What healthcare leaders should demand from marketing in 2027

Alex Loehrer

VP, Marketing Strategy

Healthcare marketing has traditionally been asked to do a familiar set of things: build awareness, protect reputation, promote services and generate patient demand. Those responsibilities aren't going away. But the world around them is changing quickly enough that healthcare leaders should be asking more from marketing in 2027.

Consider what's happening with the healthcare consumer. Nearly 60% of consumers now use online search to find a new primary care provider, according to Press Ganey. More than a third are already using AI for healthcare-related purposes, including researching conditions and treatments and finding providers. And 80% say the ability to schedule an appointment online influences their choice of provider.

At the same time, access remains a problem. PwC found that 55% of U.S. consumers encounter barriers when trying to access healthcare. Press Ganey reports that nearly half will walk away when provider information online is inaccurate or they can't find the information they're looking for.

In the Southeast, where Alloy makes its home, the market itself is also changing. South Carolina was the fastest-growing state in the country from 2024 to 2025, while North Carolina ranked third. Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina collectively added more than half a million residents in a single year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For healthcare organizations across our region, those aren't simply population statistics. They represent hundreds of thousands of consumers establishing new relationships with physicians, hospitals and healthcare brands.

Add AI, new competitors, changing search behavior, heightened consumer expectations and continued pressure to demonstrate return on investment, and the implication is clear: the mandate for healthcare marketing has changed.

As healthcare leaders look toward 2027, here are eight things they should expect from their marketing organizations.

1. Growth matters too, not just activity.

Healthcare marketing has no shortage of metrics: impressions, clicks, engagement, website traffic, share of voice and leads. All can be useful indicators. None is the ultimate objective. The more important question is: What did marketing help the organization accomplish?

Depending on the strategy, that could mean growing a priority service line, acquiring patients in a new market, increasing physician referrals, recruiting clinical trial participants, strengthening an employer relationship or supporting another strategic business objective. This doesn't mean every marketing activity can—or should—be tied directly to revenue. Brand building and reputation remain critically important. But healthcare leaders should expect marketing to draw a clearer line between communications activity and organizational outcomes. The conversation needs to evolve from "How did the campaign perform?" to "What did the campaign accomplish?"

2. Visibility has to follow patients wherever they’re looking.

For years, healthcare digital marketing followed a relatively predictable path: search, website, appointment. That journey is becoming considerably less linear. Patients may encounter a healthcare organization through Google, social media, online reviews, news coverage, physician-rating sites or, increasingly, through an answer generated by artificial intelligence.

More than one-third of consumers are already using AI for healthcare-related purposes, according to Press Ganey. PwC found that 53% of consumers are using or interested in AI-powered tools that recommend a provider or place to receive care. That means healthcare organizations need to think beyond traditional search engine optimization.

SEO still matters. But so do authoritative content, earned media, reputation, structured information and the emerging disciplines sometimes described as answer engine optimization or generative engine optimization. For healthcare leaders, there's a simple test: When someone asks Google, ChatGPT or another AI platform where to go for a particular type of care, what does it know about your organization—and what is it telling them?

3. Interest means nothing if patients can’t act on it.

Marketing can create demand. It can't declare victory if consumers can't act on it. PwC found that 55% of consumers experience barriers when accessing healthcare. Among Gen X and Millennials simultaneously caring for children and aging parents, that figure reaches 68%. Press Ganey found that 80% of consumers say online scheduling influences their provider choice.

That creates an important responsibility for marketing. Marketing doesn't necessarily own scheduling, call centers, referral management or clinical operations, but it should understand what happens after someone responds to a campaign. Can consumers find the right provider? Can they understand which services are offered? Can they tell whether their insurance is accepted? Can they schedule an appointment? Can they get an answer when they need one?

A beautifully executed campaign that generates thousands of prospective patients but delivers them to a confusing or frustrating access experience isn't completely successful. Is your marketing generating demand that follows through by facilitating access? If not, your marketing strategy is incomplete.

4. Explaining innovation is how marketing earns trust.

Healthcare organizations are adopting remarkable new capabilities, including artificial intelligence, precision medicine, robotics, remote monitoring, advanced diagnostics, virtual care and new therapies. But there's a difference between possessing innovation and getting people to embrace it.

PwC found that 56% of consumers are using or interested in AI-assisted diagnosis when the technology is used and reviewed by their physician. That suggests an important role for healthcare marketing and communications: translator. Consumers don't necessarily need to understand the technology behind an innovation. They need to understand what it means for them. Will it improve my diagnosis? Will it make my treatment safer? Will it help my physician make a better decision? Who's overseeing it? Can I trust it?

Deloitte found that nearly 80% of surveyed consumers would not return to the same healthcare provider following an experience that caused them to lose trust. In that environment, trust isn't simply a reputation metric. It's a business imperative.

Do patients in your region trust your brand? How do you prove it? There's no point in promoting quality and innovation if you can't.

5. The real opportunity is collaboration across disciplines.

Patients don't distinguish among advertising, public relations, search results, social media, physician profiles, online reviews and websites. They experience one organization. Healthcare marketing should work the same way.

A compelling physician story shouldn't live exclusively in PR. It can become authoritative website content, social content, search visibility, thought leadership and potentially a source that helps AI platforms understand an organization's expertise. A service-line campaign shouldn't begin with media placement. It should begin with a common understanding of the audience, the business objective, the competitive environment and the action the organization wants consumers to take.

Brand, PR, digital, content, search, social and paid media remain specialized disciplines. The opportunity isn't to eliminate that specialization. How are your marketing and communications specialties collaborating to leverage content strategically across each discipline?

6. Having a distinct point of view beats adding to the noise.

Healthcare organizations create enormous amounts of content. Far less of it tells us what they actually think. That's a missed opportunity.

Health systems contain extraordinary reservoirs of expertise: physicians, nurses, scientists, researchers, administrators and executives dealing every day with some of healthcare's most important questions, including AI, access, affordability, prevention, cancer, cardiovascular disease, aging, workforce shortages, population health and consumerism. Marketing and communications should help organizations identify that expertise and turn it into meaningful thought leadership.

That matters because differentiation is getting harder. Virtually every health system can say it offers advanced technology, compassionate care and excellent physicians. A distinctive point of view is harder to replicate. The objective shouldn't simply be to join the healthcare conversation. Don't confuse motion with action: Is your marketing and communications just talking to be heard, or is it contributing something worth hearing?

7. Understanding the business is now part of the job.

Perhaps the most important change is also the simplest: healthcare marketers need to understand more than marketing. They need to understand the business.

Where does the organization need to grow? Which service lines have capacity, and which don't? Where are patients leaving the system? Which geographic markets represent opportunities? Which physician relationships drive referrals? Who are the emerging competitors? What investments has the organization made that now need to generate returns? And what consumer behaviors could stand between the organization's strategy and its success?

The best marketing organizations in 2027 won't simply wait for the business to tell them what to promote. They'll help the business identify where the opportunities are. Are your department leaders engaging daily with their marketing and communications counterparts to examine, identify and anticipate the care and service innovations that will delight patients and secure marginable market share?

8. Marketing has earned a bigger role. Now it has to deliver.

Collaboration will be a major theme when healthcare leaders gather in Atlanta for Health Connect South this September, and appropriately so. Many of healthcare's biggest challenges won't be solved by individual organizations or disciplines working independently. The same principle applies inside healthcare organizations.

Marketing has spent years making the case for a larger role in organizational strategy. The changes occurring across healthcare create an opportunity to earn it, but a bigger seat at the table comes with bigger expectations. Healthcare leaders should absolutely expect marketing to build their brands, tell their stories and protect their reputations. In 2027, they should expect more.

They should expect marketing to contribute to growth, understand the consumer, improve discoverability, identify friction, translate innovation, build trust, integrate communications and, increasingly, contribute to business strategy itself. Because the most important question healthcare leaders should ask about marketing is no longer simply "What are we communicating?" It's "What are we trying to accomplish, and how is marketing helping us get there?"

Alloy's Rhea Zigmund, Alex Loehrer and Sela Missirian will be at Health Connect South this September, joining the conversation alongside health system leaders, marketers and innovators from across the region. If you're there and ready to start asking these questions, come find our team. That's the conversation we showed up for. Want to learn more about Alloy? See our work!