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Many think that the brand is developed the moment a designer or an agency hands over the brand identity. But the truth is that building a brand in Biotech and Life Sciences takes time. The real work only begins with the launch of the corporate identity. This is where the growth-driven design steps in to fine-tune the brand over time.
What do I mean by that? As a startup, you develop a product or a service for a certain customer. Your hypothesis is the way you decide to communicate that idea to your audience.
In practice and to start with, it’s your:
When a designer is designing a visual brand identity, they are making a bet that this logo, this website, this identity will resonate with the target audience based on their research. Whether it will or not is the question to your target audience. To learn if it does, you will need some insights.
Once your brand is launched, it's time to put your assumptions to the test, which requires acquiring information. In this phase, the spotlight shifts to the website. The website's role extends beyond offering information about your product; it also becomes a data collection hub that can shed some light on how your audience perceives your offer.
With the data collected through surveys, forms, heat maps, A/B testing, landing pages as well as qualitative research from customer interviews and observations you acquire insights that either validate or invalidate the hypothesis. With the insights and validation in place, you will know what works for your brand and what needs some changes.
By optimizing the website copy, refining the imagery, streamlining the onboarding process, and incorporating feedback into product development, you can now adjust your product and brand identity to better align with the needs of your customers and the expectations of your target audience in general.
As an example, experimentation and testing played a pivotal role in positioning LabTwin as the leading lab assistant for scientists.
From the first assumption to the proven concept, with time, testing, and iteration, you will craft a brand that effectively communicates your business and science in a manner that deeply resonates with your audience segments.
“To design something is to make a claim about what we think is good design, and to ask others whether they agree. That’s the role of designers and creative teams in biotechnology,” - says Christina Agapakis, SVP of Creative and Marketing at Ginkgo Bioworks for Clot.
If I were to summarize the method in one sentence, it would be: “Better done than perfect, then make it perfect.”
I like defining the growth approach as a design approach that tailors your brand. It’s the step that you take after you have developed your initial brand identity and design.
Its goal is to find a way to satisfy both the company’s and the customer’s needs to drive business activity. It focuses on developing experiences that solve problems for people while also meeting the company’s key metrics.
“Growth design involves crafting meaningful experiences at scale so that an organization can exceed its business goals while delighting their customers,” - a definition by growth.design.
Growth-driven design usually takes place in three stages:
This is the “better done than perfect” stage. In a nutshell, it includes conceptualizing the most needed assets for launch and executing them fast and well.
The kick-off package usually includes a logo, basic website pages (home, about, and blog), and a lead generator. The website is a very important one to launch as it will be the marketer, the salesperson, and the researcher working 24/7 for your startup. The majority of your insights and contacts will come through it.
The goals of this phase are to:
Overall, the objective is to establish a profound and empathetic understanding of the various target audience groups: their problems, their needs, their motivation, their behavior, and their feelings about the product. The sooner you dive into these aspects, the more finely-tuned your product can become.
You might ask why bother with this launch pad instead of dedicating time to developing a fully executed brand identity and website.
To kickstart your growth activities without delays.
To help you filter out the most necessary assets, create an initial customer journey map: the before, during, and after of the user experience. It will serve as the foundation of your hypotheses and will help identify the pivotal touchpoints and opportunities for engagement.
Simultaneously, define clear business goals and success metrics to help you prioritize essential objectives for your launch.
With the hypotheses in place, business goals in mind, customer journey on hand, website online, and lead generator up, you can start building your audience early by engaging with early adopters and connecting with your people across various channels.
Now that we’ve done it, we can make it perfect.
You already have the primary set of assets that are working for your Biotech and Life Science brand. The next step is to experiment and improve. Choose the high-impact items to improve so they can support your marketing and sales funnels.
“When interpretation is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to look at more than one right answer,” - Peter Wilken, branding expert, author of “Dim Sum Strategy.”
The ambitions for this stage are to:
This stage rotates around an agile methodology: plan the changes, develop them, test, review, and repeat. Through experimentation, look for the following answers: what is working for your brand? What needs adjustments? Where does communication become confusing? Is there anything that will enhance its performance? Brand building is all about the details, especially, when it comes to novel solutions created by biotechnology and Life Sciences.
Needless to mention the spotlight in this phase falls on your website design, your primary channel for data collection and audience engagement. The point is to design a site that effectively captures information, ensuring that your interactions are both meaningful and insightful. After all, it's a crucial tool for providing information on the product or service and gathering customer data.
To generate insights, you will be looking for three types of data:
Now that you have an idea of how your audience perceives your brand, ask yourself: is it the way you want them to think of it? If not, make the necessary changes. Barely any startup has retained its brand identity, going as far as changing the color schemes or even a logo. Their success is the result of iteration done over time. Take a look at the examples below.
Once perfected, share the learnings.
The expansion phase is about cross-pollinating findings with other teams and building assets to support them while ensuring brand consistency. It's a critical phase in which all your brand assets should align, as they might have evolved separately in the previous stages.
During this phase, the primary objectives are:
While the earlier stages may have concentrated on high-impact touchpoints, this phase allows for some creativity and exploration. Consider adding new elements, testing fresh assumptions, or venturing into uncharted territory. This could involve branching out your value proposition, tailoring messages for new target audience segments, introducing new products or services, creating ambassador programs, fostering communities, and more.
“In the survey, after 6 months agencies that used Growth-Driven Design reported seeing: 16.9% more leads and 11.2% more revenue,” - Growth-Driven Design certificate program by Hubspot.
When a design agency or a designer develops a brand identity and website, their work typically stems from audience research. However, research alone can’t ensure how the audience will perceive the brand in reality. To foster a more precise alignment between the target audience and the business, the growth design approach actively "listens" to audience feedback through data analysis and molds your brand accordingly.
Brand and website design demands a significant initial investment, financially and in time, with uncertain outcomes. In contrast, growth-driven design promotes incremental investments with ongoing result monitoring, avoiding heavy upfront costs and waiting for a grand reveal. It focuses on iterative development, integrating audience and team feedback for prompt, precise adjustments.
Conventional website design involves a full-scale launch, necessitating a halt in the growth activities of your startup until the website is up and running. Alternatively, you can launch key pages and assets, allowing your website to start its work of audience building and data collection, all while you progressively enhance the remaining components.
It's worth reiterating that the growth-driven design method's strength lies in its early data utilization. This data enables a deeper understanding of your target groups and facilitates the refinement of your brand's messaging for precise communication at the most effective touchpoints.
Brand assets, like the website, are vital components that support multiple departments within the company. The growth-driven approach places a strong emphasis on fulfilling the needs of various teams, including marketing, sales, product, and HR. It creates assets and generates insights that can be effectively leveraged across all departments, fostering a unified and collaborative environment.
“GINKGO BIOWORKS, engineering biology by design”, interview with Christina Agapakis for Clot
“What is growth design?” by growth.design
“Dim Sum Strategy: Bite-Sized Tools to build Stronger Brands” by Peter Wilken
What is Agile methodology? (A beginner’s guide) by Asana
Growth-Driven Design Certification Course by Hubspot Academy
Archives on corporate and brand identity by Brand New
