What are the 5 P's of healthcare marketing?
The 5 P's of healthcare marketing are product, price, place, promotion and people. Our Google data for 9,452 US practices shows where each one breaks: patients praise people and results, complain about price and upselling, and only 36.2% of practices list weekend hours. In healthcare, place and people decide more than promotion.
- Product, price, place, promotion, people. The first four are the classic marketing mix; healthcare adds people because care is delivered by humans.
- People is what patients write about most: 61% of dental and 48% of med spa review mentions.
- Price is where complaints concentrate: 73.9% of dental upselling mentions are negative.
- Place is the quiet gap: only 36.2% of 9,452 practices list weekend hours on Google.
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The 5 P's, one measured number each
Most marketing courses teach four P's: product, price, place and promotion. Healthcare marketers usually add a fifth, people, because a patient is buying an experience delivered by a clinician and a team, not a box off a shelf. Some versions go further to seven P's by adding process and physical evidence. The labels matter less than the habit they build: checking every part of the patient's path, not just the ads.
Frameworks like this are easy to recite and hard to use. So instead of defining each P in the abstract, the table below ties each one to a figure from our State of US Healthcare Marketing on Google 2026 report. Every number comes from public Google data or classified patient reviews, collected in September 2026.
| P | What it means in a practice | What the US data shows |
|---|---|---|
| Product | The care itself, and the results patients see. | Results is the second most-mentioned theme in med spa reviews (34% of 2,990 classified mentions), and 97.8% of those mentions are positive. |
| Price | What the patient pays and how clearly it is explained. | 42.5% of dental price and value mentions are negative, and 73.9% of dental upselling mentions are. |
| Place | Where and when a patient can actually get in. | Only 36.2% of 9,452 US practices list a weekend day on Google, from 74.2% of med spas to 14.5% of plastic surgery practices. |
| Promotion | How patients find and judge you before they call. | The median practice adds about 5.17 (dental) to 5.83 (med spa) Google reviews a month, and owners reply to 49% to 61% of them. |
| People | Everyone the patient deals with, from the phone to the chair. | Staff and bedside manner is the most-written-about theme: 61% of dental and 48% of med spa review mentions. |
n = 9,452 practices (profile data); 2,990 med spa and 2,992 dental review mentions (themes). Source: State of US Healthcare Marketing on Google 2026.
Patients judge the care through the people who deliver it
In product marketing, the product is the thing you sell. In a practice, the product is the treatment and its result, and patients mostly experience it through the people in the room. That is why we treat product and people together.
The review data is consistent on this. When we classified Google reviews by theme, staff and bedside manner came first in both samples: 61% of dental mentions and 48% of med spa mentions, and those mentions were overwhelmingly positive (97.5% and 98.6%). Results came next for med spas at 34% of mentions. Patients describe how they were treated as a person before they describe the clinical outcome.
For marketing, that means the people P is not only a hiring question. It is content. Clinician bios with real credentials, short videos of the provider explaining a procedure, and photos of the actual team do more to sell the product than another promotion. Patients are already writing about your people; your website and profile should show them first.
Price is where trust breaks
Price rarely shows up in reviews when it is clear. It shows up when it surprises. In our dental sample, 42.5% of price and value mentions were negative, and upselling was the most negative theme of all at 73.9% negative. In med spa reviews, price and value was mostly positive (84.1%), which suggests that published package and membership pricing sets expectations that the visit then meets.
Share of theme mentions classified as negative. Themes with fewer than 150 mentions are directional.
The marketing fix is mostly operational: written estimates, a plain-English explanation of what insurance covers, and treatment plans that separate what is needed from what is optional. Advertising a low entry price and then presenting a much larger plan in the chair is the pattern that produces the angriest reviews.
Place: access is the most underused P
Place used to mean location. For a practice in 2026 it also means time and channel: when a patient can be seen, and how easily they can book. Across the 9,452 practices in our benchmark, only 36.2% list at least one weekend day on Google. The split is stark. 74.2% of med spas and 65% of IV therapy clinics list weekend hours, against 25.5% of dental practices, 20.6% of physical therapy clinics and 14.5% of plastic surgery practices.
If most competitors in your specialty close on Saturday, a published Saturday morning is a real differentiator, because a weekend searcher sees far fewer open options. The same logic applies to online booking and text-back for missed calls: they widen place without a second building.
Promotion: reviews are the ad patients trust
Promotion covers ads, search, social and referrals. For most local practices, the promotion that does the heaviest lifting is the Google profile, and the engine of that profile is reviews. The median dental practice in our sample adds about 5.17 new reviews a month and the median med spa about 5.83. Owners reply to 49% of dental reviews and 61% of med spa reviews on average. A steady review request at checkout and a reply habit are cheaper than any campaign, and they make every paid click convert better.
Paid search and social still matter. But in our experience they amplify whatever the other four P's already say. Ads that send patients to a thin profile with old reviews and no weekend hours are paying to show people the gaps.
What this means for your practice
- Audit the P's in this order: people, place, price, product, promotion. The first three are where our data finds the gaps, and they are mostly fixed without new spend.
- Put your people on the page. Real bios, credentials and short provider videos on the website and Google profile.
- Publish what patients will pay, or how you will tell them. Written estimates and clear insurance language prevent the upselling complaints.
- Check your hours against your specialty. If fewer than half your competitors open weekends, a published weekend slot stands out.
- Then scale promotion. A review routine first, paid search and social second. Compare your numbers with your specialty in the full report.
How we know: source, sample, date and limits
Source: State of US Healthcare Marketing on Google 2026 (Ichelon Consulting US). Sample: public Google Business Profile data for 9,452 practices in 9 specialties across 20 large US metros, collected September 2026; review themes from 2,990 classified med spa and 2,992 classified dental review mentions; review pace and replies from samples of 115 med spas and 120 dental practices.
- Cross-specialty figures are practice-weighted.
- Review themes were classified by a language model; treat percentages as directional.
- Themes cover med spa and dental only. Small towns are under-represented.
- The 5 P's framing is ours; the data was not collected to test it.
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Related research and services
State of US Healthcare Marketing 2026
The full report behind every figure on this page.
Medical practice marketing plan guide
Turning the P's into a written plan, plus the 7 P's.
Healthcare marketing for US practices
How our US team works across all five.
Google Business Profile management
Hours, categories and reviews: place and promotion.
Reputation management
Review requests and safe replies.
What dental patients value most
The people theme in detail.
Common questions
What are the 5 P's of healthcare marketing?
Product, price, place, promotion and people. The first four are the standard marketing mix. People is added in healthcare because the service is delivered by clinicians and staff, and patients judge the practice largely on them. In our review data, staff and bedside manner is the most-mentioned theme in both dental (61%) and med spa (48%) reviews.
What is the difference between the 5 P's and the 7 P's?
The 7 P's add process and physical evidence. Process covers booking, follow-up and billing; physical evidence covers the building, website and Google profile. In our data, booking and communication is the one med spa review theme where complaints outnumber praise, so process deserves attention even if you work from the 5 P's.
Which of the 5 P's matters most for a medical practice?
There is no single answer, but our data points to people and place. Patients rarely fault the clinician; they fault access, booking and pricing. Only 36.2% of the 9,452 US practices we measured list weekend hours on Google.
How do the 5 P's apply to a med spa?
For a med spa, product means results, price means clear package and membership pricing, place means hours and booking (74.2% of med spas already list weekends), promotion means reviews and ads, and people means the injector and front desk. Booking and communication is the weakest-scoring theme in med spa reviews.
Where does this data come from?
From our State of US Healthcare Marketing on Google 2026 report: public Google Business Profile data for 9,452 practices in 9 specialties and 20 metros (September 2026), plus classified review samples from our med spa and dental studies.
A note on this article: it reports aggregate research and explains marketing practice. It is not legal advice, and cost figures are planning estimates, not guarantees of results.
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