How to choose a B2B marketing agency that understands regulated industries in healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences

Bridget Saroff, Account Director

When your organization operates in a regulated space, choosing a B2B marketing agency isn’t just about creativity — it’s about compliance, credibility, and risk mitigation. In healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences, layers of regulation influence everything from messaging to media strategy, content development, and paid promotion.

Healthcare, life sciences, biotech, medtech, and emerging therapeutic categories face oversight that shapes how brands communicate, how claims are made, and how risk is managed at every stage of the marketing funnel.

At KNB Communications, we navigate these regulated environments every day across healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences. Regulations shift across verticals and across communication channels, meaning an effective agency must understand not just the rules — but how to build smart, compelling strategies within them.

Here’s what to look for when selecting the right partner.

Expertise in navigating regulated verticals in healthcare and life sciences

How experienced is the agency across healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences?

Regulated industries aren’t one-size-fits-all — and neither are the compliance challenges that shape how you can communicate. Even within the healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences clients we support at KNB, regulatory considerations vary widely.

A capable agency should be able to demonstrate adaptability across environments such as:

Health IT and digital health: Navigating HIPAA, data privacy laws, and interoperability rules that influence how healthcare and health tech organizations communicate about technology and patient impact.

Biotech and pharma: Ensuring claims support FDA and FTC guidelines while turning complex biotech and life sciences science into accurate, accessible messaging.

Medical devices: Working within device classifications and FDA pathways that dictate what can be shared across PR, content, and paid media in healthcare and medtech markets.

Emerging categories: Balancing conflicting state and federal rules, platform restrictions, and rapidly changing policies in adjacent life sciences categories.

These examples reflect how KNB adjusts strategy based on each vertical’s unique constraints — and your prospective agency should be able to do the same.

Understanding regulations across channels in healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences

How does the agency manage compliance across PR, content, social, and paid media?

Regulatory oversight doesn’t just differ by industry — it shifts across channels. A strong agency serving healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences must understand how compliance plays out in every medium you rely on:

Media relations: Understanding what claims can be made, how to responsibly position subject matter experts in healthcare and life sciences, and how to handle sensitive or high-risk topics.

Social media: Navigating platform-specific restrictions, ad review processes, and targeting limitations common in regulated healthcare and biotech categories.

Paid advertising: Managing disapprovals, restricted terminology, or outright bans depending on the healthcare, biotech, or life sciences product category.

Content marketing: Ensuring all claims are supportable, citations are correct, and messaging aligns with ethical and regulatory guidelines across healthcare and life sciences marketing.

Evaluating real experience in healthcare, biotech, and life sciences marketing

Can the agency show how it has solved complex regulatory challenges?

One of the best ways to evaluate an agency’s readiness is to explore how they’ve handled similar challenges in healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences.

Instead of asking whether they “work with regulated industries,” dig deeper:

• “Can you share an example of a complex healthcare or biotech regulatory hurdle you helped a client navigate?”
• “How did compliance shape the strategy and messaging in a life sciences engagement?”
• “What results did you achieve?”

A strong agency will be able to walk you through the narrative — the constraints, the creative approach, the approvals process, and the impact.

Paid advertising strategy in regulated healthcare and life sciences markets

How does the agency handle advertising restrictions in regulated industries?

Paid advertising is often where healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences organizations hit the most roadblocks.

Before selecting an agency, ask how they’ve handled:

Platform restrictions or blanket bans in healthcare and biotech
Ad disapprovals due to language, claims, or product type
Limited targeting options in regulated categories
Alternative strategies when mainstream platforms restrict healthcare and life sciences promotion

Your agency should be able to explain not only how they’ve solved these problems in the past, but how they would apply that expertise to your specific healthcare, health tech, biotech, or life sciences vertical.

Are you choosing the right B2B marketing partner?

Work with a marketing agency built for healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences

Choosing a B2B marketing agency in a regulated industry requires more than creativity — it requires deep expertise in compliance, risk, and complex buying environments. At KNB Communications, we specialize in supporting healthcare, health tech, biotech, and life sciences organizations with integrated PR and marketing programs designed for regulated markets. If you’re evaluating partners and need an agency that understands both your business goals and your compliance landscape, we’d love to talk.