Positioning Over Posting: A Smarter Approach to Life Sciences Marketing
In today’s hyper-digital world, the pressure to be visible online is widespread across industries, roles, and company sizes. Whether you work for yourself or by yourself in a lab, you have likely been told that posting on social media platforms is the key to growing your business, career, or circle. But before you engage with social media marketing, you need to consider your brand positioning.
The trouble is that simply “showing up” doesn’t guarantee growth. You can’t just post once in a while and expect to get a new client, job, or friend.
Even more frustrating is the time and effort that goes into creating so much content, only to see it underperform. Or worse, fail completely. We’ve all been victims of a “viral fail.” You know the post you were sure was going to go viral, only to get a handful of likes from coworkers.
Success on social media is:
complex
metrics-driven
industry-specific
highly goal-dependent
If your goal is to build credibility and showcase your expertise, the trouble might not be in the text or the timing–it might be a lack of positioning.
In the life sciences and healthcare ecosystem, scientific credibility is built through expert positioning—not how often you post.
Why Does Posting Become the Default for Social Media Marketing?
If posting isn’t the absolute answer to enhancing your company's digital visibility, then why is it the “default” option? Like so many things in an ever-changing medium like social media marketing, the message has gotten muddled.
In general, digital marketing strategies need to be tailored to the industry, and what works for B2C or influencers doesn’t always work for B2B life science businesses. From compliance concerns to longer lead times and higher risk, B2B life science marketing is much more nuanced than B2C. Unfortunately, that message doesn’t always get passed along in the wild west of marketing advice ecosystems and free-for-all blogging.
At the same time, companies and teams are feeling pressure from the social platforms themselves to post regularly and stay engaged. When some of the best marketing options come from social media, it’s only natural to feel like your company should always be on there, too.
The other reason posting has become the default is our cultural expectation that more is better. We prioritize output in our world, especially in social media marketing, where ROI isn’t always cut-and-dry. But life sciences marketing teams don’t always need more posts to prove their value. They need quality over quantity.
The Unique Reality of Life Science Social Media Marketing
For some industries, such as SaaS or consumer products, posting a high volume of content works well. Consumers need to see a product or service many times before making a purchase, so those digital marketing strategies are optimized for attention and speed. That logic doesn’t apply to the highly regulated life sciences industry, where visibility alone doesn’t drive decisions. In fact, sometimes too much visibility can have the opposite effect, undermining credibility.
In the life sciences industry, decisions are based on factors like:
scientific rigor
regulatory and ethical constraints
trust and credibility
long sales cycles
unmet medical or research needs
Life sciences marketing must prioritize scientific credibility, accuracy, and trust. But for that to work, your company needs to identify its positioning.
What Does “Positioning” in Life Science Marketing Actually Mean?
So what exactly is brand positioning, and how does it apply to a life science social media marketing strategy?
Marketing author and historian Philip Kotler describes positioning as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market.” In other words, expert positioning is the step we take before creating thought leadership.
A company has to determine how it wants to be known among its audience and what distinguishes it from its competitors. With clear positioning, credible and cohesive thought leadership takes shape.
Identifying the positioning stems from deep brand messaging work, as Lauren Perna Communications does with our life sciences clients. We craft foundational messaging documents that help companies stand out and differentiate themselves.
When a company has identified its brand positioning, it can clearly articulate:
a point of view
consistent narrative across channels
alignment between expertise, audience, and outcomes
On the other hand, posting without positioning often leads to:
Disconnected or unclear point of view
Inconsistent messaging across channels
Misalignment between expertise, audience, and goals
Furthermore, in the latter situation, life sciences marketing teams can end up chasing trends and overproducing content.
What Are Common Mistakes We See in Social Media Marketing?
A few common mistakes we see when life science social media marketing teams prioritize posting over expert positioning include:
too many topics
c-suite voice is either diluted or absent
no meaningful impact on the platform (i.e., surface-level engagement only)
metrics that track activity, not impact
What Actually Works in Life Science Social Media Marketing?
This doesn’t mean your team shouldn’t post at all. Instead, focus on fewer, more quality posts. We often suggest that our social media marketing clients post around two to three thought-leadership-driven posts a week, depending on their bandwidth. These types of posts cover fewer topics but offer deeper insights.
To ensure this quality-over-quantity strategy succeeds, we always suggest beginning with a messaging framework. You want to get ultra clear on what your company stands for before you actually take a stand for anything. Once you’ve nailed down the messaging, you can identify a few core topics that tie back to your goal of increasing trust and scientific credibility.
The content should always be grounded in lived scientific experiences that complement your work. You don’t need to post a spreadsheet or give out patient data to share a lived experience. Instead, you want to draw conclusions and share insights that demonstrate your expertise and impact.
You also want to avoid overreliance on AI for these posts, because the point is to be authentic and have a unique perspective. Remember, in life sciences content marketing, authenticity breeds credibility.
The great thing about this type of social media strategy is that you can tailor it to your bandwidth. Even if you have a highly productive life sciences marketing team, it can be hard to maintain such a high volume of posts. But with a smaller volume, the posting is more sustainable, and you can work through existing systems.
Another notable part of this strategy is its versatility. You don’t have to rely solely on social media tactics. You can use your positioning as a compass when creating thought leadership campaigns, emails, or other digital tactics. With strong expert positioning, every insight, perspective, or asset reinforces a clear understanding of who you are, what you stand for, and why your expertise matters.
How Can You Know If Your Marketing Is Positioned or Just Posted?
To know whether you’re posting or positioning, ask yourself a few of these questions:
Can someone describe your company or expertise in one sentence?
What three words would someone use to label your business?
Do your last five posts reinforce similar ideas?
Would your audience recognize your POV without seeing your logo?
Does it look credible compared to competitors?
Sometimes, we think we’re doing a great job until we take a step back and give ourselves a little self-audit.
Positioning Is a Long Game, and That’s a Good Thing
Positioning is a long game. You won’t find success overnight, but it will build over time. Once you’ve established your expert positioning in the industry, you can build momentum from there. Unlike B2C fads and passing trends, your audience's trust will compound over time.
Life sciences social media marketing should feel intentional, not exhausting and obligatory. That shift will happen naturally if you apply the "less is more" principle. Less high-volume posting, more thoughtfully crafted insights.
If your team is producing content but struggling to build credibility, it may be time to rethink your positioning. Explore our brand messaging and positioning work now.
