On Being Market-Driven

Part 1 of a 3-Part Professional Development Series

Here’s the deal—how hospitals choose to market themselves reveals far more than messaging tactics or brand aesthetics. It reflects their philosophy of care delivery, their relationship with the community, and their understanding of consumer needs and expectations.

And if your job is to lead marketing in your hospital or health system, that choice sits squarely with you—ideally in partnership with your C-suite.

So let’s be honest: when it comes to committing to a marketing philosophy, what are your real options? What frameworks exist for how you craft a voice for your hospital?

On one end of the spectrum is the market-driven approach: grounded in listening, data, empathy, and adaptability. It focuses on doing more than simply capturing market share.

On the other end is the institutional mindset: inward-facing, often reactive and rigid, driven by internal imperatives and short-sighted financial concerns—frequently out of step with the community itself.

These two philosophies shape the prevailing choices for how you build a marketing voice and impact. The question is: which one do you relate to—and which one will carry your hospital forward?

This blog explores the critical differences between the two, and why the future belongs to hospitals that are willing to understand and serve the market—not just promote themselves within it.

MARKET-DRIVEN

A marketing philosophy that is rooted in understanding and responding to the external market—patients, communities, referring providers, payers, and competitors.

Core Traits:

Audience-First and stakeholder focused. Typically will start with research. Stakeholder needs, perceptions, and lived experiences drive strategy. Results in positive business results while also improving consumer competency and advancing community health.

Empathic Led
Human understanding informs creativity and messaging.

Responsive
Align services and outreach to what audiences are actually seeking and experiencing.

Data-Informed
Champions quantitative and qualitative insights to shape voice and strategy.

Patient-Centered
Campaigns focus on experience, access, trust, and values.

Dynamic
Adapt to shifting demographics, competitive landscapes, and consumer health trends.

Economically Aware
Tie marketing directly to service line growth, institutional strategy, and public health outcomes.

For you as a marketing professional, this is the philosophy that expands your influence and levels up your business acumen. You’re not just promoting services, you’re guiding your hospital toward relevance, sustainability, and trust.

Example:

Through community listening and claims data analysis, a hospital discovers that many low-income families in its region are delaying or missing essential well-child visits and vaccinations for toddlers, often due to transportation barriers, scheduling confusion, or a lack of understanding about pediatric preventive care. At the same time, commercially insured families in the same market are seeking convenience, pediatric continuity, and trust in clinical quality.

The hospital responds by launching a pediatric access initiative that includes extended evening hours, mobile health van visits to underserved ZIP codes, and simplified online scheduling. The marketing campaign is developed through a market-driven lens: messaging for low-income communities emphasizes “free checkups,” mobile convenience, and trusted care close to home, with materials written in plain language and distributed through community partners. For commercially insured families, the messaging emphasizes clinical excellence, whole-child wellness, and convenience through trusted pediatricians available after work hours.

The strategy is unified by a single promise: “Healthy Starts Here”, but is segmented,culturally sensitive, insight-driven, and responsive to distinct needs. The result is a campaign that is relatable across segments, grows volume across multiple payer segments, supports pediatric service line development, improves immunization rates, and advances the hospital’s role in community health.

INSTITUTIONALLY DRIVEN

A marketing philosophy shaped primarily by internal requests and perspectives. Typically what leadership wants to promote, which service lines are underperforming, what the board thinks is important, or what clinicians want featured, rather than what the market is actually asking for or needs. Results in marketing that may satisfy internal demands in the short term, but often produces limited business impact, neglects consumer competency, and deepens disconnects with the community.

Core Traits:

Inside-Out
Starts with internally expressed priorities and pushes messages outward.

Assumption-Based
Relies on narrow or limited quantitative data sets and on what the hospital believes people need or should value.

Siloed
Service lines, departments, or even individuals drive messaging independently, often with little coordination.

Self-Promotional
Highlights awards, technology, or provider expertise without connecting to consumer needs or benefits.

Rigid
Slow to adapt to changing market conditions or community feedback.

Financially Reactive
Focuses on propping up underperforming areas today, rather than aligning with long-term market demand.

Economically Unaware
Fails to connect marketing activity to broader economic or community outcomes, limiting impact beyond short-term institutional needs.

For you as a marketing professional, this philosophy limits your influence. You risk being seen as service providers and being viewed as a marketing person who takes orders and pushes messages rather than as a strategic leader shaping relevance, sustainability, and trust.

Example:

Hospital leadership identifies that pediatric volumes are lagging and directs the marketing team to “do something” to promote the pediatric clinic. Without consumer research or insight into community behavior, the team develops a promotional campaign centered on highlighting the clinic’s board-certified pediatricians, its affiliation with an academic medical center, and its recent investment in new diagnostic equipment. The campaign includes print ads, social media posts, and a billboard with the headline “World-Class Pediatric Care, Right Here in Town.”

All creative decisions are made internally, with messaging approved by department heads (or worse). Materials are produced with little or no regard for literacy and cultural relevance and placed uniformly across media channels, with low-value targeting or segmentation. The messaging presumes that parents, regardless of background, are persuaded by credentials and technology alone. No outreach is done to assess whether families in low-income areas are even aware of the clinic, can access it, or understand its relevance to them.

The result: minimal volume growth, missed opportunities to engage vulnerable populations, and a widening disconnect between what the hospital says and what the community actually needs. The campaign resonates inside the institution and with your more literate and effluent consumers, but not with the families who most need accessible, personally relevant guidance.

Pediatric Care Campaign:
Market-Driven vs. Institutionally Driven Approaches

SIX FACTS TO CONSIDER

Marketing is no longer just about telling the hospital’s story.
Marketing a hospital is about hearing the community’s story, understanding the business beads of the system, and responding with clarity, alignment, empathy, and action.

Market-driven strategies help hospitals thrive.
Being market-driven means being connected to the community, increasing access, improving equity, and building long-term loyalty while still driving revenue, business results, and strategic growth.

A unified campaign can serve both underserved and commercially insured populations. 
Campaigns and experiences that are market-driven deliver dynamic results, especially when grounded in insight and delivered with cultural and contextual relevance.

Hospital marketing must evolve.
Our profession is fast transforming from a service-bureau mindset (juggling a series of internal requests) to a disciplined empathic practice of market listening, message design, and health-literate engagement.

This isn’t a trend.
It’s a natural progression. The market-driven movement is a necessary expansion that has redefined hospital marketing not only as a core business function, but also as a public health lever focused on the well-being of the entire community.

Creativity still matters—more than ever. 
But it must be crafted in service of relevance, strategy, and community impact. Bold visuals, powerful storytelling, and beautiful campaigns can thrive when grounded in the lived realities of the people you serve.

THE ROAD AHEAD

When you seek to tackle more than just the all-important financial outcomes, you will achieve what neither institutional nor tactical marketing professionals ever could: relevance, trust, and long-term sustainability. The shift is already underway and is happening across America. The real question is not whether hospitals will change, but whether marketers and leadership will embrace this philosophy early enough to thrive.

And here’s where you come in. As a marketing professional, you hold more influence than you may realize. You can elevate your business acumen, your standing in the C-suite, and your impact on your community by choosing the right philosophy to inform your work.

You have two options:

Stay institutionally driven and focused inward, reactive, and out of step with what patients and communities actually need.

Or step fully into a market-driven mindset that is outward-facing, adaptive, empathic, guided by both quantitative and qualitative data, and committed to relevance, sustainability, and trust.

The bedrock has been waiting for decades. The rails are set. The philosophy is mature. Now the choice is yours: which path will you take? The future belongs to the market-driven.

Our next blog will introduce The Three Rails of healthcare marketing, a simple framework that demystifies what it means to be market-driven and shows how you can elevate your business and marketing acumen while transforming the way your organization approaches hospital marketing.

David McDonald, Co-founder & CEO

As CEO of LIFT and a trained anthropologist, David brings a deep passion for human understanding to every facet of leadership. Blending empathy with innovation and data, he drives empathic, people-centered solutions that elevate the healthcare marketing profession and successful client outcomes.

EXTRA CREDIT

Meet Enid Balint and George Engel 

Enid Balint (along with her partner, Michael) and George Engel were the first healthcare leaders to illuminate the value of aligning healthcare delivery with the needs and motivations of the patient. Their contributions laid important philosophical and clinical groundwork that aligns perfectly with what it means to be market-driven in healthcare—particularly if we define “market-driven” as being responsive to the real needs, values, and lived experiences of patients, caregivers, and communities.

The Pioneers of Empathy in Health Care