Content Marketing: A beginners’ guide for the life science marketer

Content Marketing: A beginners' guide for the life science marketer

In an increasingly competitive market, the need to make your company stand out from the crowd by building a strong, reputable and exciting brand that engages with your target audience is more important than ever.  But many life science companies can be shy when it comes to using the power of content.

In our experience, scientists tend not to be inspired by marketing jargon. They are encouraged by real benefits that impact their research and often gloss over if they feel they are being sold to. Content marketing, when done well, can deliver valuable information to this audience in a compelling, measurable and persuasive way. The real value of content marketing is in building trust with your scientific target audience and then, over time, turning them into advocates.

According to Marketo, 93% of B2B buyers use search engines to begin their buying process. This demonstrates the importance of high quality, SEO-optimised content, whether this is PR, thought leadership, social, content marketing or online advertising. However, a key challenge for many businesses is how to put a content strategy in place that delivers a steady stream of content which is maximised across multiple channels.

Here are our top tips to follow when creating a winning content strategy:

• Core content comes first: developing a bank of high quality content, based on core, high value pieces such as customer case studies or whitepapers is the first step to content marketing success. We have helped many life science suppliers to generate core content when they didn’t think they had any. For example, we have created industry surveys on key topics and used the findings to create valuable industry reports. We’ve also run searches on research papers that reference clients’ instruments or equipment and approach the author to provide a testimonial in return for promotion of their paper.
• Develop a content strategy: When developing content, it’s important to have a clear strategy in terms of messaging, positioning and ensuring you have something unique and interesting to say. Spend time to analyse and understand the buying personas of your target audience to tailor messaging and formats accordingly.
• Repurpose your content for maximum impact: core content pieces can be adapted across a number of different platforms including- infographics , media relations, social media, webinars, video, email marketing and more traditional materials such as presentations and sales tools.
• Make your content marketing measurable: from a lead nurture perspective the core ‘high-value’ content can be mailed out to your CRM with a downloadable call-to-action (CTA) option or hosted on your site to bring in new leads…all the while helping your pipeline! The beauty of content marketing is that the availability of digital channels means measuring its effectiveness is easier than ever. With the use of marketing automation systems, your content can help attract, nurture and warm up your leads, reducing the burden on sales teams and transforming your marketing and sales organization.

Publication has long been the driving force in science for getting noticed and being seen as a unique, relevant resource. The benefits are that the creator of the information gets noticed and is seen as a unique, relevant resource. In order to take it to the next level, a well-executed, focused content marketing strategy is an excellent way to get your audience first to find you, then to see you as a relevant, differentiated source, then to build trust in you and finally engage with you.

If you’d like to experience a true partnership contact us today and find out how we can help you achieve success for your business through content marketing.