Too often companies invest in content development without thinking about the final but incredibly important last step: publishing. Where you choose to publish your content can have as much impact on your content marketing success as what you choose to say.
In this post, we’ll discuss strategic content distribution, which involves both publishing (choosing the best platforms for posting your content) and amplifying (ensuring people see your content) what you have created
Content marketing can be a highly-effective strategy for business development, but without including certain elements, your articles will fail to gain the audience needed to educate your prospective clients and generate demand for your product or service.
The good news is that by following the guidelines in this article, you can create successful content for your audience.
Effective content pieces distill an idea into a main point that offers value to a target audience. For businesses that work with pharma companies, the main point of each content piece should support the ultimate goal of generating demand for your product or service or educating your audience to make more informed, future purchasers.
Content marketing, the practice of offering valuable content to your target audience, enables businesses that sell to pharma companies to attract new clients, demonstrate expertise, and remain competitive. For small to mid-sized businesses that rely heavily on acquiring and retaining individual clients, content marketing is an especially cost-effective way to stay visible to existing customers and attract new interest.
Estimated reading time: 4 mins
You may have heard the famous Silicon Valley expression, “Fail fast, fail often.” While failure is never a good goal, it can equip a business for future success if its leaders understand what went wrong. And yet, “most organizations are profoundly biased against failure and make no systematic effort to study it,” writes Rita McGrath at Harvard Business Review. “Executives hide mistakes or pretend they were always part of the master plan. Failures become undiscussable, and people grow so afraid of hurting their career prospects that they eventually stop taking risks.” While avoiding failure altogether is impossible, the next best thing is to fail fruitfully. Tweet This
Fruitful failing includes analyzing what went wrong and applying that knowledge to future endeavors. While “the wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson, “organizations that do it well are extraordinarily rare.” Many companies focus on responsibility and blame after a failure. Instead, certain failures, such as those that occur at the frontier of an industry, are useful because “they provide valuable new knowledge that can help an organization leap ahead of the competition and ensure its future growth,” says Edmondson.
How can you ensure that your failures are fruitful? Below are five strategies for transforming failures in developing services for pharmaceutical companies from potentially devastating disasters to experiences that strengthen your business and bottom line.
1. Fail Fast
The faster you know whether a project will succeed or not, the faster you can learn from it and move on to another one. “An early failure lessens the pressure to continue with the project...because your investment in it is not large,” says McGrath. Quick failure allows you to test an idea or hunch and move on to the next one without devoting (and losing) a great deal of time.
One way Pharma Acumen encourages clients to fail fast is to solicit charter clients early in development. Some charter clients are paying clients while others serve as sounding boards. A charter client program gets meaningful attention from paying clients and is a great way to judge the commercial viability of a new offering. If you can’t get multiple charter clients for your project it is a sign you have issues to address. We help companies facilitate their charter client programs.
2. Fail Often
In the same vein as failing fast, failing often allows you to ascertain what works and what doesn’t. “If you have an idea, build the offer, give it to customers, and see what happens,” says Peter Cohan of Inc.com. “If the customers don’t like your idea, try something new. If they like part of the idea, develop that. And if it fails, keep trying until you succeed.” Or, as author Tom Kelley succinctly puts it, “Fail often in order to succeed sooner.”
3. Fail Decisively
Akin to failing fast and often, failing decisively “can save you from throwing additional resources at a losing proposition,” says McGrath. Instead of attempting to salvage a product that will obviously not work out, cut your losses and move on. Within the pharma industry especially, attempts to innovate can lead to prolonged development and testing, keeping a company from making critical decisions about a product’s future. We work with our clients to spotlight these situations and push decisions forward.
4. Fail Cheaply
Failing fast, often, or decisively won’t matter if you fail expensively. “Initiatives should be designed to make the consequences of failure modest,” says McGrath. It’s often better to begin with a mock-up, prototype, or small-scale service launch than to invest significant resources pushing a large project down the pipeline. Failing cheaply allows your business to move from idea to idea without risking large-scale fiscal losses.
Technology and entry barriers to developing new services are dropping radically. (This is both a positive and a negative.) Services like Amazon Web Services have simplified the development process; if you have access to a few talented team members you can assemble prototypes quickly and inexpensively. The effort required is not nearly as difficult as prototyping in the 1990s.
5. Fail Intelligently
Failure can be mitigated or even leveraged for future success but only if done intelligently. “Rigorously extract value from failure, so you can measure—and improve—your return on it, boosting benefits while controlling costs,” say Julian Birkinshaw and Martine Haas at HBR. Failing intelligently includes learning from what went wrong, having a method in place for analyzing failure, and sharing lessons learned with your team. “Failure is less painful when you extract the maximum value from it. If you learn from each mistake, large and small, share those lessons, and periodically check that these processes are helping your organization move more efficiently in the right direction, your return on failure will skyrocket,” say Birkinshaw and Haas.
“People remember your hits more than your misses. It’s okay to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes and correct them fast,” says Susan Wojcicki, Senior VP of Advertising at Google. While failure is not the end goal when developing new products and services, it is often inevitable. How you handle failure will be the difference between failing fruitfully and just failing.
At Pharma Acumen, we’ve helped clients capitalize on failures by analyzing them and applying knowledge gained to future successes. We have proprietary systems in place for understanding and extracting value from failures. Whether your business needs a full-scale analysis or a sounding board, we have the tools and expertise to help you fail fruitfully. Contact Brian to learn more about how we can best serve you.
Estimated reading time: 3 mins
Attracting new clients can keep your business going. But, capitalizing on relationships with existing clients can keep your business going strong. The best way to do this, according to marketing guru Ted Rubin, is to invest in what he calls your Return on Relationship, or ROR. ROR, simply put, is “the value that is accrued by a person or brand due to nurturing a relationship.” This value, properly cultivated, “will accrue over time through connection, loyalty, recommendations and sharing.”
Cultivating your relationship with existing clients makes sense from a financial perspective. Courting new clients can cost anywhere from 5 to 25 times more than retaining existing ones. Research by Fred Reichheld, bestselling author and creator of the Net Promoter system, reveals that a 5% increase in customer retention could increase profits by as much as 25% to 95%. According to Reichheld, building relationships with clients is the biggest opportunity for keeping costs down. “Return customers tend to buy more from a company over time. As they do, your operating costs to serve them decline,” writes Reichheld. Additionally, existing clients often refer others to your business, reducing or eliminating client acquisition costs.
The key to reinforcing your value proposition after the sale is to effectively manage your client relationships. This goes beyond quick email exchanges and sending holiday greetings once a year. Clients shouldn’t wonder what value you add to their business. These four activities will help you successfully invest in your relationship with clients so that they become long-term assets instead of short-term commodities.
For current projects, keeping clients updated is one simple way to remind them that you’re there and working on their behalf. This does not need to be long communication that can overburden already busy clients. Short, consistent communications on project activities weekly or bi-weekly can make a tremendous difference. You can highlight what has happened since the last report, what is planned for the next week or two, and what you need from them (e.g feedback, questions to address, etc.). The most important aspect of communication with clients is that they should never need to contact you asking for a project status. This is a signal that you aren’t communicating frequently enough and conveys to the client that their project isn’t important enough for you to keep on top of.
In today’s info-saturated world, digital communication is the norm. Clients are constantly bombarded by emails, texts, and other impersonal means of communication. To cultivate your relationship, resist the temptation to add to the onslaught of impersonal communication when more personal options are feasible. Instead of ordinary interactions, opt for extraordinary ones. Having in-person meetings is perhaps the most important form of interaction because it allows you to renew your relationship and gauge your client’s demeanor toward your projects. In fact, research has shown that face-to-face requests are 34 times more successful than email requests. During in-person meetings with clients, reinforce your unique strengths to remind them why they chose you (and why keeping you is in their best interest).
The difference between successful and unsuccessful ROR lies in how you engage with your client. “A one-time Tweet, a quick Facebook posting, or an email here and there is an announcement, not engagement,” notes Rubin. Instead of blasting your clients with impersonal one-offs, offer relevant content and tools for their specific problems or ask questions and be receptive to answers. Focus on the give instead of the take. “If you truly want to make an impact, aim to always put more energy and attention in your ‘give’ column than in your ‘take’ column. It will pay off.”
Investing in relationships with clients relies upon one fundamental business principle: value. If you routinely add value to your relationships, clients are more likely to stick around. Adding value to a client’s relationship with you doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as sharing an article you think might be helpful (and including why), acting as a sounding board for dilemma your client is facing, or connecting your client to someone you know who many benefit their business. While this type of interaction may not be billable, it cultivates camaraderie and loyalty among your client base.
We’ve seen that demonstrating your value proposition to clients is an iterative process that should occur over the life of your relationship with them. “If you deliver on your promised value, you’ll have a roster of clients who know you, like you and trust you,” writes John Bowen at The Huffington Post. “These are perfect clients to cultivate referrals from and generate additional income. And yet, too many entrepreneurs overlook this low-hanging fruit when seeking new business.”
Does your business focus more on acquiring new clients than on cultivating existing relationships? At Pharma Acumen, we’ve helped businesses that sell to pharma companies successfully reinforce their value proposition with existing customers to build long-term, profitable relationships. We have audited existing project communications, advised on enhancements, developed templates and monitored changes for our clients. For more information on how we can help your business achieve more successful relationships with clients, contact us.
Estimated reading time: 3 mins
Prilosec to Nexium. OxyCodone to OxyContin. ProAir® HFA to ProAir Respiclick. What do they all have in common? The original versions of these drugs have since been improved through the process of reformulation. In this article, we’ll discuss the the benefits of reformulation as a business tactic that extends beyond the lab.
At Pharma Acumen, we have helped clients apply reformulation strategies to lengthen the life cycle of their business assets and to expand or develop new services for pharma companies. In our experience, the ability to reformulate assets is often the differentiating factor between successful companies and ones that fall by the wayside.
Reformulation Strategy
Drug companies rely on reformulation to improve therapies while protecting the loss of patents. Reformulation can also be a compelling strategy for businesses that sell to pharma. The art of taking existing assets or capabilities and reformulating them for new clients or situations can increase profits and reduce initial time investments. However, to safeguard success, several factors needs to be considered before beginning the reformulation process.
1. Why?
Reformulated drugs hinge on their ability to meet patients’ needs better than the original formulation. Before beginning the process of reformulating your own assets, you must determine why you are reformulating. Revamping offerings just to increase profits may backfire unless you are able to offer additional value or meet a previously unmet need.
“If nobody wants or needs your product, it is bound to fail,” writes Juan Manuel de Toro at Forbes. “The starting point for all product development should be to analyze the needs of current and potential customers, their levels of satisfaction with what the competition is offering, their consumption habits and the technical possibilities for improving existing products.”
2. Timing
Reformulating an asset is useless if you miss your window of opportunity for offering it to the market. Pharma companies whose reformulations enter the market after a generic of the old drug has come onto the scene are less likely to succeed. In the same vein, releasing a revamped offering after a competitor puts your business in a weaker position than if you had relaunched first.
In our own experience working with dozens of businesses that sell to pharma companies, we have seen that the best way to avoid mistiming a product reformulation is to ensure that your evaluation and planning process is consistent and systematic. Part of your process should include analyzing the market need and timing for a potential new reformulation.
3. Pipeline
Along with timing, your development pipeline is important to keep in consideration when evaluating which offerings to reformulate. It’s critical to determine the number of assets that need reformulating while at the same time remaining agile enough to maintain existing offerings.
While reformulation can be a great strategy for creating and sustaining business growth, it’s easy to overtax your existing resources with too many changes at once. We’ve found that spreading your systematic planning throughout the year and not just by annual budgets is a successful strategy for combating the tendency to take on too much. Consider planning out the next 5-6 quarters and updating your plan every quarter (instead of once per year). “A good business or product offering is fluid in its design and is constantly trying to improve, to keep up with its competitors and its customers’ needs,” notes George Deeb at Entrepreneur.com. Yet, he cautions that “you can't expand while your house is on fire.” Reformulation, while valuable to success, needs to be integrated into a wider business strategy to be effective.
4. Competition
The last, but certainly not least, factor to consider when reformulating assets is the competition. Your competitors are waiting to copy your offerings and steal business. Reformulation can keep you one step ahead while ensuring that you are abreast of industry trends and what clients value. Stave off the competition by focusing on what differentiates you and translating your value to customers in a meaningful way.
Reformulating also boosts your prominence as a thought leader. If you have your pulse on industry trends and know how to convert those trends into valuable products, your clients will notice. Others will copy you, resulting in new business and opportunities.
Conclusion
Reformulation isn’t just about increasing the bottom line; it’s about helping clients. To be successful, reformulation should offer something valuable or new to clients. Understanding why you are reformulating an offering is paramount to its success. We have also seen that precise timing, strategic pipeline planning, and awareness of your competition are also factors that need to be considered to improve your reformulation strategy.
When it comes to evaluating your company’s product reformulation, whether you need a second opinion or could use more in-depth analysis, Pharma Acumen has the tools and knowledge to help you successfully reformulate aging assets. We’d love to put our extensive experience to work for you. Contact Brian Bamberger to learn more about how we can help your business.
Estimated reading time: 3 mins
(This article is part of a series on modernizing your business. In the first post, we looked at ways to ensure that your business process is modern. Today, we explore the characteristics of a modern workforce.)
With 2019 nearly upon us, it’s no surprise that the 9-5 era is waning. In its place, workers are overwhelmingly looking for one common denominator across industries: flexibility. “The conventional 9:00 to 5:00, office-bound work structure dates all the way back to 1938. But a lot has changed...and it’s high time for businesses to catch up,” writes Emma Plumb at the Future of Business and Tech.
But, what exactly does “catching up” entail? In this post, we explore characteristics that define a modern workforce. For the past 6 years we’ve incorporated these characteristics into Pharma Acumen to successfully complete projects and assist clients with their business needs. At the end of this post we discuss some specifics that have worked for us and can work for you too.
1. Employee Classification
Would it surprise you to learn that almost a third of the workforce is comprised of contractors, part-time workers, and freelancers? Whether it’s to spend more time at home, earn additional income, or enjoy the freedom to pursue their passion, more and more people are moving toward non-traditional means earning a living. The good news is that your business can capitalize on this trend if you are willing to hire talent under non-traditional terms.
“Freelancers not only can work on demand as needed, but businesses also can pick and choose work-ready talents with specific skills, such that training will not be required. Moreover, with payroll being a huge chunk of fixed costs for businesses, hiring freelancers lets businesses convert them into variable costs,” writes Sara Angeles at Business News Daily.
2. Flexible Schedule
77% of Millennials (on track to become the largest generation in the workforce by 2020) say that flexible work hours would increase their productivity.
“It may seem counterproductive to let people take time off during the week, but in fact the opposite is true. Overworked people tend to burn out, produce lower-quality output, provide lower levels of customer service, become depressed, and sometimes just flail around in their exhaustion. Giving people time lets them relax, engage, and perform better,” Josh Bersin.
This type of flexibility gives team members the agility to accomplish multiple tasks at once without getting bogged down in the corporate infrastructure that often impedes efficiency.
3. Telecommuting
Allowing people to work remotely part or all of the time is perhaps the largest trend in the modern workforce and for good reason. A recent study found that employees who work from home are 13% more productive, 50% less likely to quit, and save employers an average of $2,000 a year.
Another study suggests that moving to telecommuting just halftime would save the U.S. over $700 billion a year. “Technology gives us the freedom to shape the work environment to fit individual needs and work styles. Work flexibility helps both companies and professionals embrace the workforce of the future,” says Plumb.
4. Team-based Collaboration
The days when managers were assigned projects and controlled the flow of information have disappeared.
In their place is what Deloitte University Press calls “a network of teams” in its 2016 report Global Human Capital Trends. “Hierarchical organizational models aren’t just being turned upside down—they’re being deconstructed from the inside out. Businesses are reinventing themselves to operate as networks of teams to keep pace with the challenges of a fluid, unpredictable world.”
The idea behind a network of teams is that individuals with specific expertise come together to collaborate on a project-by-project basis. This strategy is particularly effective for businesses that sell to pharmaceutical companies because of the diversity of talent available on the market.
5. Leadership Structure
In the same vein as project-based collaboration, another aspect of modernizing your workforce entails leadership structure. A modern workforce has the skills and tools to get work done without needing micromanaging.
“When managers are looking over every employee’s shoulder, this only builds a nervous, disengaged team. The employees involved feel a lack of trust from their managers, which sets a negative tone through the workplace and puts unnecessary pressure on staff,” writes Raphael Crawford-Marks at Entrepreneur.
Instead of curtailing productivity by breathing down workers’ necks, leaders of a modern workforce should focus on the final outcome.
The Bottom Line
Is your business effectively capitalizing on modern employment trends? If not, you may be missing out on potential savings and the ability to work with driven, talented skill.
In my own business, I have relied on team-based workers to successfully accomplish projects for the past 6 years. By using the same individuals on a contract basis, I learn their strengths and can compose the best team for the job at hand. This approach contributes to Pharma Acumen’s success in (1) developing and launching new products, (2) planning and executing winning content marketing programs, and (3) gaining access with strategic benchmarking projects.
Our key focus is agility, which includes working on the project at hand, checking in weekly with the project sponsor, and disbanding the team when the project is complete. A new projects starts the process again with a hand-picked team.
If your business could benefit from a more modern workforce, contact me today to learn more about how I can help you build a team-based approach to meet your business growth goals.
