1. Investors Prefer Medtech Brands with Clear Brand Strategy to Drive Growth

It can be very tempting in the early stages to focus exclusively on only technical development and fundraising in the hope that the branding strategy and marketing will ‘take care of itself’ or ‘come together naturally’ as you commercialise. 

However, that’s a very risky approach because you’re neglecting to apply equally important rigour to attracting the attention of your primary target audiences. Brand strategy is what you need to build credibility and differentiate from other perceived competitors to drive growth. The truth is, there are major commercial benefits to working on your brand strategy from day one because it enables you to make your ‘product’ or service stand out to potential investors and help make it more investable to them.

Developing a robust brand strategy demonstrates to potential investors that the team is commercially minded and is not just focused exclusively on the technology development.

Image via © Vivosight

A relevant case study is Vivosight, which has raised thirteen rounds of funding. It has a non-intrusive scanner which can diagnose non-melanoma skin cancer. One of the things which presumably attracts funders to the company is that it has had a clear brand strategy from its early days, including user case, brand proposition and value proposition.

Related: How Healthy Is Your Brand? 7 Vital Signs to Measure Today Using a Brand Audit Health Check

2. User Personas Help Medtech Brands Get the Right Product Faster

One challenge medtech faces versus a lot of other product areas are that there are often multiple user personas or customer profiles to consider when constructing a strong brand strategy. Aside from the end-user, or perhaps patient, medtech typically needs to engage prescribers, buyers, and often experts such as health officials and other decision-makers or influencers. That is a lot of people whose purchase and usage drivers need to be considered.

A lot of product development either focuses too narrowly on a specific user need or worse yet doesn’t even focus on users at all and just focusses on technical development. This causes no end of problems when the time comes to launch or rolling the product out to market. There’s often a solution without a clearly identified problem to solve — from a target audience perspective. 

User personas help to solve this problem and mitigate risk because when you initiate brand development with a clear target audience, and build personas mapping out their needs and wants, the brand is then uniquely well positioned to address their needs on their terms, so they are far more likely to be attracted to your offering. That is true not just for user personas, but crucially for all those involved in the decision-making or who may be involved in the medtech purchase and usage consideration process, from doctors and hospital buyers to loved ones.

Image via Twitter © Consure Medical

A case study relevant to this is seen in the  Indian medtech Consure. It has a stool management kit called Qora. This is an important function for bedridden patients and doesn’t sound like a very imposing tech challenge. However, like many medtech solutions, the impact on patients and medical staff is very important because failure is unpleasant and potentially embarrassing for all concerned. Consure clearly communicates in its brand messaging that it understands not only the user persona for its product, but also includes other relevant user personas such as nursing and hospital staff who are caring for bedridden patients.

Related: Using Buyer Personas to Increase Your Business Profitability

3. Medtech Brands Use Branding Strategy to Help Communicate Their Benefits

It can be a challenge for medtech products to communicate their benefit to users because the market is crowded and many larger medical device companies have more substantial resources and budgets

A simple way for a product or service to stand out in the marketplace, whether with investors or users, is to use a strong branding strategy to take the strain.  Rigorous branding strategy enables medtech brands to communicate even a novel or difficult to understand benefit without investing heavily to do so effectively. 

For example, a well-considered brand strategy should provide direction for brand name creation and choice which can help to communicate the benefit and/or usage scenario to its target audience. A brand name is important and typically much harder to change later on than some other parts of your brand strategy, so while it may look simple, in fact, the best brand names clearly flow from the brand strategy and brand architecture.

Related: Use Psychology in Your Brand Strategy to Create Irresistible Brand Experiences and Increase Sales

Image via © NeuroMod

A case study is NeuroMod. This Irish medtech SME helps reduce the effects of tinnitus through a process of modulating how noise is heard. The brand name is well-chosen to reflect the branding strategy: modulation is a concept already familiar with people when it comes to noise control, so the brand has less work to do when it comes to educating them on its benefits.

Indeed, as seen in a video of a patient discussing the product, he characterises tinnitus as being something that went “from something that was entirely outside my control, to where there was the possibility that it would be at least a little bit inside my control”: a concept which the brand strategy seems designed to communicating, including through the brand name as one method.

Related: What’s in a Brand Name? Top 8 Successful Naming Principles Explained

4. Strong Brand Tone of Voice Helps Medtech Brands Stand Out

To the wider public, medtech can seem technical, abstract, and sometimes intimidating or confusing. For non-elective or required medical treatments, those issues become less problematic. However, a lot of medtech targets elective treatments or softer medical benefits which are more discretionary. In these cases, a strong branding strategy helps medtech brands stand out, differentiate, appear approachable, credible, and engaging.

Image via © Babylon Health

Traditionally, medical branding has often adopted a formal, science-based, complex and rather dry tone. Medtech can break this paradigm, and many medtech brands often do with an engaging brand tone of voice. For example, Babylon Health’s inclusive, inviting approach to health (“We’re for health, for all”) is accessible and not off-putting as some medical communication has traditionally been.

Related: How to Develop Your Brand Tone of Voice to Increase Sales

5. Premium Pricing is Easier When Medtech Brands Differentiate  and Build Credibility

Some medtech brands have products or interfaces which genuinely set them apart from competitors. But the fact is, many medtech brands lack much IP (intecllectual property) and are simply bundling together generic components in a way which could be replicated fairly easily, so they have no real competitive advantage and are vulnerable to downward pricing pressures and discounting

The less differentiated a product or service, the more vulnerable it is to negative pricing pressure because it’s forced to compete with the lowest contender. This is not a good strategy because you’re effectively forced into a race to the bottom unless you have commercial clout like Amazon, Pfizer, or GlaxoSmithKline.

Strong branding strategy enables a medtech company to set its offering apart from its competitors and stand out in the marketplace.

Image via © Fitbit

Fitbit is a good example of this. There is not much in technology terms that sets the brand apart from a wide array of wearable vital signs trackers. What Fitbit did well was to bring it together under a well-differentiated brand strategy, enabling it to break direct comparison to less well-known competitors and so break free from direct pricing comparisons. 

This can be seen in its brand communication, which is distinctive, engaging at a human level, and focussed on higher-order benefits such as mental wellbeing and personalised health approaches, rather than lower-order functional benefits such as heartbeat tracking.

Related: Profitable Lessons from Luxury Brand Leaders, Brand Positioning for Premium Pricing

Final Thoughts

Branding shouldn’t be an afterthought for medtech brands and pharmatech brands – in fact, it is an essential foundation stone for successful long-term business success.

Technology may be at the heart of what a tech brand stands for, but technology is an enabler not an end in itself. Consequently, medtech brands and pharmatech entrepreneurs can’t rely on technology for their success alone. 

Medtech brands need to appeal to patients, prescribers, purchasers, and other relevant stakeholders. A robust branding strategy helps them hit the mark and, most importantly, mitigate risk. Technology can be a way to deliver on the brand promise, but it has a supporting role – vital but not enough on its own for a successful show.

From the very start of your entrepreneurial journey, a consistently implemented branding strategy helps in practical ways too, when consistently implemented. It can help attract funders, the right tone of voice can engage target users and, with the right branding strategy, medtech can command more pricing power.

Medtech brands often have the right elements for success – a clear user case, compelling brand stories, and a customer audience that wills them to succeed. But these pieces don’t fall into place by accident. Instead, they need to be optimised and brought to their full potential through the thoughtful use of a robustly developed and consistently applied brand strategy.

Questions to Consider

1. Does your branding strategy make you more or less attractive to potential funders?
2. What user personas are most relevant to your medtech brand?
3. How clearly do you communicate your benefits?
4. What is unique and appealing about your brand’s tone of voice?
5. How differentiated is your brand from its competitors?
6. Could you use a brand audit to enable you to develop and execute a more robust brand strategy to differentiate more strongly and achieve higher revenue?

Schedule your one-to-one brand audit consultation with Lorraine Carter here now