Turning Challenges into opportunities – Business Development & Event Communication Strategy for biotech and medical startups in times of Covid-19

Covid-19 has sent our industry into a whirlwind of confusion. For the biotechnology and medical innovation industry there are events, conferences and meetings all year round and the day to day research and development work is time sensitive and lab dependent. Imagine that happens to an industry like that when all of a sudden events are cancelled and/or are becoming virtual and everyone is sent to work from home.

For me and for my team, the current pandemic has meant that we have had to make some big shifts in strategy very quickly. Many of our clients were already registered, some as attendees and others as speakers, to the world’s leading conferences and events in their respective fields. We had already prepared the Business Development and communication strategies for them around those events.

Then, in one moment and at the click of a button, these events were either canceled, postponed or changed into a virtual format. The first thing that everyone feels when this happens is a “missed opportunity”. But this shouldn’t happen! In fact, what’s going on now offers many more companies the opportunities of a life time to jump-start their Business Development.

“Physical Distancing” should not be interpreted as “social” or “professional” distance!

Here is how we see the shift and what we do for our clients.

Research

As with everything and regardless of the format of the event, you have to start with research. Research around an event includes many facets for biotech and medical, among which are: who else is attending, who is speaking, who among the speakers can we target as one of the key entities we need to engage with: KOL, partner, client; how big is the reach of the event and who organizes it: is it worth to make an effort to sponsor or speak? Perhaps present a poster? Do we want to organize a mini-event of our own within the bigger event? If so what? A seminar? A breakfast or dinner? A round-table panel?

This part doesn’t change when a conference is made virtual and even if it is canceled. If you have already done the research, don’t throw it away. If you started, don’t stop and if you think you don’t need to research, you are mistaken.

The information and insights you will get from such research will allow you to then optimize your communication, content, lead generation actions and budget to the new virtual conference or even to allocate resources to other channels in your overall Business Development and Marketing strategies.

Remember, that even if a conference is cancelled, the information around it and the people who were supposed to attend and speak, is available nonetheless and it is pure gold for companies that know what to do with it.

Communications

Once you have your research, the next step is, usually, to plan your communication around the conference.

Here you would normally plan your Marketing Communication assets, both physical (booth, brochures, business cards) and online (social media, blog, landing page). You would also plan your actual conference strategy: booth activities and giveaways (if you were supposed to exhibit), route around the conference hall and interesting booths to visit (if you are an attendee, or even an exhibitor who wants to check out potential competitors, partners or clients), paid resources (email to the attendees via the conference mailing list, purchasing a list of attendees, social media campaigns and email marketing campaigns), Key Opinion Leaders you would target for one-on-one communication and perhaps meetings.

Just as with the research, you don’t want to throw away assets you have already planned or prepared. Your brochure can be made into a PDF file, your landing page or your blog posts can still serve you and most organizers will still allow paid mailing or purchase of lists.

Your communication, should therefore, not change at all!

If anything, whatever you save in terms of money and time on physical resources and giveaways, you can now allocate to creating more and better content and to paid campaigns to reach more people.

In other words, your communication is just as important as before if not more (and needs careful planning and immaculate execution!). The only difference is how you prioritize your channels.

Content

Since we said your communication should not change, we also insist on high quality content creation and curation, just as we would if the conference required you and your team to fly somewhere.

When it comes to content, we divide it into two main categories: owned (content we create) and curated (content we share from other sources). The types of content in both categories are diverse: text, images, video etc.

We usually prepare the content, per the communication and business development strategies for each stage around a conference, and this too has not changed!

The three main stages for any event are:

• Pre-conference
• During the conference
• Post-conference

Before the conference:

Our content should support brand awareness: email campaigns, landing pages for lead generation, social media communication announcing our attendance and what we will be showcasing, individual communication with key targets /valued contacts/prospects, etc. All of this shouldn’t change!

During the conference:

This would normally be dedicated to in-booth activities and giveaways (which are now gone, freeing up time and budget for other things) and social media communication around daily experiences at the conference. If the conference becomes virtual we can still post during the allocated time period with, for example, screenshots from zoom lectures or talks, we can post links to the interesting online events and we can participate in panel discussions and comment on those in the conference official channels, thus engaging with other participants and followers.

We can also use the conference time-frame to create our own mini-events (webinars, panels, guest blog posts…) online as well. Instead of inviting specific people to an expensive breakfast during the conference, we can invite the same people and even a larger audience, to a webinar where we introduce our research and our products. This is something we can do even if the main conference is cancelled. We can take advantage of the time-frame that is now freed up, but that people have already reserved with the intent to attend a professional development event, and offer one to them nonetheless.

After the conference:

This is usually when we would post a summary of our experiences and insights (we can still do that even if the conference was virtual!) and we would email individually and/or using an email marketing tool all the leads we have collected to thank them for visiting our booth or for meeting with us. We can still do that even if these leads attended our online webinar or engaged with us on LinkedIn… There is no reason not to maintain communication and nurture new connections.

Lead Generation

One of the hardest things to do is lead generation. The more important and the larger the conference, the more people will visit your booth or will cross your path, even if you are only attending, and the more chances are you will return with hundreds of business cards and contacts, most of which may not be too relevant.

The time it takes to sift through these contacts, add them to CRMs and set up email marketing or individually write to the ones you find important is what makes most of these business cards be forgotten in a drawer in your office, until the next conference.

Actually, in this specific regard, taking the conferences online and making them virtual is a blessing. Lead Generation around a specific conference, in the virtual world, means you have access through LinkedIn, Twitter, official conference channel and hashtags and, potentially, through paid campaigns to people who are all interested the same things as you and who are all in the same mindset of communication like you are. You could, indeed, reach these people on the same channels, before as well; But the difference now is that many organizers are opening online communities (usually in the forms of Facebook and LinkedIn groups) for the conference attendees to communicate on, which means you get more access and an option to filter and target more accurately.

Imagine that instead of paying to send an email to 10,000 expo attendees with only 5% of them interested in your specific product and most of them not opening your email, you can now target an ad on LinkedIn to a group of the same 10,000 but add a filter with keywords and other parameters, allowing your content to get right in front the most relevant people, ensuring they see it on their feed and paying less for this!

Budget

Speaking of paying less, one of the important changes is that of budget. Budget is a pain point for most companies and event budget is usually part of the larger marketing budget. Companies that are aware of the importance of allocating an annual budget for events and conferences and do that, usually take into account booth setup, registration costs, sponsorship options, design, flights and accommodations and much more.

This is why, especially when it comes to the biotech and medical world where conferences are more expensive and when we’re dealing with start-ups, we have to scrutinize and very carefully choose which conferences to take part in and in what capacity (attendee, exhibitor, sponsor). We often have to give up on events that are too expensive to reach and participate in and this hinders and slows down the business development for these companies a great deal.

But now, the shift to online events is a breath of fresh air for these startups and industries. Online events are often cheaper (in some cases they are even free to join, whereas before you’d have to pay to access), the travel costs are completely eliminated and with no booth construction and logistics costs, all design costs can be re-allocated for online design (which is cheaper than print design) and used to revamp the website, create infographics, improve your posters, your case studies and presentation templates and so much more!

Our experience shows that even if you pay to have your own webinar platform subscription so you can host online talks, rebuild your website and run paid campaigns on social media, you’d still end up saving money and be able to attend more online conferences than you would had they been held as usual.

New Opportunities

I believe, by now, you understand that the overall strategy for business development and marketing, especially around conference (but not only), has not changed much if at all. What did change is the opportunities this pandemic has created, especially for biotechnology companies and medical companies.

If you can do more in less time and pay less for it, this means that more events and opportunities to engage with Key people in the industry, are now open to young startups, pre-seed stage or underfunded companies and in general to more people, who would otherwise not be able to make use of this channel for their business development.

By taking the professional conferences online, the industry has, in effect, made the larger and deeper water-holes more accessible to everyone.

Startups that before could not afford to attend big events and show case their products, can now do it in the same sandbox as the “big ones”.

Startups that had to rely on a joint booth through funding organizations or accelerators can now stand out on their own.

All of these could have been done before too. But no one would have noticed your online efforts in the sea of communication and the bustle of commute (to and from the conference and at the exhibition hall itself). Now that everyone is #InThisTogether, as we say, and everyone is doing the same thing and participating from the comfort of their own home, they are more relaxed, they have more time and they are more inclined to notice the new players.

All in all, if the business development is done right, now is your time to shine.