Opportunity
AEG Vision had the scale most PE-backed healthcare platforms aspire to – 500+ locations across 200+ markets and 125 independent brands – but that scale introduced a capital allocation challenge. Each practice operated with its own identity, local market dynamics, and patient base, making portfolio-level performance visibility nearly impossible.
The challenge wasn’t just driving new patient acquisition. It was doing so consistently, at a defensible cost per profitable patient, across hundreds of unique market environments – and proving the return to operating partners.
Marketing efforts across markets lacked attribution infrastructure, measurement consistency, and the portfolio-level visibility required to diagnose CAC variance by location. Some locations were generating strong patient yield; others were absorbing media budget without producing commensurate EBITDA contribution – with no unified system to identify or correct the gap.
AEG didn’t need more marketing spend. It needed a connected, scalable infrastructure that could connect every media dollar to location-level production outcomes – balancing portfolio-level CAC efficiency with the local market nuance that drives patient acquisition in a 200+ market footprint.
Strategy
We built a centralized strategy combined with a localized execution model designed to perform at PE-backed platform scale — where marketing must function as a capital allocation decision, not just a campaign calendar.
At the core was a unified framework for planning, measurement, and optimization — ensuring that every dollar of media spend was connected to location-level patient-acquisition outcomes. Around that time, we deployed a full-funnel media mix, including CTV, Programmatic Display, Social, and Google Performance Max, reaching patients at every stage of the decision journey and building the attribution infrastructure to demonstrate what was working.
Campaigns were optimized at the market and practice level based on demand signals, competitive density, and capacity utilization — with budget reallocated in real time toward the highest-yield locations. Creative and landing pages were tailored to maintain each brand’s identity without sacrificing the measurement discipline required for portfolio-level CAC reporting.
This created a system where national strategy drove media efficiency and local execution drove patient relevance — giving AEG’s operating partners the portfolio visibility they needed and its local practices the performance they required.
Impact
The result was a scalable, attribution-grounded patient acquisition engine across 200+ markets – one that could be reported in financial terms to operating partners, not just marketing dashboards.
- Delivered a $87.80 blended portfolio CPA, improving to $63.24 after location-level optimization — a 28% reduction in cost per acquired patient, representing direct EBITDA margin improvement
- Multi-channel exposure drove 147% higher conversion rates vs. single-channel campaigns — demonstrating that full-funnel media investment compounds patient acquisition efficiency, not just volume
- 24% of conversions were attributed to Cadent media as the first touchpoint — providing the upper-funnel attribution data that connected awareness spend to downstream patient production
- Users exposed to programmatic media showed a 31% higher on-site conversion rate vs. search alone — validating the full-funnel media mix as the more capital-efficient patient acquisition model at this platform scale
- Conversion volume consistently scaled during key seasonal periods (e.g., May, July, August) — demonstrating the kind of predictable, forecastable demand generation that PE sponsors price at a premium
Most importantly, AEG Vision achieved predictable, scalable patient growth with a measurable, improving cost of acquisition – building the organic growth story that supports multiple expansions across its 500-location portfolio.
Key Takeaway
When managing a PE-backed platform of 500+ locations, success isn’t about choosing between portfolio-level efficiency and local market relevance.
It’s about building the marketing infrastructure where centralized capital allocation and localized execution work together – turning a complex, multi-brand footprint into a predictable, EBITDA-contributing growth engine that holds up to due diligence.
