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Content marketing provides businesses that offer products and services to pharmaceutical companies a way to reach the right audiences with the right messages. This includes consistently publishing high-quality articles and other materials that offer value and education to prospective clients through a variety of channels including email, Linkedin and Twitter.

Below are 7 pharma-specific benefits of using content marketing to reach prospective clients.

1. Demonstrate Thought Leadership

Generating valuable content establishes you as an authority within your field. By offering your perspective and solutions, you build trust between you and your audience and, ultimately, position yourself as the go-to expert in your niche.

Thought leadership can also “help answer user questions and provide solutions to their problems. This has the benefit of moving users down the funnel by chipping away at doubts and solidifying your brand in the user’s mind,” writes Gabriel Shaoolian, Huffington Post.

2. Monitor Industry Trends

Professionals within the pharmaceutical industry often spend a higher proportion of their time managing projects and working with colleagues than those in other industries. This limits their capacity to monitor trends and, more importantly, the potential implications.

Content offers an opportunity for you provide value to your pharma audience by sharing insights into market trends and developments. This strategy extends beyond merely having a website; it requires investing effort into building an audience and increasing visibility. Meeting your audience where they are spending time (LinkedIn, Twitter, newsletters, etc) is an important component of ensuring that your message reaches them.

“Many pharma marketers are perhaps mistakenly thinking that if they have content up on a website or a video connected to a tweet that they are using content marketing methods. However, if the content does not drive or change...behavior, it has no value to the marketer,” writes Robin Robinson, PharmaVoice.

3. Showcase Experience

Content marketing also demonstrates your experience to potential pharmaceutical company contacts.  Highlighting your know-how and track record instills confidence in prospective clients, many of whom have a short window of exclusivity in which to realize profit.

By using content to illustrate your approach and how you’ve helped people in the past, you make it easier for clients who appreciate your approach to work with you. When a client already educated by your material approaches you, it takes less time to begin the process of working together.

You want to be the easiest supplier to work with.  When your case studies nail the client’s need, you paint a picture that resonates with your audience.

In some cases, you can use content marketing to tell the story about how you might approach a problem and apply your unique expertise.  Your ability to crystallize the issues, document your approach, and drive your action plan can result in a potential client seeing more clearly the value in a project with you.

Someone who reads your case study may be facing the same problem you faced. When they see the issue, identify with it, and are motivated to ask questions, they are more likely to contact you for help.  Knowing that you understand the problem is a tremendous asset.

4. Increase Visibility

Content marketing makes it easier for prospective clients to find you. Within the pharma industry where big money is at stake and companies are inundated with marketing opportunities, cutting through the noise is essential for long-term success.  Content marketing helps you reach the people you need to reach on a consistent basis. Rising above the alternatives and staying top of mind are keys to success.

Content marketing is also the foundation to appearing high in the right search engine results. Even companies that work in highly-specialized niches can benefit from content that has been properly tailored to a target audience.

5. Identify Pain Points

Content marketing offers a method for identifying the pain points your target audience faces and how to address them.  Articulating or identifying specific problems reveals how well you understand their business issues and the quality of the solutions you offer.

You can also use content marketing to provide a roadmap of what future problems pharma companies will encounter and the guidance you offer along the way. Knowing what obstacles to expect and how to overcome them can assist pharma companies with brand planning, lifecycle management, and other aspects of drug development and marketing.

6. Engage Audience

Pharma companies are deeply siloed and usually require multiple touchpoints across departments to reach the right audience. Engaging your audience is a critical component of making sure that what you’re saying reaches the right person, even if it is through another contact passing information along.  Content marketing provides a great way to make your service offerings understandable, relatable, and engaging.

Your content doesn’t have to be only the written word.  You can include Slideshares, videos, audio files, and podcasts.  Even animated drawings with narration can help tell your story. Developing a variety of content offers more opportunities to engage your audience.

7. Build a Library

Having a robust content library does more than provide value to your prospective clients (though that in itself is a compelling reason to invest in one).  You can draw from the material you’ve created to develop long-format content (like ebooks and white papers), present findings at conferences, provide a searchable resource, and revisit old topics in new ways.

Our clients frequently use their libraries of topics to address recurring questions.  A well-written overview is easily copied into the body of an email question from a client. New employees can learn about company capabilities and approaches by consuming already-created company material. Over time, your content library and its metrics can even fuel custom market research.

A content library also gives you the opportunity to build a user experience that channels visitors from one piece to another. This strategy allows you to move your audience through your sales funnel while also providing value.

Getting Started

By now, you’ve seen the benefits of content marketing for business growth. How might you begin to use content marketing to reach your target audience?

An important step is determining how content marketing fits into your overall communication strategy. Creating valuable content is a forward-focused strategy that may not bear fruit immediately. However, over the long haul, content marketing offers a higher return on investment than other marketing strategies.

When beginning to develop content, it’s important to keep in mind that frequency is more important than perfection. A good article that’s published is better than a perfect one that is never published.

The best content marketing campaigns often rely on outside help to develop and execute effective plans. Outside help, particularly for smaller companies that lack the manpower to sustain long-term initiatives, offers several benefits, including:

1. Speed: Bypass the learning curve that curtails so many content marketing efforts before they ever get off the ground.

2. Cost: Inventory and transform existing resources into actionable content for your target audience. This often includes interviewing team members who have specific expertise.

3. Efficiency: Use an established process for developing and amplifying content to avoid wasting resources on finding the right talent, generating compelling ideas, and maintaining consistent publishing timetables.

4. Strategy: Determine the best types of content to develop, where to publish them, and how to amplify them across channels.

Pharma Acumen’s team has deep experience helping clients develop effective content marketing campaigns for reaching pharmaceutical companies. From conception to execution, our market-tested process for creating content offers a valuable way to consistently deliver actionable material to the right audience.

If you’re ready to harness the power of content marketing to grow your business, contact Brian to learn more about the solutions we have in place.