Generating Patient Leads

Consumers were shying away from reaching out to healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic unless they had an urgent medical concern. RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH) online form submissions and calls were on the decline. The goal was to generate high-value patient leads for RWJBH medical group practices areas — from bariatrics, cancer and cardiology to mammography, maternity and orthopedics – in hopes these leads would turn into patient cases and increase the number of patients receiving treatment at the hospital.

RWJBH and GRADIANT applied best practices from our previous campaigns and medical advertising expertise to search engine marketing (SEM), display and social programmatic campaigns to target new patients and caregivers across channels. Patients interested in each hospital specialty would complete a lead form on a customized service line landing page or use a click-to-call link in our SEM advertising to reach out to the hospital’s call center for more information or to set up an appointment.

Leveraging a mix of programmatic SEM, display and social advertising tactics, RWJBH and GRADIANT automated ad buying and used machine learning to surpass expectations and achieve a 70% increase in patient leads in 2021, with only a 26% budget increase — the most patient leads RWJBH has ever received in a year! Each lead we generated represented another patient or caregiver who started the patient intake process and considered a new treatment from one of RWJBH’s hospital specialties.