Navigating social media in healthcare advertising: Key trends for 2025

The TikTok situation and platform diversification

The uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future in the U.S. has prompted healthcare marketers to reconsider their social media strategies. Following a brief platform shutdown in January 2025, when the platform was offline for approximately 12-14 hours, marketers are pursuing two main approaches:

1. Continuing engagement: Many brands maintain their TikTok presence due to the platform’s robust content ecosystem and exceptional engagement rates. The quality of content and level of audience interaction continue to justify investment for many healthcare marketers.
2. Diversifying investments: Simultaneously, forward-thinking marketers are spreading their advertising dollars across multiple platforms to build audience relationships elsewhere. This approach allows brands to establish rapport with users on alternative platforms and develop new content strategies appropriate for different environments.

If TikTok faces further restrictions, Instagram and Facebook will likely capture most redirected advertising budgets, with Instagram Reels offering the closest alternative format. Following the January disruption, the platform received an additional 75 days to secure a deal to continue operations in the United States.

Several emerging platforms are gaining traction in healthcare marketing:

• LinkedIn, with its enhanced video capabilities and renewed commitment to video content.
• Pinterest, which has strategically entered the healthcare advertising space.
• Reddit, which offers value in pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors where consumer conversations are happening.
• YouTube Shorts and Snapchat Spotlight, which are making strategic moves to increase their presence.

The wisest approach involves monitoring developments while maintaining robust contingency plans, as the social media landscape can continue to transform rapidly and unexpectedly.

Search on social: The new discovery channel

One of the most significant shifts in 2025 is how users approach healthcare information discovery. Increasingly, people turn to social media platforms as their first stop for medical research — before consulting search engines, medical websites or healthcare providers.

Market research shows that between Gen Z and Millennials, 28% and 25% respectively begin their medical research on social media before consulting healthcare professionals or traditional search engines. This behavioral change reflects a broader trend where social media is evolving from purely social connections to becoming an entertainment and information discovery channel.

This shift presents both challenges and opportunities for healthcare brands. Communities are forming organically around health conditions, with users taking more active roles in their healthcare journeys by sharing experiences and seeking information about diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments.

Healthcare professionals are also increasingly present on social platforms, serving dual purposes as both practitioners and consumers:

• Educating colleagues about practice management and industry developments.
• Providing public education about medical conditions, diagnostic signs and treatment options.

The integration of search and social continues to accelerate through strategic partnerships:

• Pinterest has strategically positioned itself in the healthcare advertising space by enhancing its search capabilities for health-related content.
• TikTok has implemented search ads, allowing healthcare brands to reach users actively searching for relevant information.
• Reddit’s collaboration with Google has expanded search capabilities beyond younger demographics, making it valuable for reaching diverse healthcare audiences.

This convergence creates valuable opportunities for healthcare marketers to connect with patients and caregivers in spaces where they’re actively seeking therapeutic input and community support.

Social signals are increasingly influencing search rankings, with major search engines considering social engagement, reviews and user-generated content when determining search results. This means that even users who begin their journey on search engines often find themselves directed to social media content, making a strong social presence essential for healthcare brands.

Personalization through behavioral insights

Consumers expect a personalized experience when engaging with brands — and healthcare is no exception. Personalization is becoming increasingly critical in healthcare marketing. Leading organizations are using several approaches:

1. Data-driven targeting: Advanced behavioral data enables marketers to create hyper-personalized campaigns that guide users through customized journeys based on their interactions. Modern targeting solutions allow brands to adjust their messaging based on how users interact with emails or programmatic ads, creating tailored experiences that move prospects further along the customer journey.
2. Behavioral audience insights: Recent tests with behavioral insights tools for HCP social campaigns have shown remarkable results, including increased reach by 22% while simultaneously improving campaign efficiency. These tools help align messaging with the overarching goal of reaching the right people with relevant content at optimal moments, allowing messages to become integral to the decision-making process.
3. Consumer advocates: Strategic engagement with consumer advocates and advocacy groups helps build connections and delivers authentic, relevant content to health communities. This approach enhances trust with other consumers while ensuring messages resonate with specific health populations.

4. Healthcare professional influencers: Key opinion leaders and HCP influencers deliver specialized, condition-specific and peer-reviewed content to professional audiences. Their clinical insights and research sharing significantly enhance educational efforts and professional engagement.

Additional personalization tactics include precision targeting to ensure HCPs receive condition-specific content, retargeting to deliver the next best message to previously engaged professionals, and dynamic creative optimization (though this remains challenging in pharmaceutical contexts due to regulatory considerations).

Measurement in social media campaigns

Calculating the ROI on social media remains challenging in healthcare due to social platforms owning and controlling impression-level data, but several innovations are helping marketers prove value:

1. Social insights reporting: Advanced tools like AIM XR now allow marketers to understand which HCPs visit brand websites via social media and track their journeys once they arrive. This provides deterministic measurement of social media’s impact within the marketing strategy, overcoming the challenge of “walled gardens” where platforms tightly control impression-level data.
2. Conversion objectives: Progressive marketers are shifting campaigns beyond impressions and clicks to conversion objectives that illuminate search behavior, site visits and on-site actions. Healthcare brands increasingly demand clear performance metrics and comprehensive understanding of how each tactic supports strategic imperatives and overall business goals.
3. Integrated analytics: Sophisticated teams leverage platforms like GA4, Power BI, and Domo to clean, filter and analyze social data in conjunction with other marketing metrics. These tools help transform raw data into meaningful narratives rather than simply reporting metrics.
4. Third-party verification: Beyond platform-provided metrics, forward-thinking brands work with measurement partners to verify impression delivery in brand-safe environments, particularly important given shifting policies around content moderation.
5. Customized measurement frameworks: Leading agencies develop tailored measurement approaches based on specific client needs, working collaboratively with internal analytics teams and agency partners to implement comprehensive measurement plans.

Strategic outlook for healthcare social media in 2025

Industry analysis suggests several key developments will shape healthcare social media throughout 2025:

Emerging trends:

• Continued rise of influencer marketing across both HCP and consumer advocate categories, with increasing user-generated content supporting the customer journey.
• Deeper channel integration, with social, search and programmatic strategies becoming increasingly interconnected rather than operating independently.
• Emerging platforms gaining traction as the social landscape continues to evolve, with opportunities for early adopters.

Strategic imperatives:

• Maintaining organizational agility as the landscape continuously evolves.
• Developing comprehensive contingency plans for platform disruptions.
• Balancing innovation with flexibility — pursuing creative approaches while maintaining alternative strategies.
• Diversifying investments across multiple platforms to mitigate risk in an unpredictable environment.

As social media transforms how patients and healthcare professionals discover information, form communities and make healthcare decisions, strategic adaptability becomes essential. By monitoring emerging platforms, using behavioral insights for personalization, and implementing robust measurement approaches, healthcare brands can effectively navigate social media’s evolving landscape in 2025.

The intersection of social media and healthcare presents unique challenges — from regulatory considerations to platform stability — but also unprecedented opportunities to connect with audiences at critical moments in their healthcare journeys. Organizations that remain nimble while thoughtfully testing new approaches across multiple platforms will be best positioned to succeed in this dynamic environment.

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