Life sciences invests billions of dollars into R&D innovation. Why isn’t it doing the same in sales and marketing?
That was the theme of LINUS CEO Hamid Ghanadan’s keynote at the SAMPS (Sales and Marketing Professionals in Life Sciences) North American Conference, held in South San Francisco earlier this month.
Ghanadan’s keynote was followed by a full day of speakers, a couple panel discussions, and a workshop, all centered on sales and marketing tools and tactics. For those of you that couldn’t make it, I’ve provided an in-depth (long!) recap of four of the most valuable sessions of the day.
I’ve included as much useful information as my notetaking allows so you can apply some of these tips into your own plan. If you choose.
Sales and Marketing Synergy
Quick take: Integrate your CRM, marketing automation, and online scheduling into one platform to create account-based strategies that bring together the best of sales and marketing.
Richard Brooks, PhD, senior director of sales at Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ADC), discussed the challenges biopharma sales reps and marketers face today, and how they can work together better to get more benefit from their combined efforts.
Problem: Access to physicians and researchers is highly restrictive—gone are the days when sales reps could hang out in the office any ol’ time. With limited in-person access, sales must think differently about how they deliver valuable information to their prospects.
Problem: Marketing’s attempts to deliver sales-ready leads often fall flat. With more reliance on digital marketing tactics, true voice-of-customer research is limited. When marketing doesn’t provide good leads from sales to work from, sales reps have to do their own marketing, and fast.
What happens then? Sales reps go rogue. They create their own marketing content, sales decks, and emails, forgetting about the brand messaging marketing worked so hard to develop. This creates confusion in the marketplace, plus leads to frustrated people on both sides.
What to do?
Brooks suggests marketers empower sales reps to conduct their own account-level marketing. ADC uses a stack of technology that includes a Salesforce CRM, Marketo, Calendly, and an ABM platform called Folloze to make this happen.
This combo allows marketing to create content to support in-person events like lunch-and-learns. With all this technology integrated, sales reps can easily access marketing-generated content to promote and execute events, track registrations, and send personalized follow up messages to “good” leads. All without relying on marketing for every little thing.
Personalization throughout this process is key for getting a response. Messages that appear to come directly from the rep’s email account have better open rates and engagement than blitzes sent via the company.
Showing how this stack works in practice, Dr. Books shared how ADC organized symposias and lunch-and-learn events, all with high attendance rates. By taking this route, reps gained confidence presenting while meeting prospects face-to-face. Marketing got the data they needed to optimize content moving forward. Even better, sales and marketing started working together instead of struggling in their own universes.
Personalization and Account-Based Strategies
Quick take: Use technology to follow prospects’ activity on your website and others to determine their intent. Get granular with this data to create highly personalized account-based marketing tactics.
Buyers—whether scientists, executives, or physicians—have about 70% of their mind made up before they contact a product or service provider. Given all the content that comes their way, how do you stand out?
Jessica Kao, PhD, senior director of marketing operations for Cloudfare, said the answer lies in combining marketing technology with new strategies to engage buyers according to their intent. Dr. Kao’s team uses a whopping 40 martech applications to ensure marketing and sales activities align and to generate actual quality leads.
She suggested marketers create a propensity model to predict customer behavior. With that understanding, you can create more targeted content and follow-up emails. Technology helps marketers understand prospects’ behavior, including what websites they visit and what content they download. That, combined with what they do on your own website, helps you understand how to personalize the next step.
To enable these tactics as well as lead scoring and attribution, Dr. Kao suggested marketers get friendly with their company’s IT and marketing technology people.
Because more people play a role in buying decisions these days, Dr. Kao emphasized the value of account-based marketing. Evaluate the activity of all the decision makers, not just one. Their combined activity goes into an account-based funnel. Even if they haven’t given up their name and email address, technology can help you find them so you can reach out (creepy but true).
Dr. Kao also explored the concept of revenue efficiency vs. return on investment. When evaluating a marketing campaign or technology, think about its value over time rather than more immediate ROI. It’s like focusing on compound interest over day trading. Because marketing is a long game, this approach makes sense. It also helps frame the value conversation with leadership when proposing a technology investment.
Strategies for Profitable Growth
Quick take: To make the most of modest budgets and tiny teams, define your ideal customer profile, maximize event attendance, and develop value-centric messaging.
Jenn Perkins, founder and CEO of Crevi, shared her tips for building a proactive, targeted, go-to-market strategy. To do that, she said, requires more than a bunch of leads. More than posting on social media. It’s a commercial effort focused on long-term gains rather than immediate boosts.
The first step in securing sustainable growth is to conduct a customer audit. Identify your most profitable customers and look for themes. Are there common themes among sector or company size? Where do they go for information? What kind of information do they seek? Understanding your most profitable customer will help you determine where to focus your efforts.
To maximize conference and trade show investment, sales and business development reps must get out from behind the booth. Review the attendee and sponsor list in advance, identify who you want to meet and set up coffee chats and other meetings in advance. Sign up to speak at the event. Publish a white paper or other thought leadership in conjunction with the event. The objective is to do what you can to position your company as an expert in your field. That won’t happen if your reps are sitting in the corner in front of their laptops.
Messaging is another pillar for sustainable long-term growth. Think value-centered brand messaging over product features and benefits. That means focus on your customers’ problems and how you solve them—differently or better than your competitors. That’s your narrative.
You’ll also want to establish a point of view, Perkins said. Point of view is your company’s perspective on the world. It shows how you are a trailblazer and where you are an authority.
For operational efficiency (another contributor to revenue), bring disparate departments together. Bring sales, marketing, and customer success together to create a combined commercial team focused on engaging customers and prospects.
Perkins said to “track every touchpoint along a customer’s journey.” Track it through campaigns or “growth pillars,” but do show how all three elements of the commercial team are helping to move the needle.
What’s Your Digital DNA?
Quick take: It won’t be long before Gen Alpha (born 2013 – ) will enter the workforce. Are you prepared to reach them? If not, it’s time to evolve.
Grace Lean, senior director of eCommerce for Integrated DNA Technologies, started her talk with a video: an eight-year-old girl using generative AI to develop a Harry Potter chatbot. Her generation—Gen Alpha—won’t be just digital natives. They’ll be ChatGPT natives.
The first generation of digital natives—Gen Z—is expected to make up about 30% of the workforce by 2025. They’ll bring with them a different set of values, behaviors, and expectations. Is your company ready to adapt?
Lean shared digital strategies for improving customer interactions. One simple example: mobile. Is your company’s website optimized for mobile? If your company sells products, is the experience intuitive for the customer? If it isn’t, it’s time to revamp.
The State of Life Sciences Marketing
Quick take: To make the most of social media and other channels, go to where your people are, including where they’re most active on social media and in-person events.
Although scientists and life sciences brands have come to accept social media, the industry still grapples with social media strategy. Is Twitter/X worth it? Is Facebook still a thing? What’s up with Bluesky?
Mary Canady, PhD, president of Biotech Networks, shared results from a recent survey of life sciences marketers and scientists. The goal of the survey was to assess marketers’ objectives for 2025 and how they align with scientists’ interests.
The [small number of] respondents included 36 marketers and 26 scientists, over half of which were based in California.
The most effective marketing tactic used this year was email, but not by much. Only 19% were satisfied with their email marketing. Lack of resources held them back from executing other tactics; but if they had more time and people, they would start a podcast, present at more conferences, or publish pillar content like eBooks.
Most marketers (92%) cited LinkedIn as their primary social channel, followed far behind by Facebook (19%). They also cited LinkedIn as generating the highest ROI of all web-based social. Of text-based social media like X and Bluesky, about 22% used it, but none were named as ROI generators.
Fortunately, 81% of their audience spends most of their social media time on LinkedIn as well. For product info, they turn primarily to conferences (69%) and webinars (62%) and prefer YouTube for video consumption.
Of the events they plan to attend in 2025, most scientists (73%) stick with events from local organizations, followed closely by scientific conferences and company lunch and learns (each 62%). Webinars will also stay in the mix, with 69% planning to attend some virtually.
Lead generation was the top goal for 54% of marketers. Conferences (38%) and content (33%) were the top tactics planned to get these leads. Most (83%) planned to use social media to promote their content and their brand, followed by videos and collateral (58%).
The survey also revealed some disconnect between marketing and their audience. Marketers love email, but scientists don’t love reading it. They prefer to get their information elsewhere.
Looking ahead, Bluesky is gaining users, especially users who don’t like Elon Musk. The app currently has about 22 million users, so it’s a platform worth exploring—especially now, while it’s relatively quiet.
To stand out, experiment. Sponsor (and attend) networking events from professional organizations. Lend your expertise at career fairs and speed networking events. And like Jenn Perkins said, make your presence known at industry conferences and trade shows.
SAMPS will host its next conference in Cambridge, UK, in April 2025. Sign up for its mailing list for dates and more info.
Need help implementing any of these strategies? Schedule a short chat to start planning.
