.png)
Science is powerful, exhilarating, and constantly evolving. It embodies the consistent growth, expansion, and capacity of the human mind to discover, analyze, and critically think.
So why is it that so few people seem genuinely interested in the life-changing technology your company offers?
In truth, it most likely has very little to do with your product or service and everything to do with your company’s marketing and communications strategy.
When your company began its start-up journey, you overcame a number of obstacles for funding, innovation, manufacturing, and production, spanning across shipping needs and investment allocation. Once your budget was plainly in hand, you devoted time, resources, and energy into building the necessary infrastructure to develop and deliver your product or service into the hands of your niche target market. And in doing so, you most likely overlooked a seemingly small detail in your sales strategy: marketing - or dare I say, consumer behavior.
Scientific technology innovation is not like any other retail product. You do not sell clothes of a specific style, nor do you cater to your run-of-the-mill retail therapy consumers. What differentiates biotechnology, medical device, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and scientific organizations alike is that your product or service has the potential to touch the lives of millions more than just those that consume your product.
By definition, you are a life science firm - your company and brand are relevant to all of humankind. To simply focus your efforts on establishing a brand whose relatability extends only to those with direct and immediate purchasing interest is to set your company up to be utterly indistinguishable.
Life science firms that tap into the humanity and psychology of their audience to provoke a question, pave the wave for curiosity into what the company - and brand - actually represents. Driving home a key ‘mission’ that details the intentions of the company can spark authenticity and develop organic outreach necessary for lasting audience impressions. Good marketing promotes a product you need. Great marketing predicts a product you’re going to want. And using a focused and clear communications strategy helps get that message out in a way that resonates and lingers.
If you build it, they will come.
Your technology may be solving the world’s most fundamental questions of life, but you may be failing to qualify the validity of your engineering in a manner that best represents its ingenuity.
If you can not properly explain the awe-inspiring and profoundly impactful nature of your product or service - don’t expect to inspire curiosity or even excitement about your company. And in like form, if you feel your product or service lacks any true benefit to your audience, and to the world, you probably shouldn’t be playing the biotechnology game in the first place.
So does your organization spark curiosity? Are you actively engaging with an audience that seeks answers only you can provide? If not, it may not be that your product or service is ill-fit to your market. It might simply be the message falls flat and on deaf ears.
Build a message that is inquisitive and invites discourse, and you may find the unexpected: a willing audience lusting for more and a loyal following hellbent on sticking around for your next innovation.
In this world, it is our ethical obligation to bring to light the virtues of science-based solutions. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. And in being a part of this equation, it falls upon each company to do the heavy lifting and enlighten, educate, and enthrall all outside the scientific community.
The new paradigm is to transition science-based firms away from their ivory tower and bridge the gap that has existed between scientists and the general public. Shift your company to support the science community by offering educational content and digestible messaging strategies that substantiate your claims, but also lend a hand in recuperating the distrust or disinterest of science to the general public.
To establish interest, to establish loyalty, to establish growth - you must inspire.
Inspire excitement and curiosity, and defy the public resignation toward ignorance, complacency, and neophobia. You actually are the answer to your company’s own problem.