You may not be able to change the global economic, health, supply, and political circumstances that are driving some recent softening in the life science market, but as a savvy marketer, you may be able to sidestep the challenges they present to your business. With a fresh strategic approach and highly efficient use of the resources you have, you can sustain a high level of impactful marketing even with a tighter budget. How? You twist your perspective and continue to shout your message. Don’t be reluctant to shake it up. And do it now before your competitors take the stage.
Before you make any big changes in your marketing tactics, take a fresh look at how your target audiences are changing. Are they shifting priorities from accelerating innovation to funding only reliable product development? Are they restructuring staffing for only core functions or critical projects? Perhaps they are even launching new initiatives to leverage technological advancements in areas such as lab automation and artificial intelligence.
The customers and contacts you have come to know may be working on new projects, taken on new roles, or possibly even left for a different company. What is certain is that if they are doing something new, they have new needs and interests.
It’s more important than ever to update your target audience personas to reveal how and why their needs and interests have changed. Defining your target audiences by job title and institution alone may no longer give you the specificity you need to catch their attention when they think they can’t afford to buy.
Informed by a fresh perspective, well-characterized personas are valuable assets that can help simplify your entire marketing strategy from content to channels to campaigns.
Shout! Keep reminding your audiences that you are still here for them.
This is no time to back off on marketing communications. There’s a marketing adage that says if you have said something 100 times, your audiences have probably only heard it once. This might be an exaggeration but consider how quickly new information flies through social media. Nobody can catch it all. If your target audiences are spending less on new purchases and new initiatives, make sure you are top-of-mind now, and ready to go with the next surge in industry growth.
Take a look at past trends. In 2020, Statista reported that companies that increased or maintained their media spending during the recessions of the 1980s and early 2000s recorded a 1.6% and a 1% increase in market share, respectively. During the same period, companies that decreased advertising and marketing spend during those periods saw the lowest growth in market share once the recessions were over.
But what can you do with a tightened budget? One approach is to consider ways to reuse great content you already have.
- Maximize the value of your existing content
- Rethink the demo with video to showcase your expertise when travel budgets are tight
- Stretch your tradeshow investment with high-value follow-on content
- Leverage your champions by telling their stories
- Teach them something they don’t know
- Resist the temptation to broadcast everything you know. Broad-sweeping messaging that tries to appeal to everybody runs the risk of appealing to nobody. Experts will be bored. Novices will be confused. They’ll both go away.
- Entice curiosity to encourage them to contact you for more information
Catch your target audiences now while they are adapting their budgets and priorities. With a renewed understanding of your target personas and a focused content development strategy, you can continue to build high-impact marketing with whatever budget you have.
Do you need a budget-minded solution now to develop a highly targeted communications strategy that will carry you through evolving market conditions?