Is service line intelligence the missing metric in your growth strategy?

A great patient experience doesn’t guarantee a strong brand presence in your market.

You might have industry-leading patient experience scores—high “Likelihood to Recommend” (LTR), excellent safety perception, net promoter scores that are through the roof—but those numbers don’t guarantee that consumers in your market associate your brand with the services they’re searching for.

That’s the disconnect between patient experience and consumer experience. And it's where many organizations unintentionally stall their growth.

Too often, brand tracking stops at the system level. But patients don’t shop for health systems—they shop for care that fits a need. They want to know who delivers the best cardiology, the most trusted oncology program, or the leading OBGYN care in their region. 

That’s where Market Navigator comes in. Market Navigator is a syndicated brand intelligence platform that helps healthcare marketing leaders understand consumer awareness and preference at the service line level—not just for the system overall.

See your brand through consumers' eyes

Many organizations overestimate how well their brand is known—especially for specialty services. That’s because true brand awareness isn’t only about name recognition. It’s about understanding how consumers recall and relate to your brand.

Market Navigator helps you measure both aided and unaided awareness—each offering a distinct view of your brand's presence in the market. 

Aided awareness measures name recognition. Consumers are given a list of healthcare organizations and asked which ones they recognize. This works well in large or competitive markets, as well as in markets with limited access, and people are willing to travel farther for specialty care.

Unaided awareness, on the other hand, measures top-of-mind recall. Consumers are asked open-ended questions like, “Which healthcare brands come to mind for oncology?” Responses are more geographically limited and tend to skew toward common services like primary care or ER, but they reveal which brands truly have consumer mindshare.

Consumers tend to define competition differently than organizations do. While a health system may think regionally or even nationally, consumers think locally—especially when responding to unaided awareness questions.

Even if patients are willing to travel for specialty care, their top-of-mind responses are shaped by proximity, network access, and perceived availability. They name the brands that feel most immediate and accessible—not necessarily the ones with the strongest reputation in any given specialty.

System strength isn’t specialty strength

Let’s look at an anonymized market view from Market Navigator to show how these metrics diverge.

• Organizations A and B led in both aided and unaided awareness. But, digging deeper, we saw recognition clustered around a few common service lines like ER, outpatient testing, and primary care. When it comes to specialties like cardiology or oncology, brand awareness falls off.
• Meanwhile, Organization C barely registered in unaided awareness for oncology (just 6%), but scored 41% in aided awareness. That tells us consumers associate the brand with oncology—it’s just not top of mind.
• In cardiology, Organizations D, F, and G emerged as preference leaders, despite ranking only third, fourth, and eighth in overall brand awareness.

The takeaway? Specialty strength doesn’t always mirror general brand strength. Which means you may be leading in patient outcomes and still losing market share—because your brand isn’t showing up in the right context.

Preference is personal

Awareness might open the door, but consumer preference makes them pick you. That preference is often shaped by deep-seated perceptions, experience, and trust—especially in high-stakes service lines.

Back to our real-world examples:

• Organization B topped the charts in brand preference for what it’s known for (in this case, ER and primary care). But when it came to cardiology, their numbers dropped to 46%, placing them fourth overall.
• Organization K emerged as the clear preference for oncology, even though it lacked strong general brand awareness. This suggests specialization, reputation, and word-of-mouth carried more weight than system affiliation.

Preference data also revealed white space in this market—particularly in maternity and geriatrics. No clear leaders emerged, offering opportunity for health systems to claim those categories with the right mix of messaging and access.

Segment smarter. Connect where it counts.

Preference doesn’t just vary by service. It varies by age, gender, geography, insurance status, medical condition, and many other demographic identifiers—and Market Navigator can help you understand them all. 

Understanding exactly how brand awareness and perception vary across demographic groups adds critical depth to your service line strategy. Cardiology, for example, may carry more weight with men over age 60, while pediatric care resonates with younger parents—typically those in the 25–50 age range, in domestic partnerships, and/or with young families.

Market Navigator’s filtering and cross-tab capabilities let you explore these nuances in detail. You can segment awareness and preference in unlimited ways—by age, income, geography, insurance status, and more—helping you identify where your messaging is landing and where it needs reinforcement. This level of granularity paves the way for smarter targeting and sharper messaging, for maximum impact.

And because Market Navigator is built on real consumer and patient datasets, we can also help identify your true competitive set—i.e., the brands consumers are considering alongside yours.

Connecting brand, experience, and growth

Strong specialty performance deserves to be seen. By bringing patient experience and brand intelligence together, you can ensure the care consumers receive matches what they expect.

4 ways Market Navigator turns brand intelligence into a tailored growth strategy

A tailored growth strategy starts with knowing what drives awareness, preference, trust, and decisions. Market Navigator helps you:

1. Identify where service lines are falling short: Use awareness and preference data to surface underperforming specialties—and realign your investment to match market opportunity.
2. Tailor messaging by audience segment: Leverage Market Navigator’s cross-tab capabilities to reveal gaps across key demographics like age, income, and geography. Then, adjust your strategy accordingly.
3. Strengthen brand equity around high-performing services: Don’t just market your system—build campaigns that spotlight standout specialties to reinforce expertise and attract the right patients.
4. Connect brand perception with patient experience: Combine PX and CX insights to measure patient feedback, share their stories with a broader audience, and deliver a brand promise that’s both credible and compelling.

Because, at the end of the day, it's not only about delivering great care. It's also about ensuring your communities know where to go for it. That’s how smart health systems turn brand awareness into measurable impact—and leapfrog the competition.

Reach out to Press Ganey’s consumer experience experts to see what service line brand intelligence can unlock for your organization.