The Three Rails of Contemporary Healthcare Marketing

Part Two of a Three Part Series

You already know this: the job of a hospital marketer isn’t what it was just a few years ago. The stakes are higher, the demands are greater, and the opportunity for real impact has never been bigger.

Volumes and ROI are still table stakes. But now you’re also expected to deliver on access, digital transformation, health equity, community trust, and patient empowerment. Your role is more complex, more connected, and more essential than ever before. That can feel overwhelming, but it’s also what makes this moment so exciting.

Here’s the truth: hospitals and health systems can no longer afford to view marketing as “promotion.” Marketing is a business lever, a strategic driver, and a public health responsibility. And as the marketing professional, it’s table stakes for you to help leadership see that clearly.

The challenge? Too often we’re left chasing competing priorities—volume today, digital tomorrow, loud doctors the next, health equity and the foundation the next… all without a unifying philosophy to guide the work. It leaves marketers scattered, and it leaves hospitals missing the full value marketing can deliver.

What our profession needs is a simple, logical framework to manage this complexity. You need a way to organize strategy, align initiatives, and bring coherence to every demand. That framework exists.

We call it The Three Rails of Healthcare Marketing. It’s more than a model. It’s a philosophy and a practice that helps hospital marketers reclaim clarity, elevate their role, and drive meaningful results for their brands and communities.

Adopting the Three Rails won’t just change how you market. It will change how you think and lead. And it will transform how you are seen inside your organization. This is how you graduate from being “the marketing person” in the room to a place where you prove yourself as a business professional who shapes relevance, trust, and growth.

A Powerful Frame for Your Career

This framework isn’t theory. It’s built from years of frontline insight, client collaboration, and strategic observation. Keep these three rails in mind every time you plan, launch, or measure a campaign, and you’ll think more strategically, lead from a position of dynamic clarity, and deliver smarter results.

Rail One: The Financial Imperative

This is the rail you already know, because this is where the math lives.

Rail One is about marketing as a financial engine: utilization, revenue, and margin contribution. It’s the proof your CFO demands: it’s imperative that you seek to show how every campaign, funnel, and ad delivers measurable business value. And because these results are never achieved in isolation, success on this rail requires close collaboration with your internal partners—finance, operations, service line leaders, and others—who play a role in connecting marketing activity to financial performance.

Key Questions:

• Are we reaching the patients who bring both clinical need and the right payer mix?
• Can we clearly demonstrate downstream impacts like appointments, reimbursements, and long-term retention?

Rail Two: The Strategic Imperative

This rail elevates you from campaign executor to organizational strategist.

It’s about aligning marketing with the hospital’s growth plans such as expanding markets, prioritizing service lines, recruiting talent, and repositioning the brand for a new era of care access. It’s also about anticipating change: technology shifts, consumer expectations, leadership priorities, and competitive pressures.

Key Questions:

• Does this campaign support our 3–5 year growth strategy?
• Are we building the right awareness, in the right markets, for the right services?

Rail Three: The Economic Imperative

This is the rail that connects your hospital to the health of the community.

It’s about more than promotion, it’s about engagement and empowerment. Helping people make informed decisions. Strengthening consumer confidence. Partnering with schools, employers, and civic leaders to improve well-being. When you activate this rail, marketing becomes market-driven and socially relevant.

Key Questions:

• Are we improving the community’s ability to make informed health choices?
• Are we helping people access services more confidently and appropriately?
• Are we integrated into the ecosystem of educators, influencers, and advocates?

The Power of Balance

The magic of the Three Rails is balance. Financial, strategic, and economic imperatives must move in parallel. It’s in the constant tension between these demands that marketers find both their biggest challenge and their greatest opportunity. And while LIFT has shaped this framework to bring clarity and focus for our clients, we’re not alone in recognizing the need.

As my colleague, Camille Strickland, SVP Health at BVK, puts it: “The financial questions are always there, but so are the strategic and community-facing ones. The Three Rails simply formalize what marketers are already being asked to do—and help them plan better.”

Success comes from moving forward on all three simultaneously to create real impact. And many healthcare marketers and firms across the industry are beginning to grapple with how to balance financial accountability, strategic growth, and community relevance. The Three Rails offer a way to organize those efforts with intention and to practice the kind of strategic diversity Camille describes—focused, but expansive enough to meet the realities of today’s healthcare landscape.

This Is Not Optional

The Three Rails aren’t aspirational. They reflect what’s being demanded of marketers right now. Every dollar of spend comes with expectations for financial proof, strategic alignment, and community impact.

Think of the Three Rails as your compass. Ignore them and risk being seen as “just marketing.” Embrace them and you become strategically indispensable.

Your Invitation

We know you’re busy. Championing a new way of thinking isn’t always easy. But this one is simple. The Three Rails boil down to three imperatives and three questions you can ask before every meeting, campaign, or review.

Here’s how to start:

Apply it to your next planning session. Ask: Which rails are we supporting and are we doing so with intention?

Reflect on your balance. Are you over-indexed on financial goals while neglecting strategy or community? Use the rails to eliminate blind spots and frame a strategic reset.

Educate and align. Share this framework across leadership, partners, and your team. Use it as a shared language.

Deepen your practice. Download the complimentary Three Rails Handbook to guide your team through dialogue and bring the framework to life.

Take this on—for your own growth, for your hospital’s long-term success, and for the health of the communities you serve.

Because healthcare marketing can’t just be about selling services anymore. It has to be about building trust, relevance, and resilience.

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.

In the next installment of this three-part Professional Development Series, we’ll explore how Market-Driven healthcare systems intersect with the Three Rails to create a framework for growth, resilience, and relevance. Together, we’ll examine how aligning these forces can elevate marketing from a functional role to a strategic driver of organizational success.