Marketing Problems? Treat the Cause, Not the Symptoms

In medicine and in marketing, treating symptoms can bring temporary relief, but it doesn’t address the root cause.

Nowhere is this more clear than in marketing for the life sciences. Just as in human health, a single root cause might give rise to a whole host of symptoms. In marketing, these symptoms might be:

• Lack of sales leads
• Pressure on pricing
• Increased competition
• Confusion about what you stand for among your audience

While there can be many symptoms, pervasive marketing problems (problems that show up in more than one area of a life science company’s marketing efforts) are typically due to only a small handful of causes:

Lack of uniqueness

One of the biggest marketing problems in the life sciences is a lack of clear differentiation in your positioning. If you sound exactly like your competitors, why would your audience buy from you? By highlighting what makes your brand unique, you have a better chance of standing out from the crowd.

Lack of credibility

When a claim sounds too good to be true, it usually is. If your messaging sounds a bit too rosy, your audience might be skeptical of exactly what you can deliver. Learning how to effectively manage your organization’s trust signals can make or break your brand, so make sure you’re communicating in a direct and honest way.

For more tips about you can leverage trust signals to convert more of your audience, check out our blog: Trust Signals: What They Are and How to Use Them

Lack of clarity

Many life science brands suffer from muddy, generic messaging that hurts more than it helps. If you can’t clearly articulate your message, how can you expect your audience to engage with your brand? Stay away from fluffy taglines and obtuse positioning statements, and instead try to be direct: “this is what we’re good at and this is how you can benefit from working with us.”

These are some individual symptoms, but what about the cause?

There are additional symptoms beyond the three we listed, such as a lack of relevance, authenticity, or sustainability. But all these marketing problems are symptoms of a singular root cause: poor positioning.

Positioning is the DNA of your brand. Positioning is what determines how your brand is perceived in the eyes of your audience, competitors, and internal workforce. For many life science organizations, poor positioning is the root cause of most of their marketing problems.

Generic, untrustworthy, or confusing messaging can alienate your audience and cause all sorts of sales and marketing problems. If you’re seeing lower sales and conversion rates, it might be time to take a hard look at how your organization is positioned.