SHSMD 2025 Recap: Reaching Patients with Precision

Today’s healthcare marketers face a tough reality: expectations are rising while resources stay flat or decline. Budgets are tighter, leadership demands proof of performance, and patient behaviors are evolving faster than ever. To keep pace, healthcare marketers need a clear, repeatable process that reaches the right patients, aligns with organizational goals, and delivers measurable results.

That’s exactly what Jeremy Mathis, Director of Client Success, and Hannah Patrzyk, Paid Media Strategist, shared at this year’s SHSMD Connections Conference in Dallas. Their session introduced a practical three-step framework for building precision into every stage of campaign planning and execution.

Identify Service Line Priorities

• Define growth goals and map them to service-line priorities. Build audiences that directly support those objectives so every media dollar ties back to measurable outcomes.

Build Precise Audience Segments

• Use data sources like de-identified claims, search intent, and patient-journey research to translate complex clinical needs into clear, privacy-safe audience segments.

Tie Campaigns to Organizational Goals

• Employ tactics such as strategic geotargeting, condition-specific segments, and smart flighting to expand reach without overlap, driving stronger engagement and ROI.

Fathom brings this framework to life for our clients at leading hospitals and health systems by using two proprietary AI workflows:

• Patient Path: A workflow that translates complex healthcare topics into real-world experiences, helping marketers design patient-centric campaigns aligned to service-line priorities.
• Tenley: A workflow that leverages IQVIA’s ICD-10 data to identify precise clinical segments and strengthen audience definitions, ensuring every dollar is invested with rigor.

In real-world campaigns, from new patient acquisition to donor engagement, this approach has helped healthcare organizations reach target audiences with greater relevance while maintaining compliance and efficiency. By combining human insight with data-driven precision, marketers can design campaigns that not only reach the right patients but also demonstrate tangible business impact.

Interested in seeing precision in action? Reach out at hello@fathomdelivers.com to connect with our team to refine your targeting strategies, strengthen alignment between marketing and clinical goals, and prove measurable impact across every campaign.