Psychology of Scientists
The Surprising Twist in Advertising Science
In today’s world of information overload and attention scarcity, it’s no wonder that traditional outbound campaigns to market scientific offerings don’t provide results. To be compelling and pass through the filters of scientists, we need to evolve our practices to go beyond the traditional ‘creative’ value propositions. We need to position our offerings as provocative stances in the market.
The most difficult question I have been asked
In a recent talk to a group of science marketers, I was faced with a very difficult question. Here is how I answered it.
There are Only Two Reasons Why People do not Buy Fom You
In a recent conversation with author Ali Pervez, I was surprised by his provocative question. He asked "There are only two reasons why someone doesn't buy from you. Do you know what they are?" I could think of many reasons, not just two. When he told me the answer, I realized that all of the reasons I was listing in my head were neatly summed up by the two reasons that he provided. I also realized that most of the efforts in marketing should focus on removing these two reasons why people don't buy from you. Do you know what the two reasons are?
Content-Centric Marketing for Science
Part 2: Engineering an Effective Marketing Program
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.
Missing Insights in Life Science Marketing: Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research
There are many market research instruments available to marketers, yet the majority of research in the life sciences is conducted with online surveys for their ease of deployment and statistical significance. However, focusing on quantitative surveys alone may cause marketers to miss another class of highly actionable insight. This article provides context for a balanced approach to life science marketing research.
Demand Generation Requires Deep Understanding of the Psychology of Scientists
For a qualitative research project, we asked 50 scientists 5 questions. The answers we received shocked us: A deeply emotional display of why they became scientists, what excites them, and what they want from the companies with whom they work. Watch this video. See the passion in their eyes. Their genuine dedication to their field of study. This is the side of scientists that you need to appeal to in order to persuade them.
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 decision-maker type.
Are Scientists Purely Rational? Dismissing a Science Marketing Myth
As science marketers, we believe that our target audience is inherently different from general consumers, dismissing any general marketing practices as out of context and ineffective. We also believe that logical arguments make for the most effective marketing messages because, after all, scientists are rational beings. This stereotype fails to ignore the rich, diverse, creative personalities that scientists are. By appealing to scientists’ emotions and egos, we actually have the potential to make marketing much more effective.
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 categorizing 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.
Beyond Speeds and Feeds: The Impact of Emotion in Product and Brand Marketing
Business-to-business advertisement often takes the form of a direct, information-based appeal to reason that relies heavily on functional criteria, such as product descriptions and specifications, data, and other descriptive content. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the typical advertisement for technical and scientific products and services. While “speeds and feeds” are undoubtedly important to this audience, a significant opportunity exists for those companies willing to explore other communication approaches. In this issue, we discuss ways to make the advertising of scientific products more effective by situating the role of emotion in the brand preferences and buying patterns of the customers.
Marketing to the World's Most Skeptical Audience
The first book in the business literature focused exclusively on marketing within the scientific industry, Persuading Scientists sets a new standard for managers of any experience level to develop marketing strategies that align with way scientists make purchase decisions.
Buy the book