Interview: Jeff Boily, BIOWIZARD – Part 2
This is Part 2 of my interview with Jeff Boily of BioWizard. For Part 1, click this link.
Karl Schmieder: Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about the marketing of the life sciences since you’ve been a part of the industry for 30 years. Could you give us some perspective, especially in terms of the economic challenge we’ve been going through? What do you see out there in terms of what’s being successful for a company? What do you think companies are failing to do?
Jeff Boily: Well, the environment is certainly more challenging overall. So, the major issues when you are promoting to biotech and pharmaceutical industries has been this downturn. There have been significant job losses within the research areas and that has certainly impacted a lot of the programs. For example, many BioWizard’s users are associated with the industry and that certainly does make an impact.
That being said, research continues to move forward and people still need information and services. Information is critical in this sophisticated user group. They like to search for information, find what they’re looking for and move on. They’re not shopping the way consumers do. They’re looking for tools that save them time yet deliver very specific results.
At BioWizard, we consider the psychographics of life scientists to determine how they search for information, use the service and what new technologies and new programs they want and would use. We’ve tried to look at what is critical for scientists to use our services. What influence fellow researchers have? And we have found they like very specific information.
Based on that information, we added a feature that allows our users to save all their search algorithms, then be notified immediately via email if when a new article is added into the PubMed database that meet their search criteria. That way, users could develop sophisticated search algorithms, that saves time and improves results. specificity is key, they are not looking for general information or news that is not specific to their research interests.
General articles or news elements in oncology is not of significant interest to this group.. For example, they want recent published data on squamous cell carcinoma in head and neck cancer, etc . And, they’re doing very specific things with the information they receive. So, they do not like wasting their time. This is a more impatient group. They like to come in. Get what they need and move on.
So if we can provide the services and tools that solve their problems, allow very specific searches, then they will come back to BioWizard and we increase the stickiness. This is really central to what we have done as a small firm.
We know that our audience is not interested in a lot of banner ads. Some of those have worked. But it has to be appealing from a scientific or medical content perspective. In general, the standard web banner ads don’t work very well with this audience. That’s why we haven’t promoted Biowizard via banner advertising because we haven’t found it to be effective.
SCHMIEDER: Is there anything else that you have found to be effective that maybe our readers wouldn’t think of as being obvious?
BOILY: Yes. We’ve used Second Life and have participated in various programs on that virtual world. We’ve created a persona and were very surprised by the number of people in our target audience that participated. Even more surprising were the residual effects of people going back and looking at the content. We’ve found Second Life to be a worthwhile program and recently we’ve seen other firms doing virtual life science events in that world.
BioWizard's innovative marketing strategies include the use of Second Life
It allows users to look at these programs at their convenience as opposed to being locked into specific schedules and traveling, especially with the downturn in the economy where it’s been some limitations on travel.
SCHMIEDER: That’s very interesting because interest in Second Life wanes in the mainstream media, but consulting firms like McKenzie have been using it as a global marketing and recruiting tool. Given that your audience is very highly educated, I’m not surprised that a place like that would be a good place to find a lot of them at once and make it easy for them to know what you’re doing and how it’s going to help them.
BOILY: Second Life caters to a younger audience, but it definitely has a serious group of scientists who were very interested in our program.
SCHMIEDER: How did the ROI on that program compare to others? It sounds like it was very successful.
BOILY: We were pleased based on the number of people that were exposed to BioWizard and the impact our web traffic. Since we are a small firm, we need to really focus our promotional dollars as efficiently as possible. We don’t have the luxury for broad programs. So, of the various marketing programs we’ve tried, we found that one certainly did yield some positive results.
SCHMIEDER: That type of program probably doesn’t come top of mind for most marketing people but it sounds like it made a lot of sense for BioWizard.
BOILY: As with all marketing programs, you look at what’s innovative and can drive users. We had mixed feelings whether this would work or not, but it certainly produced positive results.
We’ve also done a virtual bio conferences – where a combination of speakers do recorded broadcasts for their audiences and you can circulate, and have a virtual booth, if you wish, during these conferences as well. We’re finding many other life sciences firms are using this type of marketing.
So there is a movement to this to try to get to the target audience with specific information that they want and when they want it as opposed to mobilizating people all over the country, which is what we all used to do.
Another marketing program we found interesting and brought us some interesting results is a very direct program aimed at university students in graduate school and undergraduates as well to try to promote our site. Since they’re the ones doing research, they’re very interested in new resources. We ran programs and retained what we call College Ambassadors for BioWizard. We got them to hand out pamphlets and BioWizard t-shirts. The t-shirts were in big demand. That was an effective way to get our message out to an audience that is very key to us and they helped spread the word. We’ve done this for a variety of institutions across the country.
SCHMIEDER: Again, that makes a lot of sense, you’ve got the right message aimed at the audience that will be using the product.
BOILY: Correct. We’re also tied in with a number of the academic libraries. We were part of the Medical Library Association and had a lot of our users and a variety of contacts within the academic world. We’re able to link ourselves to various academic libraries. That also strengthen our presence in a key environment. We view BioWizard as an information/education tool, where you come to find scientific and medical information for your own research or for educational purposes. So those are some of the grass roots marketing efforts we’re promoting at various academic centers and the virtual world promotions we’re doing.
SCHMIEDER: It sounds like a great way to reach your audience. I’m sure that word of mouth is a big part of your efforts. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell me about life sciences marketing in general?
BOILY: Well in marketing to the life sciences, you need to keep your user audience in mind and that audience is very demanding and very sophisticated. They know what they’re looking for. The value of your offering is critical. With BioWizard, we’ve tried to build valuable features throughout the site, keeping the user in mind. So, whether it is to save a search or two, find or share an article, we’ve tried to make it simple. Tools that simplify either research and communication process will increase the chances that your audience is going to come back to your site and continue using your program.
SCHMIEDER: Thanks Jeff for spending the time with us today.
BOILY: You’re welcome.
