Let’s cut to the chase: content marketing is more than just publishing blog posts, uploading videos, and social media action. If you’re a marketing manager at a Life Science, MedTech, or Biotech company, you need a documented content marketing strategy that aligns with your business’ commercial goals, and you need to be able to talk about its overall ROI with your leadership. Sounds overwhelming, but don’t worry, we’re going to break it down in a way that won’t leave you crying into your spreadsheets.
Step 1: Get your goals in order
Here’s the thing: content without a strategy is like my uncle Serge at Christmas—loud, chaotic, and likely to spill something. You need to know what you’re aiming for before you start shooting arrows. Are you looking to generate leads, drive sales, or earn your brand name some serious coverage out there? If you don’t know, you’ll end up creating content that’s as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
- Qincade recommendation: Sit down with the bigwigs at your company and hash out what you really want to achieve at that moment in time. Make sure everyone is on the same page, or else you’re in for a fun time at your next team meeting (and by fun, we mean awkward). Haven’t got time for that at the moment? We can conduct interviews with your internal stakeholders- just nominate them, and we’ll do the rest.
- Pro tip: Avoid “goal soup.” Don’t have so many goals that you need a decoder ring to remember them all. Keep it focused, simple and achievable.
Step 2: Really know your audience
Creating content without knowing who you’re talking to is like throwing a party and forgetting to send out invites. You might get a few stragglers, but it’s mostly just you and the crisps. If you’re in the Life Science, MedTech or Biotech world, your audience are researchers, scientists, company founders, policy-makers and other science-savvy folks who know more about qPCR than you do about Photoshop.
- Qincade recommendation: Create super detailed audience personas. We’re not talking about “Jane, 35, enjoys long walks on the beach.” We mean real, data-driven insights into who your customers are, their professional pain points, where they work, what they are working on, what they read, which events they hang out at and how you can catch their attention. Free Qincade Persona Template download.
- Pro tip: Don’t rely on assumptions. My grandma used to say, “When you assume, you make a…”—you know the rest. Just use real data, and remember that no one who works for your company is a customer, so you need to talk to actual people who buy your products, not just the sales team, okay? Qincade can run and record interviews with your customers, just nominate them and we can get started gathering that data to make you look like a marketing hero in no time at all.
Step 3: Plan like your life depends on it
Now that you know your goals and your audience, it’s time to map it out. This is where the best-laid marketing intentions go off the rails. Without a content plan and a messaging framework in place (download our free template), you can easily end up creating content that is sporadic and hits the mark only some of the time.
- Qincade recommendation: Create a content calendar that maps out what you’ll publish, when, and where. Be realistic. If you’re a small team, don’t try to be BuzzFeed overnight. There are plenty of content calendar templates out there for you to download and make your own, the trick is to spend a few long hours with it, and really put some plans down for the year ahead; it will save you and your team hours’ and weeks’ worth of time over the course of that year.
- Pro tip: Quality over quantity, friends. Nobody wants to read a 9-page white paper that feels like a term paper from your University days. Keep it relevant, focused, technically-accurate and load it with value. By the way, did you know that we can create a ton of different content types for your scientist buyers? More about Qincade’s Content Lab
Step 4: Distribution is king
You’ve created some brilliant scientist-specific content that you feel great about. But if you don’t get it in front of customers, it’s like putting up a billboard in the desert—no one’s around to see it, and the tumbleweeds aren’t buying. You need a distribution plan that’s as smooth as butter on a hot piece of toast.
- Qincade recommendation: Use a mix of owned, earned, and paid media. Social media is great, but don’t forget about email marketing, partnerships with industry publications, third party outlets, blogs, your colleagues who are active on social media, and even good old-fashioned PR if relevant. For most companies in the SME to large size range, at least 7 different channels for content distribution would be in play. This is more than enough. Remember the 7-11-4 formula, 7 hours’ worth of browsing your content, or a total of 11 interactions in 4 different locations ensures that customers are more likely to convert.
- Pro tip: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Omnichannel is the winning formula, and for goodness’ sake, don’t rely solely on organic reach. Paid promotion is your friend.
Step 5: Measure and adapt
Finally, you need to track your content’s performance and be willing to adapt. This isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it situation. If something’s not working, you need to pivot faster than my nephew playing dodgeball. Hopefully, your team’s environment promotes open discussions around failure, iterating, agility, and freedom to call a spade a spade.
- Qincade recommendation: Use your analytics tools to track key metrics like website traffic, CTRs, and downloads for example. Schedule regular reviews to see what’s working and what needs tweaking. We’d suggest a monthly review of content performance, and if you are a remote team, then there’s no reason to not update your big shared spreadsheet whenever fresh data arrives in your inbox, and ping your manager an quick update via Teams.
- Pro tip: Don’t ignore the data. If your content’s performance is lower than your enthusiasm for the Monday morning meeting, it’s time to rethink your approach.
Top 3 takeaways
To wrap it up, here are the top three takeaways for creating an effective and hard-working content marketing strategy that’ll be the talk of your leadership meetings before long:
- Start with a solid plan: Define your business goals and know your audience before creating any content. Otherwise, you’re just throwing darts in the dark.
- Focus on distribution and quality: Build a content calendar that’s realistic and focused on quality. Don’t be the marketing manager who overcommits and ends up burned out.
- Measure and be prepared to pivot: Track your content’s performance and be ready to adjust your approach or ask the uncomfortable ‘why is this not working’ question.
So there you have it. Go and create a content marketing strategy that’ll make your competitors wonder what hit them, and your leadership team pay vastly more attention to marketing. And remember, expect to pivot—because just like my uncle Serge’s dancing, a well-timed change of direction makes it harder to catch all the mis-steps on film. Good luck!
Need help with customer/stakeholder interviews, content mapping, lead Nurturing, or something else from our services’ list? Let us help you solve your marketing challenge. Get in touch via: hello@qincade.com
