Nobody knows you make this

I was chatting with a client last month who runs business development for a global life sciences instruments company. While discussing an upcoming campaign, another product they offer came up, and he admitted:

"Nobody knows we have this in our portfolio."

He wasn't talking about a niche accessory. He was talking about a genuinely clever piece of kit, built to solve a real and expensive problem in the lab. And almost nobody outside the company had a clue it existed.

That's a major problem. How does it happen?

Your flagship doesn't need your help anymore

Nearly every instrument company I've worked with has one flagship product. You know the one, the product that sells itself and is the lifeblood of the company.

It self promotes and validates as it gets constantly cited in academic manuscripts, and is the thing new starters get told to buy because that's just what everyone buys. It would keep selling even if the marketing campaign got cancelled tomorrow. Sometimes that's years of budget and word of mouth built up over time. Sometimes it's just a genuinely standout piece of equipment, one of those unicorn products.

The problem isn't that this product gets attention, after all - It's earned it. The problem is the attention doesn't spill over into the rest of the company's range. A scientist who's used your pipettes for a decade has no reason to assume you also make benchtop devices, unless someone actually tells them. 

Unfortunately, recognition in one category doesn't transfer to the next. We think it does because it feels like it should. But it's genuinely hard to get the feedback that tells you people just aren't aware of your other products - unless you go looking for it.

Have you heard from your customers recently?

This company didn't find the problem through a campaign review. It came up because I asked a direct question about how often they actually speak to their customers and prospects. They said they'd done it once, and found out that plenty didn't even know about the other products they had. Nobody inside the business had checked whether customers knew, because from the inside, of course they do. There's a page for it, it's in the catalogue, they do a monthly LinkedIn post.

But a catalogue doesn't build a story, or a message, or anything a customer actually remembers. If a scientist has never been told why this instrument matters to their specific workflow, they'll keep buying the thing they already know, from the brand they already associate with that category, indefinitely.

The fix isn't a bigger campaign. It's structural: ask existing customers directly what they actually think you make. Not what's on the website, what's in their head. Ask twenty people who already trust you, and you'll find out exactly how far your second product line has travelled. Usually, it isn't far.

What to actually do about it

Once you know the awareness gap exists, the flagship product becomes your best asset for closing it, not a distraction from it. Build co-product content around real workflows: an application note or whitepaper showing how the flagship and the overlooked product solve adjacent parts of the same research problem, so the second product gets introduced inside a story the customer already trusts, rather than cold. Anyone searching for the flagship becomes aware of the second product along the way.

Use named experts to do the introducing. A KOL or an internal SME people already listen to carries more weight for an unfamiliar product than any amount of brochure copy, because the credibility travels with the person, not the page. In our recent survey of over 100 scientists, 75% said they ideally want to consume content from a named expert. So, give the people what they want!

Give the product some of the space you're currently spending entirely on the flagship. Homepage real estate, a slot in the next ad cycle, a few minutes at the next trade show. If every bit of prominent space goes to the product that already sells itself, the rest of the range never gets a fair look.

And get sales saying it out loud, even off topic. "This isn't what you're after right now, but we also cover this part of your workflow, just flagging it in case it's useful down the line." No pressure, no pitch, just awareness planted at the one point of contact your customer already trusts.

Go and ask

If you run marketing for a company with more than one product line, I'd bet there's something in your portfolio right now that your best customers would use if they knew it existed. You won't find it in a dashboard. You'll find it by asking someone directly, the way I stumbled into it on a call that wasn't even about this.

Go and ask. You might not love the answer, but at least you'll know what you're actually working with.