Apr-May, 2009: Creating the Foundation for a Speedy Recovery While marketing budgets typically shrink during a recession, there are non-cash assets that marketers can leverage to generate business and create the foundation of a more expedient recovery when that day arrives. In this issue of Linus Report, we suggest several activities that marketers can engage in immediately for thriving under a leaner marketing organization, simultaneously generating short-term business while not losing sight of the long view. We suggest auditing internal assets, making adjustments to the company's brand strategy, experimenting with new ideas, and having a plan in place early enough to capitalize on the recovery.
Feb-Mar, 2009: Optimizing the Marketing Mix The 2009 calendar year has brought with it a new world economy. How are managers and executives in scientific industries adjusting the funding of their marketing and communications programs? We conducted an online survey of over 100 industry marketing personnel between September and November of 2008, when the majority of the industry was planning marketing programs and media for the upcoming year. The survey quantifies the distribution of budgets across different channels within the marketing mix, as well as managers' intentions for allocating budgets in the coming year. The findings suggest several trends and opportunities for marketers, which we discuss in this issue of Linus Report.
Dec-Jan, 2009: Optimizing Your Marketing Funnel With the slowdown of the global financial markets in 2008, the world's economy has taken a significant downturn and prospects for 2009 appear bleak. How are scientific companies reacting to these market conditions, and how do marketers plan their strategies and activities in such volatile times? Executives need to view this economic downturn as an opportunity to rethink and evolve their organizations' marketing practices to be more focused, effective, and efficient. This issue of Linus Report provides a framework for optimizing a scientific company’s marketing funnel to generate more sales activity while maximizing efficiencies.
Oct-Nov, 2008: Marketing Specificity Redefined As marketing organizations within scientific companies evolve their communications tactics, they are turning toward new electronic channels. However, they struggle to balance the opportunity for personalized dialogue with the burden of creating more narrowly focused information. Today, there are fundamental shifts in ways that scientists find and use information, shifts that have profound impact on marketing effectiveness. Successful marketers will view their organization’s content as a strategic asset, and will leverage this content to put the customer in control of her own marketing experience. This issue of Linus Report explores how companies can leverage content as a strategic opportunity to build meaningful connections with customers.
Aug-Sep, 2008: Greening Up the Lab - Part 3 Many companies are using environmentally friendly—or green—messages to differentiate their products and services in response to consumer attitudes toward environmentalism. Marketers in science and engineering industries may be tempted by such strategies, and not without reason. In the last two issues of Linus Report, we have drawn on a set of in-depth interviews to suggest that scientists seem to have a strong, and sometimes extraordinary, interest in the environmental aspects of their personal lives that is not being matched at work. In other words, there may be an unfulfilled desire for green products and services for the laboratory. This installment of Linus Report approaches the subject quantitatively, reporting the findings from a survey of 583 scientists on attitudes and behaviors at home and in the lab. Our data suggest that the interest in green products for the lab is high. Scientists already incorporate some environmental concerns into their decision-making, are interested in hearing more about green laboratory practices and products, and are willing to consider specific compromises—in price point and in efficiency of lab operations, but not in quality of scientific results—in order to minimize the environmental impact of their work. We conclude with five specific respondent-generated ideas for green features of lab products and services.
Mar-Apr, 2008: Greening Up the Lab - Part 2 The life sciences industry seems ripe for "green" marketing, but campaigns built around environmental messages are fraught with challenges. Environmentalism evokes social and moral concepts as well as technical ones. Marketers need to understand the psychology of scientists on the environment and its relation to the workplace. In this second part of a three-part series on green marketing in the life sciences, we present findings from extensive, in-depth interviews with scientists. These discussions suggest there will be heavy curiosity about "green" offerings for the lab, but the most compelling ones will tie green innovations to the psychology and day-to-day priorities of working scientists.
Nov-Dec, 2007: Greening Up the Lab - Part 1 As concern for the environment has become a top issue in the minds of people around the world, marketing messages with "green" themes have come into vogue. Would scientists react positively toward laboratory products and services that claim environmental friendliness? While there is significant opportunity for life science companies to tout environmentalism as a way of differentiating themselves from their competitors, there are several pitfalls they need to avoid. In this three-part series, we investigate how scientists feel about environmentalism, and how they react to marketing messages.
Sep-Oct, 2007: Why Doesn't Banner Advertising Work? Life science companies are spending ever-greater portions of their advertising budgets online. While banner advertising comes with the promise of better targeting, interactivity, and a wealth of metrics through which marketers can measure effectiveness, the medium is falling short of this promise on all such fronts. Or is it? This paper will provide a glimpse into banner advertising in the life science market, a review of recent academic literature that discusses the effectiveness of online advertising, and a framework for marketers to consider when implementing and measuring the effectiveness of their online advertising campaigns.
Jul-Aug, 2007: Rank or Relinquish: The Strategy Behind Search Engine Optimization As Google moves toward ubiquity within the life science research community and scientists move their purchase decisions increasingly toward the Web, there?s little reason not to optimize your website for better search engine visibility. While there are several mechanical fixes for ranking higher on search engines, smart marketers are developing content strategies and nesting their Google strategies within their overall marketing mix. In this paper, we discuss the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and provide a fundamental framework on which to develop your search strategy.
May-Jun, 2007: Driving Demand Down the Long Tail Companies have traditionally tried to sell products that will attract as many buyers as possible. However, according to Chris Anderson?s book The Long Tail, the Internet has changed the basic economics of many transactions, potentially opening up new markets for companies that are able to capitalize on niche demands. That ability hinges on the existence of three specific dynamics: democratization of production, democratization of distribution, and effective channels between supply and demand. In this issue, we review the fundamentals of Anderson?s model and explore the related challenges and opportunities facing life science companies.
Mar-Apr, 2007: Fundamentals of Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is the term used to refer to the second generation of Web-based services, such as social networking sites, wikis, and other communication tools, that capitalize on the collaboration and sharing of online users. Companies now face the question of how and to what extent should they be leveraging Web 2.0 trends for their businesses. This paper will explore critical trends around Web 2.0, and identify key ways in which business models are evolving to leverage these new communication channels.
Jan-Feb, 2007: Innovation as a Brand Attribute 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 of Linus Report discusses the importance of situating innovation as a brand attribute and provides a framework for employing innovation within marketing messages.
Sep-Oct, 2006: Developing Strong Brands in an Era of Immediacy Over the past five years, online marketing has moved to center stage in the marketing and communications strategies of life science companies. This comes as no surprise since this medium undoubtedly provides a multitude of advantages over traditional advertising media, such as allowing marketers to reach their short-term goals quickly and effectively. Despite its advantages, however, this medium on its own lacks the ability to build strong brands. Thus, life science companies must learn to make their online marketing activities part of an overall integrated communications mix. This paper discusses a systematic approach for developing an integrated communications mix that meets both long-term branding goals and short-term growth objectives.
Jul-Aug, 2006: Marketing Specificity Part I ? Successfully Developing and Managing Marketing Content Life science companies often need to serve different sets of target audiences simultaneously. To do this effectively, marketing management needs to develop strategies around positioning and messaging of products, applications, and the company?s master brand that align with the audiences? frames-of-reference. Too often, however, companies fall into one-size-fits-all habits that prevent them from deploying their content nimbly. This paper explores several dynamics that affect the development and management of audience-aligned marketing content, and proposes strategies for staying ahead of such challenges.
May-Jun, 2006: Differentiating Through Service and Support Building brand-preference by strengthening a life science company?s customer service and technical support offerings can help companies on both ends of the technology adoption life cycle. At the beginning of the life cycle, companies known for unique and compelling service and support will enjoy faster technology adoption into majority markets. When entering the second half of a technology?s life cycle, companies can also extend the life of their products in majority markets and fight commodity status. In this issue, the importance of service and support both as a brand differentiator and navigator through the technology adoption life cycle will be discussed.
Mar-Apr, 2006: Putting Your Company Ahead with PR In recent years, the explosion of new content channels has made it increasingly difficult for companies to effectively leverage Public Relations (PR) as part of their marketing mix. A robust PR program requires creativity, networks of relationships with journalists, and systems for reacting to opportunities at a moment?s notice. This paper provides a discussion about the changing face of PR, and offers three suggestions for leveraging PR tactics in a company?s overall marketing program.
Jan-Feb, 2006: Navigating the Technology Adoption Life Cycle While understanding the typical technology adoption life cycle provides life science marketers with a starting point for introducing discontinuous innovations with minimum resistance, out-of-the-box strategies for navigating the life cycle are problematic and may fail to capture the market. Sometimes, the most profitable strategy is to take non-linear paths for navigating the life cycle model. This paper provides a brief introduction of the technology adoption life cycle, discusses dangers of tunnel vision for life science companies, and offers three positioning scenarios where life science companies can build thrust into maximizing the life of their products.
Sep-Oct, 2005: Entering New Markets: Talking to Yourself is Not a Strategy Life science companies enter new markets as a vehicle for growth. When doing so, they often use several analysis tools to determine whether a potential market is attractive. But employing such tools without gathering unbiased market data and intelligence only illustrates internal stakeholders? guesses, which may be far from reality. This paper reviews a popular analysis tool for determining the attractiveness of potential new markets and explains how market research data can be used to populate the analysis tool to more accurately reflect potential markets? realities.
Jul-Aug, 2005: Creativity Starts with Positioning: A Guide to Developing Unique Positioning Statements The first step in developing a successful marketing campaign is to create a compelling and unique positioning statement. Some companies, however, become preoccupied solely with creating visuals for their marketing materials, thereby neglecting to position their products and services properly. To avoid this common pitfall, we recommend taking a systematic approach to creating positioning statements. But to do so requires industry knowledge, strategic savvy, and ample creative thinking.
May-Jun, 2005: Decision-Making and the Selling Process - A Psychographic Approach 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 of them.
Mar-Apr, 2005: Developing a Successful E-mail Marketing Campaign E-mail marketing is quickly gaining popularity with life science companies due to its low cost relative to other marketing channels and its measurable results. However, to successfully integrate an effective campaign into the marketing mix, several key factors need to be addressed. This paper provides guidelines and considerations for developing or optimizing an e-mail marketing program.
Jan-Feb, 2005: Going Beyond Demographics: The Personality Types of Scientists Many psychologists, sales trainers, marketers, and self-help professionals attempt to organize people into broad behavioral categories. This categorization is starting to be used in the life science market. Understanding behavioral tendencies of target audiences provides insight into targeting and optimizing marketing strategies and communications messages. In this paper, we review and analyze the results of a recent survey conducted by Bioinformatics, LLC that shed light on the behavioral tendencies of life scientists by organizing them into different personality types. Further, we discuss the usefulness of personality categorization in relation to the marketing and communications activities of life science companies.
Nov-Dec, 2004: Implementing Successful Google AdWords? Campaigns Life Science companies are recognizing Google as a prime advertising medium. The fastest way to create a presence near the top of results for a particular search phrase is to implement an ?AdWords? advertising campaign. While potentially very powerful, AdWords campaigns require a thoughtful strategy, know-how, and routine maintenance in order to produce results. This paper discusses both the potential benefits and limitations of implementing a Google AdWords campaign, and offers a process to ensure successful results.
Sep-Oct, 2004: Turning Website Visitors into Customers Your company?s website provides an excellent platform for marketing products and services to current and potential customers. However, for your company to maximize on precious lead generation and sales opportunities, your site?s architecture, content, and design all need to systematically and strategically guide visitors to key information. In this paper, we cover the important steps to successfully designing a persuasive website.
Jul-Aug, 2004: Calculating Advertising ROI: Measuring Returns on Advertising Investments Executive management is increasing pressure on marketing personnel to demonstrate the effectiveness of advertising efforts. Life science marketers lack the tools to easily calculate Return on Investment (ROI) as a financial demonstration of advertising effectiveness. Developing proper methodology for calculating advertising ROI allows life science marketers to increase the performance and profits derived from advertising. This paper introduces a framework for deriving the ROI of two common types of advertising employed in the life sciences.
May-Jun, 2004: What Do You Think of Our New Ad? When creating a new advertising campaign, life science marketers sometimes solicit informal feedback from customers about an ad?s concepts and images. This information can lead marketers astray and into making poor decisions about the creative execution of the ad. In this paper, we offer a simple and valuable process for gathering useful feedback on and evaluating the effectiveness of an advertisement.
Jan-Feb, 2004: Creating Effective Online Customer Surveys Using the Internet to survey customers and prospects is gaining popularity. Onlinesurvey tools are free or inexpensive and easy to use. However, the simplicity of thesurvey tools themselves does not simplify creating and administering marketingresearch surveys. In this paper, we outline several fundamental principles in creatingan online research instrument. We then review two online survey software programsand discuss how to avoid unwanted side effects in implementing online surveys.
Nov-Dec, 2003: Is Your Website Effective? Web Fundamentals ? Part 1 Many life science companies do not use the web to its full potential for marketing and branding purposes. In this paper, we provide a method for assessing and improving the effectiveness of your website.
Sep-Oct, 2003: When Marketing Budgets Disappear Life science companies are cutting their marketing budgets. This requires a change in strategy for the marketing departments in order to stay effective. In this paper, we provide a critical briefing on short-term negative effects of cutting marketing budgets, and suggest the needed paradigm shift for marketing departments to be successful in this new landscape.
Jul-Aug, 2003: The Dynamics of Mail Before a Large Tradeshow Are you planning to send a mailer to rally up some booth traffic at your next big tradeshow? We have news for you: so is everyone else. We tracked and analyzed all of the mail that we received in the 4 weeks prior to the 2002 Pittsburgh Conference (PITTCON). While each mailer on its own was well designed and executed, we believe that the sheer volume of mail requires alternative tactics in order to be effective. The overall dynamics of mail during this time period should be taken into account when designing a direct-mail campaign to deploy before a large tradeshow. In this paper, we present our findings and offer several suggestions for increasing your success rate with this type of direct-mail campaign.
In order to maintain a deep understanding of the industry, we decided to create a forum within which we can come together to exchange thoughts on marketing and other relevant topics.
Please join us in our discussions
Over the years, we have spoken at various events such as the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) National Sales Meeting, the American Association of Cancer Researchers (AACR) Marketing Meeting, and Analytical Life Science Systems Association (ALSSA) Annual Meeting.
f you’re interested in having us speak at your event or to a small group within your company, please email us at inquiries@thelinusgroup.com
Here are just a few of the topics that we’ve covered:
