How to be seen by your target clients online

The pharma industry is global and so are the business opportunities; the

internet offers huge prospects for companies large and small to tap into rich

pockets of new potential. But knowing what to do and then doing it right is

the key to success.

Do you fight with your target clients?

Purchasing in the pharma industry is rarely a simple process. There are a great many; regulatory,

legal, logistical and political factors to consider. Depending on the purchasing team, this could be as

relevant for stationery as it is for a highly potent ingredient. Throw into the mix issues such as

language, culture and ‘preferred suppliers’; and the question you need to be asking is whether you

should you expect to make sales without an effort or indeed a fight?!

Unfortunately marketing is no longer a simple case of just producing a nice looking company

brochure, spending budget on a major exhibition and putting an advert in your favourite industry

magazine. Yes, all of these are effective in raising awareness of your company in the right places;

but they need to be part of a more holistic programme in order to drive customers your way.

Mounting a successful marketing campaign could be likened to waging a war. As Sun Tzu said in The

Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred

battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a

defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” The same is

true in business; you really need to understand who you are ‘attacking’, where they like to fight and

what tactics are going to penetrate the defences protecting their budgets. It is also incredibly

important to be realistic about your company’s current status.

Are you engaged yet?

One also has to remember that there are always two opportunities for getting new clients:

- Gaining their interest by promoting something they want (even if they didn’t know it!)

- Being found by them as they search for a new supplier

Marketing should be seen as a series of activities designed to create opportunities for engagement

with potential clients. Engagement requires interaction on some level; easily done at an exhibition

and not so easily done with an advert or direct mail. Consideration needs to be made on how best to

stimulate & capture interest. The internet is a rich resource; this article aims to highlight a few of the

available and upcoming ideas.

Don’t swim with the fishes

Before suggesting some solutions, let us first use a few lines to consider some of the challenges.

As Confucius said: “I know why the path is not trodden; the clever ones overstep it and the stupid

ones do not reach it.”

For some companies the drive for sales efficiency, channels marketing teams back into familiar

waters, to clash rods over the next big fish that swims by. These companies believe they already

know the best places to find clients and figure that sales levels are only affected by sales people;

they just need to work harder! They step over the path.

Other companies believe that marketing is just about personal relationships, working the rolodex,

racking up the air miles visiting prospective clients. Business development is about who you know

and how many handshakes you can make. They do not reach the path.

To win new clients and to avoid a basic shouting match with competitors; uncharted waters and new

vessels should be sought. These ideas are not just relevant for the Big Pharma or Generic Giants;

everyone needs differentiation, innovation and exciting ways to engage clients.

Think tomorrow, today!

There a number of existing opportunities and technologies that could be paths to new clients and

need to be considered.

• Business networking websites

• Twitter

• Search engines & online databases

• Content targeted advertising

• Virtual partnering forums

Business networking websites

Unless you have been locked away in a sealed drum for the last 2-3 years, you will understand the

concept of online networking. It has been around for some time in various forms (consider

friendsreunited.com), but the massive success of Facebook & MySpace has made it a public pastime.

Social networking websites are about connecting with friends; helping people keep in touch, share

photos, news and generally feel a little more (/too!?) involved in each other’s digital lives.

Business networking is based on a very similar platform; of course a lot of good business

relationships also involve social elements; but the focus is about making commercial connections or

tapping into the activity of existing contacts.

I have been registered on various networking sites since 2001 (www.ecademy.com was the first I

think), but did not really see a great value until I invested time and effort. A couple of years ago

www.linkedIn.com took off in Europe and I decided to see if tangible benefits could be gained.

Spending an hour a day making new connections (sometimes one has to take educated guesses at

email addresses!), creating a full profile, getting recommendations, joining relevant groups and

making comments on discussions. I now have over 1500 connections and a group growing in

membership each week.

The results? About 20% of new clients are referrals from LinkedIn, 30% of web traffic and a network

of high level contacts I could never dream of achieving offline. At each major event I attend, around

1/3 of my meetings are with new contacts made via LinkedIn. A much better return than I would get

from attending conferences or simply sending cold emails.

By building a large network of contacts and using the various tools to make announcements,

comments and promotions, you can ensure potential clients understand what you offer without the

need to ‘risk’ contacting you and being sold to. They are much more likely to reach out when they

are ready, a positive relationship and credibility has already been established – they are engaged!

Twitter

This is another relatively recent web tool that is already firmly fixed in the public vocabulary.

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool which allows you 140 characters per Tweet to communicate with

your followers (connections) and all of them receive the message simultaneously on their news feed.

Twitter is used by a variety of people and companies for a variety of reasons.

- Celebrities used it to maintain their celebrity status; telling fans of their every move, sharing their

lives so their followers feel engaged in their lives.

- Organisations (news agencies, government, charities etc) use it to send out real time news

- Big brands use it to make announcements, special promotions, competitions etc

Individual Tweeters then reTweet these little announcements, links and titbits to all of their

followers, spreading top Tweets around the world in seconds! (Remember the riots in Iran!)

How can you use it to benefit your business?

Assuming you are not already ‘famous’ and customers will want to seek you out to follow; effort is

needed to make Twitter a useful marketing tool. First of all you need to create a Company Twitter

account and not a personal one. Then use Twitter to regularly publish news about your company, its

products, its people or pretty much anything that might interest potential customers. Includes links

to pages on your website or other websites that contain references to your company. [If you don’t

have a way to easily publish documents on your website, use your LinkedIn account or another

trusted website that created unique URL’s].

Second, connect (follow) to anyone or any company that is either a potential client or an industry

news agency. Often if you follow someone, they will follow you back and then they will see your

Tweets. Make them interesting and they will take notice. A news agency might even reTweet and

you get free promotion to their readership!

Thirdly, register in the various Twitter directories (www.wefollow.com, www.twellow.com,

www.tweetfind.com) so that you can be found if people search for relevant companies to follow.

I believe Twitter has untapped potential and will grow to become the defacto ‘news’ publishing

service for many industries. Building a following will add credibility to your online presence and

creates a simple method to send messages to potential clients; it is important to provide opportunity

and stimulus for potential clients to engage with your company; e.g. special offers, exclusive news,

new launches etc.

Search engines & online databases

Despite the massive power of online search and its ability to reach into each tiny corner of the web,

its rarely enough to just have a website and be confident that potential customers will find you.

There is of course Search Engine Optimisation (SEO); you have likely received emails or phone calls

offering a service to guarantee you number one slot in the Google natural ranking. There are many

excellent companies who will indeed find ways to manipulate the mechanism of search engines and

there fees are often quite reasonable too. You will need to retain their services of course, otherwise

your competitor’s SEO might trump you the very next day!

Search engines base their rankings based on your websites popularity and connectivity; that is to

say, the more visitors you get and more links you have from other websites to yours, the better you

will perform. The former you can increase through advertising and the ideas highlighted in this

article; the latter is a little more tricky.

A good way to increase your search visibility is to sign up with relevant online databases and

directories. The ones that receive a lot of traffic and give your company a public profile will help

potential clients find you and if you can include a link to your website, you should see a benefit in

your rankings. Some will charge for a profile; so make sure you select the best service and they are

attracting the kind of clients you want.

Content targeted advertising

It is impossible to ignore content/context/search advertising when considering effective online

marketing tactics. You will have all seen the adverts at the top and right of search results or those sat

within a website. Google is of course the global leader by a long stretch; although not the dominant

provider in all countries (Baidu in China for example). Bing (Microsoft) is also beginning to make an

impact.

Search adverts (Google Adwords) are a very effective way to target motivated potential clients. They

are looking for you! You only pay when someone clicks on your advert. Setting up an advert is

straightforward, although some time is needed to research which key words clients might use to find

you.

Daily budgets, countries, languages, time of day and multiple advert versions can all be set within

the online interface and you receive a detailed statistics report. If you link with an analytics package,

you can even see the traffic that reached your website and what pages they looked at.

I’ve used Google Adwords for some time and it is definitely the best way to rapidly increase web

traffic. The critical factor is turning visitors into leads; this requires a good website and one which

can capture visitor interest (newsletter, registration, document download, live chat etc).

The best way to capture potential client interest is when they are looking to buy!

Virtual partnering forums

Reduced budgets, increased focus on carbon footprints and greater time pressures, are all factors

which count against the traditional big shows and live partnering events. This pressure is increased

when considering emerging markets with excellent IT infrastructure and executives that are a little

less inclined to travel or blow budgets on only few trips a year.

Improving broadband connections, streaming media and browser based applications are all making

virtual reality a much richer and more stimulating environment. Although there are only a few

events already in the calendar, this is tipped to be an area of massive growth in coming years.

Modelled on real-world conference centres, each has exhibition booths with multimedia displays

and live chat (with video and voice if desired), key note speaker presentations and networking

lounges.

A few example events:

bioconferencelive.com, pharmapartneringlive2010.com, cardiocarelive.com, informex.com/virtual

Some of the larger pharma companies now have their own partnering web presence; although not

well promoted, they provide a 24/7 opportunity for engagement and information sharing with

potential partners. Expect to see many more of these virtual meeting spaces as a cost effective way

to attract interest from every corner of the industry and engage with clients worldwide!

Are you ready for tomorrow?

The internet is making the world and every industry smaller; companies from every corner of the

globe should be seeking ways to do business with each other before someone else does. If, as

forecast, the BRIC countries are going to dominate the future economy; are you already connected

in those markets? If not, why not? If, as forecast, technology is going to change the face of all

industries, including Pharma; are you investigating how you can get ahead of the game? If not, why

not? Tomorrow’s buyers are not going to wait for you. To connect with the currently unknown

clients of tomorrow is going to require a more high-tech and more digitally integrated approach.

Summary Tips

1) Agree that online marketing is important and invest time in establishing a presence. A little money

can go a relatively long way on the web.

2) Publish your online profiles in email footers, websites and business cards. You still have to tell

people where to find you! Make yourself digitally available so clients have options to engage with

you.

3) Save time and effort by integrating online tools e.g. LinkedIn & Twitter, Twitter & Website news.

4) Keep active. Your next big client could require one last little push before engaging with you.