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Tag : CRO marketing

Case: Content at a Small CRO

Content is an important sales support tool.It feels like every week I see or learn something that reinforces just how valuable content is to life science companies. For instance, I was recently discussing some sales dilemmas with the founder of a young, small CRO. Let’s call him Greg. Greg’s CRO performs a well-differentiated and valuable research service. However, Greg was lamenting about the “commoditization” of contract research – how his firm can’t seem to compete on quality and all anyone cares about is price.

Knowing what his CRO does, I was a bit disturbed by this. There are such things as commodities, sure, but the whole reason commodities become commoditized is because there is no difference in quality. Even coal fetches different prices based on, among other things, how clean it burns. If someone can mine better coal and get a better price for it, surely his CRO should be able to get a better price for their superior service. … I dug deeper.

Greg used a current problem he was having to illustrate his larger problem. He had drafted a proposal for his contact at a pharma company. That person reviewed his proposal, along with a number of others, then handed it to his boss to make a decision. According to Greg, the boss would then just choose one of the cheap ones.

Now there are times when budgets are tight and price is simply the most important factor, but this was a recurring problem. So what was really the big problem?

Greg’s CRO is young and small. He has built a rapport with his contact. He has not, however, built a rapport with the decision maker, which he does not have access to. So the person making the decision only knows Greg’s CRO from the information that is available about them on their website and with a quick internet search. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but Greg’s CRO has no educational content. Unless the decision maker happens to know Greg or someone on his team, there is no reason for him to believe that they are capable of producing the higher-quality output they claim to be able to. Compared to the more established and lower cost CROs, selecting Greg’s CRO would be a high-risk endeavor!

To lower the perceived risk, and therefore increase the likelihood that their proposal is selected, Greg’s CRO needs to demonstrate their knowledge through content. Content can, at least to some extent, mitigate the inability to demonstrate knowledge through person-to-person content. It could help provide the confidence that may lack if Greg’s CRO cannot provide many reputable customer references. Instead of only knowing Greg’s CRO as a proposal, at least they would be able to build some degree of positive brand image.

Content is an extremely multifunctional marketing tool that can assist organizations in numerous ways. Content can aid in sales support, as with the case of this CRO, it can generate leads, it can help drive inbound search traffic, it can improve your brand. There’s so much that content can do, and it contributes to so many aspects of marketing, that content marketing should really be a default. Especially in knowledge-intensive sectors like contract research and life science tools, content should be a centerpiece of the marketing effort for most companies. Content marketing is simply too valuable, and valuable in too many situations, to ignore.

What do you think?

What would you do if you were Greg? Would you invest in content marketing? Would you take another approach? Join the discussion on LinkedIn and share your thoughts.

Marketing of Life Science Tools & Services

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Differentiating Services

differentiating life science servicesSome types of offerings can be especially difficult for life science companies to effectively market. Services, in particular, seem to cause companies problems. Services are intangible. Many services are customized and lack a fixed set of features. Because of this, marketers need to be especially careful or else marketing messages can quickly become uncompelling. While the default differentiators for products are their features, services often cannot be defined in such a way. In the hands of a novice marketer, this often causes the message to devolve into little other than benefit claims. The lack of anything tangible causes many companies to give up message validation almost in its entirety. Messages often revolve around the vague and facile claims of a company being “experienced,” “knowledgeable” or “leading” and its services being “valuable” and “effective,” among other claims which offer no comparative advantage and are largely meaningless to a skeptical audience.

So how does one effectively market a service-based life science business? Like any other offering, it starts with a meaningful differentiation. Since the differentiation won’t lie in anything tangible, we need to look at things such as processes, specialization or people along with more obvious things such as proprietary intellectual property. Attribute analyses can be important in helping to identify positioning opportunities, but there will ultimately be a limited amount of meaningful attributes which the scientist-customers truly care about. The life science marketer must ensure that any value propositions are extensively validated to combat the inherent ambiguity (and therefore increased utility risk) of the intangible service. Every time you make a claim, think about how you could best substantiate that claim, then do it. Standard tools such as case studies and testimonials help as well, but more direct validation techniques should be used when possible and applicable. As always, educational content should be a core component of your marketing. In order to trust you to perform a service for them, the scientist-customer will have to accept that you have the requisite knowledge and experience. Unless your brand is very well known to the customer, you should display your knowledge through educational content.

Service companies often have difficult time differentiating their services and validating their messages, and sub-par demand generation is often a direct result of this. By focusing on differentiators and strong validation of claims to reduce the perceived risk in purchasing the service, life science service companies can greatly improve their rate of lead generation.

"Is your life science service company failing to meet your lead generation expectations or quotas? If so, it may be time to call BioBM. We’re familiar with many of the pitfalls of marketing life science services and have the full-spectrum experience necessary to build your CRO or other service company into a growing, well-respected brand. Contact us today."