What Is Content Marketing for Biotech Companies and Why Is it Important?
The life sciences industry is growing fast. From 2019 to 2021, funding jumped from $5 billion to more than $20 billion, and as of January 2023, had stabilized to twice its historical base (McKinsey).
Life sciences companies are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this growth, but these companies need to invest in explaining their value propositions to their audiences because their products are specific and complex. That starts with a multi-pronged marketing strategy, which is why many companies are turning to content marketing to reach their audiences.
Content marketing refers to content that’s created to build a relationship with your target audience via helpful, entertaining, and informative formats, such as blogs, videos, or newsletters. For a food or beverage company, content marketing might include recipes like the coffee and dessert recipes on Cafe Bustelo’s website.
Content marketing for life sciences companies is critical due to the nature of their products and services.
The goal of biotech content marketing is to establish credibility and authority in a space that often affects healthcare, chemistry, food, and the environment.
Content marketing can take many forms, but its primary goal is to provide a detailed resource for your customers to understand more about your services or products.
Use Content Marketing to Establish Credibility With Your Audience
Many companies in the life sciences space are startups, so establishing authority is critical. If your business/products are new, you need to do the work of providing your consumers with the necessary context to understand who your company is and what you offer.
For example, Akadeum Life Sciences had a patent for an improvement to cell isolation. Their product is called Buoyancy Activated Cell Sorting (BACS™), and it uses tiny microbubbles to isolate testing targets through flotation-based separation. Akadeum’s primary audience for BACS™ is medical professionals who already have a high level of familiarity with the terms used for cell isolation and other related processes.
This primary audience is very concerned with credibility, so in partnership with Metric Biotech, Akadeum created an archive of blog posts and case studies that live on their website. This detailed content uses specific terminology relevant to Akadeum’s primary audience. The case studies and blog posts included topics like “Using Akadeum’s Human CD4+ T Cell Isolation to Study T Cell Immune Responses in the Pathogenesis of Human Hepatotropic Viruses” and “Self-Antigens vs. Non-Self Antigens: Examples & Cluster of Differentiation Markers.”
Learn more about Akadeum’s success with content marketing.
The Four Pillars of Effective Content Marketing for Life Sciences
1. Speak to Your Target Audience
Most customers in the life sciences space have the education to understand scientific language and processes, so your content should speak to them using that same terminology. But remember, you’re not writing peer-reviewed research papers! Your audience also needs a lot of information in an easily digestible format.
In addition to selling your products, you should also establish trust with your audience. Speak to the scientists in your audience, and give them the language they need to explain your products to other people on their team.
Think about your content marketing strategy as if you’re creating an educational journey for your customers—you want them to be able to easily digest big pieces of information over time. What can you explain visually? What information needs more research to add to your credibility?
Potential customers may need to use your content in conversations with decision-makers on their team, so make it lively and informative.
2. Create Accessible Educational Programming
Your target audience is likely full of people with advanced degrees in chemistry, biology, physics, and more. While effective branding and short-form content are essential pieces of your broader marketing plan, you also need to appeal to the scientists who will be involved in making the decision about whether or not to purchase your product or service. Videos, podcasts, and ebooks are a few of the formats to consider for your website’s educational content.
Investing in longer-form videos includes having a video production team that can film and edit these videos. It’s also useful to work with a writer who can help you position your videos, podcasts, and webinars on YouTube and your website, and repurpose them for social media, email marketing, and blog posts.
Use credentialed subject matter experts in your videos, and include their credentials and titles in the video’s lower third portion. This serves a two-fold purpose. First, the video is educating your audience on how the product works. Second, and more subtly, the person in the video demonstrating how the product works is a qualified professional representing your company, which can help build consumer trust in the product and in your brand.
Learn how Metric Biotech worked with in2being to distribute their webinars to gain more views and warmer leads.
3. Build Authority
You’ll be doing a lot of work generating content about your product, but don’t forget to generate some content about your staff, too. Build out a robust “About Us” page that includes details about when the company started and who the founders and staff are.
Be sure to include pertinent details about each staff member’s credentials. For example, if you have someone on the sales team who worked as a nurse or R&D scientist for years, that lends credibility. Anyone on your team with advanced degrees relevant to your product offering should have that degree listed in their bios.
In addition, add any special recognitions, awards, certifications, or patents to your website that your company has received to further display your industry competence and credibility. And work with a writer to develop press releases when your team makes important strides in research and testing.
4. Research
Life sciences companies typically have a large amount of research available to them. After all, that’s how their products came to be—through research and testing. Your content strategy should include sharing that research with your audience. There are several ways to do this, including white papers and webinars.
A white paper “is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution” (HubSpot). White papers in the life sciences industry are similar to scientific reports, but their primary purpose is to inform potential customers with in-depth details on the product. These papers blend research and sales, as they’re meant to show the reasons why your product solves the consumer’s problem using scientific research.
Webinars are a great opportunity to get facetime with your audience, allowing them to ask questions in real time. As soon as you’ve built out an email list, invite interested customers to a video demonstration of your product, or a Q&A about your new pharmaceutical offering with one of your scientists on staff. Webinars disseminate information and allow you to do some critical relationship-building.
Both white papers and webinars can be repurposed for social media and your company’s blog. Record your webinars and post them with a brief description, and offer your white papers for download on your website. You can announce these new pieces of content in short social posts, with tracked links to your website.
Converting Leads to Customers With a Thorough Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing has always been critical for businesses in the life sciences industry, but it’s a marketing tactic that has become more reliable over the last year of economic turmoil. Because any keyword-rich, well-written content that lives on your website improves your search engine optimization (SEO), your content improves the odds of customers organically finding your website without you directly spending money on advertising.
As Forbes confirms, it’s essential to strengthen your relationships with your key customers by “creating valuable, no-strings-attached content that helps you build thought leadership and expertise in your industry.”
Metric Biotech has in-depth experience working with clients in the life sciences space. We help clients identify their audiences and set goals for each type of content we produce so that we can adjust based on how specific audiences respond.
In addition to our team of science writers, Metric Biotech also has experts who can help with your inbound marketing tactics, including comprehensive SEO for your website, keyword research to help determine what your content should be, and targeted advertising campaigns.