From Click to Care: Rethinking the Insurance Marketing Funnel

Best practices for marketing insurance and healthcare are evolving quickly. Quite frankly, if you’re only doubling down on lower-funnel tactics, such as paid search (such as pay-per-click and search engine marketing), you’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. 

If you’ve been wondering why your enrollment numbers aren’t soaring, or why qualified leads seem to fizzle out, the problem probably isn’t your product or your sales pitch. It’s how you approach your funnel.

In a world where more than half of all Americans begin their healthcare journeys online, whether that’s searching for providers or insurance coverage, the path to conversion is anything but linear. A full-funnel approach is your new prescription for turning awareness into actual members.

What is Full-Funnel Marketing, and Why Does it Matter in Insurance and Healthcare?

Here’s a typical journey for one of your consumers: They see a Medicare supplement ad on television, then a week later, find themselves comparing benefits plans. Eventually, they land on your quote page or call your customer service. 

Most health insurance shoppers use multiple digital channels during the consideration process, yet too many insurance marketers allocate their budgets to paid search and overlook the need to first build interest. 

During my research for this article, I spoke with one of the nation’s leading digital paid media directors at a top-three insurance company, and he put it best: “People don’t just search unless there’s interest already built at the top of the funnel.” Last-touch attribution is outdated, plain and simple.

You’ll never scale your enrollments just by capturing bottom-funnel intent. The real growth happens when you spark demand, nurture interest, and then, and only then, make it easy to convert.

The Awareness Advantage: Insurance is Won at the Top

In general, brands that lead in consumer awareness have much higher conversion rates during open enrollment compared to those that don’t. Healthcare decisions are high-stakes. People need to know, like, and trust your brand long before they pick a plan.

Top-of-funnel efforts such as targeted social ads, streaming video, and display have measurable payoffs. If you launch a new prescription plan in Florida, but skip building early demand, it’ll be an uphill battle to meet your enrollment goals.  

As our media director warned, “We’ve seen failures when we launched pages without checking demand—assuming ‘if you build it, they will come.’ That doesn’t work. Now, we start by assessing if there’s existing search interest and creating demand if necessary. Success requires aligning messaging with consumer behavior and layering upper-funnel education to simplify complex healthcare decisions.” 

Start with a data-driven approach to measure demand, then layer on messaging tailored to your audience’s health literacy and life stage. 

You have some creative flexibility in choosing how to market your company, but educational video content tends to take the lead in 2025. People appreciate content that helps them understand complicated medical or insurance topics. So don’t just tell — show and teach. 

Building a Bridge with Upper-Funnel Education

To piggyback off the last point, it’s important to remember that, from the consumer’s perspective, the healthcare decision journey is famously confusing and fraught with misunderstandings, and that’s especially true for segments like Medicare or specialty Rx. The bottom line? Many Americans don’t fully understand their coverage options. 

As a marketer, remember that mid-funnel education is an essential tool for helping to move prospects from “maybe this is the right choice for me” to “where do I sign up?” Video walkthroughs, testimonials from current members, and easy-to-digest infographics help build the confidence people need to take action.

The director I spoke with explained, “The health insurance journey is confusing, especially for seniors. Influencers aren’t just for Gen Z. Seniors trust peers, community voices, or even favorite chefs more than corporate messaging. Word of mouth is still the strongest form of persuasion. Influencer campaigns—especially when performance-based—are driving impressive ROI by delivering relevance and relatability.”

If you haven’t yet partnered with respected community figures to help promote your brand, now might be the time. 

The Privacy Pivot: Making the Most of First-Party Data

Healthcare and insurance face some of the strictest privacy regulations in the country. And as third-party cookies become extinct, adapting is non-negotiable. “Tighter regulations have forced a pivot,” the director told us, explaining that recent changes to Meta rules pertaining to “health” businesses have made the platform extremely difficult to target. “Platforms like Meta offer diminished targeting capabilities—18 and over targeting is useless for nuanced segmentation.” 

As a result, companies need to double down on owned data, along with customer relationship modeling (CRM) and the creation of lookalike audiences to gain more control and precision. Essentially, brands need to use “what we already know about our members to find more like them,” the director said. 

First-party data is still valuable (perhaps more so than ever), especially since insurers and pharmacy benefit providers already have rich CRM information. With third-party cookies on the way out, marketers need to work smarter, not harder, to figure out how to best use the data they already have to make the biggest possible impact. 

A Fast Track to Enrollment With Segmentation

Segmentation is another essential element of marketing in the healthcare and insurance industries, as poor segmentation can result in significant financial losses. “If we run a $40 million campaign and don’t exclude current members from acquisition, we’re wasting 15% of our budget,” our interviewee stressed. 

In healthcare marketing, precise segmentation accomplishes a variety of goals, including the ability to:

• Exclude current members from acquisition campaigns to make sure you aren’t spending to reach people who have already bought in.
• Target retention and upsell programs to specific population segments, like high-value pharmacy members or those at risk of churn.
• Utilize persona data to personalize enrollment messaging, so each touchpoint feels tailored and relevant.

The takeaway here? Whether you’re nurturing Medicare supplement leads, encouraging prescription refills, or running retention efforts for dental plans, segmenting your audience and messaging with surgical precision pays off in more meaningful engagement and higher conversion rates. 

Avoiding Common Pitfalls: Communication is Key

Your consumers need timely, understandable touchpoints throughout the entire funnel. If you rely on lead aggregators or third-party partners to handle this work for you, you risk creating a gap in the relationship right at the moment of enrollment. 

“Aggregators create a confusing hand-off,” the paid media director said. “Consumers think they’re dealing with the insurer directly. When things go wrong, we get blamed—even if the lead source was the issue. That’s why education post-conversion is critical. We tell consumers: ‘You’re with us now—come to us with questions, not the third party.’ That distinction protects our reputation and improves retention.”

Generic mailers or emails aren’t enough, especially in a world where 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions (and 67% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen). 

Instead, you need to build in communication that feels intuitive and responsive, especially right after a member joins. Help them feel welcomed, informed, and empowered from day one, and you’ll set the tone for a long, successful, and satisfying relationship. 

For example, you might consider sending a personalized welcome email that introduces their specific benefits and provides clear next steps, or creating a dedicated onboarding call to walk them through their plan and answer any questions.

Your Growth Blueprint for Full-Funnel Marketing

Full-funnel marketing is the new gold standard for insurance, medical, and pharmaceutical brands that want sustainable enrollment growth. 

When you embrace a full-funnel approach (and anchor it with the right data, segmentation, and human touch), you’re not just getting leads in the door. You’re welcoming lifelong members and helping to create healthier communities.

By focusing on communication, personalization, and education at every stage of the funnel, you can avoid common pitfalls and build trust with your members. The result? Stronger relationships, improved retention, and measurable growth for your organization.