With pharmaceutical spending on outsourced manufacturing forecasted at $319.6 billion by 2029, Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) need more than capacity to lure in some of that opportunity. What is an impactful way to drive in leads to fill this need? The answer is content marketing.
Content marketing is a strategic approach to generating and nurturing leads by planning, writing, and distributing educational and thought-provoking branded materials. This includes articles, white papers, case studies, videos, webinars, blogs, and more that let the target audience learn of your expertise in an area that can solve their pain points or support their organization in some way. It has become all the more essential since B2B customers spend significantly more time – estimates say 70% – of their “journey” in a self-service state. That is, companies are doing online research and reading to learn about their options in order to make a short list of businesses they are willing to engage with sales.
Across the awareness-consideration-decision customer journey, marketing is clearly responsible for the first two stages, bringing those in the decision stage to their sales partners to close.
How Content Helps in a Crowded CDMO Market
With more than 500 CDMOs competing for pharmaceutical contract manufacturing business, and the leaders garnering less than a quarter of total market share, contract manufacturers of all sizes are using content to tell their unique stories across online platforms.
To stand out in this crowded market, your content must start with strategy – an understanding of customer challenges, how your offering meets your target’s needs, what personas are involved, where they are doing their research, where they are in their journey, and how to nurture them along the way.
Specific content pieces can be created to promote, for example, a unique capability in niche drug development or specialized capacity for highly potent active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Content marketing is an excellent method for CDMOs to comment on the specialized manufacturing needs of today’s increasingly complex and changing pharmaceutical industry– as it expands from small molecule drugs into myriad new modalities with challenging manufacturing requirements.
Use Content Marketing to Engage, Not Promote
CDMOs that seek to educate the market, rather than promote themselves, will be more successful in building trust with pharmaceutical sponsors – especially those earliest in their journey. Publishing content that shares insights on technical challenges, regulatory updates, or supply chain solutions begins to establish credibility with the market.
Such “thought leadership” content establishes your company as an expert on a topic. While your website can tout your square footage, state-of-the-art equipment list, etc., your content marketing should share what you’ve learned from experiences serving pharmaceutical sponsors or respond to trends in the market. You can write a white paper on new challenges and how to overcome them – as many did during the supply chain challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. That white paper or thought leadership piece can even be repurposed into a LinkedIn ad or a social media campaign. Examples of content can range from an article on the 5 questions to ask a CDMO before signing a contract to a case study on reformulating dosage forms to extend patent coverage.
It is possible to create a content stream that helps move a prospect along – inviting them to a webinar to learn about a trending topic, following up with an executive summary or FAQ, and then nurturing with a white paper on the topic and a case study showing how your CDMO helped a client in this area.
Here are some classic content types and why you should use them:
- Contributed or sponsored articles: Writing articles to be published in third-party industry or trade journals and websites is an excellent means of getting your name out in the market. These nonpromotional articles establish your expertise.
- White papers: These self-published, branded papers provide technical expertise or share a point of view. Largely nonpromotional, they demonstrate your knowledge and acumen on important issues. Typically gated, white papers should offer information worth exchanging contact information for.
- Case studies: Whether you can name your client or write anonymized cases, these show real-world successes. In explaining how you solved a client’s challenges and delivered, case studies reveal what it’s like to work with you – a great tool for those seeking references.
- Webinars: Here you’re putting your subject matter experts (SMEs) in the limelight, offering advice, guidance, or information on topics of interest in the market. These can attract highly qualified leads – and all the material presented can be .
- Blogs: These regularly posted self-published articles can cover a range of topics that continually draw readers to your website. Optimized with keywords and phrases for search engine optimization (SEO), the blog should answer questions your customers have and provide information about relevant challenges. With an SEO focus and social media promotion, your content can land in the hands of your desired audience.
- Videos/podcasts and infographics: Visual and audio communication is becoming increasingly popular and meets specific needs at different stages of the customer journey. They offer quick and easy engagement. Videos can be used for a facility tour, quick SME interviews, or to describe capabilities. Podcasts are perfect for promoting the expertise in your organization. And infographics are great downloadable assets to describe a process.
Using Content to Generate Leads
Whether you have a single white paper or a collection of content, you can promote the content to generate leads among life science and pharmaceutical companies. Brandwidth Solutions often purchases for its clients advertising in industry journals and websites, and on Google and LinkedIn, that offer a client’s white paper. Prospects fill out a form to download the paper and their contact information is added to the CRM for continued nurturing via marketing automation.
Social media promotion of the content can also capture leads, while registrants for webinars become leads. One Brandwidth client with a robust content marketing program has seen more than 12,000 leads captured in a fiscal year.
Be sure to measure the website analytics of relevant pages on your website, traffic to the dedicated landing pages that describe the content on offer, the number of downloads and/or form fill-outs, and the open and click-through rates of the nurture emails that follow up with your leads. This helps to show what topics, channels, and content types appeal most to your target audience – and help you determine what messages you can send to drive them from becoming aware of your brand and capabilities to considering your CDMO services. A marketing ROI platform can make this measurement significantly faster and easier, providing insights that will evolve and enrich your content strategy.
Distinguishing yourself in a crowded CDMO market can be achieved with solid content marketing strategies, plans, and execution. If you need help devising expert content that speaks to your pharmaceutical prospects, talk to Brandwidth Solutions.