Perception is Reality

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

We see it over and over again.  Large bio-tools companies are often cited in surveys by market research participants as the suppliers of research products that they don’t even sell.  What is this telling us?  The cynical might think it means researchers are just clicking on buttons to get to the end of the survey - and we know that does sometimes happen.  But when all the other answers to all the other questions seem to make sense (i.e. not the pattern of random clicking) then it means something else is going on.  We at Percepta believe it is a function of brand awareness. 

Bio-tools companies that have very high brand awareness get more than their share of credit from the research community.  That is because these companies are “first to mind” for many researchers when making a mental list of who might have a specific product offering.  That perception may not even be accurate if the company does not sell that particular product, but brand awareness can bring potential customers to a web site before they even look at search engine results. 

So what’s a niche company to do?  You have the product the customer is looking for but they are looking on some big bio-tools company web site.  The error many smaller companies make is to focus too much on selling (tactics) and ignore completely brand.  That is because many people don’t understand the power of a brand platform.  The brand platform is the road-map to brand consistency.  It includes several important elements of your brand architecture and will guide all internal and external brand messages. Many may not remember when Invitrogen was a small and virtually unknown company - but 15 years ago that’s what they were.  They started a brand building campaign that began in the mid 90’s and continued to evolve as the company evolved.  Today as part of Life Technologies they are one of the most recognized brands in the industry.  Same story applies to the Qiagen brand.  They have consistently built on a brand platform that has allowed them to evolve but yet remain recognizable and true to their brand.

Unless your company has a plan to build a brand platform that will establish brand awareness, your cusotmers will continue to go to who they know.  In this game it’s not so much what or who you know - but rather who knows you?  If you want help building a brand platform for your biotools company, Percepta can help.   Your comments are welcome.

Posted by Scott Provost

Did you realize recently that the 1st quarter is over and you have not hit the revenue target?  If so, do you know why the company missed the number?  If you don’t know - is that your problem?  Is it someone else’ problem? 

What is the plan?  Is it panic time or do you know the next steps?   Does your R&D department lob new products over the wall at the Marketing and Sales Departments without any warning or are you pushing them for the long overdue product?  How does your job feel to you - is it a proactive role or a reactive role?

How you answer these questions can tell you a lot about your future. 

Bioscience companies need a plan. There should be a strategic planning process in place that happens every year on a schedule.  It should focus on long term plans (3-5 years) and short term plans (next 12 months).  Leaders from every department should be involved in this process - Marketing, Sales, R&D, Business Development, IT, Manufacturing, HR.  

Few companies do this but ALL need to.  Emphasis on ‘all’.  If you are staring at a missed revenue target at the end of Q1 something went wrong.  Be honest with yourself - was there a plan?

Years ago there was a book by Steven Silbiger call The Ten Day MBA.  Fine idea for its day.  I would like to give you the 21st century version.

Ten Second MBA: The PLAN should start with STRATEGY (Sell what to who…) and be followed by TACTICS (marketing plan) that play to your strengths and core capabilities and fit your budget.  Everyone needs to be on the same road and following the same road map.  Do this every year.

OK ten seconds is not enough time to learn much.  If you want some help getting started Percepta can help.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

If you are in the business of selling research products to life scientists then chances are good you have probably sent out promotional information or conducted market research using email.  It is an efficient and cost effective way to reach lots of potential customers quickly.  If you are using your customer lists to communicate new products or promote special pricing via email then you are tapping into one of your most powerful resources - the people who have already proved they are interested by buying your products.  Well done.

However, your customer list may not always be the best choice for some activities for a variety of reasons.  Maybe you have questions and want answers from researchers other than your customers. You know the questions I mean - like who are you - what do you want? - and why aren’t you buying from me?  In that case the customer lists are not going to give you the answers you are looking for.  Many turn to third party rented emial lists from vendors that offer them for anywhere from a US$50 to US$500 or more per thousand email address names.   It all sounds like a great idea - and it would be except there is a great deal of difference in the quality of various life science lists when it comes to response rates and price is not necessarily a good indicator so caution is required.  Some are pretty good and some are just awful.  Beware of reports of high click through rates. Lets face it - “click throughs” are not all that good a measure of success.  You need answers, not click throughs!  A good quality list should deliver at least 1% response rates for a few hundred dollars per thousand names.

We conducted a little experiment last week and tried several rented lists for an online survey we were performing.  We chose to use a “list broker” - someone that consolidates life science lists.  We selected the categories we needed, paid in advance and they agreed to send our email invitations to roughly 11,000 rented names.   The invite we provided offered $25 in exchange for completion of a 10-15 minute survey.   When all was said and done we confirmed a total of 26 responses.  Put another way that is a 0.24% response rate!  That is not even one quarter of one percent!  We call that an “eFail list”. If you have had similar experiences give us a call and we will compare notes. 

Oh - and as a control (yes we are scientists as well as marketers here at Percepta) we sent out about 6,500 of the same invitation from the Percepta Panel, which we maintain for market research projects, and confirmed a total of 158 completed surveys which is a 2.4% response rate.  CAVEAT - Percepta normally gets about 10% response rates but this project was not perfectly in our sweet spot which is why we chose to source from 3rd party lists in the first place. 

The lesson here is just another version of Buyer Beware.  Maintaining a quality mail list is a lot of work.  People change jobs, change email addresses, sign-up even though they are not scientists.  Some lists also get blacklisted which means they have been SPAMMing.  All of this means your email never makes it to the researcher and then you don’t get the answers you need.  Instead you get “click-through rates”.   We at Percepta know it’s a big bad world and we work very hard to maintain our list and our response rates are a testament to the quality of the Percepta Panel.  We only give access to the panel through our Life Science Dashboard reports and commisioned projects.  We promise that if we conduct market research for your company we will give you answers and not click-through rates.

Your comments are always welcome.

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

There are times each year when our clients just need a little extra help to get things done.  There are a lot of reasons that this is true – internal staffing shortfalls, impending strategic planning, management pressing project time lines, initiative de jour  – you name it.  This of course always causes stress for the marketing manager that needs to get things done within a defined time frame. 

In a former life, when I was a marketing manager at a well known biotools company, I had a project that required some “voice of customer” market research and I had no one and no time to do it.  I looked externally for the help I needed and hired a large local consulting firm with a group that could conduct telephone interviews.  I learned the hard way that, while they were well meaning, they were not familiar with the biotools industry and I ended up working very hard to help them get the interviews done.  Even with that, they botched many of the interviews by mispronouncing the technical terms which looked bad and irritated the participants.  Worse yet, I learned too late that they missed the truly valuable customer cues because they didn’t know when or how to ask a follow up question.  They just blindly moved onto the next question like a robocaller.   It would have been better if I had done it all myself which sort of defeated the purpose of getting help.  

When you need help it really pays to get someone with specific experience.  Just because a plumber works on pipes and water doesn’t mean he is qualified to fix your hydraulic lift (if you had one).   Ok maybe that is an odd example but the point is - for biotools companies seeking help with things like strategic planning (including product development), brand development, market research, public relations and social media planning you need someone with the right experience.  These are NOT cookie cutter undertakings that just any old marketing consultancy can take on successfully for a biotools company.  

While Percepta is very comfortable with most of these activities, we would not claim to be qualified in Public Relations or Social Media Planning (but we know who is and would happly refer you to them).

The lesson here is to be sure you are vetting your external support carefully and when you find a good firm, think seriously about sticking with them.  You will both benefit. 

As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome.    

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

We have all been so busy as the year (and the decade) draws to a close at Percepta that I have been pulled from these blog posts for the better part of two months.  But that is a welcome sign that the biotools industry is alive and relatively healthy.

Considering all that we encounter in the industry as a marketing consultancy we probably have a somewhat unique perspective on the wants, needs, and desires of the collective biotools segment (companies and customers alike).  The list can essentially be summed up in three main wants, needs, and desires. 

The Wants: The number one thing researchers want from the products they use is that they perform as promised.  Researchers are most tolerant if they try some product for an off label application and it fails, but they rightfully expect it to deliver results as advertised.  Assuming most biotools companies have learned and understand this well, it is still too common to see some products rushed to market before they are really ready for prime time.  A bad first impression for a product (or worse yet - a company) is a hard burden to overcome.  Avoid this like the kiss of death.

The Needs: This need is so obvious but so important that we couldn’t leave it out.  Here goes – biotools companies need to honestly recognize that if the product isn’t obviously and distinctively different from other products then it is perceived by researchers as a commodity and that perception is the reality. That’s it.  How you define the “obvious and distinctive difference” will vary greatly depending on your skills as a marketer and on your product and/or company but it better actually mean something to your target audience or it is sure to just lie there disappointingly.   When that happens, companies have only one effective lever to pull – price - which is just fine. Winning on price is perfectly respectable, just ask Walmart.  But don’t kid yourself into thinking about premium pricing if you are not truly differentiated in some meaningful way.  The emphasis is on meaningful.  Marketing and pricing managers need to remember this important reality.

The Desires: Researchers desire that suppliers treat them with respect.  Seems obvious but companies sometimes fail to realize that poor or non-existent technical support, or unknowledgeable field representatives, or even poorly designed automated phone systems  leave researchers feeling like they are not important.  Ask yourself honestly the next time you are navigating an automated telephone systems for three or four minutes only to be told the offices are now closed.  The problem isn’t that the offices are closed – it’s that they wasted your time.  Why?  Because you must not be very important – or so it seems.

Let’s agree that 2010 is going to be the year that biotools companies shine like never before because they are getting much more in touch with their customers and really understand their needs, wants, and desires.  Happy New Year!

I Want You - to tell us what you want

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

Percepta offers a lot of different marketing services besides market research, but market research seems to be a popular area of interest.  We offer a series of segment specific market research reports that are popular (The Life Science Dashboards), but we also like to publish complimentary reports a few time a year for our colleagues in the industry.  Recently we published a report on the stimulus funding for life science research in the US as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Previously we published a report on the customer’s perspective on life science manuafacturing in low cost countries.  Now we want your input.

What would you like to see Percepta focus on in the next free report?  Give us your comments below and we will choose from the best suggestions. Then we will conduct the research, write the report and post if for a free download.  The next topic is up to you so now is the time to let us know.

Keep it Real - Really

We are far from the first or only ones to warn against marketing messaging packed with empty words drained of meaning (see Eric Karjaluoto).  The marketing promises for “better” this or “faster” that are becoming all but invisible to the customer because they are like so many grains of sand on the beach, too difficult to tell apart.  

It seems to come down to a problem of credibility – does your customer believe and trust your marketing message?   The answer depends on whether they know you (your product or company) well enough to believe they have a real relationship with you (your product or your company).  Seth Godin nails it here when asked about the related topic of the value of social media to companies.   If your customers believe they know you well enough, then it is likely they will see you (your product or company) as real and believe and trust your message - until you let them down one time too many.  

The best thing to do is treat your customers like real people that you know and interact with regularly and give them what they want.  Here are five basic rules of keeping it real that your mother would approve of.

1) People want an honest interaction and they want the truth.  Anything else is disrespectful and it’s fibbing. 

2) People don’t want empty promises.  If the product doesn’t deliver what is promised then why is it still on the website?  Would you recommend a product to you rmother that doesn’t really do what it says?

3) People want justice.  If you make a mistake, admit it and make it right if you can.

4) People want to feel loved. Once and a while, give them something real for free.  Tell them the proprietary buffer components if they ask for it.  Let them have free shipping one week out of the year.  It can do wonders for keeping it real – like a gift.

5) People want to talk to another person and NOT an automated answering system.  I’m not talking about voice mail – that is fine as long as you actually do call back like you promise.    Please invest in people that actually answer the phone and not in an electronic gadget with a voice recognition capability.  

We would love to know what you think – your comments are always welcome.

Bandwidth all tied up?

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

All of us at Percepta have cumulatively been involved in literally hundreds of biotools product launches in the course of our careers at various well known biotools companies.  Some of these products were fabulous successes and others were fantastic flops.  The flops failed for a variety of reasons but the successes all had one thing in common – they were fast out of the gate and delivered what they promised.

I remember one success particularly well.  I was responsible for introducing a new line of products for a major supplier.  The new portfolio  was a significant expansion of what was a minor product line for my employer at the time.  The launch was quite large with over 65 individual kits all focused on various aspects of a very common molecular biology application performed by more than 90% of life science labs.  There was a lot to worry about because we were late to market with this portfolio and we knew we were facing serious competition and an uphill battle to take share from them, yet we were confident that if we could get researchers to try the product we would be able to convert them.   Naturally, we had a sample program in place and the sales force had been trained and properly incentivized.  But there was one thing we did that I still believe made the difference between early post-launch success and trench warfare with the competition (and our sales force too).  We asked our existing customers a few simple questions.

I have always been a strong proponent of the bird-in-hand mentality, so for the sake of saving time and extending our thinly spread launch team we hired an outside marketing research consultant to poll our company customer list to identify researchers that were not all that happy with their current competing supplier for this common molecular biology application.  The goal was to prime the sales force pump, so to speak, with easy to reach customers that were predisposed to try our new products. 

It turned out that there were about 1,500 disgruntled researchers among those responding to our short survey that were receptive to  a new method/kit/supplier.  Best yet, we knew who and where they were and what they were unhappy about.

Putting this kind of information in the hands of a hungry sales force is a bit like throwing gasoline on a fire.  We decided to generate a one page profile on each of the receptive customers and divvy them up by sales territory to the respective sales rep.  The sales force really ate this up and to make a long story short the portfolio launch was the most successful revenue garneting product launch in the company’s (at the time 18 year) history!  It was fast out of the gate and just kept going.  It is still growing today.

It is a simple idea that any company can do with their own resources – but few if any try.  Why?  Because most marketing managers are too thinly spread already and have too much to do before any launch.  There is not enough bandwidth and so many internal hurdles to get over like  getting access to the customer mailing lists, writing and then setting up the survey, analyzing the data.  And who writes the one page reports and gets them sorted by sales territory?  In my experience it is almost always a matter of bandwidth and not” know how” that prevents companies from doing this at launch.

If this sounds familiar , take heart and remember that we hired a consultant to help -  and it was well worth it to do so.  Percepta’s Profile Program™ can do all the heavy lifting and help your next product launch with a minimum of your time.  We’re here when the time is right. 

As always, your comments are encouraged.  

Sustained Growth

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

As everyone knows, the Great Recession or 2008 and 2009 has taken its toll on most industries and the biotools supply industry is no exception.  However, there is real evidence that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting a bit brighter.  Stimulus dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 have finally started to find their way to biotools companies’ revenue reporting.  Recently Bruker, a leading European supplier of analytical instruments with more than $1 billion in revenues, reported at an August Investor Presentation (give the PDF link a moment to load) that they have already realized greater than $10 million in stimulus funded revenues in US markets and anticipated as much of as 20% or more of their revenue could come from global stimulus efforts.  That bodes well for the biotools industry.  But the big question for all biotools companies is – will growth be sustainable or just a windfall? 

Percepta Associates recently reported that more than more than 80% of the roughly $9 billion to be distributed by the NIH as extramural grants will be hitting research budgets between now and February 2010. Ideally the stimulus will create new jobs and researchers report that new hiring is in the plans of many research laboratories.  Job creation stands a better chance to contribute to a sustained growth in the biotools industry because more researchers will presumably perform more research, which means they will use more equipment, consumables, materials and reagents.

It remains to be seen if the global stimulus efforts will promote sustainable growth, but smart biotools companies are preparing for all possibilities.  While sales departments are actively vying for the influx of funding with their current product portfolios, marketing managers should be planning for the next generation of products that will deliver true value.  Knowing what value is to the end-user is a critical part of delivering it. Has your company taken the time to understand what is important to your customers or are you assuming you know?  Trusting in assumptions is a very risky undertaking and if you have not recently polled your customers to understand their needs in detail you may be wasting valuable time and resources.   If you follow the current marketing thought leaders you will know how important it is to profile your customers and make sure you are tailoring the right message to the right end-users.  If you are not sure how to do this, Percepta can help.  Contact us any time with questions or add your comments, which are always welcome.    

Directed Evolution

There has certainly been a lot of content generated recently about the virtues of the “new marketing” and the focus on niche segments, consumer to consumer communication, and permission vs. interruption approaches.  Is it a real revolution or a fad?  The question we prefer is: what’s the difference?  So let’s see what your average dictionary says about these terms.

Revolution - noun: a sudden, complete or marked change in something

Fad – noun: a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc., especially one followed enthusiastically by a group

Certainly there are elements of both definitions that are applicable to the new marketing.  It is relatively sudden but far from complete, and it is clearly followed enthusiastically by many but perhaps too early to call permanent (though we believe it is not likely to be temporary).  It is also a marked change from the tactics of decades of marketing, especially for the biotools industry.  While some industries have embraced the tools of the new marketing such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, and have spent countless keystrokes of content on the boundless blogisphere, the biotools industry has been slow to embrace this new realm. Why is that?  Maybe it is a problem of evolution.

In Seth Godin’s nauseatingly titled, but insightful book Meatball Sundae, he points out the importance of embracing the “fashion and stories and permission and promises” of the new marketing because the old marketing is “caveman marketing”.  He has a point.  We all are saturated with in-your-face, look-at-me, push, push, push carpet bombing marketing campaigns, or as Godin calls it “interruption marketing”.   The web has made this type of marketing easier to do – but also easy to ignore.  After all a mouse click is easier than turning a page.  Last time I looked cavemen either evolved or lost out to natural selection.

So why not play to the web’s strength and let natural selection, a well understood biological paradigm, run its course?  As all life scientists understand, natural selection relies on countless random changes leading to an eventual and inevitable successful combination creating a competitive advantage.  But timing is everything.  We prefer to think of the new marketing as a healthy dose of directed evolution.

Adapt to the new environment.  That means changing. Translated to the biotools industry, Godin and other’s are actually saying you may need to change a lot about the way you try to get your customer’s attention.  Show them your cool new stuff but don’t interrupt them (in-your-face marketing) to do so.  Be confident the cool new stuff actually is going to help your customer because permission marketing is about the customer, not your products or services.  In fact, you may need to let go and just give away some value. If they like it they will want it and come back.  If they don’t like it then you learned something valuable. 

Maybe that is not such a huge change after all.  Successful biotools companies educate their customers (translation: provide relevant and informative content) and add value (translation: risk giving something valuable away because it will be useful to customers) and gain loyalty (translation: build trust by keeping promises).

Percepta can help you evolve when you are ready.

Directed Evolution