Science marketers face a persistent paradox: you're expected to deliver high-impact results with limited time, limited budget, and sometimes zero internal support. You know what good marketing looks like. You might even know what your company needs to do.
But when the resources aren’t there, it feels like you're stuck in a chicken-and-egg problem: you need more budget to prove marketing's value, but you need to prove marketing's value to get more budget.
So, how do you break out of that loop?
In this article, I list 10 practical strategies that will help you do more with less. Each one is designed to maximize your impact when time, money, and team size are in short supply.
1. Focus on what moves the needle
When you can't do everything, you have to get ruthless about where you spend your time and energy.
As Teja Sirec, a fractional marketing director, told me in a recent interview, she always recommends beginning a new marketing role by first gaining a thorough understanding of the business and then developing a strategic plan.
So start by identifying your highest-leverage activities. Depending on your stage and the work you’ve already established, that might be anything like refining your positioning, improving a single landing page, or developing one strong case study that sales can use for months. These kinds of assets can have a disproportionate impact compared to lower-value activities like keeping up a company Facebook page that nobody really looks at.
To help you sort everything out, use the 80/20 rule: 80% of your results will likely come from 20% of your efforts. Find those 20% and double down on it.
And if the budget allows, consider an external marketing audit. It's an upfront cost, but the strategic clarity and long-term focus it provides can easily pay for itself over time.
2. Niche down your target audience
Broad marketing feels safer, but it’s often more expensive and less effective.
Instead, be laser-specific about who you’re targeting. For example, rather than targeting all types of lab managers, focus only on those whose research matches exactly your product. For this, you'll have to be honest with yourself and narrow your audience ruthlessly (again, an external opinion from a consultant might help).
Companies are often unwilling to do this because they feel like they're missing out on opportunities but a smaller, well-defined audience has several advantages:
- Lower ad spend
- More relevant messaging
- Higher conversion rates
In scientific companies, tailoring your message to a niche segment can make your offer resonate more deeply and cut through the noise.
3. Learn to say no
As the only marketer (or part of a small team), you’ll get requests from all directions: sales wants a new slide deck, the CEO wants a press release, R&D wants you to help with a poster for a conference.
Each request might seem small on its own, but they add up and distract from the work that actually moves the needle.
You need to learn to say no, or at least "not now."
Set clear priorities and document them in a simple roadmap or quarterly plan. Share this with your team and leadership to create alignment and transparency.
When ad hoc requests come in, refer back to this plan to explain why you can't accommodate them right now. Offer to revisit the request during the next planning cycle or suggest alternative solutions, like templates your team can use on their own, or delegating tasks to other team members. This approach helps you stay focused without coming across as uncooperative.
4. Repurpose like a pro
You don’t need to create something new every time. A strong piece of content can live many lives.
A single webinar, for example, can be turned into a white paper, a series of LinkedIn posts, an infographic, and a blog post.
I recently wrote a list of eight ideas for repurposing your scientific content, so I won’t go into too much detail about how to do it. Keep in mind, though, that this strategy saves time and reinforces your core messaging across multiple touchpoints with your audience.
Instead of treating each piece of content as a one-and-done task, build real content hubs around each piece to maximize the time spent creating it.
5. Use your internal experts
Scientists, product managers, and executives are sitting on valuable insights but they rarely have the time, inclination, or writing skills to turn those insights into content. One mistake I see many marketers making is waiting ages for a scientist to eventually sit down and write an application note. More often than not, it won't be when you want it, which will surely impact your planning.
Rather than depending on scientists, create a process that allows you to access their knowledge without requiring their constant attention.
The process is quite simple: set up recurring 30-minute interviews with your internal experts and ask them focused, open-ended questions about their work, recent discoveries, customer problems, or technology trends. Record the session and transcribe it.
Now, you’re sitting on gold nuggets you can reuse for social media content, landing pages, blog articles, and so on.
After a few months and a few more interviews, you’ll have developed a real compendium of knowledge that you can use to create your marketing collateral, without having to wait for someone else to prioritize you.
6. Focus on one social channel
When resources are tight, trying to be everywhere at once will burn you out and dilute your efforts. It’s far more effective to pick one platform and go deep, rather than spreading thin across five.
For most B2B science marketers, that one platform is LinkedIn. It’s where decision-makers hang out, where reputations are built, and where thought leadership drives inbound attention.
But depending on your niche, other platforms might be a better fit. For example:
- Reddit can be a goldmine for engaging with technical communities and getting unfiltered feedback (if done well).
- ResearchGate offers credibility signals in academic circles, especially for tools aimed at researchers.
- YouTube could also be a winning strategy if video is your thing.
The key is to build momentum on one channel before expanding. Success on one platform creates a blueprint you can later replicate elsewhere with more confidence and efficiency.
7. Build your owned channel
Social media is important, but relying solely on it is risky. You’re building on rented land you can’t control: platforms change, algorithms shift, and your reach can evaporate overnight. That’s why every science company, no matter how small, should prioritize building an owned channel—usually an email list.
It may start modestly, but it’s yours. No gatekeepers. No algorithm. Just a direct, permission-based line to your most interested audience.
The best way to grow this list is to offer consistent, high-value content packed into a newsletter. And you don’t have to spend a crazy amount of time on it, even a biweekly or monthly email can build a loyal reader base over time, as long as it stays consistent.
And unlike social content, which disappears in a scroll, email builds a cumulative asset. The longer you do it, the more valuable it becomes.
8. Collaborate instead of competing
In science marketing, going it alone is a tough path, especially when you're short on time and budget. But there's a smarter way: collaborate with companies that serve the same audience but aren’t direct competitors.
This could mean:
- Co-hosting a webinar or LinkedIn Live event
- Swapping newsletter mentions to cross-promote
- Guest posting on each other’s blogs
- Creating a joint resource like a whitepaper
These collaborations let you borrow trust, double your reach, and share the execution load. Plus, they create more engaging content for your audience because it’s not just your voice, it's a broader perspective, which builds more credibility.
To solve the chicken-and-egg paradox, you don’t always need to do more—just do it smarter and together.
9. Revisit what you can cut
When you’re under-resourced, one of the most impactful actions isn’t adding more, it’s cutting the fat. Many science companies continue to fund marketing tactics out of habit rather than based on performance.
Ask yourself:
- Is your PR agency actually delivering meaningful results?
- Are you attending trade shows out of FOMO, or are they really driving qualified leads?
- Are you using all those tools in your tech stack, or just paying for features you don’t need?
- Is your ad spending really returning revenues?
Regular audits of your marketing spend can uncover large sums to reinvest in more effective strategies. Don’t see cuts as losses, see them as fuel to double down on what’s actually working and rely on your sales funnel metrics to take the hard decisions.
10. Adopt a test-and-learn mindset
In large organizations, marketing often moves slowly because every campaign must be perfect, polished, and approved by ten people. But startups and small teams can turn their size into an advantage by embracing speed and experimentation.
You don’t need a full-scale campaign to find out what resonates. Instead, prefer implementing small iterations based on experiments like:
- A/B testing subject lines on your next email to improve open rates.
- Spending €50 on a micro ad campaign to test a message before investing thousands.
- Republishing old LinkedIn content with a new hook to see if engagement increases.
This approach lowers risk, increases learning velocity, and helps you optimize through data rather than guesswork.
Even failed experiments are valuable as they tell you what not to do. Over time, this mindset builds a culture of agility and continuous improvement, which is a major competitive advantage.
The bottom line: Play the long game
When budgets and time are tight, it’s tempting to focus only on tactics that drive immediate leads or that feel comfortable doing. But sustainable growth comes from balancing short-term wins with long-term assets.
Some of the best marketing investments take time to show results but continue to pay off for years:
- Blog posts that bring in inbound traffic monthly
- Case studies that build trust and shorten sales cycles
- A founder’s or scientist’s personal brand that attracts talent, partners, and media.
These initiatives might not bring leads tomorrow, but they compound over time, reduce future acquisition costs, and give you more control over your narrative.
The trick is to do both: carve out space for long-term marketing bets while continuing to experiment and optimize what drives short-term ROI.
Breaking the chicken-and-egg cycle doesn’t require waiting for more resources. It starts by using what you have strategically to prove marketing’s value and earn your next move.
