Flanders field note · September 2026

Marketing support for biotech and climate startups in Flanders: what are your options?

A Flanders-based biotech or climate startup that needs marketing has five realistic options: hire in-house, brief a generalist agency, bring in freelance consultants, work with a fractional marketing lead, or lean on ecosystem programmes and grants. Most funded companies end up combining two or three, and the right combination depends on your stage more than your budget.

Flanders is unusually good at the early parts of company building: the incubators, the clusters, the grant instruments. It is thinner on people who have taken a regulated or deeply technical product to market internationally, and that gap shows up right after funding, when the science has to start selling.

This note lays out where each option fits, what to watch for, and how the local ecosystem pieces combine with paid help. It is written from our own position, so read the last section with that in mind.

Where each one fits, honestly.

Hire a marketer in-house

Best fit · Once positioning is settled and marketing is a daily, full-time job.

Watch for · Before that, the hire spends their first months guessing at the story. Most Flanders scale-ups we reviewed made this hire at around 20 people, alongside a Series A.

A generalist agency

Best fit · Production capacity: campaigns, design, websites, volume.

Watch for · Few agencies in the region have run regulated science launches. You will spend part of every retainer teaching them your market, and the senior judgment calls stay on you.

Independent freelance consultants

Best fit · A defined piece of work: a website rewrite, a deck, a campaign.

Watch for · A freelancer executes a scope; someone still has to set it. Quality varies widely, so ask for work in your exact sector, not adjacent ones.

A fractional marketing lead

Best fit · The window between funding and the first marketing hire, roughly 10 to 40 people.

Watch for · You get senior direction and hands-on execution in one engagement, scaled to a few days a month. This is the model we run, built specifically for biotech and climate companies.

Programmes, grants and ecosystem support

Best fit · Stretching budget and learning the basics alongside peers.

Watch for · VLAIO instruments, accelerator programmes and cluster organizations are genuinely useful and often subsidized. They teach and connect; they do not ship your positioning or run your launch.