12 New Year's Resolutions (For Science Marketers)

3 Jan

Your marketing tasks (new year’s resolutions) to kick-start 2020 with real focus.

We’re now back in our posts… back from the Christmas break.

I hope you had a wonderful time with your friends and family during the festive period. But it’s now time to leave the celebrations behind and focus on the marketing tasks for the year ahead.

It’s likely you have already prepared your marketing plan or began thinking about what you plan to do in terms of campaigns for 2020. At least for the first six months. But before going full steam ahead, take a moment to review your plan, position, tasks and even mindset.

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Having taken a break for a short period, a pause to reflect and review may be the best decision you’ll make for the health of your marketing plan and the activities involved. And we’ll make it easy for you. We have 12 points to get through that will get you in the right place for the year in no time.

But before you review your marketing tasks, be sure to sign up for more insights.

Once that’s done, let’s focus on 2020.

Treat this post as a reminder to ensure you have all the necessary marketing elements ticked off. If you feel you are lacking in a particular area, we’ll provide further reading/resource for you to complete the task.

Good luck.

1. CREATE YOUR BUYER PERSONA(S)

In the pharmaceutical and related industries, due to its complexities, it's more important than ever to segment audiences to create stronger marketing campaigns. A buyer persona is a research-based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas ensure that all marketing activities are aligned and striving towards the same goals. Our free, customisable buyer persona e-book will let you easily organise your research to create your buyer personas. Do not underestimate this exercise as it underpins your entire marketing plan.

Resource: Templates to Create Your Own Buyer Personas

2. MAP YOUR CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS

On a broad level, the buyer’s journey accommodates for the stages that the generic buyer of any product goes through regardless of industry, from initial awareness to consideration to a decision-making stage. Identifying a typical customer journey within a typical B2B pharma organisation, however, can be difficult. Review your customer touchpoints, from when a prospect first becomes aware of your organisation and your products/services through to the interactions during the period before becoming a customer. If you are aware of the specific touchpoints, as well as the frame of mind during these touchpoints, you can cater your messages to the relevant channels to increase effectiveness.

3. REVIEW YOUR MARKETING PLAN FOR ANY WEAKNESSES

The pharmaceutical marketing plan includes the budgets, channels and the ideas which will take the pharmaceutical organisation, and its products and services, forward in the current landscape. But do you think your plan could be better and could be driven by insight? Do you think the plan has been put together hurriedly and has key sections missing? Or, do you think it can be improved with better structure and direction? Often, our activities are determined by what we’ve always done in the past without knowing if what we are doing is making a difference, where dated assumptions affect the work we carry out. Again, we could be more effective by doing things more strategically with some planning. Review your plan before you implement it this year.

Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template
Related post: Pharmaceutical Marketing Plan Process

4. REVIEW YOUR TECHNOLOGY STACK

As you review your marketing plan, it’s only natural to review your marketing-technology stack - the systems and platforms you use to talk to your audience and complete your marketing tasks. Behind your personalised emails, downloadable content and location-enabled media are usually a suite of interchanging, complex technologies. But there might also be some essential technologies missing from your current stack which could greatly benefit your marketing campaigns. Review the technologies within your stack and assess whether a key component is missing which could help you plan for the year ahead.

(In November, we embarked on a similar project whereby we integrated our new Marketing Automation system with the CRM, which so far is proving to be invaluable when it comes to customer intelligence.)

5. FOCUS ON A LIMITED NUMBER OF TACTICS

Trying to do everything will never generate results. As you attempt to use every marketing platform and channel and speak to every target segment, you end up doing nothing of any real value. For the same reasons we create buyer personas to hone in on our target audiences, we also focus our efforts on a small number of marketing tactics (tactics that support one and other) so we can fully get the most out of those tactics, staying consistent in the eyes of the prospect. Review your tactics - are you trying to do too much?

6. SPEND MORE TIME CREATING CONTENT

Content is forever being consumed; content is what the internet is all about. Without content, there is no internet in today's capacity. Perhaps content isn’t king anymore in the same way it was 10-15 years ago but without content – ranging from websites to voice search results – conversations won’t happen to the extent they are now. Marketing plans for life science organisations, regardless of what those organisations produce or promote, will always include elements of content. Spend more time on creating content and more time again on ensuring that the content you create is of the highest of quality. You will soon see the benefits.

Related post: The 7 Principles of Pharma Content
Related post: Life Science Content Challenges

7. CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH AN AGENCY

As we cross the halfway point on this checklist of marketing tasks to begin the new year, are you beginning to see that your essential tasks (and future tasks) are going to take too much time to achieve and can’t be delivered by you and your team alone? If so, you may need help. It’s an age-old conundrum: Do you scale up your in-house marketing and communications team or do you partner with a specialist marketing agency to achieve your objectives? There are benefits on both sides of the argument. Either way, there is a process to come to the correct decision and it may be a process for which you will need to undertake this year.

8. ADOPT INBOUND MARKETING

Inbound marketing, in the sense of creating content to educate a target audience on a given topic, is highly relevant for most marketers. Because educating prospects instead of hard-selling will always paint the seller/organisation in a more positive light. Especially in the scientific and technical industries we operate within. Our target audiences are used to conducting independent research and staying updated on key topics. They are also sceptical by nature and find questioning hypothesis (collaborating and taking part in discussions) part of everyday life of being a science professional. If you are not utilising inbound marketing, now is the time to begin.

Resource: Free Inbound Marketing Checklist

9. DO MORE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Navigating the marketing landscape can be difficult. If it’s not gridlocked, it's full of roadblocks with an abundant of routes to a given destination. This is certainly the case when it comes to digital - and marketing in general - in 2020. Therefore, we much keep in touch with new approaches, consider all of our options and use all the information available to us to make informed decisions. Always staying fresh; always generating new ideas. Keep in touch with your personal and professional development this year by consuming more blog posts, reading more books and attending/learning more from conferences.

10. BE ETHICAL

The pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive. In competitive environments, marketing becomes a critical component of the organisation. This has created a competitive problem where organisations - and therefore marketing departments - will chase profits over ethics. In heavily regulated industries sanctions follow. For organisations working in pharma that adhere to regulations, there will still be risks, therefore, it’s best practice to follow a set of general principles to ensure that marketing is always ethical, ensuring that that trust is not lost with audiences. Go into this year with a promise of always conducting ethical marketing. You’ll be glad you did.

Related post: Pharmaceutical Marketing Ethics

11. BUT BE CREATIVE!

Pharmaceutical marketing can be a tricky business. There is a great deal to say but often we are constrained in how we get the message across. Of course, print and digital display are first on the list of ideas, but there is more beyond this for pharmaceutical marketing professionals. So, always remember to be creative and don’t shy away from experimenting with new marketing strategies and tactics alongside your tried and tested marketing methods. Push the boundaries and do things a little differently; your target audience might (and probably will!) respond positively to your change of approach.

12. KEEP AN EYE ON THE TRENDS

Keep an eye on the trends in your sectors at all times. Things might not change in the life sciences as quickly as they do in other sectors, but they certainly change quickly in marketing and in digital marketing. It’s, therefore, essential that science marketers stay ahead of the curve to adapt to and respond to the changes as they happen. Always remember that you’re operating within a global marketplace; not within your bubble.

In a fast-paced environment, it’s easy to fall into this trap. Make time to catch up on things for your role and your organisation with the right information. Each month, we publish our round-up of science marketing insights to keep our readers one step ahead. You are more than welcome to join us in receiving posts such as this one in your inbox every month.

Resource: Sign up Orientation Marketing’s Monthly Newsletter

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Gareth Pickering

Gareth has worked for over 20 years in B2B publishing across global organisations. He has worked on many integrated multi-channel global advertising campaigns across the life science channels including pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, performance materials, cosmetics, food, and the analytical chemistry verticals. He has a deep understanding of these media landscapes and has experience with both the strategy and the implementation of highly complex and niche B2B media programmes.