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Overcoming the Top 3 Health IT Marketing Challenges: Data Insights from Swaay.Health Live 2026
June 1, 2026
Imagine 400 health IT marketers and PR professionals in one room. Conversations shift from health policy to media monitoring tools to the latest updates on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). That’s the energy of the annual Swaay.Health Marketing Conference.
The event has become an important touchpoint for health communications professionals, creating space for collaboration, strategy sharing, and candid discussions about how to stay agile in a dynamic industry.
This year, many conversations centered on a common challenge: how to stand out in an increasingly AI-driven market while continuing to build trust with buyers, clients and stakeholders.
That theme surfaced repeatedly throughout educational sessions and in results from an onsite attendee survey conducted by FINN Partners. According to the data, the top three marketing challenges in health IT are lead generation (28%), brand awareness (20%), and GEO (18%).
Together, the findings reflect an increased focus on targeted engagement, stronger brand positioning and AI search.
Five Best Practices for Effective Marketing in Health IT
Across sessions, FINN Partners health communications experts, clients and industry peers shared practical strategies for navigating current marketing challenges.
- Optimize for AI discovery: Brand visibility now depends on being cited in AI-generated responses and overviews. Proprietary research, industry data, executive thought leadership and earned media mentions help ensure AI platforms can identify and reference credible sources.
- Prioritize smaller, focused events: Health IT buyers are becoming more selective about where they spend their time and attention. Many organizations are shifting toward regional events, executive roundtables and client dinners that encourage deeper discussions and stronger connections.
- Strengthen brand identity during change: Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are common in the health IT sector. Teams must ground messages in the shared values that originally drew customers to each company. Identify and use M&A events as the foundation for a cohesive corporate narrative.
- Protect your core audience: Growth strategies should not come at the expense of core buyers. Balance new messages, positioning, and case studies with the history and values that resonate with both longstanding clients and new ones.
- Tie marketing and PR to business outcomes: Communications touches every stage of the business lifecycle. Use brand equity studies, share-of-voice (SOV) reports and data-rich dashboards to demonstrate how PR and marketing advance enterprise-wide objectives. Work directly with sales leaders to understand how you can help achieve their goals.
Education Is the Best Medicine: Additional Learnings from Swaay.Health Live 2026
Beyond broader marketing strategy discussions, several sessions focused on customer engagement and retention in a competitive health IT market.
During the session Turn Client Events into Engagement: A Blueprint for Customer Retention and Success, FINN clients Nicole Hoy, Senior Brand Manager (MRO), Tina Frye, Senior Events & Exhibits Manager (MRO) and Ryan Dice, VP and Head of Marketing (TruBridge), shared lessons from leading successful customer engagement programs.
- Put personal relationships first: One of the clearest takeaways was the continued demand for face-to-face interaction. While virtual events can provide broad educational reach, they often lack the depth needed to strengthen long-term relationships. Speakers emphasized the value of tailored experiences for key clients and prospects.
- Build authentic connections: The most impactful conversations typically happen in the hallway, not on the showroom floor. Tailor events to your clients, create opportunities for meaningful (and genuinely fun) connections and encourage peer-to-peer relationships among your customers.
- Deliver clear value: Successful events offer more than networking opportunities. Attendees increasingly expect practical value, including Continuing Education Units (CEUs) and policy guidance. Close customer relationships directly fuel client satisfaction, engagement and future participation in thought leadership and media opportunities that support the brand longer term.
Staying Ahead in the Era of GEO and the Agentic Web
While relationship-building remains a vital part of any marketing strategy, many conference sessions also focused on how AI has changed digital visibility and content strategy.
The health sector is experiencing higher levels of AI-driven search disruption than many other industries, contributing to declines in traditional website referral traffic and shifts in how audiences discover information online. As AI overviews and conversational search tools evolve, organizations must rethink how they approach visibility.
Rather than relying primarily on keywords, brands now need to establish authority, credibility and a connected digital presence. That requires a more layered content strategy:
- Secure third-party validation: Journalists and chatbots alike seek out and cite relevant industry research and high-quality, credible stats. Earned media coverage, proprietary research and credible industry data remain essential because AI tools prioritize trusted external sources when generating responses and citations.
- Build content for both humans and AI: Owned content should clearly answer relevant industry questions while reinforcing key messaging. Clean site architecture, structured data and schema markup also help AI crawlers better understand and categorize information.
- Strengthen digital credibility through connected content: Connect owned content to established and respected external references to increase credibility. Create wrap-around blogs that tie third-party citations and brand/SME mentions to your organization. This creates a web of information that AI tools can easily trace.
- Integrate FAQs into webpages and content: Embed FAQs into blogs, thought leadership pieces and landing pages to help directly address common queries your target audience is searching for with AI.
Looking Ahead to 2027
For FINN Partners, this year’s conference was especially meaningful as our team was honored to receive the prestigious award of PR Team of the Year. This recognition is a testament to our team’s relentless dedication, creativity, and collaborative spirit that drive our clients’ success.
Despite ongoing shifts in technology, search behavior, and buyer expectations, one message remained consistent throughout the conference: healthcare communications is still fundamentally relationship-driven.
People partner with organizations they know and trust. Whether through media visibility, customer engagement, executive thought leadership, or AI discoverability strategies, successful communications ultimately comes back to building strong connections over time.
For a deeper look at the survey findings, check out Amber Doster’s article on Swaay.Health: 2026 Health IT Marketing Priorities: Swaay.Health LIVE26 Survey Results to Know.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for health IT marketers:
1. What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) refers to strategies that improve how brands appear in AI-generated search responses and conversational search experiences powered by large language models (LLMs). GEO is becoming much more important to the health IT marketing mix. FINN Partners’ recent conversation with Swaay.Health’s Colin Hung provides more details here.
2. How can healthcare organizations improve visibility in AI search?
Organizations can strengthen AI visibility by publishing credible research, securing earned media coverage, optimizing website structure and creating content that directly answers audience questions. For a deeper look into mastering these strategies, see our GEO Playbook for Health IT.
3. How can marketing and PR teams better demonstrate business value?
Metrics such as share-of-voice reports, brand equity studies, engagement analytics and sales alignment can help communications teams connect their efforts directly to business outcomes. Read FINN Partners’ recent blog post to learn how to transform PR from a cost center into a tangible bottom-line contributor.
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