How a digital health company turns evaluator searches into demos, pilots, and renewed programs: the committee buyer, the evidence pages, compliant ads, and the numbers to watch.
What marketing actually has to do for a health tech company
Health tech marketing has a different job than most marketing on this site. Nobody searches “remote patient monitoring near me.” There is no map pack and no phone call from a patient. Your buyer is a committee inside a health system, a payer, or a self-insured employer. The person who finds you first is usually a population health lead, a care management director, or the benefits consultant an employer pays for advice. Then a security reviewer, a medical policy team, and a CFO each get a say.
The buying trigger is rarely “we want new software.” It is a quality measure the health system keeps missing. It is a readmission problem a payer is paying for. It is an employer's benefits renewal, when the consultant asks what to add or cut. For remote patient monitoring, the trigger is often a billing one: the RPM CPT codes let a practice get paid for monitoring time, and a program that makes that easy has a reason to exist. For a digital therapeutic, the trigger is coverage. A payer will not reimburse a DTx that has no FDA clearance, so your 510(k) or De Novo status is part of the pitch, not a footnote.
Marketing competes with two things here. The first is the conference and the founder's own network, which is how most early deals get done. The second is the shortlist. Benefits consultants and health system analysts build a short list from category comparisons, EHR vendor app marketplaces, and now AI assistants, months before a call. If you are not on that list, you never hear about the deal. The job of marketing in this niche is to get you on the list, then carry the evidence (clearance, security attestations like SOC 2 or HITRUST, outcomes, reimbursement math) to every person on the committee.
One more fact shapes everything: the year has a rhythm. Employer decisions cluster around open enrollment. Health system and payer decisions follow the fiscal year. Plan your pushes around those windows, not around your own product launch.
The funnel, stage by stage, as it really runs in digital health
Here is how the funnel runs for a health tech point solution, stage by stage.
Stage one is the search or the ad. A care management director types “remote patient monitoring platform” or “population health management software.” A benefits consultant asks an AI assistant which digital therapeutics have FDA clearance for a condition. A LinkedIn ad reaches a named job title at a target health plan. All three should land on a page written for that person.
Stage two is the demo request. Keep the form short: name, work email, organization type, and what they are trying to fix. Route it into your CRM (HubSpot and Salesforce are the common choices) and let them book a time on the spot with a scheduling tool such as Calendly or Chili Piper. A demo request that waits two days for a reply is a demo you lose to the next vendor.
Stage three is where health tech differs from other software. After the demo comes the security questionnaire, then procurement, and sometimes a formal RFP. A health system will ask for your SOC 2 report, your HIPAA business associate agreement, and how you handle data for Canadian clients under PIPEDA or provincial law like PHIPA. Have the packet ready before the demo, not after. Tools like Vanta or Drata keep the evidence current.
Stage four is the pilot. Most first contracts cover one cohort, one clinic, or one employer group. Stage five is the first reported outcome: the first blood pressure trend, the first adherence number, the first month of billed monitoring time. That number is what gets the pilot expanded to the full population. Stage six is renewal, which happens on the buyer's budget cycle, not yours. Every stage should hand data to the next one, so you can see which search or ad produced the account that renewed.
The website that survives being forwarded to compliance
Your website has to survive being forwarded. A demo request in this niche gets sent to a compliance reviewer, a clinician, and a finance person before anyone replies. Each of them looks for a different page.
Build one page per buyer type: health systems, payers, and employers. Each should say what problem you fix for that buyer, in their language, with the outcome they care about.
Build an evidence page. State your regulatory status plainly: FDA cleared under 510(k) or De Novo, or not a regulated device, and what that means. In Canada, say whether Health Canada has licensed the software as a medical device. Link the published studies you actually have. Do not stretch a claim past your indication.
Build a reimbursement page. For RPM, walk through which CPT codes apply and how a practice gets paid. For a DTx, explain the coverage path. For employers, explain the per-employee-per-month or per-enrolled pricing shape without hiding it. Buyers forward this page to finance.
Build a security and compliance page with SOC 2, HITRUST if you have it, HIPAA, and your Canadian privacy handling. Add an integrations page that names the EHRs you connect to, such as Epic or Oracle Health, and the device feeds you accept.
Then the proof. Named customers with permission beat logos with no context. Outcomes with the real number and the real cohort size beat rounded marketing claims. A short demo video helps the person who is not allowed to book a call yet.
Finally, the form. One demo form, short, with instant scheduling. Add a second, softer step for the researcher who is not ready: download the reimbursement guide or the security summary. That captures the shortlist builder months before the demo.
Google Ads, LinkedIn, and SEO for health tech
Google Ads works in health tech, but the keyword list is narrow and the click is expensive, so build it carefully.
Bid on category and reimbursement terms. Examples: “remote patient monitoring platform,” “rpm software for clinics,” “cpt codes for remote patient monitoring,” “digital therapeutics for chronic disease management,” “population health management software,” “care coordination platform for aco,” and “[competitor] alternative.” Add your own brand and your competitors' brand terms if your budget allows.
Leave out the patient side. “Free blood pressure app,” “best glucose tracker,” and similar phrases bring consumers, not buyers. Leave out job seekers (“rpm nurse jobs”), students, and academic research queries. Use negative keywords for “free,” “open source,” “salary,” and “jobs.”
Mind the policy. Google's Healthcare and medicines policy limits how prescription products are advertised. If your DTx is prescription-only, ads that name it may need certification, and every claim must stay inside the cleared indication. In Canada, keep device claims within what Health Canada licensed. When in doubt, advertise the problem you solve and the category, not the drug-like claim.
Use LinkedIn for the committee. Google finds the person who is searching. LinkedIn finds the population health director, the benefits leader, and the CISO at the twenty health plans you want, by job title, whether they searched or not.
SEO does the long work. Rank the reimbursement guides, the comparison pages, and the integration pages. Those are what a consultant reads while building a shortlist, and what AI assistants cite when asked which platform to consider. Claim your Google Business Profile for brand searches, but do not expect a map pack; your buyers do not search by distance. Get listed on G2 and Capterra, because evaluators check them.
Follow-up from demo to renewal, and the proof that replaces reviews
The gap between a demo and a signed program can run months, and the gap between signing and renewal runs a year. Follow-up is what keeps both alive.
After the demo, send a recap the same day: the three problems they named, how the platform addresses each, and the reimbursement math for their size. Attach the security packet before they ask. Then a short sequence: an outcomes case for a similar buyer at day three, an offer to brief the finance person at day seven, and a check-in tied to their next budget window.
After signing, the sequence changes purpose. Onboarding email should be built around the first reported outcome. Tell the program lead what has to happen in the first weeks: the device feed connected, the EHR integration live, the first cohort enrolled. Nudge each step that stalls. A pilot that reaches its first outcome expands. A pilot that never reports anything quietly ends.
Ninety days before renewal, start the renewal conversation with the outcome data in the subject line. Match it to their fiscal or plan year.
Reviews and social proof work differently here than in local business. Nobody checks Google stars. Evaluators read G2 and Capterra reviews and, more than that, case studies. Ask for the review and the quote right after a milestone outcome lands, from the person who ran the program, not the person who signed the contract. A case study a compliance committee can cite is worth more than fifty anonymous stars.
What to measure, and what a good first 90 days looks like
Measure the funnel by stage, or you will fund the wrong thing.
Track cost per demo request by source: Google search, LinkedIn, organic, directory. Track demo-to-pilot rate, so you know if the demos are qualified or just curious. Track cost per signed program. Track days from signature to first reported outcome, because that is your early warning for churn. Track pilot-to-full-population expansion and net revenue kept at renewal.
The one number to watch each month is signed programs by source, next to the pipeline each source created. Traffic and leads can rise while that number falls.
A good first 90 days looks like this. In the first month the evidence, reimbursement, and security pages are live, the CRM is connected to the form, and search campaigns are running on category and reimbursement terms. In the second month LinkedIn campaigns reach named titles at target accounts, the first demos from paid search land, and the recap and security sequences run without anyone chasing. By the third month you can see cost per demo by source, the first pilot conversations are moving through security review, and the comparison and reimbursement content is starting to show in organic results and AI answers. Signed programs come later than that for most health tech companies; the point of the first quarter is a funnel you can read.
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