From Unknown to In-Demand: Spearheading Growth for a Sales-Led Startup
Our client, a sales-led B2B startup in the healthcare space, brought us in to engineer a full-funnel growth marketing program. Within a year, our research-anchored strategy and ambitious creative execution had helped drive:
booked meetings (paid, organic, and direct)
in estimated contract value from closed-won deals (350%+ in program ROI)
in estimated contract value in open pipeline opportunities
impressions and 400+ engagements with our client’s Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) on LinkedIn
Background:
The $5.3 Trillion Opportunity
In 2025, roughly $5.3 trillion ($5,300,000,000,000!) will move through the US healthcare system.
The vast majority of that money travels via provider-payer contracts: agreements between healthcare facilities and insurance companies that outline reimbursement rates. You can think about these contracts as the financial heart of the healthcare system.
Our client works on behalf of providers to ensure their contracts are strong and their reimbursement rates align with fair market data.
Because this case study shares real revenue numbers, we have taken steps to protect our client’s privacy, including removing any mention of their brand and omitting specific details about their services.
Said simply, our client exists to help providers get paid fairly for the value they create — to help them get a fair slice of the $5.3 trillion pie.
The challenge? With just a few years of experience under their belt, our client was virtually unknown in the space. And it goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: Breaking into the startup-a-minute healthcare industry is no easy task.
This is how we defied the odds.
The Goal: High-Quality Leads and Closed Deals
Who doesn’t want bullseye leads and business growth? The better question is how do you get there?
At Magneti, we do believe there’s a dash of magic in great marketing. But the science must come first. Step by step, this is the process we followed to produce success.
Step 1: Research — Avoiding the Assumption Tax
The cost of guessing is tremendous compared to the cost of research.
This is one of our favorite marketing maxims, what we at Magneti refer to as the “Assumption Tax.” 99% of marketing programs are built around a handful of Google searches, some back-and-forths with ChatGPT, and the hunches of a few industry veterans. In other words, anything but real, rigorous primary research with the target audience.
And that’s why 99% of marketing programs return sub-par (or at best, on par) results. Not so for our client.
The cost of guessing is tremendous compared to the cost of research.
Instead of paying the Assumption Tax, our client invested in in-depth interviews (IDIs) with a number of high-impact leaders in the space: decision-makers at healthcare practices with $100M+ in annual revenue. We recruited these leaders and engaged with them 1:1 to explore questions like:
- What pain points do you experience around your payer contracts?
- Does your practice have access to fair market data for reimbursements?
- How does our client’s current messaging resonate with you
- What would convince you to partner with our client?
- What can our client provide to make the decision easier for you?
Did it pay off? Big time.
The Rewards of Research
We unearthed a wealth of valuable insights, but for the sake of time, we’ll focus on oneexample.
The onboarding fee for our client, at the time, was $25k. Providers had to fork over 25 grand to get our client’s contract optimization machine running. Sounds like a big hurdle, no? But here’s the kicker: If our client couldn’t improve revenue enough to make up for that cost (and then some!), our client would pay the provider back.
This commitment resonated deeply with the leaders we interviewed. They said things like:
- “How can I argue with that? That’d be great. I haven’t seen anyone do that in this space.”
- “One of the things I like about [our client] is that they do a money-back guarantee. If they don’t feel like they can get the upfront fee back after crunching the data, they refund their fee.”
Despite its resonance, this messaging was virtually nowhere in our client’s marketing materials. As far as we could tell, it was hidden as a side note, a sweetener in sales calls. A hero concept was being buried on page nine, barely seeing the light of day.
In a hurry, we partnered with the client to fix that. After a few iterations, we settled on the client-branded “No Risk, High Reward” promise. We slapped it on ads and assets wherever we could. And the meetings started pouring in.
That’s a tiny taste of the tremendous power of primary research.
Our in-depth qualitative inter views with target market healthcare CEOs centered on their actual encounters with payers — bad, less bad, or simply Kafkaesque.
In telling their stories, they revealed pain, fear, longing, absurdity, skepticism, resilience — a rainbow of exquisitely human responses. The patterns in those responses helped us peg, with context, what would truly resonate… and what would likely get stuck in their B.S. filters. When you design great research, conduct best practice analysis, and listen deeply with unconditional positive regard, you get insights that help marketing, sales, and product teams focus on what is going to really land with those they seek to engage.”
David Lucas, Chief Growth Officer
Magneti
Step 2: Strategy — Engaging Sophisticated Buyers
Magneti’s growth process is designed for adaptability. We can pull a vast range of levers across a wide range of channels to create virtually any marketing experience for your target audience. If you can dream it up, we can deliver.
But the best campaigns rarely do everything. Doing everything spreads resources too thin and makes KPIs difficult to pinpoint, killing impact. No, the best campaigns pull the right levers. And that’s what we did for our client.
Take a look at the content program we developed, which was just one small slice of the broader strategy:
It’s an ecosystem of insight-rich content, tied to the pain points of our client’s audience and strategically promoted through the channels that pack the biggest punch. But we got even more granular than this, paying special attention to paid social:
Did we run image ads on Instagram? Video ads on YouTube? No. Because our client’s audience didn’t hang out there. We stuck to the channels where decision-makers were likely to search or congregate — Google and LinkedIn — and we consistently offered razor-sharp creative to the right people.
A great growth strategy meets buyers where they are, not where we want them to be.
For this client, we built everything around research into how their customers think, what they need, and what moves them to act. We used those insights to shape messaging, highlight their deep expertise, and focus on the core channels where buyers actually spend their time. Our layered LinkedIn ads built trust and awareness, while Google search ads turned that interest into action. The strategy leveraged initial brand awareness to create demand that drove real business growth.”
Gary Magnone, Managing Director
Magneti
Step 3: The Targeting — Reaching the Right People
Targeting is the unsung hero of marketing.
Comprehensive strategies and flashy creative get all the glory. And they are important. But more often than not, the success of a campaign hinges on targeting. Bringing your brand into the eyeballs (and more importantly, the brains) of the people with the power and motivation to buy.
We double- and triple-checked to make sure that our campaigns would hit:
- High-influence leaders (CXOs, VPs, directors, etc.), with
- 12+ years of seniority, at
- Growing companies (often with 51-200 employees), in
- The right healthcare settings to benefit from our client’s offering.
Here’s the raw data from our targeting over an 11-month period:
Strong, cohesive targeting enables your marketing to truly speak to your audience and generate relevant awareness and interest.
It’s the lifeblood of your campaign, so it’s essential to nail the details here. We started with qualified research, learned from and leaned into initial data, and then continued to refine targeting and creative to uplift performance and boost results. This approach allowed us to continuously ensure messaging and creative was fresh, impactful, and resonated well with the designated audience.”
Ady Garibay, Paid Search + Social Strategist
Magneti
Step 4: The Creative — Bold and Emotionally Resonant
When was the last time you saw a B2B ad that made you laugh?
When was the last time you received a B2B marketing email that was so moving you forwarded it to a friend?
We’d be willing to bet the answer is either “Never” or “That one time, back in 1999, when Hotmail was all the rage…”.
Our point is that B2B advertising is almost always the same: buzzwords, stock imagery, tons of clarity, and no creativity at all. It’s a snoozefest. But it doesn’t have to be. (In reality, recent research from LinkedIn, MAGNA, and Ipsos has shown that bold creative — creative that makes you chuckle or raise an eyebrow or tear up — is extremely effective.)
For our client, we set out to defy the snoozefest, to make ads that were creative without sacrificing clarity. We’ll let you be the judge of our success.
Memory Marketing: A Key to Long-Term B2B Growth
One last thought before we wrap up. Why does bold creative work?
Because it makes memories. Not just any memories: enduring, commercially relevant memories in the minds of your ICPs.
When decision-makers feel a pain point, they should think of your brand. When they enter a buying situation, they should think of your brand. When they build a consideration set, your brand should be first on the list — and when they reach a decision, it should be the only one remaining.
If you’ve done great memory marketing, that’s what happens.
What’s the OG search engine? Not Google. Not Bing. It’s your brain.
When folks have a problem, the first thing they do is scan their 86 billion neurons for the solution. And that’s why memory marketing matters. If your brand is linked to their problem in just a few of those neurons, you’re FAR more likely to win over sophisticated B2B buyers. Win early, and you’ll win often.”
Samuel Todd, Content Strategist
Magneti
The Outcomes
At the end of the day, opening doors and closing deals is what Magneti marketing is all about.
The Intangibles
By the end of our first year of partnership, our client had:
- First-hand insights into the minds of core decision-makers
- Deep connections to buying triggers for their ICPs
- A comprehensive strategy to guide years of content development
- A professionalized growth program that was firing on all cylinders
The Tangibles
Magneti’s program exceeded the goals defined at the outset:
- 61 meetings booked
- $650k+ in estimated contract value from closed-won deals (350%+ program ROI)
- $1.3M+ in estimated contract value in open pipeline opportunities
- +63% brand search volume in six months
Ready for Magneti?
Magneti moves the needle. We get you actually good leads through research-anchored strategy and bold creative execution. We’re not here to play it safe, we’re here to help you solve tough problems and spark enduring brand growth.
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