Proving Digital Marketing Success in Healthcare with Houston Methodist

Mastering Data, Compliance, and Performance in a Complex Landscape

To be a healthcare marketer is to embrace uncertainty. You are tasked with navigating stricter data regulations, working within tighter budgets, and demonstrating clear, measurable impact to key stakeholders. In a landscape where the stakes are high and the margin for error is slim, success requires resilience and innovation. Marketers need smarter, more agile strategies to drive performance while maintaining compliance.

We explored ways to solve these challenges at the 30th anniversary of the Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit (HMPS25), where our Director of Client Success, Jeremy Mathis, co-presented with our partners from Houston Methodist: Jackie Effenson, Director of Digital Marketing, and Jeff Duncan, Digital Marketing Manager.

We discussed how healthcare marketing teams can focus on optimized performance measurement, data integration, and stakeholder alignment to drive meaningful results.

Strategic Shift to Expand Performance Visibility, Optimizations

Houston Methodist is transforming its measurement approach by expanding beyond standard ad platform metrics to include website activity, market data, appointment trends, and financial and operational insights. This multi-dimensional view helps the team better understand marketing’s true impact from driving awareness and engagement at the top of the funnel to influencing patient actions and service line growth downstream.

By analyzing historical performance and aligning strategies within platforms, the team ensures that evolving regulations and shifts in data visibility do not compromise results. This evolution enables more informed decisions about where to invest marketing dollars for maximum impact.

Driving Impact Through a Full-Funnel Approach

The expanding view of marketing performance allows for the development of cohesive channel strategies. Instead of running disparate, disconnected campaigns, the focus is on a full-funnel activation model, combining dedicated upper- and mid-funnel tactics with lower-funnel conversion efforts. By layering tiered data insights that span platform metrics, website activity, preference scores, and appointment data, the team can fully account for the impact of marketing on patient behavior and organizational outcomes.

Educating and Leading Stakeholders

A critical component of clearly demonstrating success is strong internal alignment. Houston Methodist’s marketing team prioritizes education and partnerships, working closely with internal stakeholders to ensure digital strategies reflect both patient expectations and business goals. This includes removing barriers to data access, increasing visibility, and building cross-functional committees to research and carefully vet external partners. These actions strengthen trust, improve collaboration, and secure buy-in across the organization.