They research. They read reviews. They visit websites. They make decisions before they ever call. If your practice isn't part of that process, someone else is.
77% of patients search online before booking a health appointment. That's from 2025 healthcare marketing data, and it's been trending in one direction for years.
What does that search actually look like? It varies. For a routine dentist, it might be a 90-second scan of Google Maps results and a quick read of recent reviews. For a GLP-1 program or a new chiropractor, it might be 20 minutes of reading — multiple sites, review platforms, comparison articles, maybe a Reddit thread. The higher the perceived stakes, the longer and more careful the research phase.
In either case, your practice is either part of what they find — or it isn't. And if it isn't, you don't exist as an option. This is what content marketing actually does for health practices. Not "build brand awareness." Not "establish thought leadership." It makes you findable at the exact moment a patient is deciding who to call.
84% of patients check online reviews before choosing a new healthcare provider. More than half read at least six reviews before booking. And 40% have changed an appointment specifically because of what they read.
This matters more than most practice owners realize. Reviews are not an afterthought to your marketing — they're operating as a filter before a patient ever visits your website. A practice with 11 Google reviews from 2021 is going to lose to a practice with 58 recent reviews, regardless of which practice is better at the actual medicine.
The 4.5 threshold is real. Nearly half of patients say they'll only consider providers rated 4.5 stars or higher. If you're sitting at 4.2, that matters. If you haven't asked a patient for a review in six months, you're probably falling behind practices that have a systematic process for it.
Reviews function as a trust filter. A patient who finds your practice in search applies that filter before clicking your website. All the content in the world won't help if your review situation is weak.
The fix is mechanical: build a system to ask every patient who had a good experience. A card at checkout, a follow-up text, a QR code at the front desk. The specific mechanism matters less than the consistency. Respond to every review — the positive ones as briefly as you like, the negative ones carefully and without getting defensive. The responses are public signals to the patients who haven't called you yet.
A patient who searched, saw your Google listing, and decided to click through to your website is already partway there. They've filtered by location, by rating, maybe by service. Now your website has to do something with that attention.
For most independent health practices in Metro East Illinois, the website underperforms at this stage. Common problems:
The homepage is vague about services. "We provide comprehensive care" says nothing useful to a patient deciding whether to call. A new patient with lower back pain wants to know you treat lower back pain, what that looks like, and how to book.
The services page lists procedures without explaining them. "Spinal decompression" with one sentence of description doesn't help a patient who doesn't know if they need it. A page that explains what spinal decompression is, what conditions it addresses, and what to expect in a session — that helps.
There's no blog or educational content. The patient who's been to two other chiropractors without lasting relief is doing more research than usual. If your website has no content that speaks to that — "what to do when chiropractic care isn't working" or "how to evaluate a new chiropractor" — you're not part of their research. Some other practice is.
By mid-2025, 26% of patients reported that AI tools — ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, similar — had directly influenced their choice of healthcare provider. That number has likely grown since.
This doesn't mean practices need to panic about AI. It means the educational content that's always mattered for SEO now also matters for being cited in AI summaries. When a patient asks ChatGPT "what should I look for in a chiropractor in Edwardsville Illinois," it draws from indexed web content. Practices with structured, clearly written pages about their services and approach get surfaced. Practices with thin, generic websites don't. We go deeper on the specific chiropractic ranking issues in this post on why chiropractic websites don't rank — it's more specific than the principles here.
The mechanism is different from traditional search ranking, but the underlying requirement is the same: you need real, useful content on your website. Not a brochure. Actual information that a patient doing their homework would find helpful.
There's a version of this that's easy to miss: most practice owners think about marketing as what happens after a patient calls. The ad that ran, the mailer that went out, the referral from another provider. Those things matter. But the research phase — the 10 minutes a patient spends comparing practices before they call anyone — is where a lot of the decision gets made.
If your practice doesn't show up in that phase, you can't win it. If you show up but your website gives them nothing useful to work with, you might lose it. If you show up, your reviews are solid, and your website clearly explains what you do and who you're right for — you're probably getting that call.
Content marketing for health practices is really just making sure your practice is present and useful during the research phase. Blog posts that answer real questions. A website that explains your services clearly. Reviews that reflect what it's actually like to be your patient. Local pages that signal you're genuinely in the community — Belleville, Collinsville, Glen Carbon — and not a regional chain with a local phone number.
None of it has to be elaborate. It has to be honest, clear, and maintained consistently over time. The question of whether to do that content work yourself or hand it off is a separate one — we covered that comparison in full, including when DIY is the right answer.
If you want to see what this looks like as a done-for-you service — content strategy, blog posts, local pages — take a look at our Growth package or reach out directly. Happy to talk through what your practice specifically needs.
We handle the content that puts your practice in front of patients during the research phase — websites, blog posts, local pages — fully done for you.
Talk to Kerry