Features Are Meaningless Until Your Audience Cares About the Problem

Life science companies often flood their audiences with an avalanche of scientific and technical details the moment they land on a website. The instinct is understandable—you’ve achieved a breakthrough, and you want to share it with others. You assume your audience will immediately grasp what you’ve done and how it benefits them.

But here’s the reality: People are busy! They don’t have time to “figure it out.”

And yes, I’ve heard this rebuttal more than once: “Well, if they don’t immediately understand what we’ve done here, then they really aren’t our target market.”

Really? Let’s examine this a bit further.

Not everyone thinks like an innovator

Only 2.5% of your market consists of innovators—those who actively seek out new, cutting-edge solutions. They’ll dig through your website, click through multiple pages, and hunt for the “what’s in it for me.” And if you land a few of these clients early on, you might think, “Great! People get it! We’re on a roll!”

Not so fast.

The next group--the 12.5% who are early adopters—think differently. They don’t have time to connect the dots from your innovation to their problems. In many cases, they don’t even realize they have a problem. That means your job isn’t just to explain the solution—you have to educate them on why they should care in the first place.

The majority needs a different story

Once you move past early adopters, you’ll encounter the early and late majority—a much larger, more skeptical group. They don’t obsess over features. They’re not interested in the technical specs of your innovation. Instead, they ask:

• Who else is using this?
• What results have they seen?
• Am I missing out on something important?

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Tips for Creating a Story for Every Type of Buyer

1. Start with the person, not the product. Who is experiencing the challenge, and what’s at stake for them?
2. Create multiple variations of your story. Your audience isn’t all at the same stage in their decision-making process, so your story should evolve to meet them where they are. This means you need to have different messages peppered throughout your website for each buyer type as we describe above.
3. Introduce the struggle. What obstacles do they face before they even realize a solution exists?
4. Present the solution as part of their transformation. Show how their world changes—not just what your technology does.
5. End with the resolution. What impact does this have on their daily work, efficiency, or outcomes?

The bottom line
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No two buyers are alike. You need multiple stories and multiple journeys — not just a flood of features and tech talk. People don’t buy features. They buy a better version of their world. This means your story can't just inform — it needs to be compelling enough to make your audience care.

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