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Five Digital Pitfalls of Biotech Marketing (and Their Solutions)

Biotech marketers must be responsive to the changing needs of their customers. As the industry shifts to an omnichannel engagement model, companies are forced to think outside the traditional ways of doing business. Despite the urgency to find new and effective ways of marketing biotechnical solutions, most companies market the same way, falling into familiar traps.

Slow adoption of innovative tools or ineffectual integration of digital, remote, and in-person channels can put firms at a competitive disadvantage. Why do these challenges exist? What are the biggest barriers to effective digital marketing for biotech firms? What are the solutions to these challenges? We list out the pitfalls, why they are a problem, and exactly what you can do about it. Let’s dive in.

Prioritizing Development, with marketing as an afterthought.

Problem: Disjointed or obsolete marketing processes and tools, delaying the production and distribution of marketing content. If your company is one of the many without an internal marketing team, you understand how painfully long it can take to produce even a simple marketing brochure. Combine these issues with acquisitions and mergers, resulting in different legacy systems colliding, and you have a less than ideal situation.

Solution: Management teams often do not fully understand the value of marketing, let alone the need to create an internal team dedicated to medical device marketing activities. Hiring a firm can keep internal teams focused on product development and support, while ensuring that the money you spent in development isn’t squandered because your intended user doesn’t know you exist. Either hire and train an internal marketing team to be as competent as your development team, or find a reliable tech marketing agency to partner with in the long term.

Inadequate biotech industry experience when outsourcing marketing.

Problem: When biotech, medtech or lifesciences marketers outsource their marketing activities, they often make the mistake of choosing an agency out of the industry. While a proven track record of success and satisfied clients are a good sign, you want to ask about specialized knowledge and industry expertise. Agencies not solely focused on serving the biotech space will likely lack the depth of industry knowledge necessary to help you reach your marketing goals.

Solution: Partner with a marketing firm specifically serving the bio/medtech industry, with expertise to align your brand, products, and services with market demand. Choose an outside marketing firm who can tap past knowledge, successes, and insights to help you reach marketing goals that reflect your unique value. The agency should also possess the latest data analytics, market auditing capabilities, email marketing, social media, product launch, data, analytics, and strategy knowledge for your brand’s long-term success.

Inability to stay on top of regulatory guidelines.

Problem: Many companies fail to realize the extent of regulations governing the marketing of biotech solutions and medical devices. Without a complete understanding of the regulatory landscape, marketers can end up making costly mistakes when developing their marketing plans. Relying on industry consultants not well-versed in relevant regulations can spell disaster.

‍Solution: Many biotech firms have a trusted legal advisor, but if you use that advisor sparingly you should assign compliance review to an existing employee. Have the advisor create a list of relevant regulations and direct the employee to monitor and disclose updates, retractions and changes. Master evidence-based marketing and the proper use of substantiated claims. Alternatively, hire a marketing firm with specialized industry knowledge and an in-depth understanding of the regulatory landscape to protect your company from violating rules and having to pay fines imposed by regulatory agencies.

Lacking the resources and expertise to pull the trigger on marketing initiatives.

Problem: Biotech management can underestimate how much work goes into creating a successful marketing campaign. Creative thinking and distribution are major contributors to success, but effective media placement is crucial. The nuance of that placement, plus adequate data collection and analysis of the campaign are often overlooked. Whether you rely on your internal marketing team or an outside agency, you may be faced with potential delays in deliverables due to the learning curve needed to take those ideas and turn them into data-driven campaigns rooted in actionable data insights.

Solution: Developing a successful digital marketing campaign (or launching a new product) requires a collaborative effort from a team of marketing experts with a background in data. Speed up the creative process by hiring people for your internal marketing team with biotech marketing experience. If you decide to outsource your product launch or marketing campaign for even faster results, partner with a data-driven tech marketing agency.

Failure to capitalize on data analytics to track campaign performance.

Problem: Firms understand the importance of data, but fail to create a system that adequately collects and analyzes that data when launching the marketing campaign. Data helps companies make better decisions by providing evidence that supports their ideas. Without data, biotech marketers cannot prove whether their campaigns were successful, define what quantifies “success”, or replicate that quantification. This makes it almost impossible to determine what changes need to be made to improve future campaigns.

Solution: The only way to understand what’s working and what’s not in your marketing campaign is by measuring its performance with the help of KPIs. Digital marketers inexperienced in the biotech industry may select the wrong KPIs to measure performance, or fail to pair indicators in a way that offers insight beyond a vanity metric. Experience matters.

Bottom Line

You can create the most innovative solution and fail to gain market share because of an ineffective product launch. You must effectively communicate the benefits of your product or service to your target audience, while remaining compliant throughout that communication. Only those companies willing to invest in innovative marketing solutions that rapidly communicate to their audience –in that audience’s preferred medium– will gain a significant advantage over their competitors in the coming years. Want to learn more about our industry experience? Let’s talk.