My biggest frustration when I was in-house head of marketing was working with agencies. It was the same set of problems over and over again. Here’s just an example from 2 years ago of this recurring story…. The first agency - too cold:Our company specialized in healthcare, and the agency I inherited in my new role didn’t know the industry. They took forever to get started on anything because they had to sit there and learn (and bill us for it while they were doing it.) After

Back when I was still in-house Head of Marketing, autumn was always one of the most stressful times of the year. Fall events season was in full swing, the pressure to hit annual growth targets started to become real, and to top it off, it was annual planning & budget season for next year. Oh and don't forget about your 37 other responsibilities please! Through the frustrating experience of having multiple budgets rejected, I finally learned a handful of things that helped

If you’re marketing into healthcare or life sciences, the standard B2B playbook doesn’t really apply. At least not in the typical sense. That’s because your buyer is buying more than just software. They’re also buying risk reduction and a faster route to the outcomes their particular department or function is tasked with. Take the clinical development group in pharma for example. Nobody in ClinOps is as excited about that new widget or a cleaner UI as you are. What they care

We sat down with 19 healthcare, healthtech and life sciences marketing leaders to discuss how to reframe marketing as a growth driver, not support function. Participants included VP and C-level marketing leaders from life sciences, healthtech and healthcare-adjacent organizations spanning early-stage startups through growth-stage, PE-backed, and publicly traded companies. Our sessions were designed as peer conversations (rather than the usual boring presentations) focusing on

One thing I’ve learned from running Sirona Marketing for two years: every time I think we’ve figured something out, the business changes again. I’m incredibly proud of what Abdul Rastagar, our team, and I have built, but navigating a growing services business comes with plenty of uncertainty, too. Here's just a small list of a few things I've learned along this crazy and rewarding ride. 1. Be a giver, not a taker Abdul and I wouldn't be where we are today without the suppor

CONFERENCE SEASON PREDICTION: the vast majority of booths will say something about “powered by AI.” Healthcare powered by AI. Biopharma powered by AI. AI-powered clinical trials. AI-powered eClinical. AI-powered RCM. AI-powered patient engagement. AI-powered regulatory. AI-powered quality. Or perhaps it will be a variation of the same thing but around “agentic” instead: Agentic cloud for healthcare. Agentic bench scientists. Agentic AI for lab informatics. Agentic.... 🥵 Well

It’s our 2nd Sironaversary, celebrating 2 years since founding Sirona Marketing! Not gonna lie, I’m so proud of how far we’ve come on this journey in this short amount of time. If you’d have asked me when we incorporated in August 2024 what Sirona would look like today, I don’t think this is what I would have expected. I would not have been able to predict that we would have served 25+ customers, grown to a team of 5, and were having a blast doing it! When Caitlin La Honta an

Just attended the most recent BioIT World conference last week. This is THE conference where life sciences IT leaders go to figure out how to rebuild scientific R&D around AI, data and infrastructure. Ironically, I met a bunch of ex-Benchling colleagues for the first time in person. I worked there during the pandemic and never had a chance to be in the same room, so that was a lot of fun to get warm hugs from folks! Anyways, here are some impressions: What the sessions said a

We recently conducted a series of CMO roundtables featuring a total of 19 healthtech and life sciences tech heads of marketing with revenue and pipeline responsibility to find out if, and how, marketing is being seen by their CEOs and boards. The results are fascinating. Check them out here: Marketing is finally being treated like a business function Most CMOs are still fighting the same fight There’s a quiet but important shift happening in healthtech marketing. The old conv

We recently reviewed 100 healthcare, life sciences and healthtech websites, focusing specifically on homepage messaging and structure. The goal was to understand how effectively these companies explain what they do, why it matters, and why a buyer in their ICP should trust them. Design vs. messaging clarity What stood out immediately was that most of these sites are clearly the product of thoughtful design work. Visually, many are strong. The problem is that visual polish is

“I believe you have to understand the bottom of the funnel before you build the top.” — Roger Pellegrini, Head of Marketing, Albert Invent If you’ve ever stepped into a science-heavy company as a marketer, you know one thing: it’s about proving marketing’s value where it really counts. In a recent conversation with Sirona Marketing’s Caitlin La Honta and Letitia Rodley, Roger Pellegrini didn’t just talk theory, he lived it. Coming from life sciences marketing into the chemi

“Growth isn’t just about speed—it’s about smart, sustainable scaling.” — Malia Lewin, Founding Partner, Bluebuck Ventures If you’ve ever tried to scale a life sciences startup, you know the challenge: balancing ambition with discipline and speed with strategy. In this episode of the Science of Sales and Marketing podcast, Caitlin La Honta and Abdul Rastagar sit down with Malia Lewin, a seasoned life sciences strategy leader and founding partner at Bluebuck Ventures. Malia s

The historic marketing funnel, developed in the 2010s, no longer reflects modern B2B buying behavior. This traditional approach treats buyers as leads to be captured. Yet today’s actual buyer adoption process isn’t about conversion, but rather about buyer-seller alignment. The buyer journey is more akin to moving up a credibility ladder where each rung is another level of trust earned from prospects. Instead of pushing them through stages, they’re given reasons to believe the

“Marketing should lead, not follow.” — Jamie Gier, Former CMO, HealthTech Executive If you’ve been in healthcare marketing, you’ve probably noticed a trend: the CMO role is disappearing—or evolving—at many companies. In this episode of the Science of Sales and Marketing podcast, Caitlin La Honta and Letitia Rodley sit down with Jamie Gier, a seasoned healthcare CMO with over 25 years of experience, to discuss the shifting landscape of marketing leadership in health tech. J

“Experimentation is about learning what works for your organization through trial and error.” — James Niehaus, Director of Experimentation, Kaiser Permanente In this episode of the Science of Sales and Marketing podcast, Caitlin La Honta and Letitia Rodley engage in a conversation with James Niehaus, Director of Experimentation at Kaiser Permanente. James shares insights from his extensive career in digital marketing, spanning various industries and organizations. He disc

“In a startup, marketing isn’t just a department—it’s a mindset.” — Jake Strich, Head of Marketing, Ganymede If you’ve ever been the first marketing hire at a startup, you know the challenge: building a marketing engine from the ground up with limited resources. In this episode of the Sirona Marketing podcast, Caitlin La Honta and Abdul Rastagar speak with Jake Strich, Head of Marketing at Ganymede, a biotech company specializing in instrument connectivity and lab data plat

Executive Summary: Past tactics no longer work Capital is tighter, buyer attention is scarcer, and AI has reset the rules. In three roundtables with eighteen CMOs, VPs of Marketing, and GTM leaders, one theme dominated: yesterday’s tried-and-true tactics no longer earn tomorrow’s pipeline. Despite these challenges, a few things emerged that showed how these same leaders move the needle. They shared 10 practical strategies that are already producing double-digit lift in demo c

“Marketing isn’t just about shouting louder—it’s about understanding your customer’s real challenges.” — Emily Nault, SVP Commercial, Invert If you’ve ever tried to break into the life sciences market, you know one thing: success comes from solving real problems, not just pushing products. In the latest Sirona Marketing podcast, Caitlin La Honta and Abdul Rastagar sit down with Emily Nault to unpack the complex realities of bioprocessing marketing—and why traditional approa

“It’s not about AI. It’s about solving real problems.” — Dr. Sameer Ather, CEO, XpertDox For all the hype surrounding AI, most of it still misses the point. In a recent conversation with Abdul Rastagar and Caitlin La Honta, Sameer Ather, physician-turned-founder of XpertDox, cut straight through the noise. The future of AI in healthcare isn’t about buzzwords—it’s about outcomes. And for Sameer, that starts with a question: Is your product a want or a need? XpertDox didn’t b

I’ve now spoken with four healthtech founders in the past month who all said a variation of the same thing: “Once the customer sees our AI, it will sell itself.” It’s a dangerous and misleading mindset. They’re right because, in each instance, the tech itself was pretty fucking cool. And yet, they’re wrong at the same time.In fact, it’s a pretty widespread phenomenon with founders who are so passionate and who believe so deeply in the tech they’ve built that they come to beli