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The Essential Marketing Checklist for Life Science Companies

In the fast-paced and competitive landscape of the life science industry, effective marketing strategies are essential to stand out, reach the right audience, and achieve sustainable growth. Life science companies, whether they're focused on pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, or research, must navigate a unique set of challenges while promoting their products and services. Download Forma's [...]

FMDD to Merge with FLSM in 2023

Thank you for visiting Forma Medical Device Design. Forma Medical Device Design will be shutting down effective January 1, 2023. This will allow the Forma team to focus our efforts exclusively on our life science marketing service offerings. We're exceedingly grateful for the support of the FMDD brand, and we're proud of the work we've [...]

3 Crucial Ingredients Every Life Science Case Study Needs

What separates an effective life science case study from an ineffective one? Case studies are a particularly potent part of your marketing toolkit. They're a great way to convert members of your audience while also bolstering your brand's reputation and expertise. Potential buyers need three things before they make a decision: education, inspiration, and reassurance. These [...]

Amanda Jackson Promoted to Art Director

February 15, 2021 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Amanda Jackson was promoted to the role of Art Director on Friday, February 12th, 2021. Upon joining Forma in 2019, Amanda immediately got to work on establishing brand guidelines and improving Forma's look and feel. She quickly outgrew her initial role as Graphic Designer and began shaping design strategies [...]

5 Rules for Creating Killer Case Studies

This is a condensed version of David Chapin's original whitepaper, "8 Fundamental Principles for Creating Compelling Case Studies". Case Studies are Crucial Marketing Tools Case studies are one of the most powerful marketing tools in your arsenal. They can compel users to engage with your brand in a way that other marketing initiatives cannot. However, [...]

6 Aspects of Compelling Life Science Marketing Communication

If you're reading this, you're probably aware of how highly-regulated the life science industry is. If you're having trouble standing out from your competitors, you're not alone. Facilitating effective marketing communication is hard, especially in the life sciences! Marketing is one corporate function whose main responsibility involves clear communication. Communication is multi-dimensional, but most marketing [...]

The 5 Most Powerful Types of Digital Marketers

There has been an explosion of mobile applications in recent times, coinciding with the expansion and developments in the digital marketplace. As a result, companies of all sizes, in all industries and in every country have begun to appreciate how mobile applications can increase engagement with their customers. The efforts of app developers allow them [...]

Choosing a Name for Your Life Science Company

Choosing a name for a life science company, product or service can be difficult. Any choice will generate a strong, almost instantaneous response, carry great emotional weight and (ideally) last a long time. How do you choose a name while avoiding the emotional rollercoaster that such choices often bring? In this post, we'll outline several [...]

Archetypes: ‘The next trend in high-performance B2B marketing’

The recent webinar, Using archetypes in life science marketing to increase sales and margins, included an interactive discussion led by David Chapin that shed new light on how life science organizations can set themselves apart from the competition and better engage their audiences in a crowded, highly regulated marketplace. In so doing, such organizations will benefit [...]

Differentiate or Die

A recent deal between Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Ely Lilly shows where the life science industry is headed: Specialization. Novartis is moving exclusively to Oncology drugs, GSK to vaccines and Lilly to animal drugs. Differentiating yourself from your competition is how to grow sales and market share. Specializing is one way to differentiate. But what if [...]

Confusing activity with progress

If you think of your life science marketing as a journey, then your strategy gives you a clear idea of the direction you will be taking. In other words, your marketing strategy is your map. In contrast, tactics are the motive forces that power your journey. Your tactics – the tools and techniques you use [...]

Interruption Marketing is Dying

Interruption marketing is dying. The history of the aptly named “commercial break”) which breaks into your attention stream), is a prime example of escalating sophistication. Despite the growing sophistication of marketers, the rules have changed, the power struggle between buyers and sellers has changed and the buyers are now winning the battle. Let me explain. [...]

Benchmarks for Marketing Performance

There aren’t a lot of benchmarks in life science marketing. For example, no one (that I know of) has researched the average bounce rate for (to pick just one business sector in the life sciences) all formulation companies by measuring the statistics for all the home pages in that one sector. Or measured the conversion [...]

A Difficult Test

Here is an interesting test; one on which most life science companies won’t perform very well. Gather all your branded marketing material in one room. This includes everything, your printed material, online material, ads, blog posts, pictures of your trade show booth, direct mail, email blasts, white papers, etc. Then read it, all of it. [...]

Referrals in the Life Science Sector

When we ask clients how they get new business, some life science firms respond: “We get most of our customers from word of mouth and referrals.” The implication is: “We are getting high quality clients and saving money on sales costs; isn’t that great?” This may be great in the short run, but in the [...]

Authentic Complexity

Authentic complexity (for example, a subject with lots of moving parts, lots of interactions, and lots of variables) can’t be made arbitrarily simple. Authentic complexity can’t be made arbitrarily simple – but it can be made digestible. In the life sciences, where we help companies tell their stories to drive profit and sales, we often [...]

A Key Diagnostic Question for Life Science Brands

When diagnosing your own marketing ills, it is hard to know how to differentiate the urgent symptoms from the important ones, and the important ones from the unimportant ones. Even trained professionals, like doctors, don’t diagnose themselves. Yet, everyone believes it is OK to diagnose themselves for marketing issues. I am not arguing that everyone [...]

When “Quality” Is A Commodity

Crisis and opportunity in the life science sector. Service providers in the life sciences (e.g., CROs, CRMs, core labs, firms offering preclinical services such as formulation, etc) work in a sector that is changing and changing rapidly. The Big Recession tore a big swath out of Big Pharma, leaving opportunities for smaller firms to come [...]

The Basic Steps of Marketing

Let’s face it, the basic tenets of marketing have remained the same, even though the technology we use to deliver it has changed. The basic steps are simple: Identifying what makes your offering both important to your prospects and different from the competition. Articulating your message and brand character in a way that is seen [...]

Who Can You Trust in Life Science Marketing?

Who can you trust? Apparently not your friends, at least not your online friends. “According to Edelman's latest Trust Barometer, the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half, from 45% to 25%, since 2008.” That quote from Advertising Age tells you [...]

Building an Effective Editorial List

Content marketing is the hot new trend in marketing, specifically life sciences marketing, and for good reason. Effective content marketing can help to position one in the space they strive to own, provide increased exposure, build brand awareness, establish and/or increase one’s reputation by generating thought leadership and help one achieve expert status in the [...]

What is Compelling?

At Forma, we work with companies in the life sciences to Make the Complex Compelling. In this sector, there is lots of subject matter that is complex. The borders of knowledge have been pushed back quite far, so the questions being addressed are often very complex. And the audience is often technically sophisticated. They have [...]

What are the Goals of Marketing?

What are the goals of marketing? Ask any marketer this question, and you’ll get dozens of answers: build brand awareness, increase referrals, drive web site traffic, motivate response, creating customer loyalty, etc. In the end, all these goals stem from one thing: getting your audience to self-select. That is, to get those who are interested [...]

Complex Science Doesn’t Make You Special

All bioscience today is complex. To understand the questions that are being asked, much less to tease out significant answers, the level of education required is considerably higher today than it was 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Complexity carries with it very little commercial value, other than the [...]

Why You Shop vs Why You Buy

Think for a moment about your best supplier – the one your bioscience company wouldn’t leave, even for a cheaper price, because your loyalty is so strong. If you are like most, the reason you started talking to them is different than the reason you eventually chose them, and that is different than the reason [...]

The Need for Clarity in Marketing

Clarity is needed now more than ever. Bringing technology out of the lab successfully means finding ways to have meaningful conversations about very sophisticated issues with non-scientists. The American Medical Association and Medco Health Solutions (a pharmacy benefits manager) recently surveyed more than 10,000 US physicians. A few of the results: the number of doctors [...]