Patient Adoption: The Overlooked Demand Lever for Digital Health

There’s no shortage of impressive B2B digital health companies working to revolutionize care delivery. But here’s the truth: even if your buyers are health plans, providers, or employers, your success still hinges on one key thing.

Patient adoption.

If patients aren’t using your solution, it’s difficult for buyers to see value, justify continued investment, or expand adoption across their organization. That’s why health tech marketers need to treat patient adoption as a core pillar of their B2B demand generation strategy.

On the surface, this may sound counterintuitive. After all, you’re not selling directly to patients, right? But if patients don’t use your tech, your customers won't need your tech. While marketing to patients might feel outside the B2B playbook, it's a strategic lever for driving utilization, proving value, and generating demand.

Driving Patient Adoption Starts with Building a Movement

In the age of healthcare consumerism, people have become more savvy about their care. Today’s patients are more informed, connected, and vocal than ever. They want to feel like they are in control of their own health and have access to information that can help them make solid decisions.

Health tech marketers often overlook this layer of influence, but it’s critical: the stronger the patient affinity, the easier it is to demonstrate real-world impact to buyers.

Building a solid community is key for marketers to understand the unique needs, concerns, and preferences of patients and develop personalized strategies around them. By nurturing that community, we can create a supportive space where people feel empowered, inspired, and engaged.

If your marketing team can build a community that is empowered, inspired, and engaged, then you’ve got yourself a genuine movement that will drive adoption of your brand's products and services.

Patient Adoption Tactics for Digital Health Marketers

Ready to start your movement? Here are some highly effective patient adoption tactics to help you get started, with real-life examples from brands I admire.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a powerful tool for driving patient adoption and education. They leverage the power of storytelling to create engaging experiences that inform, inspire, and entertain listeners. Through podcasting, brands can invite industry experts, thought leaders, and patients to share their insights and experiences, bolstering a sense of connection and community.

Yumlish works with employers, health plans and grocers by offering an AI-powered cultural nutrition therapy solution for minorities with diabetes that addresses socioeconomic barriers to dietary adherence.

To connect with patients, Yumlish produces a podcast that empowers people with chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease to take charge of their health through diet.

Podcast guests include clinicians and nutritional experts who provide education and best practices to listeners while emphasizing the urgency to make healthier decisions.

Videos

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video format, compared to a 10% when reading it in text form.

With more marketers using AI to generate content, the need for human marketing and content is growing. Video is the most powerful medium for capturing attention and delivering your message in a personable and memorable way.

Brands can leverage video by producing engaging content such as informative/explainer videos, user testimonials, storytelling series, product/service demos, live Q&A sessions, and more.

Ria Health is a tech-enabled telehealth medical practice that works with health plans, self-insured employers, and health systems to provide evidence-based treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Ria leverages YouTube to create videos that educate and inspire individuals struggling with alcohol. Their videos feature clinician Q&A’s and patient stories as well.

Social Media & Community Building

Leverage social media platforms to build and nurture a community of engaged followers. Create dedicated social media groups or communities where professionals and organizations can connect, share insights, and discuss brand-related topics. Actively participate in discussions, answer questions, and provide valuable information to reinforce your brand as a trusted resource.

Webinars and Online Events

Organize webinars, online conferences, and virtual events centered around relevant healthcare topics. Invite industry experts to speak, share insights, and engage with attendees. Encourage participation, provide opportunities for networking, and create a sense of community among attendees. These events can attract attention from both decision-makers and end users, helping to build trust and drive adoption from multiple angles.

Thought-Leadership

Position your brand as a thought leader by publishing industry insights, research findings, and innovative ideas. Create a link-building outreach strategy and contribute guest articles to publications or websites that your end-users read. Participate in expert panels, podcasts, or interviews to share your knowledge and expertise.

Social Groups and Forums

Social platforms like Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, and Discord are great for building communities around a topic or theme. These mediums are powerful because they put the ball in the end-user’s court, by empowering them to share discussions, experiences, and other engaging content around an overarching topic tied to your brand. This can also be a great springboard for generating user-generated content.

Influencer Partnerships

Influencer partnerships are a powerful tool that digital health companies can leverage to amplify their brand’s values and increase utilization. Partnering with healthcare influencers, such as physicians or wellness experts, can help reach a broader audience and create a sense of authenticity around the brand.

Newsletters

By curating and delivering relevant, insightful, and valuable content directly to subscribers' inboxes, newsletters allow brands to stay top of mind and nurture relationships with their audience. These regular communications provide an opportunity to promote new content, showcase new products/services, share expert insights, and more.

A great example of a digital health brand leveraging newsletters for patient engagement comes from one of my personal favorite brands, Joshin.

Joshin is a digital platform that provides disability and neurodivergence support in the workplace and in life.

Joshin leverages a newsletter aptly titled, Included, which shares stories from the disabled and neurodivergent community, along with educational content on disabilities, and how employees can be a better allies to disabled and/or neurodivergent colleagues.

Start Building Your Patient Adoption Strategy

In conclusion, B2B health tech marketers can no longer treat patient adoption as someone else’s job. Marketing has a critical role to play in driving awareness, affinity, and ultimately usage, especially in a market where real-world outcomes are what buyers care most about.

If you want to win over decision-makers, start by winning over the people they’re trying to help.