Vital Signs: The Healthcare Marketing Metrics That Predict Success

In healthcare marketing, success isn’t just about running campaigns—it’s about understanding their impact and measuring it effectively. Tracking the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) ensures that marketing efforts align with business goals, whether it’s attracting new patients, increasing brand awareness, or retaining existing ones. But with so many possible metrics to track, how do marketing professionals in healthcare know which ones matter most?

Let’s break down the most important KPIs, how to prioritize them, and the common pitfalls that organizations face when measuring performance.

The Most Important KPIs in Healthcare Marketing

The right KPIs depend on the objectives of the campaign. In order to have a better understanding, let’s look at the most commonly tracked healthcare marketing metrics:

• Increase in organic traffic — Growth in website visitors coming from unpaid search results
• Increase in direct traffic — The number of users who visit the site by typing the URL directly into their browser
• Click-to-call / phone calls — The number of users clicking to call the healthcare provider directly from digital ads or websites
• Email submissions — Form or inquiry submissions via email
• Form fills — Completed online forms for appointment requests or information
• Video engagement — Time spent watching video content and completion rates
• New users — First-time visitors to the website
• Time on site — The amount of time users spend interacting with content

These metrics offer a mix of upper-funnel brand awareness KPIs (they know about you) and lower-funnel conversion KPIs (they bought a service from you), depending on what one might want to achieve.

How to Prioritize KPIs

While there are many KPIs to track, most healthcare organizations are primarily focused on new patient acquisition. That means prioritizing lower-funnel metrics that bring them closer to their ultimate goal.

The most critical KPIs for patient acquisition include:

• Click-to-calls/phone calls — A direct indicator of patient interest and intent
• Call tracking data — Identifying where calls originate and analyzing trends
• Form fills — Capturing leads for new patient appointments
• Click-to-email — A valuable conversion metric for patients reaching out

By tracking these high-intent actions, healthcare marketers can measure how effectively their campaigns drive actual patient inquiries and appointments.

Balancing Marketing Budget with Goals

When healthcare organizations need to build brand awareness but have limited budgets that can’t support both branding and conversion strategies simultaneously, decisions must be based on specific goals and priorities. Typically, we recommend starting with branding initiatives and gradually expanding into conversion-focused strategies as the organization grows.

The Value of Patient Acquisition

A critical insight that’s often overlooked: approximately 85% of patients become recurring patients after their first visit. This statistic underscores why patient acquisition deserves significant focus—each new patient represents potential long-term value.

For long-term success, healthcare organizations must focus on both attracting new patients and retaining existing ones.

Here is an example of how you might look at these two tactics together in order to get the full scope:

• New patients by month and year-to-date (YTD)
• Total patient count by month and YTD
• Cost per patient acquisition
• New patients by source

By monitoring both growth and retention, healthcare organizations can make informed marketing decisions. Not all clients track patient retention in detail, but establishing a baseline before launching a strategy helps marketers measure success over time.

Brand Awareness During Non-Need Periods

Healthcare marketing presents a unique challenge: users aren’t always in immediate need of certain service lines. However, discontinuing marketing during these periods is counterproductive. Maintaining brand presence ensures that when needs arise, your organization benefits from brand recall—becoming the first provider patients think of. We call this “always on” branding, and a great example of this would be McDonald’s, which might seem an odd choice given we are talking about healthcare, but bear with us. McDonald’s runs big campaigns a few times of year when they partner with movies, TV, shows or influencers. In these cases, the spend is larger and the impact more immediate. This would mirror the times where you understand your patients’ needs and are branding toward them. The rest of the year, they are running always on evergreen marketing. These are ads about double cheeseburgers, fries, or coffee – elements of the menu that are always there,e and when the customer is looking for the “best” fries, brand recall leads them to McDonald’s over Wendy’s.

The Biggest Challenge in Measuring Healthcare Marketing Performance

One of the most significant challenges in healthcare marketing is measuring Return on Investment (ROI).

To track true ROI, marketers must assign a value to each patient—but that can vary depending on the procedure or service line they’re trying to grow. For example:

• A single dermatology visit may have a different lifetime value than a family dentistry patient who returns multiple times a year.
• Some patients convert through high-cost service lines like elective surgeries, while others require low-cost, high-volume treatments.

Without clear value attribution, calculating cost per acquisition vs. revenue impact can be tricky but is both possible and necessary.

Common Mistakes in KPI Tracking

One frequent mistake is misaligning campaign goals with the right KPIs.

For example, if a healthcare brand is running a brand awareness campaign, they shouldn’t expect immediate conversions like form fills or phone calls. Instead, they should measure:

• Increase in organic traffic
• Growth in direct traffic
• Video engagement metrics

Not all campaigns drive immediate patient appointments, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t successful. Think about the “always on” branding mentality. This means that marketers must set clear expectations about which KPIs match which goals.

Tracking Indicating Metrics

Success requires tracking INDICATING metrics that predict future conversions. Rather than focusing solely on end results, these leading indicators help demonstrate marketing effectiveness throughout the patient journey. In some cases even answer needs before patients realize they have said need.

For healthcare marketing, particularly valuable indicating metrics include:

• Website engagement depth: Pages per session and time on site can indicate genuine interest in services. A prospective patient who reads multiple service pages, views provider bios, and examines insurance information is showing significant intent.
• Return visitor rate: First-time visitors who return to your site within 7-30 days demonstrate ongoing consideration. This metric often precedes appointment scheduling by weeks or months, especially for elective procedures.
• Resource downloads: When patients download healthcare guides, preparation instructions, or educational materials, they’re actively researching and considering your services.
• Location page views: Traffic to “locations” or “directions” pages strongly indicates patients are planning in-person visits, making this an excellent pre-conversion metric.
• Insurance page visits: Users checking insurance compatibility are typically in the final decision-making phase before scheduling.
• Search query sophistication: Progression from general terms (“back pain”) to specific treatments (“spinal fusion surgeon near me”) indicates advancement through the patient decision journey.

When presenting ROI to stakeholders, these indicating metrics create a complete conversion story. Rather than simply reporting “X appointments scheduled,” you can demonstrate how marketing efforts generated awareness, nurtured interest, facilitated research, and ultimately led to conversion—providing a holistic view of marketing impact across the entire patient acquisition funnel.

Measuring Telehealth and Virtual Care Campaigns

Telehealth and virtual care marketing is still evolving, but tracking new users, organic traffic, and direct traffic are key indicators of interest.

If a campaign includes sponsored content, video, or search ads, the most relevant KPIs might include:

• Time spent on site and articles
• Clicks to the website
• Phone calls and form fills
• Video engagement

Continuous feedback loops help ensure marketing efforts translate into real patient growth.

How AI is Shaping Healthcare Marketing Measurement

AI is transforming KPI tracking by providing deeper insights into campaign performance. Healthcare marketers are already leveraging AI to:

• Identify the best KPIs for a given campaign goal
• Analyze how different audience segments react to campaign elements (video, educational content, display ads, etc.)
• Optimize campaigns based on real-time data
• Pull trends and industry benchmarks for meaningful client reporting
• Ensure goals are realistic by comparing historical patient data with desired outcomes

AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data quickly is improving decision-making and efficiency in healthcare marketing.

Tracking the right healthcare marketing KPIs can make or break a campaign. Whether the goal is brand awareness, patient acquisition, or retention, organizations must ensure they are measuring the right metrics for the right objectives.

By prioritizing conversion-focused KPIs for patient acquisition and awareness-based KPIs for branding efforts, healthcare marketers can optimize performance and drive meaningful results.

If your healthcare organization is struggling to measure success, start by defining clear goals, establishing a data-driven baseline, and continuously refining KPI tracking. The right insights can transform marketing strategies and improve patient care in the long run.