A Lesson in Communication
Carlton Hoyt
One of the most timeless lessons in the art of persuasive communication is about 2350 years old and written by Aristotle. Rhetoric, and particularly the second book of Rhetoric contains fundamentals which every life science marketer with a role in marketing communications should understand and adhere to. In this book, Aristotle discusses what he believes to be the three essential elements of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos.
Aristotle takes ethos to comprise wisdom, virtue, and good will, however these can more generally be summed up as credibility. The speaker needs to establish credibility before he can successfully be persuasive. Aristotle’s composition of ethos actually breaks down how marketers can do this quite nicely: we can show our wisdom and have the audience therefore trust in our expertise, and we can show virtue and good will and thereby have the audience believe that we genuinely want to help them and put their best interests first. Life science marketers should aim to do both, although the former is generally an easier sell.
Logos is logic, plain and simple. (Etymologically it’s not so simple – its usage by Aristotle means something more akin to “reasoned discourse” – but that’s not really relevant to this conversation). In order for you to be persuasive, reasons Aristotle, you must think logically and effectively communicate your logic to the audience. Logos is probably the easiest and most direct element for science marketers, however understanding what you need to explain and effectively explaining it are two different beasts. Many still fail at the latter.
Pathos is an appeal to emotion. Aristotle claimed that emotions have specific causes and effects and therefore one can understand how to invoke emotion in the audience and utilize that one can effect how they render their judgments. To be optimally effective, you cannot simply reason with your audience, but you must create an emotional connection that will help drive your desired action. This is often the least straightforward element of persuasion as it pertains to marketing. Many marketers do not even attempt to leverage emotion in their communications, but the most powerful messages almost always inspire emotion.
To create more effective marketing communications, utilize Aristotle’s three elements of persuasion: demonstrate credibility, clearly explain the logic behind your perspective, and appeal to the audience’s emotion. By incorporating all three elements you’ll more effectively persuade your audience to adopt your viewpoint.
Get a Google+ Community
Carlton Hoyt
We get a lot of people asking us how they can better use LinkedIn for marketing or business development. It seems an almost universally accepted fact that LinkedIn, and in particular LinkedIn groups, can be a powerful marketing tool. We agree – that’s why we started the Marketing of Life Science Tools & Services group. Now, however, LinkedIn groups are a mature feature, well-used by scientists and suppliers / service providers. There are usually multiple groups for any given area of interest, and “copycat” groups frequently don’t catch on. You can create a more niche group, but that may be of interest to only a fraction of your audience and you may have problems growing it to a critical mass. Quite frankly, the best time to have started a LinkedIn group was probably 2007 – right before the early adopters started using them. At that point, you could have been the founder of the “Molecular and Cell Biology” group (currently 6,725 members), the “Genomics: Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS) and Microarray” group (15,554 members) or the “Structural Biology” group (3,817 members). Wouldn’t that have been nice?
Well with every new platform comes new opportunities, and last month Google launched their equivalent to LinkedIn Groups: Google+ Communities. It’s very early in its life-cycle, so most of the popular terms are still available as community names. It’s way too soon to know if Google+ Communities will ever reach the level of adoption that LinkedIn Groups have, but it’s not much of a risk to snap up a name and occasionally seed it with some content. You might be glad you did later.
The Pitfall of Facile Claims
Carlton Hoyt
Previously on this blog, we discussed why a number of commonly-used claims are meaningless (such as “high-quality” “reliable” “improved” and “consistent”) and also how marketers need to validate their marketing messages in order for them to be effective. However, life science marketers continuously cling to these facile attributes and fail to validate their messages. Many marketers who resort to the use of facile attributes want to make compelling, validated claims but fall into that pitfall anyway. In this post, focus on common reasons why facile attributes get used.
Reason 1: Poorly Differentiated Products / Services
It’s hard to make your marketing stand out if your products or services do not. Even if your products could stand out, if you don’t have a defined positioning it can be a difficult an imprecise process to determine what messages and product attributes to highlight. Without such an understanding, marketers often fall to facile claims. If the product really doesn’t have much going for it, this can be the fault of the product rather than the marketer, as vague claims are often the only ones that can be made in such a circumstance. What can be done? If you have not created a positioning statement for your product or service, do so. This will give you a better idea of how your product creates value and will therefore help you elaborate it. If your product really just lacks meaningful differentiation, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate your product line.
Reason 2: Lack of Market Segmentation
Different attributes are often important to different market segments. If your marketing isn’t targeted to distinct groups, or if your product / service tries to be everything to everyone, then marketers often resort to using facile claims as these are the most general and broadly applicable (albeit least effective). What can be done? Cut your market into segments based on application, need, position, etc. – any segmentation that meaningfully effects how they would view your product. Create different marketing messages for each segment. If your product isn’t focused, especially if it is not widely adopted by the market, pick a segment which you can provide superior value to and tailor it to that market first. Use that foothold to expand into ancillary markets.
Reason 3: Marketing Laziness
Sometimes poor marketing is simply the fault of the marketing copywriter. It’s very tempting to fall back to facile attributes. They seem generally appealing (who wouldn’t want a “high quality” product?), do not require much thought, and make the marketer’s job quick and easy. What can be done? Proofread. Look for facile claims and “weasel words”. If you find them, think about how you can be more specific in order to make a more compelling claim.
Reason 4: Lack of Marketing “Ammunition”
It’s difficult to make specific, compelling claims if you don’t have anything to validate your messages with. How can you show that your product yields 40% more protein in 25% less time if you don’t have any data to show for it. How can you reasonably say that you offer the most mouse models of disease of any CRO if you’re not willing or able to discuss the lines? If you’re going to make meaningful, validated claims you need something to validate them with! What can be done? Work with your application scientists, talk to your customers, ask product development to do some testing, or get data any way you can. In addition to hard data, gather testimonials, form case studies, or gather customer feedback however possible. Other types of validation may be optimal depending on the product or service and the situation or claim being made, so determine what “marketing ammunition” you need on a case-by-case basis. In certain situations the gathering of marketing ammunition may seem very difficult, such as when marketing a new service, but rise to the challenge and get creative to validate your messages. If you’re a life science marketer, that’s part of your job.
In order to convey value beyond that of your competitors, your marketing messages need to be differentiated. If you find yourself making non-specific, general claims, figure out the reason why you’re doing so and you’ll be well on your way to fixing the problem and creating compelling, meaningful messages.
The Customer’s Perspective
Carlton Hoyt
In most life science companies, marketing and product development work in somewhat close contact. Marketing (as well as sales) frequently relay customer needs to product development and help them to understand those needs and adopt a customer perspective. When it comes to their own craft, however, life science marketers often fail to follow their own advice and adopt that critical customer perspective. Instead, marketers tell the tale of their products, focusing on why the product is great rather than how it fulfills a need.
A while ago, we posted about the end of solution sales; how customers typically will be 60% of the way to completing their purchasing decision before ever contacting a supplier. This means that solution sales are becoming less effective. At 60% of the way through the buying journey, customers know what their problem is, what their needs are, and already have (at least superficially) evaluated a number of options. A sales rep who tries to work through all that all over again with the customer is wasting their time. However, earlier in the decision cycle the customer is far less certain about the nature of their need. In these early stages, customers generally seek information from colleagues or the internet (an unpublished BioBM study showed about 45% of scientists turn to colleagues first when considering a product and about the same number perform an internet search first). Marketers therefore need to engage in a sort of “solution marketing”, helping the customer to frame their own problem and needs and, in the process, showing how their products or services can fulfill those. Simply discussing your product’s technology, features, and benefits does not adequately do that job. Instead, marketers need to take on the perspective of the customer and frame their products and services around their needs.
To help guide you in creating customer-centric communications, ask yourself these questions:
⢠Does this communication ever address the customer? (with second-person language – “you” “your”)
⢠Did we clearly address the needs of the customer? Would our statement of this need still be valid if removed from the context of our product / service?
⢠What do we define first? The product / service or the customer’s problem that we are trying to solve?
⢠Did we clearly state how our product / service solves the problem? Do we offer specific solutions or simply general ones?
Product-centric marketing leaves a disconnect. The customer has a need, and the product provides a solution, but the customer is left on their own to decipher how (and how well) the product would meet their needs. Customer-centric marketing does that math for them by framing your product or service from the perspective of how it provides value and fills their needs. By adopting the viewpoint of the customer and creating customer-centric marketing communications, life science marketers can generate more demand.
Using the Right Metrics?
Carlton Hoyt
Much of marketing is about measurement: be it in determining the success of that recent promotional campaign, determining how to divvy up ad spending, or making the case for your share of next year’s budget. The inherent problem is one that executives often cite: the difficulty in tying specific marketing activities to revenue generation. While “big data” analytics and bulky, expensive CRM and / or ERP software can sometimes be used to get a better handle on overall marketing ROI, such solutions still do a poor job of teasing out contributions of individual activities and are most often beyond the capabilities of small companies to meaningfully manage or to afford. We must therefore pick and choose how to measure success in life science marketing, and meaningful measurement means choosing the right metrics.
Quick note: There was an excellent article in October’s Harvard Business Review on the topic, albeit from the perspective of measuring overall corporate financial performance perspective rather than marketing performance (subscribers can read it here).
There are three common reasons why you may be using the wrong metrics. The first is overconfidence. Perhaps you’ve been seen a metric be strongly predictive in the past or have been told of its importance by a respected peer. If you get it in your head that the metric is important then it’s easy for that thought to stick, regardless of whether or not there’s a basis in fact. The second is availability. Quite simply, we tend to use those metrics that are easily obtained, that we frequently encounter, or that simply come to mind quickly. The last is because use of a particular metric is the status quo: it’s either what you’ve been doing or what you know everyone else does.
In order for a metric to be valuable, it needs to be predictive (there is a causal relationship; a change in A causes change in B) and persistent (the causal relationship is reliably repetitive over time). In marketing, you often will not have troves of various companys’ data to sift through; you merely have your own company’s data. You may be able to use historical data to determine if a metric is persistently predictive of the desired outcome, but for young companies or those who have not been measuring marketing metrics, there may not be enough data to reliably determine which metric is the best to use. Even then, however, you can still take steps to ensure you use the right metrics.
First, you need to specify what your goals are. What are you trying to change? In marketing, this may be sales, it may be leads, etc. Secondly, using either past data or, barring the availability of sufficient data, a subjective best guess, create a theory of what metric(s) will drive the desired change. Third, identify the specific activities that you can undertake to improve your metric in order to create that desired change. Lastly, evaluate your decision. Did the metric perform as expected? Was it both predictive and persistent? Were you able to control (read: “improve”) it by undertaking specific actions?
In order to reliably improve marketing performance, you first need to know what to improve. By using metrics that are predictive and persistent, you’ll be able to set a clear path to achieving your marketing objectives.
Focus on “Why”
Carlton Hoyt
While a large part of a company’s brand is controlled by what a company does, this is not a compelling corporate image to project. It would be far more beneficial to life science brands to focus on why they do it, as “why” is simply an inherently more compelling proposition than “what”.
As an example, I’ve taken the first self-defining statement from five life science tools companies’ about pages and anonymized them. This is what I came up with:
- “[Company] develops and manufactures innovative scientific instruments and systems that exploit digital imaging technology for a range of disciplines.”
- “We believe in the power of science and appreciate its rigorous discipline. Thatâs what drives our passion for innovation, leading to transformative offerings that support endeavors throughout the world.”
- “[Company] develops, manufactures, and markets a wide range of laboratory instruments, apparatus, and consumables used for research in functional genomics, proteomics, and food safety.”
- “As a global technology leader, [Company] is taking action to harness the power of insights and transform them into knowledge to deliver innovative, differentiated solutions for our customers.”
- “Established in [date] as a cooperative laboratory of experienced scientists, [Company] is a world leader in the production and supply of reagents for the life science industry.”
Of those five, three (1, 3, and 5) are extremely straightforward definitions of what the company does, one (4) is a description of how a company does what they do, and only one (2) is a description of why they do what they do. Did you notice any particular one being more compelling that the others?
Your reason for existing can actually be a very compelling driver for both new customer acquisition as well as customer loyalty. Not only can it improve your current business, but also enable you to more easily enter new marketplaces. Furthermore, integrating this reason for existence into your company can motivate your employees and make you more productive and successful. I don’t mean to make it sound like a magic bullet, but your company’s reason for existing can and should be a powerful driver for both internal and external stakeholders.
There’s a great TED talk on the subject:
Reduce the Risk in Buying
Carlton Hoyt
Life science marketers often hold many simultaneous viewpoints on why customers purchase products. Frequently, the attributed reasons include a hodgepodge of quality, price, ease of use, suitability for their application, adoption by others, various performance metrics and many other reasons that may be general or product-specific. All that gets a bit confusing, and is a bit over-defined if you ask me. I prefer to start from one attribute and then elucidate from there: life scientists make purchasing decisions based on risk.
Considering the scientist as a purchasing decision-maker, risk has two main components: financial and utility. Financial risk can be represented as price, although a more accurate representation is total cost of ownership (TCOO). If a product is very expensive, that makes the purchase more risky since there will be less resources to devote to other important endeavors and also since there are more sunk costs if the product doesn’t perform to the customer’s expectations. Utility risk pertains to the product ability to perform the functions that it is expected to by the customer. In other words, from a customer-centric standpoint: “In my particular application(s), how likely is this product to meet my expectations?”
The risk-based view can answer a question that leaves a lot of companies scratching their heads: why free samples are used so infrequently. It’s common for life science consumables companies, especially smaller companies, to give out free samples when a product is first launched in order to get people to try it. Most often, unless the brand is highly trusted, free samples fail their purpose and are left unused on the shelf. This is because giving away the product only serves to reduce one of the two main components of risk: financial risk. It does nothing to mitigate utility risk.
What life science tools and services companies should aim to do is reduce overall risk by lowering utility risk as much as possible such that financial risk does not need to be reduced and they therefore do not need to discount their product (or perhaps can raise the price on their product!) This gets to the heart of conveying value to the customer – that value should, as much as possible, be something that is experienced rather than something that is simply told. This becomes clear if you ask yourself: “What can we do to minimize utility risk?” Simply claiming that your product works would be pretty far down the list.
If you’re still not convinced, go out and ask a few scientists which of the following they would be more likely to purchase: 1) a product that claims to have better performance but you are unsure if it will work for you, or 2) a product that has lesser performance but you are certain it will work.
Performance metrics are undeniably important, and scientists have different reasons for purchasing different products. At the end of the day, the product with the lowest risk will be able to capture a greater market share than its competition.
Simplify Your Message
Carlton Hoyt
Last week, I discussed the importance of positioning statements in crafting and delivering marketing messages. Today I’ll discuss a similar topic: making your life science marketing more effective by keeping your marketing messages simple. First, let me explain what I mean by “simple”.
Having a simple marketing message does not necessarily mean that it should be short, that it should contain only a small amount of information, or that you should stay away from technical information, data, or other things that may by some definitions seem “complex”. Instead, a simple marketing message is one that focuses on the customers needs, your products core claims to value, and little else. It is a message that isn’t diluted with a long list of relatively unimportant attributes that detract from your core message.
It may not be immediately clear how this is related to the positioning statement. The positioning statement should be rooted the customer need that your product or service is solving as well as how yours is differentiated from other offerings. It is concise and to the point. If this is the starting point for all of your marketing messages, then you will be starting with a message that is highly targeted and focused on the key value proposition. From that point, all you have to do is resist diluting your message.
This isn’t to say that you should only ever focus on one single value proposition. Indeed, different attributes may have different perceived value to different customers and there also may be two or more value propositions that are almost equally important to a large segment of your audience. However, the focus of the message should be on the most important value propositions and put the others on the back burner. To do this, life science marketers need to have a very clear understanding of how their product or service creates value. Without such an understanding, there will be the temptation to propose value in as many ways possible, which in turn dilutes the value propositions that create the most value.
Life science tools and services create value for their customers in a wide variety of ways. Chances are, however, that a select few of those value drivers are by far the most important to your customers. By focusing marketing messages on those key value-creating attributes. life science marketers can more effectively generate demand for their products. Using a positioning statement as the basis for your marketing messages helps to achieve this.
Positioning Statements
Carlton Hoyt
Over the 2+ years that BioBM has now been in business, we’ve had the pleasure of working with a wonderful diversity of life science tools companies and contract research organizations. One thing that we’ve been consistently surprised about is how many small life science companies lack positioning statements for their product lines and services. Positioning statements should be central parts of any marketing strategy. Even for the more pragmatic life science marketers who may eschew strategies for every product line, positioning statements should still be central to their marketing. They not only help form the basis of marketing messages, but ensure consistency in the message. Without them, marketing messages often degrade into uncompelling feature / benefit statements.
Such that life science marketers can more effectively create positioning statements, we’re going to give a quick lesson and offer some tips to help make the statement more powerful and help marketers avoid common pitfalls.
How a Position is Stated:
I’ll use a close approximation of Geoffrey Moore’s version from his book Crossing the Chasm (a great read, by the way): For [target customer] who [statement of need], the [product name] is a [product offering] that [statement of key benefit]. Unlike [primary competitive alternative], our product [statement of primary differentiation]. As you notice, there are a number of “variables” in this.
The target customer should be defined specifically. Keep in mind the target customer is NOT a market. “The pharmaceutical industry” or “environmental labs” are not customers. People are your customers. People make purchasing decisions, and you should state what people you need to speak to. There should be at least one noun that represents people (for example: “scientists,” “lab managers,” “analytical chemists,” etc.)
The statement of need cuts through your target customer to get to your customer segment. Of your target customers, what need will identify which will see value in your product? Ensure that you’re realistic. No matter what the situation, you will never achieve 100% market share so don’t pretend that you will. If you define the need too broadly, your targeting will be weak, leading to your messages not reaching the right people (and not being as effective when they do) and therefore decreasing the efficiency of your marketing communications.
The product offering should be a factual description of your product. There’s no place for terms like “revolutionary” or “breakthrough” in your product description. If you have fluff here, you’ll end up with fluff in your marketing messages, so be honest, be specific, and avoid exaggeration and hyperbole.
The statement of key benefit addresses how your product meets the aforementioned need of your customers. This statement should be specific and factual. Descriptors like “best” “reliable” or “high quality” should not be used. Also, benefits and specifications are not always interchangeable. If you use a specification or feature in your statement of key benefit, be sure to ask yourself if the benefit that feature / spec conveys would be obvious from the perspective of your audience. Furthermore, the focus should be on the single most valuable benefit; this is not a laundry list. Choosing one benefit is often not simple, but you either need to make the tough decision or reconcile multiple benefits in order to present them as one unified benefit. Lastly, note that the key benefit does not have to be your primary differentiator. That comes later.
The primary competitive alternative is not necessarily another product or service (although it often is). You want to address how most of your audience with your stated need are currently fulfilling it.
The statement of primary differentiation should summarize how your product or service provides value in ways that no other competitor can claim. It may be related to your statement of key benefit, but does not have to be. Remember: the key benefit is what provides the greatest value to the customer. The primary differentiators are what distinguishes you from other competitors. (Side note: the best differentiator should be determined by market analysis.)
A strong positioning statement is something that life science marketers can and should refer to in order to develop messages that are consistent and on target. To keep your marketing focused and ensure you target the most opportune audiences, have a positioning statement for all your product lines and service categories.
RSS Feeds & Publicity
Carlton Hoyt
Let’s face it: all companies love free publicity. However, many life science tools companies, especially small companies, don’t take full advantage of industry press. It’s certainly not for lack of news. Life science tools companies are constantly developing new products, expanding distribution networks, collaborating with academia, getting grants, and doing lots of other potentially newsworthy activities. They simply do not do a great job of disseminating their news. One very helpful step in getting your company news picked up is setting up a meaningful RSS feed.
Simply publishing your company news on your website is not sufficient to ensure it gets distributed. It is not realistic to assume that relevant members of industry media will routinely check your website for updates. Even if you are publishing your press releases through major PR outlets, such as PR Newswire, your releases may not be easily found by more focused industry press. In contrast, an RSS feed allows your news to easily be delivered to industry news media.
Simply having an RSS feed isn’t enough, though. You need to treat journalists as if they will be customers of your news content. After all, they will have many different sources of news competing for their attention. You therefore need to ensure that your feed is of high value to them. Your feed needs to be interesting and relevant. As a litmus test for any particular piece of news, try to think from the perspective of a general member of your industry and / or target market. Landed a big customer recently? It might be important to your company and maybe your investors, but the industry in general probably doesn’t care much. There are many other such examples.
Everybody loves free press, and for good reason. Spreading the accomplishments of your company can build your reputation and brand. It can raise awareness within your target markets. It can help attract investment. It can even have a very positive effect on SEO. To ensure that your company gets the most free publicity possible, ensure that you have a company news feed that is relevant, interesting, and easily disseminated to members of industry news media via RSS.