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How Hims and Hers Scaled to $1.46B

How Hims and Hers Scaled to $1.46B

AI Personalisation, Content and Paid Media Growth

Dev Chand
February 28, 2025 • Reading Time: 10 minutes

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Hey guys, hope you’re well!

Hims & Hers. is taking the DTC world by storm so thought it’d be a good case study to get some insights from.

They've orchestrated something remarkable in the crowded digital healthcare landscape by transforming traditionally awkward healthcare conversations into better experiences.

Before we get into it, here are some topline metrics that caught my attention:

Revenue Growth: In 2024, Hims & Hers reported revenue of $1.5 billion, representing a 69% year-over-year increase.
Subscriber Growth: The company's subscriber base grew to 2.2 million in 2024, a 45% increase compared to the previous year.
Profitability: Hims & Hers achieved net income of $126 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $177 million in 2024.

What strikes me most about their journey isn't just the impressive revenue numbers, but how they've woven together AI-driven personalization, content marketing, and aggressive paid media to sustainably grow.

Today, I’ll break down how they:

Turned medical questionnaires into engaging experiences
Used SEO-driven content to pull in 1m+ monthly organic visitors
Scaled paid ads aggressively while keeping acquisition costs down
Built a sticky retention model through subscriptions

Let’s dive in 👇

AI In Marketing
Making Healthcare Personal Using AI

Example: Hims Hair Quiz: 8 questions that diagnose hair loss type and recommend products.

Hims & Hers is smart because they realized medical questionnaires don't have to be boring. They used AI to make these quizzes more engaging and provide personalised notifications based on user journey.

Quiz Experiences That Don't Feel Like Quizzes → Their interactive assessments feel more like conversations with a trusted friend than medical forms, guiding users through a journey of self-discovery.

Psychology-Driven UX → Progress indicators, conversational copy, and dynamic recommendations create a sense of momentum that keeps users engaged through completion.

AI That Anticipates Needs → Their predictive systems don't just react—they anticipate, sending perfectly timed refill reminders that feel helpful rather than pushy. For example: The app displays a notification saying, "Your weight loss medication is running low. Based on your usage, we recommend reordering in the next 3 days to ensure you don't miss a dose. Tap here to refill easily."

Takeaway for brands:

Use quiz funnels and AI-driven recommendations to personalize the customer journey—but always give users control over their choices. By transforming traditional friction points into moments of engagement, Hims & Hers built pathways that convert while building trust.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Content Flywheel to Drive Organic Traffic

Hims & Hers built a content empire tackling taboo health topics, helping them rank for over 120,000+ keywords and drive 1M+ visitors per month—all while educating and converting customers. What’s even more interesting is that they keep a good balance between medical credibility and SEO savviness:

Trust Through Expertise → Each piece of content carries the weight of a medical review, transforming potentially embarrassing questions into normalized conversations. They do this by publishing in-depth, medically reviewed articles mostly written by their medical experts.

SEO as a Patient Acquisition Tool → By mapping content to specific pain points and questions, they've built an organic traffic engine pulling in over 1M visitors monthly. I’ve noticed they have the fundamentals downpacked but also focus heavily on targeted long-tail keywords like “Does stress cause grey hair”. This is helping them find keyword traffic volume without the competition.

Content Ecosystem, Not Content Calendar → Blog posts can be turned into Instagram slideshows and email series, allowing you to connect with your audience in different ways using the same ideas without losing time or budget.

Takeaway for brands

In healthcare, trust is the ultimate currency. By answering questions people are sometimes afraid to ask aloud, Hims & Hers positioned themselves as both authority and ally. And SEO, most definitely not dead.

PERFORMANCE MARKETING
Hims Paid Search and Social Strategy

Source: SEM Rush

In Q3 2023, Hims & Hers spent $116M on marketing—51% of their total revenue. This aggressive approach helped drive a 57% YoY revenue increase while keeping acquisition costs under control.

This is how they executed:

Google search

I've analyzed dozens of DTC brands, and Hims & Hers' paid search approach stands out for its detailed execution:

Brand Protection as Non-Negotiable → Their $500K+ monthly investment in defensive brand terms reveals a deep understanding of the customer journey—they know competitors are waiting to intercept searchers at the moment of decision.

Condition-Specific Keyword Targeting → Beyond brand terms, they've built impressive keyword moats around specific conditions, creating relevance at the exact moment someone is seeking solutions.

Landing Page → Each search ad connects to highly optimized landing experiences with social proof, medical credentials, and clear next steps—creating conversion paths that feel reassuring rather than sales-driven.

Benefit-Focused Messaging →Ads focus on solutions to customer pain points, like “Wondering how to get help for depression?”

Meta ads

What strikes me about their paid social strategy is how it blends education with what’s normal in the industry:

Video Led Approach → Their $3M+ weekly spend on video content across platforms signals recognition that healthcare decisions are emotional, not just rational. Looking through their ads library, they have 510 active ads with a wide range of video creatives speaking to a clear customer avatar and leads with benefit-driven copy.

Niche Targeting → Rather than broad reach, they've mastered micro-targeting specific demographics with content that speaks directly to unspoken concerns. A good framework for this is to focus on one message for one customer avatar, then build on that.

Conversion Structure → The 45% reduction in Facebook CPA while aggressively spending speaks to their commitment to data architecture—they're not just creating ads, they're building measurement systems that drive optimization by using first party data via their conversions API and customer lists.

Takeaway for brands

Paid Search Insight: Brand bidding isn’t a waste—it protects your traffic.
Meta Ads: Video is king—invest in quality content and testing to scale efficiently.

SUBSCRIPTION MODEL
Turning Consultations Into Subscriptions

Most health solutions require ongoing use to deliver results, yet traditional healthcare models aren't built for this continuity. Hims & Hers built a healthcare ecosystem where virtual doctor consultations seamlessly led to recurring product subscriptions.

They’ve built something genuinely clever:

Free Consultation as Value Hook → By offering complimentary doctor consults with initial purchases, they've transformed a traditional cost center into an acquisition tool.

AI-Powered Timing Engine → Their refill reminders aren't random—they're precisely calibrated to your personal usage patterns, creating a service moment from what could be just another sales message.

Example (Hers): Their "Acne Warrior Pack" that combines dermatologist expertise with a three-month product journey, I see something more profound than clever packaging. It's a reimagining of the healthcare relationship.

Bundle Psychology → By packaging professional consultation with multi-month supplies, they've normalized longer commitment timeframes while enhancing perceived value.