Content marketing is a team sport

Content marketing allows life science companies to achieve a number of business goals, including

• raising awareness of their products, services and unique expertise
• positioning their internal experts as thought leaders in the industry
• nurturing prospects along the buying journey
• supporting customers in overcoming their challenges

It’s unsurprising that many companies are keen to tap into this approach. However, in our experience, it can be challenging to do this effectively without tapping into the expertise spread across your team. Creating great content requires more expertise than one person can be expected to have.

When it comes to content, ‘n + 1’ often is better than ‘n’

Some people truly understand the needs and challenges of the market, while others are great communicators and can articulate complex ideas in an engaging and compelling way. Other members of the team may not be experts in a given area, but are intensely detail oriented and can spot the small inaccuracies, typos and mistakes in other people’s copy. By working together, these people can craft content that is relevant, thought provoking and likely to attract customer attention.

Strategic members of the team add an extra layer of value to this effort by ensuring that the content produced is tied to the overall goals of the business, is ‘on message’ and effectively dovetails with other ongoing communications efforts.

As a case in point, I didn’t write this blog. At least, not on my own. I discussed my original idea with a few colleagues who helped me refine the message. Someone else came up with the title and yet another person suggested I extend my point to include how we work with our clients (see below); this was a great idea that should’ve been obvious to me, but sometimes you just can’t see past the point you are focussing on at the time. Yet another person proofed the text (both spotting a few errors and suggesting other ways the flow of the blog could be improved). Finally, our designer identified an image to post with the blog.
 

An extended team: working closely with our clients

We also apply our approach when we work in collaboration with our clients to create compelling content. For example, while we have a good understanding of a wide range of scientific topics, many of the scientists we work with are leaders in their respective fields (these people include our clients and their customers). While we’d love to be key opinion leaders in every scientific discipline, this is unrealistic. However, something we are really good at is turning complex scientific topics into engaging stories that are interesting to read about. In this way, we help our clients tap into the unique expertise housed within their team, giving this knowledge a captivating voice in the marketplace. Most importantly, we have these conversations as peers, so our clients don’t waste time explaining the fundamentals to us – we can get straight to focussing on the cutting edge bits!
                                                                      Image: Baranq/Shutterstock.com

What’s better than n+1?

If you enjoyed this blog post (and I’m hoping you did) then I’d like to thank the team that helped me put it together. However, what I’m really hoping is that it stimulated some ideas and interest within you, dear reader. If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. This is another great way we can increase the size of our ‘team’ to enhance the combined value we are able to offer to the industry.