Monthly Archives: January 2011

Selling to Pharma / Biotech

Carlton Hoyt 6:21 pm , January 31, 2011

A lot of small life science companies, including those manufacturing products or offering services but especially small distributors, are unsatisfied by their penetration of the pharma / biotech markets. While academic labs are often quite open and accessible, access to labs in industry is extremely restricted. Because of this, it is very important to have an engagement strategy and make good use of your “ins” if you plan on increasing your sales to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology research markets. The best plan for your company will differ based on your company’s positioning, but I’ll quickly go over a few general strategies including some which are useful for all companies.

Indirect Selling

If you manufacture a research tool and do not have an outside sales force, you will likely be selling to industry via a distributor, at least in part. The easiest way to obtain better market penetration in pharma / biotech is to work with a distributor who has strong sales in those sectors (of course, the same guidelines should apply for selecting any distributor). Trying to sell directly to pharma in this circumstance would effectively be akin to reinventing the wheel. Don’t know what distributors have good penetration in those segments? Ask them. If they are interested in distributing your product, they’ll want to make themselves look good and will likely offer a reasonable metric from which you can gauge their pharma / biotech market penetration.

Direct Selling

If you are selling to pharma / biotech companies directly, you likely either offer a high-value, high-complexity product or service or you are a distribution company. The precise strategies for the two would be different, but on the more generalized level appropriate for this discussion they appear quite similar. In either situation, perhaps the best way to get an “in” is to hire a sales representative with contacts to researchers, lab managers, or purchasing managers in industry. In this manner, you can utilize (and perhaps internalize) the rolodex of your new reps who have more extensive industry contacts.

Universal Considerations

Regardless of your company’s positioning, your sales to industry can benefit from good CRM practices and fully leveraging high-quality lead generation techniques. Draw potential customers in pharma and biotech to your product through advertisements, search engine optimization, and / or face-to-face at conferences and capture their information through requests for more information about your products, demonstration requests, special offers, etc. Once you have the information, you have your “in”. When industry prospects are converted to customers, manage these high-value relationships to allow you to maintain your access to their research facilities.

Many pharma and biotech companies purchase through procurement agencies such as VWR or Fisher. Be sure to maintain a good relationship with these companies. While they have been known to ask for something in exchange for nothing, they also try to steer the purchasing decisions of scientists to products which offer profits for Fisher and value for the customer. It’s not always possible, but getting your products a preferred status within their purchasing departments can be a significant boon to sales.

Pharma and biotech companies are notoriously difficult for salespeople to gain access to and marketing and selling to their scientists can be difficult. If you would like to improve your access to these markets, be sure to execute a plan which allows you to both create and capitalize on opportunities to get an “in” within biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

"Would you like to increase sales to the pharma and / or biotech researchers? Are you looking to develop a well-defined and executable strategy to do so? Contact BioBM and discuss your situation and we can help you develop an actionable plan in order to improve your sales to industry scientists."

New Product? Aim for a Niche.

Carlton Hoyt 5:10 pm , January 24, 2011

Small companies often have trouble with gaining traction for their new products. Researchers in the life sciences are notoriously hesitant to change brands or adopt new technologies. Once a lab has a tried and tested method and tried and tested products, good luck getting them to change anything. Furthermore, large life science companies with huge marketing budgets and well-established and trusted brand names add to the difficulty of market entry in many markets. With these factors stacked against you, and compounded by having a limited marketing budget to work with, how can you compete and gain a significant market share? The key to doing so is often not what a business owner or product manager wants to hear, but it often the best way of proceeding – be patient and think small.

The Pitfall of Impatience

Let’s be both frank and realistic for a moment – your marketing budget isn’t unlimited. In fact, if you’re a small life science company entering a new market your budget is very likely far smaller than that of at least some of your competitors. Canvassing a large market or advertising in highly visible, broadly targeted media (by, for example, running print ads in Nature) is very expensive and can quickly drain a limited budget. Even for a product that would have broad appeal and for which that might seem like a reasonable strategy, it is usually less efficient than other methods since in more mainstream media your marketing messages are still effectively trying to go toe-to-toe against those of your entrenched competitors. In short, trying to market your new product to everyone at once is a good way to burn through your marketing dollars with little return. If you do go that route, you better have some extraordinary benefits that you can convey extremely well, or have very deep pockets.

Thinking Small

While you may think of a new product’s lack of market penetration as a curse, you also need to be able to view it as a benefit. You don’t need to protect a vast swathe of the market from competitors and you can pick your battles (read: you can pick the battles that you can win). Think about a certain market that your product would be more suited for than the competition. Does it have a certain set of features that would make it more suited for use in a particular method? Does it more easily integrate with certain equipment or processes? If not, can you design something in that would give in an advantage in a particular niche? Even if your product design has no niche focus, can you draw on the benefits of the product to show how these advantages could be leveraged by a particular audience? The answer to the last question is almost always yes (if it’s no, you’re probably just not giving it enough thought – call me and I’ll help).

Once you’ve determined a target market to focus on, you can market to that audience specifically. This will be more effective since you’ve tailored your marketing (and maybe even your product) to that audience, and will also be a good deal cheaper. Don’t forget to foster the ever-important customer interactions and feedback that any early-stage product needs. Chances are your entrenched competitor will not want to fight it out in the trenches over a niche market, and your product will gain significant market share within that niche. From that niche, your product will then be in a much better position to roll out your product to other segments of the life science research market.

"Unsure of the best way to launch your new product? Unsatisfied by your market penetration? Need help identifying and marketing to niches of life science researchers? BioBM consultants can help you roll out a new product or re-launch a failing product with an efficient, effective, and results-oriented market entry plan. Contact BioBM Consulting and we’ll discuss how we can leverage our knowledge and skills to make your product a great success."

Blog / Marketing Strategy 5:10 pm , January 24, 2011

Where Is Your Web Content?

Carlton Hoyt 3:17 pm , January 18, 2011

When viewing the websites of companies selling life science tools or services, I frequently notice that many companies have problems with online content. Whether it is a general lack of content, quality of the content, or presentation of the content, one or more of these things is often a problem area for many life science tools companies, and chances are that these easily avoidable problems are costing you valuable sales and / or leads.

Quantity of Content

There’s a balance that needs to be struck with the amount of content that you create for your products. From a search engine optimization standpoint, more information is better, period, but SEO is generally not the most important thing to consider. From a user experience standpoint, which is generally more important, you want all the information that a prospective customer would want to be able to find, however not so much that any given piece of information becomes lost in a sea of content and is difficult to locate.

Generally, you should have enough content to do these things fairly thoroughly:
1) Identify the problem that your life science product or service is solving
2) Describe your product / service and how it solves the problem
3) Illustrate the comparative advantages to other solutions (value proposition)
4) Urge the prospective customer to the next step with a call to action

At worst, I’ve seen products described with two-paragraphs or a list of features and no accompanying documents. This is obviously not sufficient for ANY product. Even many products that have multiple pages of content, however, do not have all the content they need because they do not do those four things I listed above. It does not matter if you’ve talked about every bell and whistle that your product has if you don’t take any time to tell a prospective customer why they need it. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if you’ve masterfully illustrated a problem and convinced the researchers that they need a solution but have not communicated how your problem solves it. Every piece of the puzzle needs to be in place.

Quality of Content

If you have done those four things identified above then you should have plenty of high-quality content, right? No, it’s not quite that simple, and there is plenty more that you can do to communicate value. Do you have results showing how your product can improve a particular experiment or process? Show them. Do you have a relevant, attractive marketing video that you can add to the site? Do so. Do you have a list of protocols that are already developed for your product? References from published literature? Testimonials from customers? All of these things add to the quality of your content and, in turn, the perceived value of your product. Just make sure that this auxiliary content improves the case that you’re making when talking about those four key things (problem identification, product description, comparative advantages, call to action).

Also, when analyzing the quality of your online content, don’t forget to think of SEO. For example, google and other search engines like text and content that is directly on your website rather than hidden in a pdf or other document. As another good practice, don’t forget to include appropriate keywords that you’d like you site to come up in searches for. (Generally, any time you’re doing any sort of web design, whether a complete site build or a simple content change on a single page – always think of SEO. It never hurts, and always helps.)

Presentation of Content

This is the hardest part of content design, but also the part that will allow you to differentiate yourself the most from your competition, as you can absolutely make your product shine if you do it well. Presentation has to allow users to easily navigate your site and find the information that they want while accommodating all the information that you need to include. You should think about the user experience from the standpoint of prospective customers. Who will they be, why are they on your site, and what will they be looking for? Design your content to be presented in a way that takes them from the entry points, guides them through the information that they want to find (and the information you want to present) and funnels them into the beginning of the sales process.

If you’re not already, use Google Analytics. It’s free, and it’ll help you analyze the traffic on your website so you can help optimize the layout of your content. By knowing the traffic patterns on your site, you can improve your site and make adjustments to help drive researchers and purchasers to your most valuable content and into the sales process.

Remember that online, your website is who you are. The same can be said for your products and services. Content that is compelling, attractive, professional, well organized, well written and well designed will reflect well on your company and your product. Knowing what you need to say, how you need to say it, and how you need to present it will attract a larger and more relevant audience and improve your conversion of visitors into leads and sales.

"Want to improve your website traffic and draw more scientists to your site while improving the relevance of the audience your site attracts? Want to easily and effectively increase your leads and sales by optimizing your online content? Our life science internet and marketing consultants can work with you to develop and deploy top-quality, optimized content for your website or anywhere you need it. Contact BioBM and get help optimizing your content from a professional. Our PhD-holding staff is built to understand even the most technical and highly scientific products and services."

Blog / Digital Marketing / Marketing Communications 3:17 pm , January 18, 2011

Private Labeling / OEM

Carlton Hoyt 4:24 pm , January 11, 2011

Private labeling presents a lucrative opportunity for many life science businesses. It can rapidly and dramatically increase market access and also transfer marketing, sales, support, and other costs outside your company. On the other hand, it can incur redesign costs and introduce inefficiencies that weigh on your profitability, hurt distributor relationships, dilute your brand, and have other potential negative consequences. The question of whether to allow private labeling, and under what conditions, is a complex question with many factors to consider. I will go over some common issues and considerations so you can be more prepared to answer the question: To private label or not to private label?

Perhaps due to my having a strong background in issues pertaining to distribution, the first issue that I often address is how a potential private-label partner would fit into the current distribution network. An obvious ideal situation is one where the private-label partner would serve in area where you are looking to increase distribution anyway – perhaps one in a region where your distributors are not meeting targets or where you have no distribution in the first place. Forging a private label agreement with a company that would serve areas in which you have solid distribution can damage valuable distributor relationships.

Another issue to consider is branding. Whose brand is stronger, yours or your private-label partner’s? If your brand is stronger, the private-label partner will be less likely to compete with products carrying your brand (which is good for distributors and would mitigate conflicts mentioned above) and there is less risk. If your partner’s brand is stronger, they may be able to sell more product, but they may also become in a position of power once the agreement is in place if most life science researchers know your product only through your partner’s brand. This can give them a huge amount of leverage. Another ideal situation to look for and attempt to leverage is if your brands are strong in different geographic regions or different market segments.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, be sure you can trust your private-label partner. A successful partner will be building a business around one of your products but the customer loyalty will be theirs. Ensure that you trust them enough to not develop an analogous product themselves, jump ship and begin private-labeling a competitor’s product, or even steal your technology! Selecting a partner with whom you have a good relationship, or one who is highly reputable, is extremely important.

Many factors play into the decision of whether or not to allow private labeling of your products. The reasons for doing so or not doing so are different for every company (and indeed are different for every OEM company / private label company combination) and every situation. Keep in mind what is important to your company, realize where the value lies for your partner, and carefully weigh the pros and cons. Always keep in mind that even if your company and another are not ideally suited to work as OEM / private label partners, contract terms can often be used to alter the dynamics of the relationship and provide a mutually beneficial environment for all stakeholders involved.

"Want help weighing the pros and cons of private labeling in your company’s particular situation? Our life science business consultants are here to help you find your company’s best route to long-term profits, regardless of the complexity and challenges of your market segment. Talk to us to discuss the issues that are most important to you."

Blog / Distribution 4:24 pm , January 11, 2011

Value of Social Media Marketing

Douglas E. Rogers 10:05 am , January 5, 2011

Social media is all the rage – it has been for almost a decade now. From the generation Y-ers who initially picked up on the pioneering social network Friendster back in 2002 to the new generation of socially networked seniors with Facebook friends galore, the world is now socially networked. Using social networks for marketing purposes, a practice more technically referred to as social media marketing or just SMM, is a young and rapidly evolving practice (as you may notice from the lack of detailed information in the Wikipedia entry on the subject). While the leveraging of social networks for marketing purposes is not a particularly new idea, companies have traditionally been slow to adopt social networking. While some companies have had overwhelming successes with SMM – such as Bio-Rad’s PCR song spoof of the Village People’s “YMCA” that went massively viral within the scientific community two years ago – most companies’ social media efforts, particularly those of small companies, are largely failures. In this post, I will address some of the basic yet important and often overlooked questions and challenges of social media marketing that many companies fail to address, as well as discuss some of the social media outlets and some of the specific concerns involving each.

Issue #1: Understand who you are trying to talk to

This is the easiest and least complex step and should be the first step as well, but nonetheless even this relatively simple issue gets overlooked sometimes. Simply ask yourself: “Who am I trying to communicate with?” If you are serving life science researchers generally, then the answer to this question will be broad – you’ll be communicating with research assistants and lab techs, PIs and professors, grad students and lab managers, procurement department employees, etc. They may be in academia, pharma / biotech, CROs, etc, etc, etc. This will likely make it easier to find your audience but may make it harder to connect with them since they’ll have diverse interests. Alternatively you may be focusing on a small subset – say, researchers in big pharma performing mass spectroscopy analysis of proteins. This kind of refined specification may make it harder to find your audience but will make it easier to connect with them since you will know their interests to some extent.

Issue #2: Understand why you are talking to them

An equally important and amazingly frequently overlooked question is “why”. Why are we trying to engage this audience? Do we want to get their opinions? Do we want to control or convey our brand image? Do we simply want to promote products and / or services to them? Don’t just answer yes or no to these questions – delve into them a bit. If you want to promote products to them, think about how you plan on doing so. Do you plan on offering exclusive promotions? Do you want to use social media as an outlet for conveying information on new products? Dig deep and think about what your goals are.

Issue #3: Understand how your audience uses any given social media platform

This is the #1 reason for failure of any social media marketing strategy. Companies fail to understand how the audience is using a particular platform. A related pitfall involves rolling out an identical engagement plan across all (read: “disparate”) platforms. While this is a complex issue and could be the subject of a book, allow me to give you a few things to remember. 1) Social Networks are your audience’s turf, not yours. Unlike your website, print or online advertisements, or just about any other marketing platform you utilize, you are not in control of a social network, and your audience is not there specifically to interact with you. You are both a guest and a member of a conversation, so act accordingly. Interact. Contribute. 2) You need to give people a reason to listen to you, and this reason has to be congruous with the reason that your audience is on a particular social platform in the first place. In other words, delivering value is not enough – you need to deliver value within the context of the audience’s presence on any given social network.

Issue #4: Resource your efforts appropriately

One of the great things about SMM is that social platforms are almost always free to use, but this doesn’t mean that an SMM campaign doesn’t require any significant amount of resources. While SMM can be significantly less expensive than other marketing outlets, social media marketing is not some simple endeavor that involves merely sending out an occasional tweet whenever you have a promotion. It requires forethought, planning, engagement, conversing, creating and delivering value, and all these things take time. Figure out where you can get the greatest returns from your social media marketing investment and focus on that. Only roll out a broad SMM campaign across many platforms if you have the time and budget to do so. As with other marketing endeavors, spreading your efforts too thin will lead to failure.

Brief comments about different social media platforms

Facebook – This is a purely social, mostly recreational platform. It’s a great place for strong consumer brands, but others can have difficulty connecting with their audience here. Remember that people go on Facebook for personal reasons and to make personal connections. If you’re going to connect to most scientists here, you’ll need to reach out to them not just as scientists, but as people.

Twitter – People express a variety of interests here, so listen to what your audience is saying and participate. Perhaps the greatest power of social media marketing via twitter is it’s search function. Connect with people who are talking about things that pertain to your company. Also, be sure to give your account some personality.

LinkedIn – You’re probably not going to pick up many customers here unless you’re doing higher-level B2B sales, but it is a great way to connect with potential business partners. Since your space on LinkedIn is your turf, so to speak, make the best of it. When presenting yourself on LinkedIn think of your company first, and your products as a function or extension of your company.

Forums – While not always thought of as a social network, the same rules apply. Forums can be great ways to find and convey messages to groups of researchers and scientists (and others) interested in a specific topic. Again, be engaging and be sure to add value to the conversation.

YouTube – Remember that after someone watches a video on YouTube, they’ll see “related videos”, so if your competitors are on YouTube as well, they’ll probably be presented with their videos after watching yours (although this works both ways). It’s a great way to host content that can be easily linked to, shared, embedded, and otherwise distributed.

Virality

As a closing note, don’t spend all your effort trying to create the next huge, viral media phenomenon. While it’s a noble goal, the success rate in trying to do so is very low, and the compulsion to spread the word needs to be very high. A 2006 Millward Brown study suggested that on average only 13% of people who receive any viral message pass it on. This means that for every 8 people the message reaches, one of those must pass it on to another 8 in order for the message to maintain it’s rate of spread. That’s a lot to ask for. Don’t let these numbers discourage you from trying, especially if you have a great idea (again, I point to Bio-Rad’s video), but don’t think that going viral is necessary for a good SMM campaign.

Social media marketing is a great way to connect with customers, get feedback on products or services, crowdsource for ideas, and convey and monitor your brand identity, but it is something that requires planning. Not adequately defining SMM strategies, not understanding your audience or social platforms, or under-resourcing your SMM efforts are all-too-common and avoidable reasons for social media marketing failures. A little planning and some understanding of the social networking landscape can dramatically improve returns on social media marketing.

"Need help defining a social media marketing strategy? Want to talk to a social media marketing expert about how best to engage customers on a given platform? Want to create and launch a well-rounded SMM campaign? The marketing and web experts at BioBM have deep knowledge and robust experience in SMM. Talk to us and tell us about what you want to accomplish, and we’ll help get you there."

And now, for your enjoyment, the Bio-Rad PCR song!