You Can’t Lead Marketing Without Owning the Experience
Let’s be honest. If you’re still thinking of your role as “just marketing,” could you be playing yourself too small?
The real opportunity in front of you is bigger than campaigns. It’s about influence, team value, and organizational impact. And it starts with this: owning the patient experience.
In healthcare, the experience is the brand. If your brand promise falls apart the second someone tries to book an appointment, calls a help line, or sits in a waiting room for long periods of time, it doesn’t matter how good your campaigns are. The message won’t stick. The trust won’t hold. The results won’t come. This isn’t theoretical. It’s the lived reality of healthcare consumers today. And the smartest CMOs are stepping into experience leadership, whether their organizations are ready or not.
The real power shift is already underway
If you’ve followed our, The Future of the CMO series, you know this shift has been building for years. But one part still triggers resistance. It’s the idea of marketers shaping clinical experience. That’s where people get uncomfortable. That’s where old assumptions take over. But let’s be clear, you don’t need to rewrite clinical protocols. You need to advocate for the moments that define how consumers perceive care. Marketing is already built for this. Listening, connecting, translating insight into action. No one does it better.
Stop fixing the front door when the house is broken
The “digital front door” has become a common phrase in healthcare. It helps frame the consumer journey. But if scheduling is broken, messaging is inconsistent, and people can’t find answers, the front door isn’t the issue. The entire house needs work. Marketers are often held responsible for Google reviews, net promoter scores, and online ratings. These are metrics shaped almost entirely by what happens inside the experience. And in many cases, marketers have no real authority to fix what’s broken. That disconnect has to change. You need more than a seat at the table. You need ownership. Or at the very least, shared accountability for experience outcomes.
So what now?
Start where you can make immediate impact. That might include:
- Bringing real patient stories and call recordings into leadership conversations
- Leading a unified voice across call centers, portals, and post-visit communications
- Connecting digital, physical, and clinical touchpoints to create a cohesive journey
- Asking tough but necessary questions like, “Are we delivering on our brand promise?”
This story is about leadership. It’s about owning what matters most to the people you serve.
Because if your team is still seen as “the group that makes the ads,” you’ve already lost ground.
This is your lane
You don’t have to fix everything alone. But you do have to go first. Healthcare needs marketers who challenge silos, who connect brand to behavior, and who lead with both vision and accountability. The brand is the totality of every interaction, every decision, and every moment that matters. If you’re not shaping that experience, someone else is. So step into it. The future is being built right now. And it’s waiting for leaders like you to own it.
Read the transcript here
