A unified digital marketing operation can help small and mid-size B2B companies:
Compete successfully with much larger companies
Produce a better return on investment (ROI)
Generate incremental revenue
Increase enterprise value
This short eBook describes how a unified digital marketing operation can be designed and built to fully utilize new digital marketing and communication technologies and achieve optimal demand generation performance.
An article by two of my colleagues, Michael Kuzyk and Mike Sanders, and me recently appeared in Laboratory Equipment. The information is non-commercial and specific to integrating a LIMS to instrumentation in a genomics lab, but has broader applications. Here is a summary and a link to the full article.
A successful integration of instrumentation and LIMS encompasses three phases, each of which should be addressed out-of-the-box by the LIMS: integrating the LIMS with a lab’s preferred instrumentation; configuring and customizing the LIMS to track the quality of data coming off the instruments; and ensuring rapid, reliable access to instrument results and sample information.
In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The Space Race fueled advances in microelectronics that, as predicted by Moore’s Law, have driven an exponential rate of improvement in data processing speed and cost for half a century.[i]
In 1990, The Human Genome Project ignited a similar technological race in gene sequencing. Today, high-throughput sequencing technologies are driving data generation and cost improvements at a rate even greater than Moore’s Law.[ii] It took more than a decade and an estimated cost of $3 billion to publish the first draft of the human genome in 2000. Just over 10 years later, businesses are competing to sequence an individual’s entire genome in a matter of weeks for about $10,000, and experts claim the thousand-dollar genome is within sight.[iii]
The incredible improvements in speed and cost are driving large-scale adoption of next-generation sequencing (NGS) instruments by genomics labs—from 200 in 2007 to an estimated 1,900 in 2010, with a projected growth rate of over 1,000 annually reaching an installed base of over 5,000 by 2013.[iv] This has resulted in unprecedented genomic data production. The 1000 Genomes Project, the first large project to capitalize on next-generation sequencing technologies, deposited twice as much raw sequencing data into the GenBank archives in its first six months of operation as had been deposited into GenBank in the 30 years since its inception.[v]
Organizations are confronting the reality that new sequencing instruments running at capacity can generate more information in a single year than the total deposited in GenBank at the beginning of 2008.[vi] In turn, industry analysis that once focused on the costs of sequencing genome data now focus on the challenges of managing it. In a J.P. Morgan report conducted in 2010, lab directors cited data storage, data management, and informatics as the biggest collective hurdle to expanding next-generation sequencing operations.[vii]
To meet the data management challenge, genomics labs are revamping the workflows that support sequencing. Many of the traditional workflows are based on manual, one-at-a-time processes and information stored in disconnected silos such as spreadsheets, emails, document-based communications, and paper lab notebooks. Others are supported by custom, home-brew software or modified open-source software that was developed to handle the low throughput of first-generation sequencing, microarray and qPCR instruments. Both approaches are inadequate for the high-throughput, next-generation genomics lab.
Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), commercially introduced in the early 1980s, are a mature class of software for managing data in the analytical laboratory and organizing it into meaningful information. LIMS have proven their effectiveness across multiple industries including pharmaceuticals, utilities, chemicals, food and beverage, oil and gas, and agriculture. The total LIMS market is presently about $400 million,[viii] and about 17% of LIMS applications are in life sciences.[ix]
A full-featured LIMS will manage laboratory data from sample log-in to reporting the results. However, the unprecedented throughput, experimental complexity, and rapid change associated with next-generation sequencing create unique challenges for a LIMS. The rapid timescales and expanded workflows associated with next-generation sequencing require LIMS that can be configured quickly and easily to accommodate the specific NGS instrumentation chosen by a lab. Scientific programmers and bioinformaticians in genomics labs must be able to easily adapt the system themselves to support changing technologies and protocols. And next-generation sequencing research requires iterative, collaborative work that is performed by different types of scientists.
[i] Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The quantity of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop until 2015 or 2020 or later. The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law, including processing speed and memory capacity, and are improving at (roughly) exponential rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
[ii] Stein, L. D. The case for cloud computing in genome informatics. Genome Biology 2010, 11, 207.
[iii] Batley, J.; Edwards, D. Genome sequences data: Management, storage, and visualization. BioTechniques 2009, 46, 333-336.
[iv] Third Quarter 2010 Earnings Conference Call, Caliper Life Sciences, October 2010, 16.
[v] Stein, L. D. The case for cloud computing in genome informatics. Genome Biology 2010, 11, 207.
[vi] Holt, R. and Jones, S. The new paradigm of flow cell sequencing. Genome Research 2010, 18 (6).
[vii] J.P Morgan Equity Research. Next-generation Sequencing Survey 2010.
[viii] ARC Advisory Group. Laboratory Information Management Systems Outlook: Five Year Market Analysis and Technology Forecast through 2013, (2009).
[ix] 2009 Worldwide Survey of LIMS Users: Understanding Market Trends and End-User Attitudes. Published by Strategic Directions International, Los Angeles (2009).
“By any objective measure, the amount of significant, often traumatic, change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades. Although some people predict that most of the reengineering, restrategizing, mergers, downsizing, quality efforts, and cultural renewal projects will soon disappear, I think that is unlikely.”
John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, opens his book, “Leading Change,” with this statement. In the book, he provides answers to two questions: Why do so many companies fail in their attempts to change, and is there a process to improve the probability of successful change?
As to the first question, Professor Kotter states that, “The combination of cultures that resist change and managers who have not been taught how to create change is lethal.” He supplies brief descriptions of eight common mistakes that can cause an organization to fail in its transformation efforts.
Allowing too much complacency
Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
Underestimating the power of vision
Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
Failing to create short-term wins
Declaring victory too soon
Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture
But he spends most of the book describing an eight-step process that is the antithesis of the common mistakes.
Establishing a sense of urgency
Creating the guiding coalition
Developing a vision and strategy
Communicating the change vision
Empowering the employees for broad-based action
Generating short-term wins
Consolidating gains and producing more change
Anchoring new approaches in the culture
He concludes the book by speculating on the characteristics of organizations prepared to successfully face the future, and the relationship of lifelong learning and leadership skills that define the individual’s capacity to succeed in the future.
The book evolved from an article entitled, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” that was published in the March-April 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review. Unlike many books that are expanded from articles through redundancy or by adding content of questionable value, Leading Change succinctly delivers all of this information in 186 pages that should be required reading for anyone in a position of change leadership.
Hamid Ghanadan, President of The Linus Group, is one of
the brightest and most thoughtful marketing practitioners I know.He and his company specialize in
marketing to scientists, especially in the biotech and pharmaceutical
industries.I am attending a
dinner and roundtable discussion this evening on “The Future of Science
Marketing—Emerging Models for 2011 and Beyond,” hosted by The Linus Group, and
I’ll post a review within the next few days.
"The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions:
marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the
rest are costs."
Peter Drucker wrote the Practice of Management, which included this
statement, in 1954. My 20+ years experience with scientific and technology
marketing is that "marketing" has at least faded, if not completely
disappeared from this statement for most companies. The five responses focus
mainly on the role of marketing in product management. No one mentions
marketing's role in generating demand and creating enterprise value.
In many science and technology companies, product management has been
separated from marketing and placed in the R&D function with an emphasis on
technology and product development. The rest of marketing is viewed, generally,
as a service function providing tactical sales support and marketing
communications. Unfortunately, marketing personnel have not done much to change
this perception.
Most surveys of CEO's concerns list many "marketing" issues
near the top, including identification and engagement with prospective
customers and loyalty and retention of present customers. However, most CEOs do
not look to marketing, but rather to sales, service and other functions, to
address these issues.
Marketing needs to demonstrate that it can
produce end-to-end results throughout the marketing value chain, and
strategically assist the CEO in meeting his or her top priorities for customer
loyalty and retention, revenue generation and enterprise value creation.
“CEOs
are more than frustrated by marketing's inability to deliver results. Has the
profession lost its relevance? Nirmalya Kumar argues that, although the
function of marketing has lost ground, the importance of marketing as a
mind-set—geared toward customer focus and market orientation—has gained momentum
across the entire organization. This book challenges marketers to change their
role from implementers of traditional marketing functions to strategic
coordinators of organization-wide initiatives aimed at profitably delivering
value to customers.”
If
marketers want the respect and responsibility so many say they deserve,
they have to change their role in the enterprise.If marketing acts like a service organization, that’s the way it will (and should) be viewed.If
you want to change the situation, expand your marketing vision, knowledge and goals.Quoting from the book, “Transformational marketing efforts should focus
on initiatives that:
profitably
deliver value to customers;
require
a high level of marketing expertise;
need
cross-functional orchestration for successful implementation; and
Yesterday, I attended a half-day forum presented by Tony
Jaros (Research SVP) and Jim Ninivaggi (Research Analyst) of SiriusDecisions,
titled Balancing Change and Results: 2011
Planning Assumptions.SiriusDecisions provides research and advisory services focused on the
operational intelligence sales and marketing executives in B2B companies need
to maximize top line growth.Each
year SiriusDecisions looks at the top issues of its clients during the year,
analyzes these issues, and presents its insights for the coming year.This year the insights focused on three
goals:
To improve the productivity of the sales organization
To build a robust, repeatable demand generation engine
To have communications make more of a defined, concrete
contribution
For each goal, SiriusDecisions presented a progress
report, a gap analysis and action items for 2011.I was pleased to see that
three of its four recommended actions for communications involve social media.
SiriusDecisions identifies five critical marketing tasks
for generating demand.The first
recommended action for 2011 is to build
a social media strategy that uses the most appropriate social outlet at every stage
of the cold-to-close process.Here’s a definition of the five tasks, and a modified reproduction of
the graphic that accompanied the recommendation.
SEED The use of traditional and social
media to set the stage for demand to be created.
CREATE The generation of “original”
demand, with the focus on quality versus quantity.
ENABLE Helping reps move
marketing-created demand, and to source their own demand.
ACCELERATE Efforts geared to help sales move
deals more quickly through the pipeline.
NURTURE Care and feeding of prospects
that have fallen out of the funnel.
TASK
BLOGS
SOCIAL
SITES
COMMUNITIES
MEDIA
SHARING
PODCASTS
WIKIS
SEED
X
X
X
X
X
CREATE
X
X
X
ENABLE
X
X
X
X
X
ACCELERATE
X
X
X
NURTURE
X
X
X
X
The second recommended action is that a balance of centralization and decentralization is necessary to enable
functions to best leverage social media.Many companies have initially placed social media in their
marketing communication functions.However, as companies better understand the role of social media and
develop integrated strategies for its use, the communications function will
retain centralized responsibility for policies and procedures, while content
development will be decentralized throughout a broader range of marketing and
sales functions.This will enable
more active involvement of subject matter experts and more timely creation and
deployment of subject matter important to prospects and customers.
The third recommended action is to leverage social media internally for collaboration and knowledge
management.This could
include:
Wikis
for content creation and offering roadmap collaboration
Podcasts
for product training of new sales reps hired
A
sales and marketing collaboration community
Internal sales and marketing blog
Most current providers of marketing automation and CRM are
working to integrate social media capabilities into their platforms.While Jive, a relatively new company, is
offering social business software they claim 1) fosters employee collaboration,
2) connects customers across disjointed channels, and 3) monitors social media.
My major takeaway from the forum is that companies are beginning to
recognize the power of social media for business, and vendors are providing
more capable and effective tools to harness and focus the power.However, as with most marketing
technologies and tools, the key to achieving measurable value creation and ROI
is developing and executing a comprehensive marketing strategy that integrates
social media with other communication and demand generation tools, rather than
simply bolting it on to your present (and probably outdated) strategy.
Here are the essential elements of a webinar that
outperforms the norm, with case study results from a recent one that followed the recipe.
Address a Hot Topic - The more relevant and timely the topic, the higher the
attendance and level of interest will be for the webinar.
Partner with a
Respected Third Party - Partnering with an analyst group, professional
organization, or respected publication can improve the quantity and quality of
attendees in a couple of ways.First, co-sponsorship with an independent, respected third party implies
that the webinar is more balanced and less biased than one sponsored by your
company alone.Second, the
third-party will usually publicize the webinar to their membership or
readership, which can significantly increase your reach, registration and
attendance.
Use a Third Party
Moderator - A third-party partner can usually provide an analyst,
editor or other unbiased expert to moderate the webinar.This adds greater credibility than you
or someone from your company moderating the webinar.
Have a Customer
Present a Case Study - Similar to partnering with a respected third party, a real
customer reviewing a real process, decision and result is much more credible and
interesting than you doing it yourself.
Try and Limit Your
Involvement to Answering Questions - Answering a question is much more powerful and effective
than making a statement.First, you
know the audience, especially the person asking the question, is interested in
what you have to say.Second,
people listen more closely to answers than statements.Have the person most knowledgeable
about the webinar subject answer the questions, and stay on topic.This is not the time to try and
broadcast your marketing message.Just answer the questions clearly and concisely.
Follow Up with Next
Step Options - A few days after the webinar, contact attendees with options for them
to learn more and take the next step.Make sure that there are options for each phase of the buyer education
and decision process: awareness, discovery and validation.
A Webinar Case Study
and the Results
Symyx Technologies recently conducted the most successful
webinar in its history: one that significantly exceeded average webinar metrics and produced an exceptional return-on-investment.
Symyx partnered with the American Chemical Society to
present a webinar on the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), a fast-growing
software technology that is moving from early adoption to mainstream acceptance.The webinar was promoted by Symyx through
direct marketing, its website, and its social media channels, and by ACS to its
160,000 members.Rick Mullin, a
senior editor at Chemical & Engineering News (an ACS publication) moderated
the case study presentation by Gabriel Weatherhead, Ph.D., Lead Systems
Engineer at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company.Gabriel described the process Millennium used to select an
enterprise ELN for chemistry and biology disciplines.A Symyx Vice President of Product Management and Strategy
was available to answer questions after the presentation by Gabriel.
ACS co-sponsors and conducts webinars with companies every
couple of weeks.Based on its
metrics for these events, the Symyx webinar generated 3 times more
registrations and attendees than the average, and it generated 145
questions.Also, the co-sponsored
webinar generated 10 times more registrations and attendees than webinars
publicized and conducted by Symyx alone.The average cost of attendee acquisition was about $20, well below the average
cost per inquiry from other demand generation activities.
Attendees were contacted after the presentation and
directed to an ELN microsite where they can access a pdf copy of the Millennium
case study, as well as other ELN marketing assets that allow respondents to
learn more and take the next step in the buyer education and decision
process. Symyx, in turn, can
nurture and track prospects going forward, and eventually provide sales with a
well-developed profile of a well-qualified prospective buyer: the definition of
a sales opportunity.
What works is a
focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of
your products and services.When
you understand your audience, you can construct an editorial and content
strategy just for them.In order
to implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher. – The New Rules of
Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott
Scientists are a special
class of B2B technology customer.They are very skeptical of
advertising and publicity, which they consider to be largely “hype and
spin.”On the other hand,
scientists live to publish.One
way to take advantage of this inclination is to publish a high-quality
periodical.
Case studies are one of the
most effective means of addressing a potential buyer’s question, “How does a
product or technology meet my specific business need.”Case studies are also very effective in
helping an emerging technology “cross the chasm” by providing a,
“well-established reference,” as to how, “other people have fared with the
product.”
At Symyx Technologies, a
scientific software company, we produce Molecular Connection, a semi-annual
scientific R&D publication, as our primary thought leadership vehicle.It includes state of industry commentaries,
by industry analysts and experts, and technology reviews.But the core of the publication is the
customer case studies from scientists, laboratory managers, and information
technology professionals at biopharmaceutical leaders AstraZeneca, Bristol
Myers Squibb, Elan, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and
Millennium.The case studies have
three common characteristics: 1) they name the company, 2) they describe the
benefit the user derives from the product or service, and 3) they liberally
quote specific users.
We print a small quantity of
the publication (about 1,000) as a leave behind for sales personnel (they rate
it as their most effective sales enablement tool) and we use it as our primary
handout at major events.In fact,
it is the only collateral we still print (all other collateral is only
available in electronic format).The case studies also are used individually in electronic format for
automated direct marketing campaigns, where they are our most effective incentive
for demand generation, and on our website, microsites, and blog.
While the case studies are
powerful new media assets, I am certain that it would be difficult or
impossible to obtain the cooperation of customers to produce them if they were
not part of a print publication.Think like a publisher, and become a more effective marketer.
