Effective Marketing For Healthcare & Life Sciences Companies

Summary

MarTech Podcast ™: Effective Marketing For Healthcare & Life Sciences Companies

Episode Overview In the special episode of the MarTech Podcast ™ titled "Effective Marketing For Healthcare & Life Sciences Companies," guest host Doug Bell, CMO of Chief Outsiders, engages in an insightful conversation with Christine Slocum, Founder at ClarityQuest and Chief Growth Officer at Supreme Group. This episode delves into the unique challenges and strategies involved in marketing within the healthcare and life sciences sectors, highlighting the critical role of regulatory compliance, longer sales cycles, and the necessity of sophisticated multichannel marketing approaches.

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1. Introduction to Guest and Topic

[01:50] Doug Bell:
Doug Bell introduces the episode's special guest, Christine Slocum, emphasizing her expertise in growing healthcare and life sciences companies. He sets the stage for a deep dive into effective marketing strategies tailored for these highly regulated and complex industries.

2. Unique Challenges in Healthcare & Life Sciences Marketing

[03:26] Christine Slocum:
Christine outlines the primary challenges faced by healthcare and life sciences marketers, notably regulatory compliance and extended content development cycles. She shares an example where testimonial usage is restricted by agreements with medical professionals, illustrating the stringent limitations compared to other industries.

Notable Quote:
"If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing." — Christine Slocum [00:46]

3. Longer Sales Cycles and Larger Buying Committees

[04:32] Chris Slocum:
Christine discusses the lengthy sales cycles, often spanning 18 to 24 months, and the complexity introduced by large buying committees consisting of 10 to 20 decision-makers. This complexity necessitates a more strategic and sustained marketing effort.

Notable Quote:
"If you're selling a Health SaaS product into a health system, your sales cycle is probably 18 to 24 months... your buying committee is 20 plus people." — Christine Slocum [04:43]

4. The Necessity of a Sophisticated Multichannel Model

[05:05] Chris Slocum:
The conversation shifts to the importance of adopting an omnichannel integrated strategy to navigate the complexities of longer sales cycles and larger buying units. Christine emphasizes the need for awareness, education, and conversion tactics to build trust and guide prospects through the extended decision-making process.

Notable Quote:
"You really need that omnichannel integrated strategy these days to reach different people with different content at different stages of the buy cycle." — Christine Slocum [05:30]

5. Best Practices: The Tower of Power Model

[08:49] Christine Slocum:
Christine introduces the Tower of Power model, a structured approach to marketing that begins with a solid foundation of brand messaging, visual style, and a comprehensive marketing plan. She outlines the sequential building blocks:

• Foundation: Brand messaging alignment across the team.
• Website: Developing a high-quality, optimized website.
• Advanced Layers: Content creation, technology stack integration, public relations, and lead generation.

Notable Quote:
"First, we get everyone in alignment on brand messaging. That's very, very important." — Christine Slocum [08:49]

6. Importance of Brand Messaging and Positioning

[10:18] Christine Slocum:
Christine underscores that brand messaging is the hardest yet most crucial element to measure. Consistent and aligned messaging ensures that all marketing campaigns are coherent and effective, reducing wasted efforts on inconsistent narratives.

Notable Quote:
"If the marketing team doesn't have top down C level buy in on what the message is, everyone's making up their own narrative." — Christine Slocum [11:09]

7. Applying Strategies to Healthcare & Life Sciences

[12:29] Chris Slocum:
The discussion returns to the specific needs of healthcare and life sciences companies. Christine explains how regulatory hurdles and the inherent complexity of these industries make robust brand messaging and strategic marketing indispensable for competitive advantage.

Notable Quote:
"Organizations struggling to have the right software in place to help them understand their marketing performance... starting with the thing that is the hardest to measure, which is this idea of brand." — Chris Slocum [11:09]

8. Engaging C-Level Executives in Marketing Initiatives

[12:54] Christine Slocum:
Christine shares strategies to engage C-level executives in marketing processes, making brand development an engaging and collaborative effort. She highlights the impact of activities like crafting an award speech as a motivational tool for alignment and commitment.

Notable Quote:
"Once they write that award speech and they give it in a room in front of everyone else on the team, that is an amazing light bulb moment for C levels." — Christine Slocum [14:17]

9. Positioning and Messaging as Core Marketing Elements

[15:14] Chris Slocum:
Chris likens positioning and messaging to the foundational elements of digital marketing, emphasizing their critical importance. He notes that substantial resources are being allocated to these areas, underscoring their role in achieving market success.

Notable Quote:
"Positioning and messaging is the new digital." — Chris Slocum [15:14]

10. Conclusion and Resources

The episode concludes with Christine directing listeners to her book, Stop Starvation Marketing, for deeper insights into her methodologies. She also provides contact information for further engagement.

Notable Quote:
"If I wanted to learn more about Tower of Power, you can find that information in my book, Stop Starvation Marketing." — Christine Slocum [15:50]

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Key Takeaways:

• Regulatory Compliance: A significant factor affecting marketing strategies in healthcare and life sciences.
• Extended Sales Cycles: Requires sustained, strategic marketing efforts over longer periods.
• Omnichannel Strategies: Essential for reaching diverse stakeholders at various stages of the buying process.
• Tower of Power Model: A structured approach to building effective marketing foundations.
• Brand Messaging: Aligning the entire organization's messaging is crucial for coherent and effective marketing campaigns.
• C-Level Engagement: Involving executives in marketing initiatives fosters alignment and commitment.

For Further Information:

• Christine Slocum’s Book: Stop Starvation Marketing available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other major outlets.
• Connect with Christine Slocum: Visit Supreme Group’s website at supremegroup.io or find her LinkedIn profile linked in the show notes.

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Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.

[Doug Bell]

From advertising to software.

[Chris Slocum]

As a service to data across all of our programs and clients, we've seen.

[Christine Slocum]

A 55 to 65% open rate.

[Chris Slocum]

Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

[Doug Bell]

Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

[Chris Slocum]

If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

[Doug Bell]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast I'm Benjamin Shapiro, the Executive Producer of the Martech Podcast and today we've got a special episode for you which is going to be guest hosted by Doug Bell, who's the CMO of Chief Outsiders. Doug is a veteran CMO with a background in helping growth stage B2B SaaS companies reach their true potential and I'm thrilled to invite him and some of his friends to take the microphone and share their knowledge with you, our loyal Martech Podcast listeners. Okay, here's a special episode of the Martech Podcast guest hosted by Doug Bell, the CMO of Chief Outsiders.

[Chris Slocum]

Hello marketers. My name is Doug Bell from Chief Outsiders. Joining me today is Chris Slocum, who is the founder at ClarityQuest and chief growth Officer at Supreme Group, which is a strategic marketing agency growing healthcare and life sciences companies dedicated to providing best in class business and commercialization services. Yesterday, Christine and I talked about how to stop starvation marketing. Fascinating conversation. And today we're going to continue the conversation by talking about effective marketing for health care and life sciences companies.

[Doug Bell]

But before we get to today's interview, I want to tell you about what I'm listening to. Ever wanted to sit down to a candid conversation with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands? The current podcast is your chance. On the current podcast you'll find exclusive interviews with the experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to the [e-mail] or anywhere you get your podcasts today.

[Chris Slocum]

Okay, here's my conversation with Christine Slocum, the founder at ClarityQuest and chief growth Officer at the Supreme Group. Welcome back to the podcast, Chris. Great conversation yesterday. I learned a lot just about starvation marketing and it has nothing to do with calorie intake, but certainly a lot of good learnings there. Today we're going to talk about really sort of a drill in on what good marketing looks like for healthcare and life sciences. So I'm going to take a guess here. We got an audience that is listening in going, I don't get that space. Tell us what's different about that healthcare and life sciences company world versus say, the rest of the world. I'm going to guess it starts with regulatory compliance issues.

[Christine Slocum]

Regulatory compliance and the cycle it takes to develop content through that industry does affect marketing quite significantly. Now if you're B2C, you can get out an ad, maybe it has to go through quick legal review. If you're in health tech or especially life sciences or medical device medtech, the cycle to get content and ads and everything that marketing needs to develop to put into campaigns takes a long time. Some companies are better at it than others of really speeding the cycle. But yes, regulatory is something we have to look at. It was interesting. I just had a conversation with a client today and they have some testimonials on their website from mds and we were like, well these would be fabulous to use in your paid social campaigns. And they said, oh, we're not allowed to do that. They're allowed to be on the website, but they have a specific agreement with those MDs that it can't go on social media. So that's something that affects Health Tech, B2B, Life Science A lot more than other industries.

[Chris Slocum]

And then you mentioned, as we were chatting about this episode, you mentioned the sales cycles are also much longer and I'm going to guess the buying groups are larger and sort of more difficult to sell to and manage.

[Christine Slocum]

Larger and larger every day. If you're selling a Health SaaS product into a health system, you know your sales Cycle is probably 18 to 24 months if you're lucky, and your buying committee is 20 plus people. If you're selling into a lab, it can be like easier, a little bit smaller. But it's not uncommon to see 10 to 20 people on a buying committee these days.

[Chris Slocum]

So given that, I just sort of feel like I know the answer. So I'm going to give you the answer. And then this is like Jeopardy. You're going to give me the question, but I sort of feel like the answer is you darn better have a very sophisticated multichannel model if you're going to succeed here. And I'm going to guess there are some very sophisticated and elegant models that exist to deal with longer sales cycles, larger buying units, more complex buying processes and a lot of regulation. Is that what ends up happening here?

[Christine Slocum]

Now the question is, what is Omnicycle and why am I not doing it? Because we see a lot of companies because of this stop starvation marketing. Say we're just going to put everything in Google Ads or we're just going to put everything in pr. And you really need that omnichannel integrated strategy these days to reach different people with different content at different stages of the buy cycle. And that's just reality. To get it across, you also need nurture. I see a lot of campaigns out there that are going right to conversion. They want to marry on the first date, request a demo, talk to us today, give us a consulting call. No, no, no, no. Awareness, education, conversion is the way that goes. So get in there, establish trust with thought, leadership, content. Educate them, put some effort forward. Webinar, lunch and event, then ask them to start to date you in there and have that conversation. Everyone says throws out that metric of are we 60% of the way through a sales cycle in B2B before they talk to a salesperson, are they 80% of the way through? I see it getting longer and longer. They have looked at lots of pieces of content. They have scoured the website before they request a call.

[Chris Slocum]

Gartner, I don't know if it's up to 90% to pick up that thread in terms of what the data says, but I do recall it was not that long ago it was 60% of the sales slide cycle is invisible to the sellers, if you will. And I think it's nearing 90%. I think that number is right. So to your point, it's becoming less and less under the control of sellers and it's becoming marketing led sales if you will. Which gets back to this idea of a multichannel or omnichannel model. So I have to say I feel like you probably, and I'm going to acid test this with you, so you either probably have winners or losers when it comes to marketing. You have those folks, hopefully not your client or like just put it all into Google and then you have those folks that have these big elegant models. What are some of the best practices you're seeing with the folks that are best accomplished, meaning they understand The Omnichannel, sort of. What are they doing that others could learn from?

[Christine Slocum]

It depends on the sophistication and size of your organization. But let's say you're series B, C startup, you've just found it. You can't invest in every single piece of marketing that you'd want to do across Omnichannel. But at least look at a three legged stool, look at an awareness piece, look at an education piece, look at a conversion piece. So you might look at awareness. Is your PR side right? Are you getting earned media the education? You might be going to shows, doing lunch and learns, webinars, etc. Or publishing a white paper and then the conversion piece. Yeah, let's do some Google Ads, let's do some email marketing out there. Right? So focusing at least on a three legged stool that has those pieces of awareness, education and conversion is a really successful strategy that you can then scale as you become more successful.

[Chris Slocum]

So your tactics are modulating depending on which part of that funnel is succeeding or failing. So talk to me a little bit about the methodology you guys recommend, if you're restarting, if you will. And I know that we could talk about a seven layer model. We could talk about. There's all sorts of different ways to unpack what we're talking about. We're going to stick with the three levels. Right? Do you have a playbook for recommending how people think about that model? Are you top down or are you sort of bottom up or are you top and middle? How do you recommend people go about optimizing that model?

[Christine Slocum]

We've developed a model here at Supreme Group called the Tower of Power. It's the tower of marketing power and we start with foundation and that foundation starts with brand messaging. How do you talk about yourself and do you agree as a team on how you talk about yourself? It's amazing how many C suites do not agree on what their unique value propositions are. So first we get everyone in alignment on brand messaging. That's very, very important. Then you look at your look, your feel, your brand style and you put together a marketing plan. You actually put together a 12 month marketing plan that says we're going to do this, we're not going to do this, and this is why. And we're going to have this budget every quarter. Then we have also a way to track whether things are successful. That's the foundation of the tower. Brand messaging, visual style and marketing plan. On top of that. Then you build the best absolute darn website you can afford. Really, you won't waste money on a website. You don't want this big bloated thing if you're a smaller organization. But really, does it have good search engine optimization? Is it clear? Do I understand what you do? Do I look more expensive than I am? Because that is important on B2B and getting your valuation up or selling into systems that want to trust you. And then on top of that is content, tech, stack, public relations and lead generation. And you don't go right to lead generation at first because guess what, you've just built that on a house with no foundation.

[Chris Slocum]

So let's go back yesterday. We talked a little bit about some systemic issues that are creating starvation marketing. I wouldn't mind going back to a little bit of that conversation yesterday because what we talked about there was bad data. We talked about end of the day organizations struggling to have the right software in place to help them understand their marketing performance. We talked about all sorts of stuff there. But one thing you just talked about was starting with the thing that is the hardest to measure, which is this idea of brand. And so I'll just say there's a lot in there. But to be sure I completely agree. Get your message positioning right. And so what I want to talk about here is why that's so, so, so important and why it ends up showing up in Romy when you don't think it's going to show up. And I'm going to guess it is a lot less efficient to be spending on bad positioning, bad messaging, bad website. Is that really the bottom line in terms of measuring the impact when you're talking to clients?

[Christine Slocum]

Absolutely. Because everything you're going to base campaigns are are based on that core messaging. How are we different? Not only how are we different, but how are we better? How are we unique? What is that really? Secret sauce? What is our culture? Is it coming through in our messaging and are we in agreement on what that is? If the marketing team doesn't have top down C level buy in on what the message is, everyone's making up their own narrative. So then you end up seeing companies with eight narratives up there and guess what? Salespeople want to sell so they're going to make up the narrative that they want and then you have nothing that's consistent in terms of your brand. Whereas if you spend a quarter and it's just a quarter, Doug, three months, four months maximum on brand position message, an amazing website, it's going to pay dividends across and it's also going to make things flow easier for your marketing team because they aren't going to have to reinvent the wheel every time they launch a new campaign. The playbook will be there and then of course your roadmap changes. But your values are your values, right? Your unique value propositions really don't change that much unless you go into a completely different industry. So those things stay consistent and then you're just launching new product around those foundation sets.

[Chris Slocum]

And let's take that advice and reapply it back to healthcare and life sciences companies. It sort of feels like if any industry absolutely needs this, it's that industry. We're sort of often non healthcare and non life sciences doing all the things you're talking about. And if we don't do those things, we get our butts kicked in the market hard and fast. Right. So does this go all the way back to regulatory environment and sales cycles as the reason we're not seeing the type of marketing we want to see in this space?

[Christine Slocum]

I think regulatory and the difficulty of putting out content and changing positioning if you find it's wrong does play into this because it's a big hassle to change that aspect. Like, oh, oh my gosh, all of a sudden we want to launch a new product or change our message. It has to go all the way through legal, all the way through regulatory. So that certainly plays in. But I think there's just a mindset too and folks don't want to at the C level I find don't want to engage because I don't think we as marketers sometimes make it really fun. We found a way to make this fun to come up with brand messaging, make it efficient for them. You don't want to keep people in a room for two days and they feel they're always on their phone and checking this or checking that. No, let's spend four quality hours and we're going to tell stories for four hours and we're going to come up with like SYNAC type things of impact and contribution from starting with why we're going to come up with you're winning an award at JP in a year. What is your award speech sound like? When you get them involved at that level, they find it interesting rather than just going like what's your why they don't want to sit in a room and do that and they find it very boring and very ineffective. So how do we really make that effective for the C level to see the importance of this? I can tell you once they write that award speech and they give it in a room in front of everyone else on the team. That is an amazing light bulb moment for C levels.

[Chris Slocum]

So it's getting that buy in. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I also would just say that I feel like positioning and messaging is the new digital. And let me unpack that. And I would love your reaction to it, Chris. So what I mean by that was I feel like marketers spent the last 10 years catching up to everything available to them on digital, and we're still figuring so many things out, and it changes so quickly once you think you have it. But that's marketing, right? I will tell you, there are organizations out there that are spending a quarter million dollars on just positioning and messaging, and I'm seeing it really consistently. And this is going on in sort of the dark days of what's happening in SaaS for our listeners. If you're hearing this, your competitors are doing this. And by the way, when you hit their websites and your CEO is going, can you do what they're doing? They're putting substantial resources behind those narratives, and here's why. They're out there winning. Chris, you're shaking your head. People can't say this, but you're agreeing like it's the tower of Power. Lean in hard there. Everything else is work, don't get me wrong. But lean in there fast and hard.

[Christine Slocum]

And they tell good stories, unique stories to them. They tell origin stories. How many companies don't tell an origin story? And that's so fascinating to people, right? Why did you start this company? The CEOs that do it? Well, they're the ones that get coverage. And then other CEOs come to us and go, like, why am I not in that publication? Or why am I not in the Wall Street Journal? Why am I right? Tell your story and put it out there and tell it in a unique way that is linked to your brand positioning.

[Chris Slocum]

Chris, great conversation. Tower of Power. I got to tell you, great advice. If I wanted to learn more about Tower of Power, where would I find that information?

[Christine Slocum]

Yes, it is in my book, Stop Starvation Marketing, which can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and any major outlet.

[Chris Slocum]

Fantastic. All right. Really appreciate your time today. Learned a ton. Starvation Marketing now on my list of ways to scare CEOs. Fantastic.

[Christine Slocum]

Thank you, Doug.

[Chris Slocum]

Okay, that wraps up this episode of the Martech podcast. Thanks to Chris Slocum from Clarity Quest Supreme Group for joining us today. If you'd like to get in touch with Christine, Chris, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in her show notes or visit her company's website at supremegroup IO.

[Doug Bell]

Okay, that wraps up this episode of the Martak Podcast, thanks to our guest host, Doug Bell, the CMO of Chief Outsiders. If you'd like to get in touch with Doug, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. Or you can contact him on Twitter, where his handle is market advocate. Or you could just visit his website, which is chief outsiders.com a special thanks to the Current Podcast for sponsoring today's interview. If you're looking for candid conversations with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, then give the Current Podcast a listen. On the Current podcast you'll find exclusive interviews with experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising, and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to the [e-mail] or anywhere you get your podcasts today. Just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to martechpod.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even apply to be the next guest speaker on the Martech Podcast. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is martechpod. M A R T E C H P O D on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Or you can contact me directly on LinkedIn. My handle is benjshap. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day this year, so hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast and Ihear everything Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.