By the time you start preparing for a raise, investors have usually already started forming a view.

At some point, usually well before the process formally begins, you’ve been asked to “get PR in place.” Build visibility, shape the narrative, and make sure the company shows up the right way when investors start looking. In healthtech that usually means some version of investor-facing communications, even if it isn’t described that way.

What’s rarely defined is what that actually needs to do. Because by the time anyone is looking closely, they’ve already formed an initial view. Not from the deck, or from a single conversation, but from what’s been published about the company, how the leadership talks about the product, and whether those two things line up.

PR works in the space between how a company describes itself and how outside observers read it. By the time a healthtech company is formally raising, that external view is already taking shape. Investors have looked at what’s publicly available, noticed patterns, and made early judgments about credibility.

Most teams aren’t measuring against that process. They’re measuring what’s easiest to collect and report: coverage, impressions, and volume, because it’s familiar and creates the appearance of momentum. It also avoids a harder question about what PR is supposed to change.

In a healthtech raise, the question is not how much visibility the company has generated. It’s whether the company feels credible, disciplined, and coherent when someone starts evaluating it from the outside. If your measurement framework isn’t tracking that, it won’t tell you anything useful when someone asks.

Measurement breaks when it stays at the activity level

Healthtech introduces a different set of constraints than most B2B sectors. Timelines are longer, diligence is deeper, and there are more ways for risk to enter the story, not all of them tied to the product itself. Some of the risk comes from how the company is described and how consistently that description holds up.

The regulatory layer makes this more concrete. Guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to evolve, particularly around software and AI-driven interventions. At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission has increased scrutiny on how health-related claims are communicated. That affects more than legal review, it shapes how language is picked up, repeated, and interpreted across different contexts. That is often where issues begin in regulated industries. A statement that is accurate in one setting can read as overstated in another once it loses its qualifiers. Over time, those small shifts accumulate. Most reporting frameworks don’t capture that, because they track volume, not effect.

The narrative is rarely coming from one place

Inside the company, the story is being constructed from multiple perspectives.

• Clinical teams are grounded in data and interpretation
• Regulatory and legal are focused on constraints and defensibility
• Product is oriented toward what is coming next
• Finance is evaluating risk, timing, and return

Each perspective is valid, but they aren’t naturally aligned. That misalignment isn’t unusual, but it becomes more pronounced in emerging categories like healthtech.

PR typically sits on top of those inputs, often without the authority to resolve the differences before external communication begins. The result is a narrative that is directionally consistent but not fully coherent when encountered more than once. This doesn’t usually create an obvious issue in a single piece of coverage. It becomes visible when someone reads across multiple sources and begins to notice that the emphasis shifts depending on the context. That kind of inconsistency is enough to slow a diligence process. This is the same discipline problem that shows up across regulated industries generally, not just healthtech.

What the measurement question actually is

Once the problem is framed correctly, the measurement question becomes more precise. The question isn’t whether PR is working in a general sense, but whether the company is becoming easier or harder to evaluate.

In healthtech, investors tend to focus on three things:

1. Whether the clinical evidence holds up
2. Whether the company has been careful about regulatory claims
3. Whether the story stays consistent when it moves from a pitch into technical or regulatory detail

They show up in where the company appears, how it is described, and whether that description holds across different conversations, and in how those signals are built deliberately over time. Coverage can build those signals or undermine them. Aggregate metrics won’t tell you which one is happening.

Translating PR into something a board recognizes

PR measurement still needs to connect to financial language. Share of voice relative to market position, brand-driven acquisition efficiency, and approaches like the royalty relief method all exist for a reason. They give boards and CFOs a way to connect PR to business outcomes rather than just activity.The same demand for financial translation shows up in PE-backed boards during the hold period, not just VC-backed ones preparing to raise.

But in healthtech, the structure isn’t the hard part. The input is, especially as investors become more selective about what they’re willing to underwrite, a shift reflected in recent healthtech investment trends.

Alignment is the work that gets skipped

Most measurement problems can be traced back to a lack of alignment early in the process. Before PR activity begins, there needs to be agreement across clinical, regulatory, product, finance, and communications on what the company must demonstrate by the time it raises capital.

That means agreeing on what the company needs to have demonstrated, in published research,  regulatory filings, and how the product is described before the raise begins. Without it, you’re measuring output, not progress. That alignment is also what makes narrative strategy function as a valuation lever at exit, not just at fundraise.

Adjusting midstream

If PR is already underway without that alignment, the correction point is the investor perspective. Investors typically get stuck on the same few questions:

1. Does the product actually do what the company says it does?
2. Can a health system realistically adopt it?
3. Is there a reimbursement path that doesn’t require an act of Congress?
4. Whether the company communicates discipline.

This last point is where PR either holds up or it doesn’t,  and where you can see the difference most clearly in real growth scenarios.

PR doesn’t influence a raise through isolated moments; it builds through accumulation. The company is being cited in clinical publications, quoted in trade press that investors actually read, and showing up in the same conversations as the category leaders.

Building the Foundation Before the Raise

The measurement problem most healthtech companies face isn’t a reporting problem, it’s a foundation problem. The narrative was never built to serve both audiences simultaneously, and by the time the raise begins, the gap is already showing up in due diligence.

Avaans Media works with healthtech companies to build that foundation before it’s needed. Every engagement starts with the Fingerprint Strategy, a strategic diagnostic that maps where the brand actually stands, what each audience needs to hear, and where the narrative leverage is before a single pitch goes out. The output isn’t a press calendar. It’s a clear picture of what brand authority needs to be built, for whom, and in what order, so the public record investors find during due diligence is already working for you.

Brand authority is what both tracks are building toward. Customers pay more for it, investors assign a premium to it, and acquirers move through due diligence faster when it’s established. The companies that strategically build it are the ones that show up to those conversations from a position of strength.

If your PR program isn’t building toward that, an Assessment is the right starting point.

Questions CMOs Ask

How should a healthtech CMO measure PR effectiveness for investors?

The most defensible frameworks connect PR to how investors evaluate risk, not how teams report activity.

Share of voice relative to market position is still useful, but only if that visibility is happening in credible environments. Brand-driven CAC efficiency can translate PR into financial terms, but it assumes the underlying narrative is trusted enough to convert.

For companies ahead of meaningful revenue, approaches like the royalty relief method can isolate brand value as an asset. In healthtech, that value is heavily influenced by clinical credibility, regulatory discipline, and whether the story holds up under scrutiny.

The framework matters less than the question it’s built to answer. If it doesn’t map to what an investor needs to believe before underwriting the risk, it won’t hold up in a board conversation.

What’s different about PR for healthtech companies compared to other B2B sectors?

Three dynamics tend to shape how PR functions in healthtech.

First, the audience mix carries different consequences. Investors are evaluating risk and scalability. Clinicians are evaluating evidence. Regulators are evaluating claims. Those groups don’t respond to the same signals, and moving one in the wrong direction can create exposure, not just noise.

Second, regulatory and claims risk is built into how the story is told. A statement that is accurate in one context can become problematic once it’s repeated elsewhere without the same qualifiers. PR is not just shaping perception; it’s shaping how the company is interpreted.

Third, the timeline from validation to scale means that credibility often precedes revenue. What exists early is a pattern of signals, where the company shows up, who engages with it, and how consistently the narrative holds. That pattern becomes a proxy for quality long before financial metrics are fully developed.

When should a healthtech company start building its PR measurement framework?

Before the program starts, not after.

In practice, that means before an agency is engaged, before coverage goals are set, and ideally before PR is even framed as a line item.

The measurement framework should come out of the same conversation that defines what the company needs to demonstrate in order to raise capital. Not messaging, but proof. What has to be believed, and what would make that belief reasonable.

Most teams avoid that conversation because it requires alignment across clinical, regulatory, product, finance, and communications. It’s easier to start generating activity and define success later.

That works until the moment someone asks what PR is actually doing for the raise.

What signals actually matter to investors evaluating a healthtech company?

Investors are rarely reacting to a single piece of coverage. They’re responding to the accumulation of signals.

Where the company appears, and whether those environments carry weight. How consistently the company is described across different contexts. Whether the narrative holds when you move from marketing language to technical or regulatory detail.

Individually, none of these are decisive. Together, they shape whether the company feels credible, disciplined, and investable.

Those signals are measurable, but not through volume alone. They require a framework that looks at pattern, consistency, and context over time.

Request a PR Evaluation Assessment

Sources

• State of Digital Health 2025 Report – January 22, 2026
• 2025 year-end funding: $14.2B raised across 482 deals – January 12, 2026
• Guidances with Digital Health Content – January 29, 2026
• Health and Fitness Claims (Federal Trade Commission)
• The Future of Healthtech – October, 2025

 

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →