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[Colin Miller]

Hello, you're tuned into SNiPs, a reoccurring special segment from our ongoing series, Fractals: Life Science Conversations. Bracken is the professional services firm for life sciences and digital health organizations. Our intelligence ecosystem fulfils consulting, regulatory, marketing and analytics, an integrated and strategic approach.

So, when you begin working at a healthcare or clinical research client or business, what strategies do you rely on to identify the root causes of their marketing challenges and pinpoint effective solutions?

[Mary Costello]

Great question. Before I even answer that, I want to give a shout out to last year. There was a conference put on by kind of an alternative set of sites wanting to do something a little different in the market, and it was called the SOS Conference.

And it was a very DIY almost approach to it, low cost, $50 to get in, very few sponsors, one day of meetings only at a university campus. But one of the key takeaways I loved was they wanted to develop this idea of community. So, they asked people to go ahead and throw out an offer of your time, of your expertise.

And so, I did that. And anybody that needed help, and a lot of them were sites that came forward and needed help in understanding how could they improve their recruitment efforts. But it was a wonderful opportunity just to speak to these business owners as well, and complemented a lot of work I've done most recently with startups, a lot of them in the tech space. So, I will run into people, I will honestly, it's not really about earning money unless they're in the position to do it, just to help. It's interesting, it's fun.

I think the first thing to go back to what we already talked about is what problem are you trying to solve? Quite often I get told first what it does solve without identifying whether it's an issue that resonates enough for people. I think the other is to understand the buying process. Where do you fit in the cycle? Is there a budget for this? Is there a formal process? Is this discretionary money? Who makes the decision?

And sometimes, again, there's a lot of unknown out there for someone who has launched a great idea or a great tech. But they're learning kind of by doing. And learning by doing is an expensive way to go through money. Whether you're bootstrapping or you've raised it, but just to kind of throw out, hire a sales force and throw them out on the streets and have lots of conversations.

Unless you're really systematic and rigorous about gathering that and seeing that as an element of your strategic plan, you can burn through an awful lot of money and an awful lot of time and not come up with a single sale. And I think my favorite definition of marketing ever is the most simple, which is if sales is moving your product, marketing is understanding whether your product can move and substitute the word service. But you should understand that first.

Do we have something people are willing to buy? And I've worked with companies that want to give it a free, a pilot or whatever it takes, and they still don't get anyone to bite at that. And they're wondering why.

And sometimes it's not that what you offer isn't valuable, but it's so intrusive to get you to that point, whether it's some backend integration, whether it's permissions they have to do up front. Often for me, it's even bandwidth. As a marketer, you get offered one month trial in a system.

And I think to myself, I do not have time to do justice to the access they're giving me to make an evaluation. The timing just isn't right. Or I don't have a team, anyone on the team that has time for this right now.

And I think if you don't understand that, you're going to spend an awful lot of time spinning your wheels. You're going to end up with bespoke solutions because the sales team is going to grab onto anyone they can find to sign a contract. But everybody may want something a little slightly different.

So, in fulfillment, you're going to be fulfilling not your product vision, but those customers' product vision. Wouldn't you have been better off spending a little more time asking, bringing it back in, and looking for commonality and saying, is there commonality, first of all? Are people looking largely for the same thing?

And then what can be customized? So, all that exploration needs to happen way before you do a website, a brochure, whatever brochures are these days, messaging, a PowerPoint. What message are you delivering if you don't know this?

But it's astonishing that I think a good idea comes with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of energy. And there's just an awful lot of desire to get out into the market.

[Colin Miller]

That's a very interesting point. And the concept of needing to know that there's a market for your service, for your product, is absolutely key to developing a business and growing it.

[Mary Costello]

Yeah, I'd want to add a PS on to that point because I'm thinking back on all those consults I had with sites looking for ways to optimize. You also need a pretty good concept. Are you first to world? Are you last? You know, you're just a fast follower with a new idea. Or are you something that exists out there in the marketplace and there's lots of choices? And so, you're competing against that.

I think if you don't understand that, you also don't message your customers correctly. Because first to world, not everybody likes to experiment. And I'd say our industry ranks almost the last in that. And you have to do a lot of education. People don't have a budget identified for something they've never heard of.

If they do get excited by it, they're going to have to shift and find those funds somewhere in budgets in our world that get locked. People aren't just sitting around with money they can shell out over time. Now, if you're a site looking to compete for a trial, I think you would want to know, are there other sites in my catchment area? How wide is my catchment area? Where do people come from? How do they come from there? Do they take a bus? Do we have a car service? Is Uber part of this? Is there public transportation?

These seem so basic, Colin, but those can be the business barriers to reaching your goal and not reaching your goal. And it's nothing to do with how beautiful your campaign was. It is that you failed to understand. It's back to, can we get a good list? We can get a good list. But if we don't understand what makes someone respond, they're not going to yield a better result.

[Colin Miller]

Fractals: SNiPs is brought to you by Bracken and available wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at thebrackengroup.com or reach out directly on LinkedIn. We'll be delighted to speak with you.

I'm Colin Miller, wishing you sound business and good health. Thanks for listening.