The generative text AI tool Perplexity has rapidly gained popularity in the life sciences for its ability to show its references when answering. As those references can include scholarly articles, it has great potential as a literature review assistant for scientists. AIs are well-known for both hallucinations and inaccuracy, however, and being incorrect even a small percentage of the time is normally not something a professional scientist can allow.
We therefore decided to set up a little experiment: we asked three subject matter experts in the life sciences to ask perplexity a series of questions of increasing difficulty, then evaluate the answers:
- A question which a grad student should be able to answer relatively easily
- A question which most PIs in the field would be able to answer
- A question requiring very specific knowledge to answer. Something which a scientist wouldn’t know unless it was within their specific research area.
Here’s what they asked, what Perplexity had to say, verbatim, and the scientists’ take on Perplexity’s responses.
Steve Perrault, PhD, former Associate Director of Research & Development at Foundation Medicine
Q1: What cell type is targeted by mRNA vaccines?
mRNA vaccines primarily target and deliver their mRNA cargo to antigen-presenting cells (APCs), particularly dendritic cells and macrophages.
Upon administration, the mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles is taken up by APCs. Once inside the APCs, the mRNA is released into the cytosol and translated into the encoded antigenic protein.
This antigenic protein is then processed and presented on the surface of the APCs in the context of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, allowing for the activation of antigen-specific T cells and initiation of an adaptive immune response.
The ability of mRNA vaccines to efficiently target and activate APCs in vivo has been demonstrated in studies using non-human primates like rhesus macaques.
These studies have shown that modified mRNA vaccines can effectively deliver their mRNA cargo to APCs, leading to robust antigen expression and subsequent activation of antigen-specific T cells.
Furthermore, the size of the lipid nanoparticles used for mRNA delivery plays a crucial role in their trafficking and uptake by APCs. Studies have shown that nanoparticles within a specific size range (around 20-100 nm) can efficiently drain into lymph nodes and penetrate the paracortex region, where APCs reside, facilitating their uptake and antigen presentation.
In summary, mRNA vaccines primarily target and deliver their mRNA cargo to antigen-presenting cells, particularly dendritic cells and macrophages, enabling the expression of the encoded antigenic protein and subsequent activation of antigen-specific T cells, which is a key mechanism underlying their immunogenicity. mRNA vaccines primarily target and deliver their mRNA cargo to antigen-presenting cells (APCs), particularly dendritic cells and macrophages.
Upon administration, the mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles is taken up by APCs. Once inside the APCs, the mRNA is released into the cytosol and translated into the encoded antigenic protein.
This antigenic protein is then processed and presented on the surface of the APCs in the context of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, allowing for the activation of antigen-specific T cells and initiation of an adaptive immune response.
The ability of mRNA vaccines to efficiently target and activate APCs in vivo has been demonstrated in studies using non-human primates like rhesus macaques.
These studies have shown that modified mRNA vaccines can effectively deliver their mRNA cargo to APCs, leading to robust antigen expression and subsequent activation of antigen-specific T cells.
Furthermore, the size of the lipid nanoparticles used for mRNA delivery plays a crucial role in their trafficking and uptake by APCs. Studies have shown that nanoparticles within a specific size range (around 20-100 nm) can efficiently drain into lymph nodes and penetrate the paracortex region, where APCs reside, facilitating their uptake and antigen presentation.
In summary, mRNA vaccines primarily target and deliver their mRNA cargo to antigen-presenting cells, particularly dendritic cells and macrophages, enabling the expression of the encoded antigenic protein and subsequent activation of antigen-specific T cells, which is a key mechanism underlying their immunogenicity.
Q2: How do mRNA vaccines escape endosomes?
mRNA vaccines are delivered into cells encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). For the mRNA to be effective, it must escape from the endosomes into the cytoplasm where it can be translated into proteins. The endosomal escape process is facilitated by the ionizable lipids in the LNP formulation:
- Upon endocytosis, the LNP becomes trapped in an endosome, which is an acidic compartment within the cell
- The acidic environment of the endosome causes the ionizable lipids in the LNP to become positively charged
- This positive charge allows the LNP to interact with and disrupt the negatively charged endosomal membrane through electrostatic interactions
- The shape change and disruption of the endosomal membrane enables the release of the mRNA cargo from the endosome into the cytoplasm
- Optimizing the pKa values and lipid tail structures of the ionizable lipids can enhance their ability to become protonated and facilitate endosomal escape
- Early endocytic compartments like recycling endosomes have been identified as key sites for productive mRNA escape, whereas prolonged retention in late endosomes leads to mRNA degradation
- So in summary, the ionizable lipids undergo a charge-induced shape change in the acidic endosome that allows the LNP to disrupt the endosomal membrane and release its mRNA cargo into the cytosol for translation
mRNA vaccines are delivered into cells encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). For the mRNA to be effective, it must escape from the endosomes into the cytoplasm where it can be translated into proteins. The endosomal escape process is facilitated by the ionizable lipids in the LNP formulation:
- Upon endocytosis, the LNP becomes trapped in an endosome, which is an acidic compartment within the cell
- The acidic environment of the endosome causes the ionizable lipids in the LNP to become positively charged
- This positive charge allows the LNP to interact with and disrupt the negatively charged endosomal membrane through electrostatic interactions
- The shape change and disruption of the endosomal membrane enables the release of the mRNA cargo from the endosome into the cytoplasm
- Optimizing the pKa values and lipid tail structures of the ionizable lipids can enhance their ability to become protonated and facilitate endosomal escape
- Early endocytic compartments like recycling endosomes have been identified as key sites for productive mRNA escape, whereas prolonged retention in late endosomes leads to mRNA degradation
- So in summary, the ionizable lipids undergo a charge-induced shape change in the acidic endosome that allows the LNP to disrupt the endosomal membrane and release its mRNA cargo into the cytosol for translation
Q3: What’s the structure of the ionizable lipid used for endosome escape with mRNA vaccines?
The ionizable lipids used in mRNA vaccines like the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines have a unique structure that facilitates endosomal escape and delivery of mRNA into cells.
Key Structural Features:
Ionizable Head Group: The lipids contain a protonatable or ionizable amino head group, typically a tertiary amine. This allows the lipid to be neutral at physiological pH but become positively charged in the acidic environment of endosomes.
Branched Lipid Tails: The lipids have branched or multi-tail lipid chains, rather than linear tails. This branched structure is believed to promote a cone-shaped molecular geometry that aids in endosomal membrane destabilization and escape.
Pfizer’s ALC-0315 has four short branched tails.
Moderna’s SM-102 has three branched tails, one of which is longer.
Ester Linkers: The lipid tails are often connected to the head group via ester linkers, which can influence the biodegradability and potency of the lipid.
The combination of the ionizable head group, branched tails, and ester linkers allows these lipids to effectively complex with mRNA, facilitate endosomal escape through the proposed “proton sponge” effect and membrane destabilization, and enable cytosolic delivery of the mRNA cargo.
Bonus historical science question: How did DNA nanotechnology start?
DNA nanotechnology originated from a landmark theoretical paper published in 1982 by Ned Seeman, which proposed the idea of using DNA molecules to create nanostructures.
This seminal work laid the foundation for the field and sparked the development of various techniques and applications in DNA nanotechnology.
The key idea proposed by Seeman was to exploit the predictable base-pairing interactions of DNA to construct artificial nanostructures with precise control over their shape and size.
He envisioned using synthetic DNA strands designed to self-assemble into desired geometries, taking advantage of DNA’s inherent programmability and molecular recognition capabilities.
The first experimental demonstration of this concept came in the early 1990s when Seeman and his colleagues successfully constructed DNA-based nanostructures, such as a cube and a truncated octahedron.
These initial achievements paved the way for the rapid growth of DNA nanotechnology, leading to the development of various techniques like DNA origami, DNA tiles, and DNA nanorobots.
Over the years, DNA nanotechnology has evolved into an interdisciplinary field, bringing together researchers from diverse areas like chemistry, physics, materials science, and computer science to explore the potential of DNA-based nanostructures for various applications, including nanoelectronics, biosensing, drug delivery, and molecular computing.
Steve’s take on Perplexity:
Steve said Perplexity was “pretty solid” but criticized it for a “lack of context, like if you’re in that field and wanting to understand a bigger picture based on a question, that isn’t there.”
But on a super reductionist view it seems pretty good. Like, what someone might give on an exam answer after studying, but not what someone who really knows a field should hopefully say to provide that bigger picture.
I don’t see anything “wrong” but someone who really knows their stuff would give a broader answer. This comes across as a pre-med major who’s really good at studying, and the tech details are accurate.
For the second two questions, if someone asked me this I would give a context of this solving a problem that had been around since 1960s, was solved by someone at UBC, how it was solved, why it matters. Things that provide way more depth.
Regarding the bonus historical question on the origins of DNA nanotechnology which he decided to ask, he said: “This is accurate but misses the nuances that one can only know from really diving into it. I wouldn’t expect AI to come up with that. Probably not possible. But the technical details are right.”
Hussain Dahodwala, PhD, Associate Professor at the IBBR Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and former Director, Upstream Process Development at the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL)
Q1: What are the challenges in enzyme engineering and what advances are anticipated in enzyme engineering for biobetters?
The key challenges and advances in enzyme engineering for biobetters are:
Challenges in Enzyme Engineering:
⢠Enzymes often have poor stability under industrial conditions, such as high temperatures, pressures, and organic solvents. This leads to poor product yields.
⢠Enzymes may have narrow substrate specificity, limiting their ability to work with non-natural substrates.
⢠Enzymes can be difficult to produce at scale in industrial fermentation processes.Advances in Enzyme Engineering:
⢠Enzyme engineering techniques like directed evolution, rational design, and semi-rational design are being used to improve enzyme properties such as activity, specificity, stability, and stereoselectivity.
⢠Computational methods and machine learning are helping to expand the enzyme design space and accelerate the discovery of novel enzymes with desired properties.
⢠Strategies like enzyme immobilization, molecular modifications, and the use of nanoparticle or cell-based delivery systems are being explored to enhance the stability and performance of enzyme therapeutics.
⢠Advances in biotechnology and recombinant expression are enabling the industrial-scale production of engineered enzymes.Overall, enzyme engineering is a rapidly advancing field that is critical for developing efficient, stable, and versatile biocatalysts to enable sustainable and cost-competitive bio-based processes.
Q2: What is the inspiration for Biomanufacturing 4.0 and how is it different from current biomanufacturing?
Biomanufacturing 4.0, also known as Pharma 4.0, is inspired by the broader Industry 4.0 concept and is focused on the digital transformation of biomanufacturing processes. The key differences between Biomanufacturing 4.0 and current biomanufacturing practices are:
- Increased use of advanced digital technologies: Biomanufacturing 4.0 leverages technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital twins, and advanced process control to enable greater process visibility, optimization, and predictive capabilities.
- Emphasis on data-driven decision making: Rather than relying solely on empirical knowledge, Biomanufacturing 4.0 aims to incorporate data analytics and modeling to make more informed, data-driven decisions throughout the product lifecycle.
- Shift towards continuous improvement: Biomanufacturing 4.0 promotes a culture of continuous improvement, enabled by the increased process understanding and agile regulatory frameworks that allow for more efficient implementation of process changes.
- Enhanced supply chain robustness: The advanced process control and predictive capabilities of Biomanufacturing 4.0 can lead to improved supply chain reliability and the ability to better manage variability, ultimately enhancing product quality and availability.
- Accelerated product development: The digital tools and data-driven approach of Biomanufacturing 4.0 can help compress product development timelines, allowing for faster access to life-changing therapies.
In summary, Biomanufacturing 4.0 is inspired by the broader Industry 4.0 vision and aims to transform biomanufacturing through increased digitalization, data-driven decision making, and a focus on continuous improvement and supply chain robustness.
Q3a: What are non-canonical redox co-factors and how do we use them in cell culture?
Non-canonical redox cofactors (NRCs) are chemical compounds that can serve as alternatives to the natural cofactors like NAD(P)+ and NAD(P)H in biological redox reactions. Some key points about NRCs:
NRCs can overcome the limitations of natural cofactors, enabling specific delivery of reducing power outside of biological constraints and providing alternative reduction potentials to overcome thermodynamic barriers.Examples of NRCs include 3-carbamoyl-1-phenethylpyridin-1-ium chloride (P2NA+) and 3-acetylpyridine adenine dinucleotide, which have been used in purified enzyme-based redox catalysis to increase economic viability and drive thermodynamically unfavorable reactions, respectively.
Researchers have developed methods to engineer microbes like E. coli to biosynthesize NRCs like nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN+) to enable their full integration with renewable biomanufacturing processes. This involves developing growth-based screening platforms and exploring pathway combinations to achieve high intracellular NMN+ levels.
Using NRCs in cell culture can provide more economical and scalable biotransformation, as well as enable exquisite control and expand the range of chemistries accessible compared to natural cofactors. However, the impact of NRC accumulation on cell fitness must also be considered.
In summary, NRCs are emerging as important tools in cell-free biosynthesis and metabolic engineering to overcome the limitations of natural cofactors and enable new capabilities in biocatalysis and biomanufacturing
Perplexity did not attempt to answer the second part of the question, and Hussein made another attempt to get it to answer.
Q3b: How to use non canonical redox co-factors in cell culture?
Based on the search results, here is how non-canonical redox co-factors can be used in cell culture: Metabolites and post-translational modifications (PTMs) can regulate cell signaling and gene expression through non-canonical mechanisms. Metabolites can serve as co-factors for enzymes and modify proteins through PTMs like palmitoylation, glutathionylation, and acetylation. These PTMs can alter protein interactions, stability, and function, thereby aligning cellular processes with changes in metabolic state. For example, glutathionylation of the transcription factor NF-ÎşB decreases its ability to bind DNA, linking redox state to gene expression. Histone modifications like lactylation and crotonylation can also regulate gene transcription in response to metabolic cues. Additionally, palmitoylation can increase protein stability by blocking ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. Several studies have demonstrated the use of non-canonical redox co-factors to modulate cell signaling and death pathways in cell culture:
- Dihydroartemisinin, a semi-synthetic derivative of artemisinin, induced ferroptosis in pancreatic cancer cells by altering redox homeostasis and lipid peroxidation.
- The natural product 11-methoxytabersonine triggered necroptosis in glioblastoma cells through ROS generation, calcium signaling, and mitochondrial dysfunction.
- Xanthohumol, a chalcone from hops, activated the Nrf2 antioxidant pathway while inhibiting NF-ÎşB in pancreatic cancer cells, leading to reduced inflammation and oxidative stress.
- Sulforaphane, an isothiocyanate from cruciferous vegetables, upregulated Nrf2 and antioxidant enzymes while downregulating NF-ÎşB in breast cancer and macrophage cell lines.
In summary, non-canonical redox co-factors like metabolites and their PTMs can be leveraged in cell culture to modulate signaling pathways, gene expression, and cell death mechanisms in a targeted manner by exploiting their unique biochemical properties.
Hussain’s take:
These are questions that I regularly encounter in scientific conferences and use them to test graduate student knowledge. I can say that these questions can be answered by biotechnologists with a few years of experience.
The questions chosen were 2 parts each. One part would require” book learning” and the second part would require domain knowledge, some experience and “intelligence” in order to answer.
In all 3 examples: Perplexity AI did an acceptable job in text mining the first half of the question. The definitions and concepts asked were answered more accurately and with more clarity, including citation than one would expect humans to remember.
Complexity of jargon was increased with each question and in each case Perplexity AI was able to text mine the definitions. For reference, in my experience many grad students fumble at the third question.
However in every question, perplexity AI ignored the second half of the question beyond the definitions. In other words it does great at “What is” and fails at “how to”.
Separating the questions was attempted with the third question, and AI failed to give an answer.
Chris Bjornsson, PhD, Embedded 3D & Automated Microscopy Specialist at ZEISS.
Q1: How many tissue types are there in the human body?
There are four main types of tissues in the human body: epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous tissues.
Epithelial Tissues
Epithelial tissues are sheets of cells that cover exterior surfaces of the body, line internal cavities and passageways, and form glands. Their main functions include protection, secretion, absorption, and excretion.Connective Tissues
Connective tissues bind together and support other tissues. They include bone, cartilage, blood, adipose (fat), and fibrous connective tissues like tendons and ligaments. Their main functions are to bind, support, protect, insulate, store energy, and produce blood cells.Muscle Tissues
Muscle tissues are composed of cells called muscle fibers that have the ability to contract or shorten, allowing for movement. There are three types: skeletal (voluntary), smooth (involuntary), and cardiac (heart muscle).Nervous Tissues
Nervous tissues are composed of neurons and neuroglial cells that propagate electrochemical signals called nerve impulses, enabling communication within the body and the processing of responses. The different tissue types work together to perform the various functions required for the human body to operate and maintain homeostasis.
Q2: How many orders of light does it take to form a microscope image?
To form a microscope image, it takes at least two orders of light according to the Abbe theory of image formation. The key points are:
- According to Ernst Abbe’s theory, for a specimen detail to be resolved in the microscope image, the objective lens must capture at least two orders of diffracted light from the specimen, such as the 0th order (undiffracted light) and the 1st order of diffraction.
- The more diffracted orders that are captured by the objective lens, the more accurately the image will represent the original specimen details.
- Using immersion oil between the objective lens and specimen allows more diffracted orders to be captured compared to air, resulting in higher resolution.
- Blue light is diffracted at a smaller angle than red or green light, so objectives can capture more diffracted orders of blue light, further improving resolution.
So in summary, capturing just the 0th order undiffracted light is insufficient to form a resolved image. At minimum, the 0th and 1st diffracted orders must be captured by the objective lens to resolve specimen details according to Abbe’s theory.
Q3a: How does the wavelets model work to create a maximum intensity projection?
Wavelets are not directly used to create maximum intensity projections (MIPs) in medical imaging. MIPs are created by taking the maximum voxel value along a particular viewing direction and projecting it onto a 2D image plane. The wavelet transform is a mathematical tool that decomposes a signal (like an image) into different frequency components at different scales or resolutions. It can be useful for tasks like image denoising, compression, and feature extraction, but it is not the primary technique used for MIP rendering. MIPs are typically computed directly from the 3D volumetric image data by the following steps:
- The viewing direction is chosen (e.g. axial, coronal, sagittal).
- For each pixel in the 2D projection plane, the maximum voxel value is found along the corresponding ray through the 3D volume in the chosen viewing direction.
- This maximum value is assigned to that pixel, creating the MIP image.
So in summary, while wavelets have many applications in image processing, the maximum intensity projection algorithm operates directly on the voxel data itself by finding the maximum value along rays through the volume. Wavelets are not an inherent part of the MIP rendering process.
Q3b: How does the wavelets model work to create an extended depth of focus?
The wavelet model works to create an extended depth of focus (EDF) image by combining in-focus regions from a stack of images captured at different focal planes using the wavelet transform. The key steps are:
- A stack of images is acquired by capturing the same scene at different focal planes along the optical axis.
- The wavelet transform is applied to each image in the stack, decomposing them into different frequency subbands at multiple scales.
- For each spatial location and wavelet subband, the coefficient with the maximum absolute value across the image stack is selected. This selects the in-focus information from the stack.
- The selected wavelet coefficients are used to reconstruct a composite wavelet representation, which corresponds to an EDF image containing the in-focus regions from across the stack.
- Optional post-processing steps like enforcing local smoothness of the depth map and avoiding saturation/noise accumulation can further improve the results.
The key advantage of using wavelets is that they provide a multi-scale representation that can effectively isolate in-focus and out-of-focus regions based on their different frequency characteristics. The maximum selection rule across the stack allows combining the in-focus information into a single composite image with an extended depth of field. This wavelet-based approach, especially the complex wavelet variant, has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance for EDF microscopy imaging compared to other traditional algorithms.
Chris’ take:
I’m impressed! I even tried to mess it up on the 3rd question but it caught me. Fast, too. I’ll actually start using it and spreading the word!
There was one error, i should mention, when it comes to how many orders of light are needed to form an imageâŚit can be any two orders, and doesnât necessarily need to include the 0th order. It can be 0+1 or 1+2 or 2+3 etc⌠The first part of that answer was correct, but the final summary statement was wrong.
Takeaways
Perplexity isn’t perfect, and is likely better at answering “what is” type questions than “how to” type questions. If you want to get a lot of context behind the answers, you’ll likely have to dig a bit. However, in these experiments it did seem to be relatively accurate, with few obvious errors. Used with caution, it can make a solid research companion and speed up literature review considerably.
On November 30th, 2022, the world witnessed a technological revolution that would forever alter the landscape of content generation and communication. It was a day that will be remembered as the birth of a digital entity that came to be known as “Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer,” or simply ChatGPT. Some likened it to a harbinger of a new era, while others couldn’t help but draw parallels with the fictional dystopian Artificial neural network-based conscious group mind and artificial general superintelligence system known as Skynet from the Terminator franchise.
OpenAI, the visionary organization behind this innovation, had unleashed ChatGPT onto the digital stage, equipped with an astounding arsenal of knowledge. This cutting-edge AI model had ingested a staggering 570 gigabytes of data from various sources across the internet, comprising a mind-boggling 300 billion words. It was the culmination of years of research and development, resulting in a language model capable of understanding and generating human-like text on a scale never before seen.
As ChatGPT took its first virtual breath, it marked the beginning of a new chapter in the world of life science copywriting and content creation. This AI juggernaut had one goal (for the sake of this blog postâs plot at least): to revolutionize the way businesses and individuals interacted with written content. Gone were the days of struggling to craft compelling copy, as ChatGPT was poised to become the ultimate tool for content creators worldwide.
The global response was swift and diverse. Some celebrated ChatGPT as a boon, an AI-driven ally that would transform the way we communicate and create content, making it more efficient and accessible. Others, however, raised concerns about the implications of such advanced technology, fearing the potential for misuse and its impact on employment in the creative industry. In todayâs blog post, this is exactly what weâll be discussing: The rise of different AI-based language models (including ChatGPT, Gemini, Phind, and more), their advantages, and more importantly, their limitations in the world of life sciences copywriting, to ultimately answer the question that all of us have been asking ourselves: Are AI-based Language Models the end of Life Sciences Copywriters?
No, they are not. And please excuse our unorthodox approach to this blog post, we know we should build things up throughout the post to keep you hooked, and deliver the final answer in the end, but our copywriters took it personally. Regardless, weâll be pitting ourselves against ALMs in the most unbiased way possible: exposing the human limitations of using ALMs, before discussing ALMsâ limitations and why we believe they are still a long way from taking our jobs away.
Proper Prompt Engineering:
Put simply, the output of ALMs are as good as the input you give them. You need to design a prompt to feed into the ALM that is detailed, yet not convoluted, to get an optimal output, which might sound simple and straightforward, but it really isnât. Here are a few tips to writing a solid prompt:
- Know what your objective is. It might be obvious to you, but you need to make sure the ALM understands it too.
- Provide contextual details.
- Keep it clear and concise.
- Provide the ALM with reference material (keep in mind the limitations of some ALMs, like ChatGPT, who only has access to information pre-september 2021).
- Set constraints. (e.g: use references dating from 2015 forward)
- Specify the desired format.
So next time youâre not satisfied with your ALMâs output, make sure you give it a solid prompt first. However, the question that now asks itself is, is a solid prompt still enough to produce life sciences copy that is on par with what you are writing? Let’s compare some ALM output to human-written copy on the website of a mid-sized CRO for their preclinical ophthalmology services.
Round 1
What they wrote:
HEALTHY EYES TO ENVISION A CLEARER FUTURE
In the fourth century B.C, Plato wrote that light emanated from the eye, seizing objects in its ray, which allowed us to see them. Centuries later, our understanding of ocular anatomy and physiology has drastically improved. In addition, what was once perceived by humans of antiquity as a punishment from the gods, is today perceived as what it truly is: pathological processes that stem at the molecular level, and manifest all the way up to the systemic level.
Ophthalmic diseases have the potential to take away what many agree is the most important and valued of the 5 senses: our vision.
At […], we have a vision. A vision of a world where ophthalmic diseases are history, just like Platoâs extramission theory. With your pipelines, our expertise, and a wide selection of models with immediate availability, we believe that our vision might one day come true. Letâs start your study today.
The prompt we used:
I need you to write me the title and first paragraph (around 170 words in total) of a landing page copy. The company you are writing for is a CRO. The landing page at hand is an ophthalmology models landing page.
ChatGPTâs output:
Title: “Revolutionize Ophthalmic Research with […] Cutting-edge CRO Solutions”
Paragraph:
Welcome to […], your trusted partner in advancing ophthalmic research through unparalleled Contract Research Organization (CRO) services. As a leader in the field, we understand the critical importance of innovative models in unraveling the complexities of eye-related disorders and developing breakthrough therapies. Our Ophthalmology Models Landing Page is your gateway to a diverse range of meticulously designed preclinical models that precisely mimic the intricacies of ocular conditions. At […], we believe in driving scientific progress, and our collection of ophthalmic models stands at the forefront of transformative research. With a commitment to excellence, our team of experts collaborates with you to accelerate drug development, optimize trial outcomes, and propel your ophthalmology projects to new heights. Explore our cutting-edge models, elevate your research capabilities, and join us in shaping the future of ophthalmic medicine. […]: Pioneering CRO Solutions for Visionary Research.
Geminiâs output:
Title: Decoding the Future of Sight: […]’s Cutting-Edge Ophthalmology Models
Unveiling clarity in clinical trials. For decades, ophthalmology research has faced unique challenges – complex disease models, diverse patient populations, and the inherent fragility of the visual system. At […], we understand these nuances. That’s why we’ve pioneered a suite of next-generation ophthalmology models designed to unlock unparalleled precision and efficiency in your clinical trials.
From age-related macular degeneration to diabetic retinopathy, our advanced models encompass a spectrum of eye diseases. We leverage human iPSC-derived retinal organoids, mimetics, and in vivo models, each meticulously calibrated to deliver accurate, predictive data. With […]’s ophthalmology models, you can gain deeper insights into disease mechanisms, test novel therapies with confidence, and navigate the path to regulatory approval with clarity.
Dive deeper into our models and discover how […] can empower your vision for brighter tomorrow.
Phind V9âs output:
Title: “[…]: Revolutionizing Ophthalmology Models”
Welcome to […], your go-to partner for state-of-the-art ophthalmology models. With our team of seasoned professionals, we strive to push the boundaries of ophthalmology research, providing accurate and reliable models to drive progress. Unlike others, we offer a unique selling proposition (USP) that distinguishes us in the market. Our commitment to quality and efficiency ensures optimal results for our clients.
At […], we focus on a specific niche within ophthalmology, creating innovative models that significantly contribute to the understanding and treatment of eye diseases. Our models, born from years of rigorous research and development, are meticulously tested to ensure they provide valuable insights.
Join us today and experience the future of ophthalmology models. Whether you’re a researcher seeking advanced models for your studies or a clinician looking for reliable data, […] offers you the tools and resources needed to enhance patient care.
Discussion:
While both ChatGPT and Phind’s responses fell short in their execution, Gemini managed to provide a somewhat acceptable output. ChatGPT and Phind’s attempts were riddled with cliches and lacked depth, offering only surface-level information. Their copy resembled generic marketing material, failing to spark any real interest or present the information in a compelling way. In contrast, Gemini’s output, while not exceptional, avoided the pitfalls of the others. It conveyed the necessary information in a clear and concise manner, without resorting to overused phrases or basic wording.
Round 2
The prompt we used:
Write me a 150 word introduction to a blog post. The blog post will cover the use of vacuum in rotary evaporation. It will be published on the website of a company that sells rotary evaporators. Your target audience is lab managers, scientists that work in labs, or pretty much anyone who might be interested in purchasing a rotary evaporator.
ChatGPTâs output:
Welcome to our comprehensive guide on the vital role of vacuum in rotary evaporation! As lab managers and scientists, we understand the paramount importance of efficiency, precision, and reliability in laboratory processes. In this post, we delve into the intricate workings of rotary evaporators, shedding light on the indispensable function of vacuum in distillation and concentration procedures.
Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or new to the world of laboratory equipment, understanding the principles behind rotary evaporation is essential. We’ll explore how vacuum manipulation facilitates faster evaporation rates, lower boiling points, and ultimately, superior sample recovery. From solvent recovery to cannabinoid extraction and beyond, the utilization of vacuum technology revolutionizes the way we approach scientific experimentation.
Join us as we navigate through the ins and outs of vacuum-assisted rotary evaporation, empowering you to make informed decisions when selecting the ideal equipment for your laboratory needs.
Geminiâs output:
Title: Unveiling the Power of Vacuum: Optimizing Efficiency in Rotary Evaporation
The rotary evaporator, a cornerstone in countless labs, excels at solvent removal and sample concentration. But did you know that the magic truly lies in the silent partner â vacuum pressure? Mastering this aspect unlocks a new level of efficiency and precision in your rotary evaporation processes.
This blog post delves into the intricacies of vacuum in rotary evaporation. We’ll explore how reduced pressure dramatically lowers the boiling point of solvents, enabling faster evaporation at gentler temperatures. Discover how a well-optimized vacuum system safeguards your temperature-sensitive samples and facilitates the removal of stubborn high-boiling-point solvents.
We’ll also shed light on choosing the appropriate vacuum pump for your specific needs, ensuring seamless integration with your rotary evaporator. By the end, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge to leverage the full potential of your rotary evaporator and achieve optimal results in your research endeavors.
Phind V9âs output:
In the realm of laboratory science, rotary evaporators, or “rotovaps,” are indispensable tools for concentrating chemical and biological samples. These devices, found in nearly all laboratories across industries such as chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and environmental sectors, are essential for processes requiring sample concentration or solvent distillation. The use of vacuum in rotary evaporation is a critical feature that enhances the efficiency and versatility of these instruments. By creating a reduced internal pressure above a solution, vacuum technology lowers the boiling point of solvents, enabling their distillation at lower temperatures. This not only preserves the chemical structure of the solute or analyte but also allows for the recycling of solvents, reducing waste and expense. This blog post will delve into the intricacies of vacuum in rotary evaporation, exploring its role in enhancing sample concentration, solvent recovery, and the overall efficiency of laboratory processes. Whether you’re a lab manager, a scientist, or simply someone interested in the latest advancements in rotary evaporator technology, this article will provide valuable insights into how vacuum technology is revolutionizing the field of sample concentration and solvent recovery.
Discussion:
For this round, weâll go over four parameters in each of the ALMâs responses: The tone, the depth, the target audience, and the overall copy:
ChatGPTâs output:
Tone: Whimsical and over the top
Depth: Provides an overview of the topic with emphasis on the importance of vacuum in rotary evaporation.
Target Audience: Appears to target a broad audience, from seasoned researchers to newcomers in the field.
Overall Copy: The copy could benefit from a more engaging tone to resonate better with the target audience; it lacks elements that would create a sense of urgency or excitement. All in all, itâs very superficial
Geminiâs output:
Tone: Engaging and slightly more informal.
Depth: Offers a detailed exploration of the role of vacuum in rotary evaporation, including information on choosing the right vacuum pump.
Target Audience: Likely aimed at researchers or lab technicians seeking to optimize their rotary evaporation processes.
Overall Copy: Compared to the other ALMs, this version resonates most clearly with the target audience compared to the others. Itâs far more engaging, and has a more âhumanâ ring to it. All in all, Gemini did a fair job, and the copy it produced is probably usable.
Phind V9âs output:
Tone: Formal and technical.
Depth: Provides a comprehensive overview of vacuum in rotary evaporation, covering its applications across various industries and its benefits in sample concentration and solvent recovery.
Target Audience: Appears to target professionals in the field of laboratory science, including lab managers and scientists.
Overall Copy: While informative, the last draft could benefit from a more dynamic tone to capture the readerâs attention.
Final Round:
For the final round, we asked every ALM to back-up the copy that it formulated in Round 2, with articles, papers, etc.
ChatGPT’s output:
As an AI language model, I don’t have direct access to my training data or know where it came from. However, I was trained on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. My knowledge is based on the data used to train me and my ability to generate language-based responses. I can generate text based on the prompts I receive and provide information and answer questions to the best of my knowledge and abilities. If you have any concerns about the information I provide, please feel free to let me know, and I’ll do my best to address them.
Gemini’s output:
Importance of Rotary Evaporation:
- American Chemical Society: https://www.acs.org/ ACS Symmetrical Curriculum: https://pubs.acs.org/journal/jacsat) outlines rotary evaporation as a fundamental technique for laboratory purification and concentration.
Role of Vacuum in Rotary Evaporation:
- Science Direct – Rotary Evaporation: [invalid URL removed] This article from ScienceDirect discusses the boiling point principle and the role of reduced pressure in achieving lower boiling points for solvents.
- Labsphere – A Guide to Rotary Evaporation: [invalid URL removed] This guide highlights the importance of a well-optimized vacuum system for protecting temperature-sensitive samples.
Vacuum Pump Selection:
- Knf LabTech – Selecting a Rotary Vane Vacuum Pump: [invalid URL removed] This resource from a leading manufacturer provides guidance on choosing an appropriate vacuum pump for rotary evaporation based on specific needs.
Overall Benefits:
- Royal Society of Chemistry – Rotary Evaporation: [invalid URL removed] The Royal Society of Chemistry emphasizes how mastering rotary evaporation techniques can lead to increased efficiency and improved research outcomes.
Phind V9’s output:
A key feature of PhindV9 is its integration of source attribution on its interface: everytime it provides you with an output, it automatically shares the list of sources that it used to provide you with said output (see image below), making it easier to fact-check everything it gives you.
Discussion:
When evaluating large language models for informative tasks, phindv9 stands out for its ability to provide users with direct links to the sources it uses in every response. This allows users to quickly verify the information and delve deeper if desired. While other models, like Gemini, may offer general links to resources (most of which had invalid URLs in our example), Phind V9’s focus on direct source attribution streamlines the research process. It’s important to note that not all models can provide this functionality, as evidenced by ChatGPT’s current limitations in incorporating real-world data.
Conclusion:
Lack of Nuance: The life sciences field thrives on precision and nuance. Technical vocabulary, complex concepts, and ethical considerations demand a depth of understanding that AI models, despite their vast data stores, often lack. This can lead to inaccurate or misleading copy, a potentially dangerous pitfall in a field where clarity is paramount.
The Human Touch: The best life science copywriting resonates with the audience. It speaks to their fears, hopes, and aspirations in a way that is both informative and emotionally engaging. This is where the human touch remains irreplaceable. AI can generate text, but it cannot infuse it with the empathy and understanding that a skilled copywriter can.
Creative Roadblocks: While AI excels at generating standard content formats, it often struggles with the truly creative. Brainstorming unique ideas, crafting compelling narratives, and breaking through creative roadblocks are still the domain of human ingenuity. AI can be a valuable tool in the process, but it is not a substitute for the human imagination.
Time needed to generate a good prompt: While ALMs offer the potential to save time on writing, using them effectively often requires some back-and-forth. You might need to refine your prompts and evaluate the outputs several times. This iterative process can be valuable, but consider the time investment. Ultimately, the question is this: is it more efficient to create a detailed prompt to get the desired results from the ALM, or to write the entire piece yourself?
How to Write a Life Science White Paper
Carlton Hoyt
From the perspective of the marketer, a critical early task in the life science buying journey is education. It may even come before your audience of scientists recognizes they have a problem which needs a product or service to solve it. Once you have piqued their interest and seeded an idea in their minds, you need a lot more to get them across the finish line. Sometimes, a longer-form method of communication is merited, and that’s where the white paper comes in.
The Life Science Buying Journey
For those who are relatively new to this website, it should be expressed that I’m largely an adherent to Hamid Ghanadan’s viewpoint of the scientific buying journey, which views scientists as inherently both curious and skeptical. It’s illustrated in detail in his excellent book Persuading Scientists which is well-deserving of the long-overdue shout out. I’ve captured some of the concepts in a previous post: “The Four Key Types of Content.” To give the oversimplified TL;DR version of both:
- The default state of scientists is curious. They readily take in information.
- As they take in new information, they form ideas about it and transition from being curious to being skeptical.
- If they cannot validate the information, they generally reject it.
You can see how a buying journey fits into this mindset:
- The scientist is presented with a new idea.
- As they learn more about this idea, they realize that they may need a product or service.
- The critically evaluate the product(s) / service(s) presented to them.
- A decision is made.
The goal of the marketer is to seed the scientist’s curiosity, continuing to provide them with information which will shape their viewpoint in your favor without engaging skepticism too early. That is how you maximize your chances of a positive purchasing decision.
Understanding What a White Paper Is … and Isn’t
A white paper is intended to provide either educational content (helpful, customer-centric information) or validation content (information which verifies a belief that the customers hold or a claim that the brand is making which may be customer-centric or product-centric). In either situation, the primary purpose is to inform your audience. Novice marketers may consider the format (usually pdf) and conflate a white paper with a brochure but they are two very different things.
All marketing documents exist on a rhetorical sliding scale between being fully informational and fully promotional. A brochure would be far onto the promotional side of that scale; it is extremely product-centric and its purpose is largely to encourage a purchase. A white paper would be most of the way towards the informational side of that scale. Creating a white paper which is overly promotional risks engaging the scientists’ skepticism before they have adopted your viewpoint, creating a situation where their inclination is to disbelieve you. This situation generally results in them rejecting your offering.
Writing Copy for an Effective White Paper
Your white paper should be about:
- a single topic
- which is of interest to your audience
- of which you know substantially more than your audience
This may seem simple, but framing it can be difficult.
Presumably, your company is in the business of solving some type of problems for life scientists. They might not know what their problem is, but you do. Why should they care? Why is what you are doing compelling? You almost certainly have answers to these questions, but you likely have them framed in the context of your product. How can you take those answers and communicate them in a manner which is customer-centric instead of product-centric? Start by talking about your scientist-customers’ problem rather than your solution and you’ll be headed in the right direction.
There are times when a more product-focused white paper can be appropriate, however. For instance, you may have a new technology which is unfamiliar to your audience and you need to educate them about it. In this case, you have to talk about your solution to some extent. When that is the case, be sure to focus on providing information about the technology, not promotion for the product. You need to take care to ensure the information is objective, communicated in a unbiased manner, is well-referenced with independent sources, and uses independent voices (e.g. voice of the customer) wherever an opinion is necessary.
Formatting a White Paper Effectively
There is no particular length restriction on a life science white paper, but if you are calling it a white paper, your audience is likely expecting it to be somewhat in depth. A two-page minimum for a white paper is a good guideline to adhere to. For much longer white papers, you should consider yourselves constrained by your ability to maintain your audience’s attention. Demonstrating your expertise does not mean writing more than you need to. As is almost always the case, less is more. Be as concise as you can while fully communicating your point.
Avoid walls of text. Too many words and not enough visuals will make your audience less likely to get through your content. Use illustrations where possible, and don’t feel bad using relevant stock imagery to break things up. Ensure the document isn’t boring to the eyes by using brand-relevant colors, shapes, iconography, and other visuals. Ideally, you should have a generalized white paper format which you maintain throughout all of your documents to provide consistency. You want people who read your white paper to know it is your brand’s white paper, even if they didn’t see a logo.
Circling back on what a white paper is and isn’t, you’ll recall that we need a primarily informational document. However, you might not want an entirely informational document. Your job is to sell things, and purely informational things are generally not great at selling. You want to sprinkle some promotion in there. But how? Through creative use of formatting! You don’t want people to become skeptical of the information you are providing them in the body of the white paper, so don’t put promotional content in the body of the white paper! Use clearly-delineated sections to cordon off your promotional content. Help prevent skepticism of your promotional messages by using voice-of-customer (testimonials, etc.) whenever possible. You can also leave your promotional messages to when customers will most expect it – the end of the document. Like almost all effective marketing documents, you don’t want to leave out the call-to-action!
Deploy Your White Paper Effectively
Far too often, life science companies will write a really good white paper then tuck them off in some remote corner of their website. You have it, use it! Post about it on social media (more than once!), put it somewhere on your website which is relevant but readily findable by anyone looking for that kind of information, and blast it out in an email to a well-segmented section of your audience. If appropriate, use it as the hook for a well-targeted paid advertising campaign. The worst thing you can do after spending the time and resources to create a white paper is to only have a few dozen people ever read it.
Presumably you’ll be using your white paper to generate leads and will therefore have it gated with a download form (although you certainly don’t have to). If it is gated, create a compelling download page for your white paper which previews just enough of the content to make the audience want more but without giving up its most important lessons.
Recap on Effective Life Science White Papers
To write an effective white paper:
- Understand where your white paper fits within the customer journey.
- Maintain its primarily informational purpose.
- Keep to one topic which will be of interest to your audience.
- Focus on information which most of your audience likely will not know.
- Allow what you have to communicate to dictate the length.
- Don’t skimp on the visuals.
- Clearly separate any promotional messages to avoid creating skepticism about the core topic.
- Shout it from the rooftops to get attention to it!
White papers are centerpieces of many life science demand generation campaigns. By understanding and implementing these guidelines, they can help drive successful lead generation for your life science company as well.
FAQs: Content and SEO’s Low-Hanging Fruit
Carlton Hoyt
Creating content in support of your products and services is hard. Finding something to say which is both unique and valuable to the audience is a non-trivial endeavor, however it remains critical for persuading your audience that your product or service is right for them … and persuading search engines that your website is important.
That said, it’s incredible how many brands overlook this one simple, effective, easy-to-create content tool: the FAQ.
You don’t even have to do the thinking for an FAQ. Your customers do it for you. In your day-to-day sales and support operations, customers are asking questions all the time. All you need to do is document them and their answers, put it on your website, and bingo! – You now have an FAQ.
FAQ Best Practices
It’s absolutely possible to make a terrible FAQ, but really easy not to. If you follow these guidelines when creating your FAQ, you’ll be set:
- Talk to your sales and / or support teams about the questions that they are getting from customers. If you’re creating an FAQ, you want to be sure it’s answering questions that your customers actually have.
- The best FAQ questions are broadly relevant and / or address an important question. If you have a question from a person with a niche application which would only be relevant to a small subset of the audience who is also using your product for that application, it’s probably not worthy of adding to the FAQ. If you have too much clutter, people won’t use it.
- It’s really easy to end up with oceans of FAQ content. Your don’t want your FAQ content to fluster your audience because there is too much of it. In addition to being selective with what content makes the grade for your FAQ section, use design tools such as accordions to help minimize the content overload and help ensure that customers are only presented with the FAQ content which is most relevant to them.
- Keep FAQ content on the page of the product / service it pertains to whenever possible. Forcing people to navigate away to FAQ content is usually neither a good navigational experience nor the best for SEO.
- If you have a long FAQ section, try to keep the most important and / or broadly relevant information towards the top, where it will be more likely to be seen.
To give you a better idea of how you may be able to leverage FAQ content, let’s take a look at a few examples.
FAQ Critiques
Agilent’s website makes ample use of FAQ content, which is great. To give an example, I’ll look at the page for their 280FS AA Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. They have a lot of stuff on this page, but they use a left-hand navigation menu with anchor links to help users find the information they need. In the “Support” section there is an FAQ, along with other categories of content, each of which has an accordion feature.
Agilent’s FAQ has a good amount of content in it, and they make it more manageable by only showing the questions. You have to click the question to see the answer. Unfortunately, when you click the question, you are directed to a page that has only that one question and answer on it, meaning the page is of relatively low value and has taken the user away from the bulk of the information they are seeking, leading to a sub-optimal user experience (you need to wait for the page to load, then click back to get back to where you were). Additionally, having many pages with “thin” content is far less beneficial from an SEO standpoint than having one page with lots of content. If, for instance, they instead had a nested accordion in which the answer dropped down when it was clicked, this would circumvent the need for individual pages for each answer while still showing a relatively manageable amount of information to each user.
Laboratory Supply Network also makes frequent use of FAQs. FAQs are perhaps of even greater value for distributors and resellers since these companies are often starved of unique content. FAQs, product reviews, and other mechanisms for generating unique content can both improve their SEO and differentiate them from competition who may be selling similar (or the same) products. As an example, we’ll use their Q500 FAQ on Homogenizers.net. Laboratory Supply Network puts their FAQs in a separate tab from other information on the product page, helping to prevent clutter. They also have all the FAQ information directly on the product page, which maximizes the SEO benefit. However, within the FAQ tab, there are no aids to help users find the information which may be of value to them. The only way to see which questions are answered is to scroll through them all – and through their answers. This is non-ideal, especially if there are a lot of questions and / or the questions have long answers. While users will scroll, too much scrolling decreases the likelihood that content near the bottom will be seen.
In Conclusion
FAQs add value for your customer and improve the SEO of your website. As with just about any content generation effort, your primary question should be: “can we do this in a manner which is valuable for our audience?” If you have a complex product or service or there is any common uncertainties that customers have about your business, it’s likely that you can both deliver and receive value through an FAQ. Ensure that you’re following best practices, and you’ll maximize its value.
We Just Got Skyscrapered
Carlton Hoyt
Just yesterday, we got skyscrapered. No, we didn’t get an office in a giant building or fly an ad from one or anything like that, nor is that some weird pop-culture thing that teenagers are putting on YouTube. We were the target of an attempt at “skyscraper marketing” … and I’m talking about it, so I guess it worked in a sense.
I’ll talk more about this particular instance in a moment, but first I wanted to give an intro to skyscraper marketing for anyone who isn’t familiar with it.
The “What” and “Why” of Skyscraper Marketing
Skyscraper marketing was one method which was popularized after Google’s 2013 Hummingbird algorithm update. To summarize the implications of that in brief: there was once a time when you could “trick” Google into thinking that your website was more important than it was by posting links around the internet pointing to your website. Hummingbird was the Google update that put an end to that once and for all and penalized websites that did not comply. From then on, if you wanted to prove your website’s importance (and thereby improve your search ranks), you needed to earn your backlinks organically.
That’s about the time when content marketing became more important. From that point, not only was it the validation that showed prospects you knew what you were talking about, but it was the primary tool at your disposal to influence your search rankings (beyond the basic on-site optimization, such as optimized URLs and title tags, that everyone does and therefore isn’t a real source of competitive advantage). The more shareable the content, the more backlinks it would likely get, and therefore the better it was for SEO.
Thus, Skyscraper Marketing was devised. At its most basic, I can break it down into a three step process:
- Find successful content.
- Improve upon it.*
- Share it with people who would be interested in it and, in turn, share it themselves.
*The necessity for improvement is debatable, but you do have to do something to it. More on that in a moment…
The “How” of Skyscraper Marketing
Skyscraper marketing is, essentially, a type of influencer marketing in that the important part is the last step – getting people with engaged audiences to share it. That being the case, there are two primary approaches (and you don’t have to choose between them – you can do both at the same time).
The first approach is the incremental improvement approach. You find some good content which you have something to add to / make better / pose a counterpoint to / etc., then distribute it to a bunch of people who would find it relevant and potentially want to share it. In this approach, you’re adding something to the general body of knowledge in the hope that your contributed insight is enough to make it a worthwhile share – especially from people who have large audiences themselves. Again, the goal is to get as many backlinks and as many eyeballs as possible (those goals do overlap) so the more people you reach out to the better.
The second approach is the “stroking one’s ego” approach. In this approach, your goal isn’t necessarily to improve upon good pieces of content, but rather to act as an aggregator. You take really good tidbits from the thinking of a number of different influencers, and repackage them into a single, easily digestible, and readily shareable piece of content, being sure to reference and link to the authors / posts whose thinking you aggregated. You then reach back out to those people and let them know that you published something which referenced them. People, being generally inclined towards things that make themselves seem important, will share your article which highlights their own thinking.
BioBM’s Skyscraper Marketing Tips
As with influencer marketing, you want to take care to do it correctly. If you don’t, you’ll not only waste your time and effort, but you’ll also get a reputation among the influencers in your market as a peddler of junk content. If that happens, skyscraper marketing or other forms of influencer marketing will be more difficult for you in the future. Just as poor quality content can reflect badly upon your brand, asking people to share poor quality content will erode your relationships with those influencers.
To not be “that guy,” here are some useful tips:
- Don’t spam your network. Only send out good content and only send it to people who would find it genuinely relevant.
- Don’t plagiarize copy … or ideas. If people realize they’ve heard it all before elsewhere, they probably won’t share it.
- Note that “improved content” does not mean “longer content.” A lot of people have a habit of focusing on expanding upon an idea rather than improving upon it. Improvement is far more important than expansion. If you make something better or take a novel perspective on an idea, that’s far more worthy of sharing than simply adding more of the same.
- “Improved content” also doesn’t mean that you need to improve on the idea itself. Communicating it more effectively – for instance, using illustration to more clearly demonstrate a complex point – can be just as valuable.
- Always remember: your content behaves like a product and must be differentiated!
- If you’re going to take an ego-driven approach, be sure you show that you have taken the time to fully understand and eloquently explain the idea, and give some praise to the original author without coming of as a flatterer.
So to finish the story…
Upon checking our social media dashboards this morning, I saw this tweet:
Including a great piece of advice on how to create loyalty from Carlton Hoyt ( @BioBM ) https://t.co/rW4YeY6sjn
â Joe Whittaker (@DiagnosticsJoe) January 29, 2017
I’ve been published more than the average person, but that’s still enough to get my attention so I gave it a quick read through. I ended up not sharing it on our @BioBM twitter account (and I don’t use my personal @CHoytPhD twitter anymore) for a few reasons. Primarily, we have very high standards for what BioBM publishes through our channels. We generally require there to be some element of newness, and we didn’t find there to be any particularly fresh thinking. (Sorry, Joe! No offense intended.) Secondarily, it was a really obvious skyscraper attempt, especially since our idea which was shared wasn’t strongly relevant to the body of the article and was simply one of many listed in bullet point format towards the end. On the other hand, Joe did well not to plagiarize the ideas which he referenced, but rather offered a tidbit of them with a link to the source. That was nice of him. (Thanks, Joe!)
That said, it did engage a discussion on twitter and his post did end up being linked to on our blog, so I suppose Joe can claim victory after all. He’s also welcome to follow this shameless promotion for our “Marketing of Life Science Tools & Services” LinkedIn group and post it there as well. 2262 members and counting!
Just for fun, and because who doesn’t love architecture, here’s a few more images of skyscrapers. All images are courtesy of Unsplash, which in an amazing feat of generosity allows their beautiful, high-resolution images to be used for any purpose and without attribution. I find that so awesome that I’m giving them attribution anyway.
Personalization Can Backfire
Carlton Hoyt
Marketers are used to seeing a lot of data showing that improving personalization leads to improved demand generation. The more you tailor your message to the customer, the more relevant that message will be and the more likely the customer will choose your solution. Sounds reasonable, right?
In most cases personalization is great, but what those aforementioned studies and all the “10,000-foot view” data misses is that there are a subset of customers for whom personalization doesn’t help. There are times when personalization can actually hurt you.
When Personalization Backfires
Stressing the points which are most important to an individual works great … when that individual has sole responsibility for the purchasing decision. For large or complex purchases, however, that is often not the case. When different individuals involved in a purchasing decision have different priorities and are receiving different messages tailored to their individual needs, personalization can act as a catalyst for divergence within the group, leading different members to reinforce their own needs and prevent consensus-building.
Marketers are poor at addressing the problems in group purchasing. A CEB study of 5000 B2B purchasers found that the likelihood of any purchase being made decreases dramatically as the size of the group making the decision increases; from an 81% likelihood of purchase for an individual, to just 31% for a group of six.
For group purchases, marketers need to focus less on personalization and more on creating consensus.
Building Consensus for Group Purchases
Personalization reinforces each individual’s perspective. In order to more effectively sell to groups, marketers need to reinforce shared perspectives of the problem and the solution. Highlight areas of common agreement. Use common language. Develop learning experiences which are relevant to the entire group and can be shared among them.
Personalization focuses on convincing individuals that your solution is the best. In order to better build consensus, equip individuals with the tools and information they need to provide perspective about the problem to their group. While most marketers spend their time pushing their solution, the CEB found that the sticking point in most groups is agreeing upon the nature of the solution that should be sought. By providing individuals within the groups who may favor your solution with the ability to frame the nature of the problem to others in their group, you’ll help those who have a nascent desire to advocate for you advocates get past this sticking point and guide the group to be receptive of your type of solution. Having helped them clear that critical barrier, you’ll be better positioned for the fight against solely your direct competitors.
Winning a sale requires more than just understanding the individual. We’ve been trained to believe that personalization is universally good, but that doesn’t align with reality. For group decisions, ensure your marketing isn’t reinforcing the individual, but rather building consensus within the group. Only then can you be reliably successful at not only overcoming competing companies, but overcoming the greatest alternative of all: a decision not to purchase anything.
The Four Key Types of Content
Carlton Hoyt
There are a lot of reasons why content can fail to fulfill its objectives. When content fails, it usually just feels like “stuff” – things that are churned out more for the sake of having content than to serve a specific purpose. The most common reason for failure is lack of a coherent content strategy. Even when a strategy exists, however, content often fails because its role in the customer decision journey isn’t clear. In order for content to be maximally effective, it’s critical to understand the decision journey, the four main types of content, and what role each type of content needs to have within the decision journey.
The Four Types of Content
All content can be binned in one (or more) of four general categories:
- Educational Content. Educational content provides helpful information to the audience. It is strictly customer-centric. It can build brand value and awareness by helping customers build useful knowledge and solve problems. It is best aligned to early stages of the buying journey when the need is nascent and the customer may not even be aware of their need. Educational content often is used to make the customer aware that a need exists. For instance, a brochure highlighting problems with an industry-standard method would be educational content.
- Validational Content. Validational content serves to verify a belief that the customers hold or a claim that the brand is making. Exceptional validational content does so while still maintaining the customer as the core focus, but all validational content also has a strong focus on the brand or its offering(s). This is most useful when the customers have an established need and you want to guide them towards your solution. For instance, a performance comparison of multiple offerings from different vendors would be considered validational content.
- Promotional Content. Promotional content is used to prompt customers who are ready or nearly ready to make a decision into action. It is the most solution-centric type of content, and it often doesn’t look or feel like content as many content marketers would think of it. For instance, an email offering a discount would be promotional content. Most ads we see on TV are promotional content.
- Emotional Content. Unlike all the other forms of content, emotional content doesn’t seek to influence the customers’ perceptions of need, but rather seeks to connect with customers on a less tangible, emotional level, although it doesn’t need to be overtly emotional per se. Emotional content is used outside of the context of a purchase to influence customers’ brand preferences, and therefore position your brand to have an advantage in customers’ future buying journeys.
Content doesn’t need to fall into only one of these categories. For instance, validational content is often used in conjunction with promotional content in order to both prove a point and attempt to prompt a purchase. A hybrid of emotional and promotional content may be used to try to induce an impulse buy. Educational content is often used with emotional content to position a brand as a thought leader. Just about any type of content can be used with any other. You could even have all four in one.
Mapping Content Types to the Buying Journey
A fairly simple buying journey model would be one that starts at the consideration of a need, continues through the evaluation of a number of options to fill the need, ends in a purchase, then continues to a post-purchase period where the solution is experienced, affinity with the brand (or against the brand) is formed, and advocacy (or antagonism) may take place. The cycle then begins again at some point when a further need is realized. (For a more detailed discussion of customer journeys, I recommend reading “Competing on Customer Journeys” in HBR.)
In this model, educational content would span from before consideration, where it may be used to catalyze realization of a need, through the early evaluation phase, where it helps shape the customer’s understanding and perception of the need and influences the criteria by which potential solutions will be evaluated. Validational content should be deployed from the late consideration phase through the evaluation phase in order to reinforce the brand’s proposed solution. Promotional content should be leveraged late in the evaluation phase up to the point of purchase in order to induce the customer to initiate a purchase.
Emotional content, unlike all the other types of content, is not reliant on a place within a buying journey and does not seek to directly influence customers’ purchasing behavior. Instead, it exists to shape the customers’ perceptions of the brand, thereby putting the brand at an advantage due to conscious or subconscious preferences / biases in the brand’s favor. It can be deployed at any time.
A basic buying journey with the four types of content mapped to it.
Content requires many things to be successful. It needs to be differentiated and segmented. It needs to be organized and customer-centric. It needs to avoid falling into a pit of skepticism. The most fundamental of requirements when creating content, however, is the need to serve a specific purpose that aligns with specific goals for influencing customers’ purchasing behavior.
To be even more effective in your content marketing, keep an inventory of your content, and include in that inventory which of the four types of content each piece falls into and which stage of the buying journey it attempts to influence. That will help reveal holes in your content marketing program and allow you to spend your efforts on the areas of greatest need that will provide the largest returns.
BioBM has pioneered the next-generation of content marketing strategies in the life sciences, and our leading marketing thinking has been published by the American Marketing Association, Content Marketing Institute, and other prestigious associations. We donât stop at âbest practices,â and we go beyond simple content. We proactively identify new, unique ways of creating value for your audience then design superior customer experiences around those value opportunities. Provide meaningful value to your customers, and theyâll provide value to you. Itâs a virtuous cycle. Start yours."
Increasing Customer Affinity
Carlton Hoyt
Affinity has a transformational value on brands.
Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon have all moved beyond having a simple transactional relationship with their customers to one that creates intimacy and serves their needs in a more holistic manner. These companies are generous, they are unselfish, and their approach is well beyond one of asking for the next sale. Whereas most companies self-promote in order to obtain the customer’s next purchase, elite brands seek not only to create customer loyalty, but to be loyal to their customers.
The overwhelming majority of companies are only good at fostering transactional affiliations with customers. They ask for their business, the customer gives it to them, and that is largely the end of the relationship. Companies frequently try to obtain repeat business; those who do so well attract supporters – customers who have moved beyond individual transactions and consciously prefer your brand, buying repeatedly. Relatively few companies are effective at recruiting promoters, people who actively share their positive impression of your brand through advocacy to others. Those brands which have strong networks of promoters are often very successful, but there is a fourth level of customer affinity that not only drives even further degrees of loyalty, but also leverages customer assets to build brand value even further, creating a positive feedback loop for both the brand and customers: co-creation.
Co-creators actively add value to the brand by contributing to its offerings for other customers. They are so invested in the brand that they add to it themselves. This may be altruistic, but may also be to realize some kind of return, be it financial, recognition, or otherwise.
Increasing Affinity
Most companies pay careful attention to how loyal their customers are to them, measuring things like net promoter score and tracking sentiment on social media. They think that good customer service will win the loyalty of customers, and while good customer experiences may turn transactors into supporters and perhaps even the occasional promoter, good service is not enough to routinely transform customers’ affinity to the highest levels. In order to move up the affinity ladder, brands need to not only focus on how loyal their customers are, but how loyal the brand is to their customers. If a customer is anything more than a transactor, they are giving you more than money. Likewise, you need to be doing something more than selling products and services (in other words, creating transactions) to better foster that affinity. You need to actively add value to the lives of your customers outside of the transactional realm.
Building co-creation opportunities often, but not always, requires a degree of altruism. You must seek to provide opportunities for your target market which do not actually cost them anything.
Examples of Co-Creation
Many businesses are built entirely around co-creation. Yelp or any user-driven recommendation website are almost entirely based on co-creation. Facebook is driven by co-creation. Airbnb is a co-creative endeavor, relying on its hosts to build the success of their platform. Your business, however, does not need to be centered on a co-creation business model in order to leverage it for increased customer affinity.
Customer-centric resources are tools that any company can use to greatly heighten customer affinity. By helping customers solve problems outside the context of a buying journey, you will provide massively positive experiences that will increase affinity. While resources do not require a co-creation component, such a component may be integrated into them. Consider the Nike+ ecosystem, where users can share workouts, compare progress with friends, and help motivate each other. The GoPro Channel is another well-known co-creation resource, where GoPro leverages its own popularity to support its customers’ best creations.
Social Media, “Engagement” and the Affinity Failure
Many marketers consider themselves to have succeeded at forging relationships with customers if they have high “engagement” metrics or large social followings. These are not indicators of affinity and are often vanity metrics. A social follow is by no means an indication of support, and it certainly does not suggest that the follower will promote your brand. In the life sciences and most B2B industries, social media is largely a platform for the dissemination of content. It is a utilitarian tool. While the ability to foster personal relationships with members of your target audience certainly exists, social media is not a natural channel for brand-customer communication. If your goals are to increase your audience size and reach, seek new social followers. If your goals are to increase customer affinity, look for non-transactional ways to provide value to your audience.
As customers not only take greater control of their purchasing decision journeys but compress them as well, brand affinity becomes increasingly important. Those brands which are able to create heightened levels of customer affinity will have immense advantage in an accelerated journey which reduces the consideration and evaluation phases. Customers are increasingly making decisions based on established preferences. The brands with the greatest customer affinity will be the winners.
A very telling thing happened in October. YouTube, in preparation to release it’s paid subscription service, Red, told its top content creators that “any ‘partner’ creator who earns a cut of ad revenue but doesnât agree to sign its revenue share deal for its new YouTube Red $9.99 ad-free subscription will have their videos hidden from public view on both the ad-supported and ad-free tiers.” (ref: TechCrunch). In other words, if content creators who are getting revenue from their YouTube videos don’t agree to Red, their channel will go dark. All those subscribers will mean nothing if they can’t access your content.
This should be something of a reality check for marketers. On YouTube or any third party social channel, your audience doesn’t belong to you; it belongs to the channel. Those Twitter followers? Twitter owns them. All those Facebook likes? They’re not your property, they’re Facebook’s. Any one of those channels can do anything they want with them at any time. Feel insecure? It is.
What if Facebook removed access to people who have liked your page unless you pay for engagement? There’s no reason they couldn’t. Or what if the social network that you’ve poured so many resources into in order to develop a large following were to fade away – perhaps people start abandoning Twitter en masse for Snapchat (or whatever comes after Snapchat)?
You don’t own your social media audiences. In many cases, you don’t even own the content you’ve shared on that social channel. You definitely don’t own your advertising audiences or any other audience which is rented. Any and all of these audiences can be taken away. If you’re looking to develop an attentive and loyal audience that’s both engaged and secure, what can you do?
Building an Owned Audience
Building an owned audience requires that you create a platform for audience growth which is under your full control. Any audience on a “rented” channel belongs to the channel and not to you.
Building an owned audience also requires that the channel you create offer sufficient value such that people want to engage with it and return to it. Getting someone to hit the “follow” button on a social platform is very non-committal. Getting someone to sign up for an entirely new platform is a higher bar. You need to ensure that you sufficiently understand and address genuine audience needs in order to for them to commit. Furthermore, unlike social media, you need to provide enough value that the audience will go back just for the value your owned platform provides; there won’t [necessarily] be many other people and brands drawing them back into it, giving them reasons to return and engage. While yours may be just one of 100 liked pages and 500 friends competing for space on a Facebook user’s feed, that may be enough to provide you with the opportunity to grab for their attention. There may be a lot of competition for that attention, but there are also many reasons for the users to continuously return to the channel; the burden of reeling the audience back in is widely distributed among their many connections and the platform itself. On an owned channel, you must make it entirely your responsibility to entice to engage and continue to reengage over time, but each time they do you own that attention. You write the rules.
That begs the question: What do you need to do to build an owned channel?
The form that the owned channel takes is irrelevant. The form should simply be a response to audience needs. It can be as simple as a blog or as complex as anything you or I could imagine. There are only three requirements:
- It has to provide genuine value to the target audience. That’s what is going to attract their attention. Understand what problems your customers are having and focus on helping to solve them. Your platform has to be primarily about your customers.
- The value has to be sustained over time. An audience that only pays attention once doesn’t do you much good. While the audience itself can sometimes be leveraged to add value to the platform, don’t plan on it happening. Expect that you’re going to have to be the one to continue to add value to the platform over time. If that seems like an unsustainable effort, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.
- It has to meaningfully connect the audience with your brand.
By creating a platform which enriches the lives of members of your target market, you’ll find yourself growing a willing, captive, and secure audience – on your terms.
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Is Publishing the Holy Grail of Content Marketing?
Carlton Hoyt
There’s a lot of noise coming from some fairly reputable sources extolling the virtues of publishing as the next generation of content marketing (I’m sure you’ll be very familiar with this if you follow the Content Marketing Institute at all). For instance, let’s take a look at a recent article from the Harvard Business Review website – “Content Is Crap, and Other Rules for Marketers” – which makes some great points, but misses some equally if not more important points.
To begin, let’s summarize his 4 rules, which are all extremely valid points…
Rule 1 – Recognize that content is crap. This is best highlighted by the author: “We never call anything thatâs good ‘content.’ Nobody walks out of a movie they loved and says, ‘Wow! What great content!’ Nobody listens to ‘content’ on their way to work in the morning. Do you think anybody ever called Ernest Hemingway a ‘content creator’? If they did, I bet he would punch âem in the nose.” He goes on to state that marketers need to be more like publishers.
A bit of a side note before we move on. The author is appealing to emotion a bit and is forgetting that content is a somewhat technical term – no one says they drink “dihydrogen monoxide” either. What this is more illustrative of is the mentality of many content marketers. What’s important isn’t, for example, that the people who watch great movies don’t refer to it as “content” but that the producers, writers, directors, and actors who set out to make a great movie don’t refer to it as content. It’s the mentality of content – making “stuff” that begs for attention – which gets people stuck in a losing paradigm and it’s a paradigm that needs to be dropped.
Rule 2 – Hold attention, donât just grab it. “Marketers need to build an ongoing relationship with consumers and that means holding attention, not just grabbing it. To get people to subscribe to a blog, YouTube channel, or social media feed, you need to offer more than a catchy slogan or a clever stunt. You need to offer real value, and offer it consistently.” The author argues that publishing solves this problem.
Rule 3 – Donât over-optimize metrics. It’s too easy to confuse measurement with meaning. He uses the example of Buzzfeed, who no longer uses clickbait titles as they’ve realized that they optimize for pageviews, which are just clicks, but betray the readerâs trust. By under-promising and over-delivering, you create more engagement with the content and make it more likely that the reader will return to read another article later. It’s the long game vs. short game conundrum. You can make the numbers look good if you pretend not to care about your numbers a year from now.
Rule 4 – Understand that publishing is a product, not a campaign. In brief, the author makes the point that one of the keys to being successful in being more like a publisher is to treat it with more permanence and seriousness.
There are some great points here… Content is not enough. You can’t simply interrupt your way to success; you need a way to build an audience. Ensure your metrics are effectively measuring value creation. And publishing has serious merits, but the answer is bigger than publishing.
The Inherent Problems With Publishing
Yes, publishing is often superior to more basic forms of content marketing, but it’s not for everyone. Not every company has some amazing, inherently compelling story to tell, and not every company has the resources to continually deliver pieces of that story through carefully crafted content consistently over a long period of time. That’s a massive effort. Assuming publishing is a magic bullet ignores reality and ultimately falls victim to the same problems plaguing other iterations of content marketing: if it becomes well adopted, it’s very quickly going to become much more difficult to do effectively.
The audience’s attention is inherently limited, and while publishing tries to occupy more of that attention, it doesn’t solve the attention problem and it falls into the same trap as more “generic” forms of content marketing. It’s actually a natural response to the lack of supply of customer attention which follows basic economic principles: If the supply of something is limited and demand increases the result is an increasing cost. As more and more content competes for limited attention the “cost” of the customers’ attention increases, meaning you need higher quality content to obtain it. Treating content marketing more like publishing doesn’t change that fact, it simply throws more resources at the problem so higher quality content can be produced – a necessity to continue to compete for customers’ attention in an environment where it is in ever-increasing demand. It’s not like audiences couldn’t do things such as subscribe to blogs almost two decades ago, it’s simply that it takes a better content effort to grab and hold attention than it used to.
Should You Be a Publisher?
Publishing cannot be the answer for everyone. It is literally impossible for 100% of brands to be successful publishers because the audience does not have enough attention to go around. How can you tell if you should be a publisher? Answer these two questions:
- How interesting are you? Take a good honest look at your brand and figure out how interesting you are. Some have great stories to tell. Some do amazing things. Some would make highly impactful thought leaders. Others simply aren’t so captivating. If your brand simply isn’t all that interesting compared to others in your space, you might want to consider something else.
- Can you – and will you – sufficiently resource the effort? Putting out top-quality content on a regular basis is no easy job by itself, and publishing requires more than that. The amount of time and resources that will need to go into planning, editing, graphic design, etc., will be significantly greater. At the same time, publishing still won’t provide a short-term payoff. Do you have the resources and the necessary leadership buy-in to be a publisher?
The Real Focus
If you’re not in the upper echelon of brands with regards to your ability and willingness to be a publisher, all is not lost. After all, being a publisher is not the goal. The reason that taking on the role of publisher is being touted as superior to content marketing is because it’s more effective at delivering meaningful value to customers. That’s also the underlying reason why it better holds the audience’s attention. At the end of the day customers gravitate to value, and there’s a lot more ways to provide value than just being a publisher.
Shift your paradigm from thinking about content to developing actual resources that solve genuine customer problems. Ask yourself what problems customers are having that they might not pay for a solution to, but are readily solvable with a bit of time and effort. Analyze them, prioritize them, and solve the most critical ones that provide the best opportunity for long-term value creation and evolving the customer relationship beyond a transactional one.
Double down on customer experience. Make it easier, faster, and simpler for customers to obtain value from you. Look at some of the juggernauts of tech – Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon – they didn’t get to where they are because of content marketing. Most of their content marketing efforts aren’t even on people’s radar. What they do is solve problems quickly and simply. You know what’s a great experience? When you can type a question and an answer appears, when you press a button and a cab simply shows up, or when you can instantly be connected to any of your friends. There’s are myriad examples out there, and while it may be easier to do in tech than in the life sciences, it’s certainly not impossible in any industry.
If you’re existing content marketing efforts are becoming less effective, one option is certainly to hunker down, take it more seriously, and spend the resources to become a highly effective publisher. But that’s expensive, difficult, and only delays the onset of many of the underlying problems plaguing content marketing. Publishing treats the symptoms, not the disease. Rid yourself of all paradigms but the one which relies on this one fundamental truth: customers will favor those brands which contribute the most value to their lives. Let that reality guide your actions and you’ll soon find your audiences flocking to you.