How to get your scientific marketing mix right

When approaching the task of generating new leads for your scientific business, it’s important to consider the platforms and tools available to you and how you can maximise those. You’ve got to get the marketing mix right for effective multi-channel lead generation.

While it’s a good starting point, your website shouldn’t be used in isolation. You’re looking to make the process as easy as possible for buyers to research, evaluate and purchase products in the most straightforward way.

Let’s take a look at how you can use your existing channels to best effect.

Blogging

A recent report found that companies blogging 6-8 times a month see their lead volume doubled. While it seems like a lot of updates, you can’t question the value with stats like that.

• Be sure to use as many links to your landing pages as possible within your blog copy. Don’t overdo it, of course, but you should use it as an opportunity to provide useful content to your audience.
• Suppliers to scientific and technology markets are often rife with rich, valuable content, from peer-reviewed papers, research studies, whitepapers and technical app notes to product data sheets, customer presentations and even videos and webinars. Look through your archives and you may be surprised by how many topics are ready and waiting to be written up into blogs!
• If you saw our previous blog on call to action buttons, you’ll know how important they are here too. Make sure you match the offer* to the content of the post to keep it relevant.

(*Your offer is the high-value item you’re providing to your audience in return for their interest – it might be a discount code, webinar or free guide.)

Emails

You don’t need us to tell you how useful email marketing is for lead generation.

• Ensure your contact list is up to date, well segmented and that all contacts are opted-in to hearing from you.
• Keep your subscribers happy by providing value in your emails. Doing this means you’re far more likely to have your content shared across friends/colleagues.
• On that note, make sure you provide sharing links to make it easier for your recipients to pass on your email.
  
  Social media
  

In case you hadn’t noticed, social media is pretty central not just to our daily lives, but also in marketing campaigns. And, believe it or not, its value extends beyond photos of avocado on toast…

• Build up your networks. You need to foster relationships with your potential customers before you can try to sell them anything. It’s got to be person-to-person, rather than company-to-individual. Get to know your audience, communicate with them regularly and share useful information.
• Remember to engage in balanced conversations. You wouldn’t speak to someone in person and just fire off facts about yourself and not ask about them. Interact and be helpful!
• Publishing and sharing content that sends your audience to targeted landing pages is the main way to increase lead gen through social, so share your new offers by linking to your landing pages. That’s alongside sharing blogs, discounts and other resources.
• Your content is likely to be technical and/or detailed, so make sure you translate it appropriately for a social media audience. Consider breaking down chunks of text and use them for video/animation clips and convert data into shareable infographics.
  
  Organic search
  

You can promote your offers all day long but if it’s too difficult for people to find your landing pages via search engines, you’re not going to make much progress in your lead gen journey. Search engine optimisation is key here.

• Find out the common search terms used for your products/services. These are likely to be quite niche in the scientific sector, but even a small number of searches for very relevant terms helps you to see what terms should drive your content.
• Using this research, choose a primary keyword for each landing page and make it your mission to optimise that page for that word. But don’t overdo it or you’ll confuse the message for search engines. 
• Make sure that keyword is in your main and sub headlines (the likes of Google pick these up more easily).
• Include your campaign keywords in the body of your text but make sure they’re relevant and in context.
• Use the keywords in image names or ALT tags, and also in the page URL.