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Tag : marketing strategy

Best Practices Aren’t Enough

Carlton Hoyt 1:22 pm , September 11, 2014

Many marketers look to market leaders for examples on what to do. The thinking is: if I can replicate what the largest and most successful incumbents in my market are doing, I’ll be just as successful as they are. While there are times when best practices are useful, there are many times when they are not enough. More often than not, a copycat marketing strategy will not replicate competitors’ success.

There are a number of times when marketing best practices are insufficient. These include (but are certainly not limited to):

  • When incumbents have a brand advantage that biases customers in favor of your incumbent. All else being equal, if your competitors have a brand advantage they will continue to outcompete you.
  • When there are a large number of incumbents and no one or two competitors that dominate. You certainly can’t dominate your market by following in the footsteps of other companies who don’t dominate either.
  • If the product or service you are selling is not sufficiently differentiated from competition. All else being equal, scientists will prefer to stick with what they know.
  • When the marketing practices of your competitors are misinformed or – for whatever reason – just not that good.

 

In these instances, you need to go beyond best practices. You have to choose which elements of your marketing program are of the greatest strategic importance and surpass competitors in order to gain advantage and capture market share. But how do you know what to focus on?

The answer should be rooted in two things: customer value, and differentiation. Differentiation is somewhat obvious – we can’t create advantage by doing the same thing as our competitors, so those things cannot be the focus unless you know you can do them substantially better and there would be some barrier to your competitors replicating your success. Unlocking customer value is often far more obscure of a goal. To do so, adopt a customer-centric viewpoint and consider what needs they have that lie beyond the realm of commercial products and services. Uncover needs that are related to your business and your offerings and align with your values, then create branded solutions which address them. (For more information on that topic, see this post.) Once you understand how you can create value for customers that goes beyond products, the possible natures of the delivery of that value will become relatively obvious. (More on value that isn’t intrinsically linked to your products here and here.)

Unless you have a vastly superior product or brand value, best practices can get you no further than your top competitors. To surpass them, become a market leader, and truly dominate your markets, you need to do things differently.

"Best practices only get you as far as your competition, and that’s neither our goal nor the goals of our clients. At BioBM, we strive to create leaders. We strive to transform markets. We strive to dominate competition. … What do you strive to do? Let’s make it happen."
Blog / Marketing Strategy 1:22 pm , September 11, 2014

New Marketing Strategy Paper

biobm 8:34 am , March 12, 2013

BioBM Consulting has released a new paper on life science marketing strategy, entitled “Marketing Strategy for Life Science Start-Ups: A practical guide to the most important and least understood things that founders and CEOs need to know to effectively generate demand.” This white paper discusses many elements of marketing strategy for life science start-ups or for existing companies developing new product lines or services, and provides a practical, do-it-yourself style focus on areas that are most commonly problematic for small life science companies.

This white paper is freely available to all those in the life science tools & services industry. To learn more about the new report, to preview it, or to request a copy, please visit: https://biobm.com/idea-farm/reports-papers/

News 8:34 am , March 12, 2013

Ads are Not Enough

Carlton Hoyt 8:01 am , September 19, 2012

Scientists may be getting overwhelmed with too much information, having effects on how they make purchasing decisionsMany of you reading this may be familiar with BioBM, but for those who are not: the best one or two phrase description of what we do would be “marketing for small life science tools companies“. That being the case, we run into a lot of problems that are more common to smaller companies or start ups. For example, one of the more common issues that we run into is an improper marketing focus. A product is developed, and the manufacturer rushes to pull the advertising trigger before sitting down and thinking about the message or the audience. They focus on the channel rather than content and on their product rather than the users. They confuse an advertising plan for a marketing strategy.

When a product launch is on the horizon, the first question that needs to be asked with regards to marketing is “How?” The answer cannot be some combination of in journal X, website Y, search engine Z, and by emailing a bunch of people who really don’t want you to email them. That’s not “how”, that’s “where”. More specifically, the question that needs to be asked is: “How will we be able to persuade scientists that our product provides a superior value than alternatives?” That is the most basic question that marketing needs to ask. From that perspective, the answer “by advertising in journal X” seems both insufficient and a bit silly.

An advertising plan is not a marketing strategy. Before any life science tools company thinks about channels, it needs to address that most fundamental marketing question and, with consideration of the product or service, its competition, the behavior of the target market, and many other factors, consider the messages and content that will need to be delivered. (Side note: the positioning should have been determined long before this point.) Only then can the company start to think about how their marketing content should me delivered and how to draw people to it.

"Are you a life science tools / services company that’s creating innovative, valuable products? If so, then we have a great synergy. BioBM Consulting takes products and services and help companies realize their value through strategic, powerful, and creative marketing. Want to see what we can do for you? Just contact us."
Blog / Marketing Communications / Marketing Strategy 8:01 am , September 19, 2012

Adapt to Your Customers

Carlton Hoyt 7:51 am , September 6, 2012

Adapt your life science marketing to the customers.It’s no secret that traditional approaches to life science marketing are becoming less effective. Customer behavior is changing, and returns on advertising dollars are being hit hard. A recent Harvard Business Review article reaffirmed this point, stating:

[…] buyers are no longer paying much attention. Several studies have confirmed that in the “buyer’s decision journey,” traditional marketing communications just aren’t relevant. Buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, and often from sources outside the firm such as word-of-mouth or customer reviews.

The days of trying to tell your customers what to buy and why they should buy it are long gone. Replacing that paradigm must be one that respects the scientists’ freedom in their quest for information. Life science marketers must position themselves within the customers buying paths, not try to dictate the paths themselves. We must let the scientists make their own purchasing decisions and act as a courier rather than a candidate. However, in order to be an effective courier, your brand must be trusted by the customers.

How does a brand go about building trust? By providing value. For the purposes of this discussion we can segregate value into two categories: product-related value and product-unrelated value. Note that by related we don’t mean “having anything to do with” but rather “intrinsically linked to”. In this sense, product related value is something that by definition requires affiliation with the product. Examples could include technical or customer support, benefits realized by use of the product itself, or any communication of those benefits. Product-unrelated value is anything that can be completely removed from the context of your product while having its value to the scientist undiminished.

Product related value is somewhat of a catch-22. Unless a scientist has used your product or heard good things through word of mouth, there’s not much you as a marketer can do to build solid product-related value prior to a customer’s interaction with your company (and it’s difficult to get a customer to interact with your company prior to the building value for them). That leaves product-unrelated value.

How can we, as marketers of life science tools, provide value to scientists outside of manufacturing and delivering valuable life science tools? The answer is simple (even if the execution isn’t): look outside your core business. You may be a manufacturer or a service provider, but you need to find ways to deliver unique value that don’t intrinsically depend on your product or service. The most common way of doing so is by providing information and expertise (either novel or curated).

One of my favorite examples of delivering product-unrelated value is, ironically, within a product catalog. However, I’ve found it to be one of the most common product catalogs in life science laboratories specifically because of the product-unrelated value within it. It is the New England Biolabs “Catalog & Technical Reference”. Many molecular biologists keep this catalog – a CATALOG! – close at hand because of its very useful technical reference section with, as they put it, “up-to-date technical charts, protocols and troubleshooting tips to aid experimental design.” That technical reference acts as the courier and delivers their products alongside it. It makes the molecular biologists decision simple: New England Biolabs knows their stuff – after all, look at all these useful protocols and troubleshooting guides – so it’s reasonable to presume that they make quality products.

The combination of a leadership brand position and a courier / decision simplicity marketing style, along with quality products to back it up, is an incredibly powerful combination. The creation of such a combination by life science marketers will allow them to capture market share and, ultimately, dominate their segment.

"Finding ways to create and deliver product-unrelated value in order to build trust and brand leadership can be a very difficult task. Luckily, you have the experts at BioBM here to help you. Our life science marketing consultants help define truly unique strategies that deliver value in ways that differentiate you from your competition. Looking to take the next step in building your business? Talk to us. We’ll explain our process, learn about your situation, and guide you towards increasing market share."
Blog / Branding / Content Marketing / Demand Generation 7:51 am , September 6, 2012

End of Solution Sales

Carlton Hoyt 2:07 pm , July 16, 2012

In our Marketing of Life Science Tools and Services group on LinkedIn, we recently discussed an article in the Harvard Business Review on “The End of Solution Sales.” While this is an excellent article and I suggest reading it, we’ll focus on one key finding: that “[…] customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision — researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on — before even having a conversation with a supplier.” This is just the beginning, but it does highlight something of key importance for marketing that is not discussed in the article.

If 60% of the purchasing decision is concluded before interaction with sales, marketing needs take responsibility (and claim the opportunity) for satisfying customers’ self-driven quests for information.

As the default behavior of B2B consumers is changing to include more self-fulfilled quests for information, life science marketers must make the necessary information to drive their target audience’s purchasing decisions available. The ability to predict the information that will be necessary, as well as the downstream ability to shape content to the audience’s measured behavior, is of increasingly critical importance. Marketing campaigns need to be able to respond dynamically to collected data on prospect behavior if the appropriate content is to be delivered at the appropriate time. A content roadmap becomes an even more critical component of generating demand. These factors collectively drive the importance of performing market research / marketing research, developing a clear marketing strategy, and planning a content-driven campaign.

If B2B purchasing decisions are 60% made by the time a conversation w/ supplier occurs, this places more of a responsibility on life science marketers to shape opinion before that first conversation. More planning is required, however such planning will have an increasingly positive effect on marketing ROI. Furthermore, we can conclude that marketing campaigns driven primarily by awareness-generation efforts will continue to decrease in effectiveness.

"Is your marketing strategy prepared to carry customers most of the way through their purchasing decision? If not, you’re losing out on sales – and chances are your losses are accelerating. When you’re ready to turn your marketing around and capture more demand, talk to BioBM. Our life science marketing consultants will help you analyze your markets, create concrete strategies and plans, and develop marketing campaigns that drive sales and profitability within your organization."
Blog / Demand Generation / Marketing Strategy 2:07 pm , July 16, 2012

Strategy Before Action

Carlton Hoyt 7:58 am , June 28, 2012

Life science strategyAt BioBM, we interact with a lot of start-ups. Most often these start-ups consist of a team of scientists and / or engineers, sometimes with little to no start-up experience on the team. Marketing experience is often lacking entirely. Because of this, we run into the same problem over and over – young, ambitious companies who, knowingly or not, wager their success by putting action before strategy.

Having a great product or service is the #1 factor in a young company’s success. You’ll never catch me saying otherwise. However, a great product alone isn’t sufficient to be successful. By rushing to market without thinking strategically about anything other than product development and prior to having strategy-backed plans in place for marketing, sales / distribution, support, and a multitude of other factors is, plain and simple, a bad idea. You are very unlikely to hit your target if you’re shooting blind, regardless of how big your gun is.

Furthermore, there is often an assumption among scientists that their experience in the field makes them sufficiently knowledgeable about the needs of the marketplace that little to no outside information is necessary. While experience being a member of a market certainly conveys some knowledge about the broader marketplace, and if you were to ask one person to explain a market in great detail it would naturally be someone within that market, it should never be assumed that this knowledge is sufficiently accurate. Start-ups should never rely solely on their own opinions and views for the same reason that you would never want to do a market research study with only a small handful of individuals. Opinions and perceptions vary. Just like anyone else, scientists are perfectly capable of being biased by their own opinions. As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Companies would be far better served by doing their homework. The time and resources required to properly strategize and plan should be incorporated into the estimates of start-up costs (not to mention the costs of initial marketing campaigns, which are again frequently underestimated or overlooked by individuals with little or no functional expertise in marketing) and resourced appropriately. The product(s) may be the heart of your company, but a heart alone doesn’t sustain life. If you want to ensure that you’ll be successful, make sure you have all the other pieces in place before you rush to market.

"Are you a young company developing a life science tool or service? Maximize your chances of success by working with the right experts from the beginning. Call BioBM Consulting before you have a market-ready product. Our life science strategy experts will ensure that when your product is market-ready, so are the rest of your capabilities. You develop great products, now let BioBM develop you a great company."
Blog / Marketing Strategy 7:58 am , June 28, 2012

Distributors: Not for Marketing

Carlton Hoyt 10:08 am , June 21, 2012

Life science tools manufacturers should retain control over demand generation rather than leave it to distributors.Many life science tools manufacturers, especially smaller companies, have a tendency to push a lot of marketing responsibility on to their distributors. In most such cases, the manufacturer often retains some broad marketing responsibilities which are usually focused on branding or awareness (for example, advertising in scientific journals or websites) and leaves their distributors responsible for most or all aspects of lead generation and nurturing. Allow me to take a very clear stance: this is a massive mistake – one that costs life science tools companies and their distributors incredible amounts of lost potential product demand (and, in turn, revenue).

Your distributors strong point is not marketing your products. It’s selling your products. It doesn’t matter who your distributors are – they are salesmen first and marketers second. There is a very good reason for this.

Creating and distributing individual marketing communications is relatively cheap. Developing a highly effective content-oriented marketing strategy, framing the campaign architecture, then building and deploying such a campaign is a very laborious process that can require a very significant time commitment by highly skilled marketers. A distributor, with maybe dozens or hundreds of product lines, can not realistically be expected to take on that burden. Additionally, distributors’ internal competencies often strongly favor sales to marketing, and many smaller distributors lack sufficient in-house marketing skill to perform deep analyses on products (and, perhaps, markets) that are novel to them. As distribution contracts may be tenuous and temporary, distributors are rightfully hesitant to devote such resources to marketing.

Life science tools manufacturers would be far better served by creating holistic marketing strategies that map out how to take prospective customers through lead generation to the point of sale, defining what will be performed by themselves and what will be handed off to the distributor (if any). If the distributors will be responsible for any aspects of marketing, there should be a high degree of collaboration to ensure that the marketing efforts are synergistic and build a single, coherent campaign rather than a set of discreet, loosely-related components. In other words, it is acceptable for your distributors to execute parts of your marketing campaign, and indeed they may have marketing resources which can help manufacturers generate demand beyond what the manufacturers could generate on their own, but they should not be left to design the campaigns or key marketing messages.

While salesmen are certainly capable of generating leads, marketing is a much more efficient and effective tool for this purpose. Because life science tools manufacturers often leave lead generation to their distributors, who are heavily sales-oriented and almost always have a very limited incentive to invest heavily in marketing for any single product line, a lot of potential demand is never realized and both manufacturers and distributors suffer from sub-par sales.

"If you are looking to get better performance from your distributors, sometimes the best place to look is inside your own company. BioBM Consulting offers life science marketing services that enable companies to generate demand across all geographies. We also offer distribution partnering and distribution management services that ensure your company’s distributors are committed to your shared success."
Blog / Distribution / Marketing Strategy 10:08 am , June 21, 2012