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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 all of your 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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Good post, but I disagree on html for application notes for usability. I much prefer PDFs since they can be printed better and saved and shared easier (I don’t mean shared on social media, but say with a labmate or student). I don’t mind an extra click….I may play on my iPhone in dark room but not the cold room…brrr! I guess both would be best – html for the SEO and a link up top for PDF download.
I think CancerGeek has the prevailing attitude. We get lots of requests for articles in the form of PDFs. People want that format, not just html. Html is great for scanning, not so much for reading, annotating and archiving.
Agree heartily with Michele and Angela. I tried articles in html format ages ago and learned very quickly that many people hated them, requesting PDFs. Why? Because they’re more usable. You can share them, save them to apps, annotate them or read them later if on an Android, iPhone or iPad. Html has very limited utility for the end user.
If you are going to link to a PDF, be sure it indicates that so people know what to expect when they click the link.
One thing not talked about often but is very useful is having your site be printable. It is a bit technical to set as it involves some code on your page. In a nutshell, CSS is what controls the lay out of your HTML on the screen. There is a way to have a different layout when the person tries to print the page. This page has all the details: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/ You can see it in action just by going to that page and trying to print.
I don’t think it is either/or but rather a combination of HTML and PDF. Some of the content in HTML would be helpful for SEO, then for “formal use”, download the PDF.
Wow thanks for all the feedback, noted, the PDF is not dead!