Life science founders and leaders have a lot to prioritise. While having novel and robust science and products is key, more so is talking about them!
Telling the company’s story, the importance of the new technology being developed, and its huge potential are essential to making or breaking a company. This is where having a solid content strategy comes in.
While it may seem easy, being consistent and organised in how content is produced and distributed can take time. But good news! Once the foundations are in place, creating, scaling, and repurposing content is much easier.
Here we summarise 7 common mistakes when building and delivering a content strategy for life sciences and biotech, and how to avoid them. In five words, it is mainly about: focus, value, alignment, planning, and refinement.
Check the carousel for the shorter version, or read ahead for more details!
Mistake 1. Not focusing on the target audience -> Solution: Focus on your ICP
Starting with the basics, it is crucial to keep your target audience in mind at all points. Before you start, take the time to analyse your target audience(s), map their buyer journey and touchpoints with your company. Who are they? Where will they see you? And when will they interact with your content?
What to do?
- Segment your target audience, create detailed buyer personas or ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Tailor your content depending on what they might need at each stage throughout their journey (including the level of technicality)
- Prepare content for different persona and different sales funnel points, specific to different touchpoints and channels.
Mistake 2. Product promotion over education -> Solution: High-value content
Content that feels promotional tends to put readers off immediately unless they are ready to purchase. It is important to nurture your audience over time and provide content of high value that not only benefits that but that also builds your authority over time and positions your business as a thought leader in the field.
What to do?
- Prioritise educational value to help your audience make informed decisions
- Focus on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ your products solve a specific problem
- Use papers, case studies, and storytelling to make complex science easier to grasp
Mistake 3. Heavy focus on new launches -> Solution: design a flexible strategy
While product launches are key milestones for companies, there are many dependencies that can delay a new launch or release (especially in small R&D focused life science companies). I’d highly recommend designing a content strategy that has a running theme with pillars that appeal to the target audience and, which can be adapted to changing a schedule with a few weeks’ notice.
What to do?
- Build a strategy with 70% of content independent of product launches
- Consult the strategy with stakeholders to seek regular alignment and buy-in
- Design a content creation system that allows flexibility when needed
Mistake 4. Different styles and ‘voices’ -> Solution: content guidelines
It often happens that content is written by different people within a team or even across teams. While this can help bring additional expertise and knowledge, it often reflects on the writing style and voice, which will lack consistency and a unique voice. As part of your brand identity and narrative, it is important that your content has a consistent and recognisable tone and voice. This will make it more memorable and relatable, increasing trust in the brand.
What to do?
- Create content and design guidelines incl. brand voice, tone and visual identity
- Establish a clear and simple review system to gather crucial feedback
- Consider nominating a lead copyeditor to align on messaging and brand’s voice
Mistake 5. Failing to measure and adjust -> Solution: go over your tracking tools
This is a big one. Sitting down in front of the numbers and comparing what worked vs what didn’t work as well is always valuable. I’d strongly recommend sharing key numbers with stakeholders you get in buy-in from (see above!), as this will help them make informed decisions. While some factors might not be controllable (e.g., summer months being slow), gathering key metrics on the performance of your content will help you learn and pivot. And keep testing!
What to do?
- Avoid the trap of vanity metrics and track content performance, e.g. lead generation, downloads, click-rates, time on page…
- Analyse data regularly to see what channels, formats or themes do best
- Define measurable goals that help you track and assess. Use the data to refine your strategy!
Mistake 6. Scattered content and assets -> Solution: a master content tracker
Having a single place of truth for approved documentation is crucial particularly when deploying assets across marketing, sales, products, and customer support teams. Organisation of all assets, including working documents, figures, images, and finished content pieces in any organisation (regardless of the company size) is as key as the creating a master content tracker document.
What to do?
- Create a master content tracker to plan timely content production and distribution
- Be consistent to build brand authority and become recognisable by your audience
- Use a centralised system to store and tag approved assets for easy repurposing
Mistake 7. Ignoring promotion and distribution -> Solution: promote, optimise, and repurpose
While this may seem obvious, sometimes content production falls flat, or could be enhanced across different channels to bring audiences to the content. Strategy and distribution channels can be adapted depending on the budget for each campaign or project, with optimisation for search engines and LLMs (AI-trained platforms to understand human language).
What to do?
- Develop a multi-channel distribution plan mixing owned (social media, website, email), earned (PR), and paid (ads)
- Repurpose content into multiple formats
- Optimise your content with keywords and phrases that SEO and GEO can find/cite
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