Video offers biotech startups a simple way to present complex technology in a format that broad audiences can easily follow, showing how a product or process works at times when plain text would fall short.
Animated explainers, product demos, lab and manufacturing tours, case studies, investor pitch decks, and more; the range of video formats available to biotech startups is massive and ever-growing.
For this reason, we decided to investigate how companies and startups in the biotech industry use video content for marketing purposes, to raise capital, attract potential partners, and strengthen their overall market position.
How We Built the Study
We analyzed 92 companies from all around the world. This list includes biotech startups from the US, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Asia-Pacific region (such as Japan, China, Taiwan, and others).
Our team drew on both general industry startup rankings and country- and region-specific lists. Companies also had to meet the following criteria to participate:
- The company must have an official website, not just social media profiles
- Its LinkedIn page must list at least two dozen (24) employees
- The firm must have run at least one funding round of $10 million or more (some have raised hundreds of millions)
- Posts on the company’s social accounts indicate the business is currently active
The final list consists of companies working at the leading edge of biotech innovation: gene engineering, therapeutics, oncology and rare disease treatment, longevity, specialized AI platforms, and many other significant areas.
So, if you have an interest in video marketing for biotech companies and startups, this study should give you plenty to think about, along with some new ideas.
Video Marketing in Biotech Isn’t for Everyone
“59 of the 92 biotech companies and startups we analyzed were found to create video content and publish it on at least one platform. However, a not-insignificant 33 don’t create video content at all.”
Why this matters:
- Around one third of your competitors may not be using video marketing as a channel at all. That means less competition and more room to get your brand noticed, attract investors and potential clients, and expand your overall reach.
Don’t wait for your competitors to move first. Start making videos now and capture attention in a market that isn’t crowded yet.
Average Video Length in the Biotech Industry
86% of companies publish video content that is under 5 minutes in length. On 4% of channels, most videos run between 5 and 10 minutes, while only 10% of companies release videos longer than 10 minutes.
Why this matters:
- Short videos take fewer resources to produce and deliver information to your audience quickly and in a more concentrated form.
- Videos under 5 minutes are usually the sweet spot, since that length works equally well on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
How Many Biotech Companies Use Video on their Homepage?
10% of companies have integrated video on their website’s homepage.
56% of those companies have more than 100 employees (based on the headcount listed on their official LinkedIn page).
Why this matters:
- Adding video to your site improves engagement metrics; it draws the visitor’s attention and encourages them to stay longer. As such, even a clip of a few dozen seconds will add a lot in terms of interactivity, and on commercial pages, it can have a noticeable effect on conversion rates.
Pro Tip:
- Video doesn’t have to live only on the homepage. You can embed it on product pages, pages describing individual features or technologies, project portfolios, and more.
Biotech Companies on YouTube: Video Count, Publishing Consistency and Frequency, and Average Length
18 of the 92 companies we surveyed had a YouTube channel. With that being said, only 8 of them publish new content on a regular basis. Fewer than half.
Why it matters:
On any algorithmic platform, publishing consistently matters more than publishing a lot. So, if you want solid, durable results from video marketing, you need to create new content on a regular schedule.
Succeeding with a single video is unlikely – and you won’t see lasting results over the long run if you post three or four videos to the company’s social accounts and then stop adding new ones entirely.
Expert Tip:
Producing video content can be time-consuming and may require serious investment if you work with a professional BioTech video production agency to get the best results. With that being said, there are a few ways to still publish regularly while keeping resource costs under control:
- Alternate long-form videos with Shorts, which are far simpler to produce. You can also cut horizontal videos into short clips and use those as Shorts, which saves a lot of time and money.
- Mix-and-match formats, since each requires a different level of resources. Don’t focus only on the complex, more expensive ones.
- Produce some videos in-house or bring in UGC by getting your team involved.
How Much and How Often Do Biotech Companies Publish on YouTube?
Looking at the average number of videos published on biotech companies’ YouTube channels: 33% of channels have up to 10 videos uploaded, and 5% have between 10 and 20. However, 62% of channels have more than 20 in total.
17% of companies had published up to 5 new videos on their YouTube channel over the past six months, while 7% had published between 5 and 10. A further 34% published more than 10 during that period (some posted several dozen).
“At the same time, though, 42% of companies hadn’t uploaded a single new video to their YouTube channel in the last 180 days.”
Why this matters:
For YouTube’s algorithms to figure out which audience to show your videos to, they need to collect a certain volume of data. A handful of videos on a channel isn’t enough to earn solid view counts and steady growth in reach.
“Every additional piece of content covers a specific slice of search demand, resonates with your target audience, and adds to your content library, which has a compounding effect.”
Biotech is one of those niches where there’s room to create a genuinely large volume of content (lab and manufacturing footage, for example). As such, companies that approach this systematically can turn a YouTube channel into a real driver of business growth and brand recognition.
Vertical vs Horizontal Videos
56% of companies release only horizontal, long-form video content, while 39% combine both types of content.
Nusantics, however, decided to bet entirely on Shorts. The simplicity of the format lets them release new videos every week without significant expenses.
Which Platforms Biotech Companies Use to Distribute Video
Here’s how platforms rank in popularity among biotech companies that publish video content:
- LinkedIn: ≈ 88%
- YouTube: ≈ 31%
- Website: ≈ 17%
- Instagram: ≈ 15%
- X (Twitter): ≈ 14%
- Facebook: ≈ 8%
46% of companies in Biotech industry publish video content on LinkedIn only, ignoring every other platform. YouTube comes second, but by a fairly wide margin.
Why this matters:
Concentrating on a single platform limits your brand’s growth and potential. It also raises your risk considerably: if that account gets blocked, for example, you’ll lose the entire asset along with every marketing and lead generation opportunity that depended on it.
Expert Tip:
Audiences on different platforms overlap only partially, and user behavior differs greatly. For example, some people are used to watching videos exclusively on YouTube, while others prefer Instagram or regularly watch clips in their LinkedIn feed.
Sticking to one platform cuts you off from a much larger audience. Plus, cross-posting doesn’t require building videos for YouTube, LinkedIn, or Instagram from scratch.
“You can upload the same video to multiple platforms without any trouble, which significantly expands your distribution options.”
Animation and Motion Graphics as a Growth Lever
Only 12% of biotech companies use animation and motion graphics in their videos.
Nonetheless, animated explainers are an excellent format for visualizing complex concepts and technologies, which is exactly what biotech companies need.
Animated videos stand out for their energy and visual appeal, and they carry high viral potential, which makes them extremely valuable for marketing.
Real cases back this up, with videos pulling in tens and hundreds of thousands of views entirely through organic reach.
Video Formats in Biotech: Where Should You Place Your Bets?
The most popular video formats among biotech companies and startups are as folows:
- Talking Head: 44%
- Corporate / Brand Video: 41%
- Slideshow: 22%
- Explainer Video: 14%
- Lab Footage: 14%
- Interview: 12%
- Webinar: 10%
- Product Video: 8%
- Case Study: 7%
- MoA Animation: 3%
As the chart above shows, the third most popular video format among biotech companies is the humble slideshow.
That kind of content is very easy to produce. However, in terms of interactivity and visual impact, slideshows lose out to other formats, and audiences engage with them far less.
Expert Tip:
In our view, animated explainers, lab footage, product videos, and MoA animation are the most promising formats for companies working in biotech. When it comes to a biotech video marketing strategy, these are the ones we’d recommend prioritizing.
You can start with just one video in each category, review the results, and then scale what works.
Key Takeaways
Based on our brand research, we can draw a thorough set of conclusions, recommendations, and insights that should be useful to marketers, startup founders, and business owners in the biotech space.
- A large percentage of players in this market aren’t using video marketing at all in their strategy. As such, at this stage, simply using video is a competitive advantage in itself. It also lets you reach more of your target audience at lower cost.
- Reuse content across platforms. LinkedIn is the primary distribution channel for companies in biotech. However, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram audiences overlap only partially, so the same video is worth publishing on several channels; this costs almost nothing extra and significantly expands your reach.
- One of YouTube’s competitors in video hosting is Vimeo. We recommend posting there as well, particularly animated videos, webinars, and investor pitches. It’s a free way to reach a new audience.
- Combine long-form content and Shorts to maintain consistency without raising costs. Cutting horizontal videos into short clips is a more practical way to save resources while publishing more often.
- Animation is rarely used and holds the most promise. Unfortunately, only 11 of 59 companies bet on animation or motion graphics – even though animated video content does the best job of explaining complex technology and carries high viral potential.
Choose several different types of videos that seem like they’ll be the most promising for your company, and start small.
Have any more questions? We take a strategic approach to support your specific needs to produce compelling videos. Contact us to find out more and get a quote!
Select the video type that aligns with your marketing objectives, and receive an immediate high-level estimate of the production cost.
