Healthcare Advertising Beyond the Waiting Room
| Advertisers
Most healthcare advertising is aimed at the patient. That's perfectly logical. But it's only half the room really.
Health decisions are rarely made in isolation. A daughter will be comparing plans for her dad. A wife will be booking the appointment. A parent will be the one to go to the urgent care. The person who benefits and the person who makes the decision are frequently two different people.
The second one is easy to overlook as they're not in the waiting room at all. They're all over the place elsewhere.
## The caregiver is the real audience.
AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that 63m Americans are now family caregivers (that's about 1 in 4 adults). 60% of them also have a job.
That's a huge number of people going out and researching plans, providers and options on someone else's behalf whilst running the rest of their lives.
## Where they actually are
Caregivers don't spend their entire week in the clinic. They're at the gym before work, they're at dinner with friends on Friday, they're at the rink for a kid's game on Saturday.
Those are the moments they get a breather. No-one's asking them anything for a few minutes. That's when a message can actually land.
Indoor screens get the message out to them. They're in community venues that they visit regularly. They're up close, no skip button, no other ads to distract them and the screen is in the room with the patient. So one plan can reach both sides of the decision. We cover this same logic in more depth in [where indoor DOOH fits in an omnichannel media plan](/blog/indoor-dooh-omnichannel-media-planning).
## Healthcare brands that fit
- **Health systems and hospitals.** New locations, seasonal offerings, service lines, specialist access. - **Insurers and Medicare plans.** Plan awareness prior to enrolment. - **Urgent care and retail clinics.** Right on your doorstep, very much top of mind when you need them. - **Pharmacy and wellness.** Vaccines, screenings, preventative care. - **Senior living and home care.** That's something families will research together. - **Donor and clinical trial recruitment.** Messages that need trust and repetition.
## Planning notes for healthcare marketers
**Plan for both audiences.** Write the creative that works for the patient and the person who is helping the patient. "Talk to your family about" is a very different message to "you deserve".
**Match the room.** Gyms are the venue of choice for preventive care and sports medicine, the same audience we talk about in our [gym advertising guide](/blog/gym-advertising-what-actually-works). Family restaurants are the venue of choice for pediatrics and household plans, as we cover in our [restaurant advertising guide](/blog/restaurant-advertising). The venue sets the scene before your ad even gets a chance to speak.
**Build in review time.** The healthcare creative will go through compliance and Medicare marketing have their own set of rules around timing and claims. Get that review on the calendar early.
**Start before the season.** Medicare Annual Enrollment is October 15 to December 7. The plans for the fall are set in the first half of the year so the venue plan should be too.
## The bottom line
The waiting room is where you reach people after they've made up their minds. Community venues reach them and the people who are helping them as they're still in the process of deciding.
Most of you have already begun planning your 2027 health campaigns. The good news is that it isn't too late to reach out. [Let's map the venues that work](/advertise-with-us).
Social Indoor is a national indoor digital out-of-home advertising network with 3,700+ venues across 20+ states. Reach real people in bars, restaurants, gyms, and entertainment venues with 100% share of voice and GeoPath-audited measurement.