Last night’s UltraLight Startups event featured a panel that discussed the need for search engine optimization and search engine marketing. The four panelists – Seth Dotterer of Conductor, Inc, Christopher Hart of Bruce Clay Inc., Kevin Lee of Didit and Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal – were tremendous. For startups, the take-aways were:
- Know your audience and learn to think and search the way they do,
- Set goals, measure and track against the goals,
- Build great content, and
- Start thinking about search engine optimization earlier rather than later
The biggest take-away, though, was that you need to have at least an understanding of SEO and SEM if you’re going to have any type of online presence.
For biotech and life sciences startups all of the above apply. It’s common sense but it takes time.
When I meet with potential clients, I like to talk about online marketing strategy and it still amazes me how often clients either dismiss SEO and take a ‘we’ll build it and they’ll come attitude.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way and never did, no matter how great your content, product or service. In addition, very few life sciences and biotech companies use their web sites to capture emails, distribute white papers or develop a relationship with their audience. I say, what better way to communicate with an audience that wants to know you?
Online marketing isn’t complicated, but it is something that needs to be part of your market mix.
Market you must. Constantly.
Graham posted links to several articles on SEO marketing for new sites here, here, here, and here.
Image: suzysputnik
The amount of information generated about the biotechnology and life sciences industry is overwhelming. On a daily basis, I’m reading BioWorld, several Fierce Publications e-newsletters (FierceBiotech, FierceHealthcare, FierceHealthIT, FierceMobileHealth, FiercePharma) and Xconomy.
In my mailbox, I’m receiving Genetic Engineering News, In Vivo, Nature (including Nature’s Bioentrepreneur blog), Medical Media & Marketing, Pharmaceutical Executive, PharmaVoice and Science. I also frequently check the following blogs: Sally Church’s brilliant Pharma Strategy Blog, John Mack’s often-hilarious Pharma Marketing Blog, Pharmalot, plus several other blog you can find on the MessagingLab Alltop page.
It’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it? Enough to overload neurons?
Over the next couple of months, I’ll be focusing content on marketing in general, the life sciences in particular and will also be adding interviews with founders and marketers. I’m a huge fan of Y-Combinator’s Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies, including Apple, Flickr, Lotus, and PayPal, among many others. My goal is to create a similar book for biotech and the life sciences.
I’ve lined up several interviews and will be posting those as they are edited. I’ll also post my dream list of people for the book in the next few blog posts. Any feedback is welcome.
I recently reviewed Gary Vaynerchuck’s Crush It! and personal branding at the Fundamentals of Bioscience Alumni site. As I said in the review, the book has applications not only toward personal branding but toward the branding a startup. One of the things I tell people all the time is make yourself the expert. Crush It! is all about that.
Thanks to Matt Engel for the invite to contribute to the FBOIP site.
A few weeks back, I attended a Licensing Executive Society’s event called “The Future of the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry.” It’s taken me a while to get to my notes but here they are, finally.
The well-attended event was formed around a panel of speakers that included biotech allstar Dennis Purcell, Richard Sperber and Graham Jones
Dennis Purcell
Mr. Purcell started out by saying 2009 was a pretty good year for biotech, small caps were up, and there were some big biotechnology company breakouts. On the downside, there were no IPOs and rewards for investors were elusive.
He predicted big changes in Venture Capital over the next few years because VCs are now funding biotech companies to help sustain them. As a result, they can’t place as many bets, and they can’t rely on IPOs or Big Pharma deals as exits. He said the VC industry could shrink by as much as 50% in the next few years.
One of the main reasons is that M&A and licensing have converged and there are fewer acquisitions. As a result, the VCs are trying to figure out what kinds of biotech companies to build – companies that are developing a product versus companies that are developing pipelines of products.
Mr. Purcell said it’s hard to figure out what the pharmaceutical companies want these days, especially since big pharma has gotten smarter about licensing deals.
The big issue for the biotechnology companies that survived last year is how will they make it through the next few years. Sustainability is a huge issue. And the general investor doesn’t feel the need to be in biotech.
An audience member asked Mr. Purcell how early his company would go into a company and he answered, “Later.” Ainsling is interested in platforms that will spin off products but their recent focus has been on orphan drugs. He warned it’s hard to make money off of early stage companies and said there are less dollars available for those early-stage companies. He also mentioned reimbursment is a huge issue for all biotechnology companies and too are looking at the reimbursement big picture.
Richard Sperber
Richard Sperber, started by joking “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for the industry but everything changed on December 31, 2007. IPOs started to mean ‘I Postponed the Offering’… Private financing dried up… 200-300 companies found themselves with less than 1 year of cash… Partnering slowed to a trickle… Pharma companies stopped calling back. And biotech became a buyer’s market, going from, we want phase 2 data, to we want a filed NDA to we don’t want to talk to you until you’re on the market.”
He reminded the audience that partnering in biotech is enormously important. Pharmaceutical companies need partners. And, thankfully, all investment is cyclical.
When asked when companies should be thinking about partnering? Mr. Sperber answered, “When you have Phase 2 data.” When asked if there were too many leads and too few investors? he answered, “It’s a buyers market and pharma can wait. There is a lot of junk out there and big pharma can wait but don’t forget, big pharma needs biotech.”
When asked, “Who is funding the early stage?” Mr. Purcell stepped in answered, “bigger syndicates…. but fewer deals, bigger deals.” An audience member from Pfizer countered,”Pfizer is funding early stage research.”
Purcell offered that half of the conversations at this year’s J.P. Morgan Biotechnology Healthcare Conference were around outlicensing. To which an audience member pointed out, “Compounds could be outlicensed, then developed offshore.”
Gerard Jones, Ph.D.
Dr. Jones spoke about biosimiliars and said biosimiliars are defined as those compounds that are usually protein-based, and created via a biological method after the patent on the original compound as expired. These compounds – like Amgen’s recombinant epoetin alfa, Epogen – are highly effective and make up 50% of all new drug registrations. As these compounds come off patent, their generic versions will represent an $80 billion market. Biosimilars he noted represent the point when the golden age of biotechnology turns platinum.
The biosimilars discussion was very interesting because the intellectual property around biosimilars focuses on process and compounds creation.
Legislatively, Dr. Jones mentioned we’re getting closer to 12 years of exclusivity but generic biosimilar manufacturers will need alternate strategies to be successful. One other barrier to entry for generics manufacturers will be generic company must use the innovator drug as reference for their NDA application.
The FDA has the biosimilars issue on their radar screen and has hired 1000 new inspectors. EMEA is having a harder time on this and China and India are leading innovation in this space. Mr. Purcell mentioned that BIO is happy with the 12 year patent protection.
I enjoyed the panel, especially Dr. Jones insights. I walked away feeling very humbled in my knowledge re: biosimilars.
Kudos to moderator Arnold Burstein and organizer Sandra Holtzman.
This is Part 5 of our 5 Part Series on 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming. Check out Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.
Mistake #5: Not “dotting all your Is” and “crossing all your Ts.”
Details. Details. Details.
It always comes down to the details. And, with a name, the details really matter.
When you’ve come up with a great company or product name, don’t forget your work isn’t over. You need to do some simple things to make sure this name can really work:
Say the name aloud. Run it by some friends or colleagues. Answer the phone saying the name you’re choosing. A name can look really great on paper. But, when you speak it, you may realize that is rhymes with something you don’t want it to rhyme with or is hard work to say clearly or, even worse, isn’t clear how it should be pronounced by seeing it written down. Remember: potential customers will hear your name mentioned. Will they like what they hear? Will they know how to spell it when they go looking for you? Will they remember it.
Check the Internet. Be sure you can register a URL that contains the name. Sites such as Joker.com can help you determine if the domain name is available and help you register it. These sites — and a simple google search — can help you find out who else might be using this name.
Avoid trademark problems. Check the U.S. Patent and Trademark office to see if the mark is available – you don’t want to come up with a brilliant name only to find out it’s trademarked by another company in your category. Avoid the legal repercussions of that.
Make sure it works internationally. Even if you’re not planning on expanding outside or your local area, you need to make sure your name works linguistically around the world. We live in a multicultural society, and you don’t want to end up with a name that means something offensive in Urdu (one of the languages spoken in Pakistan).
Conclusion: A lot of people say to us, “Anyone can sit down and come up with a great name.”
Well, it’s true. Anyone can.
But unfortunately, many people come up with names that eventually get them into trouble or paint their business into a corner. Lots can go wrong: the name is already trademarked, the name turns customers off, the name becomes obsolete as the business changes.
The good news is that you can create your own name without hiring a naming firm or consultant. You just need to have a process in place for how to come up with possible name candidates and be sure you narrow it down to the right one. Using the right tools and following good advice from those who have a history of naming successes can make all the difference.
This is Part 4 of our 5 Part Series on 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming. Check out Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.
Mistake #4: Naming too quickly.
We’ve all been in those situations where we have to make a decision quickly. Too quickly. And often, those quick decisions are decisions we regret making later. It has been said that there is no virtue in thoughtless action. This is especially true with naming.
One thing that makes naming so difficult nowadays — much more difficult than it was ten or even five years ago — is that many, many names have already been taken. Both large and niche industries now have many players with many products. And each and every one of them has been named. And those names are already out there: trademarked, patented, or even simply in the broader cultural memory. Worse, if you’re launching a business and you come up with a name, you want to register it as a dot com. And it seems like most of the great .coms (top level domain names) are seemingly gone.
This means that many times, when an entrepreneur comes up with a possible name, it’s unconsciously drawn from something everyone knows. It’s the name of a song that used to be popular. Or a product that already launched and failed. Or it sounds just like a competitor’s name. Or it sounds unique at first but people remark that it’s too cute or too generic or too obvious.
It’s all too easy to come up with a name that, well, anyone would have come up with if they sat and brainstormed about a similar company. And that’s what you need to beat if you’re company name is going to be a winner. You have to get past the obvious names and find one that has real power for your customers.
Here’s the good news: Once you’ve made a long list of names and none of them end up sounding that original. You’re in the right place. You’ve gotten all those names that are floating in everyone’s heads out of the way. Now you can come up with something that really is spectacular.
Stay tuned for Part 5 in the series and leave your comments below.
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming – Part 3 – Choosing a Name that Won’t Grow
This is Part 3 of our 5 Part Series on 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming. Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Mistake #3: Choosing a name that won’t grow with you.
Let’s say you’re starting a company that focuses on the stem cell market. Okay, that sounds like a good, targeted market. It’s large and growing. And there is increased interest in stem cells in the media. So, you choose to give your company a very descriptive name such as American Stem Cells (with no disrespect to American Stem Cells Inc.).
The problem: The name only tells the world what type of business ASC is in.
Why is that a problem?
Let’s say the company takes off and you decide that you want to expand beyond stem cells into other therapeutic areas. Suddenly, American Stem Cells needs to change its name to let people know you focus on more than just stem cells. What if your company moves beyond enabling technologies? What if it moves into markets outside the US? What if stem cells fall out of fashion and a new technology become the rage?
If you realize in a year or so that your original name isn’t working, you’ll need to spend money on changing the name on all your materials, expanding your advertising, explaining to current customers, investors and the media that you are expanding your line. And on and on and on.
The problem could’ve been easily solved by creating a name that is not so limiting and designed to grow in the future.
So, when you start thinking about your name, don’t limit yourself to a name that describes your company as it exists now. Give yourself a name that will allow you to grow in the future.
This is Part 2 of our 5 Part Series on 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming. Check out Part 1 here.
Mistake #2: Limiting Possible Directions for Your Name.
When begin to consider possible names, make sure you don’t limit your naming options. If everyone in your industry includes the same word in their name — whether it’s “glass” or “coaching” or “power — that doesn’t mean you necessarily have to include that word.
The father of American Motivational speakers, Earl Nightingale once said that if you want to be a success in all you do, you should find out what everyone else is doing in your chosen field and then do the exact opposite.
The same holds for naming. Don’t be afraid to go against the current trends in your industry. If people were afraid to against the tide there would be no Apple Computer or Google or Virgin Airways or Yahoo! And now many of these “out there” names define their industries.
We’re not suggesting you do definitely name the opposite of everyone in your industry is, but consider doing something different and looking beyond your industry for inspiration.
Here’s another important point in the process to write things down. What are the names of your main competitors? Make a list. What do they have in common? Why? Are there any gaps?
It can be hard to start thinking of names that don’t echo everyone else’s. After all, those are the names you here all the time when thinking about your industry, right?
Here are some activities you can do to begin to think differently about possible names. (And doing these things will — and should be — fun.):
- Read a good book ,
- Sign up for the “word a day” email from a dictionary web site,
- Browse a store completely outside your industry (e.g., music, clothing, packaging materials, an Asian grocery),
- Study a foreign language,
- Watch late night television or listen to foreign language radio.
Give yourself the permission to be creative. Then, be creative. The best ideas come when you’re not limiting yourself.
Stay tuned to Part 3 of this series.
