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The best technology, product or service doesn’t necessarily win in the marketplace, and having a great product doesn't guarantee you customers or market share. This is particularly true in the life science industry—but why is this the case? There a number of reasons, but four major factors are:
- People can’t buy something they have never heard of
- People won’t buy something they do not understand
- People won’t buy something if they cannot clearly see how it benefits them
- People won't buy from a supplier they do not respect and trust.
These four challenges all have something in common—people—and unlocking the power of customer-centric marketing has huge potential to generate more awareness, demand, leads and sales. So, how do you put the customer at the centre of your life science marketing activities?
Blog snapshot: Having the next great life science product or service does not automatically guarantee you market share—you have to adopt a marketing strategy that generates awareness, demand, leads and, ultimately, sales. Taking a customer-centric approach is one way of demonstrating how your product/service can meet your customer's needs. For more information on how an inbound approach can support your next product or science service launch, get in touch with our team today.
Understanding your customers so you can meet their needs
Effective marketing is about truly understanding your customers; their goals, challenges, frustrations and pain points. Effective positioning is about understanding how you are able to communicate the fact that you can solve these issues for your customers (and more effectively than your competitors).
Doing both of these things well requires extensive research and analysis, allowing you to collect as much primary data as possible relating to the things your customers care about. This data should inform everything from tactical selection to communication channels, content formats and messaging. Regardless, it all starts with collecting the data and converting it into insights that will give your marketing campaigns the best chance of success. The best way to do this is to take a buyer persona-driven approach to your life science content marketing strategy.
Inbound marketing is one approach that we’ve helped to pioneer here at BioStrata that aims to put the customer at centre-stage, and finds the best ways to communicate and connect with them. I discussed this recently with Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).
An innovative, customer-centric mindset has to be woven into the entire sales and marketing process—from strategy through to execution. If we take a lesson from a fast-moving area like ‘software as a service’ (SaaS), creating a great product is only half the challenge. Getting to market quickly and building a loyal customer base as quickly as possible is just as important.
Science companies tend to be exceptionally good at R&D, but invest less in marketing and sales. This means they are missing the whole other half of the equation— and you need both to be successful.
Address your customer first, not your product
Successful marketing is not just a case of getting the word out and raising your profile—it’s all about converting the technical features of a given science product launch into customer-driven benefits that will capture attention and drive action. Putting the customer at the centre of your sales process allows you to build a trusting relationship with them, and is a great way of demonstrating how your product/service can help them solve their problems or meet their goals. Try to avoid talking specifically about product features, and instead opt to talk about the challenges your prospects face, before ultimately positioning your product/service as the solution to help prospects overcome their challenges or achieve their goals.
Invest in marketing to succeed
It is understandably exciting when a new product or science service launch is ready to share with the market. But I hope you now share some of my excitement with the power of developing an effective, customer-centric marketing strategy. Investing in such critical thinking at the start of any marketing process may seem like a luxury, but can any business really afford to allow a long-awaited product to fail because its potential customers never get to hear about it, don’t understand it or can’t see the benefits it offers them? I’d suggest not.
To find out more about how BioStrata’s pioneering inbound marketing approach and other specialist services could support your next product or service launch, get in touch with our team.
You can also take a look at BioStrata's other contributions to ‘The Mad Men & Women of Scientific Marketing’ issue of C&EN by clicking on the image below:
