THE tribe BLOG

Are You Best Known in Your Lane? How MedTech Startups Can Own Their Category

Let’s get one thing straight: If your audience can’t describe what you do in one sentence, you don’t have a marketing problem, you have a positioning problem.

In the MedTech industry, where years of R&D, regulatory roadblocks, and clinical trials stand between you and commercialization, that brand clarity isn’t optional,  it’s critical. So, here’s the question Tribe Agency asks every client:
What do you want to be best known for?

If You’re Not Known for Something, You’re Known for Nothing

Most early-stage companies, especially in MedTech, think they can build their brand on simply being the best in their category.   However, “being the best” is subjective. It takes years and clinical evidence to prove it. It will rely on clinical outcomes, time, and often FDA clearance.

What can you control? Becoming best known.

Being best known is about owning a category, even if you’re still building traction and proof of concept. Whether you’re disrupting mammograms or rethinking surgical robotics, your edge comes from being unmistakably associated with that one thing – that only you can do.

When Tribe builds brands, this is non-negotiable. No executive or founder should be boiling the ocean with generalist messaging or creating “everything for everyone” content. It confuses investors. It loses providers. It stalls growth.

Pick Your Lane — Then Own It

You might be building a breakthrough solution. But if your brand doesn’t reflect that clearly, you’re running in circles. Here’s how to fix that:

1. Start With the “Why”

Not just your product’s “why,” but your company’s origin story:

• Why did you build this?
  
• Why now?
  
• Why are you uniquely positioned to solve this?
  

This isn’t fluff. It’s your North Star. It should drive every decision from branding to pitch decks to clinical study messaging and your website.

2. Define Your One Thing

We say it all the time at Tribe: People remember one clear and compelling solution, not 10 decent ones. So answer this:

• What do you want to be best known for?
  
• What market are you here to reinvent or disrupt?
  

Don’t be afraid to go bold. Your audience, especially physicians and hospital execs, want clarity. They want a message that sticks and resonates with them and their needs.

3. Do the Work Most Startups Skip

Every category leader starts with a brand foundation:

• A refined ideal client profile (aka: who is your primary target audience or clinical user)
  
• A pain point-driven narrative with outcomes messaging
  
• A point of view that stakes a claim – If you own it – they will come! 
  

Without that, you’re building on loose sand. At Tribe, this foundation work always comes first, even before color palettes or logos or websites. Our reasoning is, if your messaging doesn’t nail the who, what, and why, no amount of brand design or marketing content will save it.

Still Not Landing? It Might Be a Market Research Problem

Let’s say you’ve picked your lane, and built a strong brand foundation, and you’re still not gaining traction. That doesn’t always mean your idea’s bad, it might mean you haven’t validated your assumptions with your future customers.

Founders and executives often build from instinct. But instincts aren’t data or proof of concept – they are an n = 1.

Here’s how to back your brand with voice of customer (VoC) insights:

• Survey your current customers (if you have them): Why did they buy? Did your product meet expectations?
  
• Run polls via tools like Tally.so or Google Forms: Ask your target buyers what pain points they’re desperate to solve.
  
• Look outside your echo chamber: Don’t rely on feedback from your existing network, friends, investors, or internal teams only.
  

At the end of the day, every innovation starts as a hypothesis of the problem to solve. You either validate it or adjust it. But ignoring market research is how you waste years and millions pushing the wrong messaging to the wrong audience.

Real Talk: Clarity Beats Cleverness

Want to know why your sales team can’t convert? Why VCs don’t lean in during pitch day? Why do physicians bounce after one webinar?

Because your message is trying to do too much.

The most successful brands we’ve helped scale weren’t always the most advanced product on the market. But they were:

• Best known for a single disruptive idea
  
• Crystal clear about who they’re for, what they do, how they do it and why
  
• Consistent across every touchpoint
  

If your brand doesn’t pass the “can a stranger explain this in one sentence?” test, start over.

How to Become Best Known (Even If You’re Not the Best Yet)

Let’s bring it home.

• If you’re not best known in your category, someone else will claim it, even if you technically invented it.
  
• You don’t need to be the “best” yet, especially in MedTech, where clinical proof takes time and money.
  
• You do need to be the one everyone remembers. The one investor reference. The one physicians mention in rooms you’re not even in yet.
  

That only happens when you claim your lane, build momentum around it, and drive every piece of content toward it – or as Tribe Agency says, “Make your Brand a Verb”. 

Own It. Claim It. Scale From There.

You’re not just building a product, you’re building a category. So stop trying to be everything. Instead, be best known in your lane, then scale from there.

Need help clarifying your positioning and building a brand that actually lands with your market?👉 Start with Tribe’s One Day VIP Intensive.  Learn more about how others who have utilized this service to clear out the bottlenecks in your business, get crystal clear on what you want to be best known for and have an executable and strategic plan to scale – all in one business day!

🎙 Tune Into Leadr.

For more unfiltered conversations on MedTech growth, marketing, and brand-building with real operators — listen to the Leadr. Podcast by Tribe Agency. No fluff. Just strategy that works.