Health system chief marketing officers say marketing is most effective when it helps shape strategy instead of simply promoting it.

As executives face growing pressure to demonstrate measurable business results, Becker’s asked marketing leaders to share a campaign or initiative that moved the needle on revenue and what it revealed about marketing’s role in driving organizational growth.

At UW Medicine in Seattle, the proof of concept came from an access problem. Patients seeking evaluation for complex neurological conditions, including brain aneurysms, moyamoya disease, meningiomas, cavernomas and arteriovenous malformations, often faced friction that had nothing to do with clinical capacity. Getting to a neurosurgical consultation meant navigating traditional referral processes or waiting in call center queues.

A neuroscience marketing manager developed a digital self-referral pathway: condition-specific online appointment forms that allowed patients to request a neurosurgical consultation at any time and have submissions routed directly to the scheduling team. Within the first year, one pathway generated 44 completed neurosurgical consultations and 18 completed neurosurgeries, a 41% surgical conversion rate from completed appointments.

“Marketing is most effective when viewed not simply as a communications function, but as a strategic growth partner that helps remove barriers to care, improve the patient experience and create measurable pathways from awareness to treatment,” said Glenn Bieler, chief brand and marketing officer at UW Medicine, along with senior marketing manager Jamie Kahn and assistant director of marketing Jenny Ring-Perez. “When marketing is empowered to solve access challenges and collaborate closely with clinical and operational teams, it can deliver meaningful outcomes for patients, clinicians and the organization alike.”

At Coral Gables, Fla.-based Baptist Health South Florida, marketing’s role in growing the health system’s urgent care service line began well before anyone wrote a creative brief. Baptist Health has operated urgent care sites in South Florida for nearly 30 years, but a more competitive same-day care market demanded a rethinking of the service itself.

Christine Kotler, chief marketing and communications officer, said the marketing team entered the process at the strategy level, defining the business challenge, convening cross-functional stakeholders and leading consumer research before any campaign work began. Ethnographic research revealed that convenience and speed had become table stakes. What actually drove choice and loyalty was the total experience: the physical environment, the emotional tone and the ease of access.

One of the most consequential findings was that patients did not separate the quality of care from the quality of the environment. They expected urgent care spaces to feel modern, clean and welcoming, closer to hospitality than a traditional clinical setting.

Marketing translated those insights into facility redesigns, upgraded materials, more intuitive layouts and staff training before developing a single piece of advertising. The campaign that followed, “The Better Way to Better,” used a “green carpet” as a signature creative device to signal an elevated, differentiated experience, positioning Baptist Health above transactional retail care options on trust, warmth and quality rather than speed alone. Same-day care volumes have increased 8.21% year over year, with off-campus emergency department volumes growing 39.37%.

“When positioned upstream and empowered to influence the business before campaign development begins, marketing can help define not only how a service is communicated, but how it is experienced, differentiated and grown,” Ms. Kotler said. “Our brand is not defined by the advertising, but rather by the complete experience.”

At Mountain View, Calif.-based El Camino Health, Mark Klein, chief communications and marketing officer, described a deliberate move away from a communications-and-campaign model toward what he calls an enterprise growth capability that integrates brand strategy, precision marketing, consumer data and measurable patient acquisition.

Over a six-month period, the team deployed targeted growth campaigns across nine strategic service lines, including primary care and urgent care, generating more than 7,000 new patients and more than 70,000 verified visits. The campaigns produced more than $16 in attributable revenue for every dollar invested. Over the same period, unaided brand awareness increased by nearly 60%.

“The most important shift is moving from ‘marketing as expense’ to ‘marketing as a disciplined investment in growth,’” Mr. Klein said. “That reframing changes how we resource the function, how we measure success and how leadership engages with marketing as a strategic partner rather than a support function.”

At Marlton, N.J.-based Virtua Health, Chief Marketing Officer Chrisie Scott said the team built a shared ROI framework with finance that it regularly presents to leadership and the board. The work spans CRM-powered campaigns that bring patients back for critical screenings, including mammograms and colonoscopies, to propensity models that connect patients to specialized care.

Ms. Scott singled out a less data-driven initiative as one of the most instructive: a series of live virtual “real talk” women’s health chats in which physicians discuss topics from mental health to sexual wellness without a script. The format has consistently attracted both new patients and more engaged existing ones.

“It’s a powerful reminder of the impact marketing has when we allow our consumers’ voice to guide our approach,” Ms. Scott said. “In healthcare, where every operational dollar is vital, marketing must be able to connect what we do to quantifiable brand, business and human outcomes.”

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