Life Science Marketing Trends

Anyone in the life sciences vertical will be quick to tell you that marketing isn’t easy in their industry. They encounter a lot of challenges when it comes to marketing products and services. In addition to facing extremely high levels of competition and being subjected to strict regulations and rules, most life science companies also have a hard time reaching out to their audiences.

If you’re searching for more efficient ways of connecting with your target customers so you can offer them your product or service, this article will be of great help.

1. Video content is one of the fastest growing digital marketing trends.

The rate at which online marketing trends change is alarming. Each year we are presented with new delivery methods and channels, new technologies and opportunities. While video certainly isn’t new, the market is evolving and video now dominates the field with billions of people watching over a hundred million hours of video each and every day.

YouTube is already dominating the field, and its vast marketing appeal is mostly thanks to the fact that they reach more 18-49-year-old users than any cable network in the world. If you’re still not convinced that video is the most popular format of content these days, take a look at in-SERP video ads such as these ones:

– https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/life-sciences-and-healthcare/a…

– https://cheekyscientist.com/trends-phds-must-know-about-the-biopharma-ma…

According to SEMRush, the two search giants, Google and Bing are both incorporating video schema markup into their rich search results to reinforce it for SEO purposes.

With so many eager viewers on board already and the SERPs and social media ramping up viewer opportunities, it’s no wonder video is gaining popularity at such an explosive rate. This is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to boost the results from your marketing efforts in the coming months.

2. Artificial intelligence and advertising are the future.

This is yet another one of the current digital marketing trends that you cannot afford to ignore. Advertising is getting a lot more intelligent, which means that targeting your ideal customers is now easier than ever before. Also, thanks to AI, we now have smarter marketing automation.

Sources at Voy Media state that as modern marketing continues to become more and more data-driven, intelligent systems are necessary to help marketers make sense of all the data accrued in real-time as well as to allow them to act on the results immediately.

This is something you should consider implementing into your overall digital marketing strategy as it will make a huge difference to your ad campaign performance tracking.

Now that advertising has grown more intelligent, it’s easier to get really specific in your targeting and keep the costs way down. You can even use prediction targeting to get relevant content in front of the right individuals, such as the person in charge of supply for a specific pharmacy chain, and so on.

This is the perfect time to educate yourself on all the intelligent online advertising trends so you can tap into this incredible opportunity to skyrocket your company’s bottom line.

3. Work with the top influencers in the life sciences.

Now that you know for sure that YouTube celebrities are real, it’s time to explore the many different ways in which you can leverage their star power to get better results from your lead generation efforts. Influencers are simply people who have a significant online presence. They are ‘internet famous’, so to speak.

Most of them have millions of ardent fans, and although the numbers would probably be a lot smaller in life science circles, online influencers still exist in that sector. Influencers with audiences of about 1,000 people or more are called micro-influencers. Their audience is targeted and they have worked to develop trust from their followers and fans over time.

According to Disruptor Daily, there are a lot of micro-influencers in the life sciences industry that you can work with. The advantage of working with these ambitious minds is that while they may have a smaller audience, they have a bigger influence on their individual followers than the more popular household celebrities do on theirs.

So, if you can find the right influencers to work with you, you’ll be able to reap a lot of the benefits of having them endorse your brand.

4. Online and offline worlds are colliding.

There used to be a distinct line separating the online world from the offline, but that is no longer the case. The differences between the two are becoming less and less significant. However, it’s important to note that offline isn’t dead; it’s just a bit overpriced right now.

A lot of life science companies continue to adhere to offline strategies simply because that’s what has been working for them in the past. They hold on to the notion that offline marketing practices are superior and yield better results. Although that may be true in some cases, it’s no longer possible to deny the importance of having a sound online marketing strategy if you want to succeed these days.

The good news is that, as stated by Ethos Marketing, you can still use your traditional marketing methods in conjunction with digital tactics to create a strategy that is even more effective. For instance, you could couple your physical networking methods with a strategic email autoresponder campaign to generate more leads for your business.

5. Social media is becoming more important as the primary means of communication.

For those who’ve been in marketing for any length of time, you’ll know that email is a very effective channel of communicating with your audience. However, times are changing and while email still remains the medium with the highest ROI, as evidenced by studies conducted by Campaign Monitor, social media is now becoming just as important as email when it comes to communicating with prospects and customers online.

The majority of email users these days are signed up to a lot more subscriber lists than they realize. They are so swamped by emails that a lot of important messages get lost. This means that your emails may not be getting the attention they deserve, and that’s why you should be focusing more on connecting with your audience on the different social media platforms as well.

But the unfortunate part is that the attention is spread across various social platforms, and each of your audience members has their own favorite. So in order to be able to communicate with them effectively, you’ll have to make use of  ‘social monitoring’ software that helps you monitor your brand’s presence on the different social platforms easily by using a single dashboard.

6. Don’t ignore mobile-first design moving forward.

If you’re guilty of doing so in the past, now is the perfect time to change your ways. Ignoring mobile-first design will cost you massive amounts of money in the long term. The number of smartphone owners who spend the majority of their media time on their phones is growing by the day.

According to Steve Farnsworth of Impress Labs, you can use simple tracking methods to determine the size of your mobile base, and it’s typically larger than most people think – even in the life sciences industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a very small niche; it’s worth taking the time to ensure that your design caters to the ever-increasing numbers of mobile users.

7. Data analytics is the key to marketing success in life sciences.

This is a trend that most companies in this sector will appreciate. When you test, track, and analyze, it makes your marketing a lot more effective. Make sure that your next campaign is data-driven to help you maximize your chances of success.

As stated by Hans Christian Ekne from Towards Data Science, having a dedicated data scientist is now a must for any life sciences marketing department. A data scientist is simply a type of IT person that specializes in the areas of tracking, automation, machine learning, etc.

This is something that is vital to any company’s success particularly if you consider the sheer volume of data available which would be unmanageable using manual analysis.

8. Consumer engagement is becoming a top priority.

It has always been extremely important to create humanized experiences in our digital era. This is particularly true for those in the life sciences industry. It’s all about value-based care, and there’s a massive focus on the improvement of user outcomes.

This means that your organization needs to create a digital marketing strategy that not only achieves the company’s objectives, but that also promotes much deeper engagement with your customers. According to life sciences customer engagement experts at PEGA, there are a lot of benefits to be realized from understanding and complementing your buyer’s journey.

From email campaigns, content marketing, social media and other elements of digital marketing, it’s important to alter your strategies so you can take a stronger stance starting right now. Creating more personalized experiences for your customers will go a long way in deepening the level of engagement.

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