Sometimes, in the world of marketing, we create our own monsters. Take a look at a lot of agencies advertising their services these days and they are often full of wild claims.
- Only video ads are driving growth in 2026!
- Facebook is dead, Reddit is killing it!
- We track every single dollar of ad spend, tying it all back to patients in the door!
- We’ll build you a content engine that fills your schedule!
- We’ll rank you on Google in 30 days or your money back! (for some obscure term).
- 90 patients in 90 days or you don’t pay! (includes non-refundable setup charges and numerous loopholes on the guarantee)
Why do agencies push these pitches? Well, providers mostly have themselves to blame because it’s what many providers want to hear. They want to hear that, in essence, they can pay for guaranteed success or that a single tactic is all that’s needed to drive breakaway success.
And underneath this lies what we call the “mythology of marketing,” that marketing acts as an independent entity generating results regardless of business type, market demand, degree of competition, or underlying business quality.
Agency owners often joke about this. If it were true that marketing alone could build any business on demand, then marketing agencies would rule the world of business. They would own all the businesses. Today they could start a shoe store, tomorrow a dental practice, and, next week physical therapy services.
This mythology then seeps down to the platform, the campaign, and even the ad level. Instead of viewing business as a complex ecosystem, success is boiled down to some kind of magic marketing formula. Facebook isn’t working, try Reddit. Our ads aren’t converting profitably, split test new creative until we “find the one that works,” as if a single ad can run forever and carry the entire business on its back indefinitely.
Within this mindset is the idea that there is a formula out there. Maybe you don’t know what it is yet, but if you can split test your way to a high performing ad, then the marketing can drive the entire business engine. Again, we’ve arrived at the fundamental fallacy that marketing is some kind of standalone entity which works independently of competition, market demand, or business awareness and reputation. Split testing done right is used to refine and optimize channel specific strategies, not define the strategy itself.
Great marketing is a strong component of business success, but it is only one component of the many that are required. For marketing to work, it must be uniquely tailored to your business, your market, your competition, and what’s important to your patients today. Templates, paint by numbers approaches, funnel formulas, these are why campaigns fail.
When Big Data Obscures Business Logic
Over the past decade, business operators have been trained to rely on the data, to look to it for all the answers. Within this logic, data then becomes the beacon, the shining light that should show the path forward. Focusing solely on split testing ads and audiences makes sense under this philosophy. By feeding the algorithms and testing out 1,000 iterations, we’ll surely land on “what works.” No need to think through the psychology of the patient, how they make decisions, how they engage on different platforms, what creative grabs attention versus what overcomes objections versus what drives a decision. A complex process is reduced to the overly simplistic idea that all we need is a big data set to show us some kind of magic creative/audience/platform combo which performs independently of the business or its environment.
It is an illusion that your customer/patient is out there just itching to buy your product or service, BUT they simply hadn’t been hit with the right ad creative on one of their primary platforms of choice. Suddenly, they see an ad created by your marketing department or agency and they become a patient on the spot? This is nonsense.
By prioritizing a data-driven mindset, we have lost sight of basic human psychology and how real-world decisions are made.
- Most people are inherently distrustful of marketing. They assume you’re exaggerating, overplaying strengths, minimizing or hiding drawbacks. No single ad overcomes that initial skepticism.
- People rarely make big decisions quickly. They consider, evaluate, shop around and compare (see below for the exception).
- A pitch ad is rarely the pivotal decision-maker. Instead, it’s often the level of trust an organization has built with the potential patient over a period of time through repeated touches from different angles: educational content, helpful content, testimonial content, overriding objection content, etc.
It is not a single touchpoint that drives a decision, but, instead, the culmination of touchpoints. Fundamentally, this requires a different mindset from how most small-to-medium sized businesses approach marketing today. Most businesses today try to tie ROI to individual platforms or touchpoints. How many patients did Facebook vs Google Ads vs Connected TV generate? Instead of tying campaign strategy by platform, audience, and creative to the appropriate stage of the patient journey, every ad is used as a hammer to try and drive final attribution conversions.
Why doesn’t Coca-Cola use the same ad forever? Why does Nike advertise on almost every platform rather than just one or two that drive the clearest, most visible results? Why is the Starbucks ad on TV different from their video ad on TikTok and why are they using carousel ads on Instagram even though they have the video creative from TV and TikTok?
The biggest companies in the world understand what many less successful businesses do not. Great marketing is about meeting your customer where they are at and connecting creative to the medium. If we’re McDonald’s running a TV ad, we want that ad to be memorable because we know that no one is going to get out of their chair and march over to McDonald’s right this second to get a burger. Our goal with the campaign is to instill a memory that will trigger the next time they are hungry and looking to eat out. But when we have a billboard, we want it off the highway right before an exit with one of our locations. We’re not looking to create a memory, we’re looking to compel people to turn off at the next exit and stop in since we know a good enough percentage of the people seeing the ad are hungry right now. And, if we did our marketing job right, the TV ad letting consumers know the McRib is back will work in conjunction with the billboard ad letting them know there is a location nearby. That’s understanding the consumer journey. That’s strategy.
Confusing Crisis Inquiry with Sustainable Business Growth
Imagine you woke up this morning with a horrible toothache. It’s this horrible throbbing pain. You can’t think about anything other than the pain. In this scenario, you have one goal: end the pain as soon as possible. You call your regular dentist and they can’t get you in until next week. There’s no way you can wait that long.
So you turn to Google. Normally, you take your time and research websites, check credentials, compare Google reviews. Today, you could care less. You just need someone who can get you in today. You literally start calling down from the top of the page. The first 2 ads at the top can’t get you in any time soon either, but the 3rd one says they had a patient cancel this afternoon and they could get you in, but, unfortunately, they aren’t in-network with your insurance. Again, normally, you’re cost-conscious, you’d call around to find an in-network provider. But today isn’t a normal day. The only thing that matters right now is ending this pain. You tell them you’ll be there this afternoon.
There will be readers going through the first section of this email saying to themselves, “but we do get patients off of single ads on Google.” And this is true. But it goes back to data obscuring business logic. There are people in crisis who will buy out of desperation and a strong factor determining who wins that patient from a marketing standpoint is being the first option they see with an opening.
But this is a relatively small number of people. We can’t scale this because total volume is low. In some healthcare specialties such as cosmetic surgery or residential behavioral healthcare, people will travel a further distance, maybe even get on a plane and fly. But, for most healthcare providers, patients need local. No one is going to drive 50 miles to get a cavity filled, do an MRI scan, or go to weekly therapy. And most people in any geographic area are not in a state of crisis like in our scenario which started this section.
Additionally, most people who click a Google Ad or come off of a Google search are not in crisis. They are evaluating options, looking at multiple websites, calling multiple providers, then making a reasoned decision. Your ad caught their eye, which is good, but they’re not in crisis mode, so you need more than an ad to drive a decision.
- These decisions are driven by more than the search as well. Have they heard of you before? They’ll be more likely to go with you.
- If they’re familiar with you, do they just know your name or have they been on your site before, read one of your articles, or watched one of your videos?
- Did the content they engaged with resonate with them?
- If they’re familiar with you, do they just know your name or have they been on your site before, read one of your articles, or watched one of your videos?
- Many people don’t like to make big decisions hastily. They’ll sit on it for a few days. Are they still seeing ads from you, nudging them along in the decision-making process, keeping you top of mind? Or are you only doing search ads, so, unless they’re searching, they won’t see you?
- They’ll also seek advice from friends, family, trusted healthcare providers or a colleague they know has had similar issues. Are these people aware of you? Will they have positive things to say about you?
All this to say, it’s not a single ad on a single channel that drives the majority of patient inquiry behavior or provider choice. Marketing requires an ecosystem of campaigns, all tied together, that envelop potential patients at each stage of their decision-making journey.
Strategically, you need to capture all of this volume. Do you want to run the Google Ads that capture the crisis calls? Absolutely. But what about all the potential patients who aren’t in crisis (which is the majority of them at any given time)? What about all those patients who are in pre-contemplation or contemplation stages of the decision-making journey? What about those patients who have already checked out your website, but also the website of 3 of your competitors and they’re mulling it over right now? How are you influencing them to make sure you come out on top?
Even if you provide a high-reimbursement service that enables you to absorb the exorbitant costs of Google Ads, is it worth sacrificing 20-30% of margin to ignore the rest of the patient journey?
Where Are Your Patients?
The fact is that your patients are everywhere. Some of them watch the evening news on good old regular TV, some are on Netflix, some on Facebook, some searching Google, some in a subreddit, many are now using AI.
The question is not, “which of these channels works,” but, instead, is, “how do our patients find, consider, and make decisions about us and the services we provide?” Do they watch niche influencers on TikTok for advice? Are they doom scrolling on Facebook to avoid thinking about their issue? Are they comparing options on Google? Are they asking Chat GPT, which often pulls from Reddit, which are the best providers in the area and why?
Like in our McDonald’s example, healthcare providers need to connect ads to the platform and the user’s psychology. When they’re seeking advice on TikTok, is your campaign providing them answers to their questions rather than pitching them on your services? When they’re doom scrolling on Facebook to distract themselves, are you providing them with educational content that will help them solve their problem and start to trust you (or are you yet again trying to pitch services)? When they’re comparing options on Google, do your ads and web pages make it clear why you’re the better choice compared to your top 3 competitors (which they’re also looking at right then)?
The conversation needs to change from being only “how do we design an ad that converts” to “how do we meet patients with the right ads on the right platforms that ultimately leads to them choosing us?” Whether the ads are designed to help them choose you today or a day in the future is part of your channel strategy. Channel strategy evolves from single channel conversion attribution to measuring metrics that matter for that stage of the patient decision-making process. For TikTok, we want to measure video views. For Facebook, clicks and scroll depth on page. For Google Ads, it’ll be qualified inquiries. Tracking needs to be as strategic as the campaign content.
Looking to evolve your marketing beyond a simplistic per channel attribution model? Looking for an agency that combines human psychology with industry expertise and omnichannel healthcare marketing expertise? Then get in touch.