Healthcare marketing is neck-deep in the AI boom, but one company is intentionally swimming against the purely machine-generated current. White Coat Web, a long-time provider of digital marketing services for small and mid-sized medical practices, says the real secret to winning in an AI-powered search landscape isn’t more automation—it’s more humanity.
Founded before the pandemic with a mission to help patients find the right doctors, White Coat Web built its strategy around a deceptively simple principle: people trust people. That philosophy, once considered old-fashioned, has become something of a competitive advantage now that AI-generated content floods search engines, feeds, and—ironically—AI models themselves.
The company claims that human-written, empathetic content not only performs better with real patients but also aligns neatly with Google’s evolving emphasis on quality and authenticity. And as AI systems like ChatGPT and Perplexity increasingly recommend providers directly, the same rules apply there too: the stronger the real human signal, the better the algorithmic response.
According to the White Coat Web team, patients want assurance that the physician behind the website actually cares. When communication feels personal and direct, engagement improves, patient honesty increases, and outcomes follow. The better the relationship, the more the practice benefits—both clinically and operationally.
The company’s pitch: AI doesn’t reject human content; it rewards it. Human-first doesn’t mean tech-last. It means tech-enhanced.
White Coat Web’s approach—pairing human expertise with modern optimization—allows practices to show up authentically across search, content, and recommendation engines. Instead of automating everything, they use AI as a support layer, letting doctors and medical brands shine through as…well, human.
“We see marketing as a partnership,” says co-founder Graham Dunlap. “Our goal is to help people focus on what they’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people, so you can be passionate about your patients.”
In an era where generative content often feels interchangeable, the company is betting that authenticity will be the differentiator—and that both search engines and AI models will increasingly prioritize signals that reflect real experience, real expertise, and real people behind the words.
It’s a counterintuitive stance in an industry chasing automation, but perhaps that’s the point. When every brand is trying to sound like a machine, sounding like a human might be the smartest optimization strategy of all.
