You’ve been here before. Your product development team spent years perfecting the technology. Your marketing team spent months developing marketing plans and collateral. You trained your sales team on every feature and benefit. Launch day finally arrives‚Äîfollowed by months of underwhelming adoption, difficult sales conversations, and, ultimately, results that fall far short of your projections.

For many health care marketing leaders, this disappointing arc plays out over and over in a frustrating cycle. Yet, each time, the postmortem rehashes the same insights: 

The market wasn’t ready.¬†

Physicians didn’t see the value.¬†

We couldn’t differentiate from existing solutions.

What do you do now? Improve the product and try again? What if the issue isn’t with your product at all?¬†

Here’s the way out: Breaking the cycle of failed launches lies not in your solution but in whether you’ve established that the problem it solves is worth solving in the first place. If your market doesn’t care about the problem, it won’t care about your solution.

Health care companies that break the cycle of failed launches understand that job one isn’t to promote their product. First, you need to identify one compelling problem that your product is uniquely positioned to solve. Then, you need to help the market recognize and prioritize the pain of that problem‚Äîlong before you mention your solution.¬†¬†

Apply a problem-communication framework to your next pre-launch campaign to ensure your innovative technology gets the welcome it deserves. Here’s how.

6 Steps to Finding High-Impact Problems Your Product Can Uniquely Solve

In health care, customers don’t buy products because of their features. Like most customers, they buy solutions to problems they face. In health care, however, there’s an added challenge: The cost of change. HCPs perceive value only in solutions that outweigh the high cost of change in complex systems with multiple decision-makers.¬†

The complexity of health care means that adopting a solution to a problem may create a new set of problems in another area‚Äîa key contributor to health care’s overall glacial rate of change and adoption of new products.

The health care value equation is simply the problems you solve minus the problems you create.

Each time your reps speak to a health care professional, you can be sure that the prospect is not thinking about the solution you are selling but about the potential problems that adopting your solution could cause. And if they don’t recognize the problem you’re solving as being urgent or compelling, your launch is likely to fail.¬†

To avoid asking sales reps to create problem awareness while they’re pitching your solution, reframe your pre-launch campaign as a problem communication phase dedicated to elevating the problem your solution is uniquely positioned to solve.

Instead of preparing to talk about your product, shape how the market perceives and prioritizes specific challenges. Create the context that makes your eventual solution not just appealing but necessary.

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When this pre-launch phase is done effectively, your product launch becomes the natural conclusion to a story the market actively understands and believes. Your solution arrives not as an interruption seeking attention but as the answer to a question the market is already asking.

6 Steps to Finding High-Impact Problems Your Product Can Uniquely Solve For HCPs

To identify and elevate the one problem that will position your product as the solution, look beyond known pain points. Seek to uncover new or lesser-known problems that you can solve better than anyone else. 

Here’s a practical framework for finding and owning problems that will drive your next successful launch.¬†

1. Start with HCP empathy, not product features

First, immerse yourself in the HCPs’ experiences with the following exercise. This exercise is designed to build empathy with your audience, and it will help you consider the context in which your product will be used. Stand in the HCP’s shoes and ask yourself these questions:¬†

1. What are they thinking? Visualize the specific moment when your audience is experiencing the problem that your product addresses. What thoughts are running through their minds? 
2. What are they feeling? Identify the emotions that might be present in that moment. Is it frustration? Are they overwhelmed? Are they concerned for patient outcomes? Are they worried about someone objecting to your product? Even for rational health care professionals, emotions drive purchasing decisions more powerfully than data. 
3. What are they doing? Picture the physical actions they’re taking. Are they turning a monitor around to show a patient their test results? Are they manually entering data? Are they scheduling follow-up appointments?

2. Identify high-impact, ownable problems

Once you’ve mapped your audience’s experience, identify ownable problems by honing in on pain points that meet two critical criteria:

1. High impact: Does solving this problem significantly change outcomes, efficiency, or experience for your audience? High-impact problems change practice patterns, improve patient care, or solve significant operational challenges. These are the problems health care stakeholders are most inclined to prioritize.
2. Uniquely ownable: Can your organization solve this problem better than anyone else? Can you build a case for why your solution can and should be distinctly associated with this problem?

Create a simple two-dimensional matrix and plot potential problems. Focus your efforts on problems that have high scores in both categories—these represent your most fertile market-shaping opportunities.

3. Dig deeper than feature-level benefits

To develop your value proposition that captures the problem and your solution, push beyond product features to the real-world impact of your product on your customers’ lives.¬†

Consider the experience of a nuclear medicine company that produces radioactive tracers. Initially, they described their innovation as unit-dose ordering‚Äîa feature-level benefit. Digging deeper revealed the real problem they solved‚Äîand their unique value proposition. Traditional contracts required hospitals to find enough patients each day to utilize the radioactive dose generator, in which they had already made a significant investment. The solution eliminated this pressure, allowing hospitals to order exactly what they needed for each day’s patients.

This deeper understanding allowed them to transform their messaging from “We offer unit-dose ordering” to “We eliminate the daily pressure to fill quotas, allowing you to focus on patient needs rather than generator economics.”

4. Test early whether an identified problem resonates

Before investing heavily in any problem-focused pre-launch campaign, validate whether your audience actually cares about the problems you identified. This is called armor chinking, and it will help you identify problems that matter most. 

Try these approaches:

1. Problem-focused conversations: Ask your sales team to engage in exploratory discussions about specific problems without mentioning your solution. Which problems generate the most interest and engagement?
2. Topic-specific content: Create content related to several problems and track engagement metrics. Which topics drive the highest engagement rates?
3. Digital problem-probing: Test different problem statements in digital campaigns. Which one generates the strongest response?

When you discover a problem that resonates, follow up with more communication on that specific issue. This focused approach helps you identify the most motivating problems before your full campaign launch.

5. Look for allies who already recognize the problem you solve

The most powerful market shaping happens when you amplify existing voices rather than creating a new message from scratch. Look for key opinion leaders (KOLs) who are already advocating for solutions to the problem you’ve decided to own.¬†

These existing advocates become natural allies in your problem communication efforts. And the ease with which you find these allies tells you a lot about how resonant your problem really is. After all, if you can’t find a KOL who cares about your problem, you probably don’t have a real problem‚Äîor a good solution.¬†

As you look for KOL allies, keep in mind that in health care’s specialized environment, each medical ‚Äútribe‚Äù has its own unique communication style and priorities. It’s imperative that you understand your niche audience and tailor your problem communication to match those tribal characteristics.

6. Beware of false consensus

Perhaps the biggest pitfall in problem identification is assuming your internal team’s perspective matches the market’s reality. Just because your product team believes that it has identified a critical problem doesn’t mean your audience shares that assessment.

The only way to confirm problem–market fit is through direct engagement with your audience. This validation should happen long before your product launch. In fact, it should ideally happen before any significant product development investment. The earlier you validate problem resonance, the more time you have to adjust either your solution or your market approach.

By systematically identifying problems you can uniquely solve and validating their importance with your audience, you create the foundation for a successful pre-launch phase. You’ll enter the problem communication phase with confidence that you’re elevating issues your audience actually cares about‚Äîand that you’re uniquely positioned to address.

How to build a problem-focused pre-launch campaign

There are three distinct approaches to problem-focused pre-launch campaigns. The approach you select will depend on your situation and market dynamics and the problems you’re addressing.¬†

1. Pre-launch sales campaigns

Use this approach when your audience recognizes the problem but needs encouragement to prioritize it.

Guide your sales team in highlighting existing problems your audience already recognizes. Sales representatives can engage prospects in conversations and provide collateral that spotlights those pain points long before introducing your solution.

These campaigns can be implemented relatively quickly and close to launch. Their effectiveness relies on audience preparedness: That is, your audience should readily acknowledge the problem once it’s pointed out‚Äîand care about solving it. If that’s not the case, this approach will fail. Physicians will ‚Äúkick the sales rep out of the office‚Äù rather than engage with a problem they don’t perceive as real.

2. Topic campaigns

Use it when the market doesn’t yet recognize or prioritize the problem your product solves.

Topic campaigns aim to elevate specific problems through third-party validation and industry conversation. Tactics often include:

• Sponsoring research that quantifies the problem
• Organizing KOL roundtables focused on the challenge
• Publishing white papers that explore the issue’s implications
• Promoting research findings through targeted advertising and communication

The goal of these campaigns is to transform an underappreciated issue into a recognized industry priority. Allocate at least 4 to 6 months to effectively shift perceptions. Timing matters: Start too early, and you risk laying the groundwork for competitors to swoop in and benefit from your problem awareness efforts with substitute solutions.

3. Thought leadership platforms

Use it when you are marketing a portfolio rather than a single product or when you are addressing complex, multifaceted market challenges.

This comprehensive approach builds a content ecosystem around your target audience’s problems. Rather than focusing on a single issue, you create a hub of valuable content that addresses interconnected challenges.

Thought leadership platforms can establish your organization as the authoritative voice on solving a particular set of challenges long before introducing specific solutions. While this approach requires a more substantial investment, it creates deeper market relationships and lays a foundation for multiple product introductions.

Selecting the right approach

Ask yourself the following questions to determine the right pre-launch campaign approach. 

• How established is problem awareness in your target market?
• How much time do you have before the product launch?
• What resources can you dedicate to the pre-launch phase?
• How significant a market shift does your product require?

Remember that these approaches can be stacked based on timelines and resources. You might begin with a thought leadership platform to build broad problem awareness, layer on a topic campaign focused on a product-specific issue, and then activate sales teams with a direct pre-launch sales campaign as your launch approaches.

The Pre-Launch Difference: Problem First, Product Second

The size of the change you create will never exceed the size of the problem you solve in the minds of your audience. As a result, your pre-launch investment in problem elevation and communication is directly proportional to your product’s eventual impact.

Ready to break the cycle of failed launches with a problem-focused pre-launch approach? Let’s explore how VIVO can help you identify, validate, and elevate the high-impact problems your organization is uniquely positioned to solve.