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Hey again — it's Steve with Healthcare Marketing Vitals!

One of the fundamental challenges in healthcare marketing is identifying and targeting your ideal patient personas.

Casting a wide net and hoping for the best isn't just inefficient—it's expensive.

I mean, sending ads for braces to the nursing home down the street might work, but…I wouldn’t recommend it.

That’s why the most successful healthcare practices are those that know exactly who their ideal patients are and how to reach them directly.

This week, we're diving into strategies that address Healthcare Marketing Roadblock #2: Inefficient Patient Acquisition.

In This Week’s Email:

• [1 min] Thoughts for the Week: Grow from strength

• [4 min] The Science of Patient Targeting: Finding and Attracting Your Ideal Personas

• [30 sec] By the Numbers: Patient Targeting Statistics

• [30 sec] In the Know: Most healthcare searches return AI overviews, balancing tech and humanity in healthcare, and scientific storytelling

TOGETHER WITH OURS PRIVACY

You Don’t Have to Choose Between Growth & Patient Privacy

Running effective marketing campaigns is difficult enough on its own.

Add to that competitive markets, strict regulations around HIPAA compliance, and managing dozens of different marketing channels—and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

But what if you could link and optimize all of your campaigns from one, easy-to-use, completely HIPAA-compliant platform?

Enter, Ours Privacy…

Whether you run ads on Meta or Google, use Google Analytics or dozens of other data or tracking tools, Ours Privacy has you fully covered with their HIPAA compliant CDP.

Don’t let poor analytics stunt your growth.

Find out why healthcare marketers love Ours Privacy.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

Grow From Strength

A few months ago I was talking to a client who wanted to expand to multiple locations in the next few months.

He had already grown the business quite a bit in the year prior and I had full confidence he’d be able to pull it off.

The main question on his mind was exactly how to structure his marketing (in particular SEO & PPC) to grow profitably and expand into these new, highly competitive areas, but highly profitable.

“It’s actually pretty simple,” I said. “Grow from strength.”

What I meant by growing from strength is that you need to do two things: 1) Have a solid, reliable foundation, 2) Define and carve out the area where you have the most significant advantage and grow that first—whether geographically or by service—so when you move into new markets you have a clear value proposition.

For him, this required:

• Solidifying their reputation around service delivery for specific populations in a few key areas

• Examining the competitive market in the new location to understand service offering gaps and where their target market was underserved to find the best location and positioning

• And spending the next few months perfecting messaging, gathering reviews from their target audience, and planning the content that would help them rank in the new market and stand out.

All of this boils down to knowing and understanding his target audience and what services he delivered best.

While he’s planning on expanding his offerings to include additional services, for now he’s focused on growing geographically.

Only once he has a strong foothold in the metro, should we budget for expanding his service offerings.

BY THE WAY

I’m opening up two slots in my agency. If you’d like a partner who can help you grow from strength, let’s talk.

SPOTLIGHT

Targeting: Finding and Attracting Your Ideal Patient Personas

4 min. read

When healthcare practices fail to effectively target their ideal patients, they typically face three major problems:

1. Higher marketing costs with lower returns as messaging gets diluted across irrelevant audiences

2. Increased administrative burden from patients who aren't a good fit for your practice model

3. Reduced patient satisfaction when expectations don't align with your strengths

Addressing Roadblock #2 (Inefficient Patient Acquisition) requires moving beyond the "we treat everyone" mentality and developing precision in your targeting approach.

Identifying Your Ideal Patient Personas (IPPs)

The first step is defining who your ideal patients actually are. This goes beyond basic demographics to include factors like:

• Clinical needs and conditions where your practice truly excels

• Financial characteristics such as insurance coverage or ability to pay for premium services

• Behavioral traits including compliance with treatment plans and follow-up care

• Geographic proximity and willingness to travel for your services

• Psychographic elements like lifestyle, values, and healthcare priorities

According to PatientPop research, 92% of healthcare marketers believe their prospects and customers expect personalized experiences, highlighting the importance of developing tailored marketing approaches.

The most successful practices often develop 3-5 distinct patient personas, each representing a different segment of their ideal population. For example, a primary care practice might target:

• Young professionals seeking convenient, tech-enabled care

• Growing families needing comprehensive pediatric and adult services

• Seniors with chronic condition management needs

• Patients interested in preventative health and wellness services

👉 Want to start building your own patient personas? Make a copy of our Free Patient Persona Worksheet to get started.

Target Your Audience Effectively

Once you've defined your ideal patient personas, the next step is implementing targeting strategies to reach them:

1. Analyze your current patient base

• Review your practice management system for patterns among your most profitable and satisfied patients

• Conduct patient surveys to understand why ideal patients chose your practice

• Map zip codes of existing patients to identify geographic clusters

2. Leverage insurance data

• Identify which insurance plans your ideal patients typically carry

• Focus marketing efforts on highlighting that you’re in-network with many plans from these carriers

• Consider targeting employers who offer these insurance plans in local outreach campaigns. This information can sometimes be found online, but more often will come from knowing large employers nearby and looking for patterns in employers from your current patients

3. Develop condition-specific marketing

• Create dedicated campaigns for clinical conditions where you excel

• Use condition-specific keywords in your SEO, PPC Ads, landing pages, and website

• Develop educational content addressing these specific conditions with an emphasis on FAQs and “What-to-dos”

4. Implement demographic and interest targeting

• Develop messaging that speaks directly to the priorities of each patient segment

• Use Google Ads to target ads based on demographics, using language from your Free Patient Persona Worksheet

• Ensure your intake process is set up to serve your IPPs well (i.e. more digital for younger populations, larger text for older populations, convenient phone trees—if any, etc.)

Research published by Invoca reveals that patient targeting strategies should account for how people make healthcare decisions today, with 88% of healthcare appointments still scheduled by phone, emphasizing the importance of integrating both digital and traditional communication channels.

Measuring Success in Patient Targeting

How do you know if your targeting is working?

Look beyond simple volume metrics to evaluate:

1. Patient lifetime value by acquisition channel and patient type

2. Treatment plan acceptance rates for different patient segments

3. Referral rates from each targeted patient population

4. Patient satisfaction scores compared across segments

5. Cost per acquisition for each targeting strategy

Research on healthcare personas shows that using detailed patient profiles helps healthcare providers not only improve patient acquisition, but also enhance treatment adherence and outcomes by better understanding specific needs and communication preferences.

The goal isn't just more patients—it's the right patients who value your services, comply with treatment recommendations, and become loyal advocates for your practice.

These patients will have higher satisfaction, help you develop a specialized niche (as refined or as broad as you desire), and start to give you a name as the “go-to CBT therapist” or the “perfect cardiologist for complex conditions.”

Common Targeting Pitfalls to Avoid

Even well-intentioned targeting efforts can go awry.

Watch out for these common mistakes:

• Targeting based on convenience rather than strategic fit with your practice strengths

• Overlooking outside factors that affect patient acquisition and retention (insurance, transportation, accessibility) 

• Targeting only based on profitability without considering clinical outcomes, provider expertise, and patient satisfaction

• Abandoning targets too quickly before strategies have time to mature

• Creating overly rigid targeting that fails to evolve with changing market conditions (financial, insurance, competitive)

For better or worse, provider loyalty is a thing of the past, with patients increasingly using online reviews and positive consumer experiences to select new providers—and switching quickly when dissatisfied. This makes effective targeting even more crucial for sustainable practice growth. 

The true basis of effective patient targeting isn't excluding people from care—it's directing your marketing toward those you serve best.

BY THE NUMBERS

Patient Targeting Statistics

1. Loyalty Dynamics: 47% of patients leave healthcare providers due to poor experiences, while 61% stay loyal because of excellent care, demonstrating the importance of targeting patients who will value your specific approach.

2. Referral Influence: 48% of people identify word of mouth as the second most important factor in selecting a healthcare provider, emphasizing the value of targeting patients who become advocates for your practice.

3. Patient Retention Window: 86% of patients give providers only up to 2 chances after poor care before ending the relationship, highlighting the importance of targeting patients who are a good fit from the start.

IN THE KNOW

Key Articles this Week

1. 63% of Healthcare Queries Now Have AI Overviews: BrightEdge research shows that nearly two-thirds of healthcare search queries now trigger AI-generated overviews in search results, fundamentally changing how patients discover and interact with healthcare information online. Read more

2. Innovation with Humanity: Balancing Tech and Connection in Healthcare: This thoughtful analysis explores the critical balance healthcare providers must strike between leveraging new technology and maintaining meaningful human connections with patients - especially relevant when implementing targeted marketing approaches. Read more

3. From Data to Dominance: How Scientific Storytelling Drives Success: While primarily focused on pharmaceutical communications, this article offers valuable insights for healthcare providers on turning complex clinical data into compelling narratives. The principles of effective scientific storytelling apply equally to practices reaching patients. Read more

When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help

1. Hit "reply” to any email and drop me a line. Tell your story, share your marketing struggles, or just say hi. I read every email.

2.  Get in front of our audience of healthcare leaders & professionals.

3. I’m opening up 2 slots in my agency. If you’d like help acquiring more patients and want to partner with someone knows what to do:

*Some links in this email may be affiliate links.

That’s All for Now

Have a great week—and remember to grow from strength.

See You Next Week,

Steve