B2B Healthcare: A tough place to be a hero

Why Health Tech Founders Should Prioritize Marketing Early

Congratulations, you’ve built a product that will inspire real change in healthcare — remove administrative burden, improve patient experiences, reduce costs (or perhaps all three). Early adopters are singing your praises, and you’re ready to take the market by storm. But inevitably, reality will hit. Thousands of companies are vying for the same customers. Nobody returns your calls. Sales cycles drag on, and you’re stuck in endless meetings with buying committees. 

Welcome to B2B healthcare – it’s a tough place to be a hero. There are few magic wands to make it easier and many daggers that will make it harder. One of the biggest? Saving marketing for “later.” Tenacious founders, fueled by their “hustle-first” mentality will double down on product development and schmoozing with investors, doing some marketing “stuff” on the side only when necessary. They wear their lack of marketing spend as a badge of honor. A testament to their bootstrapped grit. But in healthcare, marketing cannot be some afterthought that you sprinkle on top only once the product is baked, it must start from day one to help you gain trust, credibility, and actual paying customers. Here’s why:

1. Looonnnnng sales cycles

Selling to healthcare organizations takes longer than appealing a denied claim. Decision-making involves a parade of stakeholders (see #2), sprinkle in budget cycles, security audits, and pilot programs, and suddenly your deal takes years. While the average B2B sale cycle is less than three months, the average healthcare B2B cycle is 6+ months. And, I feel like that is generous. I have been on both the buying and selling sides of deals that took more than two years.

2. Complex and Fragmented Buyer Personas

Part of what takes so long is getting the 159,000 people on the buying committee to agree. Selling in healthcare isn’t as simple as convincing one person. The CIO wants interoperability, the CFO is counting pennies, the CISO wants premier security protocols, and clinicians want workflows that work from within their EHR (and to do less coding in their pajamas every night). Making the CIO your best friend and hoping that is enough, well, isn’t. If you’re not tailoring your pitch to multiple buyer personas, you’ll lose.

3. Deeply Entrenched Incumbents

You’re not just competing against other startups—you’re up against massive legacy systems and vendors who have been glued to health systems, payers, and pharma for decades. If a hospital has been working with Deloitte, Epic, or Optum since flip phones were cutting-edge, convincing them to take a chance on you is an uphill battle. Many of these vendors have strong political ties within organizations, making them hard to unseat.

4. Nothing says comfort quite like the status quo

And, even if you aren’t replacing the functionality or service of an entrenched incumbent, healthcare organizations don’t trust easily. Nobody says “that’s the way we’ve always done it” more than healthcare. Even if your solution is faster, better, and cheaper, getting buyers to move past inertia is like convincing a doctor to switch from a pager to a smartphone. And it (mostly) makes sense — you’re asking them to shake up their workflows, integrate new tech, and possibly touch patient/member data — all high-stakes moves. If you can’t prove your ROI AND that you’re the magic bullet to all their woes, they probably won’t consider you.

5. Limited and Conservative Digital Engagement

Unlike other industries where social media and digital ads may work magic, healthcare decision-makers treat digital marketing like a suspicious cold call. Email inboxes are overflowing, and most execs would rather take advice from their golf buddy than click on a banner ad. I am not saying digital marketing doesn’t work in healthcare, I am just saying it’s harder in healthcare.

If you made it this far you are likely thinking, “Lady… 4 out 5 of those are about sales, not marketing. Imma go get me a sales leader.”

First, yes. You should definitely go get a sales leader, but second, if you want to have real ARR before your 9-month-old starts kindergarten, you need a great story and to start building awareness with potential buyers now. And great stories and awareness, take marketing. You probably don’t need a CMO right away, but you do need a pragmatic marketing expert capable of setting your marketing foundation, building your brand, and enabling your sales team.

If you wait until your product is perfect before you start marketing, you’re already losing ground. In healthcare, trust and credibility don’t happen overnight, and getting a foot in the door takes time. Start early, build your presence, and make marketing a core part of your strategy. Because no matter how great your product is, you will can’t be a hero if no one knows you exist.

Ready to start your hero’s journey? Subscribe and stay tuned. I will lay out the “how” over the next few weeks.