Biopharma Marketing: How to Get Executives to Pay Attention

More than $974 billion.

That’s the estimated size of the biopharmaceutical market by 2030.¹

That’s great news for healthcare advertisers selling to biopharma businesses. Many pharma and healthcare brands increase sales and revenue by partnering with biopharma companies (who may want anything from insights into the genomics of cancer to innovative drugs they can add to their portfolio).

However, advertising to biopharma execs comes with a rub: Getting the execs — the ones with buying power — to open their wallets isn’t easy.

This is why creating a thoughtful biopharma marketing and advertising strategy is so important.

Here’s everything you need to know about biopharma advertising and marketing and what it’ll take to get company executives to convert.

Biopharmaceutical Market Size

In 2021, the global biopharmaceuticals market was valued at more than $345 billion. By 2030, the market is expected to reach more than $974 billion, making it one of the biggest industries in the US.

In 2020, biopharma companies were developing approximately 4.5 thousand medicines.² Of the medicines, 560 were for pediatric diseases, 537 were for neurological disorders, and 362 were for cell and gene therapies.

The biggest biopharma companies in the world include Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Pfizer, and Abbott, but it’s common for new entrants to fight for market share.

Understanding Biopharma Execs & Their Online Behavior

Launching a biopharma marketing and advertising campaign at executives relies on one thing: Understanding them and their online behavior.

Here are a few things to consider when building your target list of biopharma executives:

• Number of biopharma companies in the United States: 6,653
• Popular biopharma conferences: US Pharma & Biotech Summit, Reuters Events: Pharma USA 2022, CPhI North America, and AAPS 2022 Annual Meeting and Exposition
• Interests of biopharma executives: Health, Fitness, News, Weather, Lifestyles, etc.
• Popular websites of biopharma executives: The New York Times, weather.com, and MyFitnessPal

You can use these insights to build your strategy.

For instance, if you know your target executive will be at the US Pharma & Biotech Summit, you can launch a geofencing campaign that gets in front of them when they’re actually at it.

From there, you can take the intent signals, i.e., who showed interest in your geofencing campaign and continue to promote your products or services to them after the fact.

At the same time, ask yourself where they’re most active online and at which time of the day. What else do you know about them and their lifestyles that can influence your campaign?

At the end of the day, your goal is to understand who you’re targeting and what will get their attention. The better you can do this, the better your ads will perform.

Did you know? We have data on the online behaviors of more than 128,000 biopharma executives. Contact us today to start building your next campaign.

How to Advertise Your Healthcare Brand to Biopharma Execs

Understanding your target executive will only get you so far.

Campaign execution is just as important.

To ensure you’re getting this part of biopharma marketing right, focus on relevancy, benefits, and delivery.

Be Relevant

The biopharmaceutical industry is a big game of cat and mouse. In some way, shape or form, biopharma executives are always looking for ways to stay ahead of the competition.

Go to any biopharma company’s website and look at their positioning.

The image below is from Gilead Sciences’ website.

Notice the language.

“Gilead at Forefront of Herculean Effort to Combat COVID-19”

This one’s from AstraZeneca. Again, look at the language, specifically, the callout about the 183 projects in its pipeline.

In the biopharma industry, if you’re not first, you’re last. These executives know this and understand their jobs depend on figuring out how to stay ahead of the pack.

Show them that you can help them do that, and you can win their business — or at least get them to convert on your ad.

Focus on Benefits Execs Will Care About

At the heart of effective biopharma sales and marketing are ads that demonstrate business value.

Note the word in bold: Business.

While ads targeting other HCPs often focus on benefits related to the day-to-day application of the product — for example, how easy a bioreactor is to set up and maintain — anything intended for the eyes’ of executives should zone in on business results.

So, rather than focusing on setup and maintenance, highlight how the time savings will lead to financial gains.

You should also consider where the executive falls in the organization.

If they’re the CFO, talk about financial benefits. If they’re the CTO, key in on the technology. If they’re the CEO or a board member, highlight revenue.

Show Up When & Where Execs Are Spending Their Time

How you deliver your ads will depend on what you know about your target executive, i.e., the insights you used to build your list during the planning stage.

That said, there are tactics you can use to increase the likelihood that you land on the right screen at the right time.

All of these revolve around programmatic technology.

With programmatic technology, you can effectively and efficiently deliver ads across the online ecosystem, regardless of where executives spend their time online or which devices they’re using to do so, an increasingly important part of biopharma marketing considering 80% of people use multiple connected devices.³

Beyond giving you the ability to deliver ads across devices, programmatic technology can also help you deliver impactful ads on endemic and non-endemic websites, enabling you to land on their screens when they’re in and out of the workplace.

Similarly, you can power the geofencing campaigns we mentioned above, giving you the chance to deliver contextual and relevant ads to executives when they’re in the medical mindset and more likely to engage.

Wrapping Up: Marketing to Biopharma Executives in 2022 & Beyond

Every campaign is important, but it’s hard to argue against the fact that ones targeting biopharma executives aren’t just a little more important.

These are the people with buying power who’ll ultimately decide if they want to sign the dotted line. This is why building a thoughtful biopharma marketing strategy that focuses on relevance, business benefits, and delivery is so important.

Reach out today to learn more about how we can help you do just that.