Contract marketing leadership provides flexibility for start-up organization

Client

Early-stage health IT company

Situation

The client, CEO and co-founder of a start-up health IT company, decided it was time to add a marketing executive to his small but growing leadership team. The original team included investors – most of whom had full-time jobs – doing the tech development, marketing, sales and business development work needed to build a business plan that would generate the first round of external financing. Now that the first round of financing was in the bank, it was time to replace some of the original team with employees and dedicated consultants.

Solution

Hire Nancy Lonsinger of Leverage Point Advisors (LPA) to provide strategic marketing consulting and service as the head of marketing. Nancy served in this capacity for three years. During this time, Nancy was an active member of the leadership team, leading all aspects of marketing and strategic planning.

Planning began with market sizing, researching how many hospitals and physician group practices around the country could be in the target audience. Once targets were identified, a lead generation plan was developed, utilizing direct and email campaigns with follow-up calls by a sales development representative who delivered warm leads to the field sales representatives.

Key to success was flexibility. As with most businesses, during the first three years of the company’s lifecycle, it was necessary to revise the original business strategy multiple times as tactics were implemented and results analyzed and utilized to adjust the strategy. With each strategy adjustment, targets and/or how to best reach them morphed to support the new strategy.

In addition to the lead generation activities, marketing efforts were focused on awareness building activities, such as building and maintaining the corporate website, trade show planning and attendance, and managing all public relations and social media activities. Agencies and independent contractors with experience in specific areas of marketing were utilized to implement the marketing plans.

Results

The organization and its product were firmly established in its market, winning numerous awards and recognitions, including inclusion in the KLAS report for its industry segment. Thus, it was time for the strategic focus to shift to growth within current customer accounts, with the goal of establishing showcase accounts that could be used to take sales to the next level. Investment in lead generation and awareness-building activities were decreased to fund these activities, demonstrating one of the primary benefits of working with LPA … the flexibility to quickly adjust go-to-market activities.