3 Mistakes Healthcare Brands Make When Marketing to Women

Women’s health is finally having its moment. After decades of overlooking half of the population, investors in healthcare have poured nearly $60 billion into women’s health across private equity, venture capital, and corporate investment between 2020 and 2025. And yet 73% of women say they have felt dismissed in healthcare settings because of their gender, according to a Langrand report out today. The healthcare strategy firm commissioned a survey of 1,000 U.S. women between the ages of 18 and 44 to assess whether investments in women’s health have had tangible impacts on their healthcare. The report, titled “Still Waiting,” found a significant gap between how much attention women’s health gets in the boardroom and the care women actually receive in the exam room. What’s more, women are beginning to route around a system they feel isn’t listening to them, Shannon Langrand, founder and CEO of Langrand, told ADWEEK. “Creating experiences that work for women isn't just a nice thing to do,” Langrand said. “Women feel dismissed by healthcare—we saw that very clearly in this research. And dismissal sounds like an experience issue, until the woman leaves. Then it's a brand issue and it's a growth issue.” If healthcare marketers do not work to close the gap between women’s health advertising and their lived experience, they risk losing a valuable audience. Here are three common mistakes marketers make around women’s health, and how they can start rebuilding lost trust. Underestimating women's decision-making power Women already control a tremendous amount of healthcare decision-making, and that extends beyond their individual needs: 77% of women make the healthcare decisions for their households, the report found. This influence often extends across generations, with women managing healthcare decisions for their parents, in-laws, and children, all at once. These decisions can entail which doctors the family sees, or which insurance plan is a fit for their combined needs. “The question isn't when women are going to become an important healthcare audience,” Langrand said. “They already are.” Understanding the role of women as healthcare decision-makers represents a huge commercial opportunity, Langrand said. But it’s not a matter of “discovering” the female audience with a pink-pilled campaign. It’s about designing a system around the power women already have. Saying ‘we see you’ without listening to women “Feeling seen” has become a common brand line when marketing to women, but that doesn’t always translate to women being taken seriously in healthcare environments. Two-thirds of women surveyed said they have been misdiagnosed or waited too long for a diagnosis for mental health conditions, chronic pain, reproductive or hormonal conditions, and more. At the same time, symptoms that are not necessarily related to women’s hormones or mental health are dismissed as stress, anxiety, or hormonal. Eight in 10 women surveyed have heard “it’s just stress” or similar lines in doctor’s offices, with four in 10 saying it has happened more than once. “There's this whole vocabulary that's emerging in healthcare marketing around being seen and being heard and being understood, and I think that's really positive,” Langrand said. “But what happens when everyone is saying, ‘We see you,’ but the woman still walks into an experience where she doesn't feel heard?” The Langrand report demonstrates that women often do not feel heard in healthcare settings, and the fixes are "embarrassingly basic,” Langrand said. When asked what would rebuild trust fastest, 20% of women said “Being listened to by clinicians.” Other top responses included “Care that remembers me as a person” and “Proof the system actually wants me to get better.” “Being seen has to become an operating behavior, not a brand line,” Langrand said. “If the ad says, ‘We see you,’ but the appointment doesn't, then the appointment wins every time.” Missing the mark with social media and AI Feeling ignored and misunderstood by traditional healthcare environments, many women turn to social media for validation. The report found that 40% of women turn to social media not to seek clinical information or guidance, but to validate their feelings around healthcare. “We're seeing that social media is really filling an important emotional gap, not necessarily a clinical one,” Langrand told ADWEEK. “Women are really going there because they want someone to say, ‘Yes, that thing you’re experiencing is real.’” Langrand said that marketers could easily misinterpret this behavior as a sign to invest in new channels: Women are getting their health information on TikTok, so let’s go all-in on TikTok. But it’s actually an experience issue: Women want to feel seen and heard in healthcare settings, and they are able to find that validation on social media when healthcare falls short, she said. Artificial intelligence could help make healthcare feel more human, Langrand said, but only if institutions are willing to prioritize patient experience over throughput. Technologies like ambient listening and AI notetaking can help to move patients through the system more quickly, or they can give clinicians an opportunity to slow down and look at a patient versus a screen. If healthcare institutions encourage the latter, they might just see and hear the women they’ve historically overlooked.

Health and Wellness

3 Mistakes Healthcare Brands Make When Marketing to Women

Despite increased investments in femtech and women's health marketing, women still feel dismissed and discouraged when navigating healthcare environments.

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Andrea Michelson

Brand Marketing

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