Marketing in the Ecosystem Era: What Platform-Led Growth Means for GTM Teams at Healthee

Healthee isn’t just scaling — it’s transforming. What started as a sales-led, high-touch go-to-market motion has evolved into a hybrid model where we sell through partners, platforms, and distribution ecosystems — but still depend on end-user adoption to drive success.

It’s what makes our growth strategy unique and what makes life in GTM both more challenging and more exciting than ever.

The New Reality: We Sell to Platforms, but We Grow Through Users

Our ecosystem is complex. Not only do we sell directly to employers, but we also partner with PEOs, TPAs, brokers, and BenAdmins — enterprise buyers with long sales cycles, detailed compliance requirements, and big expectations. But once the deal is signed, the actual usage and success depends on something much more human and immediate: whether the employee finds value in Healthee — fast.

This duality creates a unique challenge for GTM teams:

We need to master enterprise sales and partnership strategy while executing consumer-grade onboarding, messaging, and engagement at scale.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all model. It’s a tightrope.

Why the Textbook Doesn’t Work

If you read a product-led growth (PLG) book, it’ll tell you: simplify everything, let the product speak for itself, eliminate friction.

If you read a sales-led playbook, it’ll say: focus on ROI decks, enterprise relationships, and enablement.

If you follow a partner-led model, it’s all about co-marketing, integrations, and joint GTM plays.

At Healthee, we don’t get to pick one. We do all three simultaneously.

That means our GTM engine has to be multilingual. We need:

• A sales team that can sell platform value to enterprise buyers.
  
• A marketing team that can speak to end users like consumers.
  
• A partner team that can activate channel ecosystems.
  

And a customer success team that understands adoption is the new retention.

The Tradeoffs Are Real

As marketers and go-to-market leaders, we live in the tension between:

• Helping close massive platform deals … while not overloading the product with requests that slow the user experience.
• Creating messaging that speaks to brokers and HR leaders … while staying obsessed with what employees actually care about: clarity, ease, and support in moments of need.
• Enabling dozens of go-to-market partners … while keeping the brand consistent, the experience cohesive, and the value clear.

These aren’t problems; they’re the nature of operating in a platform-led, ecosystem-first world. But they do force us to think differently.

What It Means for GTM Teams at Healthee

1. Marketing is No Longer Just Top of Funnel
We own the full journey from acquisition to activation to adoption. Our content, messaging, and in-product comms must support the employee experience, not just the sales motion.

2. Sales and Product Must Be in Lockstep
We work with R&D and Product on what we can promise, how we position it, and what tradeoffs we need to explain. The era of “sell first, build later” is over. We co-create with eyes wide open.

3. Product Education is Part of the Brand
We can’t rely on reps or onboarding teams alone. The brand must speak clearly through every email, product tooltip, FAQ, and in-app moment. Simplicity is our superpower, but only if it’s consistent.

4. Channel Partners Are GTM Multipliers (If We Equip Them Right)
Our platform partners are powerful distribution engines, but only if we give them the right tools: co-branded assets, training, value props, and shared goals. We treat them like part of the team—because they are.

5. Success Means Usage, Not Just Revenue
In this model, a signed contract isn’t the finish line. It’s the starting line. We win when employees actually use Healthee, get value, and keep coming back. That changes how we measure marketing’s success, from MQLs to activation, engagement, and advocacy.

The Bottom Line

At Healthee, we’re not just marketing a product. We’re marketing a platform that has to work for everyone:

• For PEOs and TPAs managing complex ecosystems
• For HR leaders rolling out benefits to thousands of employees
• For Finance leaders, demonstrating significant cost savings on health benefits
• And most importantly, for employees navigating their health and well-being with limited time and high anxiety

Our role in GTM is to hold all of that. To help Sales close, to help Product connect, and to help every employee feel supported from their first click.

It’s not easy — but that’s the point.

We’re not playing by the old rules. We’re building a new kind of company for a new kind of growth. And we’re just getting started.