“Life Science Marketing” might seem like an odd combination of words if you don’t have an idea of how much this particular industry has flourished in the recent decade. Did you know that the global net worth of just the pharmaceutical industry is 405.52 billion USD? And these are just the pre-COVID statistics from 2020. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2021 to 2028 is estimated to be 11.34%.
And these are just the statistics of the pharmaceutical industry in particular. The Life Science industry consists of various units, like environmental sciences, biotechnology, biomedicine, biophysics, neuroscience, nutraceuticals, cell biology, and many more. The life science market has been growing steadily ever since researchers realized genetic sciences could be used to create drugs that were specific to patients.
Long story short, the life science industry encompasses everything that improves the life of any living organism- animals, plants, or humans. From cancer research to the invention of new vaccines and medicines, everything falls in the broad category of life science.
But, life science, as you might have already guessed, is not something easily marketable. This isn’t because it’s not crucial. Nothing is more crucial than the development of medicines in the present day and age.
But, this lack of fame that life science has stemmed from the fact that it’s not very easily comprehensible to the mainstream public. For example, publishing brave titles like “Eating chocolates daily, can make you lose weight” can indeed sell your paper, but they usually have less than an ounce of truth in them.
This is exactly what makes life science marketing so difficult. However difficult though it may be, it’s not impossible. And we have seen the greatest example of this during the COVID-19 pandemic when the population had to be convinced to take the vaccines.
So, how do you sell your life science products successfully? Keep reading to find out.
Top Life Science Marketing Trends in 2022:
Decentralize the clinical trials
Clinical trials are necessary to test medicines. However, the pandemic made everyone reconsider how clinical trials could be performed. “Remote” was the keyword during the COVID-19 lockdown. From remote schooling to remote working, the paradigm has majorly shifted.
Therefore, it only made sense to shift to remote clinical trials. Though this seems impractical, it’s no more impractical than treating COVID-19 remotely- something that doctors already did with expertise during the pandemic.
The experimental sample can easily be delivered to the participants’ doorstep, and the patients can be monitored remotely by the researchers. How does this change the system? Think about how many people live near a research facility. The researchers had to choose their participants from this¡ very select group of people, irrespective of their preferences.
Now, the pool of possible candidates has widened immensely. Moreover, doctors can make a list of prerequisites for the candidates as well. This helps to target a particular patient base. By decentralizing clinical trials, a lot more people can participate in the discovery of a drug.
Social Media Marketing
This might seem like an odd choice for life science marketing. “Shouldn’t I be advertising via email?” you might be wondering.
Email marketing, of course, has a higher ROI. Plus, researchers are more likely to check their emails than their Facebook profiles. However, you must remember that life science marketing doesn’t just target researchers; it targets ordinary folks who do spend a considerable amount of time on Facebook and Instagram.
Moreover, Apple has spelled doom for email marketers with their new feature that makes it easier for customers to opt out of their email subscriptions. They can opt out of email tracking as well. While, yes, this does guarantee greater privacy for the users, it’s not good news for you.
Instead, you might want to shift to social media marketing, where, believe it or not, people do pay attention to the information that they are reading.
Remember, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of patients received their news from social media. A brilliant way to perform life science marketing over social media is by posting infographics and informational content.
Practice SEO
Again, this is a piece of marketing advice that works wonders for all industries. You cannot have an online presence unless you optimize your site for search engines.
Without SEO, your page will have no visibility, and no one will ever find your site on the first page of Google. So, how to rise to the top of the Google SERP?
You need to produce content and get backlinks. And no, the number of backlinks is not the only thing that counts. As per the Google Penguin Algorithm, your content needs to have these three factors:
E- Expertise
A- Authoritativeness
T- Trustworthiness
The quality and relevance of your content matter. And this isn’t too difficult for a life science website to manage either. After all, you can get one of your researchers to supply you with information that can be turned into a long-form blog, a checklist, or even a series of infographics.
If you aren’t sure how to integrate the relevant keywords, you should hire an SEO specialist for the same. Just remember, making sure that your SEO is optimized is a crucial step to familiarizing the public with your content and your products.
Remote monitoring
As mentioned before, doctors have already taken care of their patients remotely during the pandemic. And this does set a precedent for future operations.
If clinical trial participants can be closely monitored, so can elderly or disabled patients who face difficulty visiting the hospitals directly. There are hundreds of disadvantages of visiting the hospital, especially after the pandemic. Several immuno-compromised patients, young or old, can get severely affected by the infections that are prevalent in a hospital setting.
Moreover, several families cannot visit the hospital because they either live too far from one or because their work hours do not permit the visit.
In all such conditions, remote monitoring should be made available to patients through wearable medical monitoring devices. After all, it cannot be too difficult to manage a task that even a smartwatch can take care of.
Fewer on-site healthcare workers
Much like patients, healthcare workers, too, are functioning at a great risk day in and day out. During the pandemic, doctors and nurses had to spend more than 12 hours a day in PPEs that were extremely suffocating. This led to a large-scale resignation from healthcare workers who couldn’t keep on putting themselves at immense discomfort and risk at the same time.
Some healthcare workers can easily function from their home bases. For example, if there is a need to monitor most patients remotely, then all nurses do not need to be on-site all the time. This ensures that nurses who do have to turn up can work with security and comfort, without overcrowding and the related health risks.
As for the ones with clerical positions in the hospital, they don’t need to visit the hospital if the digitalisation of paperwork occurs. Doctors can also function from their own homes at a certain point in time. The pandemic has made people realize that a whole new model of work is viable. Undoubtedly the experiment for this form will take place upon some more in the future.
Telemedicine to Reach Distant Patients
One of the branches of life sciences that boomed during this pandemic is the telemedicine section. Previously, only a couple of telemedicine companies functioned as emergency service providers. Now, no one can look beyond telemedicine to serve their purposes.
Medicines are something that is either regularly or urgently needed. And telemedicine companies have ensured that buying from them is profitable in both situations. Medicines are available at huge discounts. Moreover if you buy in bulk, and they are the supply of it are either on the same day or a couple of days after ordering. It’s the best of both worlds.
Just like “Free Shipping” and “24 Hours Shipping” were buzzwords when the e-grocery market boomed, now the buzzwords are valid for the telemedicine market. The quicker you supply, the more your company can flourish.
In Conclusion
Life science marketing, as you might already have gathered, is not much different from other kinds of marketing. You just need to figure out the pressing needs of the industry at the moment.
In this day and age, “remote” is the keyword you must focus on if you want to be a successful marketer in almost any field. It is no different in the life sciences sector, either. If you can manage to supply medicines remotely or provide equipment for remote monitoring or testing of patients, you are all set to win this race. Both industry veterans and the general public will embrace your product or service with open arms.
