A leading scientist once told us that scientists buy from other scientists. You might ask why this is important to remember? Well, the reality is that for science marketers, understanding this helps you develop and shape more effective marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience.
The Life Sciences and Biotech sectors are complex; they’re led by rapid technological advancements, with stringent regulatory requirements, long sales cycles and high-stakes decision making. When you combine that with the fact that the decision makers are often scientists who are influenced by their professional training, diligently researching and analysing the data before adding your company’s product or service to a list of similar products or services worth considering – science marketers face a real challenge in communicating with such an audience.
For the scientist buyer getting access to educational, engaging and valuable content is a key driver. Therefore, companies providing content that meets these criteria should be able to establish themselves as thought leaders. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to achieve. Remember my initial point about scientists buying from scientists? Well that still applies. So, while they are interested in the capability of your latest instrument, or what your probe or primer might be able to achieve, what piques their interest even more is the application of the instrument or probe or primer. It comes back to the ‘so what’ factor. And this is where the scientist-to-scientist communication comes in. Let them do the talking for you. Let them showcase that ‘so what’ factor. That’s the power of content in science marketing.
Its role becomes even more vital when you consider the lengthy sales cycles and the fact that numerous stakeholders can often be involved in the decision-making process. This is where being able to deliver the right information at the right time, to the right individual can play a key role in guiding prospects through the decision-making journey converting them to loyal customers. And this is where the power of practicing lead nurturing comes into its own.
So, how exactly does content marketing fuel lead nurturing?
The distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content is pivotal to any lead nurturing strategy. It adds value in the following ways:
- Educating an audience thirsty for knowledge: In sectors like Life Sciences, Biotech and MedTech, known for their innovation and rapid advancements, having access to the most up-to-date educational content is vital. Content marketing provides the perfect platform to educate your audience. Creating varied content types including blogs, whitepapers, application notes and webinars that present complex concepts in an accessible way, helps the audience to understand the benefits and applications of the product or service.
- Building trust and credibility: Given the complexity and potential impact of the work that scientists do, they need to have trust in the products they’re considering. Establishing the efficacy, safety and quality of the product can be done through sharing case studies, peer-reviewed research, expert opinions and customer testimonials. This also serves to reassure customers that they’re making informed choices
- Personalizing the customer journey: Integrating content marketing with lead nurturing means that you can adapt your messaging to address the needs and concerns of specific audience sectors. By creating different buyer personas, you can build lead nurture streams for each persona, developing content that speaks specifically to these groups, thereby engaging your audience more deeply and moving them further down the funnel.
- Facilitating an omnichannel approach: Actively engaging your audience means reaching them on multiple channels. Create derivative content that echoes the core message, in a range of formats and push it out across various platforms, including social media, email, websites, events and industry forums. By building and maintaining a consistent presence you enhance brand awareness and provide multiple touchpoints for your potential customers with your brand.
- Creating alignment between marketing and sales: Bring the sales team on the journey with you. Provide them with high-quality sales collateral, like flyers, white papers and sales presentations, that echo the core marketing message. This will give them the tools they need to engage prospects more effectively, addressing any concerns they may have. Arm your team with a battlecard documenting salient points to aid the discussion with prospects and let them have your tactical plan so they’re never caught off-guard if someone mentions any content they’ve seen.
Implement a strategic content marketing plan
In order to maximize the value of content marketing in lead nurturing, and even content marketing and lead nurturing, it’s essential to adopt a strategic approach. Here are some key steps to developing a successful content marketing strategy:
1. Set clear objectives
Make sure that you know what you’re trying to achieve from your content marketing efforts. Are you building brand awareness, generating qualified leads, or increasing the number of conversions you have? Whatever your goals, make sure they’re aligned with your overall marketing strategy and of course with the business. Ensure you have clearly documented key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your success.
2. Understand your audience
Research your audience to understand their needs, pain points and challenges, and their preferences. Use buyer personas and messaging frameworks to guide your content creation and ensure your messaging resonates with the different segments of your audience.
3. Create high-quality, relevant content
The key to a good content marketing strategy is to ensure your content provides value to your audience. Content should educate and inform – be scientifically accurate, accessible, up to date and address the specific challenges faced by your prospects. Sharing details of how other scientists have used your products is a very effective way to show up in front of your scientific audience. Remember what I said about scientists buying from other scientists…
4. Optimize all content for SEO
By implementing SEO best practices, you can enhance the visibility of your content. Make sure that your website is user friendly, that the navigation reflects the way your audience will be looking for information and that content is easy to find. Use relevant keywords and create compelling meta descriptions for your content. All of this will help attract organic traffic and increase the reach of your content.
5. Distribute content effectively
Develop a detailed tactical plan for the distribution of the content to ensure that it reaches your target audience. Use your own channels like email, social media and website banners and consider using third party media partners to expand the reach.
6. Analyze and refine
Measure the performance of all your content using whatever analytics tools you have at your disposal. Track things like website traffic, engagement rates, form fills (if your content is gated) and conversion rates. Track which content and channels are performing best. Use these insights to refine your strategy, optimize both content and channel and improve the effectiveness of your marketing.
Content is the lifeblood
Educational content should be the lifeblood of any life science marketer because it takes complex and technical scientific information and makes it accessible to a wider audience. It’s how you can highlight the core concepts in an easy-to-understand way, foster informed decision making, build trust and authority with your audience, and ultimately drive engagement and adoption of your new technology or innovation.
Good educational content is often the key that differentiates companies in a competitive market. Even more so when the content is delivered by a fellow scientist as it tends to be perceived as being more reliable and accurate, enhancing the credibility of the organisation. However, when you take this educational content and integrate it with a good lead nurturing strategy, you’re not only educating your audience but you’re building a relationship with them too.
By aligning content with the customer’s journey and ensuring that you deliver the right content at the right time, you build trust with your potential customers, and drive conversions, ultimately accelerating growth in your business.
If you’d like to benefit from Qincade’s proprietary integrated approach to content marketing and lead nurturing, get in touch with us at hello@qincade.com.
