Makers: Marlena Sarunac
David McCarthy
Marlena Sarunac wants to tell you something: most marketing in health tech is boring. It’s too full of platitudes, too familiar, too boundary confined.
“If it’s boring, it’s broken,” she argues.
To the marketing leader and the founder of The Company Advice, a fractional marketing and design agency for startups, the industry’s marketing needs more truth, more trust, more insight, more “soul,” more “teeth,” as she puts it.
That’s where her work and her content come in. Marlena is helping emerging health tech companies, like Systole Health, Skin Wins, Volta, and Piction Health, build a brand that people actually remember and that owns a category.
Marlena and I chatted asynchronously about her campaign against Boring Marketing, the unique marketing needs for early-stage companies, and why startup founders and leaders need to market with the same urgency an 8 Mile battle rapper might.
What type of content do you publish, and where do you publish?
I create content that makes health tech startups feel seen, and occasionally, a little called out. Whether it's marketing strategy breakdowns, GTM playbooks, or hard truths about what actually moves the needle, you can find my content across LinkedIn and The Company Advice blog. I also contribute a lot of effort to brand positioning work that becomes the backbone of startups’ content strategies.
Who is your ideal audience, and what do they care, or worry, about?
Health tech founders, marketers, and product leaders who know they should be doing more with their brand but don’t know what or how. They worry about audience trust, GTM motion misfires, and whether their AI-powered [insert buzzword] is actually resonating.
I also work with early startup teams who are obsessed with building something impactful but often realize too late that a great product isn’t enough. They worry about breaking through the noise, differentiating in a saturated market, and how to tell a compelling story without resorting to generic “We’re revolutionizing healthcare” platitudes.
What's been your best-performing or best-received piece of content?
As a marketing leader, I’ve often taken the back seat when it comes to my own self-promotion. For example, in a past leadership role, rather than promote my own voice, I used my storytelling abilities to amplify the voices of others, like our CEO, our product leaders, and, most importantly, our engineers. I loved telling their stories because those were the ones that needed to reach our audience, who were other engineers. By serving as the conduit between what was being built and the people building it, and translating technical complexity into narratives that resonated, I crafted a content strategy that didn’t just inform, but engaged.
How’d we measure it? Clicks, baby, clicks! (And Ahrefs, and Google Analytics—because the best content strategy isn’t a shot in the dark. It’s about keeping a sharp eye on what’s drawing in organic eyeballs, then refining, iterating, and repeating.)
In terms of the content I'm generating now for The Company Advice, the success of some of my recent thought pieces have translated to founders and investors reaching out and asking "Hey, we think we need your help!"
Which brands or creators inspire your work?
I take notes from anyone who refuses to water down the truth. People who have walked the walk and are now generously sharing their learnings and getting awesome industry folks to the table to share their learnings too. April Dunford on positioning, Lenny Rachitsky on product-led growth, and the occasional meme marketer who reminds us that humor and conversion rates are not mutually exclusive (shout out, Nikhil Krishnan!)
When it comes to creating content, what are your first principles?
Clarity wins. If your grandma can’t understand it, it’s too complicated.
If it’s boring, it’s broken. Information doesn’t have to be dry.
Write for impact, not approval. If no one reacts (positively or negatively), you haven’t said anything worth remembering.
How do you decide on a topic? Do you plan your content out?
A mix of strategy and sheer exasperation. Some of my best ideas usually come from frustration. I write about problems I see startups running into again and again, whether that’s terrible positioning, unrealistic marketing expectations, or founders burning cash on tactics that don’t work.
Sometimes it’s planned, but often it’s reactive because good content is a response to what’s happening now. This is also why brands can’t farm out all of their content needs to AI tools.
As the fractional CMO at The Company Advice, you help startups grow their brand and their business. What's unique about creating content for leaders in the market? Has anything changed?
The biggest change I’m seeing is more noise, less trust. Buyers are more skeptical than ever, which means content has to earn attention. It’s not a given. The best brands aren’t just broadcasting; they’re building credibility, educating, and giving people a reason to care. A founder posting generic LinkedIn updates won’t cut it anymore. Thought leadership needs teeth.
In a memorable post, you argued that brands need to "unsnooze" their marketing and make it less boring. Is there an example that comes to mind of a brand doing exciting work in health tech? And how can brands ensure they're not alienating their often-conservative audience?
In health tech, there’s a huge business opportunity for exciting branding and marketing to emerge. I think everyone's a little afraid right now to rock the boat. From the lack of product-market fit, lack of measurable ROI, and the dip in investor interest, my sense is that a lot of health tech startups are afraid of pushing boundaries.
That brings me to my advice: you don’t have to be completely edgy—you just have to be memorable. That means a few things:
Speak like a human, not a press release.
Have a real point of view.
Make your audience feel something (even if that’s just relief that someone finally gets their pain point!)
When you think about founders at early-stage brands, what perception about marketing do you most often try to change, either in your content for them or when starting a project with them?
This is a big question to answer. I have an entire section of a deck dedicated to "what marketing is not."
I'll start with this, though: marketing is a system, not a band-aid. It's not something you simply switch on when you need leads. Just like your product and engineering teams deserve time and resources to build their part of the company, so does your marketing function. You need positioning, you need strategy, and it's going to take a couple sprints to get there.
There's a fair amount of investment that needs to go into building the foundation. Everything else you build on top is destined for failure if you ignore this critical part of the process.
Do you use any tools for your content creation?
In addition to Ahrefs and Google Analytics, I use an unreasonable number of Google Docs, old school sticky notes all over my desk, and lots of random voice notes on my phone!
What is your optimistic contrarian take on health tech for this year?
AI won’t replace doctors, but it will force healthcare orgs to rethink their outdated UX.
Patients expect digital-first experiences, and the companies that deliver seamless, intuitive, and trust-building interactions will win. If your user experience stinks or you're missing product-market fit, no amount of snazzy marketing is going to be able to solve for your lack of engagement.
Additionally, something I often remind folks is that B2B buyers are people. And people make decisions emotionally first, then justify them rationally. The best brands will be the ones that learn to sell to enterprise buyers the way they’d sell to consumers—with clarity, strong positioning, and (dare I say it?) a little bit of soul.
If your content had a theme song or anthem, what song would it be?
If “you’ve got one shot, one opportunity” to grab your audience’s attention, you better not waste it on a bland LinkedIn post.
Marlena Sarunac is the fractional CMO at her agency, The Company Advice. Reach out to her for questions about positioning, messaging, content strategy, and more.
