Better Patient Experiences Need Better Healthcare Marketing Data

Consumer behavior is changing, and eagle-eyed healthcare organizations are seeing new trends emerge. One important shift is that consumers today have higher expectations of their experiences online than pre-pandemic. Consider this:

• 60% of healthcare consumers expect their online experience with their healthcare provider to be similar to their experiences with retailers.

• 50% of healthcare consumers say that even one poor online experience with their healthcare provider is too many. In fact, these consumers say it ruins their entire experience with the healthcare provider.

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These consumer trends are giving rise to an even bigger shift in healthcare marketing. Healthcare marketers (and their organizations) are learning that a great website is not the same as a great patient experience. These marketers need to provide the same seamless experience that consumers expect from retailers.

But even with new marketing strategies and tactics, there's one thing still holding healthcare back: how their marketing data is structured.

In response to changing consumer behavior, there are new healthcare marketing trends, too. That's why many healthcare marketers are working towards closing the gaps in patients' omnichannel journeys. Even the NIH republished a study from the Mayo Clinic in June 2023 on the impact of streamlined omnichannel patient journeys. Here's an excerpt from their conclusion:

"The health care institutions that implement the omnichannel approach will benefit from a new window of opportunity and business growth and patient engagement… Ultimately, the adoption of an omnichannel strategy will make the patient the true beneficiary of the health care system."

There's only one problem: omnichannel marketing requires that healthcare marketers 1) eliminate silos in their systems and 2) manage their consumer-centric data.

Siloed systems result in siloed information. Healthcare marketers need that information to gain key insights on their organization and marketing efforts. They need to consolidate their marketing tech stack so their information is consolidated, too.

As a result, marketers are starting to work more closely with CDOs, CIOs, and CTOs. These marketers are responsible for creating great patient experiences — and well-managed marketing data is key. Organized marketing data is easier to distribute, so marketers can deliver better patient experiences without investing too much time or resources.

But what is marketing data in healthcare — and how can marketers do a better job of managing it?

Marketing data is information that is public-facing. Patients, consumers, and other third parties search for this data online. For healthcare, this marketing data includes:

• Provider Data: Healthcare organizations share information with customers about providers, their specialties, their time, and their availability. Healthcare marketers need to manage this data to succeed in the new consumer-first world of healthcare.

• Facilities Data: It's absolutely necessary to maintain your facilities data. Patients need to know where to go to set up and prepare for their appointments. Otherwise, you won't easily drive revenue within your system.

• Specialties, Conditions, Treatments, and Procedures Data: You need to be able to match the patient to the best provider. When this data is accurate and available, healthcare marketers can save time for both the patient and the provider. For example, the patient doesn't accidentally see the wrong provider. And, the provider doesn't waste time with a patient who should be seeing someone else.

• Appointment Availability Data: You need to be able to match the patient to the right provider at the right time. Managing this data ensures that patients can access care within an appropriate time frame. It also helps providers fill their empty appointment slots.

Consumers are shopping online for everything these days, and healthcare is no exception. Their expectations for their healthcare experience mirrors the expectations they have for retailers. And the only way healthcare marketers can match retail experiences is to have control over marketing data.

Now that you know what marketing data is, it's time to manage it. Healthcare marketers need to take command of the data by owning it. These steps are a great start:

1. Identify the systems where your data lives. This includes data on your providers, facilities, and locations. It's not uncommon for this data to live in multiple different systems.

2. Allow marketing to take full ownership of your provider data. Then, create processes to maintain the data. This will ensure the provider data is accurate for your use in marketing.

3. Establish a close working relationship with your IT teams. In doing so, you can make a strong case for investment in martech solutions. You can also work together to ensure these investments serve the entire organization, not just marketing teams.

4. Work with your CTO to eliminate data silos (and technology silos) that exist today. Use a technology platform like a headless CMS to import data from and export data to other martech platforms. For longevity, ensure this platform is AI-ready.

Once you've worked with IT to eliminate your data silos, your marketers can distribute information with confidence that it's accurate. But before you can use that information in omnichannel marketing activities, you'll need a system that can manage both first- and third-party channels.

That's why a key solution in your healthcare martech stack is your headless CMS. With a headless CMS, marketers can consolidate, store, and manage data that lives in multiple systems — eliminating silos. They can also manage that data from one single platform, and then distribute the information across all platforms, even owned and non-owned channels.

Once you've identified your healthcare marketing data, put a system and processes in place to manage it. Then, you can execute omnichannel marketing activities to connect patients with your organization. The result is a better patient experience — and more effective marketing.