Strategic Pete · Selling into healthcare

B2B Healthcare Marketing Agency
for Companies Selling to Providers, Operators & Payers

Your buyer is a clinical or operations leader with no time, a committee behind them, and a healthy suspicion of marketing. Generalist demand-gen tactics bounce off that person. This is the practice built for them.

We know the buyer because we have filmed inside their world. Strategic Pete produced People Worth Caring About, a documentary series filmed across 21 long-term care stories in 7 communities, funded by a state healthcare association and distributed nationally on Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV and Amazon Fire. Facility leaders, caregivers and association executives are the people on camera — and the people you are trying to sell to.

That is unusual credibility for an agency, and it is why healthcare vendors hire us to build demand rather than just to run campaigns.

Book a call with Pete See the case studies

The distinction that decides whether this page is for you

This page is for companies that sell into healthcare organisations — software, staffing, devices, supplies, revenue-cycle, clinical services, consultancies. If you are the provider — a community, a facility, an operator marketing to families and recruiting caregivers — you want the senior living marketing agency page instead. Same firm, different buyer, different playbook. Getting this wrong is the most common reason a healthcare marketing engagement produces nothing.

What we run for healthcare vendors

Eight capabilities, sequenced. The first three are where most healthcare B2B marketing is actually broken.

Positioning for clinical buyersCategory & message architectureDemand generationCase studies & proof assetsEarned media in trade pressPodcast & thought-leadership placementContent & searchFractional CMO leadership

Strategic Pete is listed as a solution partner in the HubSpot Solution Directory, and the practice carries 20 years of operating experience and the trust of 100+ CEOs.

Why healthcare B2B marketing underperforms

We have yet to meet a healthcare vendor whose problem was volume of activity. The problem is almost always that the activity is aimed at a buyer who does not exist.

The buying committee is real, and it is not one person

A director of nursing feels the pain, a CFO signs, an IT or compliance reviewer can veto, and a corporate office may standardise the decision across every site. Marketing written for one of those four reads as noise to the other three. The first thing we build is a message architecture that gives each of them their own reason to say yes without contradicting the others.

Your buyers do not trust marketing, and they are right not to

Healthcare operators are sold to constantly, usually with the same three claims. What earns their attention is specificity: a named outcome, a peer they recognise, a number they can check. That is why our first production job on a new engagement is usually a case study, not a campaign.

The workforce crisis is the context for every conversation

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects roughly 211,800 openings a year for nursing assistants through 2034. If your product touches staffing, retention, throughput or documentation burden, that is the frame your buyer already lives in — and most vendor marketing never names it.

If you want this run as one commercial programme rather than a set of tactics, the parent practice is our B2B marketing agency page.

How the work runs

Five moves. The order is the method.

Position against the committee, not the persona

Interviews with your won and lost deals, plus a read of how every competitor on your category SERP describes itself. Out of it comes one sentence per decision-maker and a category claim you can defend.

Build the proof before the pipeline

Published case studies with real numbers, reference stories your sales team can send, and the assets a committee circulates internally. One healthcare-adjacent SaaS engagement is published on our site at a 100X increase in leads over twelve months.

Earn the trade press

McKnight’s, Becker’s, Provider Magazine and Sanford Health are among the outlets that have carried our clients’ work. Trade coverage is the cheapest credibility available in healthcare, and almost nobody works for it systematically.

Put the founder or clinical lead in front of the audience

Podcasts, panels and expert commentary. Across the practice that has meant 39 podcast appearances and 99 earned PR quotes with zero ad spend, and 42 podcast bookings in six months reaching roughly 500,000 listeners.

Then, and only then, spend on demand

Search, paid and outbound against a message that has already been proven to land. Running this first is what produces expensive pipeline that never closes.

Who we work with

Five kinds of healthcare vendor. The common thread is a long, committee-led sale into an organisation under staffing and margin pressure.

Healthcare & senior care software

Long sales cycles, IT and compliance gates, and a category page that reads exactly like every competitor’s. Positioning is usually the constraint, not lead volume.

Staffing, workforce & education

You are selling into the single most acute pain in the sector. The opportunity is to be the company that names the problem properly rather than the one with the biggest job board.

Devices, supplies & clinical services

Procurement-led, reference-driven, and won on trust. Case studies and peer proof do more here than any campaign.

Revenue cycle, payer & compliance services

A CFO-facing sale where the buyer wants arithmetic, not adjectives. We build the proof assets that survive a finance review.

Consultancies & advisory firms

You are selling judgment, which cannot be demoed. Thought leadership, earned media and published points of view are the product demo.

Operating a community rather than selling to one? Start at senior living marketing agency. Looking for a sponsored documentary or film specifically? That is healthcare video production.

What the work has produced

Published figures only, and each is labelled with what it actually measures.

100X

increase in leads, 12 months

A long-term care SaaS engagement, published: 15 sales-qualified leads a week and hundreds of MQLs alongside it. Read the case study.

+40%

EHR demo requests, two months

An EHR software client’s demo requests accelerated 40% within two months of front-page placements in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. Read the case study.

100+

CEOs served

Across 20 years of operating experience and more than 100 CEOs, healthcare among them. Alongside it: 39 podcast appearances and 99 earned PR quotes, with zero ad spend behind either.

And the credibility that is harder to buy

Our long-term care documentary work was funded by a state healthcare association, adopted into curriculum by the UNO Department of Gerontology and the Nebraska Health Careers Pipeline, used in advocacy that helped secure Medicaid funding, and quoted by state senators during workforce debates. It reached 80,000+ views in six months for the association and 32.1 million in social media reach — social reach, not television viewership.

For a vendor selling into this sector, that is not a vanity credential. It means the agency writing your positioning has sat in the buildings your buyers run.

Leaders like Peter are rare… Under his stewardship, our company’s podcast quickly rose to the top of the industry…Jason Long — Tangent Solutions

Peter prioritized case studies as a core content strategy for WebStreet…Mike Vranjkovic — Managing Partner and Co-Founder, WebStreet

A generalist B2B agency, a healthcare PR firm, or this

Three real options. The right one depends on whether your problem is reach, reputation or revenue.

What you need	A generalist B2B agency	A healthcare PR firm	Strategic Pete
Knows your buyer’s day	Rarely	Yes, at the policy level	Yes, at the floor level
Starts with	Channels and budget	Media relationships	Positioning and the buying committee
Proof assets	Sometimes	Press coverage	Published case studies with numbers
Trade press	No	Yes	Yes — and tied to pipeline, not coverage counts
Demand generation	Yes	No	Yes, after the message is proven
Who runs it	An account manager	An account director	A fractional CMO with operating experience

If your only gap is media relationships, a specialist healthcare PR firm is a cheaper answer and we will say so on the call.

Where we are the right answer — and where we are not

A strong fit

You sell into providers, operators or payers and your category page reads like everyone else’s.
You have happy customers and no published proof that a committee could circulate.
Sales is winning on relationships and marketing is not making the next sale easier.
A founder or clinical lead is willing to be visible — on a podcast, in trade press, under their own name.
You want one person accountable for the whole commercial story rather than four vendors.

Not a fit

You market directly to patients or families. That is a different discipline and we do not sell it here.
You are a provider organisation rather than a vendor — the senior living page is yours.
You want media placements counted as the deliverable, with no link to pipeline.
Nothing can be published, named or quantified because everything is under NDA.
You need results this month. Positioning-led work compounds; it does not spike.

What actually gets published in the first six months

Healthcare vendors are usually not short of activity, so it is worth being concrete about what changes. A typical engagement produces:

Assets your sales team can send

Two to four published case studies carrying real numbers and a named customer where one will agree.
A category point of view your founder can defend in a room.
One-page proof sheets written for the CFO and the compliance reviewer, not only the champion.
A reference story per segment you sell into.

Attention you did not buy

Trade-press commentary and contributed articles pitched on a schedule, not opportunistically.
Podcast appearances booked for the person who can actually speak to clinicians.
Search pages aimed at the terms a buying committee types, including the comparison and alternatives queries.
A measurement view that separates sourced pipeline from influenced pipeline.

None of it is exotic. It is simply sequenced so the expensive channels run against a message that has already been proven to land.

The first ninety days

Days 1–30 — the buying committee read

Won and lost interviews, a sales-call listening pass, and a competitive read of every page ranking for your category term. Output: one defensible category claim and a message for each decision-maker.

Days 31–60 — proof

Two published case studies with real numbers, a reference story sales can send, and the beginnings of a trade-press and podcast plan built around the people who can actually speak.

Days 61–90 — distribution and pipeline

Search and content aimed at the terms your buyers use, outbound and paid aimed at the accounts you can serve, and reporting that shows sourced and influenced pipeline rather than impressions.

Questions we get asked on the first call

What makes a B2B healthcare marketing agency different from a normal B2B agency?

The buyer. A clinical or operations leader is time-poor, sceptical of vendors, constrained by compliance and rarely able to sign alone. That changes what you publish, who says it, where it appears and how long it takes. Channel mechanics are the easy part; almost nobody gets the buyer right.

We are a healthcare provider, not a vendor. Is this our page?

No. If you run communities, facilities or clinics and you are marketing to families and recruiting staff, go to senior living marketing agency. The distinction is who writes the cheque, and it changes everything downstream.

Do you do healthcare video and documentary work as well?

Yes, and it has its own page because it is bought differently: healthcare video production. There is also a healthcare sponsorship offer for organisations that want to fund a story rather than commission one.

Can you get us into McKnight’s or Becker’s?

We can work for it, and outlets including McKnight’s, Becker’s, Provider Magazine and Sanford Health have carried work we were behind. Nobody can promise a specific placement, and an agency that does is selling you something else.

How long before this shows up in pipeline?

Proof assets land inside the first sixty days and sales feels those immediately. Search and earned media compound over quarters, not weeks. If you need a number to move this month, paid is the honest answer and we will tell you that rather than sell you a retainer.

What does it cost?

You get a number rather than a range, after a call. This is priced as a strategic engagement with a fractional CMO attached, not as a per-deliverable retainer.

Tell us who has to say yes

Bring one won deal, one lost deal, and the sentence you currently use to describe your category. That is enough for a useful first conversation.