Clever Marketing Content Serves Both Seller and Buyer

In a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 58% of marketers rated their ability to accurately target content to their intended audiences as average, fair, or poor. When asked which resources or tools they needed to meet their demand generation goals, the top three responses were:

· A better understanding of customer needs/preferences (67%),

· a stronger alignment between sales and marketing (57%),

· and more writer resources (51%).

In a world full of content, competitors, and critical readers, the quality of marketing content seems to become increasingly important to how buyers accept and perceive a brand and a product. How do you tackle this as a marketer in a B2B organisation when your product or service is a complex, regulated offering?

The Knowledge Gap between Product, Sales, and Marketing

The first thing you learn when developing products or services, is that their features and values should address customer needs and pains. The most successful customer value propositions are those that begin with a detailed mapping of the customer profile and values, also referred to as Value Proposition Designs. If your product or service achieves a fit between the customer profile and how your product can create value for the customer, then you are off to a great start.

But value propositions also have to reach their customers to become a real success that drives growth. In a competitive and transparent market place, your job is almost never done with a great product offering alone. Authoring marketing content based on product and customer expertise should therefore be part of any Go To Market strategy.

In regulated industries such as Pharma and MedTech and their service providers, this is especially important. The knowledge gap between marketing, sales, and product owners is often wider in these industries than in other, non-regulated industries because of the complexity of the products and the buyer needs. Marketing teams are often extremely challenged to produce relevant, high-quality content that resonates with their demanding buyers that also have a unique, complex industry jargon. Also, marketing budgets rarely allow for hiring professionals that bring both industry and communication expertise because they are too expensive, hard to attract, or a simply a rare breed.

Marketing Strategies should Include Subject Matter Expertise

Ideally, marketing teams in regulated industries should have content authors that bring a deep understanding of the domain combined with writer and industry language skills. The flip side is that your content becomes too generic to resonate with your audience and to create the respect that you need to succeed in this demanding industry. Thought leadership matters in regulated industries because it builds trust, respect and differentiation.

How Sealion Consult can Help

Sealion Consult can provide the subject matter expertise you need to succeed in the life sciences industry as well as provide the writing and industry language skills needed to produce high-quality, compliant content without expensive agency fees.

Sources

2023 Content Marketing for Demand Generation Survey, Content Marketing Institute, February 2023

Value Proposition Design, Alexander Osterwalder, et. al., 2014, WILEY.