Medical marketing people wind up talking to a lot of interesting people and they also wind up talking to engineers, scientists, software “code warriors,” biostatisticians, and clinical denizens. In fact, you can’t really do much good at marketing medical products and services without knowing these characters. But how do you get what’s in their head into meaningful concepts you can use in your marketing materials?
Step one involves talking to them. I know many marketing people who take a perverse pride in never, even stepping foot outside the marketing department (or cafeteria). These guys realize that other areas of the company are populated by people who like math better than music and do not always have good social skills. But you can’t have good marketing success unless you get to know these people. Visit their departments; ask to sit in on relevant meetings that are run by “their side”; make every effort to call or sit down with a scientist whenever you need something explained.
Step two involves patience. You won’t get everything you need in the first sound bite of information. That’s why you need to do your best to create a relationship with these colleagues; you need some “name recognition.” They need to know who you are, what you do, and why you keep asking them all of these weird questions. Give your relationship some time. This is particularly vital since many engineering and scientific types live in the world of patents and proprietary knowledge. This makes them super-secretive by profession, and they’re usually already shy by nature. It can be tough to get one of these guys to share any information, so your best bet is making sure they at least know who you are and that you’re one of the “good guys.”
Step three: explain marketing to them. As much as Kaplan-Meier curves or polymer molecules or hermetic seals are a mystery to you, marketing is a black art to them. The best way to convince a scientist that marketing is good is to create a strong immediate link to sales, which is a world of numbers. Show the scientist sales figures and point to specific marketing endeavors that helped bring those numbers up. You may win an ally if you can persuade a scientist that talking to you will help the company translate his knowledge into sales.
Step four may involve instilling some controls, with which you may be uncomfortable. Most scientists are deeply distrustful individuals (scientist and skeptic just kind of go together, don’t they?) and they no doubt imagine you’re trying to hoodwink them. It can be useful for your relationship to include a scientist in a review of marketing materials, to show him or her interim drafts of materials, or to allow other access to “materials-in-progress.” You may not like this and it may be against your boss’s better judgment, but if you can swing it, it can really work. It helps the scientist see that you’re not out to con him.
Step five is the one you thought should have been first: research. You need to do some homework before you talk to scientific types. Now don’t go haywire. You’re not going to out-engineer the engineer. You just need to know what they’re working on and how they do things.
Last but not least, in step six, ask questions. Think of yourself as a reporter trying to dig out a story from a mad scientist. When in doubt, ask, “How does this work?” And if the scientist comes back at you with jargon, come back with more questions. “What does that mean?” You can even enlist his or her help: “How can we explain this kind of technology best to a physician?” or “What does a patient need to know about how this new device works?”
The weird thing is that scientists and clinical experts and all of these other people are mostly very interesting individuals. They’re usually a lot of fun and can greatly add to your expertise and help your marketing productions. The only thing is: you have to cultivate the relationship. In all the years I ever worked in marketing in medical device companies, I never saw any of these guys linger around marketing. You’re going to have to go to them.
