This week,
SpeakPharma interviews Kate Covalt, Vice President, Client Services and
Executive Strategist at SCORR Marketing, a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the health sciences space, who throws light on the benefits of outsourced marketing support. According to Covalt, communication and collaboration are key, as is selecting an experienced and strategic agency partner.
What are the benefits of outsourcing marketing, as against building an in-house team?
An objective, outside perspective is an invaluable asset. Being too close to something, like our own business, can create a “curse of knowledge” bias that prevents us from seeing other solutions or being open to exploring them. An outside perspective can ignite fresh ideas and shed light on gaps in current strategies or approaches. Agencies also come armed with a breadth of experience on running campaigns across a wide variety of channels, and provide insight into what’s working, what’s not, and what’s new. That compounded knowledge is a noteworthy benefit.
Additionally, it can be more cost-effective to outsource marketing. Think about the overheads that go into building a robust internal team — salaries, health benefits, PTO, management of employees, etc. It all adds up.
With an agency,
you get an entire marketing team without the burden of overheads and management
expenses. Moreover, you get the added bonus of being able to work with experts
across key areas: strategists, SEO, social media, PR, copywriting, design, etc.
If a company
already has a marketing team, why would they outsource additional support?
The hybrid approach provides specialized expertise and support to complement a company’s internal team. You never want a lack of time or resources to inhibit business growth or prevent you from hitting your marketing goals. Bringing on an agency helps prevent this. A hybrid approach can also be very customizable and flexible. It allows a company to scale its marketing team up and down to meet their current needs or budget while tailoring outsourced work to fill internal gaps or to address specialization.
How can companies
with an internal team and external support ensure alignment on strategy?
Great question. First of all, find an agency that puts strategy first — one that fundamentally believes strategy drives creative, and not the other way around. Those agencies will likely already have an approach in place that sets the two organizations up for alignment.
Apart from that, communication is crucial. Be sure to establish clear communication channels and share your business goals. Make planning an integrated and collaborative process. Effective and strategic marketing plans can’t be developed in a silo. Clear communication of objectives is essential so that everyone is working towards a common purpose. It is also important to ensure both teams have access to data and analytics. Marketing isn’t a set-it-and-leave-it activity.
Therefore, this collaboration needs to be ongoing and proactive in order to build trust. Consistent feedback loops help identify what is working, what isn’t, and how to pivot accordingly.
How important is
it to work with a partner with experience in the industry?
It definitely has an upside. You wouldn’t hire a marathon runner to coach you in sprinting simply because she knows how to run. Context is important, and an agency partner with industry experience has already collected a lot of that context. It’s not just about hiring an expert, it’s about hiring the right expert. If you partner with an agency with a foundation in
the industry, you will be able to focus your valuable time on sharing insights
around the nuances and goals of your unique business. This ultimately
translates into spending a lot less time and money educating your partner, and
getting time to focus on solutions to get your business closer to its goals,
faster.
While looking for
the right agency partner, what are some key questions one must ask an agency?
Start with the basics. What is the agency’s experience in the industry? What is the breadth of services it offers? How big is their team, and how many of those are full-time employees? Is the work all done in-house or does the agency have partners they outsource work to?
Beyond that, it is important to understand how the agency operates and what you can expect as a client. What is the agency’s approach to strategy and creative development? How does their team define success and how do they report on it? How does the agency manage client communication and collaboration? How often can you expect updates, and is there a designated point of contact? What is the pricing structure and how does the agency handle changes in scope?
You should also get a sense of culture. You will be working closely with the agency’s team, so meet and talk to them. This really needs to be a two-sided conversation. There is no “silver bullet” in marketing. Therefore, make sure you’ll be working with an agency that is truly solution-oriented, and that there is a strong alignment of values and philosophy.
What can companies do to set themselves up for success in their marketing partnerships?
It is essential to invest in developing a strong relationship with the team. That foundation of trust will ultimately create a more open, creative, and transparent environment — and that’s the kind of environment that marketing teams flourish in. Again, communication is key. Establish clear goals, communicate when those goals change, be transparent with expectations, and always begin with strategy.
Impressions: 7644
This week, SpeakPharma interviews Alec McChesney, Director of Business Development, SCORR Marketing, a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the health sciences space, to understand how marketing and business development teams should work together for effective sales enablement. According to McChesney, the teams should understand the company’s sales goals and collaborate seamlessly to enable sales. Excerpts:
We all know how important it is for the marketing and business development teams to work together to empower sales. But what’s the best place to start when working to strengthen that bridge?
That’s a great question. What we’ve found is that getting both these essential sales-driving teams on the same page about their ideal client persona — who those clients are, what’s most important to them, and what drives their decision making — is the common cornerstone on which the marketing business development (BD) relationship and resulting efforts should be built on.
Once both teams are aligned with the client profile, the next step is to develop the sales pipeline — identifying where clients are entering the sales pipeline and ensuring a clear strategy for receiving and following up with both marketing- and sales-qualified leads.
What
is cross-team buy-in? And how can teams achieve this?
Sales enablement is a process by which you provide your sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. Effective sales enablement requires cross-team buy-in. In other words, members of the marketing team have to be clear on the BD team’s goals and get behind them, and vice versa. When we start to see teams falling into silos and focusing only on supporting their own goals rather than the full set of cross-team goals, that’s when friction and a sense of disconnection arise.
Whether you’re on the marketing side and receiving top-down business goals from the BD team, or you’re on the BD side receiving campaign-specific goals from the marketing side, the most important thing for you to do is to orient yourself to the other team’s goals, make sure you understand them, and then throw your support behind both the departments’ goals.
What
are some examples of how BD and marketing teams can better integrate tools and
processes to achieve sales enablement?
As we discussed earlier, development and implementation of client personas is a great start. Getting on the same page at the systems level is also very important. For example, if your marketing team is using the customer relationship management (CRM) software HubSpot, but your BD team is using Salesforce, you’re missing out on a crucial level of integration. One team might be receiving the leads and then handing them over to the other team for follow-up. But where is your lead nurturing happening?
Synchronizing
your tools and processes optimizes your results. Automate integrated lead
scoring and invest in the right databases, software, and lead-mining tools.
Lead scoring helps your marketing and BD teams identify where a prospect is in
the buying process while also enabling follow-ups. The two teams must track
their success metrics jointly to support continued integration.
What role can innovation play in
bridging the BD-marketing gap as well as in making a sales-inspiring impact
with clients?
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when you’re doing things a certain way in business because that’s how they’ve always been done. Instead, strengthen your BD-marketing bond by encouraging new approaches and creating space for the two teams to brainstorm and collaborate. Ask the question: What non-traditional ideas do you have for reaching potential customers?
The next sales-inspiring impact on your client may come from the ideas generated during this kind of collaborative time – virtual trade shows, live events on social platforms or from a handwritten note with a gift card. Make space for your teams to be creative together and support one another on the execution of the ideas that emerge.
What’s the most important takeaway you’d like BD and marketing professionals to get from this interview? What do you believe will make the biggest impact for these teams when it comes to enabling sales?Don’t let “the big picture” of your company’s sales goals exist as something that’s external to you. Own it by not only understanding your own piece of the puzzle clearly, but also by understanding and supporting the goals of parallel teams. Sync up at this intention level, and then carry that through to the practical level of aligning tools, processes, and touchpoints to maximize collaboration. You can’t get on the same page through ideas and intentions alone. Strategy and implementation are the keys to successful
sales enablement.
Impressions: 2805
In these times, quality talent can be difficult to
attract. SpeakPharma interviews Lea LaFerla, Vice
President of Marketing Services & Business Development at SCORR Marketing, a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the
health sciences space, to understand how companies need to work on both their
corporate brand, as well as their employer brand, in order to attract talent.
According to Lea, companies today need a strategy to engage with the talent
they want to attract, and that begins by honing the strength of their employer
brand. Excerpts:
With unemployment rates touching new lows, companies are scrambling for quality talent. Tell us about the role a corporate brand plays in attracting high-quality talent.
Your corporate brand is the first impression people get when they interact
with your company. This is not just true for the target customer market, but
also for your prospective employees.
A successful corporate brand showcases the company’s uniqueness and personality, along with its
expertise. It invites engagement and inspires the talent it is seeking to click
on that next page or next piece of content and interact with it.
An effective corporate brand motivates viewers to go deeper and achieve
an experiential sense of the business that goes well beyond the “nuts and
bolts” of the
products and services on
offer. At first glance, if the brand isn’t inspiring, it detracts from
the much-needed opportunities to connect with the talent you’re competing for.
What’s the difference between a corporate brand and an employer brand?
Your corporate brand is the ultimate expression of your company’s value
proposition. To external audiences, such as existing
or potential customers and potential employees, the corporate brand should reflect an
alignment between the external offerings — i.e., products and services —
and a clear company personality.
Your employer brand, on the other hand, needs to reflect your internal
offerings (i.e., trainings, growth opportunities, personal wellness culture,
work-life balance, etc.), which in turn need to be aligned with your corporate
brand personality to both internal (existing employees) and external audiences
(potential employees).
The external elements of your employer brand should directly reflect the
aspects of your internal culture that you want to highlight to prospective
employees.
How consistent should the corporate and employer
brands be?
They are closely tied, but distinct. Your corporate brand personality
should definitely influence your employer brand. That said, your employer brand
can be more personal, and even informal, depending on which platform you are
working on.
For example, the employer brand, as expressed on your website, might
include a culture page that showcases professionally photographed or filmed
experiences of what it’s like
to work for your company. But you could have a less formal expression of your
employer brand on social media by empowering employees to use selfies and
self-created videos from their mobile devices to share personal snapshots of
why they enjoy working with you. What kind of employer brand tactics you use
will partially be determined by the overall tone and personality of your
corporate brand. Thus, both the corporate brand and the employer brand should
work together closely and cohesively.
Is it enough to put all job openings on the website? What
else can companies do?
Unfortunately, it’s not
enough these days to have open jobs listed on your website. You need a strategy
to engage with the talent you want to attract, and that begins by honing the
strength of your employer brand. What do prospective employees find when they
go through your website? Are you really showing — and not just telling — what it is like to be a part of your team? Is the content on your
website and various social media channels designed specifically to demonstrate
your internal culture and values? And how consistently and effectively are you
leveraging those elements? It’s a “buyer’s market” for employees right
now, and you’ve got
to attract them with a clear “why” that
shines through and inspires engagement.
Increasingly, candidates’ top priorities these days have less to do with the salary and more to do with the culture. How can marketing help?
Marketing is a clear, consistent, and effective tool for candidates to
connect the dots between what they’re
looking for and what you’re offering. It’s a tool that points engaging content at your desired
audience to achieve the results you want. Beyond that, marketing is a
reputation builder. It shows and tells the world why you’re a preferred business partner and employer.
What do you want the candidates to know about working with you? Will
they have opportunities for professional growth? What about work-life balance?
And what benefits will they receive? Use marketing to let them know that you
tick all their boxes, at the same time showing them how your company does that
in a unique and inspiring way. Great marketing brings right-fit tactics (i.e.,
website upgrades, videos, social media, etc.) together in such a harmonious way
that it appeals directly to the talent you want to attract.
Corporate social responsibility issues are becoming increasingly important to job seekers. How can marketing help address these questions?
The first question to ask is whether your company prioritizes corporate
social responsibility (CSR) or not. If yes, then marketing is the ideal tool to
showcase your efforts and commitment tastefully and effectively to candidates
who are applying for a job or accepting
an offer.
If the answer is “no,” then business leaders need to realize that internal culture-building strategies around CSR issues can be included within the context of marketing consultation. As mentioned earlier, marketing is not just a tool for interfacing with external audiences. It can also be used to bolster and nurture internal culture-building efforts, which in turn, can be told as stories to external audiences.
Impressions: 1148
With
the New Year just around the corner, SpeakPharma interviews Kate Covalt,
Director of Account Management, SCORR Marketing, to find out how pharmaceutical companies can draw up an effective annual marketing plan to make 2022 the best year ever. SCORR Marketing is a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the health sciences space. It also partners PharmaCompass for its Pipeline Prospector Tool, a database of current global
drug development deals. Covalt talks about how to create an annual marketing
plan and its benefits. Excerpts:
It may sound self-explanatory, but can you define the term “annual marketing plan” for our readers so that they know what it must entail?
An annual marketing plan is essentially a roadmap that identifies marketing priorities and strategies for the upcoming year, both short- and long-term. The goal is to formulate a clear vision that can unite, inspire, and drive the team. A good marketing plan must address questions like where the company is now and where it wants to be. It must also identify benchmarks and goals very clearly and chalk out backup plans and contingencies. A clear, strategic annual marketing plan is key to a successful business.
That’s a very lucid explanation. But why, in the first place, is a marketing plan so important?
Marketing
plans provide both passion and purpose, priming you for a productive year
ahead. They also clarify your intent, empower your team to work together
towards clearly defined goals, set the scaffolding to measure your goals and
successes, keep you on budget,
provide guidance for when things get unpredictable and help you act fast when
new opportunities arise.
While
making an annual marketing plan, where does one begin?
You begin
with the SCORR Annual Planning Worksheet! The worksheet is designed to
be a simple, straightforward guide with step-by-step instructions for creating
an annual marketing plan and convenient layouts for every step to inspire clear
organization of thoughts and details. The worksheet will help you answer key
questions to shape your business in the coming year. This includes questions
such as: are your branding, messaging, and related tactics telling the story
you want your target audience to hear? Do you have a strategy in place to connect your
marketing and business development team’s growth goals? And do you have flexible assets that allow your business
to thrive in virtual, in-person, and hybrid sales environments?
What are the main steps for creating a plan that effectively reflects your strategy and articulates your goals?
There are three main steps: Meet With Your
Stakeholders, Break Down Your Budget, and Consider the Big Picture.
The
crucial first step is to meet with your stakeholders to determine your business’ strategic objectives and goals. Here you will discuss your company’s short- and long-term goals, find out
whether your mission or vision needs adjustment or not and identify any changes
in your target audiences, key buyer personas, or buyer’s
journey development, to name a few.
The second
step is to break down your budget. Start by analyzing the amount spent last year on marketing initiatives and tactics, then evaluate this information alongside performance metrics to determine the value of your tactics. For example, as you are looking at your trade show investment, you will want to consider last year’s budget and how you utilized it, then take into account any adjustments within your booth strategy that can maximize your ROI.
The third step is to consider the “big picture” and plan for other major initiatives like (a) rebranding/new identity, (b) buyer messaging, and (c) upcoming merger or acquisition. These major initiatives have a significant impact on your marketing needs, and therefore your marketing plan.
Since
SCORR caters to life science service companies, can you tell how the annual
planning worksheet assists those businesses?
Everything SCORR does is through the lens of the life sciences — an industry we’ve been experts in for over 18 years due to our connections, experience, and information.
The annual
planning worksheet offers specific tips like how to navigate trade shows. Trade
shows involve large investment, averaging 30 to 40 percent of our annual marketing
budgets pre-Covid, dipping to 15 to 20 percent in the pandemic, and are likely
to return to over 30 percent for 2022.
As opposed
to the past, your annual trade show investment needs to be assessed
differently, as we need to study factors such as whether your presence will be
live, virtual, or in hybrid mode?
The Annual
Planning Worksheet also offers industry-specific tips in market research,
prompting you to think about what your competitors are doing, what they have
done in the past and how does that affect your choices.
We
learnt during the pandemic that even the best-laid plans can be forced to
change. Has the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the need for annual marketing
plans?
Over the
past two years, we have learnt that many things are out of our control. What is
in our hands is preparation. If you have a clear plan in place (with a clear
goal in mind), it’s
much easier to pivot when necessary to stay aligned with that final goal.
Unlike the
blanket of uncertainty that weighed on us as we drafted marketing plans coming
out of 2020, we are looking ahead here, at the end of 2021, with cautious
optimism. As an industry, the “wait and see” days seem to be behind us, even if the pandemic isn’t.
Do
you want to end this interview with some year-end planning tips?
Make your plan now! Time is of the essence — 2022 is here! Creating a solid annual marketing plan will set your business up for success in the New Year. By planning today, you can look forward with confidence, knowing you’re doing everything you can to make the
next year the best it can be.
Impressions: 1545
Like
most industries, the biopharmaceutical industry has been facing a host of
challenges due to the pandemic. Trade shows and conferences have been cancelled
and in-person meetings have become a rarity. In such a scenario, health science companies are finding it difficult to
grow their businesses. This week, we speak to Lea LaFerla, vice president—marketing services and business development at SCORR Marketing, a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the health sciences space, on how the sales and marketing teams at health science companies need to work in tandem and devise a proper strategy to grow their businesses. SCORR Marketing partners with PharmaCompass in its Pipeline Prospector Tool, a database of current
global drug development deals. Excerpts:
There are lots of jokes on
the epic friction between sales and marketing. After a year of significant
change and disruption, do you feel it is more important today for these two
groups to be on the same page?
Absolutely. As you know, businesses around the world continue to struggle due to the pandemic. Trade shows and conferences are still on hold or are being held virtually. Therefore, the opportunity to network, and have in-person interactions and meetings are minimal or have been paused all together. The ability to “get to know” prospective clients has been significantly reduced and is fraught with challenges. Understanding where a prospective client sits in the marketing and sales funnel is critical to the direct efforts of a company to grow the business.
What do you mean by the
marketing and sales funnel? Is this funnel applicable in the real world? Or is
it just an academic exercise?
The marketing and sales funnel is a way of breaking down the customer’s journey with a company all the way from the Awareness stage (when they first learn about your business) to the Lead Capture stage, the Prospect stage and the Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) stage. After that, the funnel has three key sales stages — the Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) stage, Opportunities Leads stage and finally the Customer stage. The funnel is broadest at the Awareness stage, and progressively narrows down until the Customer stage.
However, the funnel is not a
linear process. Potential customers can jump in at various points in the funnel
depending on their situation.
In the Awareness stage, customers need to be informed who you are before they consider dealing with your company. Marketing needs to do the groundwork to make things easier for the sales team. However, not all tactics adopted to create awareness necessarily transition to the next stage — Lead Capture.
In today’s world, Lead Capture is a very important stage. It involves a process of gathering contact information in an attempt to convert the lead to a paying customer. An example of a lead capture page or a lead capture form is downloading a white paper or a quote request form on a website. The contact’s name, email address and phone numbers are usually captured. Keeping the number of fields captured to a minimum increases the likelihood that someone will provide their information.
Once you have a qualified lead — be it an MQL or an SQL — it is vitally important that your sales and marketing teams have clear communication and that they work together to bring potential customers through the funnel effectively.
Although sales and marketing may have different views on the funnel, they clearly have the same objective – more sales. What are some ways to get both groups working together in this process?
There are multiple ways for
marketing and sales to work together. The first is by investing in databases and mining tools. Some
resources are even available for free, such as PipelineProspector. And then there
are others like GlobalData and PharmaTargeting. Regardless of
which tool you choose, the important thing is to utilize the knowledge gained
from them to help shape your marketing and sales targets.
Secondly,
be sure to engage people with stage appropriate content and messaging. One of the best means of doing this is to set-up a joint marketing and business development playbook. Both the departments analyze a buyers’ journey and use that insight to develop tactical plans and set targets. Stay away from separate Sales and Marketing contacts. Marketing can and should help Sales nurture prospects all the way through the process; for example, nurturing SQLs by providing Sales with various scripts and tools.
Don’t good sales
people just need more leads? What if marketing just focused all their efforts
on getting more leads?
Several organizations are
spending heavily on deploying tactics to get leads, and do not have a
foundational strategy in place. They have to weed through leads and do not have
a business development person who can prioritize this process. In our view,
qualified leads should be assigned more value than volume leads.
Marketing needs to be aligned to Business Development’s target audience. They need a go-to-market strategy that is measured on the MQLs they have generated. The criterion for a qualified lead needs to be set in the playbook. And the marketing department also needs to nurture SQLs through to loyal clientele.
Once you establish your
target markets and efforts are proceeding well in that direction, is it solely
up to the sales team to penetrate
their top target accounts? How can sales and marketing collaborate to help in
this area?
There is an opportunity for both sales and marketing to work together even after the target market has been established and a client base has been created. Sales and marketing departments can help each other by (a) creating client dossiers to help identify specific needs, contacts, etc., for outreach; (b) utilize executive relationships and other connections — companies need to map these out as part of company dossiers; and (c) understand where each company/prospect is on the funnel, and target outreach to them that matches their stage (for instance, some prospects may need awareness, while others maybe existing customers).
Once you have a prospect
that has become a client, do the roles of sales and marketing stop? How can you
utilize current clients for ongoing sales and marketing?
The first thing companies need to ask themselves is whether they have invested in strategies to retain loyal clients, and if they have leveraged referrals and testimonials from these clients. There is one theme that is recurring in SCORR’s voice of customer surveys — that word of mouth or recommendations by a colleague are by far the most heavily weighted factor in establishing new business. It is understood that these leads are super valuable and should be weighted and nurtured as such.
A current client who feels you
go above and beyond, especially when it comes to proactive communication and
problem solving, becomes your greatest business development ally without the
need to formally ask the client to do so.
Impressions: 3599
The pandemic has been raging across the world for over nine months, with no end in
sight. With trade shows and conferences getting suspended, it has become harder
for people to meet and travel restrictions have worsened the impact. Now more
than ever, digital marketing can help create awareness about your company,
generate leads and deliver success. SpeakPharma spoke to Jane Byram, Media Director for SCORR Marketing, a leading life sciences
marketing and communications agency, on the importance of digital marketing at the time of COVID-19. SCORR
Marketing partners with PharmaCompass in its Pipeline Prospector Tool, a database of current global
drug development deals. Excerpts:
In your
view, what are the various benefits of digital marketing over traditional
marketing?
Digital marketing is a broad term, encompassing marketing that takes place online — on your social media channels, website, via paid search, and more.
In order to make your digital marketing comprehensive, you need to work on an integrated marketing plan that looks at both digital and traditional marketing and how the two can work together. However, digital marketing offers the advantage of being nimble — you can change your marketing plan quickly based on the current events or metrics that
show your audience’s engagement, or the lack of it, with your brand.
Thanks to
technology, most of your audience is very engaged on traditional platforms. And
with trade shows and conferences unavailable because of the coronavirus, your digital
marketing needs to carry the day, now more than ever.
What are the best digital tactics to increase awareness of a company’s brand?
There are
three digital tactics that work best at increasing the awareness of a brand.
Digital advertising – Developing Google Ads and Microsoft Ads will get your brand the attention of new audiences by serving up content that is directly related to their browsing habits.
Social media content — both organic and paid. Such content can expose your audience to your industry knowledge and help new audiences discover your thought leaders and your brand.
Search engine optimization (SEO) – By optimizing your website content using SEO, you can ensure that new eyes will continue to discover your brand and begin seeking you and your content
out intentionally.
What
about generating leads? How can digital marketing help a company get leads?
Digital marketing helps drive leads by showing your audience that you’ve got solutions to their challenges. And you can use digital marketing to invite them to reach out to learn more. For example, if you “gate” content — request a visitor’s contact information in exchange for valuable information or content — you’ll be able to identify the visitors who are most likely to convert into customers.
With marketing automation, pharmaceutical companies can target customers with drip campaigns — automated messages across email, web, social media, and text messages. With the help of marketing
automation tools, messages are sent automatically, according to sets of
instructions called workflows. Workflows may be defined by templates or may be
custom-built from scratch. By reaching your audience at multiple touch points,
you can nurture your audience along their journey from discovery through qualified
lead.
Most clients won’t come to your website ready to buy right away, as many are just gathering information. With the right types of content, you will be able to give them the right types
of information at the right time in order to help usher them toward making a
decision, rather than overwhelming them with pesky calls, advertisements, or
emails.
What
is the best way to optimize for success in the digital space?
The most important thing is to be intentional in your digital strategy. Think about who your audience is — where are they in the digital space? What channels are they using? How are they consuming your content?
From there, create your content so it touches every stage of their journey, using each of those channels with a strategy appropriate for that digital venue. By creating a content “web” that crosses channels, you’re more likely to reach the right audience at the right time.
And once you’ve got a strategy — it’s not just “set it and forget it.” Stay active, keep nurturing your content web, keep tweaking it and adding to it.
How can you be sure your digital strategy is working?
You can’t change what you don’t measure. Begin by setting
key performance indicators (KPIs) and use metrics to measure how your digital
strategy is working. Once you have set the KPIs and metrics to measure your
digital strategy, keep reevaluating it. In the digital space, things change
constantly. Assess your strategy and your digital performance on a regular basis
and adjust accordingly. Furthermore, set goals and assess how they are hitting
your marketing objectives, often.
Impressions: 3898
At a time when all conferences are getting cancelled or indefinitely postponed, SpeakPharma interviewed Lea LaFerla, vice president of marketing services and business development at SCORR Marketing, a leading full-service marketing and communications firm in the health sciences space. SCORR Marketing partners with PharmaCompass in its Pipeline Prospector Tool, a database of current global drug development deals. LaFerla is of the view that in these unprecedented times, when the global economy is locked down due to the Covid-19 pandemic, health sciences organizations needs to be creative in their marketing tactics and repurpose content to stand out from competition. Excerpts.
The
health science industry is facing an unprecedented business environment. What
recommendations do you have for your clients at this time, when most trade
shows have either been canceled or postponed? And how do you combat the
tendency to cancel or postpone trade-show-related initiatives?
While some trade shows are shifting to a virtual format, few are thinking about how to replicate the immersive, interactive nature of the exhibit floor and booth experience. Participating through trade show platforms and by having a virtual trade show booth is a real opportunity to highlight your company’s creativity, agility, and
market leadership at a time when those assets are more highly valued by
potential clients than ever.
One
undeniable effect of Covid-19 has been a surge in online activity, and a
significant increase in the consumption of social media. How does this sudden
shift impact your view of suggested strategies?
Right now,
social and digital marketing are the primary channels through which clients are
going to learn about your service and solutions, so they deserve additional
emphasis. Marketing plans, however, should be living documents, designed with
the understanding that changing goals and priorities, trends, and competitive
realities will require you to be agile. SCORR’s holistic strategy has long
embraced integrated marketing, inclusive of social and digital efforts.
Messaging is more important than ever as it is your first touch point with
potential clients and will differentiate you in their minds.
Currently,
the only thing that seems certain is constant uncertainty. During a period of
such rapid change, how valuable is it for drug development companies to
showcase core competencies and definitive results? How can such a strategy help
companies in the long run?
This is an unprecedented time, and companies that have survived other challenging events and have a history of delivering during times of adversity are at an advantage. More than ever, sponsors will be less likely to take a chance on a partner that is unproven. Regardless, focus on the things you can control — your internal execution, your standards, your communications, etc.
Make it
clear that in an environment where instability and lack of clarity are the
rule, your business is solid, steadfast, and unwavering in its dedication to
providing consistent results for its clients. Communicate early and often, and
don’t be afraid to lead.
What
would you say to companies that are adopting a more passive, “wait it out and then figure it out” stance right now?
The
instinct to pull back and hunker down during times of uncertainty is
understandable. It can be uncomfortable to proactively engage with your market
when you know you don’t
have all the answers you usually do, but it’s
important to remember that like you, no one has the answers right now.
And that’s okay.
At the
moment, “waiting it out” may send a message to potential clients that “we are unprepared to proactively respond to unforeseen business challenges.”
In our
view, these unprecedented times present a unique opportunity for organizations
to get creative and step outside the box. Clients will increasingly gravitate
toward those who demonstrate such leadership. These lasting relationships are
being formed now, and they will generate revenue for many years to come.
If
you could give a single piece of advice to a health science firm that feels
stuck in a “freeze” mode right now, one that the company could enact today to get back on track, what would it be?
I would
tell firms to get creative. There are so many strategies currently available to
health sciences companies. For instance, you could focus on improving your
inbound by repurposing the content originally intended for in-person
conferences that have been cancelled and employ webinars, podcasts, live
forums, etc.
Second, companies
need to understand that in order to build out their inside sales efforts and
outbound strategies, they have to adjust their sales playbook. More of the same
isn’t enough.
Third,
health science firms need to virtualize their conferences. The show must go on.
Fourth, they need to reallocate their marketing budget by utilizing the decrease in their overall trade show spend to increase digital media and social media spend. In fact, I would say even within traditional channels, stand out from competitors by sending out 3D mailers, micro-videos, and other content.
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