Health tech and life sciences B2B technology and SaaS marketers are often mired in tactical messaging. Leading with features and benefits (F&B) is often the path of least resistance for making your internal stakeholders happy.
But what about potential customers who haven’t even entered the marketing funnel? Are you speaking to their needs and search intent?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly a time and place for F&B, but that place is primarily for people who already know your company and what you do.
A strategic messaging framework lays out how to communicate the value you bring to customers and that ‘je ne sais quois’ quality unique to your brand.
Raising the bar is mission-critical to fuel your funnel
Elevating your messaging may require a mindset shift to help your target buyer see the big picture.
Our clients’ products typically fall into one of two categories:
- New, product-defining solutions that go unnoticed. Because there are no other solutions on the market, your potential customers aren’t looking for one.
- Products are pigeon-holed for a particular use case. Your product may be able to scale across the enterprise but your buyers and influencers can’t see the forest for the trees.
In both cases, leading with features and benefits messaging only exacerbates the branding challenge.
To grow top-of-the-funnel interest and leads, problem-solution messaging is a must.
Get the 5 secrets to elevate your tech product messaging
Here are five ways to elevate your health IT and biotech B2B messaging to take it beyond the tactical features and benefits.
1. Know your brand promises. Brand promises communicate how your organization singularly provides deliverables to customers. They are different from your internal values in that they are outcomes-focused.
If you can’t articulate your brand promises, you can’t expect your target audience to either.
2. Align your messaging with your company’s goals and objectives. This may seem obvious, but you may be surprised how often this gets pushed to the back burner.
As your company grows, your total available market (TAM) gets smaller. Doubling down on existing messaging that talks to a shrinking pool of potential customers simply isn’t strategic. Rather, it’s time to start seeding the field for expanded markets and messaging for the future.
3. Listen to what your customers have to say. Start your journey toward more strategic messaging with customer interviews. While you may hear they like a particular feature, this is your chance to get at the heart of how your product or service changed and improved the customer’s day-to-day work life.
Knowing what resonates with your current customers is one of the easiest ways to develop messaging that will convert future customers.
4. Center the customer, not yourself. It’s not about you. Have you been in business for 20 years? Great. But don’t pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Let potential customers know how they can benefit from that experience.
Help your prospects answer the essential question: what’s in it for me?
5. Treat your audience like people, not faceless buyers. In B2B marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that your customers are people, too.
When it comes to enterprise-wide health tech, the ask is so much greater than buying your product or service. With sales cycles of 18 months or longer, you’re also asking for a significant commitment of time and resources that could also impact the trajectory of your buyer’s career.
Need help with your strategic positioning?
In the crowded health IT market, it’s critical that your messaging does more than showcase your features and benefits. Strategic brand positioning is a business imperative that forms the foundation of your lead generation outreach.
Partner with a B2B healthcare marketing agency with subject matter expertise in healthcare IT and biotech to elevate your messaging from the tactical to the strategic.
Contact us today to get started.
