Breaking Down A Successful Biotech Digital Marketing Strategy
Biotechnology is the field of science involving the use of living organisms – or their products – to create or modify products and processes for a wide range of scientific applications. From pharmaceuticals to agriculture to environmental conservation, biotech plays a crucial role in today’s modern society.
Digital marketing, on the other hand, is the process of using digital technologies to promote and sell products or services. With the rise of the internet and social media over the last couple of decades, digital marketing has become an essential part of business strategy for companies across all industries, with biotech being no different.
By understanding their target audience and utilising the right platforms and channels, biotech companies can capitalise on digital marketing to effectively promote their products and services and drive sales through digital marketing.
In this article, I am going to take a run through of the different elements that any biotech company should consider if they want to implement a successful digital marketing strategy.
Understanding Your Target Market
Identifying the target audience and customers is the essential first step for biotech companies looking to implement a successful digital marketing strategy.
The best way to identify the target audience(s) is to consider the specific needs and preferences of different groups of people. It is likely that if you already have a functioning company, then this is already clear and understood.
But for startup companies, this can take some significant work to research and understand fully.
In addition to identifying the target audience(s), it’s also important for biotech companies to understand your target customers’ behaviour and decision-making processes. This includes considering factors such as their budget, their preferred channels for receiving information, and their level of knowledge about the products or services being offered.
Choose The Most Suitable Platforms And Channels
Following on from the last point in the previous section, the next step is to think about the most appropriate digital marketing platforms and channels for reaching these groups.
With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to determine which ones will be most effective for a given business, but understanding the preferences and behaviours of your target audience is a good place to start. In addition to considering the target audience, you should also think about your own resources, capabilities and budgets when selecting platforms and channels.
For instance, if you have a small marketing budget, you may want to focus on free or low-cost platforms like SEO, social media or email marketing, but if you have larger budget with more resources, you may want to consider investing in paid advertising on platforms like Google Ads.
By selecting the right platforms and channels – and how you use them successfully in combination – moving on to the process for creating your marketing content biotech companies can begin.
Content Creation And Distribution
To start marketing on the channels and platforms that you have selected, creating relevant content and then distributing it is imperative.
Using your target customer and audience information you identified in the first step, the next step is to think about how you can create content that resonates best.
There are a few factors to think about here.
- What stage of the marketing funnel do you want to target?
- What content topics, and format do you want to create?
- How can you reuse content for multiple customers and platforms?
This process should help you identify the information and resources needed to put your content production and distribution into action.
If you have internal resources, asking your team to map out a long term strategy and publication schedule will help you predict the future performance of your content plan. But it can also help determine any time, skill or resource shortages that are likely to impede success.
Whilst an ad-hoc content production plan my result with initial success, scaling this process to meet demanding lead generation or sales targets will be much harder to action.
Which leads me nicely onto my next point.
Understand The Lead Generation & Conversion Process
Lead generation refers to the process of attracting and capturing the interest of potential customers, while conversion refers to the process of turning those leads into paying customers.
As you probably guess, lead generation and conversion is highly dependant on your content production, and the two are often considered together. So when creating content, you need to consider it purpose, or purposes.
If you are trying to generate leads via a biotech SEO strategy, have you considered keywords and how you will optimise for them?
If you are going to be active on social media, how can you create compelling short form content with catchy titles to grab readers attention?
What about paid advertising? Well you’re still going to need content in the form of any ad graphics and copy.
Once leads have been generated, it is important to focus on converting those leads into paying customers. Lead nurturing involves building a relationship with leads over time and guiding them through the sales funnel, from prospect, to lead, to customer – and anything in between.
Of course, you can still use some of the content types mentioned above, but you may want to consider other digital marketing methods, such as email marketing, retargeting, and lead nurturing.
Email marketing involves sending targeted, personalised emails to leads with the goal of converting them into paying customers.
Ad retargeting involves showing ads to leads who have previously visited your company’s website but did not make a purchase.
But how do you know what does and doesn’t work, or what the best value for money is?
Tracking & Analysis Your Prospects, Leads & Sales
Determining how well you implement all of the above points into your biotech digital marketing strategy should be assessed by proper tracking and analysis.
And do remember, that there are many variables that can determine success or not, and often these are out of your hands – remember the global pandemic?
But by both tracking and analysing key performance metrics, you are able to generate valuable insights into your marketing efforts, which is useful for both reporting to upper management, and allowing your team to determine what is working, and what is not. Ongoing, scheduled analysis is important, and highly recommended, as it can help you make informed decisions about how to allocate your marketing budget and resources, to maximise your return on investment (ROI).
It’s probably best you set up a scheduled time to review your data, rather than leaving it until it’s requested!
To get started, it is important that you consider the right tools for your goals, and to implement them as soon as you launch one or more campaigns.
You should be considering the standard web analytics tools as a minimum – such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, social media analytics, etc. There as also numerous analytics tools that can also help; CRMs such as Hubspot or SharpSpring, web analytics tools including Ahrefs and SEMrush, email platforms or even click tracking software.
But finding ways that can turn this plethora of information into key data and insights is often one step that many marketing companies fail to consider.
Setting up custom dashboards that can be integrated and automated with your desired platforms, is something I also highly recommend to track and analyse key metrics.
After all, who doesn’t want valuable insights into their current marketing efforts to dictate their future strategies?
Conclusion
A proper and well thought out digital marketing strategy can be a powerful tool for building trust, credibility, and relationships with potential customers in the biotech industry.
The points raised in this blog only scratch the surface of what is possible when considering and building out a strategy. By following the best practices outlined in this guide, you can should be able to effectively create a digital marketing strategy that can kick start your online marketing efforts.
But if you would like more help, advice, or see how I can help you succeed with your digital marketing strategy, please get in contact so we can discuss your challenges and goals in more detail!
