Every year, healthcare organizations waste millions of marketing dollars — not because they overspend, but because they overspend in fragments. Teams optimize channels, not journeys. Agencies execute campaigns, not systems. CRM, media, brand, and web all run in parallel — but rarely in sync. The result is the most expensive outcome in healthcare marketing:
Activity without impact.
For CEOs managing margin pressure and CMOs fighting for line-of-sight to revenue, this isn’t a workflow nuisance — it’s an economic drain. Bain & Company found that companies with tightly aligned go-to-market functions achieve up to 6x faster revenue growth than those without alignment. Meanwhile, McKinsey reports that as much as 50% of marketing spend is wasted when personalization, analytics, and journey execution operate in silos. The Advisory Board adds that cross-functional fragmentation is now the #1 barrier to marketing ROI — above talent, budget, and technology.
Fragmentation is not a creative problem. It’s not a media problem. It’s not a martech problem.
It’s a systems problem.
Fragmentation Is the Silent Margin Killer
Healthcare is uniquely vulnerable to the fragmentation trap. Unlike retail, travel, or financial services — which typically design journeys around a single product or path — healthcare must manage:
- Dozens of service lines competing for attention
- Multiple access points that don’t share data in real time
- Brand, digital, and CRM teams on different calendars
- Agencies and vendors optimizing their slice of the funnel
- Compliance layers that slow alignment and coherence
Yet patients and members experience none of that internal complexity. Their expectations are simple:
“Know me. Guide me. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
But inside the system, fragmentation creates four predictable economic losses:
|
Fragmentation Cost |
Impact on Growth |
|---|---|
|
Mixed messages |
Lower trust, slower volume build |
|
Channel-first decision-making |
High CAC, wasted media |
|
No continuity in the journey |
Leakage to competitors |
|
Siloed reporting |
Slow optimization, unclear ROI |
This is why CEOs are cutting budgets, and CMOs are losing ground: fragmentation makes marketing look expensive and underperforming — even when teams are talented and working hard.
What CEOs Want (and What Fragmentation Blocks)
A CEO doesn’t care about impressions, clicks, or CPMs. They care about three things:
- Net new contribution to the bottom line
- Reduced cost of growth over time
- Predictability and strategic control
Fragmented marketing cannot deliver any of those outcomes.
Even great creative fails when six touchpoints tell six versions of the story. Even sophisticated martech fails when CRM journeys don’t match media sequencing. Even brand equity erodes when demand campaigns contradict the core narrative.
Marketing can’t earn credit for growth when it can’t prove connection to it. And it can’t prove connection when the system itself is fragmented.
The Turning Point: From Fragmentation to Performance Branding
The most successful marketing organizations are responding with a structural pivot:
Brand and demand must operate as one system — not two agendas.
This is the foundation of ab+a’s Performance Branding Model, where:
- Brand creates meaning and preference
- Demand creates momentum and measurable volume
- Experience is the proof point
And all share one story, one scorecard, and one system
Forrester research shows that companies that unify brand and demand see 2.5x higher marketing-led revenue growth and stronger long-term loyalty. Edelman’s Trust Barometer reinforces why: trust is now the #1 predictor of loyalty, not awareness.
Performance Branding converts trust + demand into margin — which is exactly what CEOs and CFOs want.
|
If Fragmented |
If Unified Through Performance Branding |
|---|---|
|
Vanity metrics |
Business outcomes |
|
High media waste |
Lower CAC and better yield |
|
Disconnected stories |
Market momentum |
|
Competing agendas |
One accountable system |
When the brand strategy, demand strategy, journey design, media, creative, CRM, and analytics all operate as one — leakage drops, conversion accelerates, and growth compounds.
Not through more spend. Through alignment.
Unify to Multiply
The biggest unlock in healthcare marketing is not a new tool, new platform, or new campaign. It is the elimination of fragmentation.
Because when you align:
- One story (brand)
- One system (operations)
- One journey (experience)
- One scorecard (measurement)
—you finally earn the one thing CEOs will invest in:
Predictable, profitable growth. Fragmentation is the hidden cost center. Unity is the multiplier.
For health systems and health plans ready to stop leaking dollars in the gaps between their teams, channels, platforms, and partners, the path is clear:
Unify to multiply.
Let’s discuss the specifics of your organization’s challenges.
