Biotech brand positioning insights to attract investors and build credibility

The biotechnology industry is growing fast. Every day, new companies are emerging, introducing new ways to overcome global health issues. In this industry, success doesn’t just hinge on groundbreaking products, it depends heavily on your approach to biotech brand positioning.

A strong positioning strategy doesn’t just help biotech companies differentiate themselves from the competition in a crowded market. It defines whether you’ll be able to earn the trust of the investors, stakeholders, and consumers that will help your business grow.

Credibility and trust are the currency of the biotech industry. With effective branding, biotech startups and established companies alike can improve their chances of earning funding, gaining regulatory approval for new products, and securing strategic partnerships with leading organizations.

Here, we’ll explore why you need to invest in strategic branding for biotech growth, and introduce some of the best strategies you can use to boost your chances of success.

Why brand positioning matters in biotech

A strong brand positioning strategy is crucial in any industry. It’s the key to differentiating your company from countless other organizations offering similar solutions and products, and forging strong connections with your target audience.

In the biotech industry, however, a careful approach to determining how your company will be perceived by stakeholders and investors is particularly important.

As the market continues to grow (expected to reach a value of $3.9 trillion by 2031), standing out is becoming increasingly difficult. Strategic positioning, with engaging biotech storytelling strategies, a unique visual identity, and effective marketing materials, is the key to getting ahead.

Beyond enabling differentiation in biotech branding, the right positioning strategy is how you build valuable relationships with the right stakeholders. It’s how you show investors and partners why they should be betting on your company and its products.

More than a logo or tagline, a biotech brand positioning strategy:

Establishes credibility and earns trust

The biotech sector is built on innovation, but innovation alone isn’t enough. Biotech products empower healthcare professionals, fight destructive diseases and ailments, and ultimately change lives. In a world like this, trust is everything.

The more you can prove to your audience that your products are revolutionizing human health, addressing unique challenges in the medical space, and driving results, the more support (and funding) you’ll earn.

Take Moderna, for instance, before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was just one of many biotech startups.

The company’s approach to highlighting constant scientific innovation in its branding and marketing materials, as well as its focus on positioning itself as an educational resource, and thought leader in the biotech industry helped to make it a household name.

Attracts investor support

Biotech companies aren’t just trying to build relationships with consumers and healthcare providers. They need to attract funding from investors who believe in their cause or mission. Learning how to attract investors in biotech is essential to sustainable growth.

The right brand positioning strategy can make all the difference. It ensures you can align your company’s vision and messaging strategy with investor priorities.

A great brand positioning strategy helps biotechnology companies convince investors that they deserve their backing. Everything from your company’s online presence, to your product development roadmap and marketing messages helps to show stakeholders that you’re a worthwhile investment.

Just look at how companies like Pfizer secure funding by demonstrating their authority through strategic marketing campaigns, and sharing data-driven case studies with investors.

Enables long-term growth

A great biotech brand positioning strategy doesn’t just help companies stand out in a crowded market, or increase brand awareness. It gives firms the tools they need to facilitate long-term growth.

For instance, by committing to effective biotech research and positioning strategies, firms can more easily navigate regulatory hurdles, ensuring they’re prepared to present their products to regulatory bodies in a way that complies with local, and international standards.

The right brand positioning strategy also ensures that organizations can continue to demonstrate their value to potential partners, customers, and medical professionals while they’re working on new products. Biotech development cycles can be extremely lengthy.

Simply creating, testing, and releasing a new drug can take years. With a positioning strategy that focuses on educating potential investors and clients, demonstrating thought leadership, and keeping stakeholders up-to-date on developments, you keep your audience engaged.

By celebrating milestones, fostering dialogue, and showcasing progress, biotech companies can maintain momentum and strengthen relationships with investors, partners, and even the public.

Key components of effective biotech brand positioning

So, what does it take to build a positioning strategy that attracts investors for biotech brands, establishes credibility, and nurtures growth? The simple answer is “more than just a sleek logo or a clever tagline.”

At its core, biotech brand positioning is about crafting a compelling identity that resonates with stakeholders while clearly communicating a company’s value and vision.

To give your company the best chances of success, you’ll need to focus on:

Crafting a unique value proposition

Great biotech branding strategies are built around a compelling “value proposition”. In other words, you need to know what makes your biotech company unique, and why it’s going to appeal to potential customers, stakeholders, and investors.

In a competitive landscape, simply promising customers a life-changing therapy or treatment isn’t enough. You’ll need to find comprehensive ways to set yourself apart from the crowd. For instance, does your team take a unique approach to conducting clinical trials?

Are you taking advantage of cutting-edge technology that other organizations don’t have access to? Do you specialize in making complex scientific concepts easier to understand for the masses?

Maybe your unique value stems from your commitment to collaborating with other companies to accelerate product development. For example, CRISPR Therapeutics works together with academic groups, well-known pharmaceutical companies and universities.

Building a strong mission, aligned with stakeholder values

A biotech brand’s mission and vision define its purpose and long-term goals. Your mission as a growing biotech company, should align with the values of your target market.

As an example, your business might be committed to crafting treatments for cancer patients that help to reduce tumors, and improve quality of life, minimizing the side effects of other treatment options.

Alternatively, you might be focused on developing medical devices that make healthcare professionals more productive and help them to reduce their carbon footprint. Whatever your mission is, it needs to be easy for stakeholders to see and understand.

Genentech shares its mission to “pursue groundbreaking science” and support people with “serious and life-threatening diseases” which is evident in everything it does. All of the company’s marketing materials highlight its patient-first focus.

Identifying a clear target audience

Understanding your target audience is crucial to brand positioning in any industry. You need to know who you’re targeting with your products and services to ensure you’re addressing their unique needs, pain points, and goals.

In the biotech industry, connecting with your target audience can be a little more complex, as you’ll usually need to craft an image and message that appeals to multiple different groups, from regulatory bodies, to potential partners, investors, patients, and healthcare providers.

The key to building a strong brand identity, and developing effective promotional materials, is learning as much as you can about the core values and concerns of each “segment” of your audience.

Investors are drawn to clarity, scalability, and risk mitigation. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in treatments for cystic fibrosis, tailors its investor messaging by emphasizing its pipeline’s breadth and scientific rigor.

Patients, consumers, and healthcare providers, on the other hand, are more likely to be drawn to educational content, and marketing messages that highlight the impact your products are having on real people.

Establishing a memorable brand personality

A strong personality is critical to effective brand positioning for biotech companies. Developing a unique tone of voice, and a strategy for storytelling can elevate the impact of your marketing efforts, and help you build stronger relationships with potential clients and investors.

As an example, Moderna doesn’t just position itself as a thought leader and an expert in the MRNA space, it entertains, educates, and inspires its target audience. Moderna’s website is packed full of engaging stories from subject matter experts and customers.

Plus, the company constantly shares unique content, from videos and webinars to articles written to resonate with all kinds of consumers – not just medical experts.

Moderna’s brand personality helps to differentiate it from other “stuffy” biotech brands, making it seem like a friendly source of guidance and support for its audience.

Your approach to building a unique personality, and showcasing it in your online content, social media posts, and videos will help you grab the attention of the right people, and earn customer loyalty.

How to build credibility through effective branding

As mentioned above, credibility is the backbone of success in the biotech industry. In a field marked by groundbreaking innovation and high stakes, earning the trust of investors, partners, and the public is non-negotiable. To build credibility in biotech, you need a comprehensive strategy.

Once you’ve established the core elements of your brand positioning strategy, such as the personality you’re going to demonstrate in your messaging, and your unique value proposition, you can start to build credibility, and earn trust by:

Developing a strong communication strategy

Effective communication is essential to earning trust and demonstrating your value to stakeholders. In this sector, transparency is everything. If you’re positioning a biotech startup as a thought leader, educator, or patient-focused company, you need to constantly connect with your audience.

Companies that are open about their progress, challenges, and plans are more likely to earn the confidence of stakeholders. Just look at how BioNTech constantly shared updates on its development milestones, and trial results when it was working on a COVID-19 vaccine.

Make sure you understand the importance of transparency in biotech and keep your audience in the loop with data-backed updates and genuine stories. Address setbacks and delays openly, and tell your community how you’re addressing challenges and managing hurdles.

A commitment to open and consistent communication will help you stand out among a sea of competitors, and earn the trust of the investors you need to facilitate growth.

Creating a powerful visual identity

Successful biotech brand positioning relies on more than just a great logo or a well-chosen color palette. However, that doesn’t mean you should overlook the importance of your visual identity.

First impressions matter, whether you’re trying to attract medical clients and consumers, or investors. A strong visual identity for biotech brands could be the key to standing out in a crowded market.

The Ginkgo Bioworks company immediately grabs attention with its bold color palette, professional photography, and minimalistic logo. Beyond simply helping you to stand out, your visual identity sends an important message to stakeholders about the stability and authority of your firm.

A poorly designed logo, outdated website, or inconsistent branding can raise red flags for investors and partners, suggesting a lack of attention to detail or strategic focus. Don’t overlook the importance of a visual identity that shows authority, professionalism, and a commitment to innovation.

Sharing case studies and success stories

Nothing elevates investor messaging for biotech companies, or earns trust quite like proof. If you want to build credibility in the biotech industry, you need to regularly show your audience that you’re making progress towards your goals.

Sharing white papers that detail the results of clinical trials, or case study articles with genuine input from medical professionals and consumers makes a huge difference to your brand’s impact.

As an example, Illumina, one of the current leaders in the genetic sequencing market, frequently shares case studies and customer success stories on its website, and across social media platforms.

In the fight against blood cancers, traditional tests often fall short, leaving critical mutations undetected. WGS is changing that—offering a single, comprehensive solution with 100% sensitivity for key mutations like FLT3-ITD in Acute Myeloid Leukemia. As #ASH24 approaches,… pic.twitter.com/f6wGPxnrO7

— Illumina (@illumina) December 5, 2024

The company sources genuine feedback from patients who have experienced the unique benefits of its products first hand, as well as creating data-driven documents for investors and stakeholders. This approach validates the value of Illumina’s products, and inspires confidence among partners.

Investing in thought leadership

Sharing case studies, news reports, and updates with your target audience are all great ways of establishing “thought leadership” in the biotech space. However, if you really want to make sure your audience views you as an industry authority, you need to go a step further.

Help your customers and investors to see you as an expert in your specific biotech niche, with a holistic approach to content marketing. Attend industry events and tradeshows, and share valuable insights with sector specialists.

Invest in developing educational content that inspires and informs your target audience. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, for example, regularly presents keynote speeches at industry events, and works with academic institutions to deliver educational resources to medical professionals.

A commitment to sharing high-quality, original content across various offline and digital channels, and in different formats, will elevate your brand image. It will help you build brand awareness, and position yourself as a reputable authority in biotechnology.

Biotech branding strategies for attracting investors

Using the strategies above to build credibility with effective biotech marketing and branding assets should help you to attract investors. However, if your company is still in the early startup stages, you might need to take a more strategic approach to connecting with funding sources.

Some of the key points to focus on when you’re experimenting with investor-focused biotech branding include:

Investor-focused messaging

As mentioned above, your approach to communicating with your audience in the biotech space will vary depending on who you’re trying to reach. Communicating biotech innovation to investors requires a focus on demonstrating clear value.

Investors are drawn to compelling stories that demonstrate the short-term and long-term benefits of partnering with your brand. Look for ways to show possible investors how robust, scalable, and profitable your company is (or could be).

Even before the pandemic, Moderna’s messaging emphasized a long-term vision for MRNA technology. They showed investors that working with them didn’t just mean investing in a single product, but an entirely new approach to drug development and pharmaceuticals.

Data-driven storytelling

Data-driven storytelling is a powerful tool in biotech investor relations. Investors aren’t just buying into your vision; they want proof that a company can execute and scale.

Stories backed by data like clinical trial success rates, market projections, and patient outcomes are the key to connecting with crucial funding sources. For example, Ginkgo Bioworks has an entire section of its website designed to share recent milestones and updates with investors.

The key to making a memorable impact is ensuring that you share relevant data, in a way that resonates with your audience. Don’t just promote figures and share whitepapers. Use infographics and videos to translate complicated data into messages investors can understand.

Collaborations and partnerships

Strategic partnerships and collaborations aren’t just excellent for strengthening relationships with investors and powering great biotech funding strategies. They’re also a great way to overcome various biotech industry challenges.

Working with established players in the pharmaceutical, life sciences, or biotech industries can strengthen trust in healthcare branding strategies, by aligning your company with reputable organizations. Partnerships can also accelerate biotech startup growth strategies.

For instance, by working with CRISPR therapeutics on its gene editing therapies, Vertex Pharmaceuticals accessed the technology and expertise it needed to speed up product development times and enter the market faster.

Partnerships can also show potential investors that you share their values. For instance, partnering with a company known for its sustainable initiatives could help a biotech firm connect with investors who care about reducing their carbon footprints.

Building an effective online presence

The impact of digital presence in biotech branding is significant too, particularly in today’s landscape. Investors don’t just encounter companies at tradeshows and industry events anymore. They discover potential partners by reading press releases, and following companies on social media.

A well-designed website, active social media presence (particularly on B2B channels like LinkedIn), and even an online video strategy can make a huge difference to the success of your biotech brand positioning strategy.

Just look at how Illumina maintains an engaging and professional digital presence across numerous social media channels, as well as YouTube. The company even works with industry publications to boost the visibility of its press releases and news updates.

Biotech brand positioning in action: Real-world examples

Excelling in the world of biotechnology market positioning and branding can be complex, but the right strategy pays off. There are plenty of examples of biotech branding success worth mentioning today, such as:

MinervaX: Mission-led marketing

The MinervaX project was an incredible insight into the impact of brand positioning on biotech companies for the team here at Fabrik. This clinical-stage biotechnology company approached us with a vision to revolutionize the medical world with the development of a novel vaccine.

The vaccine would prevent the adverse pregnancy outcomes caused by the Group B Streptococcus (GBS) virus, protect fetuses in utero, shield newborns for up to 3 months, and defend non-pregnant adults at risk of infection.

What makes MinervaX unique is the company’s incredible vision and purpose. That’s something we needed to convey in the brand’s visual identity, messaging, and tone of voice.

It was a complex project, which involved:

• Developing a new visual identity: Building on the assets already created by the company’s team, we designed a memorable new logomark, featuring an arrow pointing to the letter X to symbolize its focus on progress. We combined this with modern typography and a blue color palette to convey reliability, and a contemporary personality.
• Building a strong messaging strategy: We consulted regularly with the senior management team, conducting workshops, and developing comprehensive user guidelines covering messaging, tone of voice, marketing images, and more.
• Designing an online presence: To give MinervaX the best possible platform for showcasing its brand, Fabrik designed and developed a new website, ensuring the site was user-friendly, accessible, and aligned with the company’s vision and messaging strategy.

With this comprehensive strategy, we helped MinervaX to position itself as a true leader in the biotech space – one committed to innovation, genuine life-altering results, and discovery.

Moderna: An MRNA market leader

Moderna, another company we’ve mentioned regularly throughout this article, also has a fantastic branding strategy. The firm’s success in recent years has come from its ability to adapt quickly to changing healthcare trends and global issues, while maintaining a consistent message.

Moderna constantly presents itself as a company committed to revolutionizing medicine through mRNA technology. By emphasizing the scalability of its platform rather than focusing on a single product, the company presents itself as a long-term investment opportunity, and a market leader.

Illumina: An inspirational brand identity

Illumina, the genomic sequencing leader, also uses a range of brand positioning strategies to its advantage. The company’s image, name, and messaging, consistently highlight the themes of illumination, discovery, and transformation.

Illumina’s marketing strategies also enhance its thought leadership. This company regularly participates in digital and offline conferences, works with academic institutions and research facilities, and shares news updates on industry publications.

How Fabrik enhances brand positioning for biotech companies

Positioning a biotech startup or company for success in a competitive industry requires precision, creativity, and a deep understanding of the evolving sector. That’s where Fabrik steps in.

We work hand-in-hand with revolutionary companies in the biotech space, helping them to discover their unique value proposition, refine their messaging strategies, and create visual identities that instantly resonate with customers and investors alike.

Our end-to-end approach to branding for early-stage biotech companies as well as rebranding and brand development for existing firms helps organizations achieve incredible results.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect name to inspire your target audience, a logo that separates you from the competition, a messaging strategy, or a comprehensive visual identity our team can help.

We’ve already helped countless companies upgrade their approach to investor messaging, capture the attention of new strategic partners, and forge deeper relationships with customers.

If you’re ready to position your biotech company for long-term growth, reach out to Fabrik, to discover how we can give you the tools you need for sustainable success.

Fabrik: A branding agency for our times.

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—Branding for pharma startups guide
—Fabrik’s biotech branding services