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, 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

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!

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.  

Flux Capacitor

Posted by Michael Klein

At Percepta, our first point of contact is at times an overworked product manager blurting, “I need to field a survey on…insert topic here…and I need the data back by…insert excessively tight deadline here.”  Our approach is generally to convince them to come down off of the ledge, take a deep breath, and provide us with the answers to three mission critical questions, not necessarily in the order of importance:

1)      What do you want to know?

2)      Why do you want to know this?

3)      What are you going to do with this information?

Question 1: What do you want to know?

Q1 identifies the missing pieces of the “knowledge puzzle” that exist at the client’s organization.  Knowledge gaps may be relatively simple, like a need for an up-to-date snapshot of the company’s market share in North America.  Or more complex, like understanding the performance specs, QC requirements and delivery schedule for bioproduction-scale culture media at biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities.  Q1 helps us choose the proper market research method (maybe it’s not a survey), and select an appropriate target audience (perhaps biopharma process development and manufacturing scientists).

Question 2: Why do you want to know this?

Q2 provides the project goals and objectives, and crystallizes the overall scope of the study.  It tells us precisely what we need to ask end-users and/or potential customers, and also tells us what we don’t need to ask, which is often equally important.  Perhaps a client wants market share information to discover whether they are gaining or losing share overall.  If so, we can ask the appropriate questions now and also put a plan in place to measure performance regularly, so that the company can plan accordingly.

Question 3: What will you do with the information?

Q3 reveals the business decision riding on the results of the research.  For example, a client might be developing marketing campaigns based on an annual marketing budget and thus must decide how to best allocate resources across major product lines.  Here is where issues with market research projects often arise.  Quality market research must be accurate and actionable – actionable meaning it not only provides the necessary knowledge but also occurs in time to influence decision making.  How actionable is customer feedback related to unmet needs for a product that is in the late stages of design?

It’s our job at Percepta to make sure you get the “necessary knowledge” part right.  However, lacking the Flux Capacitor (Google it, if you were born after 1977), there isn’t much we can do to fix any “in time to influence decision making” issues.  But you can.

Get your organization to think strategically about market research.  First, add it to your budget planning. Then three months before strategic planning, meet with your product development or commercial marketing team.  Brainstorm, beginning with a focus on Question 3, to clarify the strategic decisions facing your organization in the near term.  Then, shift the focus over the next week or so to Questions1 and 2.  Identify those areas where knowledge necessary for decision support is lacking and develop a list of goals and objectives for potential marketing research projects designed to address these knowledge gaps.

Need help in guiding this process?  Percepta excels at facilitating cross-functional exercises to identify knowledge gaps and develop a market research plan designed to capture information that gives you the confidence you need to make the correct calls for the success of your business.

Companies that effectively coordinate market research with strategic planning excel at developing winning products and implementing the proper metrics to regularly measure sales and marketing effectiveness.  Don’t believe me?  I’ve got a used DeLorean I’d like to sell you…

Your comments are welcome

By Scott Provost, Percepta

In the past few years Percepta has had several clients come to us saying in essence “We know we have the best products - just help us find the customers”. This is illustrative of the all too common view that since we have the best widget for whatever bench application all we need to do is show it to prospective customers and we won’t be able to keep it in stock.

The presumption that the best performing product will win the business is at best a bit naïve, and at worst recklessly misguided. If building “the best products” is in a Bio-tools company’s DNA and building customer profiles isn’t, then they need some gene therapy.

In his useful book The New Rules Of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott reminds us to forget about the products for now and think first about our customers. Scott’s theory applied to our industry essentially translates to this – biotools suppliers need to think more about what customers want from their research tools and not how to make one message fit everyone’s needs with a bunch of, what Scott aptly calls, marketing “gobbledygook”.

This requires a fact-based and up-to-date honest assessment of your customers. But first let’s be honest with ourselves. Has your company profiled your customers? Do you really know what they are doing and who else they are buying from? Do you know if they are loyal adopters or price shoppers? Marketers need to understand what their customers are trying to do in a very detailed and precise way. If they don’t, their marketing messages often end up full of the vague, unclear, or glossy language – in other words “gobbledygook”.

Unfortunately, one-size-fits-all, shotgun marketing is overused in the bio-tools industry and a more personalized intimate connection to your customers must replace it. Customer profiles will help your company personalize a message that resonates with each one of them. Tools companies that fail to learn this will not reach their full potential and may even fail until they do. Want help with profiling your customers? Percepta has affordable programs that might be right for your company. Why not check it out?

Your comments are always welcome.