Telehealth has become one of the fastest-growing segments of digital healthcare, driven by consumer demand for accessible treatment and accelerated by the rise of direct-to-consumer wellness platforms. But scaling these companies presents a unique challenge: they must operate with the speed of modern e-commerce while navigating strict healthcare regulations.

Telehealth marketing is integral to this process, which includes the strategic promotion of virtual healthcare services, such as remote consultations, online therapy, and digital health platforms.

These processes attract, engage, and retain patients who seek convenient care from anywhere. It uses tactics like SEO, content marketing, social media, paid advertising, and educational resources to build trust, highlight accessibility, and drive online appointment bookings.

Effective telehealth marketing also prioritizes regulatory compliance and patient privacy while communicating the benefits of remote care to both new and existing patients.

For growth teams inside these organizations, traditional marketing playbooks often need to be rewritten.

Alex Padilla, Vice President of E-Commerce at Brello Health, is widely regarded within performance marketing and digital commerce circles for his expertise in building scalable acquisition and retention systems for regulated consumer platforms.

At the Houston-based telehealth company focused on GLP-1 weight management treatments, Padilla leads the company’s digital growth engine, overseeing acquisition strategy, conversion optimization, lifecycle marketing, paid media, and analytics infrastructure. Known for applying disciplined, systems-based approaches to telehealth marketing, Padilla has earned a reputation among founders and acquisition teams as a sought-after operator who translates complex regulatory constraints into scalable digital strategies. His work centers on designing integrated growth systems that connect healthcare marketing, product development, and patient experience, an approach that

has become increasingly important as telehealth platforms compete in highly regulated markets.

Rather than focusing on individual campaigns, Padilla approaches commercial strategy as a system that connects marketing, product, compliance, and patient experience.

“In healthcare, you can't treat performance marketing like a series of ad campaigns. You have to design the entire system from the first impression to the long-term patient journey so that it’s compliant, measurable, and scalable.” Padilla says.

That mindset shaped how Brello built its marketing infrastructure as the company expanded from early-stage digital advertising into a multi-channel acquisition platform.

From Early Paid Ads to a Structured Growth Engine

When Brello began building its digital presence, the initial strategy resembled that of many young direct-to-consumer companies: paid social advertising on Meta platforms.

Those early campaigns served as a testing ground for messaging and audience targeting: “Facebook ads are often the fastest place to validate whether your messaging resonates. You can test positioning, creative angles, and offers quickly.” Padilla explains.

But the limitations soon became clear. Healthcare marketing requires strict oversight around medical claims, and consumer trust plays a central role in conversion. Messaging that might work in traditional consumer advertising can trigger compliance concerns when applied to medical treatments.

“Regulated industries change the equation. You can’t run aggressive performance ads promising unrealistic outcomes. Every message needs to align with clinical reality.” Padilla says.

To support expansion beyond paid social, Brello built internal processes that included creative review, compliance checks, and stronger tracking infrastructure.

Padilla describes those foundational steps as necessary before scaling into new channels: “Before you expand healthcare marketing, you need to make sure your operational and compliance systems can support it,” he says.

Designing a Multi-Channel Acquisition System

As the company grew, Brello expanded its acquisition strategy into a multi-channel system designed to reach consumers across several digital environments.

Today the company’s marketing ecosystem includes:

• Meta advertising
• Google Search and Display
• YouTube video campaigns
• TikTok short-form content
• Streaming television placements
• Reddit communities
• Influencer partnerships with health-focused creators

Each platform serves a different purpose within the customer journey.

“Every channel plays a role in the funnel. Search captures demand, video builds education, social creates discovery, and lifecycle channels reinforce engagement,” Padilla says.

Video content, particularly on YouTube and TikTok, became an important component of Brello’s strategy. Rather than focusing exclusively on direct-response messaging, the team experimented with educational content explaining how telehealth consultations work.

“In healthcare marketing, education is part of conversion. People want to understand what they’re signing up for.” Padilla says.

Short-form videos discussing treatment experiences, consultations with licensed providers, and wellness journeys helped build familiarity with the telehealth model.

“We found that transparency outperforms hype. Consumers respond better to realistic expectations.” Padilla explains.

Influencer collaborations also became part of the company’s broader content strategy, particularly among creators focused on wellness, nutrition, and lifestyle education.

“In regulated healthcare, credibility is a performance metric. The best influencer partnerships educate, build trust, and ultimately improve conversion across the entire funnel,” Padilla says.

Why Blended ROAS Matters More Than Channel Metrics

As Brello’s marketing ecosystem expanded, measuring performance became increasingly complex.

Many organizations rely on channel-specific metrics such as return on ad spend (ROAS) reported by individual platforms. Padilla believes that approach often misrepresents how modern customer journeys actually unfold.

“Customers rarely convert after seeing just one ad. They interact with multiple touchpoints across different platforms,” he says.

A typical journey might begin with a social video, followed by a Google search, then additional exposure through remarketing campaigns before a final conversion.

To better understand this process, Brello evaluates performance using blended ROAS, a metric that measures total revenue generated relative to total marketing spend across all channels.

Padilla says this broader perspective helps reveal the real impact of awareness channels that may not appear profitable in isolation.

“Some channels don’t produce immediate conversions, but they dramatically improve the performance of other channels,” he explains.

Streaming television placements provide one example.

“Streaming TV doesn’t always show strong last-click attribution. But when brand awareness increases, we often see improvements in search conversion rates and direct traffic,” Padilla says.

By analyzing the system holistically, the team can make more balanced decisions about where to invest healthcare marketing resources.

“You’re optimizing the ecosystem, not just individual ads,” he adds.

Building Company-Wide Attribution Infrastructure

Understanding that ecosystem required more than platform dashboards.

Padilla led the development of a centralized analytics infrastructure designed to track user journeys across multiple touchpoints.

The system combines analytics tools such as Google Analytics 4 and Mixpanel, along with internal reporting dashboards that integrate marketing data with product usage and lifecycle engagement.

The goal was to eliminate fragmented reporting across departments.

“Marketing teams often rely on platform-reported metrics, but it's common for Meta, Google, and other platforms to each claim credit for the same conversion,” Padilla explains.

Instead, Brello built attribution models that evaluate user interactions based on recency, engagement signals, and historical behavior patterns.

The result was a clearer picture of how different marketing channels contribute to patient acquisition: “Once you understand the full journey, budget allocation becomes much more rational,” Padilla says.

The shared analytics infrastructure also allows product and operations teams to see how healthcare marketing initiatives affect onboarding and retention: “Revenue strategy isn’t just a marketing metric. It’s a company metric,” he says.

AI Automation Inside the Healthcare Marketing Workflow

Automation plays an increasingly important role in Brello’s marketing operations, particularly in areas where large datasets make manual analysis difficult.

Padilla describes AI not as a replacement for marketing teams but as a tool for improving decision speed: “AI helps process patterns faster than humans can. But strategy still requires human judgment,” he says.

Advertising platforms now include machine-learning optimization tools that automatically adjust bids, audiences, and creative combinations. Brello uses systems such as Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max campaigns to support large-scale optimization.

“These tools help us identify which creative formats and audiences perform best,” Padilla explains.

Internally, the team also uses automation to assist with audience segmentation and campaign performance analysis: “AI helps us prioritize experiments. Instead of testing randomly, we can focus on areas where the data suggests the biggest opportunities,” Padilla says.

The technology reduces time spent on manual campaign management while allowing the healthcare marketing team to concentrate on creative development and strategic planning.

“Automation frees up cognitive bandwidth. That’s where the real value appears.” Padilla adds.

Conversion Optimization as a Continuous Process

Acquisition efficiency depends not only on advertising performance but also on what happens after a visitor reaches the website.

Padilla emphasizes that conversion rate optimization (CRO) is often underappreciated in healthcare marketing.

“Traffic alone doesn’t create an increase. The funnel determines how efficiently that traffic turns into customers,” he says.

Brello runs continuous experiments across its landing pages and onboarding flows. These experiments evaluate elements such as:

• clarity of treatment explanations
• credibility indicators like physician credentials
• simplified intake forms
• patient testimonials
• visual presentation of treatment timelines

One area of focus involves reducing friction in telehealth intake forms. “When forms become too complex, people drop off. But if they’re too simple, you lose necessary medical information.” Padilla says.

Balancing usability with medical requirements requires close coordination with product and clinical teams: “CRO in healthcare isn’t just about design. It involves operational constraints.” Padilla explains.

The team structures experiments as controlled tests to ensure that improvements are measurable and repeatable: “We treat optimization like a scientific process,” Padilla says.

Retention as the Foundation of Profitability

While acquisition strategies receive significant attention in digital marketing discussions, Padilla believes retention is where sustainable growth emerges: “Customer acquisition gets the spotlight. But retention is where businesses actually become profitable,” he says.

Telehealth platforms offering ongoing treatments have natural opportunities for lifecycle engagement.

Brello’s retention strategy combines email and SMS communication tailored to each stage of the patient journey. Messages include treatment education, refill reminders, progress check-ins, and support resources.

“Retention programs should reinforce the patient experience. They’re not just marketing messages,” Padilla says. “Segmentation tools help personalize communications based on engagement behavior and treatment timelines.”

The company also uses predictive analytics to identify patients who may disengage from treatment: “If we detect signals that someone might churn, we can intervene earlier,” Padilla shares.

Those interventions might involve educational resources, follow-up consultations, or personalized support messages: “Retention in healthcare is really about patient outcomes,” he says.

Cross-Functional Collaboration Behind Growth

Padilla’s work sits at the intersection of marketing, technology, and operations. Many revenue strategy initiatives require coordination between multiple departments, including product development, engineering, pharmacy operations, and customer experience teams: “Marketing insights often highlight where product improvements are needed,” Padilla explains.

For example, analytics data might reveal friction points in onboarding flows or areas where patients need additional guidance. Those insights can inform product updates, support resources, or user interface changes: “Growth teams act as translators between data and execution,” Padilla says.

“The collaborative approach helps ensure that marketing promises align with the actual service experience. Trust is essential in healthcare.”

Lessons for Scaling Regulated Wellness Platforms

For founders building digital health or wellness companies, Padilla emphasizes that sustainable performance marketing requires a systems mindset.

“Short-term marketing tactics don’t work in regulated industries. You need infrastructure,” he says. “That infrastructure includes compliance frameworks, analytics systems, and lifecycle engagement strategies.”

Padilla also encourages operators to think beyond individual marketing channels: “The most successful companies optimize the entire journey, from awareness to retention,” he says.

Camilo Parra, the CEO of the Enterprise Services Division at Alaya Health Group, speaks highly of Padilla and has witnessed the impact of his work personally.

He says: “Alex is a high performer who earns the respect of the people he works with. Beyond his professional capabilities, he’s a genuinely good person who cares about doing right by others.

“He’s also highly resourceful. Even when challenges fell outside his core expertise, such as technical website issues affecting revenue on a $10 million-per-month site, he quickly learned what was needed and worked with developers to resolve the problems.”

Parra adds: “Alex is dedicated, resourceful, and an excellent team leader. He’s extremely committed to any goal he’s given and consistently delivers outstanding results.”

Padilla’s skills have impressed Caulen Foster, whose company has also benefitted directly from his expertise. It has seen exponential profit and growth as a result of his work: “As a growing early to mid nine-figure business, we have new challenges pretty much every week,” Foster says.

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Brello Health, Padilla’s expertise has had a huge impact on the telehealth company, which is one of the fastest-growing in the world: “I think one of the biggest wins has been building a completely headless, custom-built website and all the technicalities involved with implementing that.

“We could not do what we do without Alex’s expertise. He knows the inner workings of the user experience. He understands the difficulty associated with every portion of the ecosystem.”

Foster adds: “What that displays to me is not only his ability to market and sell products online, but to understand the technical infrastructure associated with the build-out. Not only does he understand how to sell, but he also understands the technical integration required to build out a very complex and intertwined ecosystem.

“The level at which you have to understand digital infrastructure to do what he is building takes decades of experience to acquire.”

While AI continues to reshape digital marketing workflows, Padilla believes the fundamentals remain unchanged: “Technology accelerates good systems. But it doesn’t replace them,” he explains.

For companies navigating the intersection of healthcare and digital commerce, that perspective may be increasingly important.

“In telehealth, the real challenge isn’t running ads. It’s building an operational revenue system that patients trust and regulators respect,” Padilla says.

As demand for digital healthcare services continues to expand, the companies that effectively solve this challenge may define the next phase of the industry.

About the Author

Sashindra Suresh is an experienced writer specializing in artificial intelligence, software development, and emerging technologies. With a strong ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, engaging insights, she has contributed to a wide range of publications and platforms. Her work focuses on making cutting-edge innovations accessible to both industry professionals and curious readers alike.