In the second installment of our pre-HMPS25 series, we explore how leading healthcare organizations are applying human-centered design principles to transform their marketing results.
In our previous article, we examined why human-centered design is becoming essential in an AI-driven healthcare marketing landscape. Now, let’s explore how organizations are implementing this approach to achieve measurable, transformative results.
The Human-Centered Marketing Advantage
Organizations implementing a human-centered approach to healthcare marketing are seeing remarkable outcomes:
- A rural health system achieved a 300% increase in daily leads for orthopedic services
- A specialty care provider generated 9,689 new appointment requests in less than 90 days
- A national healthcare network realized an 8.7x return on ad spend—more than double the industry standard
These results don’t come from increasing budgets or adopting the latest marketing technology. They come from fundamentally shifting how these organizations understand and connect with their audiences.
Five Essential Elements of Human-Centered Healthcare Marketing
While a comprehensive framework requires more depth than a single article can provide, these five elements form the foundation of an effective human-centered approach:
1. Human-Centered Personas
Traditional personas focus on demographics and service utilization. Human-centered personas capture what truly drives decisions.
Case Example: For a behavioral health provider, we discovered that family members, not patients, initiated 73% of treatment inquiries. By developing separate personas for these “hidden influencers,” we helped the organization completely reimagine their outreach strategy.
Quick Win: Interview five recent patients about their decision journey, focusing not on what they did, but how they felt at each step.
2. Journey Mapping Beyond Marketing
Most journey maps focus on the marketing funnel and service delivery. Human-centered journey mapping expands to capture the full experience.
Case Example: A cardiovascular center was puzzled by high engagement but low conversion rates. Journey mapping revealed patients were seeking second opinions but encountered no content addressing this specific need—creating an invisible barrier to conversion.
Quick Win: Identify one key service line and map patient emotions at each touchpoint, from initial symptom awareness through post-care follow-up.
3. Messaging That Resonates at a Human Level
Effective healthcare messaging requires more than clinical accuracy—it requires emotional relevance.
Case Example: When a movement disorders clinic shifted from promoting “specialized techniques” to focusing on helping patients “move easy” in everyday life, website conversion rates increased by 42%.
Quick Win: Audit your current top-performing service line content for the ratio of functional benefits (what you do) to emotional benefits (how patients’ lives improve).
4. Metrics That Matter to Humans
The most valuable metrics go beyond clicks and conversions to measure what truly matters—are we making meaningful connections?
Case Example: By developing custom metrics that tracked not just engagement but emotional response, a health system identified that certain message types generated 3x higher conversion rates despite lower initial click-throughs.
Quick Win: For your next campaign, add one qualitative measurement alongside your quantitative metrics, such as sentiment analysis of comments or quality of questions from prospects.
5. Continuous Human-Centered Optimization
Healthcare needs evolve continuously. Your marketing must evolve alongside them.
Case Example: A specialty provider implemented a quarterly persona validation process, discovering shifting emotional drivers during the pandemic. This insight led to a messaging pivot that improved lead quality by 27%.
Quick Win: Schedule monthly reviews that include not just performance metrics but patient feedback, call center insights, and frontline staff observations.
Moving Forward: Your Next Steps
As HMPS25 approaches, healthcare marketing leaders have a valuable opportunity to assess their current approach and identify opportunities to become more human-centered:
- Assess Your Current State: How do your personas, journey maps, messaging, metrics, and optimization cycles measure up against human-centered criteria?
- Identify One Priority Area: Rather than overhauling everything at once, select one key service line for initial implementation.
- Map the Gap: For your priority area, where is the largest disconnect between your marketing approach and patient needs?
- Take One Immediate Action: Choose one quick win from above that you can implement before HMPS25.
Unlocking the Full Potential of Human-Centered Healthcare Marketing
The strategies outlined here provide a starting point, but implementing a comprehensive human-centered framework requires more detailed guidance.
For organizations ready to transform their approach, we’ve developed a complete strategic framework based on Hailey Sault’s proven methodologies for implementing human-centered design in healthcare marketing.
See our case studies to discover the detailed process, tools, and templates that leading healthcare organizations are using to transform their marketing results.
Hailey Sault combines empathy-based design thinking with the scale and optimization of data and artificial intelligence—allowing healthcare organizations to rapidly gain comprehensive patient understanding, create deeply personalized experiences, and continually refine performance through agile iteration.
