Linus Report is the most widely-read publication that focuses on critical marketing issues of the life science, biotechnology and diagnostics industries.

An Executive’s Introduction to Marketing Automation for Science—Three marketing mistakes most companies are making, and how to fix them

By Hamid Ghanadan,  February 7th, 2013

Marketing Automation is the latest manifestation of database marketing or direct marketing, married with the latest web capabilities to track and customize every user’s experience on their own terms. Many business-to-business industries, including the science industry, are rapidly adopting such Marketing Automation tools. However, there are three fundamental issues that commonly impede the potential for success. In this Linus Report, we justify why Marketing Automation should be an important part of every science company’s marketing mix and provide practical advice for successful implementation.

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Current Dynamics in Marketing Science
Results of the 2012 Survey of Science Marketers

By Hamid Ghanadan,  November 2nd, 2012

Many companies within science-related industries are increasing the sophistication of their digital marketing strategies, and investing in sales and marketing technology to support more effective engagement with their audiences. In our 2012 survey of science marketers, we set out to benchmark the movements toward digital marketing among science marketers, investigating several facets of marketing channels. In this issue of Linus Report, we present the results of our survey of 125 respondents, which provided us with insights about budgets, priorities, investments and challenges that science marketers face.

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Effective Marketing within a Complex Organization

By Hamid Ghanadan,  August 15th, 2012

No function within the organization can operate independently, and such dependency is especially felt in marketing, which acts as the pivotal point between internally focused teams and externally facing channels. As this industry continues to consolidate and teams of different cultures come together and are forced to work more effectively, cultural alignment can become the key ingredient in continued organic growth. But culture can be influenced. Marketing can positively influence culture by focusing on achieving execution excellence. This report provides the critical factors for effective execution as well as suggestions for how marketers can influence culture through each of these factors.

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Content-Centric Marketing for Science
Part 2: Engineering an Effective Marketing Program

By Hamid Ghanadan,  April 17th, 2012

Value propositions should be experienced. In the content-centric marketing model, the three classes of content that facilitate the scientist’s own buying journey are also intended to influence them to adopt the company’s way of thinking. This requires translating the value proposition into an engineered experience for audiences. 

In this issue of Linus Report, we leverage the principles of content-centric marketing and describe the planning needed to build robust marketing campaign strategies. 

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Content-Centric Marketing for Science – Part 1: Understanding the Way Scientists Make Decisions

By Hamid Ghanadan,  December 21st, 2011

Most life science marketing activities are wasted because they prematurely try to persuade their audiences rather than first engaging them. But engaging scientists is far from easy, given their finely honed sense of skepticism and their strong tendency to filter out biased information. To develop more effective campaigns, marketers must first understand the psychological landscape of how scientists make decisions, and then to develop the most appropriate types of content to engage scientists, rather than deter them. In this first of a two-part Linus Report series, I introduce a model for how scientists consume information and then map this model to the archetypal scientific buying journey. This information will serve as the precursor for the second part in this series in the next issue, where I will offer the principles of Content-Centric Marketing for science and an actionable guide for the content types that make marketing campaigns up to 10 times more effective.

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Where Life Science Marketing is Headed: Results from the 2011 Quantitative Study of the Dynamics of Science Marketing

By Hamid Ghanadan,  July 18th, 2011

There has never been a time of more rapid change in the scientific industry, signaling the need for more sophisticated marketing practices. How are life science marketers evolving their strategies and tactical mix during these times? We recently conducted a quantitative study of over 100 science marketers in order to understand their priorities and their budget expenditure, as well as their attitudes towards current topics such as demand generation, brand awareness and social media. In this report, we present the results and synthesize our findings.

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Sizing Up Social Media: An Investigation of Scientific Community Dynamics on LinkedIn

By Veena Kumar,  April 19th, 2011

Social media enables marketers to monitor, instigate, participate in and measure audience engagement. LinkedIn, the professional networking site, hosts an array of scientific discussion Groups, offering tremendous potential for life science marketers to capture engaged audiences. Before developing a strategy, life science marketing professionals need to optimize their audience selection strategy when targeting these Groups as part of a marketing program. By not strategizing the process of audience selection, the outcome could unnecessarily result in the high cost of an un-optimized marketing program. To understand the dynamics of instigating audience engagement on LinkedIn Groups, we studied several scientific Groups of varying sizes on LinkedIn to determine whether size affects the level of group activity. We found that the level of engagement follows an asymptotic regime as the size of Groups gets larger. More interesting, however, is the significantly higher level of Group activity in smaller Groups as compared with larger Groups. This issue of Linus Report discusses the results of our investigation and offers recommendations for how science marketers should prepare to engage with LinkedIn.

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Social Media in Science Marketing: Fad or Function? – Dispelling Four Myths and Capitalizing on Three Opportunities

By Magali Charmot,  February 10th, 2011

While the consumer world has seen an explosion of social media adoption over the past five years, these same tools have been slower to be embraced by the scientific community, making social media a nascent priority in most marketing plans. However, many early attempts to incorporate social media into scientific marketing campaigns have been undermined by four common misperceptions about social media itself. While the opportunity to leverage social media for scientific marketing is on the rise as scientists embrace these channels, marketers must address these new channels according to their own new rules. This issue of the Linus Report dispels these common misperceptions, and offers a realistic set of guidelines for what scientific marketers should expect when it comes to social media in the next year.

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Decision-Making and the Selling Process: A Psychographic Approach

By Hamid Ghanadan,  November 15th, 2010

The recent book The 5 Paths to Persuasion: The Art of Selling Your Message offers a compelling argument that people make decisions in five different ways. Sales and marketing personnel can collaborate to deliver sales communications to match the decision-making styles of prospective customers. This paper reviews the five types of decision-makers, and suggests ways to present to each decision-maker type.

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Innovation as a Brand Attribute

By Hamid Ghanadan,  September 15th, 2010

Innovation is a crucial part of most life science companies’ success. Management often uses the claim of innovation as a message in marketing and advertising campaigns for products, however, this practice can promote mixed results at best and may have long-term negative consequences for a company’s brand. This issue ofLinus Report discusses the importance of situating innovation as a brand attribute and provides a framework for employing innovation within marketing messages.

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