Life sciences marketing companies often lack the necessary tools to create personalized and targeted campaigns. Compliance and regulation often overshadow marketing campaigns leading to an industry-wide lack of visibility and investment.

Life science companies that want to increase company return on investment (ROI) should spend time investing in customer relationship and experience management strategies. Implementing a strong customer relationship or experience management system can help LS marketers gain insight and better understand the entire customer journey.

While there are many benefits to having a customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as efficiency in market realignment, account planning, mobility, social CRM, and nurture marketing, a CRM system can help life science companies with unique industry challenges.

Life Science Marketing Challenges

Customer service remains one of the greatest challenges for life science companies. CRMs can help life science companies increase and maintain contact with customers, helping relevant departments make personalized connections that address customer pain points.

A CRM strategy must be combined with a detailed, flexible, and well-thought-out strategy to create impactful change. Involving employees, prioritizing customers, and creating goals ensures that a CRM system is being used correctly and is producing efficient results. When used correctly, CRM systems can increase overall company revenue by more than 40%.

Customer Interest

Life science marketers must deal with extensive quality and government regulations, which means there is little time or emphasis placed on in-depth campaigns. Therefore, the marketing of life science products is increasingly difficult, especially when brand story or strategy are not consistent throughout the customer journey. Customer interest is an indicating factor for how customers view a brand or experience customer services.

There are a few ways that life science marketers can take advantage of new opportunities and platforms to gain exposure. Understanding social media and what kind of content to post on which platform can be an extremely useful way of reaching a new audience with an omnichannel method of exposure.

Being aware of sustainability and social responsibility as a brand is also an important consideration for life science marketers who want stay competitive. Customers care about what their brands are doing for the environment, and a CRM system can help life science companies leverage insights into what kinds of products or services customers are buying or showing interest in.

Because life sciences marketing requires specific targeted and quality campaigns, ensuring that the newest technologies are used to help leverage customer data is crucial for increased ROI. While many marketing strategies have remained the same in principle, technology has created new platforms for marketing, replacing traditional print-based marketing methods.

Enhancing the Customer Journey

The customer journey is all about optimizing customer experience from the first introduction to the brand or product, through to the end. The life science industry has often seen their customer’s dissatisfied with service, products, and the overall experience. Having a Customer Experience Management (CXM) strategy in place is crucial to ensuring that your customers have as seamless of an experience as possible.

Just as understanding each piece of a customer journey can help optimize the overall customer experience, implementing a strong CRM or CXM system and strategy can help optimize each piece of a company for customer experience.

Marketing and branding misalignment for many life sciences can lead to a loss of customers who value continuity between branding message and customer communication. There are 4 kinds of misalignment that can occur with life science marketing:

1. When company position is not aligned with needs of audience
2. When the story/brand not aligned with position
3. When touchpoints are not aligned with brand/story
4. When internal communications are not aligned with external communications

Misalignment both in marketing efforts and between internal departments can create further challenges for life science marketing teams. CRM systems can help rectify issues with marketing misalignment because they automate and connect multiple departments, making consistency in brand story across the company simpler.

How a CRM Can Resolve Life Science Marketing Challenges

One of the greatest challenges for life science marketers, is the industry-wide fragmentation of customer communication. Because every life science company has different needs and challenges, implementing an effective CRM software and strategy can be more difficult than in other industries.

The goal for life science companies in implementing a CRM system is to anticipate a variety of consumer needs while delivering products and information that comply with all regulation. In using a CRM, life science customers will also be able to target the correct consumer more accurately, eliminating waste with catch-all marketing and informational campaigns.

Life science companies can use CRM systems to leverage customer data, allowing for ultra-targeted marketing efforts. Because CRM systems can focus on both new and existing customers, they maximize a company’s capability to cater to customer needs. Through strategic, operational, analytical, and collaborative systems, a CRM can help life science companies optimize their customer interactions systematically.

Coauthor and contributions by Maggie Wong