It’s time to start life science marketing planning for the next year, and we’d like to help you get the most out of your budget with this guide. We’ll assume that the Mayans are wrong and that the world won’t end, at least not before Q4. We’ve updated our life science event planning calendar which has 2012 conference and relevant due dates to help you get abstracts and other items in on time, especially if you add the google calendar to yours so you’ll get reminders. In addition, we’ve added the official Twitter hashtag for each event (where available) so you can track them (see our guide to life science hashtags to learn more).

Life Science Event Listings

Below is our list of life science media kits and editorial calendars. Marketers use them to plan their tactical schedules, see our life science marketing plan series for more details. We’d hoped to find more of the 2012 versions of these schedules, but several are from 2011. We’ll try to update them as they become available, try poking around the websites and contacting the publications yourself to find them.

Our 2011 survey of life science marketers indicated an increase in spending on social media, we’ll repeat the survey for 2012 soon. What are your thoughts on the trends for spending and success in 2012?

Life Science Media Kits, Editorial Calendars & Contacts

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Are you a life scientist or marketer planning for 2011? Below, we list resources for you, including a Google calendar which you can add to yours with reminders for major conferences and their due dates for abstracts, etc. We’ve also included editorial calendars and media kits for traditional publications. We’d also like to help marketers learn how to support ’2.0′ publications like blogs and wikis, and we’re working on that, stay tuned!

Life Science Conferences

Here is our list of life science media kits and editorial calendars. Marketers use them to plan their tactical schedules.

Life Science Media Kits, Editorial Calendars & Contacts

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Each post in our Life Science Marketing Plan series will help you piece together a ‘map’ that is representative of the analyses and learning process that will help you define your marketing strategies and tactics for the year. In the first part of this series, we provided and outline and described why marketing plans are needed for life science companies of all sizes to meet their goals. In this post, we’ll define the first half of the components in detail. Let’s get started!

1. Executive Summary. Even though this part of the marketing plan is at the beginning, it is written at the end. Writing a marketing plan is like a journey, and at the end of it you will have learned a lot and have a clear understanding of the strategies and tactics needed to help you reach your goals. Keep in mind that several people, especially senior management, will read only this part of your marketing plan, so summarize the report here and don’t worry about being a bit redundant. Feel free to reference figures and tables in the report for easy and quick analysis. Also, if there’s a point you’d like to make to senior management (e.g., I need a bigger marketing budget to meet my numbers!) this is a good place to make your case.
2. Situational Analysis. Before getting started on an in-depth analysis, you need to provide details about your products, internal factors, and external trends which will help explain where you’re starting from. Remember that the marketing plan is a tool to help you communicate to others, so this is a good place to step back and set the stage so that anyone in your company who reads the plan will understand it clearly. Be very literal and don’t worry about explaining things you think everyone knows, such as defining the products included in the marketing plan and that big acquisition that occurred 3 months ago (a safe bet you’ll need to include that these days). In this section you will describe broader issues such as the life cycle stage of your products and any history that is relevant such as trends in the industry and current attitudes about your company’s brand.
3. Sales History and Forecast. This is fairly self-explanatory, but sometimes a bit tricky depending on when you are writing your plan. Because you normally need to start your plan well before the year ends, having a full year of sales history is difficult. In my experience, projections are normally used to estimate sales for the current year, and remember that sales fluctuate from month to month (e.g., December is usually lower) so base the remaining months’ sales based on these changes. Sales forecasts for the year that the marketing plan describes may need to be done at the end of the report, as the complete analysis may be needed to make predictions. Consideration of the historical sales growth, the size of the marketing budget in comparison to yearly revenue, and other factors will be important. In addition, my experience has been that ‘top down’ forecasts are sometimes given to marketing and product managers, indicating the revenue growth they must achieve in the coming year. While this is sometimes disheartening, the marketing plan can be used to explain why a higher budget is needed if these growth figures are too ambitious. A general rule of thumb is that the marketing budget should be at least 10% of the annual sales for the products it supports. In practice, I’ve seen the budgets run much lower than this, perhaps because marketing is sometimes under-appreciated in life science companies. However, it’s a good number to shoot for, and a strong marketing plan will provide confidence to the management that you will meet your goals if given the appropriate budget (and be prepared to work hard to reach them if your wishes are granted!).
4. Market Research. One of the objectives of a marketing plan is to ensure that your company continues to be driven by the market. In other words, you need to know about your customers’ needs and about factors that are driving their purchases, and there is no substitute for getting this information straight from them. Market research can be done many ways–you can buy off-the-shelf reports (Price $3-10K), hire a company (broad price range, $5K minimally), or conduct research yourself (price varies greatly). The scale can be large or small, from online surveys of hundreds to phone interviews of 10. Larger and purchased surveys will give you estimates on the size and growth of the market and each company’s share of it, while smaller surveys help you understand your customers more on a personal level (which is very important as we’ve discussed). Another consideration is whether you want the survey to be blind, and whether it should focus on only your customers or more broadly. One of my fantastic mentors Michael Gonzales told me once at the start of a market research project to define very specifically what internal decisions you need to address before you begin, and write each question to definitively provide answers to them. There is no point in posing a question unless it will have an unambiguous effect on a decision that you will make. It is easy to get carried away designing questions related to your company or products, as you’re curious about so many aspects, but keeping your objectives clear helps to focus the effort. Questions should center around the customers’ needs and habits and how they relate to your product development and tactics. What are their daily struggles or ‘pains’ in the broad area of your products? What conferences are they attending this year, and which publications do they read? Perhaps most importantly, you should give customers a chance to give you any feedback they have for you in an open-ended format, as they’ll often have great ideas and opinions and appreciate being heard. Even with a focused effort, you’ll learn a lot about your customers and their needs, and can use the information all year for many different purposes.

   After you’ve completed these tasks, you’re well on your way towards completing your ‘journey’ towards defining your marketing strategy and tactics. The way the pieces fit together will become even more clear after the next post in our series, The Life Science Marketing Plan, Part 3: Components (Second Half). Sign up for updates so you won’t miss anything, and see the whole series here.

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We talk a lot about social media on this blog, and are of course strong proponents of its utilization for life science and biotech companies. One of the aspects we like about it is that the basics of traditional marketing planning are also the cornerstones of social media planning. For this series of posts, we’ll go back to basics and explore traditional marketing plans–beginning with their ‘raison d’etre’ to the details of developing one. We see marketing plans as a journey in which you learn along the way, and we’ll provide one ‘piece’ of the map in each of these posts, helping you to see the big picture by the end of this series.

What is a marketing plan? Marketing plans can be centered around a product, product line, brand, or small company. My experience has been that they are developed early in the fourth quarter preceding the fiscal year they describe. While they can be discussed by a team, normally I’ve seen one person taking the lead in writing the document–of course this is dependent on the scope of the plan. Input can come from anywhere, but the marketing group and the management should own them and have the research to back up the marketing plan’s claims. They can take the form of a text document with figures (e.g., Microsoft Word) and usually include a summary presentation (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint). In theory, they should be considered living documents which can be modified by the owners (in practice this often proves too difficult for the busy marketing professional).

What are the components? Of course you can find marketing plan templates online, and you can certainly customize them to fit your needs. Here are what we consider to be the basics:

1. Executive Summary
2. Situational Analysis
3. Sales History & Forecast
4. Market Research
5. Competitive Analysis
6. Strategy
1. Messaging & Positioning
2. Overall Plan
7. Tactical Plan
1. Events (Conferences, Ad planning, Product Launches)
2. Budget

You’ll often hear the components referred to more generally as strategic and tactical marketing. Overall strategy is determined by the careful analysis of components 2-5 above, and it guides the tactical plan. We’ll go through each of these in detail in subsequent posts.

Why do I need a marketing plan? We all understand that having a plan makes everything work better, but I’ve worked in smaller companies in which it has been very difficult to justify taking time off to write a formal document. Let me give you a few examples for why it is so important, and why it will actually make your work easier.

Consistency. Working through a marketing plan will help you to see your path clearly for your product or product line and to quickly communicate it to others. For example, let’s say your objective is to be the leading provider of fast, high performance protein chromatography, and your target customers work mostly in pharma companies. This is all part of defining your positioning in the market, and will guide all of your marketing materials and actions. Every time you or your colleagues communicate with a customer, write a marketing piece, etc. you’ll be guided by this principle. This will result in a consistent message which will improve your brand perception.

Better product development. Successful companies are driven by the market. In a smaller biotech or life science company, the products (at least initially) are by nature driven by the market, because the company was likely founded based on strong need. However, as companies grow, there is a tendency for scientific companies to produce what they ‘can’ rather than what they ‘should.’ Developing a yearly marketing plan is a great way to get a reality check and to define your product line’s direction and be ready to give solid reasons to back your decisions. Additionally, having a document that can be forwarded to the R&D team is a powerful way to help everyone brainstorm about product development.

Time savings. Your colleague comes to you with a great conference at Cold Spring Harbor which he says is PERFECT for your company to attend. Your answer? Thank him, but point to the marketing plan and indicate that your target market won’t be in attendance, so it doesn’t make sense. Quick decision, no feelings hurt (hopefully), and you’ve pointed him in the right direction as to what conferences he should be looking for.

More bang for your buck. The strength of a good marketing plan is in the power to see how tactics can work together to be more powerful than they are individually. The tactical plan normally takes the form of a spreadsheet or table which list the months of the year and every major planned event, such as product launches and conferences. These can also be cross-referenced with editorial calendars (see our 2010 planning guide). Example? Let’s say your big product is launching in August, but you see that a relevant conference and editorial piece are available in July. By planning ahead, you may be able to work with R&D for an earlier launch, and come out with a bang in month of July with news about your product at the conference and in the editorial.

A marketing plan is a journey in which you step back and look at things more broadly, and spend the year prepared, making smarter decisions and being less reactionary. Of course, a marketing plan can be written any part of the year–there’s no time like the present. Next in our series will be The Elements of a Life Science Marketing Plan. Sign up for updates so you won’t miss anything, and see the whole series here.

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You are likely in the throes of determining your 2010 marketing plans and budgets. How should you budget for social media? We’ve been asked this a few times and thought we’d give you some guidelines (of course we have ulterior motives because we want you to have a budget for Comprendia’s services, but as long as we’re clear on that ;). Here are some guidelines for budgeting for social media in your life science marketing plans. Social media takes time to cultivate, and there is every indication that customers now expect to be engaged with these tools, so why not get started now? Here are the items we think you should consider adding, increasing, or adjusting in your 2010 budget:

1. Web 2.0 Upgrades. We’ve written about life science companies and social media, and many of you are just getting started in this area. One of the first steps is to move towards a more dynamic, engaging website. What does this mean? Think about websites like Amazon.com and Facebook, which give users a customized experience when they visit your site. Invitrogen now has user ratings for products, similar to Amazon. Don’t think that you have to jump in with both feet, however, and build something too fancy. You can start with simpler things like polls, resources, or news feeds which will help your customers feel engaged. Adding a blog or forum is likely more easy than you think, ask us or your web team about the budget for these types of upgrades.
2. Training. From strategies, to etiquette, to tactics, this should be a significant consideration for your budget. A social media strategy needs the participation of people inside of your company to succeed. For this to happen, everyone needs to be clear on the messaging and guidelines. There are infamous stories of missteps companies have made that have been devastating for them. Training on etiquette and procedure will prevent your campaign from going viral in a bad way. Make sure that you hire trainers who know your life science customers, as there are myriad social media ‘experts’ available who will likely provide general training which is already available in many forms on the internet.
3. Content. A good social media strategy requires producing more content than you may be used to. For example, newsletters that adhere to the tenets of social media aren’t simply lists of new products, but are more rich resources which help customers with their broader needs. More time will need to be budgeted to create this content. By being creative, and assigning someone who will be the social media champion for your organization, you can likely find content that you can repurpose, which may save some time.
4. Redistribution of Existing Budgets. Have you noticed that banner Ads and email blasts just don’t have the impact they used to? You may want to consider turning some print and online advertising into social media campaigns. This budget shift may mean shifting paid-for services such as Ads into additions to headcount to create strategies and content. Of course, outsourcing is a good way to get started.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Other Search-based Advertising. A big part of moving away from ‘broadcast’ advertising is to help people to find you, or pull them in, rather than ‘pushing’ your information to large groups of people who don’t necessarily want it. You’ll need to make changes to your website content to help search engines find you as well as invest (more) in paid search advertising like Google Adwords. As with most other areas of social media, you’ll obtain useful information from these tools, as you’ll be able to see what people are searching for and adjust your product offering accordingly.
6. Outside Consultants. OK, you knew this was coming. While social media will likely ultimately rely upon your existing staff, you’ll need help developing a Social Media Charter™, with training, and with content. Social media likely requires a change in mindset for your organization. Comprendia is the only company that is integrated with the life scientist social media community, and we will use our knowledge and vast network to help you to hit the ground running. If you feel as though you’re a ‘lone voice’ in your organization, trying to get traction for social media, we can help as well, as we have talking points that will help you communicate the importance to your upper management.

How much should you budget for these items? We can help you with a free consultation and also give a short presentation which will help you to ‘sell’ social media to your organization, if needed. We have great examples specific to life science and biotechnology that will make social media tangible to your staff and also inspire them to be creative and participate. We also have the resources to successfully implement your plans in 2010, helping you to increasingly engage your customers and provide the resources and products they need.

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If you’ve been following our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog, you likely know that we are ‘in the know’ about social media. We’ve used it to grow our own company and the San Diego Biotechnology Network, and we’ll be featuring our work with other companies soon. Check out our Social Media Capabilities page to learn more and to get started!