âTwo roads diverged in a wood, and Iâ I funded the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.â
(or something like that)
If I had to guess, you came up through engineering, product, clinical or finance. Itâs rare to find a founder, CEO or health tech leader who cut their teeth in marketing.
So when itâs time to put together a marketing budget, you typically fund the things you can easily see from the outside, like press mentions, LinkedIn posts, a trade show booth or your newsletter. And those things become the entire marketing function.
Itâs human nature to build for what you understand. And for most health tech leaders, thatâs awareness.
Think about how you draw a house. A square, a triangle on top, maybe a chimney and some smoke if youâre fancy. You learned that at five and never questioned it again.
Most leaders drew their picture of marketing early on (marketing is the department that makes the stuff) and never had a reason to redraw it. But if you want marketing to drive pipeline, that picture needs a redraw: a different house on a new road.
In my last article, I argued that marketing never had a shot at most companies. This article dives into the why underneath it and where I stand on the matter.
What awareness does (and doesnât) do
Awareness is an investment. It builds up and compounds on itself over time. I mean, think about your own behavior. Do you run to buy new software for your business because you saw a LinkedIn post about it a few times? No!
Your buyer doesnât read one article about you and call. And even if they wanted to, they couldnât. They need to get clinical, operations and finance on board before anything gets signed.
Hereâs what actually happens: they see your name in an article or hear it on a podcast. Then they see you at a conference. A few weeks later they hear about your company from a peer they trust. And then months later, you send an email, and youâre familiar. Taking a meeting with you feels like the right next step.
Awareness is valuable. It warms up what would ordinarily be an easily deletable email in their inbox. It makes in-person conversations much easier, and it builds a layer of trust that ads or other paid channels donât.
The problem is awareness on its own doesnât grow pipeline, but itâs assumed it will.
Different jobs
Awareness and pipeline generation go hand in hand, but they are different jobs. A LinkedIn post gets you familiarity. Getting covered in the media builds credibility. But those two things donât give a buyer a reason to raise their hand or a clear place for them to do it.
Awareness feels like âdoing marketing.â More posts go out. Articles run. The booth looks amazing. And the whole time, marketing is measuring things like engagement and views while sales is measuring qualified meetings, pipeline and revenue. Two completely different measurements.
Iâve seen this unfold firsthand in an engagement I was working, where what marketing was building toward was pipeline generation, but there was only appetite for awareness at the leadership level. As a result, marketing efforts had very little impact on pipeline. Everyone ended up frustrated because it looked like marketing wasnât working.
Leadership expected one thing and got another. But in reality, marketing did all it could do given the circumstances it was given.
Why I build the way I do
For me, typically, I recommend building toward a pipeline-building, nurture and sales enablement engine, because thatâs what most health tech companies need to grow.
Growth takes a mix of marketing efforts serving the full lifecycle, presale through renewal, with marketing working as the right hand of sales. They are working the same target list and hitting the same revenue goal, just coming at it from different angles. Marketing warms and qualifies and sales closes, then they both stay with the account after the signature.
LinkedIn and PR stop being the whole plan and become the top layer of a pipeline-building engine underneath. Itâs also the only setup where handing marketing a pipeline number is fair. Again, awareness in and of itself does not directly impact pipeline in most cases. Only when combined with other (often less visible) marketing activities can you start to show attribution.
You can see a clear difference in these two roadmaps I built for a client. The roadmap on the left is focused on activities to build pipeline. The other is awareness building only. Each have different measurements in line with expected outputs (i.e. revenue numbers vs. activity counts).
What the build takes
There are three things needed to build the right engine. First is mindset. The next is the right organizational structure, and the last is the proper level of investment.
When Iâm talking about mindset, I donât mean the vision-board, manifest-your-destiny kind. Iâm talking about something tangible and operational: things you are willing to change about how you market and how you sell. It starts with the way you think about marketing, and from that thinking comes behavior.
If youâre still a founder-led sales organization, or youâve brought in a salesperson with a deep network in healthcare, and you want marketing to provide that layer of awareness, thatâs a legitimate path to go down. But itâs only legitimate if youâre doing it intentionally. And most organizations outgrow this setup eventually and need the engine.
Next, you need structure. That requires a defined sales motion with someone who works every qualified lead and logs every interaction in the CRM, so it always has the latest and serves as the bible of your sales organization. It also takes a marketing leader whoâs senior enough to set direction and execution capacity beyond one person doing everything.
And finally, investment. Typically, a minimum of six figures across six to twelve months, with a system set up to measure how that investment tracks to pipeline.
If you donât have these three things, or arenât willing to move toward them, then run an intentional awareness program instead. The worst thing you can do is expect an engine, and invest like youâre building one, while operating with awareness behaviors.
So whatever you choose, choose it with eyes wide open.
The bottom line
If youâre basing your marketing budget on the house you drew years ago, itâs time to look at the other road. Awareness on its own was never intended to grow pipeline. If thatâs the goal, then what you need is an engine house. And that may be at the end of the road you havenât walked down yet.
Not sure which road youâre on? Thatâs the first question a Marketing Gap Analysis answers: what your marketing is built to deliver, what youâre expecting from it and the distance between the two.
Keep Reading
The Question That Kills Health System Deals: âWhose Job Is This?â â sales looks at marketing, marketing looks at sales, and your champion pitches the CFO alone. The four-asset kit that closes the gap, and which team brings what.
The Revenue Hiding in Your Pipeline â what conversion youâre already leaving on the table before you spend another dollar on leads.
Selling to Health Systems Starts with Knowing the Journey, Not More Leads â Three healthcare buyers, three completely different timelines. Most stalled pipelines are a misread journey, not a lead problem.
The Cut List â Your customers are slimming down their vendor lists. Someone will finish âWe HAVE to keep them because ___â about your company this year. Can they make the case for keeping you?
About the Author
Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO
Heather helps bring clarity to growing health tech and healthcare service companies that have the marketing talent but lack the strategic direction. She helps establish clear market positioning, lead focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather takes the team and the budget you already have and makes them work harder. The right problems, the systems underneath, every dollar tied back to pipeline.