by Jonathan Kay, MPP, Managing Partner, Health Market Experts & BioHealth Innovation, Inc. Entrepreneur-in-Residence
To recap, the first 5 posts of our series covered:
- Test, Don’t Guess: Adopt a data-driven mindset about messaging impact
- Know Your Stakeholders: Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach
- Listen First: What are your stakeholders saying and how?
- Message Anatomy: Ensure messages get the job done
- Measuring Success: Define metrics of success upfront
Insight 6: Just Start
It’s true we want to pursue all 5 tactics above. But that doesn’t mean we always can. Sometimes clients or would-be clients insist:
- Time is too limited, so they can’t test
- The target audience is rare or ultra rare, so they can’t test
🛑 Hold on! Don’t skip testing even in these situations. As the saying goes, Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.(That’s typically attributed to surgeons!🥼)
Real-world problems require real-world problem-solving. To know in advance how well your messages will perform, ask real-world stakeholders. Even if time is extremely limited. Even if audiences seem too hard-to-reach. (We can help you in both cases. While we encourage clients to have a launch runway and notify us in advance, typically we can line up test audiences in a day or two, or faster!)
Testing messages BEFORE launch can improve early uptake 📈, increase commercial success, and save time and budget later. It can help you avoid unnecessary stress.
✅ Rather than skip testing, “just start” testing by modifying the ideal and going with what is realistic. Here are a few ideas:
- Fewer interviews
- Shorter survey
- Leverage Gen AI (more to come in Tactic #7)
- Plan ahead: put message testing in your launch plan
When a client was preparing to launch a genetic marker for a rare disease, they approached us to test physician ad concepts and messages. They faced two familiar constraints in biotech launches:
- Limited time
- A small, hard-to-reach physician population
One more traditional approach might have been to test messages → share feedback with client and creative agency → agency modifies concepts → ideally we test again to optimize. Instead, we compressed the process and reduced the timeline by days, possibly a week. (How great would it be to save a week when getting ready for launch?)
How did we do that?
- We reduced the number of stakeholder interviews.
- We prioritized metrics like stopping power, visceral response, clinical credibility
- Importantly, we invited the agency into the testing process.
Bringing the agency in allowed for agile development. As the interviews progressed, the concepts evolved, and we moved closer and closer to optimal with each next test.
The results were telling, actionable, and valuable even with a small sample. We confirmed a key hypothesis, which added confidence to the commercial strategy. We also revealed confusing language about the biomarker that we easily fixed to avoid encountering post-launch confusion, questions, and delayed product adoption.
The key takeaway: When launching a business or a brand or a campaign, perfect conditions are rare. But even limited testing can uncover powerful insights, reduce risk, and strengthen confidence before your message reaches the market.
If your organization is preparing to launch a new business or brand, connect with us (message me on LinkedIn) or visit https://www.healthmarketexperts.com/ to learn more about how we can help you with messaging and commercial strategy to set your business and brand on a path of success.
Written by a human. This post expands on content I previously wrote as a blog at Catalant and delivered in guest lectures at Rutgers Business School.
Visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-kay-healthcare/ to connect with Jon on LinkedIn.
