Positioning
A number of the companies I’ve worked with over the past two years have faced challenges in reaching new customers, especially in regards to launching products, due to restricted access to customer sites during the COVID19 pandemic. This has been particularly true for university research laboratories and even more so for hospital based clients. Even in normal times busy professors or physicians don’t want to be bothered by people with whom they don’t already have relationships, or who don’t clearly add value.
While CEO at Transplant Genomics, when people wanted to meet my partner Dr. Mike Abecassis, he used to always say “don’t waste my time”; “what value do they have to me?” He wasn’t being rude, but frank. Getting right to the point as any good surgeon would. So when it gets even more difficult to reach people, you have to have a very good answer to this question. What value do I have to offer? What’s more, with every action you take, and every interaction you have, you should bear in mind that building long term trusting relationships is your goal.
Every aspect of an effective marketing and sales strategy starts with positioning. It ends with execution, which we’ll get to another time. You can get positioning exactly right, have a strong compelling message, and still fail in the marketplace. That's where execution comes in, and there are countless things that can go wrong. So I don't mean to minimize execution in any respect. In fact, I’ve always had a soft spot for people who are effective at executing on a plan. It’s as valuable a skill as is strategic planning itself.
However, it starts with positioning. And effective messaging. Your targeted audience needs to be made aware of who you are and what you have to offer. They must understand your value proposition, why it matters to them, why it's so compelling, what problem it solves, and why it's superior to any of the other solutions that may be available to them. If you communicate this effectively, and your story holds true, not only will the barriers to meeting come down, but new opportunities will present themselves for building long term relationships.
Positioning does not mean simply having a longer list of product attributes, or comparing each of your specifications with those of various competitors. “Spec wars” can be won, but all things being roughly equal (and sometimes very difficult to assess quickly), a strong message is more likely to capture attention and lead to a lasting relationship. Your message will be dependent on your positioning, and with respect to positioning you need to first identify the single most important factor that matters to your typical target customer. What matters most to them in relation to your product offering?
I’ve always found it useful to try to think about two factors that matter most, and where you are furthest differentiated from all of your competitors. Create a mental map in two dimensions where ideally you are in the upper right hand corner (high on both axes) and all of your competitors are in the lower left hand corner (low on both axes). By this I mean that they're low with respect to their capabilities on both of these factors that matter, and you are high. One is usually enough to win, but two is more compelling.
Thinking about putting this into words, I always liked the simple template for a positioning statement provided in Geoffrey Moore’s book “Crossing the Chasm”:
“For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit – that is, compelling reason to buy).
At Transplant Genomics, for example, the two key attributes that mattered most to our target customers for our TruGraf® blood test were that a) the test be non-invasive (not require a tissue biopsy), and b) performance was validated in a population of stable patients with no signs of rejection. All alternative tests either required invasive biopsies, or had only been developed and tested in patients already rejecting. Our unique positioning statement was:
“For (transplant nephrologists) who (need a non-invasive rejection test validated in stable patients), the (TruGraf® blood gene expression test) is a (diagnostic test) that (provides high negative predictive value for surveillance of apparently stable patients).”
The key message around which we built our whole brand image and communications plan was our unique position as offering a high performing non-invasive test properly validated for use as a surveillance tool in patients who appeared to be stable. All of our competitors with other non-invasive tests could only show that once a patient already had other clinical signs of rejection, then they could detect that too.
That’s a relatively complicated example. Under most circumstances people think about basic factors such as speed and cost as being the two most important things that matter to a customer. If your product gets an answer faster that’s the feature you promote. If your product does so for less money, then that’s what you focus attention on. Faster and/or lower cost is often enough to win, but that's not necessarily true. It really depends on the circumstance. What if the factor that matters most is analytical precision, or the need for quantitative results, and it simply takes longer and costs more to deliver these? My point is that faster is better, and time is money, but you may find yourselves in a competitive situation where that’s still not sufficient.
If your first pass at competitive positioning yields a compelling position and one that is highly differentiated, then congratulations. Now you “just” need to effectively communicate your message, which we’ll discuss below. But what do you do when you have at least one major competitor that is either equivalent or better than you in respect to the factor(s) that matters the most? Now you really need to get creative. Many people would have a knee jerk reaction to start competing on price. That's exactly the wrong thing to do, or at least it’s the last thing. What you really need to do is find a way to increase the value of your offering to the customer.
Increasing value can come in many forms. Often I would think about first providing better customer support, or better client services, or making the system easier to use. Customer support could be in the form of education as well as staffing a hot line (or chat room) with experts available to provide advice on product use and applications. Client services may mean same day instrument servicing, or walking through problems over the phone, or having an online portal through which products may be ordered and payments may be processed. Ease of product use should be considered both with respect to the manual steps involved in the process for which the product is used, as well as the actual human interaction with the system. These days an analytical instrument is often operated from a digital interface of some sort, probably a touch screen. Or it may be driven off of a separate computer, using dedicated software loaded on a laptop, for example. In any case it has to be as simple and intuitive as possible. Think about the way Apple products are designed and function.
There are additional things you can do to increase value in the eyes of the customer. One subtle but extremely important means involves creation of a recognizable and memorable brand name or logo, along with an easy-to-remember tagline that resonates with your target audience, and aggressively promoting your company’s name in places that your audience is likely to see and feel good about. This could be advertisements in online and physical journals, various social media platforms, conference sponsorships, and participation in technical conferences where you speak about your work. You can create a blog, or a Facebook page, or a white paper on a topic of special interest, or even host a seminar lunch or dinner in conjunction with a trade show. In San Francisco I’ve seen companies take out ads on the side of trolley cars!
Speaking of Facebook, it’s now extremely important to build a following through an active targeted social media campaign. Facebook, Google ads, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These need to be professionally managed and provide timely useful information. Simply having a presence buys you nothing. It’s actually worse than that, as it gives the impression that you don’t really care, or you don’t know what you’re doing, and that reflects negatively on everything else you do.
Before you can think about social media I would invest in a state-of-the-art friendly feeling website as opposed to one that is “clunky”, has too many pages, requires too many clicks to get to the main points, or is simply a list of specifications and a big data dump. All of that data is extremely important, and it needs to be accessible. I mean this in two senses. First, using search engine optimization techniques to ensure that your website can be found by someone who has an interest in this general area. Second, making the actual website extremely easy to navigate, and reading very clean and simple and clear.
Press releases are another important tool in the marcom toolbox. You need to toot your own horn, and do it with regularity. Show both specific accomplishments and general progress. A healthy flow of meaningful press releases is an indication of a vibrant growing company. This will both create “buzz” in the community as well as increase the chance that new opportunities will come your way. Enhancing awareness and accessibility are both key, and when more of your target audience sees more of their peers getting involved, they’ll want to be involved too. These affiliations, among other things, add value vs competitors who lack such activity.
Another approach to add value it to find a few key opinion leaders in the field and engage them as consultants, to participate in an Advisory board. As they become more familiar with your product, ideally even become a user, they may publish their own studies, and/or serve as speakers at conferences, or at grand rounds at individual institutions. With enough of these on board you might even produce a week long road show in which presentations are given at major customer sites around the country.
Partnerships and research collaborations are another tool both for developing critical data, but also for helping spread the word about your products. High quality partners give people confidence in the product they are using. Associating yourself with other high value brands will confer some value onto your product too. Perhaps you'll decide to run a study highlighting how the use of your product complements a market leading product somewhere downstream in the workflow. Or on a parallel path, such that the combined data has even more value to the customer.
You can add more value by taking actions to show that you intend to be an active positive influence on the community you plan to serve. This “good will” will generate recognition for your brand, and positive feelings from clients in the community. Examples of ways to show that your company supports the general field in which it is operating include by sponsoring conferences, or awarding non-directed grants to young investigators,
Most people think about studies as either a requirement of a properly run R&D program, a regulatory requirement, or necessary to support an application for Medicare or private insurance coverage. But sponsoring studies in which investigators are paid to participate is a great way to develop data on product performance, demonstrate new applications, build relationships with future customers, and generate buzz in the marketplace.
Sponsorship may include providing instrumentation, reagents, technical support, and additional financing to cover administrative costs. You may even provide non-directed funding for other activities in the PI’s lab. It’s neither unusual nor unethical to compensate someone for their time, to provide some additional support for their laboratory, to provide the recognition that comes from an award – and all you need in return is a commitment to use your product in a study, and to publish the results and speak about them at conferences. The results cannot be censored in any way, and you should be confident in your product before engaging in this kind of activity, or alternatively, it should be done for exactly the purpose of determining product utility.
This is distinctly different from paying for use of a product in a clinical context where patient care is involved. That’s a whole other subject, as there are strict laws around payment that could be viewed as inducement to use a product (Stark laws: “The Physician Self-Referral Law, commonly referred to as the Stark law, prohibits physicians from referring patients to receive "designated health services" payable by Medicare or Medicaid from entities with which the physician or an immediate family member has a financial relationship, unless an exception applies.”- https://oig.hhs.gov/compliance/physician-education/fraud-abuse-laws.).
What if you’re faced with a real challenging barrier, an event that comes out of nowhere and effects everyone in the world. A war. A pandemic! When COVID19 emerged in early 2020 I was Executive Chairman at Transplant Genomics. We had just received Medicare coverage for our flagship product, a diagnostic test used to help assess rejection status in kidney transplant recipients. All of our customers were transplant programs, and all of their patients were immunocompromised. With so much still unknown at the beginning of the pandemic, they all effectively shut down.
They still needed patient testing as much as before, but sales people were not allowed to visit transplant centers, and nobody had time to evaluate a new test anyway as they were all helping care for infected patients. Transplant recipients, however, still needed to be tested – even more importantly than ever. The solution was to hire traveling phlebotomists, and offer to go to each patient’s home and collect samples at no charge to them or their transplant program. The value of this service was further enhanced by enabling the phlebotomists to draw bloods for other routine tests that the transplant programs needed done, and ship the samples directly to their labs.
One can use some combination of all of these approaches, or some unique approach I haven’t even mentioned, to generate awareness and interest among your target customers. What’s most important is that you find a way to be visible, recognized, and memorable to your target audience (based on your unique positioning and compelling messaging), create a high value image in their eyes, and go out of your way to be accessible and easy to work with in every respect. You need to continually reinforce your simple compelling message and the key way(s) in which you are differentiated from your competition.
Ultimately it comes down to developing relationships with key opinion leaders at more and more local levels, so that eventually every key decision maker is effectively a KOL. They all talk to each other, so if they have good things to say then they become missionaries for your cause. They help spread the word regarding the value of your company and product through their personal and professional networks. Nothing is more valuable than great relationships, personal referrals, and good word of mouth.
Coming right back to where we started with positioning. Your targeted customers need to get the message right away. They need to clearly understand what problem your product solves for them, how you are differentiated from other possible solutions, and why you are a better choice - the best choice - for their particular problem. They also need to develop some sense of trust in what you’re saying, and a degree of comfort and good feeling about working with you and your company, and this comes from all of the types of activities I’ve mentioned. With well thought out positioning, strong differentiation, clear compelling messaging, and an effective broad based marcom program aimed at developing and leveraging relationships, you should now be able to answer “what value do I have to offer?”. When that is crystal clear, and truly compelling, then word will spread, barriers will be broken, and opportunities will present themselves to develop lasting relationships. All that’s left is effective execution.