Tag : content marketing

AI-based Language Models: the End of Life Sciences Copywriters?

Edgard Sayegh 3:08 pm , May 19, 2024

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 post’s 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 today’s blog post, this is exactly what we’ll 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, we’ll be pitting ourselves against ALMs in the most unbiased way possible: exposing the human limitations of using ALMs, before discussing ALMs’ 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 isn’t. 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 you’re not satisfied with your ALM’s 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 Plato’s 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. Let’s 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.

ChatGPT’s 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.

Gemini’s 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 V9’s 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.

ChatGPT’s 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.

Gemini’s 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 – 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 V9’s 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, we’ll go over four parameters in each of the ALM’s responses: The tone, the depth, the target audience, and the overall copy:

ChatGPT’s 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, it’s very superficial

Gemini’s 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. It’s far more engaging, and has a more “human” ring to it. All in all, Gemini did a fair job, and the copy it produced is probably usable.

Phind V9’s 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 reader’s 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 11:43 pm , November 7, 2022

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!

*This is a stock image of life science brochure templates and doesn’t say anything meaningful at all, but you probably stopped to look at them because they’re visually appealing.*

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.

"Not sure how to best deploy content to help fuel your marketing efforts? Experiencing writer’s block? Don’t spend time fretting, just contact BioBM. Our life science marketing experts are here to help innovative companies like yours craft purposeful, effective content to influence your scientist-customers and encourage them into action."

Blog / Content Marketing / Marketing Communications 11:43 pm , November 7, 2022

FAQs: Content and SEO’s Low-Hanging Fruit

Carlton Hoyt 8:18 am , April 20, 2017

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.

"Looking to create content which has a discernible impact on your business? Looking for practical, realistic means to improve your search marketing? BioBM helps life science companies with almost any marketing needs. Contact us today and learn how we can help build your company into a powerhouse brand with rapidly growing revenues."

Content Marketing / Search Marketing 8:18 am , April 20, 2017

We Just Got Skyscrapered

Carlton Hoyt 3:44 pm , January 30, 2017

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

— 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.

"Innovative companies deserve innovative marketing. If you want to leverage the next generation of marketing strategies to not only help you achieve success, but create genuine strategic advantage for your company, contact BioBM. It’s never too early or too late, but the sooner we get started the more of a head start you’ll have."

Blog / Content Marketing / Marketing Communications / Search Marketing 3:44 pm , January 30, 2017

The Four Key Types of Content

Carlton Hoyt 1:41 pm , January 29, 2016

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.

"88% of B2B companies utilize content marketing, but only 30% believe their content marketing program to be effective. We certainly understand that content marketing is a challenging and resource-intensive endeavor. That’s all the more reason to ensure your money and efforts are well spent.

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 don’t stop at “best practices,” 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 they’ll provide value to you. It’s a virtuous cycle. Start yours."

Blog / Content Marketing 1:41 pm , January 29, 2016

Is Publishing the Holy Grail of Content Marketing?

Carlton Hoyt 11:43 am , November 3, 2015

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 that’s 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 ‘em 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, don’t 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 – Don’t 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 reader’s 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.

"Are you struggling to attract your target audience? Do you find you need to interrupt them to try to get their attention? Then it’s time to do something different. Shed all your old paradigms and focus on unique and differentiated ways to add genuine value to your audiences’ lives. Provide meaningful value to your customers, and they’ll provide value to you. It’s a virtuous cycle. Start yours."

Blog / Content Marketing / Customer Experience / Marketing Communications / Marketing Strategy 11:43 am , November 3, 2015

Stop Thinking About Content

Carlton Hoyt 11:48 am , June 4, 2015

Content marketers in the life sciences have reached a critical point. The traditional paradigm of content marketing is becoming ineffective. Content marketers have endeavored to create, publish, share, and then repeat this cycle to the point where there is far too much noise. It is becoming ever more difficult to win the battle for attention. Quite simply, content marketing is no longer enough.

We need to shift from a simple content marketing paradigm to a resource marketing paradigm. We need to stop thinking about creating more stuff and start thinking about how to build things of utility that meaningfully help solve our audiences’ problems.

It’s not just the life sciences that are experiencing this, either. It’s everywhere. This is a pandemic problem across almost all industries. We have recently been honored to have our solution, as elaborated by BioBM’s Carlton Hoyt, recognized by the Content Marketing Institute. You can read about how to take your content marketing program beyond the traditional paradigm and start creating transformational value for your audience which will both captivate them and build genuine value for your brand in the CMI article “Stop Thinking Content, Start Thinking Resources”

"Looking to take your content marketing to the next level? BioBM goes beyond simple content. We proactively identify new, unique ways of creating value for your audience then design superior customer experiences around those value opportunities. We design customer-centric resources which compel your audience to interact with your brand in a highly positive way, giving your company the influence and reputation you need to turn purchasing decisions in your favor. Provide meaningful value to your customers, and they’ll provide value to you. It’s a virtuous cycle. Start yours."

Blog / Content Marketing / Marketing Strategy 11:48 am , June 4, 2015

Remove Steps With Content

Carlton Hoyt 12:33 pm , May 14, 2015

While we strongly advocate that many content marketers in the life sciences shift from a content paradigm to a resource paradigm, there are still ample roles for more traditional content to play. This is especially true in demand generation endeavors when content is being leveraged to fulfill a specific role in a buying journey. When using content to move prospects closer to making a sale, the most effective content removes steps from the customers’ buying journeys. It actually makes the journey shorter while influencing the customer in a way that favors your brand.

If you want to create content that moves your scientist-customers forward in their buying journeys, you need to know where you’re starting, where they’ll finish, and not try to take a larger step than your content is able. To create great content that can help shorten a buying journey and direct customers in your favor, follow these 4 planning steps before actually putting pen to paper.

1) Map the buying journey.

You can’t effectively influence customers to progress in their buying journeys unless you understand the nature and the steps within those buying journeys. There is no shortcut to this – you need to talk to the customers. When doing so, it’s important to get feedback from a broad range of customers. In addition to simply speaking with different demographics (for instance, customers in different market sectors or those with varying seniority), it’s important to speak with those whose buying journeys have ended differently. Talk to your own customers, those who have made purchases of alternate or similar solutions, those currently involved in a purchasing decision, and some who have exited a buying journey without making a purchase. It’s important to understand all of the paths these journeys took and the factors that led to their ultimate decision.

Remember: a buying journey is not a line. It is a roadmap, where there are multiple routes from the start to the destination, and you want to understand those various routes as much as possible. Mapping the buying journey is something that will be useful well beyond content planning, so it’s a good thing to do regardless. For instance, a map of the customers’ buying journey is invaluable when designing campaigns. It’s not a simple or fast process, but it’s well worth the effort.

2) Pick a step to remove.

Once you understand the “routes” the buying journey may take, you can decide which step you want to remove. To be broadly effective and achieve the best ROI, this should be a step that is on many of the routes and is not presently being addressed well. It should also not be too large of a step, as there is a practical limitation to how much of the buying journey you can bypass with content.

3) Determine why that step exists.

The step you’re trying to remove is there for a reason. The scientist-customer may be trying to understand something, or seeking a particular experience, or looking to verify a specific belief. Unless you know exactly what they’re trying to do, you can’t design content to bypass that step.

In many cases you may be able to use your own best judgment to understand why a step in the buying journey exists, and in others you may want to speak to the target market. The more effort you put into this process the more likely you’ll end up with a correct answer, but the effort needs to be proportional to the effort required to actually create the content. Otherwise, you’d be just as well off taking the “shotgun” approach, designing a few different pieces of content, and A/B testing.

However, to know how much effort you would need to design the content, step 3 needs to overlap with step 4…

4) Determine the best way to bypass the step.

Churning out white papers is only going to get you so far, and there are a lot of steps in the buying journey that can only be effectively skipped by richer content. If your audience seeks only information, there may be a wide variety of content formats you can choose from. If your audience requires an experience, you may be required to use rich media.

The only way to use content to skip a step in the buying journey is to provide the audience with exactly what they are looking for. You can’t take a shortcut and expect to be effective.

There are far too many companies who use their content marketing programs haphazardly, as blog post and white paper factories. Those are wasted efforts. When creating content to generate demand, understand the buying journey, focus on a particular step, then design content to fulfill the needs of that step and get scientists past it. Only then will your content program achieve its potential.

"As marketers’ usage of content marketing has surged in the life sciences, we’ve seen a very predictable trend: it’s become less effective. At BioBM, 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. If you are looking to leverage compel your audiences or to build influence and reputation, don’t settle for a generic create-publish-share-repeat paradigm. Work with an agency that can help you achieve success through differentiated, value-creating customer experiences. Speak with BioBM, and we’ll show you how we can help."

Blog / Content Marketing / Demand Generation 12:33 pm , May 14, 2015

Should You Be A Thought Leader?

Carlton Hoyt 9:43 pm , January 7, 2015

Being a “thought leader” has become cliché.

That’s what most brands and most content marketers aspire to be, however. They want to be visionaries; oracles of their respective fields. It seems like an attractive position to occupy, but is visionary, forward-looking content really what all content marketers should aspire for?

No. Quite frankly, not all companies’ positions justify thought leadership. So how can you tell if your company should be a thought leader?

Assess Your Brand on 3 Dimensions:

1) Nature of the Customer Relationship (Transactional vs. Collaborative) – This is the most important factor. Being an effective thought leader means that you need the market’s attention. If the attention that you have is fleeting, you likely don’t have time to position yourself as a thought leader. Transactional customer interactions are often brief, while collaborative interactions (where you act more as a partner to your customers) are far longer lasting and provide more attention. The same can often be said for the sales cycles for transactional vs. collaborative products and services. Note that transactional relationships may act more like collaborative ones if you have a high rate of repeat business and your products / services are of a high perceived value to the customer; it’s not just about how a single buying journey behaves.

Example: Contract research organizations have highly collaborative customer relationships and are well served by acting as thought leaders. It’s important that these companies demonstrate their knowledge. Companies selling general lab equipment are far more transactional and have less to gain from a thought leadership position.

2) Complexity of Your Products or Services – If your products / services are complex or technologically advanced, this provides a greater opportunity for thought leadership. Customers are more likely to want to take the time to understand the market, and you have more room to play the role of a visionary. To use an example we can all relate to: lots of people want to know about tomorrow’s smartphones. Few people are interested in tomorrow’s socks. You could make the same comparison between sequencers and old-school thermal cyclers.

3) Ambiguity Within Your Market – If the average customer knows very little about your market and / or the products / services within it, there is a greater opportunity to be a thought leader. Ambiguity generally leads to difficult purchasing decisions. Through thought leadership you can create clarity and understanding for your audience, and your audience will in turn reward you with its business.

What to Do If You’re Not a Thought Leader

If you’re not a thought leader, that doesn’t mean you should give up on content marketing. Thought leadership is only one approach to content marketing. Being one of the most popular approaches, there’s a lot of competition for the position of thought leader. Doing something else can actually be an easier way to achieve customer engagement (remember, your content is a product which must be differentiated as well). Some ideas include:

Be better at formatting information. You don’t have to be the first to say something if you can say it better than others. Take some of the best ideas you can find and package them into more appealing formats, such as videos, infographics, or interactive content.

Provide something other than knowledge. Not all content has to be about information. Share something else. Entertaining content is the default alternative, but get creative.

Go past content and develop resources for your scientist-customers that deliver greater value and go further in helping them solve their problems. Get outside the box of “content” as we know it and think more about what problems they have and how your brand can help solve them.

Be practical. Scientists may not want or expect you to be a thought leader, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need information. Offer simple, to-the-point content that helps them streamline their buying journey and reach a better outcome.

Don’t get caught into thinking you need to win some kind of information war to succeed at content marketing. While some brands may be best served by a thought leadership position, for many it’s easier and more productive to shoot for something else. There are certainly plenty of options.

"From creating customer engagement to building brand value to generating leads, content marketing is an extremely powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. It’s also one of the hardest to use effectively, and life science companies frequently assault their audiences with generic and ineffective content. There’s no reason to settle for mediocrity. With BioBM, you’ll 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. So contact BioBM today, and give your company the influence and reputation it needs to turn purchasing decisions in your favor."

Blog / Branding / Content Marketing 9:43 pm , January 7, 2015

Content as a Sales Tool

Carlton Hoyt 9:23 am , November 17, 2014

Content marketing is for more than just lead generation: it can increase sales efficiency. A lot of people think about content marketing in terms of inbound marketing and lead generation. You create content and either make it freely available with perhaps CTA at the end, or you put it behind a lead gen form so you can collect people’s information with the intention of adding them to an email campaign list (or similar). Lead generation is certainly an important use for content marketing, but content should also be looked at as a tool to support the sales function.

How Content Supports Sales

It’s no secret that customers are taking more control of their buying journeys and pushing back their first contact with a salesperson. That is a well-documented fact, from which we can posit that the ways in which customers obtain information is changing. The information itself, however, is not. Just because customers are obtaining information in different ways doesn’t mean they need different information and it certainly doesn’t mean they need less of it. What it does mean is that the information that they were previously obtaining from salespeople now needs to be made available from them in different formats. If you have the customers’ attention and you fail to provide the information that they want, their changing behaviors indicate you’re becoming less likely to induce a sales contact and more likely to lose that attention as they seek information elsewhere. (That’s the reason companies are creating decision engines.)

That’s where content comes in. Content is the vehicle through which you provide detailed, specific information to customers and influence their thinking in the early and mid-stages (and sometimes the late stages as well) of the buying journey. Companies have always used their websites as “brochureware,” but we know that’s not enough. Various educational and persuasive content is required that goes beyond simple product or service information. In that sense, it’s doing what customers are no longer allowing salespeople to do. In doing so, content makes sales more efficient.

Bolstering Sales Efficiency

If you’re an organization that is heavily sales-driven and have great salespeople, you may wish that you could get contact with customers earlier in the buying journey. You shouldn’t. The more naive your customers are, the more effort they will take to lead them through their buying journeys to the point of purchase. If you are leading them with human effort, your sales costs increase with the remaining duration of the buying journey. The more naive your customers are, the more expensive your sales are.

Content, however, is readily scalable. For a one-time creation cost you can provide information to as many customers as the content is relevant to. There is more up-front cost, but as audience size increases the long-term costs rapidly decrease in comparison to a sales-driven effort.

Additionally, content can be viewed as a sales support asset, providing salespeople with referenceable materials and information to provide to inquiring prospects. Customers can go back to a piece of content whereas they cannot go back to a conversation (unless the conversation is via email). Content is not just an inbound tool nor does its utility end upon customer contact with sales; it can coexist with sales to collectively and synergistically advance customers’ buying journeys.

How Can Content Improve Your Organization’s Sales Efficiency?

If your company and sales organization are experiencing the following, you are probably in a good position to utilize content to improve sales efficiency:

Your salespeople get asked the same questions repeatedly.
The average time between sales contact and a positive decision is long.
The average number and / or total duration of sales contacts required to close a sales is high.
You get an abnormally high proportion of contacts whom you never hear from again (they could be contacting you to ask questions, then retaking control of their buying journey).

If you don’t know what content you need to create to start improving sales efficiency, start documenting the questions that your salespeople are being asked. Those questions and thir frequency often indicate what the most beneficial content would be for you to create. For a more thorough process, create content roadmaps for each of your customer personas. This process will help you to define in more detail the content that should be created. When deciding on what content to create, keep in mind that content = time and money! If a particular piece of content would have a small audience, it may not be worth creating. You need to balance completeness with practicality!

Content is a useful tool for decreasing the duration of customers’ sales cycles and decreasing the cost of sales. As customers take more control of their buying journeys, however, content is even more critical. It is a necessary delivery vehicle for information which will influence, educate, and persuade your customers. If your company does not provide the information they are seeking they will look elsewhere, and the customers’ attention is extremely difficult to reclaim.

"The most effective companies don’t act as peddlers, they act as shepherds. They efficiently guide the customer through their buying journey in a way that is intrinsically sensitive to their needs. If you want to become the shepherd of your customers’ buying journey, contact BioBM. We’ll help you build a marketing architecture that will win your audience’s attention, influence their thinking, and earn their business."

Blog / Content Marketing / Demand Generation 9:23 am , November 17, 2014