Search smarter, track better: 5 core strategies for Consumer Healthcare search marketing success

In consumer healthcare, search is more than just a channel as it’s often the first step a consumer takes on their journey to understand symptoms, find products, or explore treatment options. They may be looking for pain relief, allergy guidance, food supplement suggestions or possibly wellness support and the moment of need nearly always begins with a question.

That question is increasingly asked online. The numbers prove it too…

59% of people in the UK search online for symptoms before visiting a healthcare professional, a behaviour we often refer to as consulting “Dr. Google” (Lenstore). and across the EU, 58% of people now regularly seek health information online (Eurostat, 2024).

Younger audiences are even more digitally driven with 73% of Gen Z consumers in the US exploring health advice on Google before consulting a medical professional, Charity RX and 68% of Millennials are doing the same Eurostat).

But the way people search is changing rapidly. AI-powered search tools, voice assistants, social platforms and retailer ecosystems are reshaping how consumers find (and trust) healthcare information.

A Tebra study found that 25% of surveyed people would prefer consulting AI over visiting a doctor and 80% of people using ChatGPT for medical advice reported finding it effective, indicating a shift in trust towards AI-driven tools.

At the same time we are often having discussions with our clients about the rising tide of complexity they face as marketeers, with fragmented data sources, stricter compliance expectations, and an increasing pressure to demonstrate performance and ROI across every channel and healthcare campaign. So as this search behaviour shifts, then so too must marketing strategies for your consumer health brand. You must now be discoverable, trusted and helpful in the moment of search and that means not just on Google, but across a growing number of environments like TikTok, YouTube, ChatGPT and retail search engines like Amazon.

But alongside this opportunity comes complexity. Marketers face fragmented data sources, tighter compliance expectations, and increasing pressure to deliver meaningful results.

Here are my 5 essentials to help you get your search and data strategy working much harder:

1. Understand the new search ecosystem for Consumer Health.

It’s not just Google anymore.

Today’s consumers use a mix of search platforms. They might start on Google but often explore questions further on Amazon, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube or increasingly AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Each of these platforms has its own algorithm, intent signals and content preferences.

So if your consumer health brand is only focused on traditional SEO, you’re likely missing visibility at key stages of the decision-making journey. Search is now embedded across multiple touchpoints and this means your marketing strategy should reflect that.

You may see people referring to this shift as the new SEO; ‘Search Everywhere Optimisation’, highlighting the need to optimise not just for Google but for all digital spaces where search intent happens. Some are also using the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) to describe the specific strategies needed to appear in AI-generated responses from tools like Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT. I believe we will start to hear both of these terms more frequently and both signal the same reality; that search has fundamentally changed and your strategy must evolve with it.

2. Optimise for AI-powered search with helpful, accurate content

AI-driven engines like Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are now transforming how answers are delivered. These tools are designed to surface helpful, trustworthy content and they do it very very fast.

At Varn Health, we have created an ‘AI Visibility Framework’ in order to help brands assess how discoverable and credible their content is in this new era of search. This includes reviewing your technical SEO health, brand authority signals, structured data and also how well your content answers real-world consumer health questions. Plus, in a regulated industry like healthcare, showing up in the right way matters more than ever.

Recent analysis by our sister agency, Varn, reveals that Health & Pharma is currently the most visible sector in Google’s AI Overviews, with a significant 47.5% of health related searches triggering AI-generated summaries. To put that in perspective: just 25% of travel searches and only 3% of retail searches appear in these AI results. This suggests Google is highly confident in surfacing related AI-generated summaries, likely due to the abundance of authoritative, structured content. This reinforces the need to publish well-structured, medically reviewed content aligned with EEAT guidelines.

For consumer healthcare brands, this represents a major opportunity to lead the way in AI-powered search visibility; but only if your content is optimised to appear.

3. Build strong data foundations. Tracking matters more than ever

You can’t improve what you can’t measure and we see too many consumer health brands struggling with broken tracking, duplicate reporting tools or unclear KPIs.

We would recommend that setting up reliable, privacy-aware data tracking is a first step. That means configuring GA4 correctly, understanding consent-mode implications, integrating CRM and marketing platforms and clearly tagging your marketing campaigns. If you can do this effectively it can unlock valuable insights into how you are performing and which parts of your funnel need attention.

That’s exactly the focus of our upcoming PAGB webinar on July 31st for PAGB members, which is designed to help you cut through the chaos and noise, taking control of your data, “Making sense of data chaos: Turning data into smart decision making for consumer healthcare brands.”

4. Focus on meaningful performance metrics and not just clicks

In healthcare marketing, it’s not enough to know how much traffic you’re getting you really need to understand who, why and what happens next. Are visitors finding what they need? Are they returning? Are your website pages converting? With smart dashboards and filters, we often help our consumer health clients focus on the signals that matter: for example branded vs non-branded search split, product discovery rates, FAQ engagement, exit points etc.

In a nutshell, having the right data foundations in place allows you to make more informed, confident decisions about where and how to allocate your marketing budget. By focusing on the metrics that truly matter rather than vanity numbers — you can optimise spend, identify underperforming areas and invest in the tactics that deliver real value. The result is a measurable improvement in overall marketing performance, efficiency and return on investment. Our team will be exploring this in the Webinar on July 31st.

5. Make data work for you and not against you

We know from working with leading consumer healthcare brands that the biggest challenge isn’t access to data; it’s clarity. Most teams are drowning in metrics but unsure how to turn it into direction. We have developed a practical Data Journey framework at Varn Health and this helps marketing teams assess where they are in their data maturity, spot gaps and take confident steps toward smarter, faster decisions. We’ll be sharing this framework in the upcoming PAGB webinar on 31 July too.

In summary, search behaviour in consumer healthcare is really evolving at speed and with it, the expectations on marketers. Being discoverable is no longer enough. You need to be accurate, trusted, helpful and present across a growing number of digital touchpoints, from Google and ChatGPT to TikTok and Amazon. But visibility without clarity is a wasted opportunity. By building robust data foundations and focusing on the metrics that matter, your brand can move from reactive reporting to proactive, insight-driven decision making.

As PAGB associate members we are delighted to support the UK’s consumer healthcare industry with expert SEO, AI search and data insight expertise. If you want to ask about getting visible where your consumer health audience is searching and how data clarity can help you and your team, get in touch we’d love to hear from you.