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Brand Strategy
Our quickstart guide for brand strategy for biomedical innovators covers why brand strategy is important, exactly where you might be in the journey today, and the key elements necessary to craft a brand strategy that will propel your business for years.
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Today, biomedical innovators face a more challenging and complex landscape than ever before. Rapid advancements in AI, robotics, and digital health have intensified competition and forced companies to invest heavily in cutting-edge technologies to stay ahead. Regulations are also becoming more complex, particularly in Europe, making bringing new products to market more difficult and expensive. Economic difficulties, such as rising interest rates and inflation, are straining MedTech by impacting research funding and company valuations. Digital transformation requires significant investment and major organizational changes. And we can’t forget supply chain disruptions, a strained healthcare workforce, and other factors that MedTech firms have little to no control over.
Despite these challenges, biomedical innovators often fail to invest in one thing that is in their control: brand strategy and brand development. As a result, they are falling short of optimizing their ability to establish a distinct brand that resonates with their target audiences. This oversight can seriously impede fundraising efforts, delay market entry, and compromise employee attraction and retention—ultimately negatively impacting commercialization and device adoption.
A strong device is no longer sufficient. An intelligent, well-defined brand strategy is essential in overcoming these obstacles and driving successful commercialization.
This guide provides a fundamental overview of brand strategy and a basic blueprint for defining your own powerful brand.
75% or more of biomedical startups fail to successfully commercialize. You need every advantage you can get. A solid brand strategy is one of those advantages.
Let’s start with the basics. A brand is the perception and feeling customers have about a company, product, or service. It's more than just a name or logo; it's the total of experiences, interactions, and emotions associated with that entity. A strong brand builds trust, loyalty, and a unique identity that differentiates it from competitors.
Think of it this way: a brand is the promise a company makes to its customers of quality, consistency, and a positive experience. It's how customers feel when interacting with the company, whether through one-to-one communication, webinars, advertising, customer service, or simply using the product.
At the core of every successful brand is a solid brand strategy. During the brand strategy effort, you'll examine and evaluate your organization, strategic objectives, products, target audiences, and competitive landscape. At its core, brand strategy is about understanding your goals, defining truths, and creating a roadmap that articulates precisely what your brand needs to be to meet those objectives. Your brand strategy will become the foundation for everything you do—guiding your marketing campaigns, helping you develop new products, and even influencing how you interact with your customers. It's like a blueprint that ensures everyone in your company is working towards the same goals and telling the same story to the world.
A brand strategy is meaningless if you don’t put in the time and dedication to see it through—constantly—to ensure consistency across all touchpoints. You want to create a seamless and consistent brand experience for everyone who comes into contact with your company. It's an ongoing process through which you must constantly monitor how your brand is performing, gather customer feedback, and adjust as needed. The goal is to build a strong and lasting relationship with your customers so they consistently choose you.
Managing a biomedical device brand has unique challenges compared to other industries. With the primary concern being patient safety, it’s integral to build and maintain trust—likely through transparent communication of scientific evidence and their adherence to regulatory requirements.
Brand management is the set of actions you take to actively and thoughtfully wield the brand you defined in your brand strategy effort. The goal? To build strong, lasting relationships with your target audiences.
Think about companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Roche. For good reason, these are some of the biggest names in healthcare. Pfizer is known for its groundbreaking work in pharmaceuticals and vaccines, while Johnson & Johnson has built a strong reputation for health and wellness. Roche is synonymous with medical advancements, inspiring hope and trust with their cutting-edge research. These companies haven't just developed amazing products; they've also built powerful brands that resonate deeply with doctors, patients, and everyone involved in healthcare. Some examples of strong brands in the biomedical device field include:
Offers a wide range of devices for various medical conditions, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries.
Known for its innovative medical devices in areas like diagnostics, nutrition, and cardiovascular devices.
Specializes in minimally invasive medical devices, particularly cardiology, urology, and gastroenterology.
Focuses on orthopedic implants, medical and surgical equipment, and neurotechnology products.
Known for its innovative heart valve therapies and significant contributions to cardiovascular medicine.
A solid brand strategy backs every successful brand. A well-thought-out brand strategy is essential for biomedical device companies who want to bring their products to market successfully and can help them overcome the many obstacles they'll face along the way:
In such a competitive landscape, differentiation is key. A well-defined brand strategy is critical in establishing a unique market position for a company's products. By understanding and clearly communicating the distinct value proposition of their devices, companies can effectively differentiate themselves from competitors. This highlights key benefits such as improved patient outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and enhanced usability. A good brand strategy also allows companies to tailor their messages to the right people, whether doctors, patients, investors, potential employees, or those who buy hospital equipment. This helps ensure that the right message reaches the right audience.
Earning and maintaining the trust of healthcare professionals, regulatory bodies, strategic partners, investors and patients is fundamental for success in the biomedical device industry. Healthcare professionals are more inclined to recommend and adopt devices from brands they understand, trust, and respect. A consistent and credible brand strategy is an effective tool for assuring these professionals of a device's reliability, efficacy, and safety. A consistent brand fosters long-term trust, which is particularly important in the biomedical device sector, where decision-makers prioritize reliability and are inherently risk-averse. A strong brand can also enhance patient confidence, and that’s even more important in communities with an inherent mistrust of institutions and healthcare in general. When branding effectively communicates ease of use and emphasizes positive outcomes, patients are more likely to feel confident in the quality and effectiveness of the device.
A well-defined brand strategy plays a vital role in clearly conveying the device's clinical benefits and unique value proposition. By tailoring messaging to specific audiences, such as healthcare providers and institutions, a solid brand strategy enables you to effectively address their pain points, highlight the seamless integration of the device into existing workflows, and, most importantly, showcase how it leads to improved patient outcomes. This targeted approach can significantly reduce the time these key stakeholders take to embrace and adopt the new technology.
You can position your device as a premium offering by effectively articulating and communicating superior clinical outcomes, using cutting-edge technology, and enhancing usability. A strong brand strategy can also create a compelling value story for cost-conscious markets by demonstrating how the device improves efficiency, reduces complications, and ultimately lowers overall healthcare costs. This strategic approach allows companies to maximize the return on their investment while delivering innovative solutions to the healthcare market.
Top talent wants to work for a company they believe in. Biomedical startups with a strong brand have a considerable advantage in attracting, engaging, and retaining the best people. A recent study by Glassdoor indicates that 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand. The same study showed that a strong employer brand can reduce cost per hire by as much as 50%, and companies investing in employer brand can reduce turnover by as much as 28%. Brand strength is a big deal, especially in MedTech, where you need incredibly talented people to drive innovation, and teams are often decentralized.
A strong brand can make a difference in attracting those early-stage investors, and investors in the MedTech space are looking for companies they can trust. A strong brand signals credibility and shows you're in this for the long haul. One recent study showed that 82% of investors believe that brand and name recognition are important factors when evaluating startups. Crafting a great story, with a deep narrative is at the core of a great brand; it helps investors understand and envision a successful future and makes it something they want to be a part of.
Trust is essential for new medical devices, especially those from startups. A strong, clear, and informative brand connects with its stakeholders, builds trust and makes it easier for doctors and patients to embrace MedTech innovations. This can be an advantage for startups, helping them commercialize and scale their innovations.
A strong brand can significantly increase your company's value when it comes to selling or going public. Strategics often acquire biomedical innovations that they can easily scale with their sales force—and strong brands allow them to do that more efficiently and effectively. Investors and big companies are willing to pay a premium for a company with a strong brand because it shows that the market is ready for their products and that people trust them. So, building a strong brand isn't just about looking good; it's about maximizing your company's value down the line.
So, how exactly does an organization do brand strategy? To answer that question, it's easiest to think of brand strategy as a set of guideposts. Some of these guideposts are facts about your organization, marketplace, or target audiences. Some guideposts are aspirational goals or strategic objectives. Some are complex puzzles that need to be solved—brand architecture comes to mind. Others are closely associated with less tangible, higher-minded concepts such as mission, vision, values, and your organization’s why statement. Some might already exist in partial or complete form within your organization. Others need to be created from scratch.
This set of guideposts will impact what your organization communicates, how it communicates, and who it needs to connect with. They are the fundamental building blocks of your brand's story and narrative and the key to telling that story consistently, clearly, concisely, and compellingly. These guideposts will directly inform your business strategy and tactics.
We believe that the future of biomedical brand and marketing is storytelling: your story, your customers' stories, and the stories of the patients you're positively impacting. Doing all of that efficiently and effectively hinges upon an intelligent brand strategy.
These guideposts will build upon and inform one another as you create your brand strategy. It’s not a linear process. If you find it linear, step back and ensure your actions aren't superficial or incomplete. Make sure that you get a sense of how all the guideposts should feed into one another and integrate. It’s common, for example, to finish a guidepost only to find that another guidepost requires that you revisit and revise it. So, while there is a clear set of guideposts that you need to define, serendipity and thoughtful evaluation throughout the process are required to define them. Don’t be afraid to go back and rebuild some of your work when you uncover new information; it's part of the process and will result in a stronger brand strategy.
The work you're about to do is vital. It requires stamina and patience. Be bold, courageous, and comprehensive. Don’t settle for anything less than brilliance, and ensure your entire team is on board with those directives.
Deciding who will (and won’t) be on the core team is an important step. The core team will help you define your brand strategy and be your initial brand strategy champions upon rollout.
A brand strategy effort very well might be recommended and/or managed by your marketing team. The implications and application of brand strategy touch all roles and departments of your organization. For that reason, you’ll need balanced and comprehensive participation as you create your brand strategy. While every organization is unique, we recommend considering these roles when selecting the core team:
Your C-Suite’s participation in creating your brand strategy is imperative. It might be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many C-Suite executives are too busy to participate or prefer to let their team do the brand strategy work and report it back to them. That’s an inefficient, costly mistake that will result in a low-quality brand strategy, poor company-wide adoption, and a dramatically reduced likelihood that it will ultimately have the intended positive impact.
For corporate brand strategy efforts, ensure your CEO and the entire C-Suite are on the core team from the beginning. Depending on the size of your organization, product brand strategy, and employer brand strategy efforts might require a smaller subset of your C-Suite. Regardless, the entire organization will benefit from understanding that your C-Suite is not just along for the ride but that they're championing this effort.
Active C-Suite participation in brand strategy—and effective communication of the effort from the C-Suite—can ensure:
Likely, someone with the word Marketing, Brand, or Commercial in their title will be leading the charge of your brand strategy effort—even if the idea to get it done was not originally theirs. Given their responsibilities, it makes sense. After all, these people will primarily coordinate how your new brand strategy impacts or changes your visual, textual, and experiential brand. However, it’s important to remember that an intelligent brand strategy will affect every area of your organization, helping ensure everyone is aligned and rowing in the same direction. Brand strategy is not the sole domain of your marketing department. Brand strategy should impact everything, everywhere. It’s helpful to frame it that way from day one so nobody on the core team believes they can go along for the ride without active, meaningful participation.
These team members are at the tip of the spear when communicating your corporate and product brands to healthcare professionals. Not only that, but they are also uniquely aware of those healthcare professionals' needs, habits, behaviors, and pain points. This insight makes them incredibly valuable in helping you tailor your brand to connect healthcare professionals successfully. Due to compensation packages that lean on pipeline and new business, sales and business development people benefit uniquely from a smart, strong brand strategy and brand. As a result, they can be more motivated to ensure your brand work is as successful and complete as possible.
Product managers are essential to brand strategy efforts, particularly if you're embarking on corporate and product brand strategies (doing these simultaneously or serially is not for the faint of heart, by the way).
Product managers are responsible for—or critical to—medical device development, launch, and lifecycle management. They have key commercialization responsibilities. Their understanding of markets, stakeholder needs, product characteristics, and the competitive landscape can make them vital to positioning your brand effectively.
These experts deeply understand your devices' technical and clinical aspects. Their input ensures that your value propositions and messaging are accurate, rooted in reality, and resonant with healthcare professionals and consumers.
Given the highly regulated nature of the medical device industry, these specialists ensure that all branding and marketing materials comply with regulatory requirements, which is crucial for maintaining credibility and trust. Conversely, you will not create your actual brand and marketing materials during your brand strategy effort.
Few departments interact more regularly with end users than the customer service team. This consistent interaction gives them insight into your customers' actual needs and sentiments, and the real or perceived strengths and weaknesses of your medical devices and brands.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the number of people who should be on the core team. In smaller organizations and startups, it's often apparent. It can be more challenging in larger organizations, but we recommend capping it at eight to ten people. If you're still finding it challenging to select a manageable number of people, consider keeping the core team to a minimum and pulling in additional team members to participate in a subset of brand strategy work sessions that best align with their roles and experience.
An essential core team member may not even be an actual participant or part of your organization. However, they will likely spend more time on your brand strategy than anyone else.
The person you charge with moderating your brand strategy work sessions and orchestrating the entire project has a unique role and needs a particular set of skills. This person's job is to set the agenda, challenge the core team, challenge your C-Suite, and ensure your brand strategy is truly something powerful and actionable. Ideally, they should also have experience doing all these things and a track record of efficient, effective brand strategy work.
Given these considerations, hiring an outside consultant with proven experience is often wise. The right consultant will confidently and effectively provide objective moderation and leadership for a project with long-term strategic implications. They will also allow your core team to participate more actively in the discussions.
After you choose the core team and before you begin the work, it’s time to let your entire team know about the effort—what brand strategy is, why it’s important, and how it will help your organization define and meet its objectives. This is most effective if it comes from the CEO as it signals the importance of the project and that it has top management sponsorship. Also, try to update your entire organization when you hit certain milestones and solicit questions along the way. The more you keep them in the loop during the process, the more successful you’ll be at rolling out your brand strategy and making the meaningful changes that are often required.
Work sessions are needed to align teams, generate ideas, and make informed brand strategy decisions. During your sessions, you should define, in detail, the following brand strategy elements. While this is this guide's core, it's just a high-level overview. It’s up to you how to best get the core team to provide input, gain consensus, and document your work. At Launch by Boyd, we use various collaborative tools and techniques to elicit meaningful input from the core team and keep them engaged throughout the work sessions.
Ensure everyone on the core team understands how you expect the team to work together towards this common objective and the organization's expectations of the core team members.
Clearly articulate the purpose and goals of the brand strategy initiative and explain how it aligns with the overall business strategy, how it will benefit the organization, and the future responsibility of your team members to live it. Ask your core team to provide input and additional reasons why undertaking this effort will be beneficial.
Identify all existing brands, including product, service, and corporate brands. Determine which brands require immediate attention or strategic adjustments. Focusing on one brand or device at a time is helpful as work sessions can quickly get too complicated if you’re trying to juggle multiple brands.
Acknowledge and discuss any long-held assumptions or beliefs that may hinder brand innovation or progress. Encourage open and honest dialogue to challenge these assumptions and explore new possibilities. Brand strategy often points to subtle or more comprehensive refinements of your brand. Aligning your core team and executives on what can and can’t be changed at the start of the brand strategy effort is essential to expectation management and efficient development of your “new” brand.
Brand strategy must align with and support your organization’s overall objectives and those specific to your device. Keep that in mind as you discuss and define these brand strategy elements. Build your brand around these strategic objectives.
Precisely define what business your company is in. If your target audiences were going to search for a company or device like yours, what would they search for? This might sound simple, but it’s often tricky. Nailing this down will help you more clearly communicate who you are and your value proposition.
Identify the brand's primary and secondary target audiences and develop deep insights into their needs, wants, and behaviors. Use this information to develop everything from product features to narrative and tactical marketing decisions.
Conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis to identify the brand's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can then use this analysis to inform strategic decisions and mitigate risks.
Define the brand hierarchy and relationships between different brand elements and ensure a consistent and coherent brand identity across all touchpoints. Is your existing brand architecture flexible and futureproof? Try to peer into the future to ensure your brand won’t be upended by M&As, device updates, or additional product introductions.
Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of key competitors and identify opportunities to differentiate the brand and gain a competitive advantage. This should be an ongoing effort, and much of the work for this element is probably best done offline and outside of the core team meetings.
Develop a unique and compelling brand positioning statement and clearly articulate the brand's value proposition, how it differs from your competition, and how it meets the target audience's needs.
Define the brand's personality and values and develop a brand voice and tone that reflects the brand's character. This can be one of the more fun and engaging elements for your core team to define. Multiple collaborative tools are available to help you accomplish this in a group environment.
Articulate the brand's long-term vision and mission while defining the core values that guide the brand's behavior and decision-making.
Clearly define what your brand will deliver to your key stakeholders every single day. Is it clear? Is it unique? Is it compelling? This becomes a rallying point around your team's day-to-day actions.
Clearly define what the brand will deliver to its employees every single day – and the environment in which employees will work. If approached intelligently, your employer brand promise—and the employer brand that you build will help you attract, engage, and retain the top talent you need to succeed.
Define what you provide, how you provide it, and why you do it. This can be highly effective as an elevator pitch or shorthand summation of some of the more essential elements of your brand strategy.
You’ve finished your work sessions. You’ve cleaned up and consolidated the work session notes and ideas. You’ve identified and filled gaps. You’ve addressed elements that are incomplete or unconvincing. Now, it's time to create a single brand strategy document and share it with your team in a way commensurate with the value it will provide your organization. We recommend a Town Hall style rollout complete with commentary and endorsement by your CEO and executive team.
Every person in every department of your organization now has a powerful new set of assets that—if orchestrated intelligently—can move the company forward with meaningful purpose.
Your brand strategy defines guideposts for bringing your “new” brand to life. Now, you must determine what needs to change because of the work you’ve done. This can be as simple as a slight reframing of your target markets or adopting a refined messaging platform. It could also be as comprehensive as a corporate and product rebrand or an operations overhaul.
Brand strategy often involves refreshing or overhauling how a brand is expressed visually, textually, and experientially. Our next guide for biomedical innovators will focus on just that.
Regardless of the level of complexity that your brand strategy requires, it's essential to make those changes. A brand strategy without downstream change equates to time and money wasted in addition to opportunity costs for not realizing the positive impact that your team has defined.
We highly recommend that your brand strategy be revisited annually and updated during annual strategic planning, as the market changes, or before significant events such as product line expansion or M&A activity.
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