Summary of this blog
- A HealthTech marketing budget sized for pipeline starts from the number the board expects, works back through cost per opportunity to the spend required, and only then decides the channels. A budget set as a percentage of revenue and spent as a list of channels funds last year’s activity.
- The percentage approach is failing everywhere. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 marketing leaders found budgets flat at 7.7% of revenue, 59% of CMOs saying the budget cannot deliver the strategy, and 39% planning to cut agency spend and 39% planning to cut labour. Paid media takes 30.6% of the total.
- Five rules allocate for pipeline: start from the number; fund three channels to depth before a fourth; put proof before promotion; split people, agency and media on purpose; and reserve a share for testing and for the length of the health buying cycle.
- Health changes two of the five. Proof, meaning evidence pages and references, has to be funded before paid promotion because the committee reads before it meets. The reserve has to cover cycles of two or more quarters.
- Judge the allocation monthly on qualified pipeline by source and cost per opportunity, and move money between channels on the evidence, quarterly, with the board’s agreement in advance.
A HealthTech marketing budget sized for pipeline is built backwards. Start with the qualified pipeline the board expects next year and divide by the share that closes to get the opportunities needed. Multiply by the cost per opportunity the company has measured, and the result is the spend. Then decide which channels produce those opportunities at that cost, and fund them to the depth where they work. A budget built forwards, as a percentage of revenue spread across a list of channels, funds last year’s activity and hopes.
The forwards method is failing in public. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 marketing leaders, run in February and March 2025, found budgets flat at 7.7% of company revenue, 59% of CMOs saying the budget is insufficient for the strategy, and 39% planning to cut agency spend and another 39% planning to cut labour. Paid media takes 30.6% of the total. A HealthTech marketing budget that copies those proportions inherits the same insufficiency.
This guide sets out five allocation rules for the founder, CEO or head of marketing at a HealthTech, health SaaS or MedTech company who is setting or defending next year’s spend. The stage is Series A to Series B, in the US, the UK or Europe. Our guide to the HealthTech growth strategy covers the plan the budget funds, and our pillar on the HealthTech marketing agency model covers the agency share of the split.
A budget set as a percentage of revenue funds last year’s activity. A HealthTech marketing budget set from the pipeline number funds next year’s result.
Why the health buying cycle changes the maths
6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report, drawn from nearly 4,000 B2B buyers, found that buyers first contact a seller 61% of the way through their journey. Gartner reports 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience. A hospital committee researches for months before it calls, so money spent in the first quarter produces opportunities in the third. A budget judged month by month will cut the channel that was about to work.
1. Start from the pipeline number
The first rule is the arithmetic. A HealthTech marketing budget begins with the qualified pipeline the board expects, expressed in opportunities rather than in money, because opportunities are what marketing produces. If the plan needs forty new qualified opportunities next year and the company’s measured cost per opportunity is known, the spend is forty times that cost. Add the fixed costs of the people and the pages that produce them. Everything else in the budget is a decision about how to reach that number more cheaply.
A HealthTech marketing budget when the cost per opportunity is unknown
Most Series A health companies do not know their cost per opportunity, because the early opportunities came from the founder and were never costed. Then the first quarter of the HealthTech marketing budget is spent finding out. Three channels run to depth, opportunities counted by source, the founder’s introductions on their own line. By the end of the quarter the company has a real cost for each channel. The rest of the year’s allocation is built on it. Our guide to HealthTech demand generation describes the measurement.
The HealthTech marketing budget number the board should approve
Ask the board to approve three things rather than one. The pipeline number, the cost per opportunity the plan assumes, and the rule for moving money between channels when the measured cost differs from the assumed one. A HealthTech marketing budget approved as a single total gets renegotiated every time a channel underperforms. Approved with its assumptions and its reallocation rule, it gets managed instead.
2. Fund three channels to depth before a fourth
The second rule is concentration. McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse, from nearly 4,000 decision makers, found buyers use an average of ten channels in a purchase. A Series A HealthTech marketing budget cannot be present in ten. The choice is three channels funded to the depth where they produce, or ten funded to the depth where none does. The second is how most budgets are spent. Those three are chosen from where the buyer researches. In health that is usually search with an evidence page behind it, references and referrals, and email to the pipeline the company already owns.
What depth means in a HealthTech marketing budget
Search to depth is a page for every question each committee seat asks, written by someone who can be named, published for two quarters before it is judged. References to depth is five customers who will take a call, with a case study each. Email to depth is a quarterly evidence email to every stalled evaluation, written for the seat that stalled. Each of the three has a cost. A HealthTech marketing budget funds all three of those costs before it funds a fourth channel’s first month.
The fourth channel test
Add a fourth channel when the first three are producing opportunities at a stable cost. The constraint has to be volume rather than conversion. Paid media, events and account programmes are the usual fourth channels in health, and each needs the first three to exist. Each sends a buyer to the evidence and security pages that search built and to the references that the reference programme built. At Healthora, we have seen that HealthTech marketing budgets which fund paid media before the evidence pages exist tend to buy traffic to pages that cannot convert a committee. The same money moved to the pages first tends to change the cost per opportunity within two quarters.
3. Put proof before promotion
The third rule is specific to health. The committee reads before it meets, and what it reads is evidence. Outcomes from a site like theirs, the study behind them, the security posture, the integrations, the pricing model. TrustRadius’s 2024 B2B Buying Disconnect, from 2,164 buyers, found 78% already knew the products they bought before the purchase began and 63% shortlist two or three vendors. A HealthTech marketing budget that funds promotion before proof pays to send buyers to pages that give them no reason to shortlist.
What the HealthTech marketing budget proof line funds
The proof line funds an evidence page with a named clinical author, a method and a reference list. Then a security and compliance page. An integrations page. A pricing model page. Three case studies written around the committee’s seats. These are one-off costs in the first quarter, with a maintenance cost after. They are the cheapest line in the HealthTech marketing budget relative to what they do, because every later channel sends the buyer to them. Our guide to the HealthTech landing page covers how each is built.
Why proof also lowers the media cost
Proof also earns its place in the HealthTech marketing budget through search. Google’s guidance on helpful content says its systems weight experience, expertise, authority and trust more heavily on topics that affect health. An evidence page built for the committee tends to rank for the buyer’s most serious searches. That reduces the paid budget needed to be found for them. In the US, the FTC’s Health Products Compliance Guidance requires “competent and reliable scientific evidence” for health claims, so the proof line also funds the review that keeps every claim inside what the regulator allows.
A specialist’s view on your allocation
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Book a Free Consultation4. Split people, agency and media on purpose
The fourth rule is the split between the three things a HealthTech marketing budget buys: people in the building, specialists outside it, and media. Gartner found 39% of CMOs planning to cut agency spend and 39% planning to cut labour in the same year. That describes budgets being trimmed from both ends without a view of what each end produces. The split should follow the stage. At Series A the building needs one person who owns the number and the brief. The disciplines, from technical search to conversion design, are cheaper to buy from specialists than to employ, and media waits for proof.
How the HealthTech marketing budget splits by stage
At seed to Series A the HealthTech marketing budget funds one marketing lead or a fractional CMO, a specialist agency for the disciplines, and a small media line once the evidence pages exist. Series A to B: a lead and one or two generalists, an agency for the specialist disciplines. Media is scaled against a measured cost per opportunity. The ANA’s in-house agency study found 82% of member companies now have some in-house capability and 92% of those still use external agencies, so the hybrid is the norm at every stage. Our guide to HealthTech agency vs in-house compares the two lines in detail.
The one line a HealthTech marketing budget should never cut first
The person who owns the number. When a budget is cut, the temptation is to keep the media, which is visible. The judgement, which is not visible, goes first. Gartner’s survey found 22% of CMOs saying generative AI has reduced their reliance on agencies for creativity and strategy. The execution layer is being repriced and the judgement layer is not. Cut media first, then breadth of disciplines, and keep the person who decides where the remaining money goes.
5. Reserve for testing and for the cycle
The fifth rule is the reserve, and most budgets forget it twice. First, a share held back to test a channel the plan did not include. The committee map will reveal a seat nobody expected, and the search data will reveal a question nobody wrote for. Second, a share held to keep the three main channels running through the length of a health buying cycle. Money spent in the first quarter has to still be there when the opportunities it produced arrive in the third. A HealthTech marketing budget without a reserve is either underspent in a panic or overspent in a rush.
How large the HealthTech marketing budget reserve should be
A tenth of the HealthTech marketing budget for tests is the usual working figure, spent in two or three small experiments a year, each with a stated hypothesis and a stop rule. The cycle reserve is harder to size and depends on the company’s own measured cycle. If hospital deals take three quarters from first contact to close, the channels that start them have to be funded for three quarters before their cost per opportunity can be judged. Rock Health recorded $6.4 billion of US digital health funding across 245 deals in the first half of 2025, and the companies behind those deals are being asked for pipeline on a timeline the buying cycle does not respect.
The test a HealthTech marketing budget should run first
Almost always the first test is a page rather than a channel: an evidence page for the seat that stalled the last three deals, or a security page written to the questionnaire procurement sent. Such a test costs little, takes a month, and is judged on whether the seat stops stalling. At Healthora, we have seen that companies which spend their first reserve on a page for the stalling seat tend to learn more about their cost per opportunity than companies that spend it on a new channel. The page changes the conversion of every channel at once.
A HealthTech marketing budget in practice: the allocation by quarter
A HealthTech marketing budget built on the five rules runs to a shape across the year. Quarter one is proof and measurement: the evidence, security, integrations and pricing pages, the first three case studies and the three channels started. Opportunities are counted by source with the founder’s line kept separate. Then quarter two runs the three channels to depth and produces the first measured cost per opportunity. In quarter three the fourth channel is added if the first three have earned it, and the first test is spent. The fourth quarter is judged on pipeline from sources other than the founder, and the next year’s number is set from it.
Companies whose HealthTech marketing budget is allocated this way usually notice the change first at the board. The conversation moves from the total to the assumptions: the cost per opportunity, the cycle, the reallocation rule. Then the report begins to show opportunities from search, references and email on their own lines, and the fourth channel gets funded on evidence rather than enthusiasm. The following year’s budget is approved in one meeting because the arithmetic is on the page.
The recap below lists the five HealthTech marketing budget rules in the order to apply them.
- Start from the pipeline number. Opportunities needed, times cost per opportunity, plus the fixed costs of people and pages. Ask the board to approve the assumptions and the reallocation rule with the total.
- Fund three channels to depth before a fourth. Search with evidence behind it, references, and email to the owned pipeline, each funded to where it produces. A fourth only when the constraint is volume.
- Put proof before promotion. The HealthTech marketing budget funds evidence, security, integrations, pricing model and three case studies, funded in the first quarter, because every later channel sends the buyer to them.
- Split people, agency and media on purpose. One owner of the number in the building, specialists outside it, media scaled against a measured cost. Cut media first and the owner last.
- Reserve for testing and for the cycle. A tenth of the HealthTech marketing budget for two or three tests a year, and enough to keep the three channels running through the length of the buying cycle. The first test is a page for the seat that stalls deals.
A HealthTech marketing budget can be built and run by an in-house team, by a specialist agency with a strategy layer, or by the hybrid most health companies settle on. Our guide to the HealthTech marketing audit shows where allocations usually leak, and our services and case studies show what the agency share of the split buys in practice.
A specialist in health understands that the committee reads before it meets, that proof has to exist before promotion can work, and that a hospital buying cycle will outlast a quarterly review. Build the HealthTech marketing budget backwards from the number and fund three channels to depth. Put the evidence pages first, split the three lines on purpose and keep a reserve for the cycle. Then judge it monthly on the one page that shows opportunities by source.
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Book a Free ConsultationFrequently asked questions
How much should a HealthTech company spend on marketing?
Size the HealthTech marketing budget from the pipeline number rather than from a percentage of revenue: the qualified opportunities the board expects, times the measured cost per opportunity, plus the fixed costs of the people and the proof pages. Gartner’s 2025 survey found budgets averaging 7.7% of revenue with 59% of CMOs saying that is insufficient for their strategy, which is the argument against copying the average.
What percentage of a HealthTech marketing budget should go to paid media?
Less than the 30.6% Gartner found across industries, at least until the proof pages exist and the cost per opportunity is measured. In a Series A health company the first year’s media line is small and starts in the second quarter, after the evidence, security and pricing pages are live. Paid traffic to pages that cannot convert a committee is the most expensive line in any HealthTech marketing budget.
How should a HealthTech marketing budget be split between in-house and agency?
Split the HealthTech marketing budget by stage. At seed to Series A, one marketing lead or a fractional CMO in the building and a specialist agency for the disciplines. At Series A to B, a lead and one or two generalists, with the agency covering technical search, conversion design and content at volume. The ANA found 82% of companies have in-house capability and 92% of those still use agencies, so the hybrid is the norm.
How much of the budget should be held in reserve?
About a tenth of the HealthTech marketing budget for two or three tests a year, each with a hypothesis and a stop rule, plus enough to keep the three main channels running through the length of the company’s measured buying cycle. If hospital deals take three quarters, the channels that start them are funded for three quarters before their cost is judged.
What should the first quarter of a HealthTech marketing budget fund?
Proof and measurement, which is where a HealthTech marketing budget earns its second quarter. The evidence page with a named clinical author, the security and compliance page, the integrations page, the pricing model page and the first three case studies. Plus the three channels started and opportunities counted by source, with the founder’s introductions on their own line. The first quarter’s job is to make the second quarter’s cost per opportunity measurable.
How do we defend the budget to the board?
Present the arithmetic rather than the total: the pipeline number, the close rate, the cost per opportunity the plan assumes, the channels that produce at that cost, and the rule for moving money when the measured cost differs. A HealthTech marketing budget presented this way is approved as a plan with assumptions, and the monthly report against those assumptions is the defence.
What does Healthora charge to help with budget allocation?
Fees depend on the scope, from a one-off HealthTech marketing budget review to a strategy engagement that builds the plan the budget funds, and are agreed for the engagement rather than billed by the hour. The consultation is free and produces a first view of where the current split leaks. Book one for a view on the right structure for your stage.
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