Transcript
In this episode, Matt Wilkinson and Jasmine Gruia-Gray unpack “performance branding” for life science companies—why brand drives performance, how to measure it across the buyer journey, and how biotech startups can apply it next week on a small budget.
Intro & Sponsor
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [00:02]
Hello and welcome to a splice of life science marketing. This episode is brought to you by Humantic AI. Imagine if you could close 22% more deals overnight using a buyer intelligence platform. Imagine slashing prep time by 70% and boosting close won deals by 37%. That's what customers the world over are achieving using Humantic AI's account and buyer intelligence system.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [00:16]
Imagine, right in front of the steps, and moving slowly, of you, right there, step by step. That's the front of the world I hope you've heard of.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [00:29]
The platform arms you with firmographic and psychographic insights at scale. So every outreach hits the mark. Deals move faster and revenue grows. Scan the QR code or click the link in your show notes to claim your 10% discount. Now let's get on with the show.
Why Performance Branding
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [00:48]
Hi Matt! Good, good. I'm excited about this topic of performance branding.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [00:49]
Hi Jasmine, how are you doing today?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [00:59]
The way this came up is a couple of weeks ago, I inadvertently had written a blog post about performance marketing versus brand marketing. And my take was that it wasn't one or the other. It was an and. And then a few weeks later, you shared an article from MarketingProfs where they talked about performance branding, which is the perfect mashup from my blog post. So yeah, let's get on with it and have a chat about that.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [01:39]
So isn't it nice that MarketingProfs are reading your blogs? But I know that they talked about a paper from Kotler and Furch. And what do they actually mean by performance branding? And why isn't it just performance marketing with better manners?
Definition: Brand Tied to Business Outcomes
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [01:58]
Right. It's really simple the way they describe it. It's branding that's tied to business outcomes. So think about the way we do branding today. Nothing changes in this definition, but it's tied to things like revenue, win rate, margins, lifetime value of a customer, and so on.
The real caution that I would overlay on this concept that they didn't touch on was that people have to think about the business metrics for performance branding across the entire buyer's journey. So let me take a step back. What do I mean by this? So typically, we tend to attribute a single business metric to a single activity. An easy one is you go to a conference and how do you measure success of that conference? By the number of leads. Well, when you think about performance branding, you don't want to just take that one conference and tie it to a business metric. You want to look at the performance branding in aggregate over a campaign or multiple campaigns that focus on the brand in a particular way across the whole buyer's journey.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [03:38]
That's really interesting. So how do they propose to do that? To be able to look at that in aggregate, because that's quite a challenge.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [03:46]
Yes and no. I think the concept is that there's no one thing that you can tie to revenue. It's an aggregate of your conferences, your application notes, obviously your sales interaction and relationship, your application scientists' interaction and relationships—all of that together results in the sale. All of that together results in building that pipeline and pipeline velocity. I think it's a mind shift that we all need to start getting our heads around.
Search Behavior & Brand Recognition
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [04:32]
So it's really trying to actually look at things in an omni-channel holistic view. Kind of takes me back to something I wrote more than a decade ago, where I was looking at research that said 93% of the time B2B sales start with a Google search. And then it looked at what actually makes up those sales—the top 60 or 70 percent of clicks came from the top three links on the search engine results page. Those have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. But then what was really, really interesting is that when research was conducted into what drives people to select the links, it was actually: did people recognize the brand name?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [05:13]
I think that was really pretty.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [05:30]
So 87% of people would actually only click on links of companies that they already recognized. And you could argue that Google search in some ways—in its purest form—was a kind of performance marketing because at that point it was still very much the old black hat, before updates improved the search experience. So it really was a performance marketing approach back then. And that really did lead us to a point where brand’s still important.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [05:57]
I'm reading it.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [06:01]
In fact, brand is incredibly important, even in a space where people can choose their own adventure. So I thought that was really, really interesting.
Are Scientists Immune to Branding?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [06:12]
That is interesting and it sort of ties to my next question. I was always raised under the belief that scientists don't fall for branding. That's consumer world fluff and scientists are immune to branding. But then how do you explain brands like New England Biolabs or Oxford Nanopore or Cytiva, the former Pharmacia and GE Healthcare?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [06:52]
I really disagree that scientists are immune to branding. When you're pushing at the sum of all knowledge, you have to believe some things to be true. Being able to trust and believe in your results is an element of belief, because you're believing in your results. And we do that by believing we can trust results that come from certain brands.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [07:09]
—
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [07:21]
Branding is in some ways more important. I've seen arguments between proponents of Agilent and Waters for HPLC-MS systems that are more impassioned than Apple vs. Android debates. This week I wrote a blog on using AI to study what people were saying about brands—doing deep research across the likes of ResearchGate and Reddit and places where scientists talk. You can get an awful lot of information about what people are talking about. Word of mouth marketing—certainly word of mouth marketing—
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [07:22]
Enough. Okay.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [07:43]
Thank you.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [07:49]
Thank you.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [07:50]
—in digital space now, using AI, that you couldn't do before. You can see why they really like those brands. Not only sentiment analysis, but thematic analysis of what's being said, breaking it down into discrete quotes. For example, NEB’s following just loves human, credible contact—when they pick up the phone with a question, there's a scientist who understands them. Oxford Nanopore has built a whole field-support system online, a community support model. While maybe they don't rank as highly as NEB for phone support, they've built a community where people problem-solve together.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [08:18]
It becomes a way of asking: how do we build memorable experiences that people talk about—or dominate some online spaces? Cytiva has taken a different approach in some ways, using a rebrand to signal their focus after different shifts in ownership and brands. They’ve focused on branding in their culture as a risk-reduction strategy—signaling trust. It's not just pretty logos and iconography—those are important because they're what we tie emotions to—but they’ve understood that emotion is a core part of what scientists and human beings need to identify with a brand.
Measuring Memory + Money
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [10:19]
What I like in the examples is the tie between emotions and creating community. You can't have a community without brand awareness and trust. That common purpose is part of performance branding.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [10:59]
If performance branding is designed to strengthen relationships, loyalty and trust, what should we measure to see if we’re moving the needle?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [11:19]
We need to measure a combination of two words: memory and money (or business). All of these companies are in business to be profitable. How do you go about measuring these two things? Branded search, share of search, and share of voice are part of memory. Repeat traffic on your website from target accounts starts joining the dots between memory and money. Then more concrete business metrics like pipeline velocity, win rates where there was prior brand exposure, and price realization versus discounting trends—especially with repeat customers. Those are things you can measure in a coming quarter to start aligning to performance branding.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [12:56]
Doesn't that get complicated across so many channels?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [13:09]
It can be. You need a plan and sales-marketing-finance alignment. I'm a big fan of starting small. Think big but start small. Maybe pipeline velocity is too complex right now—go to something more concrete like win rate, then work toward pipeline velocity.
Human-Centric Buyer Journey (AI Era)
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [14:09]
What does human-centric look like in a lab buyer's journey?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [14:21]
It's changing all the time thanks to AI. McKinsey’s data showed buyers want to interact everywhere, any time. Funnels have become webs of interaction, and buyers jump around as they move through their journey—often starting in those webs before they're even in a buying journey.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [15:16]
We have to make really consistent claims with compelling proof across every touch—app notes, webinars, calculators, trials. Scientists are the most skeptical audience in the world. They test hypotheses: “If I go down this route, can I improve X by Y percent?” So we need consistent claims and proof points—and ensure there’s a line to a human they can trust. Keep a human in the loop across those interactions.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [16:15]
What’s the fastest path from brand awareness to competitive advantage?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [16:34]
Pull on “consistent claims.” Pick your strongest claim versus competitors—e.g., “My technology detects 30% lower-abundance proteins without any extra steps.” Repeat that claim across channels with the strongest data and evidence. Consistency plus proof builds the path from share of mind to share of wallet and competitive advantage.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [18:23]
So brand is linked to clarity of message and credibility that’s consistent across communications.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [18:38]
We get tired of our own messages and switch too soon. The audience isn’t tired. Studies show you need to repeat a message up to seven times before someone internalizes it. Don’t be afraid of repetition—it’s your friend and part of performance branding.
Misconceptions & 360° Experience
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [19:46]
In your experience, what misconceptions do early career marketers inherit about brand?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [20:00]
Thinking branding is “one and done”—logos, color palettes, tone of voice. Strong brands like NEB, ONT, Illumina have identifiable, consistent elements you can hang emotions on, but they also build a culture of engagement. Products must be great. And the true test is when something goes wrong—do they make it easy, do you feel heard? Early marketers often miss that brand is the entire customer experience. As Warren Buffett says, it takes years to build a reputation and seconds to destroy it.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [22:13]
So important and so undervalued. Every employee is a brand ambassador—front of house or back of house—part of the customer experience. We could go down the rabbit hole on CX—maybe for a separate podcast.
Shoestring Performance Branding
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [22:53]
How would a scrappy startup run performance branding on a shoestring?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [23:19]
Think in three questions. Who am I talking to (persona and ICP)? What are you going to say (consistent claim)? Where will you meet them (channels they actually use—LinkedIn, ASHG, etc.)? Start small: one application note—e.g., head-to-head comparison data versus a competitor. Describe setup, outcome, and most importantly what the outcome means. With something like that (gated or not), you tug on memory by repeating a narrative, show proof to the skeptical audience, and pull on empathy because the experiment resonates with your target.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [25:43]
Find that killer application that appeals to enough of your ICP to move the needle across a segment.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [26:04]
That goes back to product management and PMM early in development—build applications as the product is built. We are not an industry of “we will build it and they will come.”
Using AI Without Losing Your Soul
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [26:40]
AI can feel like a field of dreams. How do we use AI without making our brand feel robotic or unauthentic?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [27:04]
As models improve, generic outputs stay generic—unless we give specific inputs and guidance. Andy Crestodina says AI can be “average information.” But AI gives phenomenal abilities to research customers. Once we identify ICPs, AI helps expand lists, build better personas, and do deep research—what are they actually talking about online? Forums beyond the obvious. What are they saying about my brand? What problems are they highlighting?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [28:22]
Use it to spot risks and enable advocates. Then use RAG systems to guide outputs—what to say and what to emphasize. AI connects datasets the human brain struggles to connect. Keep the human at the heart and solve real human problems. Creation still works best as collaboration: human tasks, augmented tasks, and agentic automated tasks—aim for symbiosis in the augmented zone.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [30:05]
I often get soulless responses. I’ll reprompt for more empathy—for the user’s struggle in an experiment. How do you approach it when you get a soulless response?
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [30:50]
Exactly that—guidance in prompting and reprompting. If it’s a task you do a lot, once you get a good output, ask the AI: “Based on this, how should I have prompted you to start?” Save that in a prompt library. If it’s frequent, create a custom GPT or Claude project. I’m a fan of Mark Schaefer’s “Markbot”—discussing ideas there often makes outputs more empathetic. It’s like collaborating with a synthetic version of a marketing hero.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [32:45]
Two take-homes: build a prompt library—even an Excel file with tabs (performance branding, competitor analysis, etc.). And pick a marketer whose style resonates; prompt the AI to use that style or debate in that style. It helps you grow faster than doing it alone.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [34:02]
That prompt library suggestion is gold. Mine grew from scattered notes to a big Google Doc—one of the documents I’d be most upset to lose.
Lessons from Leading Brands & Close
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [34:44]
What can early career marketers learn from brands that are really talked about—NEB, Oxford Nanopore, Cytiva?
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [35:06]
Remember the feeling. Our audience is often scientists who pivoted to marketing. I remember using NEB products—detailed instructions, thoughtful human support when issues arose, not robotic answers. I remember events where speakers really understood my problems and helped connect the dots. Find a brand you respect and emulate how they created that feeling, loyalty, and trust.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [37:13]
I love that—branding is about the feeling. Great note to end on.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [37:23]
One encouragement: we're in strategic planning season. I strongly encourage you to think about how performance branding will fit into your business in 2026.
Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [37:50]
Excellent. Thank you so much.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [37:52]
Thank you. This was a fun discussion.
Speaker: Jasmine Gruia-Gray [37:58]
Looking forward to seeing you again on the next episode of a splice of life science marketing.
Q&A
How do I pilot performance branding next week with one scientist persona?
Pick one ICP role (e.g., proteomics core lead). Draft a single, strongest claim (e.g., “Detect 30% lower-abundance proteins without extra steps”). Create one proof asset: a one-page app note with setup, data, and what the outcome means. Post a plain-language teaser on LinkedIn, DM five relevant scientists, and email five existing contacts. Measure branded search, page views from target accounts, and replies over 7–10 days.
What metrics should I track first if I can only set up three?
Start with: (1) Branded search volume (memory proxy), (2) Win rate where prior brand touch is logged (money proxy), (3) Repeat traffic from target accounts (bridge metric). Instrument with Google Search Console, simple CRM campaign tags, and an account list in your analytics. Review weekly; log baselines and deltas to see if your claim + proof shift behavior.
How do I create consistent claims without sounding repetitive?
Keep the core claim identical, vary the wrapper. Use a 1×3 matrix: one claim, three proof formats (app note, short demo clip, customer quote). Rotate channels your persona actually uses (LinkedIn post, relevant community thread, conference follow-up email). Every asset ends with the same one-sentence claim and a single CTA to the app note or demo.
Where should I show up if my audience is small and niche?
Audit where your 25-account wishlist engages: LinkedIn posts, specific subreddits, ResearchGate questions, ASHG/SLAS sessions. Choose one digital venue and one event. Commit to a 2-week sprint: comment helpfully on five posts/threads, publish one practical tip tied to your claim, and offer the app note to those who engage. Quality beats volume in niche science.
How can I use AI without making content feel robotic?
Use AI for deep research and structuring, not final tone. Build a prompt library with your brand voice and persona pains. Feed AI your app note data and have it draft a summary; you add the human layer: context, empathy, and concrete next steps. Run outputs through a “scientist sanity check” list: does it cite data, acknowledge limitations, and offer a clear experiment-next step?
