As we step into 2025, the healthcare industry finds itself at the intersection of innovation and transformation. With rapid technological advancements, shifting patient expectations, and evolving regulations, keeping your organization ahead requires both innovation and foresight. To help navigate this changing landscape, two of our Salelytics experts, Sr. Director of Healthcare Operations Zach Champeau, and Director of Patient Operations Kim Burnie, have identified seven key trends that they could see defining healthcare marketing in the coming year.

Prediction 1: AI Will Be Selectively Integrated into Key Systems

A recent US survey by Satista found that 73% of respondents representing healthcare organizations believed generative AI to be beneficial for clinician/clinical productivity. This has resulted in the AI Healthcare market being forecasted to eclipse $188 billion by 2030 (Statista).

The question is no longer if AI is going to be applied to healthcare, it's how.

Zach: There are two questions when it comes to AI use in healthcare. The first question is, how does AI integrate into such a heavily regulated space? Data privacy worries will never go away, and regulations will continue to be layered to protect consumers and patients.

The second question is, how do you make sure that AI gets used in places where it makes sense? AI is this incredible new tool, and you’ll frequently see senior-level leaders asking “how are we going to incorporate AI into our strategies”, but oftentimes I think they’re missing the point. While there are so many different places we could use it to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of our work with patients, there are also many cases where an AI application would be overkill. There are so many hours that go into these types of deployments, much less enhancing and maintaining a program. So while AI can be used practically anywhere, I highly doubt that the investment is justifiable in every place that it could be potentially applied.

Prediction 2: Consumers Will Look For Healthcare Information Through New Channels

Zach: In 2025 I believe we'll see a continued acceleration in the dispersion of where people are getting their healthcare information. If we look back pre-pandemic, most people were getting their information directly from healthcare providers in clinics. Once everyone got sent home during Covid, we saw an increase in people searching online for healthcare information, which drove a ballooning of traffic to the WebMDs of the world.

This led to different platforms and players in the healthcare industry taking responsibility for and trying to control where data comes from and how trustworthy data is identified. Since then, we’ve seen healthcare companies take an active role in educating customers and patients. So where five years ago WebMD was housing all the traffic and Google was the front line for self-diagnosis, now we have people that are looking to alternative platforms like Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter (X), as their starting point of research.

A recent survey of Gen Z found that 56% of those surveyed said they go to TikTok for health information, with 1 in 3 citing it as their primary source of health information.

Kim: From a marketing perspective, when I think of how consumers continue to search for their healthcare information on social media, the increase and importance of Facebook communities comes to mind. Patients are increasingly reaching out to other consumers or other patients to ask questions and have that open dialogue, but instead of that conversation happening in person it’s taking place virtually over social media. That’s why, if we look at this trend from a marketing standpoint, healthcare companies need to continue to leverage their consumers at the patient level and to push for self-advocacy for their consumers.

Of those who sought medical information using search engines, 72.8% searched for information through social media (National Library of Medicine ).

Prediction 3: Companies Will Lead With a Human Connection to Secure First-Party Data

According to Statista, 76% of responding professionals stated that their organizations had adopted at least one third-party cookie replacement solution, with another 15% planning to adopt one in the future. The healthcare industry is no different.

Zach: As the regulatory landscape of the industry continues to change, and we head towards a cookieless future, it’s going to become increasingly complex for marketers to target patients and customers with their advertising. With less data being collected from people visiting specific web pages, marketers' reliance on receiving quality information will shift over to first-party data that the patients are willing to provide. The ability to generate the necessary data outside of a one-to-one interaction, an opt-in, or an interaction via form is going to become even more challenging. Therefore, as the data environment continues to become more complex, the ability to make a human being the first interaction point for a brand and have a positive “greeter” will become increasingly important. 

Prediction 4: Healthcare Micro-Influencers Will Become More Prevalent and Invaluable in Marketing Efforts

Zach: The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to micro-influencers in healthcare, and it’s not going back anytime soon. With more of our relationships and interactions occurring on the internet, there's no arguing that it's easier to find community, and many people are finding it in the form of shared health conditions. Enter the micro-influencer.

Now, being an influencer doesn’t necessarily mean you're cashing checks every week from Giant National brands because you drank out of your Stanley cup on a 15-second TikTok. When I think of these micro-influencers, I think about somebody with a lung condition, maybe somebody who has been dealing with COPD or a similar condition, and they are active within the American Lung Association. They have a strong network there, they just so happen to have 500 followers on Facebook or TikTok, and they're making videos about going through their treatment. That’s the kind of influencer we’re talking about. These people that before just would have been posting pictures for their friends and family about, “I was at the clinic today, it turns out I'm greenlit for my treatment”, are now becoming a public figure to some extent within that community, with their posts being much easier for people to access. So just by virtue of communities being so much easier to access, more people are influencers than ever before.

While there are already companies interacting with these micro-influencers, there are going to be even more that are going to turn this into a potential way to access patients in a really meaningful manner.

Tapping into micro-influencers might seem challenging to access or like a farfetched idea, but in reality, it’s not as big of a leap as you’d think. Many companies already have ambassador communities (patients who have their therapy established and that they have relationships with) that they're already leveraging via community events or getting in front of other patients. With a bit of investment and education within an ambassador community, those patients can go out and become influencers in their own right. This often takes the form of the company empowering them to share their story, and then potentially providing them relevant talking points. Although, a lot of times the best practice is to let those interactions happen as organically as possible. When patients are pursuing that peer-to-peer conversation, they don't want it to feel like they're interacting with a paid or otherwise incentivized influencer. They want it to be authentically patient-to-patient and to feel very organic.

82% of patients are likely to follow health advice given by healthcare influencers (Market.US Media).

Kim: When we look at the micro-influencer, traditionally it’s been the patients/consumers that are going through that therapy themselves. They’re essentially that brand ambassador that you're able to pull from a public community standpoint to share their story. From a human-to-human aspect, it goes such a long way to hear directly from someone, whether it is a public figure or somebody you don't even know but is willing to share their journey through healthcare treatment. You simply can't replace or fabricate the connection that is garnered from a real person's story.

Prediction 5: Companies Will Switch Communication Strategies to Target “Non-Live Communicators”

Zach: Companies need to focus on channels of communication, specifically on how to capture the “non-live communicator”, and the answer is not email.

As the world evolves, email has become more successful in pushing consumers to web pages or to check out videos than in creating dialogue. This is largely because the conversations that used to happen via email are being shifted to the product everyone has on them at all times, their phone.

Every year that goes by patients are aging into demographics where they become at risk for certain health conditions, and every year the tech savviness of said group goes up. Companies need to be able to communicate with patients, and in the past, this has occurred through email, text messaging, a phone call, or real-time chat. However, these newly aged-in consumers don’t necessarily want to invest 10-15 minutes in a phone conversation. And email has become a “FYI” platform, instead of a viable platform for dialogue, leaving one path forward.

It's time for companies to lean into real-time chat and text message solutions. For a consumer, having a 15-minute conversation spread out over 24-48 hours is a relatively low burden. They may not have the time or the desire to have that conversation all in one go, but by using these chat-based platforms patients can have these conversations throughout the course of the day without feeling pressured to drop what they're doing and invest all their time in that moment. By doing this it becomes easier to reach them where they are and provide the relevant information they need.

Kim: Leveraging platforms that deliver that multi-avenue, multi-channel communication is going to be essential in the upcoming year. Companies are going to need additional support to be able to communicate in real-time with patients and consumers, allowing them to meet those individuals where they are, and at the right time. With companies’ continued Ieverage of these communication channels, think 2025 will look different.

Prediction 6: There Will Be an Exponential Increase in Targeting Referral Physicians

Within a patient journey, there is the opportunity for multiple physician referrals before they get to a treatment. For example, if the patient is having heart problems they may be referred from their primary care doctor to a cardiologist, who would then refer them to an interventionalist who might refer them to an Electrophysiologist. In fact, according to the JABFM, referral rates for primary care physicians can hover around 28%.

With broad-focus doctors, new treatment options and standards of care change so frequently, it’s impossible for them to stay up to date on every new option. As the patient goes throughout the referral journey, each step provides a chance to either lose or gain their business, which is why it’s so vital to educate referral physicians.

Kim: I think one of the obstacles as we look to the future for healthcare marketing is really having comprehensive marketing. Companies have been adapting their strategies to market directly to consumers, and often there's marketing to a specific specialty of physician as well (i.e. the physicians that are doing the procedures), but there is another vital piece in the process, referring physicians. From a marketing perspective, I think there's a gap, but there's also awareness that a gap exists. So, over the next year expect to see a continued layering of support for all those avenues.

Learn more about the importance of referring physicians in healthcare marketing here!

Prediction 7: There Will Be a Communication Shift to Meet Consumers Where They Are

Zach: In healthcare just about everybody has made the decision that they need to invest in patient or customer education. Now it's not so much, are you doing it? It's how are you doing it, how much are you budgeting, or how much are you investing?

Companies don't want patients showing up to a physician's office saying, “WebMD told me I have XY and Z and you should do all these different tests”, which has resulted in them being intentional about putting clinically vetted information out into the public domain. Some companies are investing in educating clinicians in the hopes that those clinicians will be informed enough to have meaningful conversations with the patients. Others are focusing on the professional side of things.

I think the companies that are at the forefront of this space are a lot of the companies that we are working with, and they are investing in educating the patients where they are. They’re thinking about micro-influencer communities and how they're getting their message out on various social media platforms. They're thinking about how it's showing up when patients are searching for their symptoms or their disease state on Google or Bing, or even out in the Reddit community. Then they're taking steps to make sure that a branded message is there, so that if a patient wants to engage with them to be educated, they have those opportunities to do it. At this point, it's just a matter of how much of their budget they're pushing into that, and what they're able to do with that budget.