In almost every early-stage MedTech or diagnostics company, there comes a point where someone says, “I think we need marketing.” It’s usually said for good reasons. The product is progressing, clinical evidence is being generated, regulatory planning is underway and conversations with clinicians, distributors, investors and prospective customers are becoming more frequent. The business is beginning to look beyond development and towards commercialisation.

At first glance, the next logical step may appear to be hiring someone to build the website, prepare conference materials, create sales tools and begin generating awareness. Those activities matter, but in my experience they’re rarely the real reason the organisation has reached this point. More often, the business has become too commercially complex for customer and commercial thinking to remain everyone’s part-time responsibility.

A useful signal is when investor questions shift from whether the product can reach its next development or regulatory milestone to how quickly the business can generate revenue and market traction. At the same time, evidence is shaping future claims, pricing is becoming a decision about value and adoption, and distributors are asking practical questions about training, launch readiness and local market needs.

Individually, none of those decisions belong solely to marketing, but collectively they determine whether the product will be understood, valued, purchased and adopted. Over the years, I’ve come to think of product marketing as the discipline that translates technical innovation into commercial adoption. It champions the customer and helps connect decisions across product development, evidence, regulatory, manufacturing, finance, sales and business development.

Product marketing doesn’t replace those disciplines or own every commercial decision. It helps ensure their decisions come together as one coherent pathway to market rather than a collection of individually sound choices that unintentionally work against one another. That’s why the more useful question isn’t simply, “When should we hire marketing?” It’s, “When does our business need product marketing?”

Every discipline asks a different question

Bringing a medical device to market involves specialist disciplines looking at the same product through different lenses. Engineering considers whether it can be built and perform reliably; clinical teams whether it works and improves outcomes; regulatory whether the evidence supports approval; manufacturing whether it can be produced consistently and at scale; and Human Factors whether people can use it safely and effectively. Finance considers sustainability, while sales and business development explore demand and the route to market.

Every one of those perspectives matters, and each discipline is naturally optimising for a different outcome. The difficulty is that ownership may sit within one function while the consequences travel across the organisation. A clinical study does not only determine whether a product works; it shapes the claims the business can make and the confidence customers have in adopting it. Pricing influences revenue, but it also affects positioning, willingness to pay, perceived value and distributor economics. Packaging needs to protect the product and be manufactured at scale, but it also represents the quality of the brand and forms part of the customer experience.

I’ve seen evidence plans achieve the regulatory objective while leaving the commercial team unable to make the claim customers cared about most because the benefit had not been measured in the right way. I’ve seen low pricing create a powerful accessibility story while leaving channel partners with insufficient margin to prioritise the product. I’ve also seen functional packaging become the visual image repeatedly shown in user-generated content, eclipsing the beautifully designed product inside and leaving marketing with a brand legacy it would never have chosen.

Product marketing asks how those elements need to work together, who the product is really for and what the customer must understand, believe and change before adoption can happen. It’s complementary to the other disciplines because it holds the customer and commercial thread across them, helping the organisation see how individual decisions interact while there’s still time to influence the outcome.

The commercial journey has already started

The first product marketing leader rarely joins a business with a blank sheet of paper.

Some decisions are obvious, such as what the MVP will include, which markets to enter first or whether distributors will form part of the route to market. Others appear relatively minor at the time but become surprisingly consequential once they’re embedded in the product or operating model. I’ve inherited clinical trial protocols that had already shaped the claims the business would eventually be able to make, and products where packaging, onboarding and Instructions for Use had largely been finalised before anyone had considered what that experience would feel like for a first-time customer.

None of those decisions reflected poor judgement. They reflected the expertise around the table and the information available at the time. Regulatory teams were focused on compliance, engineers were solving technical challenges, clinical teams were generating evidence and business development teams were opening doors and testing interest. The missing perspective wasn’t capability; it was someone consistently asking how those decisions would come together from the customer’s perspective and what commercial consequences they might create later.

The market starts shaping your story and your brand

Long before formal launch, the market begins forming an understanding of the product and a visual impression of the brand. Founders present to investors, clinicians discuss early experiences, distributors prepare local markets and business development teams test interest. These activities are valuable, but they also create language, images and expectations that can become remarkably sticky.

I’ve seen CEOs publicly describe features from the original vision that didn’t make the first commercial release, and investor presentations continue using language that no longer reflected the product being prepared for launch. I’ve also seen enthusiastic distributors register branded local web domains, share prototype screenshots and create market materials because the manufacturer wasn’t ready yet with an agreed story, approved visuals and formal sales enablement.

None of this reflects poor intent; it usually reflects excitement and a genuine desire to help. The difficulty is that product and brand marketing begin to blur as soon as the market starts seeing and discussing the product. Language and visual cues gain momentum as customers repeat them, sales teams adopt them, distributors localise them and journalists quote them. Before long, marketing is trying to reshape a story and brand image that already has credibility.

In an early-stage company, the first product marketer often becomes the brand custodian as well. The role isn’t to control every conversation, but to give internal teams and partners a shared, accurate story and consistent visual assets they can use with confidence. Otherwise, distributors will understandably fill the gap themselves, and their interpretation may be difficult to reverse.

Product marketing champions the customer

One lesson that has stayed with me involved two reasonable design decisions around a personal defibrillator I helped bring to market. To preserve product integrity throughout its shelf life, the device was sealed inside a transparent barrier bag and then placed in a protective carry case held closed with nothing more sophisticated than standard red electrical tape. The contrast with the highly sophisticated medical device inside was hard to ignore, even though both decisions made sense within their own disciplines.

Product marketing looks at the same product through a different lens and asks what happens when those decisions meet the customer. That customer may have stored or carried the device for months or years in its ready state. Then, without warning, they may be kneeling beside a loved one in cardiac arrest, adrenaline surging and hands shaking uncontrollably in fight-or-flight mode, when every second of delay matters. The storage experience and the emergency-use experience were two very different customer journeys, and both formed part of the product experience.

Human Factors asks whether people can use a product safely and effectively, and product marketing doesn’t replace that expertise. In an integrated development process, product marketing translates customer and market insight into requirements that sit alongside clinical, regulatory, engineering and usability inputs as the product is formed and refined. In many start-ups, dedicated Human Factors capability may be limited or shared across roles, making that complementary commercial perspective even more valuable.

Product marketing considers the holistic experience, from how the product is discovered and evaluated to how it’s purchased, stored, introduced into practice and adopted over time. It isn’t simply about making the product easier to promote; it helps make the product, the story and the pathway to adoption easier to navigate.

When product marketing becomes a leadership need

Most companies begin thinking seriously about product marketing as regulatory approval and launch come into view. That’s understandable, but by then the role may be asked to unwind earlier decisions rather than influence them. Product requirements may be finalised, evidence plans locked, packaging approved, distributors forming expectations and language circulating externally that no longer reflects the MVP.

There isn’t one revenue figure, headcount threshold or milestone that provides the answer. Investors are asking what happens after approval; leadership is debating pricing, positioning and launch sequencing; distributors want training, onboarding and local support; and different people are describing the same product in different ways. The need becomes visible when the organisation spends more time connecting commercial decisions or revisiting choices made before the customer and commercial perspective was represented.

None of those signals are problems on their own. Together, they often show that the business has outgrown informal commercial decision-making. Customer and commercial thinking can no longer remain something everyone contributes to when they have time; someone needs to hold the thread across functions and help the organisation make those decisions as part of one commercial system.

This is where the first marketing role is frequently mis-scoped. The job description asks for a generalist who can build the website, create content, prepare for conferences and support sales, while the business actually needs someone to clarify positioning, challenge assumptions, shape go-to-market, influence evidence and pricing discussions, onboard and educate distributors, and align leadership around one market story. These aren’t simply execution tasks; they require experience, judgement and credibility across technical, clinical and commercial teams. The risk isn’t only hiring too late. It’s hiring for the wrong level of problem.

It does not have to begin with a full-time hire

Recognising the need for product marketing leadership doesn’t automatically mean appointing a full-time Head of Product Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer. Many early-stage businesses don’t yet have the workload, budget or structure to justify another permanent executive, and hiring too much capability too early can be as unhelpful as leaving the gap unaddressed.

The need is often intermittent but high leverage: experienced input before product requirements or a clinical protocol are locked in, a pricing model is approved, a distributor agreement is signed, a launch sequence is committed to, or the market story becomes embedded. A few well-timed interventions can prevent months of rework later.

The right starting point may be an adviser who provides commercialisation checkpoints, a defined project to clarify the market and build the first sales enablement package, or fractional leadership where launch is approaching and several workstreams need senior coordination. Each gives the business experienced capability without requiring an immediate permanent executive appointment.

The model matters less than the capability and mandate. Fractional support isn’t a cheaper substitute for tactical execution; at its best, it provides experienced product marketing and commercialisation leadership where it can have the greatest influence, while helping build the foundations and internal capability the business will eventually carry forward. It is often the practical answer when the commercial pieces need to be connected before a full-time senior hire is justified.