The modern benefit admin ecosystem is a sprawling system defined by fragmented channels, complex integration paths, and deeply regulated products. For the proactive benefits marketer, staying on top of this rapidly evolving playing field requires a toolkit of integrated analytic and technical capacities. Those who fail to adapt will quickly find themselves falling behind. Winning in this space requires marketers to adopt three approaches that enable smarter, data-driven execution.
1) Making go-to-market a data-driven discipline
In the modern financial services environment, a successful marketer is part analyst, part growth hacker, and part systems architect. Cutting-edge marketing strategy aims to measure incrementality, test and re-test creative performance, gauge audience potential, and understand channel-specific ROI. All of this must be continuously optimized. In the Ben Admin space, this means tracking the entire benefits choice lifecycle and working closely with sales teams to segment targets, pursue account-based sales strategies, and bring the right content to the right buyer at the right time. At Marketbridge, we take a use-case based approach to simplify this process into a series of “jobs to be done” for a quantitatively robust go-to-market strategy (Figure 1).
2) Micro-segmenting groups
It is now possible to build segmented activation strategies not just by employer size and geography, but also by industry vertical, renewal cycle, benefit portfolio, and even internal HRIS configuration. Strategies utilizing machine learning techniques can create targeted activation based on factors such as account size, tenure, industry and policy mix. In the example below, these factors were used in a random forest model to score groups for marketing activation during the open enrollment period, and half of all converters were accurately predicted by the top 3 deciles. This allowed for more targeted and efficient marketing activation and conversion strategies across the funnel (Figure 2).
3) Remixing digital channels for real enrollment lift
Employee benefits marketing must now account for the complete activation and retention funnel, requiring fluency across multiple digital channels and the ability to test channel mix optimizations in all stages of the buying cycle. Techniques like MMM (media mix modeling) and MTA (multi-touch attribution) can determine which tactics and channels drive groups and employees towards decisions, and powerful open-source data science libraries make these methods accessible to anyone with data. In Figure 3 below, the output from a typical MMM shows how three different channels reach the same CAC (customer acquisition cost) at very different spend levels—implying an optimal mix for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.
Why this matters
The benefits market is still highly competitive, but this won’t last forever. Carriers and brokers still operating with a traditional marketing mindset will find themselves increasingly left out of bids, while those willing to modernize their marketing and sales teams will rise to the top. The next generation employee benefits marketer won’t be “digital” in the superficial sense—they’ll be technical, data-fluent, and operationally embedded across the entire go-to-market stack.
Download our whitepaper, “A new golden age for employee benefits”
Discover how GTM leaders can cut through complexity and unlock growth.
Just four years ago, in their 2021 report, “Cashing In On Creativity: How Better Ads Deliver Bigger Profits,” LinkedIn’s B2B Institute showed the connection between powerful, emotional B2B creative and long-term business growth. The report was a rallying cry for B2B marketers—and their agencies—to elevate their creative game and deliver more memorable, impactful ads.
Since then, we’ve witnessed a B2B creative awakening of sorts (or so it feels). Even the Cannes Lions Awards recently launched a new B2B Creative category. But how far have we really come? Are most B2B ads pushing the creative limits further? Or are the widely celebrated recent spots from the likes of Workday, Amazon and Salesforce just isolated examples of highly creative (and big budget) advertising in B2B?
Unfortunately, follow-up new research from LinkedIn suggests we might not be as far along as we’d hoped.
In their latest 2024 study, “The B2B Renaissance,” LinkedIn reported that the majority of business decision makers remain underwhelmed by the B2B ads they encounter.
Despite stating that more creative ads would drive their interest and action, 64% of respondents said they rarely saw B2B ads with emotional appeal or humor. Similarly, 60% said ads lacked characters they could connect with, and 59% said ads failed to offer a unique perspective. Yikes!
So, B2B buyers are unimpressed by your ads. The cure? Be less boring. Be more memorable.
Easier said than done, I know. In an effort to lift the burden, here’s how you might raise the bar in your B2B ads (without necessarily breaking the budget):
Humor is surprisingly powerful in B2B advertising—even though B2B is often seen as all serious suits and spreadsheets. Here’s why humor works so well in that space:
Cuts Through the Noise B2B audiences are bombarded with dry, technical, jargon-filled content. A well-placed joke or clever twist stands out and grabs attention.
Humanizes the Brand Businesses don’t buy things—people do. Humor shows there’s a real, relatable human behind the brand, which builds trust and emotional connection.
Boosts Memorability Funny ads are easier to remember. If you make someone laugh, they’re more likely to recall your brand later when they actually need your product or service.
Encourages Sharing Humorous content gets shared more—even in professional circles. This can amplify reach without extra budget.
Makes Complex Ideas Digestible B2B products can be complex or dry. Humor can simplify and make boring stuff fun, helping audiences understand your value proposition more easily.
Differentiates in a Serious Market When competitors are all saying the same things in the same tone, humor makes your brand distinct and more likable.
So, how might you add a touch of funny to your ads? Great question—here’s how you might pull it off:
Start With Empathy Know your audience’s day-to-day struggles. Humor that taps into real pain points (“Ugh, another 43-tab spreadsheet.”) is gold. Think: “We know your procurement software feels like it was coded in 1996… because it was.”
Use Smart, Situational Humor Avoid slapstick or over-the-top silliness. Instead, go for wit, irony or exaggeration based on real business life. Examples:
The endless Zoom meetings
Office buzzwords (“Let’s circle back.”)
“Mission-critical” tasks that are actually just moving files
Play With Format You don’t have to write just funny copy. Try:
Funny charts with absurdly obvious insights
Mock testimonials (“This changed my life—my inbox now has only 912 unread emails.”)
Parody ads styled like something your audience already knows
Video! Stats show video content helps drive better brand engagement.
Personify the Problem (or the Product) Give your tech or service a voice. Or make a dramatic villain out of the problem you solve.
“Meet Tom. Tom is the spreadsheet that’s been running your operations since 2010. Tom has feelings. Unfortunately, ‘efficiency’ isn’t one of them.”
Tone It Right Balance is key. You can be playful without being unprofessional. Think of your brand voice like a smart, funny coworker—the one who makes meetings bearable but also knows their stuff.
Avoid
Inside jokes that are too niche (unless you’re 100% sure your audience gets it)
Humor that could offend or feel like a punch-down
Overuse—it should support your message, not overshadow it
OK, you’ve got the big idea—but how do you pull it off in a time when budgets (and timelines) are shrinking? Well, we’ve leveraged AI in a few key ways to be our secret weapon for scaling big ideas without “Mad Men” budgets.
Everything from brainstorming and concept development to visual and video production and testing and optimization, AI has helped us scale effectively and efficiently.
But is that actually doable? Hell yeah! Check out our recent award-winning campaign for Chevron, where we brought humor and AI together and achieved some pretty amazing results.
The line between B2B and B2C hasn’t just been blurred; it’s disappearing. By leveraging some of the tips above, you might just find your ads stand out from the crowd, help move the needle for your business and get some laughs along the way.
With ever-growing and increasingly complex data, multichannel processes, and varied measurement mechanisms, Marketing leaders often have difficulty answering analytics questions with one-off, traditional professional services engagements. Fully in-house marketing analytics are often constrained by budget and headcount, while fully outsourced models can lack oversight, context, and alignment to real business challenges.
That’s why a hybrid approach — embedding third-party experts directly alongside internal teams — becomes essential. Embedded teams help shoulder the heavy lift: tackling the painstaking work, building new processes, and driving adoption of best practices. By working inside complex systems and closely with your teams, they combine an outside-in perspective with deep, day-to-day understanding. This enables faster, more relevant insights and the ability to adapt in real time to shifting macroeconomic factors, priorities, and strategies.
Ultimately, this model creates a more fluid dynamic across marketing organizations. It minimizes learning curves, preserves institutional knowledge, and brings the expertise of a consultancy without the limitations of static deliverables. Rather than fading in relevance after a single project cycle, embedded analytics relationships continue to build and evolve, delivering lasting value and continuously improving outputs over time.
Why embedded analytics teams create lasting value
1. Closeness to both the data and the specific business problems
Being directly embedded within your team allows third-party experts to understand nuances — from data structures to evolving priorities.Ramp up periods are significantly shortened when tackling new workstreams, causing the resulting output to be more impactful (in service of the intended goal) and relevant (to the specific needs of the stakeholders involved).
2. Expertise on emerging best practices
Blending the methodology- and industry-specific expertise of traditional consulting firms with a bias to action allows implementation of those concepts to specific, unique client applications. That team’s experience from a wide range of past work coupled with a bespoke understanding of how to effectively deliver in the existing ecosystem, allows seamless, continuous delivery of quality insights that are often unachievable with other engagement models.
3. Agility of high-impact resource deployment
Too often, novel questions go unanswered due to resource constraints; “run the business” work always takes precedence. This is especially true for marketing analytics teams. Embedded analytics elegantly solves this problem by infusing agile, high-impact resources to tackle newer problems. This agility allows this work to get done without de-prioritization of day-to-day activities.
4. Increased ability to focus on lifting and shifting the internal “analytics mindset”
As opposed to clunky, do-as-I-say attempts at enacting change (which are typically distrusted by staff), a Managed Analytics team drives innovation from within. The “teachers” start with intimate relationships with across the organization, allowing new approaches to be trusted and successful. This fosters an environment where a “lift and shift” of analytics is both well-founded and well-received.
5. Answers to broad or complex questions that may not have a clear-cut solution
Oftentimes, open-ended questions are hard to approach (and therefore hard to answer) with only internal perspectives. Having partners who understand both internal context and outside perspective creates a working relationship uniquely positioned to tackle the big questions that may not have a clear-cut solution.
Read our case study, “Embedded support transforms marketing analytics team”
Learn how a fast-moving, budget constrained team increased marketing ROI.
So what does this look like in practice? The right third-party embedded analytics team can flex across nearly any marketing analytics need, typically in three categories:
Growth
Growth activities focus on answering broad questions that help support strategic goals.
These questions come from a variety of sources, including marketing stakeholders, executives, and analytics leadership. Growth-related questions tend to be related to larger scale changes, such as “how can we increase marketing’s profitability?”, “are we thinking about marketing investment in the right way?”, or “is the way we measure success properly tied to business goals?” Oftentimes, these high-level, open-ended questions are difficult to answer with internal resources, whether due to staffing and capacity constraints or a lack of external context. Managed Analytics teams provide the capacity, outside expertise, and institutional knowledge necessary to answer them.
Process
Process activities are directly concerned with improving the existing “analytics universe”.
This type of work includes finetuning existing practices, creating new ways of delivering insight or measuring success, and upskilling internal analytics teams. Frequently, in the hectic flurry of day-to-day activities there is not enough time in the day to consider how these activities can be improved.
Measurement
Measurement & Testing encompasses the ongoing quest to understand what’s working, what isn’t, and where to shift dollars to increase effectiveness.
This scope includes both ongoing measurement efforts (MMM or Media Mix Modeling; MTA or multi-touch attribution; and last-touch attribution), as well as in-market testing (A/B testing) and analysis. These approaches can be shifted, improved, and repeated over time by employing an agile approach to understanding and improving marketing effectiveness.
Why this matters now (and how Marketbridge can help)
As marketing grows more complex, the need for embedded analytics partners — ones who work with you, not just for you — has never been greater. Whether addressing strategic challenges, improving day-to-day processes, or navigating evolving measurement needs, embedded analytics relationships drive faster, more effective outcomes.
Connect with us to see how our analytics consulting team can help!
Working with go-to-market (GTM) organizations is always an engaging experience. And while there’s rarely a dull moment, there is also the sense that GTM teams are at the mercy of micro- and macro-economic factors out of their control. For the most part, this is an accurate statement, but also let it be a call-to-action to find better means to deliver sustainable, predictable value to the organization. A call to get sharper—to look at go-to-market with the lens of science and economics, and build a more resilient approach to driving growth and profit.
No one can profess to know the future (definitively), so humans, and GTM leaders specifically, must understand, interpret and react to situations with data and information we have at hand. Gone are the days (if there ever were those days) of set-it-and-forget-it strategy. GTM leaders are tasked with constantly reacting to changes, disruption and uncertainty. All while being asked to grow faster, leaner and more predictably.
Growth Theatre
It’s no wonder that a lot of GTM leaders have a bias for action—which they generally should—but while the instinct is to act, this comes with the risk of misreading signals and making bad decisions. And here’s this thing: companies are generally not suffering from lack of action—they’re drowning in it. The problem is that a lot of these actions amount to nothing more than growth theatre.
Launch something new, reorg coverage, double headcount, start a partner channel. The market isn’t waiting, so the thinking goes—why should we? While performances have their place on stage, screen and politics, GTM leaders have a responsibility to their organization and shareholders to ground their actions in durable economic models.
Everyone’s moving, but few are moving in the right direction. The problem isn’t action, it’s strategy. In times of volatility, model-less growth isn’t only less effective, it’s more expensive in terms of hard costs and opportunity costs. Smart decisions don’t take more time, but they do take more effort.
Most of that effort comes back to the issue of alignment around a hypothesis, validating assumptions, testing actions and then being able to course correct without panic. This scientific approach, in my opinion, is the difference between flailing and scaling. This is where go-to-market economics comes in—not as a function or tool, but as a way of approaching GTM alternatives and decision-making.
An Urgent Reality
The urgency for a more durable approach to growth comes not only from external market, customer and economic factors but as the mandate to leaders who occupy GTM roles. Data from Gartner shows that 71% of CMOs are under pressure to deliver measurable ROI within six months of tenure. There’s no time for a website refresh here. At the same time, only 27% of GTM leaders report high confidence in the economic and financial efficiency of their GTM efforts. And it’s not just Marketing, across functions, the gap between performance pressure and confidence is widening. Sales is optimizing for quota attainment while Marketing is optimizing for leads. And Finance is optimizing for efficiency and runway.
Everyone is working, acting, but no one is pulling in the same direction. According to Forrester, only 14% of B2B organizations say marketing and sales share a common definition of success. And 62% of GTM leaders say that internal misalignment is their single biggest barrier to growth. What’s missing isn’t effort or talent. It’s coherence.
Go-to-market economics isn’t a new dashboard or planning framework—it’s a shared lens. A model that connects strategic intent with operational investment and measurable return. It turns fuzzy ambition into accountable execution.
Start with Tradeoffs
I like to think of a GTM organization as an organic organism—where dependencies and benefits affect different systems independently AND as a whole. Shifting focus to components grounded in data and facts gives leaders a stronger basis to optimize efficiency and drive growth. Lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition costs (CAC), payback timelines, ROI and cost-to-serve are fundamental tools to prioritize and de-risk decisions for GTM leaders to scale.
In our work, we see six economic capabilities emerge repeatedly in high-performing GTM organizations:
Clarity on Tradeoffs: With an economic lens, every investment becomes a strategic decision where teams understand where dollars create the most value, enabling smarter resource allocation and more intentional growth
Focus on Return, Not Just Results: Evaluating performance through ROI—not just activity and outcomes—helps teams prioritize efficiency and helps growth become scalable and sustainable, not flashy
Confidence in Action: A shared model reduces noise and misalignment and teams act with purpose, knowing decisions are grounded in common logic rather than guesswork or internal politics
Predictability Over Time: With an underlying model, GTM strategies become more resilient and adaptive, plans hold together through disruption because they’re designed with feedback loops and real-world variability in mind
Objective Prioritization: A shared economic framework helps teams focus on what truly drives impact, bringing transparency to prioritization, making it easier to align around high-leverage initiatives—and let go of the rest
Resilience to Change: When conditions shift, well-modeled strategies evolve, economics-based planning gives organizations the flexibility to adapt with intention, adjusting course while maintaining strategic integrity
Practical application of these tools can lead to more predictable patterns for growth. Instead of reacting to shifting conditions or internal noise, teams align around a shared view of value. Pipeline quality improves because targeting is more precise. Sales and Marketing collaborate on segment priorities using a common dataset. Headcount decisions are tied to ramp velocity and ROI, not just gut feel. The marketing mix stabilizes around proven drivers of performance. And dashboards—from Finance to Field—tell a consistent, trusted story.
According to Bain, nearly half of GTM strategies are now “reactively updated”—a signal that many organizations are moving quickly to respond to shifting conditions. This is sorta good. It reflects the pressure teams face in an environment where customer acquisition costs have risen over 60% in B2B SaaS over the past five years. The opportunity now is to move from reactive to adaptive, building the modeling capabilities that allow GTM teams to adjust in real time, make smarter tradeoffs, and stay ahead of market dynamics.
Where to Start?
The answer isn’t more tools. It’s better thinking. A unifying logic that ties GTM investment to growth outcomes, not activity. One that supports both urgency and durability.
Build a Shared Model: Create a unified understanding of how growth happens—linking investments to outcomes across Marketing, Sales, Product, and Finance—it doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to be shared
Focus on ROI, Not Activity: Shift the conversation from volume to value, whether it’s campaigns, headcount, or programs—measure what matters, and let data, not instinct, drive prioritization
Institutionalize Feedback Loops: Make learning part of the operating rhythm, model assumptions, test hypotheses, and adjust in real time—not just at QBRs or annual planning
At Marketbridge, we help companies build science (and economics) into GTM function at both a strategic and operating level. We use tools and principles grounded in science to help our clients drive growth and long-term value, as well as optimize operations and financial returns. Not with a reorg. Not with another planning cycle. But with grounded, practical models that help you decide where to invest, when to pivot, and how to grow without guessing.
Over the past several years, the growth seen by Medicare Advantage (MA) carriers and brokers has begun to stagnate. One of the forces driving this stagnation is the decline of Member Lifetime Value (MLV). MLV is a member’s inbound cash flow, minus outbound cash flow, over a member’s tenure with a single insurer; essentially, the expected net profit from a member for the time they are expected to remain with the carrier, discounted in future years by a carrier’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Over the past four years, three primary forces have concurrently exerted downward pressure on average Medicare Advantage MLVs:
Declining member tenure
Stagnant CMS payments
Increasing claims costs
1. Declining member tenure
With a plateau in age-in Medicare Advantage penetration beginning in roughly 2022, an increasing number of new members are “switchers” from other carriers. Having already switched carriers at least once, these members may be more likely to switch again, regardless of actions taken by the carrier. With members remaining with a single carrier for a shorter period, the carrier has fewer years to extract value from that member.
2. Stagnant CMS payments
Over the past two years, carriers have seen lower reimbursements from CMS to pay for their members’ claims.In 2024, CMS payments under the Physician Fee Schedule adjusted for inflation began declining by 1.25%–in 2025, CMS payments will decline an additional 2.93%. However, with the policies in the CY 2026 Rate Announcement released by CMS last week projected to result in an increase of 5.06% in MA payments, this factor is expected to moderate for plan year 2026.
3. Increasing claims costs
Possibly the largest driver of declining MLVs, claims costs have been increasing for the past few years. During COVID, most members chose to delay screenings, tests, and non-emergency procedures (Journal of Clinical Oncology). From 2022 onward, the repercussions of these delays emerged, resulting in more serious—and costlier—diagnoses once members returned to the doctor (UC Davis Health). Members in the past few years have also been receiving the elective procedures that they delayed during the pandemic. It is likely that, over the next several years, these impacts of the pandemic will subside as members return to normal rates of screenings, tests, and non-emergency procedures.
Additionally, product decisions made during the 2020-2022 Plan Years to attract customers often resulted in coverage for expensive services not previously included, such as vision, hearing, and in-home support services. Finally, CMS temporarily expanded the definition of dually eligible members during the pandemic, but once these members began to be dropped in June 2023, carriers had fewer profitable DSNP members—and those that remained were less healthy and more expensive to service.
Toward higher Member Lifetime Value
Business leaders in the Medicare Advantage industry must adapt to the changes to Member Lifetime Value that have been observed over the past four years:
Better audience targeting can allow a carrier to isolate and target audiences by their estimated mean lifetime value and to only invest in acquisition marketing and sales up to the point where the marginal acquisition cost is estimated to be equal to the present value of future cash flows.
Adoption of vertical integration can result in tighter communication and better information from the carrier, leading to longer member tenure and higher lifetime values.
Digital and digitally assisted application technologies can improve speed, accuracy, and applicant satisfaction, reducing buyers’ remorse and the resulting switching behavior that decreases member tenure—with longer tenure, a higher MLV is possible.
For more information on how to succeed in the face of declining Member Lifetime Value, and other challenges in the MA industry, read our executive whitepaper: “The next decade of Medicare Advantage: 2025 and beyond.”
Download our whitepaper, “The next decade of Medicare Advantage: 2025 and beyond”
Learn how the next decade will reward Medicare Advantage leaders who embrace agility, analytics, and a member-first approach.
BioCatch is a world-renowned leader in financial crime prevention powered by behavior biometric intelligence, which uses advanced analysis of a user’s physical and cognitive behavior to help banks protect consumers and their assets from fraud and cyberattacks.
BioCatch’s marketing team faced a familiar challenge: a lack of actionable data. This made it difficult to effectively connect with their ideal audience using personalized, relevant messaging.
“We didn’t want to be on an ad platform where we were wasting even a penny showing ads to people who didn’t care or were not within our ICP,” said Jonathan Daly, CMO of BioCatch.
Past campaigns leaned on more traditional marketing tactics, often generating leads that didn’t align with their ideal customer profile (ICP). Without a way to clearly understand buying signals and real-time intent, resources were being drained without measurable ROI.
Solution: implementing 6sense
To address this, we helped BioCatch implement 6sense and build out an ABX strategy to use this data.
Our team designed a series of one-to-few and one-to-many campaigns, integrated a multi-touch framework, and established a robust reporting framework for tracking full-funnel performance.
We began by refining their ICPs and deploying 6sense’s Predictive Analytics to continuously optimize messaging based on customer behaviors and buying signals. This AI-driven capability provided visibility into where accounts were in their journey, enabling BioCatch to prioritize high-potential prospects.
6sense’s Intent Scoring added another layer of precision, giving the team the data they needed to focus efforts on the accounts most likely to convert based on prior engagement trends.
Outcome: a wildly successful pilot campaign
We rolled out a pilot initiative with a bold target: engage 553 global banks that had shown little to no previous interest, and move at least 60 into the active sales pipeline—all through an Account-Based Experience (ABX) strategy.
Using 6sense, we developed over 200 unique audience segments and ran personalized one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many campaigns.
Over the course of six months, we launched highly tailored landing pages, ran full-funnel, multi-channel campaigns across 6sense Display Ads, LinkedIn, and Google, and synced our messaging to match where each account was in the buying cycle.
In total, we created over 450 creative assets and built over 10 landing pages. And after six months, the results were:
5x increase in accounts in active pipeline stage
6% of the full target account list moved into the pipeline stage since March
63% increase in accounts in active engagement stage
This initiative marked a turning point for BioCatch’s marketing strategy—transforming their approach from broad and traditional to data-driven and precision-targeted. By leveraging the power of 6sense and a deeply segmented ABX framework, BioCatch was able to focus its efforts where it mattered most, align closely with buyer intent, and drive measurable pipeline impact at scale. The success of this pilot not only proved the value of intent data and predictive insights but also laid a strong foundation for future growth.
Current Medicare demographic trends are rooted in the Baby Boom. Post-war prosperity and GIs returning home in the 1950s and 60s led to inflated numbers of Medicare-eligible seniors entering the market from 2010 to 2025. Healthcare payers have been able to ride that demographic wave and observe year-over-year growth during this period with over four million new seniors becoming Medicare-eligible each year.
However, moving forward, we will likely never see so many people turning sixty-five. The number of incoming Medicare-eligible seniors has peaked and will begin to decline in the coming years. This will translate directly to fewer net-new Medicare Advantage enrollments each year.
Impact of the demographic cliff on customer acquisition
Smaller incoming applicant pools mean carriers will have to fight much harder for a limited supply of prospective Medicare Advantage members. These carriers will be competing in a highly saturated market as higher numbers of carriers have further increased competition. Increased competition also means more difficult marketing.
Marketing challenges:
The amount of mail, television ads, and other marketing that individuals receive has increased threefold over the past decade, decreasing the effectiveness of marketing.
Media costs continue to rise above the rate of inflation. In other words, carriers are spending more on less efficient marketing.
The road ahead for Medicare Advantage
The road ahead looks difficult for the Medicare Advantage market. Applicant pools are shrinking, competition has increased, marketing is more expensive yet less efficient, and decreasing member tenure combined with stagnant CMS payments and increasing claims costs is driving down member lifetime value (MLV).
Those who will win in the Medicare Advantage market throughout the next decade will need to turn to go-to-market, product attractiveness, and clinical maturity as the leading drivers of growth. For more information on how to succeed in the face of these challenges, read our executive whitepaper The next decade of Medicare Advantage: 2025 and beyond.
Download our whitepaper, “The next decade of Medicare Advantage: 2025 and beyond”
Learn how the next decade will reward Medicare Advantage leaders who embrace agility, analytics, and a member-first approach.
Almost three-quarters (71%!) of B2B buyers are Millennials or Gen Z (Forrester).
Seems like only yesterday that pundits were yakking about the rise of millennials and how it would affect business culture. Those Millennials are now well into their careers and rapidly entering middle age. (I’m sorry, Millennials, but it’s true. You can switch to wearing taller socks but time marches on regardless.)
People born in or near the 2000s are the new kids in town, and this Gen Z wave is changing the game for B2B marketers once again.
The buying group is even bigger than you think.
Forrester predicts, “As the Millennial and Generation Z buyer cohorts increasingly drive purchases, they will rely on external sources — including their value network — to help make their decisions.”
A few related stats to mull:
6sense reports that nearly three-quarters (72%) of buying teams now hire consultants or analysts to help with purchasing decisions.
Among younger buyers who responded to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2024, 30% indicated that 10 or more people outside their organization are involved in purchase decisions.
Not surprisingly, word-of-mouth recommendations still carry the highest weight, with 73% of buyers ranking it as their most trusted source (Wynter).
So, what does that mean for B2B marketers?
Just as we’ve gotten our heads around using account-targeted campaign and media strategy to reach multiple members of the buying group, we must expand our understanding of the audience. We need to reach more broadly to influencers outside of the target organization –– without becoming scattershot.
And where do you start?
1. Continue to invest in your social presence
Social media has become a top source of information across B2B buyers regardless of age (PR News). As more and more “social media natives” get into decision-making roles, its influence will only grow. My LinkedIn scroll is already replete with memes and personal stories, and yours probably is too. The divide between personal and professional social media is getting thin (LinkedIn). You may want to consider expanding your brand’s presence on social channels that have traditionally been thought of as more personal if you have the resources, savvy and determination to support them.
Even if you’re not actively publishing widely, you should be listening widely. Keep digital ears open across social platforms, online communities and industry forums. Conversations are happening in these channels and consideration sets are being formed –– whether you’re part of them or not.
2. Influence the influencers
“Influencers” are not just for aspirational lifestyle brands. They’re part of the value network for B2B buyers too. Identify who has credibility and clout, engage them, and look for opportunities to partner with them.
More and more of our clients are getting serious about their influencer strategy, and it’s about time. Chevron Lubricants has been effectively working with influencers for years, most recently with Bryan Furnace, a heavy equipment operator, content creator and the host of Equipment World’s weekly video show, The Dirt. He’s got the expertise, experience and street cred (worksite cred?) to discuss oil technology claims and benefits with authority. (Chevron’s work in this area recently won them a 2025 B2BMX Killer Content Award for “Best Influencer Marketing”. You can see their award-winning video series with Bryan here.)
3. Authenticity still matters
Consider how you might enable and encourage customers to share honest reviews about your services or solutions. It may feel risky, but it’s a strategy that pays off in increased visibility and credibility.
Reviews help you get found. Great reviews are social proof that speaks for itself. Not-so-great reviews give you the opportunity to authentically engage and repair. How you show up in moments of challenge has enormous influence on the perception of your brand. The “Service Recovery Paradox” has been observed for decades – that is, brands that respond to challenges transparently, quickly and with meaningful action may be perceived more favorably than if no problem had occurred in the first place (Wikipedia).
4. Be sharable
While the idea of a B2B campaign going viral may sound unlikely – at least before Workday’s delightful “Rock Star” spots – it’s a worthwhile ambition. Especially when you use “viral” to mean “gets shared among target audiences.” Sure, you could take a cheeky, entertaining (and costly!) approach like Workday did, but there are other ways to create experiences that are worthy of being shared amongst value networks and by influencers.
What is your brand expert on? What do you care deeply about? What causes or ideas do you want to be associated with? Answer the same questions about your target audiences. Draw your Venn diagram and start in the areas of overlap as a jumping off point for ideation. Maybe there’s content you can create, a learning opportunity you could sponsor, or a contest or event or handy-dandy calculator or tool.
5. Learn about – and from – your audience
Look around your organization. I bet there are at least a few Gen Zs, and I know it’s bursting with Millennials. Tap into your own team for insight. How they make significant purchase decisions in their personal lives may reflect how they’d want to approach business buying. Extensive online research, reaching out to friend and family networks for opinions – almost certainly ducking the salesperson until they have already decided to buy. Ask: how can you reduce friction from your processes and get ahead of theirs?
In B2B marketing, strengthening your brand and accelerating demand go hand-in-hand. (Yikes. Do I leave the corny rhyme? Yes, I do.) They should be thought of as deeply interconnected marketing motions serving the same ultimate goals – build interest, build trust, build results.
There you go. One new generation, three major shifts in the landscape, and five things B2B marketers should be thinking about now.
Five forces are converging to stall growth of the Medicare Advantage industry over the next decade—halting momentum enjoyed since the 1990s. While inflation and immutable demographic trends are recurring characters in this story, trends in trust and product quality reveal that carrier actions also contribute to the five stagnation forces:
Increased member acquisition costs
Fewer age-ins
Declining member lifetime values
Declining innovation on both product and member services
A rapidly changing go-to-market landscape
1 – Increased Member Acquisition Costs: Marketing and Sales
Since Covid, inflation has left its mark across the marketing funnel. Competition for cost per click is ensuring the Paid Search dollar doesn’t go as far, especially during the Annual Enrollment period peak. Postage rates make key Direct Mail campaigns costlier at 120% the rate of core inflation. Meanwhile in upper funnel, cost-per-thousand (CPM) was increasing by 5% per year shortly before 2024, leading to costlier brand marketing.
On the sales front, expenses are climbing too. On-target earnings (OTEs) for captive field agents have risen 5-10% per year since Covid. Agent turnover rate has also increased, lowering sales productivity, as newer agents need more training and “at bats” to sell more.
The takeaway: Costs are not going down, but better audience targeting over the next decade can make acquisition budgets drive a greater impact.
2 – Fewer age-ins
All Baby Boomers will have turned 65 by 2030, spelling an end to the era of rapid growth in newly eligibles. Between 2022 and 2027, an estimated 4.2-4.3 million individuals turn 65 per year. By 2040, the annual age-in population will be only 70% of that, around 3.1 million.
Medicare Advantage penetration of the eligible population also seems to be approaching a plateau around 55%. The sum effect is that annual net new enrollments in Medicare Advantage will trend downward in the decade to come. (American Community Survey, NCHS birth data, CMS.gov data)
The takeaway: In order to sustain growth, the industry will have to nurture product attractiveness and clinical maturity. In other words, insurers will have to work harder to grow.
3 – Declining Member Lifetime Values
Member Lifetime Value (MLV) is a member’s inbound cash flow minus outbound cash flow over a member’s tenure with a single insurer. All three parts of the equation are driving down MLV: members are disenrolling more frequently in the face of declining benefits, stagnant CMS payments and mounting claims costs. These claim costs can trace to Medicaid eligibility changes affecting Dual-eligible Special Needs Plan (DSNP) members, added dental and vision benefits, and forgone preventive care during Covid.
The takeaway: CMS payments are not keeping pace with the costs of servicing the neediest members, and a more productive partnership with CMS will be key to remedying this shift.
4 – Declining Innovation on Product and Member Services
Product innovation – adding fitness programs or dental benefits to health plan benefits for example – characterized recent years of Medicare Advantage. Inflation, once again, acts as a headwind here by discouraging maintenance of characteristic benefits and by reducing the value of food cards. But abandoned benefits stem from other sources too—in-home nurses’ visits, for example, received negative publicity with accusations of abundant fraud. Consequently, they became deemphasized.
Member service innovation might temper member disillusionment, but it occurs in a narrow domain. Government regulations require many communications, driving members to largely ignore most insurer messages. Another potential communication channel, insurer mobile apps, suffer low adoption rates due to competition with separate provider apps and limited data portability and functionality.
The takeaway: Innovation can happen under constraints, but a return to quality can light the path forward through greater efficiency across acquisition, member retention, and care delivery.
5 – Rapidly Changing Go-to-Market Landscape
Unit economics and member preferences comprise serious threats to the traditional channels for reaching the Medicare population. Linear TV is less captivating for seniors, direct mail is being hit with inflation, and effective paid search now requires commitment to bidding wars.
Insurers are rethinking their distribution channels, too. Third-party call centers and aggregators rose to importance around 2010, as Medicare Advantage welcomed age-ins at unprecedented volumes. However, aggregators have shown to generate customer confusion while attracting low lifetime value members, and third-party call centers may have eroded trust by their less than honest call tactics.
The takeaway: Winning over the next decade will look a few different ways. We present more data and additional considerations in our whitepaper, which you can download below.
Download our whitepaper, “The next decade of Medicare Advantage: 2025 and beyond”
Learn how the next decade will reward Medicare Advantage leaders who embrace agility, analytics, and a member-first approach.
As a consulting firm based outside of D.C., we are acutely attuned to politics, even though we don’t do any political or governmental work. Big political and governmental moves ripple across the economy to impact businesses across sectors. I haven’t seen much advice or discussion of what advertisers should consider given the declining consumer financial outlook and the potentially rising consumer activism, so I put together this post to distill my thoughts on how advertisers should prepare.
Declining Consumer Financial Outlook
For the first time in nearly two years, U.S. consumer spending in January fell. That doesn’t yet fully account for the agency staff cuts in February, or the forewarned mass layoffs coming in March. However, those changes and upcoming tariffs likely contributed to the drop in consumer confidence seen in February. As I write this, Target and Best Buy are warning that prices will increase soon.
Consider cuts in lower funnel if demand is soft or non-existent. As consumer confidence wanes, fewer consumers will be shopping. For demand-based channels (such as search and affiliate) advertisers should closely watch efficiency and set gates for when to reduce budget because of lower results.
Don’t throw out your marketing playbook or completely reinvent your mix. Work with marketing analytics and agencies to size the impact and reforecast what marketing can achieve. Develop tests and performance gates to re-evaluate metrics and KPIs.
Focus on impression and ad view quality. Rather than quantity of impressions, advertisers should prioritize quality ad views for prioritized segments. This may mean significantly limiting where your ads are placed and rigorous testing and analysis to ensure you prioritize high customer lifetime value audiences; however, learnings will continue to pay dividends long past the recession.
Consumers may shop earlier to avoid boycotts. The retail shopping calendar may be out the window if consumer boycotts gain additional traction. Products sold through big box stores and Amazon in particular should evaluate how to drive conversions in the absence of historical sales holiday periods.
Consumers may want to shop directly. If you’re already set up to sell directly to consumers, ensure that experience is optimized. Plan and prepare to pivot budget and efforts between sell-through and sell-to channels.
Monitor competition on boycott and blackout dates. Competition for consumers who are shopping will heat up. Expect cost pers to increase and advertisers should look at whether these consumers are incremental and high value.
Preventing reactionary decisions to stay ahead
Though the governmental upheaval is unprecedented, seasoned advertisers have weathered low consumer confidence and poor financial outlooks before. To prevent reactionary decision making, advertisers should prepare and set expectations in advance, and develop stage gates or guardrails around performance. Monitoring competitor activity and continuing to test and learn what is working also is essential.
If you’re unsure how to get started, get in touch! Simply fill out the form (put “develop performance stage gates” in the anything else we should know box) or send me an email: srenner@marketbridge.com.
Download our resource, “Accelerating growth through test-and-learn marketing culture”
For an in-depth look at full-funnel marketing strategy, marketing imperatives, and key testing levers, download our 20-page paper.
