You’ve heard that content is king when it comes to improving traffic to your website and generating leads or ‘converting’ visitors to paying customers. Relevant content will bring more people to your site through Google searches, and by engaging them they’re more likely to become customers. That’s great, how do life science companies find the time and material to add to their websites? As we’ve discussed before, life science companies have been generating great content for years, but it’s not always web-friendly. In this post, we list five great ways to add lead-generating content to your life science website. Having a blog is a great ‘catch all’ for this content, but you may find a way to work some of these items into your website without one.

1. Webinars. As we’ve discussed, webinars are a great way to give leads useful information while at the same time introducing them to your capabilities. While you don’t want to give away the secrets to your success, your company has expertise that can be shared, resulting in a useful presentation which may lead some viewers to buy your products or hire you for services.
2. Publication reviews. Many researchers are getting squeezed in different ways these days, two of the biggest are time and money. Reviewing an important publication in your field saves them both of these precious resources, and also shows them that you know the field well. Also, the reviews will be full of words relevant to your products and customer needs, improving search engine optimization (SEO) and bringing new leads to your website.
3. Application notes. These are nothing new to life science companies, application notes show an example of a product being used in an experiment. Here’s an example from GE Healthcare, and note it’s in PDF form, resulting in another step to download it. Think of the researcher looking for information on their smart phone in the cold room–will they take the time to download and view? Make application notes more accessible by converting them to html, and benefit from better SEO, as html is indexed by search engines more readily than PDFs.
4. FAQs. Think about the questions your technical service team answers over and over again, and how many people are also typing the same query into Google. Kill two birds with one stone by putting these online—you’ll answer your customers’ questions as well as bring new leads to your site. A quick Google search shows GE Healthcare’s on top of this as well.
5. Researcher profiles. Looking at independent science blogs can provide ideas for company blogs, and here’s a nice example of a researcher profile from the Protein Wrangler, a biochemist in Texas who we met on Twitter. The podcast he’s created might not be as friendly for SEO and generating leads, but a text transcript could be added. It’s a great way to show your connection to research thought leaders and to help the scientists out as well by highlighting their work.

While we’ve listed what we think are ‘easy’ ways to add content to your life science website, it will still require effort. However, the benefits of improved SEO and lead generation are worth it. When updating your website, make sure that you’ve integrated methods to capture the leads wherever possible, but don’t force people to sign up before they can view the content. Additionally, by making your website more informative and web-friendly, you’ll find your sales, technical service, and other teams will appreciate and utilize it as well.

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If you’ve been reading this blog, you know we’re crazy about word clouds, a way to visualize text data that is mostly associated with social media content such as in blogs. However, they are also being utilized in other areas, and were even featured on a recent cover of Science magazine. As part of our new Social Media Toolbox series, we’ll show you how to use word clouds to understand how your life science company is found and perceived by your customers through search engines.

Why do this? You of course know what your best selling products are. Do the needs or ‘pains’ these products meet align with the top searches that customers, or even non-customers, use to find your website? We did the below exercise with our partner site, the San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN), and made some useful observations. Below, we list the steps to create Google Analytics keywords word clouds, and show what can be learned.

1. You will need to install Google Analytics (it’s free) and have at least six months of data to do this.
2. Log in to Google Analytics and choose “Traffic Sources->Keywords” on the left menu.
3. Choose a six month period using the calendar menu at the top right.
4. Using the “Show Rows” menu at the bottom right, choose 250 rows.
5. Go back to the top and click on the “Export” button at the top left (just above the word “Keywords” above the chart). Click on “CSV for Excel” and download.
6. The Excel spreadsheet will contain your keywords (scroll down to see) in the first column, with the number of searches in the second. The first word cloud we’ll make will use the number of searches as a factor to determine the size of the words.
7. In Excel, create a column between 1 and 2 and fill each cell of the top 50 rows with “:”. This will allow us to cut and paste into Wordle with a “:” separating the words and their weight, a format it requires.
8. Open up Wordle in your web browser and choose the “advanced” tab. From Excel, copy rows 1-3 for the 50 top keywords into the top entry blank of wordle. The first few lines of our paste looks like this:

   sdbn    :    700
   san diego biotech companies list    :    477
   biotech companies in san diego    :    391

   The resulting word cloud is below (click to enlarge).
   
   From this cloud, we learned that the directory of San Diego Biotech Companies is one of the major reasons people visit the site. The weighting helps us to understand this well, as most other searches are dwarfed.

9. The above cloud considers the phrases people use to search, and is useful, but we also wanted to dissect the searches further and look at what words people use to search, taking advantage of analyzing the so-called “long tail.” For the next cloud, we did some trial and error and found that using the top 250 search terms worked best. Since we thought ahead and asked you to download these already, go back to your spreadsheet and copy and paste the 250 cells from column 1.
10. We used a program called Tagxedo to create our “long tail” word cloud, as it has more options. Here, you can play around with the maximum number of words in the cloud, and we won’t give you the options we used as it will vary. This is a very subjective process, so feel free to massage the data (it’s OK!) to look for trends. Our long tail word cloud is below (click to enlarge).
    From this cloud, we learned that the word “biotech” is used much more frequently in Google searches than the word “biotechnology,” and that networking is very important. These two insights would have been lost if we hadn’t done the long tail word cloud.

With just a few steps with these free tools, we’ve come up with some strategic and tactical actionable items for the SDBN from the Google Analytics word clouds:

1. Build upon the biotech company directory. Consider ways to get more ROI and/or leads out of this resource.
2. Choose the term “biotech” in web content over “biotechnology,” but include both.
3. Ensure that SDBN events provide plenty of networking.

The SDBN website is relatively simple with few products, so we analyzed the whole site, but Google Analytics has many ways you can slice and dice the data to meet your needs. You can also set up conversions to see which search terms are leading to sales. Do the word clouds for your brand, or product line, match what you expected? Your products may meet a customer ‘pain’ that you did not know about. Of course, the content on your site must provide ‘clues’ to the issues, one of the reasons we promote thinking about customer pain on a broader level. Word clouds are also great for sharing what you’ve learned with your group or the management.

This post is the first in our Social Media Toolbox series, and we also cover Google and other applications in our Workshops and Training. Sign up for email updates so you won’t miss any of our tips and tricks.

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When I started Comprendia little over a year ago, I actually had some doubt as to whether WordPress, a software popular for blogging, could be used to create my entire site. With the knowledge I had of web programming and WordPress, some through my personal usage, I quickly developed a branded, web 2.0 site. Now, it appears to me as if WordPress is taking over. If you look closely, you’ll see many websites are using it. Several nice examples of corporate WordPress sites exist here and here.

Why is WordPress so great? It has a highly customizable front end, with a user friendly back end as well. This translates into professional-looking websites which can be easily edited by non-professionals. This combination creates the potential to make businesses of all sizes more functional on-line and responsive to their customers, even if they choose not to use WordPress blogging feature. It is a stellar example of open source software, meaning that developers literally all over the world have written ‘plugins’ and ‘themes’ for it, making it infinitely customizable. Using it, I created the Comprendia site and the SDBN site quickly. Both are branded sites with many web 2.0 features, and I am able to quickly change content. Additionally, search engines LOVE blogs and WordPress can be configured to dramatically improve your ranking, which I’ve used to quickly reach the first page of results for terms that I think are important.

What does the ‘WordPress Wrevolution’ mean for life science/biotech companies? For small companies, it means you can set up a professional looking website with an integrated blog, and it can be branded and doesn’t have to look like open source software. Interesting scientific news and articles can easily be fed into your site, adding functionality and content. Your site can easily be integrated with and leverage other social media, creating a comprehensive strategy gain exposure and new customers. Mid-size life science companies Accelrys and Promega use WordPress for their blogs, even Johnson & Johnson’s JNJBTW blog uses it! Hopefully, this embracing of WordPress means we’ll see more blogs and interactivity from biotech, life science, and pharma companies in the future. Currently, as we’ve covered, the number of blogs from our industry is very small.

My niece Anne is doing a ‘virtual internship’ with me this summer, and some of this includes learning WordPress so she can update the Comprendia and SDBN sites. Typical of her generation, I asked her to do it, and although she knew little about it to begin with, she told me you ‘just have to figure it out’ and picked it up quickly. We can all learn a lot from her attitude, and realize this ‘just do it’ mentality is all we really need, regardless of whether we ‘grew up’ with Facebook.

How do you get started? Check out the links below to get your feet wet. While we encourage you to try it yourself, we can also help you to create a branded and unique website and blog, or integrate a blog with your existing website. We work with a team of designers and developers, and together with you we’ll create a site that will help you to grow quickly. Contact us for more information, check out our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, and sign up for updates via our RSS feed.

WordPress Resources

Special thanks to Anne Warner, student at Indiana’s Taylor University, for composing this list. You can follow Anne on twitter at @anwarner. This is Anne’s ‘Summer of Social Media.’ ;)

One of the tenets of new media and marketing is a strategy called ‘Launch & Learn.’ It refers to executing marketing campaigns, launching products or websites quickly, setting up metrics to determine their success, and redefining as necessary. The benefit? Begin building brand loyalty and communicating with your customers early, rather than delaying launch, or waiting until your website or product has achieved perfection. The new paradigm has been driven by the growth of tools to create ‘web 2.0‘ websites, where users can interact and give feedback. This has accelerated the pace of business and the feedback loop cycle, and companies have quickly learned the benefit of launching campaigns and products sooner rather than later.

What about Biotech products? We all know that there are many factors that come into product development and doing business in Biotech. Our products are not T-shirts which we can design one day and toss out the next. So, the products we launch are unlikely to hit the market any more quickly. However, engaging customers through web 2.0 tools, and testing ideas or campaigns can surely benefit any product or company. In biotechnology, especially, where so many directions for products can be taken, from tools for studying drug targets to the latest in instrumentation, it seems imperative to get as much feedback as possible, especially since products often take a long time to be developed. If you work in a highly regulated area of Biotech, such as diagnostics, turn ‘launch and learn’ around and determine what things you can launch quickly to learn more about customer needs. Biotech can learn a lot from newcomers such as 23andMe, who have created blogs and communities, likely towards this goal.

Changing to a ‘launch and learn’ strategy involves a change in attitude towards a more facile development of applications, sometimes relying on open source software and outsourcing projects to smaller, specialized groups. I see many in Biotechnology and science being reluctant to embrace these new ideas, partially because of the age demographic (no offense–I’m describing myself too). We learned that big agencies do Ads and PR, professional website design is expensive and lengthy, and that large companies are the only ones that can ‘reach the masses.’ Additionally, Biotech has been a very slow adopter of social media, which bucks all of these trends.

Traditional marketing, as well, with ideas that brands should remain consistent, also stands in the way and leads to more ‘staid’-fastness. I would argue that reaching your customers earlier by launching a website that may not yet have the perfect ‘look and feel’ you want, is more favorable than waiting and missing the opportunity to connect earlier and with more people. While new media moves quickly, building relationships with customers takes time, why miss out? Your Search Engine Optimization will thank you for launching early as well, because rankings improve the longer a website has been published. Launching early is exceedingly more important if your website embodies a new idea or product. According to Ries and Trout’s classic book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the first law states that ‘it’s better to be first than it is to be better,’ so it’s clear that launching and learning aligns with traditional marketing. This philosophy should be pervasive in your strategy and tactics–plan to use media which is amenable to determining your metrics and ROI quickly, and to revise your plans according to what you find.

Do I suggest that you put up a sloppy website rather than having none at all? Launch a product, either physical or virtual, before it’s ready? Not at all! Be proactive, and hire a team of professionals who adopt the ‘launch and learn’ philosophy. Be wary of those who present long time lines or large price tags. Don’t rush decisions, but don’t belabor them either. Want to learn more about it? I highly suggest reading Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae and Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do. Also, of course, Comprendia can help you to implement ‘launch and learn’ strategies and tactics to help you become more market driven, contact us.

In our first Biotechnology Marketing 101 presentation, we discussed using the principles of marketing to help further your career. In our latest presentation, Biotechnology Marketing 101: Your Company (PDF), you’ll learn how promote your small or large company using tactics that all marketers use to promote any ‘product,’ be it a physical product, service, or organization. Learn about every day steps you can take to ensure that your company is positioned for success. The presentation includes strategies to make the most of your budget. Tips for everything from choosing a logo to leveraging PR is included here, and please contact us if you’d like to schedule a free, personalized Biotechnology Marketing 101 presentation and consultation with Comprendia.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital for any company, and biotech companies are often very fluid and must keep their sites optimized to reach their target audience. Researchers rely heavily on search engines such as Google to quickly find information and products, and having your site at the top of the list makes them more likely to visit it. There are several tricks of the trade to improving your ranking, including using keywords on your page, simplifying your design by omitting extras like Flash, and cozying up to the search engines by using their web tracking and advertising applications. However, the single most important thing you can do is to add useful content to your site. In other words, make your site a place where your customers would want to come, not just for your products, and they will.

In Biotechnology and the Life Sciences, we are lucky in that there is usually a wealth of scientific research behind the products, so creating content around them simply takes time to put articles together. Consider writing application notes or newsletters that will not only put your products in the context of your customers’ research, but will increase your search engine indexing. Another idea is to include an application that many of your customers will find useful. Do your customers need to make certain calculations repeatedly, or would they benefit from a listing of references on a particular topic? Often, these resources can be integrated into your product listing. Thus, they will not only provide researchers with useful information, but they will be linked to your products and increase your search engine indexing because they will contain words that your customers are already searching for.

Some biotech companies have broken basic SEO rules. A few years ago, several companies got the idea to link their signal transduction products from graphical pathway maps. Thus, researchers searching for anything from “ras protein” to “map kinase” will find these applications and the products related to them. Great idea, but two of the companies used Flash animation for their applications, which are almost invisible to the search engines. Currently, the one company that chose not to do this, EMD Biosciences, still shows up fairly prominently in the search engines, while the others don’t.

Getting your site recognized by search engines is best done by professionals that understand your science, your target audience, and how to implement a strategy that will meet your goals for growing your biotech or life science business. Whether you need to redesign your website completely, or just need the “extra minds” to write engaging content, Comprendia can help. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and Marketing 101™ seminar, which will include hints for optimizing your website today. This post is part of Comprendia’s Marketing 101 Blog Series, designed to help you grow your business by developing marketing strategies and tactics that work for biotechnology.