Highlights
- Only 36% of healthcare CMOs believe their metrics resonate with CEOs and CFOs (Gartner, 2025).
- Hospital operating margins averaged just 2.3% in mid-2025 (Kaufman Hall, 2025), while health plans are under pressure to prove value in provider networks and member retention.
- Quick wins in access, referrals, reputation, and retention create immediate credibility with leadership.
- As Tony Baradat says: “Quick wins aren’t fluff—they’re fuel. They buy you the trust and time to prove the bigger story.”
- CMOs who deliver early proof points secure trust, budgets, and a seat at the enterprise strategy table.
The Pressure to Prove
Healthcare CMOs don’t need reminding: the microscope is on. For health systems, Kaufman Hall reported median margins hovering at 2.3% in mid-2025, a fragile reality where every line item is under fire. For health plans, profitability is increasingly tied to member acquisition, retention, and demonstrating value to employer groups and regulators.
CEOs and CFOs across both environments ask the same questions: How does this marketing spend protect revenue, reduce leakage, and improve margin or member retention?
That’s the proving ground for healthcare marketing strategy today. And while long-term systems—econometric models, contribution ladders, patient lifetime value analytics—are essential, CMOs often don’t have the luxury of time.
This is where quick wins matter. They’re not about vanity. They’re about buying credibility in the boardroom and proving that marketing is accountable to the business.
Why Quick Wins Matter
Quick wins act as credibility accelerators. They:
- Align with enterprise financial priorities.
- Deliver measurable, defensible impact.
- Recast marketing as a margin driver for systems and as a retention driver for plans.
In Gartner’s 2025 survey, only 36% of healthcare marketing leaders felt confident their metrics resonated with CEOs/CFOs. That’s why CMOs need quick wins—they bridge the credibility gap.
Tony Baradat, President of ab+a, is clear:
“Quick wins aren’t fluff—they’re fuel. They buy you the trust and time to prove the bigger story. If you don’t show fast impact, you may never get the chance to build the full proof.”
Quick Win #1: Access as a Growth Lever
For health systems, access defines patient acquisition. Deloitte found 30% of patients switched providers because of access frustrations (2024). For health plans, access is tied to network satisfaction—if members can’t see providers easily, they churn.
Quick wins in access include:
- Reducing call-center abandonment and wait times. Both health systems and health plans can measure this.
- Increasing digital self-scheduling adoption (≤25% in most practices, MGMA, 2024). Plans can track whether network providers are enabling digital access.
- Promoting access tools—same-day scheduling, portal usage, or 24/7 telehealth—through digital healthcare marketing campaigns.
Access wins aren’t abstract. They protect volume for health systems and reduce member dissatisfaction for health plans.
Quick Win #2: Referral Conversion
Referrals are a lifeline for health systems and a key value signal for health plans. Yet as many as 65% of referrals never convert into completed visits (JAMA, 2023). That’s margin leakage for systems and care gaps for plans.
Quick wins here include:
- Targeted patient outreach to close referral loops.
- Reducing referral-to-appointment cycle time.
- Demonstrating how marketing improved conversion rates in specific service lines (systems) or care pathways (plans).
A modest lift—say, 5% more referrals completed—can equate to millions in additional revenue for a system and reduced medical-loss ratio for a plan.
Quick Win #3: Digital Reputation Management
Reputation drives choice for both systems and plans. Healthgrades and rater8 found 86% of patients read reviews before booking and most won’t consider providers below four stars (2025).
Quick wins here are visible and persuasive:
- Automate review requests and improve star ratings.
- Track improvements by specialty (for systems) or by provider tier within a network (for plans).
- Correlate reputation gains with higher new-patient acquisition or improved member retention.
Quick Win #4: Patient and Member Retention
Retention is the most underleveraged quick win. For health systems, leakage rates often exceed 20% (Advisory Board, 2024). For health plans, churn is a direct hit to revenue and brand trust.
Retention quick wins include:
- For systems: marketing reminders that reduce no-shows and increase follow-up completion.
- For plans: personalized outreach to new members during their first 90 days, which McKinsey data shows dramatically reduces churn.
- Both: reporting improvements in repeat visits or year-over-year member renewal as direct margin protection.
Bain’s 2024 analysis showed that a 5% improvement in retention can increase profitability by 25–95% across industries, healthcare included.
Retention is the quickest way to demonstrate marketing’s value: keeping patients and members is cheaper—and more profitable—than acquiring new ones.
What Doesn’t Count as a Quick Win
Vanity metrics—likes, pageviews, and email opens—don’t count. They don’t resonate with CEOs, CFOs, or boards.
Quick wins must tie directly to outcomes:
- Health Systems: access, referrals, reputation, retention.
- Health Plans: network access, care pathway conversions, provider ratings, member retention.
Anything else risks reinforcing marketing’s “cost center” stereotype.
From Quick Wins to Sustainable Proof
Quick wins are the entry point. To sustain credibility, CMOs must:
- Build KPI ladders that tie activity to contribution margin (systems) or reduced medical-loss ratios (plans).
- Use triangulated data models to blend surveys, analytics, call data, and claims/EMR data.
- Implement econometric modeling, which Bain found improves ROI by 10–15% when applied effectively.
Quick wins prove you’re relevant. Sustained systems prove you’re indispensable.
Practical Actions for CMOs
Pick one quick win per quarter (access, referrals, reputation, retention).
- Report in financial terms. For systems: contribution margin and revenue. For plans: retention rates and medical-loss ratios.
- Educate leadership. Be transparent: attribution is imperfect, but contribution can be proven.
- Engage a healthcare marketing agency to design digital campaigns that tie directly to enterprise KPIs.
Closing Thought
Margins are thin, competition is fierce, and patience is short. CMOs at health systems and health plans alike can’t afford to wait for perfect measurement. Quick wins in access, referrals, reputation, and retention demonstrate immediate value and reposition marketing as a growth steward.
Download ab+a’s Referral Conversion Playbook—a practical guide for health systems and health plans to close care gaps, reduce leakage, and turn referrals into measurable ROI.
