I was on a call last year with a practice owner who told me, with a straight face, that his telehealth strategy was “being on Teladoc.”
That’s not a strategy. That’s surrender. You’re handing your patients to a platform that will replace you the second a cheaper provider signs up. You built a practice so you could be a commodity on someone else’s marketplace? Come on.
Everyone and their mother told practices to get on the big telehealth platforms during COVID. And it made sense in 2020 when patients had no choice and you just needed to keep the lights on. But here’s what nobody told you: those platforms don’t care about your practice. You’re a line item. A replaceable provider in a dropdown menu. Now that the panic is over, you’re competing with every other doctor on the platform for the same patients, and the platform takes its cut whether you thrive or starve.
Here’s where telehealth actually stands. Seventy-one percent of physicians used telehealth weekly in 2024, nearly 3x the 25.1% in 2018 and just below the pandemic peak of 79% in 2020 (AMA, Dec 2025). The global telehealth market sits between $80-100 billion in 2025 with sustained double-digit growth (Dr Telx, Feb 2026). This thing isn’t going away.
The problem isn’t demand. The problem is that most practices still market telehealth like it’s 2020, when all you had to do was announce “we’re open virtually” and desperate patients showed up. That era is dead. Now you’re competing against Amazon One Medical, Teladoc, and every other practice in your specialty that discovered the same Zoom link.
The playbook is completely different now.
You’re Selling the Wrong Thing
The number one mistake I see is practices leading with the technology. “We offer virtual visits!” So does everyone. You might as well put up a sign that says “We have a phone.”
Nobody books a telehealth appointment because they’re excited about video calls. They book because they have a problem and they don’t want to drive 45 minutes, sit in a waiting room for an hour, and take a half-day off work for a 12-minute conversation.
A woman in perimenopause who can’t get an OB/GYN appointment for six weeks? She cares about getting answers this week. A parent whose kid has an ear infection at 8 PM? She cares about not sitting in an ER. A chronic care patient who needs a medication adjustment? He cares about not burning a vacation day.
Lead with the problem. The virtual visit is just the delivery truck, not the package.
The data backs this up. Women’s health telehealth ranks number one in patient satisfaction across all virtual care categories, with a 58% return rate (Wheel, 2025). Chronic care hits a 70% return rate. Women aged 43-58 are the fastest-growing female telehealth cohort. And 70% of women aged 40-55 experience perimenopause or menopause symptoms but fewer than 1 in 3 seek care (Wheel, 2025).
That’s a massive pool of patients who want help but aren’t getting it through traditional channels. The practice that positions telehealth as “get perimenopause care from your couch this week” will crush the one advertising “virtual visits available.” Every single time.
Your Competition Isn’t Who You Think It Is
During COVID, you were competing with the practice down the street. Now you’re competing with billion-dollar platforms that have nine-figure marketing budgets and booking flows smoother than anything your $5,000 website can produce.
I had a client last year who couldn’t figure out why her telehealth bookings were dropping. Took me ten minutes to find the problem. Her booking process required a phone call during business hours, a 10-minute intake form, and a three-day wait for the appointment. Meanwhile, a patient could open the Teladoc app, tap three buttons, and see a provider in an hour.
You can have the best clinical skills in your state. If your booking process feels like filing a tax return, you’ve already lost.
Patients now compare healthcare experiences to Amazon and Uber. That’s not fair. But it’s reality. And that’s a marketing problem, not a clinical problem.
What Actually Works Now
Pick a Lane and Own It
The generalist “we do telehealth for everything” play is dead. It was barely alive to begin with.
Mental health telehealth has some of the highest utilization rates of any specialty. Women’s health is number one in satisfaction. Chronic care management has the highest return rates. Dermatology for follow-ups and non-urgent consults is growing fast.
Be the telehealth menopause clinic. Be the virtual behavioral health practice for teens. Be the remote chronic disease management provider for diabetics who hate going to the doctor. I’ve watched practices try to be everything to everyone on telehealth. It never works. You end up invisible. Specificity wins because specific messaging converts better, and specific SEO is far easier to dominate than broad terms.
Content That Answers Questions Before They’re Asked
Seventy-two percent of patients research providers online before making contact (Anzolo Medical, 2025). For telehealth, that number skews even higher because patients are also evaluating whether virtual care can even address their problem.
Here’s what they’re actually typing into Google and ChatGPT:
“Can a dermatologist diagnose eczema over video?” “Is telehealth covered by my insurance?” “What can an online therapist actually do?”
Forty million people use ChatGPT daily for health information (OpenAI, Jan 2026). One in four ChatGPT users submits a healthcare prompt every week (Fierce Healthcare, Jan 2026). If your content directly answers these questions with real, structured information, you have a shot at being cited by Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT’s responses.
AI Overviews appear in 51% of healthcare searches (WebFX, Sep 2025). Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks (Seer Interactive). The practice that creates clear, specific FAQ content about telehealth capabilities will steal traffic from every competitor still running generic “we offer virtual visits” pages.
Local SEO Still Matters (Yes, Even for Virtual)
This trips people up. Telehealth is virtual, so why does local matter?
Because patients trust local providers. A patient in Austin would rather do a virtual visit with a doctor in Austin than someone in a state she’s never heard of. Licensing requirements enforce this anyway. You can only practice in states where you’re licensed.
Your Google Business Profile should clearly indicate telehealth availability. Your service area pages should mention virtual visit options. Target “[specialty] telehealth [city]” and “[specialty] virtual visit [state]” keywords. Most of your competitors won’t bother.
Your Response Time Is Killing You
I tell every practice owner the same thing: the entire value proposition of telehealth is convenience. If your patient acquisition process is slow, you’ve cut your own legs off.
Average medical practice response time to leads: 47 hours (InfluxMD, 2025). For telehealth, that’s a death sentence. The patient looking for a virtual visit today isn’t waiting two days for a callback. She’ll find someone else in 10 minutes flat.
Only 19% of medical group practices use chatbots for patient communication (MGMA, Apr 2025). For telehealth, this number should be close to 100%. An AI-powered booking system that lets patients schedule a virtual visit at 11 PM on a Tuesday, when 7 in 10 healthcare AI conversations happen (OpenAI, Jan 2026), is worth more than any ad campaign you’ll ever run.
Paid Search for the Ready-to-Book Patient
Google Ads for telehealth can work well, but only if you’re specific. The intent behind “see a dermatologist online today” is immediate. These searches have tiny decision windows. Your ad needs to be there at that exact moment, and your landing page needs to convert in one visit.
Structure campaigns around specialty-specific keywords. “Online psychiatrist accepting new patients” converts. “Telehealth services” is a waste of money.
Healthcare Google Ads convert at 11.6%, which is 55% above the all-industry average (PPC Chief, 2026). For telehealth keywords with same-day intent, conversion rates run even higher because there’s no friction. No driving, no parking, no waiting room. The patient books and gets seen. That compression of time from “I need help” to “I’m talking to a doctor” is your unfair advantage if you set up the funnel right.
Retention Is the Whole Game
Here’s where I see the biggest missed opportunity. Practices spend all their energy on acquisition and almost nothing on keeping the patient they already won.
Chronic care has a 70% return rate. Women’s health has 58%. Mental health has some of the highest ongoing visit frequencies of any specialty. A therapy patient who books weekly sessions at $150 and stays for 12 months generates $7,800 in revenue. If it cost $200 to acquire her, that’s a 39:1 return.
But only if she stays. And in telehealth, switching costs are nearly zero. She can be seeing another provider tomorrow with three taps on her phone.
So what keeps her? The experience. Automated appointment reminders. Easy rebooking. Follow-up communication between visits. A patient portal that doesn’t look like it was designed during the Bush administration.
Acquiring a new patient costs 5-25x more than retaining an existing one (MFG Wellness, 2025). In telehealth, retention isn’t just a nice strategy. It’s the entire business model.
The Fight You’re Actually In
The real fight in telehealth marketing isn’t tactical. It’s existential.
During COVID, you just needed to let people know you existed. Now you need to prove you’re better than the alternative. And the alternative isn’t “drive to the office.” The alternative is the other telehealth provider who’s easier to book, faster to respond, and shows up in the AI search results when someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation.
That’s a much harder fight. And it’s the one that separates the practices that will thrive from the ones that will quietly bleed patients until there’s nothing left.
Stop being a line item on someone else’s platform. Build your own thing.