A telehealth marketing strategy has to solve two problems at once: getting found by people who want care without a commute, and doing it without handing their health details to an ad platform. The second problem is now a lawsuit risk, not a footnote.
In July 2026 the FTC sued a telehealth company over exactly that, which changes how every channel below should be set up.
Who your telehealth marketing strategy needs to reach
Roughly a third of working-age US adults have tried it. In the CDC's 2021 National Health Interview Survey, 35.3% of adults aged 18 to 64 had a telemedicine visit in the previous 12 months, and women (41.7%) were well ahead of men (28.8%).
Coverage mattered more than gender. Uninsured adults reported just 14.0%, against 37.5% of the privately insured, so a cash-pay offer needs to say its price on the first screen.
Motivation is easier to market to. In J.D. Power's 2020 telehealth satisfaction study, 51% of users named convenience as a reason, ahead of safety and speed of care. That study dates from the pandemic period, so treat the ranking as a clue to messaging rather than a current benchmark.
Lead with how quickly someone can be seen and what it costs. Save the technology for the page where they book.
Make the booking path the heart of the campaign
Every telehealth marketing strategy ends at the same place. Most of the traffic you buy or earn lands on one of two pages: a condition or service page, or a booking form. If either one is slow, vague about price or unclear about who the clinician is, no channel upstream will rescue it.
Write each service page for one situation, such as a prescription renewal or a follow-up visit, and put the next step above the fold. Say what happens after the click: a form, a short questionnaire, a scheduled video visit. Patients who don't know what a virtual visit involves will leave rather than ask.
Intake forms deserve the most care, for a reason covered below. They collect the most sensitive answers on your site, so they're also where tracking tools do the most damage.
Show up in local and search results
A virtual clinic still serves people in places, and many of them search the way they would for any provider: a condition, a service and a town or state. Your telehealth marketing strategy should therefore include location and service pages, not only a single national landing page.
Keep your listings consistent and ask satisfied patients for reviews, since a stranger deciding whether a video visit is legitimate will look for proof that other people used it. Our guide to patient acquisition marketing that works covers the mechanics of listings and reviews in more depth.
Answer the questions people hesitate over. Which conditions can be treated virtually? What do you need for the visit? What if you need an in-person exam? Pages built around those questions bring in the searches that a generic homepage never will.
Build trust with content before the ask
Care delivered through a screen asks for more trust up front than a clinic with a front desk and a car park. Content is how a telehealth marketing strategy earns it.
Introduce the clinicians by name and credential, explain how a visit works with real screenshots or a short walkthrough, and publish plain answers on privacy. A detailed article on how your practice handles patient data will persuade more cautious visitors than any badge. Our piece on a healthcare content marketing strategy that builds trust goes through formats and topics.
Answers to common questions can also live in a chat widget on the booking page, as long as the widget itself is configured with the same care as your forms. Our overview of healthcare chatbot development explains what that involves.
Paid ads and retargeting without leaking health data
Paid social and search are where a telehealth marketing strategy most often goes wrong. The usual setup puts a pixel on every page, builds audiences from visitors, and retargets them. On a site where the pages themselves describe a condition, that setup tells an ad platform who is being treated for what.
Regulators have said so plainly. In July 2023 the FTC and HHS's Office for Civil Rights sent a joint letter to about 130 hospital systems and telehealth providers warning that tools such as Meta Pixel and Google Analytics can expose patient information. The letter cited reports of trackers collecting answers to medical intake questions on direct-to-consumer telehealth sites.
It also made clear that companies outside HIPAA aren't exempt. Telehealth providers that aren't covered entities still answer to the FTC Act and the Health Breach Notification Rule, even if a third party built the site and even if the data wasn't used for marketing.
The money is real: the same article reports that BetterHelp was ordered to pay $7.8 million and barred from sharing health data for advertising.
The newest case is Hims & Hers. According to the law firm Goodwin, the FTC, joined by Utah and, through the Los Angeles County Counsel, California, alleges the company shared sensitive health information with advertisers, including hashed customer emails uploaded to ad platforms and audience segments tied to health conditions. The allegations are untested, but the list of practices reads like a standard performance-marketing setup.
Public pages are less clear-cut than you might hope. A Texas federal court ruled in June 2024 that HHS's 2022 tracking guidance was unlawful as applied to unauthenticated visitors, yet Goodwin notes that California and Washington laws, and restrictions in more than 20 states, still reach health-related data outside HIPAA. A ruling about HIPAA doesn't settle your state exposure.
If you buy social ads for a practice, read our piece on healthcare Facebook ads and ethical targeting before you build audiences.
Audit your tracking before the next campaign
Goodwin's advice for marketers amounts to a short audit for any telehealth marketing strategy, and it's worth running before you spend another dollar on traffic:
- Find every place a tracking tool runs, especially condition pages, registration and intake forms, checkout and confirmation pages.
- Check both browser-side and server-side events for any condition, treatment or product detail.
- Read your event, audience and campaign names, because abbreviations and code names can still reveal a diagnosis.
- Decide whether you need clear opt-in consent before sharing health-related data with advertisers.
- Make sure your privacy notice describes what your site actually does.
Then repeat it. Tracking configurations drift as tags are added, so Goodwin recommends periodic technical scans rather than a one-off review.
Measure with data that stays on your side where you can: booked visits, completed visits and cost per booked visit from your own system. They answer the question that matters more than any pixel-reported conversion, and they carry no condition data to anyone else.
If you'd rather have this built into the campaign from day one, our digital marketing and growth service includes tracking setup.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 2024 Texas ruling make ad pixels safe on public pages?
No. The court only found HHS's guidance unlawful as applied to unauthenticated visitors under HIPAA. State laws in places like California and Washington, and FTC enforcement, still apply to health-related data.
Do telehealth companies outside HIPAA need to worry about tracking?
Yes. The FTC and HHS said in 2023 that providers not covered by HIPAA must still avoid impermissible disclosures under the FTC Act and the Health Breach Notification Rule.
How often should I audit my tracking tools?
Periodically, and before each new campaign. Goodwin recommends recurring technical scans because tracking configurations change over time.
Cover photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels
