Does Your Small Business Have a Marketing Strategy?
Startups are a great wellspring of innovation and new products or therapeutics. But guess what? Your startup is a business! Now, if you already have in hand, or are developing, a product or therapeutic for which the world will automatically line up outside of your door, congratulations! The truth of the matter is, most startups do not. Another sad statistic - especially true in biotech - is that a significant percentage of startups will ultimately fail. Sometimes, failure is due to the vagaries of biology, but other times, it is due to poor business practices. One thing that is often overlooked is marketing — a step-by-step process that starts with your unique selling proposition (not to be confused with advertising, which is only a component of marketing).
Starting out strong.
You have good science or technology, and you found someone to help back your idea. You showed passion, determination, insight and obtained some seed funding. However, very few companies get a mega seed round. Almost from the very beginning, you have to be thinking about how to market your idea to others. Publishing papers…marketing. Presenting a poster…marketing. Looking for more funding…absolutely marketing! It’s all about the approach: It’s not about taking out advertisements, printing glossy brochures, etc., but looking beyond your program, your product, and your process. You not only have to project your expertise, but also show that you understand your prospective audience and their thoughts on the value of your technology. If it does not match your presumed valuation, you have work to do . . . marketing work.
What is your company’s path?
Hopefully you started out with an idea that will lead to a therapeutic with great promise and you raised enough money to make it all the way to the clinic (which does not happen very often). You took the necessary steps to protect your intellectual property and now you are thinking about how best to present your company’s potential. Pitch decks, elevator speeches, 5 minute business plan competitions? There are many places where your focus must extend beyond your science. Have you thought seriously about how others might view your program, especially those on the business development side of things? It is a different era now in biotech than even 10 years ago. Many larger pharma companies routinely look at small biotech companies as the source of their new pipeline assets. In addition, most early-stage investors will want to know how fast and how much capital it will take to show whether your startup’s idea has a chance. How are any of these different entities even going to know about what you are doing if you haven’t thought about how or to whom you should market your project or program?
Can you reach the finish line?
If your product can disrupt an entire segment of the life science / biotech arena, wonderful, but the reality is that most biotech startups are focused on a specific question in a very specific area. Ultimately, the majority of those startups that last long enough to progress an asset to near the finish line will need to join forces with others to see their product come to market. You have come a long way, and done an excessive amount of hard work. You have superior expertise and knowledge in your scientific or technical specialty. Don’t get derailed by an absence of awareness of your competitive landscape or who you should be speaking with most urgently. Most of all, remember that finish lines can and do move, but information you produce to help persuade others of your goals is always valuable.
