Marketing Disruptions
Every Healthcare Executive Should Know
Four Disruptive Changes Impacting Your Marketing Right Now
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The debate over brand vs. performance marketing
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The new reality that LLMs can craft your brand and reputation
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Increasing screen fatigue is a cause to rethink digital-first marcomm strategy
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Media’s increasing appetite for sponsored content
Brand vs. Performance Marketing
7 in 10 marketers very likely or likely to increase their performance marketing spend and reduce brand building.
9 in 10 CMOs agree that they often focus on the short term to the detriment of the long term.
Source: marketingcharts.com
Brand Marketing Is the Force Multiplier for Performance Marketing
Brand marketing outperforms performance marketing 80% of the time.
Source: Analytic Partners
LLMs Are a New Marketing Channel To Manage
Emergence of LLMs like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are go-to sources about your brand, reputation and products.
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Companies need to be alert to how LLMs form opinions about brands and businesses
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What influences those perceptions most?
How do LLMs Form Opinions About Brands and Businesses?
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68% of AI-generated brand insights related to brand trust, value, quality, and innovation are sourced from earned media
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Most PR teams currently don’t track how their coverage shapes LLM responses
The Source Behind the Score
Percent of ChatGPT Sources for Brand Reputation Decisions
Source: COVO
Methodology: Manual search of four key questions around Trust, Value, Quality, and Innovation for an aggregate list of 30 top brands to identify the sources ChatGPT used to answer each.
We’re Turning to AI for Advice.
And We Trust It.
60%
Say they’ve followed advice or used information from ChatGPT
70%
Found the advice helpful
34%
Say they’d trust ChatGPT more than a human expert
Source: How People Use & Trust ChatGPT in 2025: Express Legal Funding April 2025
This isn’t just curiosity. It’s confidence.
People are starting to see ChatGPT as a real source of insight.
How Do LLMs Source Information About Brands and Businesses?
Company Websites:
About pages, product descriptions, mission statements
Reputable Media:
News outlets, industry publications, review sites
User-Generated Content:
Reddit, forums, social media (with privacy considerations)
Structured Data/Knowledge Graphs:
Schema.org markup, Wikidata, Google Knowledge Graph
Social Media & Video:
Posts, video/audio transcripts
Proprietary/Enterprise Data:
Internal documents, customer support logs (for brand-specific LLMs)
APIs & Real-Time Sources:
Google Workspace, connected databases (for certain LLMs like Gemini)
Screen Fatigue Is Killing Digital-First Comms Strategies…
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63% of adults have implemented some form of digital limitation in the past six months—a dramatic increase from just 37% in 2023. 1
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58% of Fortune 500 companies have implemented formal digital wellness programs in 2025, up from 24% in 2023. 2
…And Making the Case for Reviving In-Person Engagement
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88% of executives believe in-person events are critical for building business relationships. 3
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Organizations will shift 70% of their marketing budgets to offline channels by 2028. (2022 budgets for offline channels was 44%) 4
Source: 1,2 unplugwell.com, 3 Harvard Business Review Analytics Services survey 2023, 4 Gartner
The Sponsorship Squeeze:
Why Your Earned Media Is Less Visible
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Content marketing industry reached $600 billion in 2024 1
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90% of marketers include content in their marketing strategies 2
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45%, B2B content marketers anticipate a rise in their budget for content marketing in 2025 3
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Brand spending on sponsored content on social media in the US expected to increase by roughly 14 percent in 2025, to 9.3 billion U.S. dollars. 4
Source: 1,2 forbes.com, 3, 4 emarketer.com
Actions to Take
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Place your dollars on first developing your brand to boost performance marketing
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Make sure you create brand messaging to inform all your marketing
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Be disciplined in using the messaging consistently
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Create a platform that conveys your brand long-term
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Audit what AI is saying about your organization before your clients or prospects learn about you from their organic searches
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Invest in generating earned media for your company
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Understand the variables to gaining earned media
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Incorporate meaningful live and in-person interactions into your marcom strategy to better engage stakeholders and influencers.
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Increase participation in industry events. Host in-person events.
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Partner with the broader healthcare community, creating relationships builds trust and makes news