The Carolinas Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society (CHPRMS) recently wrapped up its annual digital marketing conference, bringing together leaders and professionals from across the industry for three days of practical insights and timely conversations.
This year’s conference, held over November 19–21 at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, offered a mix of learning sessions, networking opportunities, and keynotes discussing where healthcare marketing is headed.
The 2025 theme, “Rise Above,” reflected the resilience of the Asheville and Western North Carolina region following Hurricane Helene. Their focus on collaboration and adaptability felt like an appropriate backdrop, given that healthcare is also navigating its own challenges, including privacy regulations, AI adoption, shifting patient expectations, and the increasing pressure to prove marketing’s impact.
If you missed the event, here are some of the most important ideas that surfaced across sessions, panels, and conversations in the halls.
The privacy landscape is more fragmented than ever
Data privacy remains a critical issue held among healthcare leaders across the industry, especially as data breaches and cyberattacks grow more sophisticated and challenging to combat.
Mike Julian of Definitive Healthcare joined leaders from Unlock Health, Ours Privacy, and Inspira Health during one of CHPRMS’ lunch and learn sessions to tackle concerns regarding compliance and keeping data private and secure. A few themes stood out in their session, “Navigating Data Privacy in Healthcare Marketing,” such as:
- There is no one-size-fits-all approach to compliance. How healthcare organizations approach privacy depends on their structure, goals, and risk tolerance.
- To get executive buy-in, marketers need to lead with clear use cases.
- Strong privacy foundations start with segmentation strategies and enriching your first-party data, as well as considering social determinants of health and the patient journey.
And when advocating for privacy resources, the expert speakers recommend grounding your pitch in patient centricity. As data breaches continue to compromise clinical workflows, expose protected health information (PHI), and put patients at risk, healthcare leaders are rethinking their approach to cybersecurity. Rather than continue labeling cybersecurity as an IT issue, leaders are treating it as a patient safety issue, and a core component to delivering great patient care.
Patients and communities are demanding accessible, inclusive experiences
“If you’re only thinking about compliance, you’re not listening to your community.” This bit of insight was shared by Lauren Minors of digital agency Reason One and social media researcher Dean Browell, during their session on the importance of building digital experiences that can be used by everyone.
Minors and Browell challenged marketers to broaden their thinking: accessibility is more than checking legal boxes. It is a commitment to making digital experiences work for everyone, including the millions of Americans who encounter barriers online.
They encouraged healthcare marketers to shift their mindset from “meeting requirements” to “removing friction.” That shift starts with a shared understanding of what accessibility actually means within websites and digital properties.
At its most practical level, accessibility means designing and building experiences that people can see, hear, navigate, and understand regardless of ability, device, or assistive technology. For websites and online tools, this shows up in several ways:
- Text must be readable with proper contrast, alternative text must describe images, and videos should include captions or transcripts.
- Every interaction should work with different input methods, including keyboard navigation, screen readers, or speech tools.
- Pages should use plain language, consistent layouts, and predictable patterns.
- Experiences must function across browsers, screen sizes, devices, and assistive technologies, and continue to work as those technologies evolve.
Minors and Browell also stressed that accessibility must be measured against the WCAG standards, which provide a shared benchmark across industries. But WCAG alone does not guarantee success. Healthcare marketers need to test their properties with real users, including those who rely on assistive devices, because empathy-driven insight will reveal gaps that automated tools do not.
Exceptional experiences are your best marketing
One of the most talked-about sessions came from healthcare leaders and consultants Steve Koch, Jean Hitchcock, and Kristin Baird: “Beyond the Campaign Launch: How exceptional experiences become your best marketing.” They started with a reminder that should be printed on every creative brief: The best campaign in the world will fail if the actual experience does not live up to the expectations it sets.
Their approach emphasizes understanding the experience your organization delivers today, not the one you believe it delivers. Journey mapping remains one of the clearest ways to do this. Three rules matter most:
- Talk to the right people. Focus on patients who recently moved through the experience you want to understand.
- You don’t need dozens of interviews. Talking to eight people uncovers roughly 80% of the themes.
- Just ask. Instead of questions about “satisfaction,” ask how specific moments made patients feel. Ask whether the experience matched your brand’s promise.
Once gaps surface, marketing should help co-create solutions with operations. The key takeaway is that your top priority should be to make sure your service line is ready, both clinically and operationally. Otherwise, your campaign is promising something you cannot deliver.
Healthcare marketers have earned recognition for the work that keeps organizations running
During the CHPRMS closing keynote, Amy Comeau, MBA, offered an important reminder: Healthcare cannot function without the non-clinical professionals who support every stage of the patient's journey. Marketers are part of that backbone. You help build the website, manage patient communications, gather insights, support acquisition and loyalty strategies, and tell stories that reflect the communities you serve.
It can be easy to overlook how much this work contributes to operations, patient experience, and organizational strategy. The keynote reinforced how essential the marketing community is at a time when healthcare is changing fast and professional demands continue to grow.
Bringing healthcare marketing into the future
Healthcare marketers are navigating a complex environment, but they’re doing it with focus, creativity, and a real commitment to improving patient experiences.
Definitive Healthcare is here to support that work. If you want to better understand your markets, strengthen your targeting, or bring sharper insights into your strategy, we can help you turn data into action. Book a demo with Definitive Healthcare today.
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