Customer Validation Before Marketing Investment
In his book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore argues that there’s a chasm between the early adopters of a product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). Moore believes that visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations and suggests that alternative techniques are required to successfully cross the “chasm,” including
- Choosing a target market
- Understanding the whole product concept
- Positioning the product
- Building a marketing strategy
- Choosing the most appropriate distribution channel
- Pricing
This framework is based upon the diffusion of innovations concept developed by Everett Rogers (Figure 1).

Are you REALLY ready to invest?
Many life science companies may be facing a chasm even though they are well beyond start-up mode with many years in business, increasing revenues, and a growing customer base. It’s quite common for these organizations to invest in expensive technologies, eg, marketing automation, to accelerate top-line sales growth, but two key questions to ask are
- Has the organization truly identified a specific target customer?
- Does the organization understand the buyer persona and customer organization well enough to justify significant investments in marketing?
Steve Blank’s Customer Development Framework offers good perspective on this situation (Figure 2). History has shown that many early-stage organizations leap to Customer Creation (let’s use marketing automation as an example), before they truly validate their customer. When a marketing team or agency doesn’t have sufficiently granular insights into the buyer, throwing money at marketing and sales can be wasteful.

In the case of life science companies that may be selling therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, or other products, there are often several dimensions to the target customer, and the overall customer organization needs to be validated before an investment such as marketing automation makes sense. For those who’ve played the board game Clue, this level of customer validation resembles solving a murder mystery … “it was Professor Plum … in the library … with the wrench!”
Multiple levels of validation
Let’s review a wound and tissue management product as an example. We’ll assume that Ouchy Inc. has a new silver ionic solution for wound care — “Heal-Fast,” which has been on the market for 3 years, but sales have not lived up to investor expectations. Marketing automation has been recommended as a solution to accelerate sales. Let’s further assume that Ouchy Inc long ago determined that the best product form factor given the target wound type, the problem that needs to be solved, the target patient, and the target caregiver. This means that Ouchy Inc. considered the options of whether Heal-Fast is best packaged and sold as a rinsing solution, alginate dressing, hydrogel, antibacterial paste, foam dressing, hydro-fiber, or film dressing.
To inform the form-factor decision, they had to consider whether the biggest need was wound cleansing, wound debridement, infection management, pain management, exudate management, moisture management, periwound area management, or wound-bed conformability. The form-factor decision then informed whether Heal-Fast was best suited to treat diabetic foot ulcers, burns, pressure ulcers, surgical wounds, or vascular ulcers.
In terms of the end-use customer, Ouchy Inc needed to consider the podiatrist, registered nurses, endocrinologist, primary care physician, ER physicians, wound care specialist and others within the customer ecosystem (Figure 3). Once the target end user was identified, there were other recommenders, influencers, and others that needed to be identified and understood before a marketing automation strategy could be put in place.

The point is that several dimensions had to be validated in sufficient detail to properly inform the decisions that would guide creation of an effective marketing automation campaign.
Build a road map
The ultimate output from customer validation is the sales road map, which documents the buyer’s process at each stage of the sales funnel from suspect to lead to prospect to customer to reference. Once you understand the buyer’s process, the next steps are to identify the associated business task, desired response, and metrics.
Once Heal-Fast identified the registered nurse as their target customer, the sales road map was populated after studying the process that RNs pursue when moving from awareness (suspect) to interest (lead) to consideration (prospect) to customer. They did this by identifying the online search, conferences, continuing education, professional associations, and other activities that spanned these funnel stages for the registered nurse. Armed with a road map, Heal-Fast was ready to invest in sales and marketing. From brand and product positioning to messaging and tactics, customer validation provided the raw ingredients to inform the sales road map and better position the investment in sales and marketing for a better return on investment.
Don’t hesitate to validate
Customer validation has application beyond the business start-up phase and it’s never too late, even for a mature company, to “take one step back” in order to “take several steps forward.” As Steve Blank would say, customer validation is about “getting out of the building,” and asking unbiased questions to confirm product-market fit — a prerequisite for developing the sales road map. Developing customer validation competency within your organization will pay dividends over the long term, so don’t limit it to a one-time activity.
Scott Phillips
Scott is a veteran of product innovation, business development, marketing strategy and entrepreneurship with experience across many industries, including leadership positions at Whirlpool Corporation, Fortune Brands and Burger King Corporation. In addition to The Inovo Group, Scott has worked alongside innovation thought leaders including Strategos, Doblin, and Strategic Horizons on client engagements focused on top- and bottom-line growth. Scott has also started 3 companies including, The SearchLite, where he is CEO and Founder.
Archives
- May 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- October 2021
- August 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2019
- May 2019
- January 2019
- July 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- December 2016
- October 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- March 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013