- For healthcare technology companies, success is not dependent solely on the development of innovative solutions.
- Marketing teams play an essential role in translating technology capabilities into an outcome-focused language that buyers understand.
- Marketers must uncover customer challenges and goals, and then build a strategy that earns the trust of buyers over time.
Healthcare organizations continue to spend billions of dollars on technology every year. According to Forrester, US healthcare providers alone are expected to increase technology budgets to $69 billion throughout 2026, up 7.6% year over year.1 They are investing in analytics platforms, cloud services, hybrid work solutions, AI tools, and more.
Given this appetite for adopting new technologies to solve healthcare challenges, why are some healthcare technology companies struggling? They don’t lack innovative products. Instead, they are failing to explain how those products can deliver desired healthcare outcomes.
Too many healthcare marketing teams lead with their products when engaging with customers. Understanding customer challenges and then adopting more outcome-driven marketing messaging will help organizations better connect with these customers, who will then be more willing to explore their solutions.
Understand Who the Buyer Is and What They Need
Healthcare technology buyers represent a diverse array of organizations, all with distinct priorities. A large hospital system evaluating a cybersecurity platform has very different requirements than a small regional clinic investigating cloud services. And a well-funded healthtech startup considering platforms to accelerate software development has different goals than an insurance company exploring AI tools to streamline claims processing.
Before sending sales reps out into the field, and even before crafting marketing messaging, technology companies must first define these differences. For each target audience, they should pinpoint primary challenges and business objectives as well as any regulatory constraints and budgetary limitations.
The next step is drilling down further. Within each organization, there are people in multiple roles who weigh in on purchases. And each might have subtly different priorities. For example, the IT director might need to implement new technologies that support key organizational initiatives, such as making it easier for doctors to access patient information remotely. But the CISO will need to ensure that any new technology does not expose patient data or leave systems vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.
A marketing campaign should incorporate messages for all the distinct personas within each target audience. Those messages should work together to form a cohesive narrative.
Stop Leading with Features
Healthcare leaders know that technology is evolving rapidly. They understand that the latest solutions—in particular, those built on AI—include innovations that place them miles ahead of the products they implemented just a few years ago.
Still, these leaders aren’t going to invest in a new solution because it is innovative. They will invest only if the solution enables them to reach the goals they are accountable for, like improving patient wellness, reducing operational complexity, streamlining compliance, or addressing advancing threats. Marketers need to help buyers connect the dots between technology capabilities and the outcomes that buyers envision.
Educate Throughout the Marketing and Sales Process
In many cases, bridging the gap between technologies and potential outcomes requires educating customers. While buyers are focused on outcomes, they do want to understand how a particular solution can deliver those outcomes—that’s part of how they decide between all the products available to them.
There is often plenty of time for that education. Technology purchasing cycles are long in healthcare. Marketers must capitalize on that time to earn the trust of buyers. They need to demonstrate that they understand healthcare organizations’ pain points and then explain how their products address that pain.
In particular, marketers should publish thought leadership articles, supply industry research, offer interactive webinars, provide assessment tools, and supplement all this information with customer success stories. By presenting themselves as advisors, they will have a much better chance of pointing their customers in the right direction when it comes time for make buying decisions.
Measure What Matters
Any business marketing to healthcare organizations will need to fine-tune the marketing strategy over time. Making adjustments requires marketing teams to constantly measure what matters.
To understand whether they are reaching their audience, they should measure everything from organic search performance and click-through rates to brand awareness and return on ad spend. To scale customer acquisition, they need to track metrics such as marketing-sourced pipeline and marketing-attributed revenue. All of these data points can help marketers shape their campaigns and strategies.
Translate Technology and Multiply Successes
While engineers concentrate on building innovative technology solutions, marketers must translate new features and capabilities into outcomes that address the challenges and goals of specific buyers. Marketers who understand the pain points and objectives of distinct organizations, and individual roles within those organizations, can build more effective go-to-market campaigns.
Success in healthcare marketing does not rest entirely on the shoulders of those building new solutions. Marketers play a vital role in speaking the language of healthcare buyers and highlighting the transformative value of their solutions.
A: Collectively, healthcare companies spend tens of billions of dollars on technology every year. Many healthcare technology companies struggle to capitalize on this appetite for technology because they focus too strongly on new product features. Instead, they should refocus on explaining how products can deliver transformational healthcare outcomes.
A: Healthtech companies might want to reach multiple audiences—from small clinics to large hospital systems—with distinct needs. Within each organization, there are also numerous people on buying committees. Healthtech marketers must understand the unique challenges and goals of each organization and each role.
A: Once they’ve carefully defined their target audiences, marketers craft messages that cover essential challenges. They can then spend time educating audiences over frequently lengthy technology purchasing cycles. Instead of focusing on innovative capabilities, they should explain how capabilities deliver the outcomes that buyers need.
- Forrester, US Tech Forecast For Healthcare: Demand For Personalized, Connected Care Accelerates Spending, February 2026
