Biotech: probably one of the fastest growing and most interesting and inspiring industries of this century. Many times we get questions about growth hacking for biotech companies.

• Does growth hacking apply to biotech?
• Can biotech startups and established companies actually implement growth methodology and active experimentation framework?

Growth hacking is a relatively new focus in the marketing field, which focuses on company growth, and indeed applies to biotech. The goal of its extremely effective methodology is to quickly test ideas that can improve the customer experience before investing a lot of resources to its implementation on a corporate project level, copy and expand ideas that can work, and modify or abandon those that don’t work. The ones that did, we call validated growth drivers, and we focus on scaling them up and turning them into modus operandi of our biotech.

Let’s start from the beginning though. How do we implement growth hacking methodology in the biotech industry? First, we start with metrics to measure growth of our biotech startup corporation. The key metrics should always be the ones that best deliver growth to your company, and depending on the type of our business, it can be selling more products or services (number of sales), new strategic partnerships, new enterprise clients (amount of sales), maintaining current contracts (retention) or upselling new products.

Once we know which metrics are the most important ones, it is time to set goals. Think of your goals as desired increments (or decrement) of key metrics. Goals should be SMART, and these are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Getting 15 new enterprise clients for your product or service in upcoming month could be an example of a SMART goal. After we set up our goals, we ideate new or existing growth drivers. Growth levers, or drivers, are hypothetical ways to achieve goals. Entering the biotechnology industry requires business owners, especially small ones, to recognize the obstacles they face as small fish in the ocean of big sharks. Not surprisingly, many of these challenges are related to winning the trust of potential customers and trust based experiments and message could be a potential driver across key channels to experiment on. Showing your commitment to product quality and getting quality based feedback as a key positioning could be another driver. In these case we break down complex product features into successful selling points and sell them directly from the perspective of past customers. Trade shows can be a powerful growth driver, so creating a trade show calendar and using each trade show as an experiment could be a good way to start verifying whether this could bring us growth of our key metrics. Participating in trade fairs is one of the best ways for biotech companies to consolidate their position in the healthcare industry.

Health and biotechnology trade shows attract thousands of companies, however, do they really bring sales? This is something to test out for your company, especially importantly, measuring well the time spent on preparation of the trade show as well the overall investment made. Another growth driver for a B2B biotech company could be case studies of your products. 

Whether your company specializes in pharmaceuticals or medical devices, you can to show potential buyers the advantages of the product and make them downloadables for other potential clients. Case studies could effective because they illustrate how your biotech products affect the lives of medical professionals and the patients they treat, and they can help you determine which potential customers are more ready to sell. Showing your industry certifications, inviting customers to visit your facility, building expectations before launching new products by sending "peek" or preview benefits or providing a main location for your latest products on your website are another growth ideas to test, beside the “classic” ones, like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads that you should also test out and, importantly, document thoroughly your learnings.

Want to know more about how to apply growth hacking to your biotech business? Sign up for Hypertry and ask for a one to one session!