If you’re preparing for a career in Marketing or even starting up or spinning out your own life sciences business, you’ll know that online marketing is all about “content”. But that just sounds so broad, right? So what, exactly, is content marketing? And is it even relevant to the life sciences sector?
Let’s start with the broad thing. The term “content” is actually even broader than it might initially appear. That’s because content covers images, video, email, podcast episodes, training programmes, interviews as well as written webpages and articles. So, pretty much everything in Marketing. Which isn’t very helpful I know.
So, the trick is to get specific and that starts with understanding the role of content in a marketing strategy.
The role of content is to engage your customer, not to talk about yourself
The biggest misinterpretation of content marketing is that it’s about you, your company, your mission, your service and your products. This is just shouting louder and harder in a really self-focussed way and no human likes to be influenced like that. True, you might have a great product and an interesting back-story... but it’s still not about you. It’s only ever about the customer. Because without the customer you don’t have a product and your back-story will remain just that.
The role of content marketing is to engage the customer with what they are interested in and what, specifically, they are researching and absorbing online. The most successful content marketing strategies are those that are generous and insightful, educational and advisory. Of course you have a product or service to sell – and you will publish content on this too. It’s more about getting the balance and the order right. Start with the customer and align to them; add value to their online activities, build credibility and tailor your product messages to their interests. Think of content marketing as an online version of rapport building; the more they get to know you and your area expertise, the more organic the sales process becomes.
Content Marketing is Highly Relevant to Life Sciences
Is all this relevant to Life Sciences though?
Yes. Yes, it is.
If you’re an entrepreneurial scientist or a marketer then you’ll be in the business of getting another person to do something differently - use a new product, adopt a new process or work with you rather than struggling alone – and this makes content marketing highly relevant. Even if you aren’t actually selling something and you simply need to increase awareness of something or increase a following, then content marketing is the “how” behind achieving that vision. If it’s about engaging more people, it’s about content marketing.
In fact, I’d go a step further... Life Sciences business have a particular opportunity with content marketing because of the abundance of insight, experience and expertise in the field that can be translated into a rich, engaging marketing effort. That marketing effort has the potential to attract more people to your work and build your thought leadership in the field. And the best bit? It’s available to everyone and it doesn’t have to cost a penny.