Google Ads as a demand generation channel instead of an intent capture channel. Ray explained, “Sometimes we have customers that have 80% of their spend in Google Ads. When I think of paid media, that's not a paid media strategy. That's an intent strategy. Google Ads is not demand gen. It's intent capture.” Google Ads sits at the bottom of your funnel, waiting for high-intent patients to search “flu shot near me” and presenting them with an ad that makes it easy to convert. But as Ray noted, “intent is finite, fickle, and really expensive in 2025.” Any marketers tasked with getting more patients or enrollments out of the same spend are gonna have to figure out how to generate demand. 

A great way to increase demand is to invest in top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel channels alongside Google Ads. Channels like Display, CTV, Social Media, and even Offline can educate audiences and increase intent, which leads to increases in search conversions and lower CPC. 

When opening up a new office, Monu’s team invested in channels like community engagement and content marketing across owned channels and social media to increase awareness in the area. “It was one of our best use cases.” Monu explained. “We've exceeded our results month over month for the last three months. Now the discussion is, how do we invest more next year? It's not, how can we dial down? It's, let's dial up!"

Make Google Ads Smarter With Conversion Data

Teams can also improve Google Ads performance by feeding better conversion data back into the platform. “Google really cares about intent,” Ray explained. When teams are able to provide Google with accurate data on which conversions led to attended appointments, the platform is able to fine tune its ML models and drive better campaign results. It’s like putting high-octane fuel in a sports car for the first time. 

“'Sally showed up for the appointment,' is not the same as Sally actually showing up for the appointment,” noted Ray. “So much so that when customers do connect all the way from the ad click down to Sally showing up for the appointment, we've seen improvements of revenue by 20% on equivalent ad spend.” 

Use Conversion Types to Help Google Ads Prioritize

As your data strategy matures, you can further optimize Google Ads performance by assigning relative values to different conversion types. The way a patient converts, whether by completing a form, calling, or booking an appointment, has different value to your organization. Feeding this information back to Google Ads helps the platform drive the best results for your business.

Sharianne explained that her team can “delineate what's a high-quality call that's more likely to convert versus just a lower-quality call. We've assigned a weighting for calls, for form fills, and then, of course, for appointments. We give that to the bidding to help optimize our media. The results have been pretty compelling to encourage us to do that more and be able to be better at acquiring bids.”

4. View Privacy Compliance As A Strategic Advantage

Although the conversation was packed with tactical takeaways, the panelists also emphasized that healthcare marketers’ mindset is just as important as their strategy. Especially when it comes to privacy.

Many healthcare marketers view privacy as a thorn in their side, preventing them from running the same campaigns as their counterparts in Retail and Media. But to succeed in our new reality, Marketing must begin to view privacy as an opportunity, using it as a means to take ownership of data and build better relationships. 

"Privacy is not a blocker,” Ray explained, “it's really an opportunity to get buy-in across the organization. Marketing needs this new shiny tool, and no one cares. But privacy is something that everyone cares about. Legal compliance, the C-suite, and IT."

By framing investments in patient data strategy as a privacy solution, Marketing can position themselves as problem-solvers that are bringing the organization forward, instead of the problem themselves. As part of this process, Marketing builds closer relationships with Compliance, Legal, and IT, collaborating with those departments to design the best solution for the business. 

"Privacy is a friend,” says Monu. “Having worked in regulated industries for the last decade or so, you can still do stellar marketing. I will challenge everyone that you should be able to tell that story."

Change is Hard, But You’re Not On Your Own

The privacy landscape is constantly evolving, and healthcare marketers must adapt. But no one should have to navigate these challenges on their own. Through engaging with peers in the industry, marketers can learn more about how to carry their practice forward in a privacy-first world.

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