Is the marketing funnel dead?That question started bouncing around among those at Jarrard Inc. who have backgrounds and specialize in healthcare marketing. It’s a provocative question, and provocative questions lead to sharp conversations that make for good podcasts. So, we asked two of those experienced healthcare marketers to have that conversation on the record.Pattie Cuen served at UCLA for two decades. There, she established the medical center's first internal communications team and orchestrated an award-winning branding campaign for the system. More recently, Cuen held a high-level position at Cedars-Sinai.Abby McNeil is a vice president at the firm and deputy lead of our Regional Practice. McNeil has served in a number of prominent roles, including vice president of communications and public affairs for CHRISTUS Health, where she sat at the helm of all corporate communications and helped guide the organization through COVID.Key Insights:

The marketing funnel isn’t dead. But it’s not really the most accurate model, either. It serves a useful, mostly two-dimensional purpose to get a snapshot of how consumers move from awareness to conversion. It’s also helpful as a relatively simple tool to present marketing concepts and different levels of messaging to people outside the field.

The funnel doesn’t take into account the time involved as people move from one stage to the next. That time could be five minutes for a digital engagement or weeks/months for an out-of-home campaign like a billboard.

Another way to think about the customer journey is as an elliptical. Once someone converts and makes a purchase – or, in healthcare, becomes a patient – the selling process starts all over, and the patient has to choose you all over again. And again. And again. It’s not one-and-done. Meanwhile, each person is sitting in the funnel – or spinning on the elliptical – of other providers, making it a multi-dimensional environment for conversion and retention.

Because of that elliptical process, the patient experience has to be dialed in right alongside the marketing messages and platforms. If someone buys but can’t schedule a followup appointment for weeks, they’ll go somewhere else regardless of how great your marketing campaigns are.

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