How to Build an Audience in B2B Pharma
In this post, we’ll detail the steps required to build an audience of B2B pharma professionals.
An audience, as stated by The Startup, is made of people that: Read your stuff once, but then later consciously return to read your content, actively seek to consume new content from you and usually sign up to get content from you in any ‘push’ mechanism.
As an agency, we spend most of our time helping clients build their audiences. As we have crossed our 5th-year anniversary in operation, we’ve also developed an idea of how to do that with the most effect. We will share our process in this post via ten steps which you can follow.
Subscribe for marketing insights via email
HOW TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE IN B2B PHARMA
10 steps to ensure you are building your audience of B2B pharma professionals in a way that will foster success from the content campaigns.
1. DEFINE THE AUDIENCE FROM THE OUTSET
Before setting out to actually building your audience, it’s imperative that you know the audience you want to attract, as well as the audience which you currently have for your current content. Understanding who we’re trying to bring to the content and campaigns which we will create will determine the content and campaigns themselves, using current content/audiences as a guide.
This early work consists of identifying the market segment(s) which you are looking to target as your customer base, as well as creating a buyer persona(s) for the individual job titles/roles within the organisations which you will aim to reach. In the B2B pharma and related industries, due to its complexities, it's more important than ever to segment audiences to create stronger marketing campaigns to see results - in this case, a growing audience.
2. ASSIGN A BUDGET TO THE AUDIENCE-BUILDING PROGRAMME
Once you have identified the target audience, it’s then worth understanding how much budget you have at your disposal to craft the content-based campaign to build the audience. Knowing how much budget you can assign to the campaign early on will mean that you can effectively allocate spend to all of the areas of the campaign from the outset. Doing this ensures that you can develop a holistic view of the campaign, and where each budget is assigned, to gauge whether there are any shortcomings before any work has started.
3. REGULARLY PUBLISH CONTENT WITHIN A SERIES (IN THE SAME FORMAT CONSISTENTLY)
Commit to creating content and deliver it to a schedule. Every publisher and creator of content will know that one of the sure-fire methods of building an audience is to post topical content consistently. Doing so will motivate your audience to come back again to read, watch or listen to similar content. Creating such programmes, often within a series, is the most important element for building audiences; without it, your audience has nothing to engage with and come back to engage with again. Two (or three) pieces of linked content always helps bring readers back also.
This is often a major hurdle for B2B organisations, especially after the content programme has started where the organisation always has a deadline for content looming. Ensure you have a structured content production programme that can consistently deliver the content you require to reach your audience, at regular fixed intervals. Keeping the format the same - the content type as well as the structure - will provide your audience with content they feel comfortable with, which they can also anticipate and subscribe to.
4. IN ADDITION, REPURPOSE CONTENT AND VARY TACTICS TO ATTRACT NEW AUDIENCE MEMBERS
If podcasts are your main form of content, prioritise the creation of future podcasts on a regular basis - publish them on the same day each week/month if possible. Should you have additional resource to repurpose the podcast episodes into additional formats, you could build your audience even further via other channels and tactics.
A 30-minute podcast will likely have enough content to serve four new thought leadership articles on your blog, all of which can be shared on your social channels etc. If you see these thought leadership articles building up, you could take 8 of them - where the topics complement each other - and create a downloadable e-book to promote via LinkedIn or a specific publisher in the pharma space. Whitepapers are huge investments for any organisation, not only in pharma, so why not review the paper and pinpoint all of the various content pieces you can source from it to use elsewhere? Rest assured, this isn’t a case of old pills in new bottles.
5. CREATE A SPECIFIC CHANNEL FOR THE CONTENT
Your favourite TV series might be available on Netflix, just like your favourite podcast series might be available on Spotify. Each time you want to watch/listen, you know exactly where to go. B2B pharma content also requires a specific channel that features the core content so that your audience knows exactly where to find your content and future content.
YouTube, for example, will allow subscriptions to channels which will send emails to subscribers of new videos without the user having to configure. Since B2B pharma organisation might create text-based content, it is more often than not that the content will sit on the company website, or a campaign website designed specifically for that content such it need to sit separately (with its own identity). Building a home for the content is essential if you want to keep users coming back for more.
6. CREATE A SUB-BRAND FOR THE CHANNEL/CONTENT SERIES
Branding is predominantly about trust. For audiences to trust your content and channel, the message must be consistent… which leads to branding and the potential of a sub-brand to help build the audience. By creating a sub-brand for your content series or programme, you are establishing a common identity that can help integrate everything associated with the content. A sub-brand, with its own identity, look and feel and tone may be the breath of fresh air your content needs to boost audience numbers. Whilst this may not always be necessary, or even possible, it’s worthy of consideration as they have been successful throughout many other sectors.
7. ALLOW MULTIPLE SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS VIA EMAIL
If your organisation produces a range of content and topics, allow your users to choose specifically what content they would like to receive via email. If you can, also give them an option on email frequency, which will be considered B2B email marketing best practice in pharma. By doing this, you may limit the number of future emails sent, but the number of people signing up will increase because the subscriber is able to pick a topic that is relevant for their particular needs and avoid unnecessary ones.
What do your website visitors and prospects want that you can offer? Apart from sending regular content, include an incentive for subscribers that is emailed to them upon sign-up such as partner discounts or competition entries or exclusive content. Your email list is a big part of your audience and it is particularly important as you know exactly who they are by name. Where possible, get the consent of the audience you are looking to reach and gain, or at a minimum, approach your audiences in a non-intrusive way.
Pharma organisations that conduct email marketing should let segmentation practices drive those campaigns. Email contacts, once subscribed, can be segmented to enable targeted and timely campaigns so that the chances of the audiences doing what you want them to do are higher.
8. INVITE GUEST CONTRIBUTORS AND ENSURE PROMOTION VIA THIRD-PARTIES
Guest contributions and collaborations are highly common (as well as highly valuable) in B2B pharma. Gaining multiple perspectives on a topic or problem can help the audience members form their own conclusions and solutions. Guest posting is an effective method of content creation where a brand will receive content to publish from an external contributor who will request something in return, usually a link to a website or a mention of their product/service. It’s a win-win for both parties, and it also demonstrates real authority on the subject and the organisation’s credibility within the industry - a helping hand when looking to draw professional visitors to something.
Similar benefits are also realised by curating or syndicating (with permission) others’ content and should also be considered within am audience-building campaign. In addition, including third parties within the content creation process often means that the third party will promote on their own channels, build your audience for you in the process. Also, be sure to promote your content and channel via paid programmes offered by third-party vendors - you will see your audience quickly develop in this way. We work with hundreds of vendors in this area and would highly recommend doing so if would like to see immediate results.
9. PROMOTE VIA OWNED CHANNELS (AND USE FORMS/LANDING PAGES)
You may have audiences to your website’s content without even knowing it (apart what shows up in Google Analytics). Although this is fine (even desirable) it is in your best interests to know who those people are visiting your website and reading your content. This is where forms and landing pages become useful: They capture website visitors so you can attribute an audience member by name and email, who can be contacted in future (via a marketing automation system) where new content is delivered to keep that audience member coming back for more content. Anonymous visitors are fine, but known visitors are the goal when building a B2B audience.
10. SET UP A MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM TO MANAGE THE AUDIENCE
At the very least, a CRM/Marketing Automation software is required to effectively build and manage your audiences. Then, depending on the specific activities and tactics, a wide range of other software, once fully integrated, can supercharge the way pharma organisations attract, connect and convert its audiences further down the line. But this system does need to be set up from the offset and considered within the budget.
Marketing automation (or inbound marketing) platforms have become increasingly popular in the last five or so years, with their ability to help marketing departments effectively market on multiple channels online and automate repetitive tasks such as delivering new content episodes to the audience you are building. Key features include the ability to generate leads via forms and landing pages, communicate with those prospects via automated email marketing campaigns and then report on the status of those prospects within the CRM. Popular marketing automation technologies include HubSpot, Marketo and SharpSpring.
BUILDING AUDIENCES: A FINAL THOUGHT
Building a B2B audience in pharma is often an end product of the marketing plan. As a tactic, it’s now highly common. Especially since COVID-19 has restricted pharma organisations to digital-only touchpoints with their audiences, and this adds to the already challenging environment a B2B pharma marketer finds himself or herself in when a programme is defined by the content it produces.
Audiences can be built via programmes that include webinars, social media, blogging, third-party vendors… there is a range of content marketing options in pharma but not all will be relevant to hit your audience sweet spot. Consideration for the ten points in this post will ensure you begin your audience-building campaign on the right foot.
For more on strategic digital marketing approaches in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help you, visit our section on web.
