Marketing to Life Scientists

Every place under the sun is trying to shine as a biotech or life science center. It makes sense for economic developers to look carefully at how they market their areas to the decision-makers in this sector. A recent report by Bioinformatics provides some useful insight into about businesses are marketing themselves to life scientists. Maybe there is something that economic developers can learn from this report.

Here are some tid bits from the report:

- "Catalogs", "information from co-workers and colleagues" and "scientific meetings" are the three most common ways that scientists learn about vendors and their products and services.

- The respondents claim that the most influential factors in their decision to purchase a new product or service that they've never used before are the availability of a "free product sample for evaluation" (61%), the "recommendation from a co-worker or colleague" (55%) and the "brand name/company reputation" of the vendor (44%).

- 38% of the study respondents spend between one and two hours visiting vendor Websites per week.

- The study respondents state that the two most useful features on vendor Websites are "detailed product descriptions" (69%) and "protocols and application notes" (62%).

- Sigma-Aldrich, Invitrogen and Molecular Probes are considered to have the most useful vendor Websites.

- Over 35% of the life scientists surveyed open and read over 80% of the direct mail they receive each week.