Eggs in Brownie Batter: How Communication Helps Companies Succeed

A strong communication strategy is a key ingredient to your startup’s success

Let’s say you’re a healthcare startup. With the help of your team, you’ve recognized a need in the market and dreamt up a new type of therapy to meet the demand. You’ve worked hard for years developing your therapy, fundraising and getting regulatory approval.

Although you know the value of communication, setting up a strategy may not be your biggest priority as you prepare for takeoff. But without a strong communication strategy, the hard work you’ve put into bringing your therapy to market may have less chance of paying off.

Bringing a product to market without investing time and effort in communication is like baking brownies without eggs. Even with high-quality ingredients and the perfect oven temperature, the bake won’t come together without a bonding agent. Like eggs in brownie batter, communication brings the separate components of your project together into an attractive and irresistible package.

Just as enticing (but not as aromatic) as freshly baked brownies.

Communication starts with a message that clicks

So how do you develop a strong communication strategy?

Communicating the benefit of your product to key stakeholders starts with understanding the value your product brings them. Does it make a difficult task easier for caregivers? Does it cost hospitals less to run than their current equipment? Does it help an underserved community access care?

Find out what may connect on an emotional level with your audience. Distill benefits into tangible positive emotions—hope, relief, assurance, control, happiness, and more.

Then put together the messaging. Some helpful questions to ask:

• What is a useful analogy for my product or therapy, something people will quickly understand and easily remember?
• What are some simple ways to describe what my product or therapy does?
• How can I boil down my message so my audience with the least technical knowledge can easily understand it?
• What matters most to each group I’m targeting?

Strategy comes next

After refining your messaging, you’ll need an actionable way to inform interested parties. For example, if you’re targeting physicians, you may want to publish an article in a popular journal or buy a booth at a national conference. Or, if your target audience is therapists, you may consider a series of sponsored videos and ads on a social media platform where they often congregate.

Creating and implementing a communications strategy is a topic that requires a series of articles if not books. Here are just a couple of thoughts to get you started. You can consider the following:

• Laying foundations by writing a marketing plan
• Hiring third parties, such as PR agencies
• Bringing in outside experts to consult

Whichever way you decide to approach the task, remember that it is an important part of getting your hard-fought product or therapy out there and into the hands of those who need it.    

An “eggless” situation

Once, a prospective client told me that the science behind their product was too difficult for people without the right educational background to understand. Previous copywriters had struggled with the product’s technicalities, so they stopped outsourcing.

The resulting copy on their website reflected their decision not to invest in communication. Visitors had a good idea of their product’s scientific merit but not the many ways it could make their work easier.

A simple but not simplistic overall message would quickly convey the products’ value to potential customers. Why should people care about this product? How could it simplify their research process, helping them save time and money? Also, distilling the product into more relatable terms would likely appeal to key stakeholders besides scientists and engineers, such as executives and purchasers.

Communications strategies are unique for each organization, product, audience, and medium. Developing the right plan takes time and, often, money, which is why companies, especially startups, may avoid them in the first place. However, implementing strong messaging with an actionable strategy will improve your business’s success.

A tasty prospect indeed.