I'm Brendon Rowe, MBA. I've run consumer acquisition across paid social, search, CTV and television, influencer, affiliate, podcasts, and app stores — doubling subscriptions at TouchNote on a $4M budget, doubling digital subscriptions at Weight Watchers, and cutting cost per acquisition 40% at iHeartMedia. For the last seven years I've applied the same full-funnel discipline to health, wellness, and behavioral health — and I'm currently advising Weill Cornell on strategy, creative, and copy across Meta, LinkedIn, Google Ads, and CTV.
Media, subscriptions, then healthcare, and now an academic medical center. Each stop added a channel or a discipline the next one needed. Tap a role.
Owned digital acquisition and the customer journey for 37 treatment facilities. Leads up 127%, admissions up 8%, web conversion up 256%. Full-funnel flows across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, SEO/AEO, and CRO, with CAC and ROI reported to facility leadership.
Consumer health isn't one funnel. At Lakeview I built campaigns targeted by client need and customized to personas and lifestyle — including affluent, private-pay audiences — and each one weighted the channels differently. Today I'm advising Weill Cornell on the same question across Meta, LinkedIn, Google Ads, and CTV. This is the first-call version of that judgment: where the budget leads, what supports it, and what I'd test first.
The searcher is often a parent or spouse. Search and call-only campaigns lead; CTV and podcasts build the name they’ll recognize; paid social is constrained by sensitive-category rules and used carefully; influencer works only through recovery advocates and clinicians, so it’s a test, not a pillar. Email and CRM automation hold the family through a multi-week decision.
Emphasis, not a forecast. The real mix comes out of your data, your margins, and a first month of testing.
I ran subscription and media acquisition before I ran healthcare, so I know exactly which consumer tactics don't survive the move. Health conditions sit inside the ad platforms' sensitive categories, and HHS has published guidance on online tracking by HIPAA covered entities — parts vacated in June 2024, still unsettled. Here is where the playbook splits.
A subscription is an impulse compared to choosing a treatment program. The consideration window runs days to months and often involves a whole family. That's where automation, email, and CRM-connected data do the work paid media can't.
At Lakeview Health I managed the automation flows behind conversion-based campaigns and assisted the engagement team on email copy and creative — the same at Bradford. Sequences written for someone still deciding, not a discount code.
Cross-platform data exchange between Meta, Google, and the CRM — Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot — so the platforms optimize toward admissions and retained subscribers, not raw form fills. Configured with patient privacy as the constraint.
KPI and LTV dashboards built at iHeartMedia; CAC, LTV, and ROI reporting to sales and leadership at Lakeview; CAC, ROI, and conversion reporting to facility leadership at Bradford. I've presented this to boards, C-suites, and team leads.
Four stages. The order matters: audience and measurement before creative, creative before spend, and new channels tested on the side while the core mix compounds.
Who this fits: digital health and wellness subscriptions, weight-loss and nutrition programs, treatment centers reaching families directly, and consumer health brands that need one person who has run the whole mix — not a social agency, a search agency, and a TV buyer who never compare notes. See the paid search scope.
Who actually converts today, by channel and persona, with CAC and LTV pulled from the CRM rather than the ad platforms. Tracking configured for patient privacy before any spend moves.
Messaging built for each audience — the subscriber, the parent, the private-pay client — and cleared against ad policy. In healthcare the creative review is a compliance step, not a taste step.
Search and social carry the plan while one new channel at a time gets a real test: CTV geo tests with holdouts, influencer with real practitioners, podcasts, app store. The way TouchNote found its next channel.
Automation and email hold the long consideration window; CRM outcomes flow back to the platforms. One monthly report — CAC, LTV, ROI by channel — the same one I’ve presented to boards and C-suites.
The six questions that open almost every consumer health marketing conversation — answered the way I'd answer them on a call.
Ask it directly. I'll answer plainly, including when the honest answer is that it depends.
Ask Me DirectlyAnything where the buyer is a person, not a procurement team: digital health and wellness subscriptions, weight-loss and nutrition programs, and treatment centers reaching patients and families directly. The consumer playbook applies, with healthcare’s privacy and policy constraints on top.
Paid social on Meta, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn; paid search on Google, Microsoft, and SA360; CTV, cable, and news networks; podcasts and radio; influencer through agency networks and affiliate through Rakuten; App Store Optimization and Apple Ads; email through Braze and CRM automation. All of them owned, not coordinated.
Yes, carefully. Health conditions sit in the platforms’ sensitive categories, so targeting leans on context and creative rather than behavioral lists, and remarketing is broad or skipped. I’ll name the constraints up front rather than discover them in a disapproval.
More than it used to be. CTV buys can be geo-targeted and tested against holdout markets, and I read the lift in branded search and inquiry quality rather than in impressions. I’ve bought cable, news networks, and CTV; the test design matters more than the budget size.
CAC, LTV, and ROI by channel in one report, built from GA4 and the CRM. I built the Tableau reporting at QuinStreet and the Looker KPI and LTV dashboards at iHeartMedia, and I’ve presented them to boards, C-suite executives, and facility leadership.
Hourly or a flat project fee, not a percentage of media spend — a percentage rewards spending more, not spending better. You own the ad accounts, the data, and the creative.
If your cost per subscriber is climbing, your social and search teams don't share a report, or you've never tested CTV, influencer, or podcasts, a conversation costs nothing. I'll tell you which channel I'd fund first — whether or not you hire me.