In the fast-moving world of life sciences and health tech, communication is often treated as a series of isolated tasks: a deck here, a new website there, a few posts on LinkedIn, maybe an event or webinar. On paper, these are the makings of a marketing function. In reality, they are disconnected outputs without an underlying system to drive momentum.
Early-stage companies rarely lack effort. What they lack is strategy.
And for a good reason. Entrepreneurship is about being scrappy, creative, and operating lean. Founders should prioritize R&D, regulatory milestones, funding rounds, and hiring. Marketing, when it exists, is either a junior hire, run by a salesperson-turned-Head of Marketing, or a cobbled-together set of vendors producing on-demand deliverables. In the absence of a cohesive strategy, what emerges is a pattern we’ve seen again and again: activities without lasting business results.
Let’s be clear: startups don’t just need more content.
They need someone to build a systemized approach that makes their marketing actually mean something.
Communication Without Direction
It’s tempting to start with execution because it feels productive. Making a prettier deck, launching a new website, producing a flashy video, or preparing for a conference deliverables sprint feels like progress. But ask yourself this:
Can you articulate how your marketing activities lead to your business goals, step-by-step?
If the answer is “not really,” then it’s time to consider an alternative approach.
The problem isn’t your team’s effort or your vendors’ quality. The problem is that these activities aren’t connected to business growth. There’s no coordinated sequence that turns brand visibility into lead volume, which turns into real commercial outcomes.
Understanding the Communication Readiness Curve
To grow, companies need to climb what we call the Communication Readiness Curve — a progression that takes an organization from scattered activity to integrated, operational systems that drive real outcomes. At the lowest levels, marketing is reactive and opportunistic. At the highest levels, it’s embedded in business planning, linked to KPIs, and accountable to growth.
Most early-stage teams are stuck between Level 1 (improvised) and Level 2 (fragmental).
They’re doing marketing, but they’re not doing it strategically.
That’s not a knock on early teams, but rather a resourcing reality. But staying there is expensive.
When your efforts aren’t connected to strategy, even great work underperforms.
A polished pitch deck doesn’t help if it’s disconnected from the rest of your brand. A stunning MoA video gets lost if your team isn’t aligned on how to deploy it. A booth at BIO won’t move the needle if there’s no campaign around it.
Why Execution Alone Doesn’t Scale
In our early days as a content creation studio, we saw this firsthand. Clients would come to us asking for a single asset — a website, a set of slides, a fundraising video. We delivered, and they were thrilled with the quality. But then they’d come back months later, needing another piece. And then another. And each time, the brief was different. The positioning had changed. The audience had shifted.
We realized that no matter how great the asset was, if it didn’t live inside a broader structure, the value dissipated. What they really needed wasn’t content — it was coherence.
That’s when we shifted.
Now, we approach every engagement through the lens of communication strategy. That means starting with your goals, understanding your lifecycle stage, and designing a system — not just the tangible — that helps you move faster and smarter.
The Role of a Communication Strategist
This is where the communication strategist comes in.
Communication Strategists don’t just build. They connect the dots between business milestones and communications strategy. They assess what channels make sense and when, identify where your message is leaking or landing flat, and put guardrails around content creation so that every new asset amplifies the story.
Most importantly, they design for repeatability.
Ultimately, effective marketing isn’t a one-off, but a system.
That’s what early-stage companies really need — not a graphic designer, production company, or a junior marketer, but a fractional CMO who can do the thinking that execution alone can’t solve.
Start with Structure, Then Scale
- Structure: Assess where you are, align your communications with growth goals, and identify gaps in assets, workflows, and team understanding.
- Assets: Build the foundational materials you’ll need for repeatable, credible storytelling: decks, campaigns, landing pages, brand libraries.
- Execution: Activate across the right channels with clarity, consistency, and a cadence you can sustain — internally or with external support.
This framework isn’t revolutionary, but it’s rare.
Most teams skip straight to execution and then wonder why growth doesn’t happen.
The truth? Without structure, execution erodes. Without assets, execution overwhelms.
Why This Matters Now
Today’s life science innovators are facing more pressure than ever. Investors expect differentiation. Partners expect polish. Talent expects clarity. You don’t get there by outsourcing to a graphic designer or waiting for a head of marketing to arrive.
You need a system, even if it starts small.
That’s the promise of a communication strategist.
Not more content and noise, but turning motion into momentum.
Final Thoughts
If you’re spending time and money on content but not seeing long-term traction, it’s not a signal to double your output. It’s a sign to zoom out.
Ask yourself: Does our team know how to tell the story consistently?
If not, it’s time to stop just ticking boxes — and start building a system.
Where Smart Growth Starts
Before you commit to another campaign, take a moment to pause.
Communication struggles not because execution falls short, but because no one stopped to ask whether the foundation was ready to support the weight of growth.
The most effective marketing leaders start with a simple discipline: assess before you build.
A good assessment sharpens priorities, aligns objectives, and makes the next steps obvious.
It turns instinct into structure.
If you’re serious about scaling your marketing function into growth, that’s where the work begins.
