These tactics helped drive online lead generation from ~$35M to over $83M in a two year period.

In the biotechnology industry, it’s not uncommon for a company to spend millions of dollars on marketing and SEO to try and get their products or services discovered by new customers and web users. In this article I will share some key level steps that drive more visitors and revenue when deployed. This is the recipe that helped me grow conversions over 65% and help a past client successfully get acquired in 2020-2021.

Step 1: Identify Top Converting Keywords (With Data)

Step 2: Rank Highest Converting Keywords In Google

Step 3: Behavioral Analytics

In addition to on-site and technical SEO, ensure you are using behavioral analytics in your campaigns. This will give you deeper insight on engagement and exact behavior of website users without guessing . Any SEO or PPC company that doesn’t use behavioral analytics I suggest you re-consider hiring them.

Deploying this will yield information such as; user navigation on pages, focal points of interest and if calls to actions are really performing or not being utilized. I.E. Decision making is based on user preferences. With behavioral analytics in place you can have more confidence and solutions to increase customer conversions, and focus more on traffic volumes (SEO/PPC).

Step 4: Test/Monitor User Experience

Over time by watching UX and ranking important keywords our website gained authority. We earned much more organic keywords for free.

Step 5: Quality Press On Credible External Websites

Above is an example of a qualified post on a high level website that was driving topical authority back to our client. This specific post took 3-4 months from the introduction to finalized publish.

Step 6: Create New Strategic Landing Pages

Building landing pages was an idea we designed because we found out these two data points:

• Our budget was absorbing upwards of $11k per month in Adwords.
• Top performing PPC keywords were variations of “contract research organization” bringing high level traffic and conversions.
• We were driving the keywords to a  landing page that wasn’t solely related to contract research organization and quality score was poor.

More Intricate Campaign Details

 

Our SEO Landing Page Generated Over 1M Impressions Free.

We researched exactly how we wanted to embed keywords, layout headers and subparagraphs and the exact content needed. Then we got to work and designed a landing page that both converted well in PPC but had long form layout so we could get SEO value.

$11k Per Month & $137,000 Annually Of Free Traffic.

SEO & PPC For Biotech Industry In 2022

In the biotechnology industry, it’s not uncommon for a company to spend millions of dollars on marketing and SEO to try and get their products or services discovered by new customers and web users. Unfortunately, search marketing can be challenging and not all biotech’s get see their product reach the market or optimal results.

Key Step 1 – Thorough Keyword List For SEO

Initiating an SEO campaign requires a leap of faith in terms of your keywords. Don’t overanalyze this. Rather start with broad themes such as; Pediatrics, Dermatology & Dossier Submissions for example and craft your keywords from there. You don’t need to have a massive list of thousands of keywords, you should group keywords methodically like you see below and understand these are fluid and can change over time. You could start by using the “Google Keyword Planner”, Ask The People, SEMrush, etc. and select your 10-20 most relevant keywords balancing high volume keywords.

Once you have your keywords you need to begin onsite optimization and archive these into a keyword tracking software such as SEM RUSH. Remember to stay fluid and that these are a benchmark for you to assess overall keyword themes for an entire service page vs looking each day at one particular keyword.

Key Step 2 – Content Marketing – Onsite & Offsite

Many biotech companies don’t fully understand the importance of a content calendar for onsite (blog, on your hosted domain) and offsite (publishing content on external sites and linking back). For example a significant amount of traffic to Pharma.com is coming from article citations off of Quora, Business Insider and Hubspot not just high level publications. Knowing where to place content and having a comprehensive schedule geared towards producing high performing articles at regular intervals enables us organic traffic growth over time that compounds upon itself.

Key Step 3 – Offsite Content

Offsite content should be quality over quantity in terms of guest posting. The key to success is remembering consistency across content opportunities in terms of branding, tone and subject matter. Also, do not rush the process or think it is easy to get qualified coverage. It is very time consuming and resource heavy. Think of it as cold calling where you will get a very low response rate (2%). Lastly, when I say offsite content understand the differences between PR and offsite content. This is a common misconception and they are very different forms of content.

Offsite content comes down to earning quality backlinks, which grow a website’s organic traffic and ranking for specific keywords.

Key Step 4 – Onsite Content

Content calendars for blog content are very useful for SEO. Some tips to consider are:

• Aside from the actual research into topical ideas to create be mindful of embedding graphics and charts. For life sciences and biotechnology users are typically much lower in the funnel and these simple techniques can really drive conversion and value.
• Be aware and implement new trends or topical points being made by your competitors so you can respond quickly with relevant information.
• Not all content needs to be from scratch – Once you are on a continuous schedule and seeing traffic rise also go back and regularly update older, aged blog posts if needed

Remember a good content marketing strategy should be a web of onsite and offsite for Google and Bing to recognize the website’s authority.

Key Step 5: Synchronize PPC & Search Engine Optimization Together

PPC is a channel that will allow you to understand quickly and easily the exact conversion rate of keywords. For example, you will see if “Pediatrics clinical research” converts much higher than “dossier submission companies”. Also, PPC helps your SEO analysis by delivering quality scores so you can see exactly how Google views a particular ad and landing page combination.

Some important considerations for you PPC campaigns are:

• Run tight budgets and consistently improve to eliminate wasted spend.
• Branding and creative is vital, have enough iterations to test which convert best.
• Monitor regions, devices, day parts like a hawk to increase easy wins.
• Treat the process as a learning experience where you continue to communicate on what is working and what is not.
• B2B companies typically do not need to run ads on non peak or office hours (weekends)

Start with a select few campaigns at first as things get better over time buy testing and understanding the data.

Basic Marketing Checklist For Life Sciences/BioTech

The first caveat I will make is that biotechnology and life science companies aren’t the easiest digital marketing niche. Running ads on Google can flag as “inappropriate” or against their policies if you aren’t meticulous and working with an expert. For example, we ran ads containing the word “pediatrics” and that single keyword flagged the bot. Even more challenging, life science companies are very heavily regulated so you must be careful with your content marketing strategy and understand HIPPA Compliance.

The key to success for SEO/PPC regarding life science companies is:

Leveraging Google Analytics and Search Engine Optimization insights from outside sources where possible (e.g Diversica). Detailed Reporting is vital – paid & organic search inventory data into Google Analytics.

Maintain a 300 day rolling snapshot of progress through the website with real-time associated analytics and other conversations such as competitor’s strategies.

Working with proven SEO experts (not necessarily large agencies) that partner specifically with life science companies creating strategies to ensure content will be indexed & make continuous decisions based on data.

Sharing data between key brand ambassadors and specific teams who know how to work outside the core business – This can often require “creative hijinks” such as encouraging discussions on leading forums, or interacting with social followers on LinkedIn through marketing campaigns.

Applying regular testing throughout campaigns – Paying attention to user experience, feedback & ad scores can help adjust and improve your own winning strategy.

High level relationships with life science content networks help (such as Big Pharma)- This builds an effective content management processes through blogs or embedding sponsors in their websites/blogs which conveys message value while earning critical links for SEO.

Branding and design is very important to the success of search campaigns.