Product Positioning for Life Sciences

Product Positioning for Regulated Markets

In life sciences, positioning isn't a marketing exercise — it's a commercial survival skill. Your product exists in a regulated, evidence-driven market where clinicians, payers, and procurement teams make decisions based on clinical value, not creative advertising. There are no impulse purchases in diagnostics. Nobody buys an NGS panel because the logo is nice.

Get the positioning right, and your product becomes the obvious choice — the one that clinicians request by name, that procurement committees approve without a fight, that payers see as cost-effective before you even show them the health economic model. Get it wrong, and no amount of marketing spend will fix it. I've watched companies pour six-figure budgets into campaigns built on weak positioning. The campaigns were excellent. The positioning was wrong. The budget was wasted.

The Positioning Trap

Most life sciences companies position on features. Sensitivity. Specificity. Turnaround time. Throughput. These are table stakes — you need them, but they're not differentiators. When every product in the category leads with the same metrics, the buyer defaults to price. And the moment you're competing on price, you've already lost the positioning war.

I've seen this play out dozens of times. A diagnostics company has a gene panel with outstanding analytical performance. Better sensitivity than the market leader. Faster turnaround. Broader coverage. But when they present to a procurement committee, the committee doesn't see a superior product — they see another gene panel. The clinical data is on the table, but the story isn't. Nobody has articulated why this product matters in terms the buyer cares about.

The trap is subtle: features describe what your product does, but positioning describes what your product means. A 99.7% sensitivity figure is a feature. "The only panel validated for early-stage detection in liquid biopsy, reducing the diagnostic window by six weeks" is positioning. The first invites comparison. The second defines a category.

The Three Layers of Value

Effective positioning in regulated markets operates on three layers simultaneously. Miss any one of them and you're leaving money on the table — or worse, losing to a competitor who got the story right.

Clinical value: What clinical decision does your product enable? Not "what does it measure" but "what can a clinician do with this result that they couldn't do before — or couldn't do as well?" This is the layer that earns clinical champions and drives adoption among healthcare professionals. I've repositioned diagnostic products by shifting the conversation from analytical performance to clinical utility — from "our sensitivity is 99.7%" to "this result changes the treatment pathway in 40% of cases"
Operational value: How does your product improve the workflow, reduce the burden, or eliminate a step? Lab managers and hospital operations teams care about throughput, integration with existing systems, hands-on time, and training requirements. A product that's clinically excellent but operationally painful will struggle against one that fits seamlessly into existing workflows
Economic value: What's the total cost of ownership? What's the budget impact? How does your product compare when you factor in downstream savings — reduced repeat testing, earlier intervention, shorter hospital stays? Payers and procurement teams need this framing. They don't buy products; they approve budgets. Your positioning needs to speak their language

Most companies nail one of these layers and ignore the other two. I build positioning that covers all three — because the clinician who loves your product still needs procurement to approve the purchase order.

What I Deliver

Competitive landscape analysis: A rigorous mapping of where you sit relative to direct competitors, substitute technologies, and — critically — the status quo. The status quo is almost always your biggest competitor. I analyse how competitors position themselves, where they're vulnerable, and where the white space is. This isn't a desk exercise — it includes analysis of competitor clinical evidence, regulatory claims, pricing signals, and conference messaging
Clinical value articulation: A clear framework for expressing your product's value in the language each audience uses. Clinicians hear clinical utility. Lab managers hear workflow integration. Procurement hears cost-effectiveness. The evidence base is the same; the framing is different
Positioning statement: One clear, defensible, differentiated position that your entire organisation can rally around. Not a paragraph of marketing language — a strategic statement that defines who you're for, what problem you solve, why you're different, and why the buyer should act now
Payer and procurement framing: How to present health economic arguments alongside clinical ones. This includes budget impact modelling, cost-per-test analysis, and value-based framing that aligns with NHS procurement evaluation criteria, NICE guidelines, or equivalent frameworks in your target market
Positioning validation plan: A methodology for testing the positioning with target audiences before committing. This might include advisory board feedback, KOL interviews, or structured testing with sales teams. Positioning that hasn't been validated is positioning that might not work

How It Works

Phase 1 — Landscape and Evidence Review (Weeks 1-2): I map the competitive landscape, review your clinical evidence, and assess your current positioning. I talk to your sales team about what objections they face. I analyse how your competitors position themselves — not just what they say in marketing materials, but what their KOLs say at conferences, what their clinical evidence actually supports, and where their claims are weakest. By the end of this phase, I have a clear picture of your competitive reality.

Phase 2 — Positioning Development (Weeks 3-5): I develop the three-layer positioning framework — clinical, operational, and economic value — tailored to each audience. I draft the positioning statement, build the competitive differentiation argument, and create the payer/procurement framing. This is pressure-tested against your team's real-world experience: does this survive a conversation with a sceptical clinician? Would a procurement lead find this compelling? Does this hold up against the competitor's counter-argument?

Phase 3 — Validation and Activation (Weeks 6-8): The positioning is validated with key stakeholders — including, where possible, external voices (KOLs, advisory board members, or friendly customers). I refine based on feedback and deliver the final positioning package with activation guidance. This isn't a strategy deck that lives in a drawer — it's a working document that your sales, marketing, and medical teams use every day.

What You'll Have at the End

A positioning strategy document covering all three value layers (clinical, operational, economic)
Competitive landscape analysis with differentiation framework
Audience-specific positioning narratives (clinician, payer, procurement, investor)
Payer and procurement framing with health economic arguments
A one-page positioning summary for rapid internal alignment
Validation methodology and results

Industries I've Positioned In

In vitro diagnostics and companion diagnostics: Gene panels, NGS platforms, liquid biopsy, point-of-care testing
Medical devices: Surgical instruments, imaging systems, patient monitoring
Digital health and clinical decision support: Healthcare apps, AI-enabled platforms, clinical workflow tools
Biotech therapeutics: Pre-launch and launch positioning for novel therapies
Research tools and laboratory equipment: Antibodies, assay kits, reagents, instruments — including portfolios with thousands of SKUs

In every case, the approach is the same: start with the evidence, define the value in the buyer's language, and build a position that's defensible under scrutiny.

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