What Multi-Channel Actually Means in Healthcare Marketing (It's Not Just More Ads)

Ask ten marketers what “multi-channel” means and you’ll get ten different answers. Most of them will be wrong. 

Not wrong because the people explaining them are incompetent. Wrong because the term has been watered down to the point of uselessness. Multi-channel has become shorthand for “doing more stuff”—run ads on Pinterest, test some YouTube pre-roll, throw budget at TikTok, maybe try connected TV if there’s money left over. 

That approach doesn’t work. It’s expensive, unfocused, and politically dangerous when nothing converts as cleanly as search advertising does. 

The teams that actually move beyond Google aren’t just adding more channels. They’re rethinking how they bring patients in: each channel has a clear job, they track how channels help each other instead of only the last click, and they build a system where channels work together. 

That’s what multi-channel actually means. And it’s a fundamentally different operating model than what most healthcare marketers are running today. 

Let’s unpack that further. 

What Multi-Channel is Not

Multi-channel is not running ads everywhere hoping something sticks. Budget without strategy is just noise—and expensive noise that finance without hesitation. 

And it’s not isolated channel tests where a team spins up an Instagram campaign for six weeks, sees it doesn’t convert like search does, and declares “Instagram doesn’t work for us.” That’s not testing multi-channel. That’s testing whether a single tactic can replace an entire system. Of course it fails. 

It’s definitely not applying the same KPIs across every platform—judging awareness channels by conversion rate, expecting consideration tactics to deliver immediate ROI, or killing upper-funnel work because it doesn’t show up in last-click attribution. 

Those approaches fail for the same reason. They treat channels as interchangeable when they’re not. A YouTube video that introduces your brand to someone who’s never heard of you does not have the same job as a retargeting ad that reminds a recent website visitor to book an appointment. Measuring both by cost per conversion misses the point entirely. 

How Multi-Channel Actually Works

Multi-channel works when channels have clear roles tied to where patients are in their decision-making process. 

But here’s what makes healthcare different: patient acquisition isn’t a single journey. Jeremy Rogers, VP of Digital Marketing and Experience at IU Health, frames it this way: “It’s not really one funnel. If you look at a patient’s healthcare lifecycle, it’s a series of funnels. And you’re winning that relationship every time.” 

Most patients aren’t in the market for healthcare services very often—maybe a handful of times per year. But each time they seek care, they’re entering a new conversion funnel. You might win them for primary care but lose them for specialty services. 

That’s why channel roles matter.

As you can see, each stage requires different channels, different creative, and different success metrics.

Awareness channels win when they reach the right people often enough that your brand starts to feel familiar. At this stage, you’re measuring reach and frequency—not immediate conversions. Expecting awareness campaigns to deliver appointment bookings is like expecting a first date to end in marriage. It misunderstands the job. 

Consideration channels succeed when they move people closer to decision. Again, the goal at this stage isn’t the immediately convert. It’s to stay relevant while they decide. This means measuring things like engagement, time on site, email opens—basically anything that signals that someone is actively evaluating their care options. 

Conversion channels succeed when they close ready patients effectively. Measurement at this stage focuses on KPIs like cost per acquisition, conversion rate, appointment volume. 

What’s important to understand is that conversion isn’t just about getting the click—it’s about getting the patient to show up. 

Consider this: Allison Horn's team at Imagen Dental Partners increased show rates from 51% to over 80% in one year by focusing on post-booking communication, practice operations, and patient experience. "It's not just marketing," she notes. "It goes into operations and engagement and conversation and validating insurance and being more mindful of are we pulling the right patients in to actually show up."

Why You Need a Multi-Channel Strategy

As I mentioned earlier, most patients don’t see one ad and immediately book an appointment. They see your brand on YouTube while researching symptoms. They scroll past a Facebook ad featuring a patient testimonial. They hear an ad while listening to their favorite podcast on the commute to work. Then—when they’re finally ready—they search and instantly recognize your brand among the complete unknowns. 

That familiarity is what tips the scales. All those upstream touches didn’t convert the patient directly but they shaped the consideration set. The YouTube pre-roll made your search ad more likely to get clicked. The Facebook ad made your website feel credible when they landed on it. Together they turned a cold relationship into a warm one.  

Put more bluntly, channel interaction compounds impact in ways that single-channel optimization can’t replicate. When awareness channels feed consideration channels, and consideration channels warm up patients before they search, the entire system performs better than any individual platform could alone. 

And here’s the part CFOs care about — demand creation lowers downstream acquisition costs. 

When patients already know your brand before they search, you’re not competing purely on price and location. You’re competing with preference. That means higher clickthrough rates, better conversion rates, and lower CPCs—because you’re not fighting to introduce your brand at the exact moment someone needs to make a decision. 

This shows up in unexpected ways. Allison Horn noticed it when reviewing performance at one of Imagen Dental’s Ohio practices. 

The dental practice wasn't hitting its new patient volume target, but something else had changed. “[Patients] were already informed in what they’re looking for,” she explained, “The conversion and case acceptance have increased. They're getting higher average value of new patients. They've had their best production numbers ever.” 

In her example, upstream awareness work didn't just drive more patients—it drove better-qualified patients who were further along in their decision process, which meant higher treatment acceptance rates and record revenue despite lower raw volume.

That's the strategic case for multi-channel. 

The Foundation Multi-Channel Requires

Running campaigns across connected TV, programmatic display, social, and search requires unified data and compliant integrations.

That infrastructure work is unglamorous, but it's non-negotiable. You can't orchestrate channels you can't measure. You can't prove multi-channel ROI when data lives in silos. You can't diversify when finance only trusts what search attribution shows them.

Find out what it takes to build the foundation for a multi-channel marketing strategy that creates demand and proves ROI. Download Beyond Google: The Multi-Channel Playbook for Healthcare Marketers today.