A Practical Guide Based on Feedback from Over Forty Healthtech Marketing Leaders
It is well-known that the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is around two years. One of the reasons may be that the C-Suite has a poor understanding of the value of marketing.
According to the Healthtech Marketing Network members, educating the C-Suite on the value of marketing was the second most important issue they wanted to learn more about. Only learning about how to implement ABM was seen as more important.
To help answer this, we gathered over forty health tech marketing leaders to understand how they do this. Each one had ideas and shared experiences on what had worked for them. As none of us is as smart as all of us, the collective feedback provided a source of best practices that any marketing leader would find helpful.
What follows is a practical and actionable guide for any marketing leader. It will help you educate the C-Suite on the value of marketing and build trust in yourself and your department.
These are considered best practices by the executives we spoke with. As the list is long, we have organized these into six categories:
Educating on the broader strategic impact
Being seen as a thought leader
Earning trust through transparency
Demonstrating business impact
Building credible measurement models
Building Alignment
The healthtech marketing leaders we spoke with considered these six core competencies to be those that successful CMOs have mastered.
Educating on Broader Strategic Impact
1. Emphasize marketing’s strategic role
Position marketing as a strategic partner in driving business growth, not just a cost center or tactical function. Show how marketing insights inform product development, market expansion, and overall business strategy. Demonstrate marketing’s role in building brand value and creating competitive differentiation.
2. Highlight marketing’s role in customer retention
Demonstrate how marketing contributes to upselling, cross-selling, and overall customer lifetime value. Show examples of successful retention or expansion campaigns. Track and report on metrics like net revenue retention and customer satisfaction scores.
3. Educate on the cost of doing nothing
Illustrate the potential lost opportunities or market share if marketing efforts are reduced or eliminated. Use competitor analysis and market trends to show the risks of underinvesting in marketing. Present scenarios comparing different levels of marketing investment and their likely outcomes.
4. Present competitive benchmarks
Show how your marketing investments and performance compare to industry standards or key competitors. Use data from sources like Gartner or industry-specific reports to provide context. Highlight areas where you’re outperforming and where there’s room for improvement.
Being Seen as a Thought Leader
5. Showcase long-term impact
Given the long sales cycles in health tech, demonstrate how marketing activities today influence deals that may close months or years in the future. Use lead scoring and pipeline velocity metrics to show progress over time. Highlight case studies of long-term nurture campaigns that resulted in significant deals.
6. Implement and showcase Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Demonstrate how ABM strategies lead to higher-quality leads and more efficient use of resources. Show how ABM aligns marketing efforts with high-value target accounts identified by sales. Present case studies or early wins from your ABM initiatives to build support.
Earning Trust Through Transparency
7. Be transparent about budget allocation
Clearly communicate how marketing budgets are spent and the expected returns for each category of spend. Use visual aids like pie charts or treemaps to make budget allocation easy to understand. Be prepared to explain and justify major expenses, especially in areas like martech or events.
8. Adapt reporting to organizational changes
In cases of mergers or acquisitions, quickly align marketing metrics and reporting with new organizational priorities. Be proactive in understanding new leadership’s expectations and preferred reporting styles. Show how marketing can support integration efforts and drive growth in the new organizational structure.
9. Leverage marketing technology effectively
Show how investments in martech improve efficiency and provide better insights into marketing performance. Demonstrate how your tech stack enables personalization, automation, and improved customer experiences. Regularly assess and optimize your martech investments to ensure maximum value.
Demonstrating Business Impact
10. Develop a reverse waterfall model
Start with revenue goals and work backward to show how marketing activities contribute to pipeline and closed deals. This approach clearly demonstrates the link between marketing efforts and business outcomes. It helps C-suite executives understand the volume of marketing activities needed to achieve revenue targets.
11. Translate marketing activities into financial terms
Present marketing efforts in a language that resonates with the CFO, focusing on investments and returns. Use terms like “customer acquisition cost” and “lifetime value” to frame marketing spend. Provide clear ROI calculations for major marketing initiatives.
12. Focus on pipeline and revenue metrics
Emphasize how marketing activities drive pipeline creation and contribute to closed revenue rather than just vanity metrics. Show the direct correlation between marketing efforts and financial outcomes. Regularly report on metrics like marketing-sourced pipeline, marketing-influenced revenue, and return on marketing investment (ROMI).
13. Provide regular, data-driven updates
Report frequently (weekly or monthly) on key metrics that demonstrate marketing’s impact on business goals. Use dashboards or standardized reports to make these updates easily digestible for busy executives. Include both leading indicators (like MQLs) and lagging indicators (like closed revenue) in your reports.
Building a Credible Measurement Model
14. Develop a balanced scorecard
Create a comprehensive view of marketing performance, including leading and lagging indicators. Include metrics across different categories like financial, customer, internal processes, and learning/growth. Use this to provide a holistic view of marketing’s impact on the business
15. Use multi-touch attribution
Implement a system that tracks marketing influence throughout the entire customer journey, not just the first or last touch. This provides a more accurate picture of marketing’s impact, especially in long sales cycles. Use tools like Salesforce or specialized attribution software to capture and report on this data.
16. Conduct thorough post-event analysis
Perform detailed ROI calculations for major events and trade shows, linking participation to pipeline and revenue. Track both immediate results (like leads generated) and long-term impact (deals closed from event contacts). Use this data to inform future event strategies and justify budget allocations.
Building Alignment
17. Collaborate closely with sales
Foster a strong relationship with the sales team to ensure alignment on lead attribution and the value of marketing activities. Hold regular meetings with sales leadership to discuss lead quality, pipeline progress, and joint initiatives. Develop shared definitions and processes for lead qualification and handoff.
18. Involve C-suite executives in marketing activities
Invite CFOs or other executives to attend trade shows or customer meetings to give them firsthand experience of marketing’s impact. Encourage their participation in content creation, such as thought leadership articles or webinars. Provide opportunities for them to witness customer interactions and gather market intelligence.
The list is long, and in the interest of brevity, we have summarized the key activities. In future articles, we will provide more in-depth guidelines on many of these best practices.
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