Actionable takeaways from Swaay.health 2025 conference

This month, I attended Swaay.Health 2025 in San Diego. Over two packed days, I met with peers, sat in on forward-thinking panels, and gathered fresh perspectives on what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next.

Here are the insights that I feel are most actionable.

1. Marketing Budgets Are Tighter Than Ever

Instead of large one-off projects, the new normal demands agile marketing investments. Incremental digital improvements are now the norm as opposed to boom-and-bust website redesigns.

For providers, this means less focus on flashy rebuilds and more emphasis on squeezing long-term value out of your existing website infrastructure.

2. HR and Marketing Are Stronger Together

By working together, marketing and HR teams can build a stronger employer brand. This not only attracts talent but also boosts local visibility and community recognition for patients.

The most successful organizations are those that treat employer branding as part of the customer experience, not just a recruiting tactic.

3. Committees Make Decisions, Not Executives

Let’s call it what it is: the healthcare marketing buying cycle is broken. Agencies are watching RFPs drag on, only to fizzle when budgets evaporate or priorities shift. Healthcare vendors need to market across the full buying group, from C-suite stakeholders to mid-level influencers and junior team members.

If your campaign only speaks to the decision maker, you're likely missing the people who will actually advocate for or implement your solution.

4. The One Metric That Ties Marketing to Revenue

Provider CMOs aren’t chasing vanity metrics anymore. Their main KPI is clear: appointments booked, kept, and billed. Every marketing initiative, from paid media to web content, needs to directly support these goals.

This has big implications for how we define “success” on healthcare websites—and for how digital strategy gets funded.

5. Direct Mail is Quietly Outperforming Digital

You read that right. Physical mail (yes, the kind that arrives in a mailbox) is outperforming digital in some segments. Why? Because inboxes are flooded, and mailboxes are empty.

Marketers looking for new channels to test should revisit this old classic.

6. SEO Is Changing and Content Strategy Needs to Catch Up

AI summaries in search engines are siphoning off organic traffic. That’s the reality and it’s scaring healthcare marketers. One solution is to focus on bottom-of-funnel content. Help users who are already deep into their research convert as opposed to top-of-funnel visitors.

Smart content isn’t just optimized for SEO anymore; it’s optimized for intent.

Final Thought: Agile, Integrated Teams Win

From every session, side conversation, and shared story, one theme emerged again and again: agility wins. The teams who move fast, who iterate instead of overhaul, and who align across departments are the ones seeing real results.

Conferences like Swaay.Health are valuable not because they hand out blueprints, but because they give us new lenses through which to see old problems. And this year, it’s clear: The future of healthcare marketing belongs to the teams who adapt, align, and optimize every step of the way.

Which of these insights will you take away from the ones listed above?