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Tag : product-unrelated value

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

Content Is Not Enough

Carlton Hoyt 11:51 am , April 23, 2014

Photograph by Michael Nichols for National GeographicVery few things are immune to the law of diminishing returns. Content marketing is certainly not one of them. As content marketing has surged in the life sciences over the past few years, we’ve seen a very predictable trend: it’s become less effective. Customers are swarmed with efforts to grab their attention with low-value, shallow content. Given their inherently limited time, they can only be the “customer” of so much content. As with anything, if you have increasing demands for a limited resource (in this case, the customers’ attention) the cost goes up.

That’s exactly what we see happening with content marketing. The cost of getting your target market’s attention is increasing. It requires richer, denser, higher-value content. As the cost of scientists’ attention continues to increase, we are coming to a point where content, as it is traditionally defined, is no longer enough.

Content itself is not enough. Even relatively high-value content.

As the ever-growing tidal wave of content amasses and the demand for scientists’ attention increases, companies must begin to look for new, unique ways of creating value. After all, the purpose of content is not simply to be read, but to demonstrate or provide value in a manner which is untethered to the actual usage of a product or service (we call this “product-unrelated value“). Companies must move from delivering solely content to creating and delivering resources.

So what’s the difference between content and resources? Theoretically, content can certainly be viewed as a resource and in many cases resources may take the form of content in one way or another. They are both broad terms and they do overlap, so it’s important to distinguish between the concepts. The key difference is that content can address any question. Resources specifically ask: what are the needs of our target audience and how can we address them in a way that creates value for our brand? In doing so, they circumvent the problem of limited attention by addressing customer needs that would need to be dealt with anyway.

One of our favorite examples is the numerous protocols found in the New England Biolabs catalog. We’ve heard this valuable, long-standing resource referred to as the “molecular biology bible” and it has led to a steady stream of requests for their catalog for many years. This would be an example of a resource in the form of content, but there could be many resources which are not content. For example, digital tools can be resources. Andrew Alliance, a manufacturer of an automated pipetting robot, provides free software which easily creates pipetting protocols which can be readily edited, saved, shared, and viewed in order to help reduce errors in both protocol design and actual pipetting. This provides product-unrelated value (it doesn’t require any purchase or use of an Andrew robot) in a way that is still relevant to them (pipetting / liquid handling). There are certainly other examples as well, but not all that many. Life science companies have, as a whole, not yet become creative with regards to the resources that they provide to scientists.

As more companies become content developers and more content competes for scientists’ limited time and attention, the standards for content become much higher. While high-value content can still be very effective, a shift in thinking is required for companies to provide high-value resources which circumvent the problem of limited attention. The companies which successfully do so will be greatly rewarded in brand value.

"Stuck in the old paradigms of content, where white papers, blog posts, social media, and other “traditional” content forms dominate? If you’re looking to break free in order to stand out from the noise and generate lasting brand value, contact BioBM. Our life science content marketing expertise goes beyond traditions and tired paradigms, to more creative approaches for resource development which will act as longstanding value-added assets for your brand by being powerful creators of value for your audiences."
Blog / Content Marketing 11:51 am , April 23, 2014

Product-Unrelated Value

Carlton Hoyt 11:35 am , October 9, 2012

At BioBM, we often advocate that companies find ways to create what we call “product-unrelated value” (we first discussed it publicly in a blog post last month). Note that when we say product-unrelated, we don’t mean “has nothing to do with your product” but rather “is not intrinsically linked to your product”. Product-unrelated value should still be something that is relevant to your products, services, or market, but the delivery of value to the customer, as well as the realization of value by the customer, should be completely independent of purchase or use of your products. Product-unrelated value can build trust and strengthen your brand without requiring the user to have participated in the purchasing cycle. Still, many companies scoff at the notion of spending resources to develop value that isn’t intrinsically linked to a product.

It’s good to know that some of the top thinkers agree with our philosophy, though.

Bill Lee, the president of the Customer Reference Forum, Executive Director of the Summit on Customer Engagement, and frequent contributor to the HBR blog network, recently wrote: “It’s always a good idea to look for new ways to create value for customers. But focusing only on doing so through your product or service is entirely one-dimensional. The hard reality is that your product or service, however great it is — however much it helps your customers get a job done or provide an enjoyable experience — is likely just not that important to their lives in the grand scheme of things.”

Companies exist because they are able to provide value to their customers. Companies that cannot do so cease to exist. Life science tools companies, and indeed companies across all industries and sectors, need to realize that they need to focus on creating value for customers in more ways than just through their products. Those that argue that product-unrelated value doesn’t help their bottom line are being shortsighted. Product-unrelated value builds the critical trust and brand value that allows a company and a brand to succeed in the long-term. This is especially true with a highly skeptical audience such as scientists.

"Is the value that your company provides effectively building your brand and growing your market share? If not, it’s time to contact BioBM. We’ll help you determine what can be done to improve your brand and fuel demand for your products."
Blog / Branding / Content Marketing / Demand Generation 11:35 am , October 9, 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