The life science marketing predictions and trends for the year ahead.

As 2019 nears its end, it’s always a good idea to look ahead to what the following year in 2020 might bring. If you’re looking for ideas for your next marketing plan, this post will present some of the marketing trends that will take shape specific to the life science sectors.

Each year the marketing landscape shifts. New technologies are introduced and with those technologies and platforms come new tactics and approaches. New marketing trends are emerging all the time in the life sciences and it’s sometimes hard to keep on track.

Keeping on track, however, is essential to remain relevant. To remain competitive. From print advertising to creating personalised experiences to creating content, conducting relevant experiences to your target audiences is a must to strengthen relationships and the success of those marketing campaigns.

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8 LIFE SCIENCE MARKETING TRENDS

Here are eight life science marketing trends, methods and tactics to help you form your marketing efforts for the year ahead.

1. PERSONALISATION

There is a gap for personalisation in the life science sectors. In big pharma, patients are always asking Google to find out what is wrong with them by looking for answers to symptoms and there is no better opportunity for web personalisation through websites to get to know these patients. Getting to know web visitors need not be limited to the B2C sectors and is a trend across the board.

Yes, it’s sometimes difficult to make life science and pharmaceuticals exciting and interesting - but the audience knows this already. So making the content personal to the receiver instead of exciting will make the information captivating and compelling. The best way to know your audience is to identify them via the appropriate tracking software and technology platform, and then asking them questions. (The Drum state that the global digital marketing software industry is set to reach $74.96bn by 2022 showing the importance of such technology.) Surveys are a good way to get your audience engaged and can end up supplying you with some useful data that will allow you to be relevant to patients and clients.

2. CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING INTERFACES

Relationships are important in the life science sector. Having strong relationships with your patients will help them to trust you. Conversational marketing is a great trend to adopt if you want to develop the relationships you have and foster new ones. This is all about being available when you are needed which is something you should be doing. The life sciences sector has some of the smartest people in the world so you should utilise this to help in your marketing efforts.

Gartner suggests that organisations should partner with customer experience experts to learn if this type of technology can alleviate consumer frustrations and create better customer interactions, with conversational marketing being a key driver.

Chatbots and social media are two ways that you can become more conversational and interactive with your audience. (For some examples see our post featuring Conversational Marketing Interfaces for Healthcare.)

As we’ve previously stated, the pharmaceutical and life science sectors have always been a little behind when it comes to new marketing approaches, but conversational marketing is a trend to get behind. It makes audiences feel connected and engaged with organisations on a personal level which we are striving to achieve with all of our marketing efforts.

3. INTERACTIVE CONTENT FORMATS

Interactive content is a good place to start if the goal for 2020 is to do something a little different with your campaigns. This sort of content is appealing because it makes it easier to attract and educate potential customers, it gives people a reason to stay involved and interested, which can translate into shareable content.

Interactive videos keep visitors engaged when there are lots of content to be delivered - the element of interactivity gives them something to do instead of dropping off the page or the website like they might normally. Social media is where this technique exploded with the use of interactive quizzes and social media channels are a good place to use interactive content because the platform itself is visual.

Interactive e-books are useful for the life science industry because it allows you to offer your customers lots of information that they can interact with. Just be sure their format includes interactive elements, and not just a word document. In a similar manner, e-blasts are still wider used in the life sciences to deliver content; be sure to check that they are not just plain emails and that they grab attention.

Video is a growing trend regarding inbound. Life science organisations don’t seem to have jumped on this in numbers just yet, but they should. People have said that video is the type of content they want to see to accompany (and counter) textual content with visual elements. Video can be a great way to do interviews, use animation or rather than a blog try creating a vlog, so your viewers have something to watch.

4. INBOUND MARKETING BEING ADOPTED MORE

Inbound marketing is a good method for attracting and engaging with your customers. It is not a quick process, but the results are worth the input. The trends all point towards a customer who does not want to be sold to and would rather consume content in his or her own time.

Content creation and distribution is a key element of inbound. Content can take time to create, especially in this industry because there are many sign-off stages that it needs to go through before it can be used. (See our post on Life Science Content Challenges for more.) But don’t be put off - content will work for your organisations over and over.

It has always been known that Google uses keywords to rank pages but that has recently changed Google now favours a different type of ranking system called clusters. Publishing blogs is a good way to get yourself in the game. Writing a series of blog posts around a key topic will mean you’re creating a cluster which will make Google aware that you are an expert in that topic, so they begin listing your content at the top of the page.

5. WORKING CLOSER WITH MEDIA/INFLUENCERS

Marketing Drive state that 86% of marketers reported using influencer marketing back in 2017. In the life science sector, people care about experiences and this is how people decide if they are going to do business with an organisation. In many B2C sectors, organisations use influencers to promote their products and offer discounts because audiences trust these celebrities. Life science organisations can do the same by using trusted and well-known industry influences to help promote their products: A growing trend across the entire marketing landscape.

Organisations and brands can use influencers to share their stories. They might not even need to be famous in that respect. In big pharma, for example, following the story of someone who is using medication for diabetes, while they share positive stories about their experiences. Word of mouth is also quite prevalent in the life sciences, where people’s opinions get others interested. So getting influencers to share positive experiences they have had with your drugs or your services or your content will increase the trust people have in your brand.

6. AGENCIES BECOME PART OF THE TEAM, RATHER THAN JUST SUPPLIERS

Agencies are there to help and take away the stress to lighten your workload. Even if we do say so ourselves! Agencies are here to form relationships with organisations to deliver on the marketing activities and objectives agreed upon, usually set out by the organisation. Organisations are looking for stronger relationships with agencies and the trends appear to suggest that organisations are either building more in-house teams or are adopting agencies as part of the actual marketing team.

Agencies want to help you promote your business and generate more customers and can help you have a higher success rate with your campaigns, where the legwork is mostly taken away from the client. (See our post on the Benefits of Working with a Specialist Marketing Agency for more.)

Using an agency means you get a fresh perspective on your marketing plan, sometimes after looking at something for so long you don’t see the flaws and you can’t see a way to make it any better. With organisations already working with organisations, it makes total sense to use the agency more efficiently and incorporating it within the team.

7. MARKETING KPIS NEED TO BE MORE MEANINGFUL

KPIs are important for any marketing effort because they define how your campaigns are performing. But it is often the case that KPIs and metrics that do not provide any meaningful insight are tracked and reported upon. Meaningful KPIs - which are relevant to your marketing strategy and plan - are much more beneficial than the average generic KPI.

The dangers of having KPIs that haven’t been well thought through can be that they get ignored completely because people just don’t see them as relevant. Your measures need to match the strategy you have otherwise there’s really no point in them.

First, ensure that your objectives follow the SMART format and then determine the KPIs that you need to monitor and which will offer the best perspective on whether the marketing activity is on track. Rather than track the number of leads generated, is it more appropriate to track the number of sales meetings confirmed? Or, rather than track the number of pageviews/sessions, is it more appropriate to track the number of web visits per lead? Such a trend is now becoming more prevalent as marketers are looking to better understand their audiences.

8. ENSURE YOUR PLAN INCLUDES A MULTI-CHANNEL MIX

The life science sector, especially the B2B sectors we work within for our clients, organisations will need to include both print and digital tactics within the marketing mix. The trends in this respect are as follows: Life science professionals use both digital and print publications to attain information and knowledge about the industry.

Online resources are becoming more and more prominent as the industry is exposed to digital platforms meaning that digital should now account for at least 50% of the budget, where previously this would have been much lower. But print also has its place firmly within the marketing plan. See this article on print vs digital for more on the relationship between both channels.

KEEPING ON TREND

Adopting these trends, and keeping an eye on similar trends throughout the year ahead, will help improve your current marketing activities as well as introduce new ones. Don’t fall behind the crowd as these marketing trends will help keep you one step ahead of the competition.

It is important to have a review during intervals, and what better time to do it going into 2020 and putting together your marketing plan. Go through your marketing activities and determine if they are still needed - did they produce the results last time around? It is possible that some of them may well be out of date and in need of updating? Take these life science marketing trends into consideration for next year’s marketing plan and beyond.