My New Year’s Resolutions to You

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were fun and relaxing.

I, along with many of you, have spent the last couple of weeks reviewing the successes as well as the learning points 2011 offered. Also I have spent this time contemplating the areas of my life I am pleased with and will continue, as well as making commitments in areas I am dedicated to strengthening.

Thanks to the commitments I made to myself a couple of years ago I am in pretty good physical shape and am a healthy weight, so I will not bore you with the subtleties of my resolutions in this area. You are also probably not wildly interested in the commitments I made relating to my life with my family, friends and spiritual life.

What’s in it for you? Professional resolutions have always been a big part of my commitments for a given new year, but this year they are center stage under a bright spotlight.

Successful business-to-business communications and business development approaches have changed. Driven by technology, lean teams within most companies and corporate cost cutting, the way your customers make their way through buying cycles has changed. This said, the age old saying….."The more things change, the more they stay the same" certainly applies. Your customers are people and people do not change their views, perceptions and behaviors as quickly as technology changes.

So, I resolve to you to:

• Multiply my dedication to ongoing professional development so that I, along with the full Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team, can bring the latest marketing communications thinking and approaches to you. In fact, Putman Media has invested to send myself and one of my colleagues to American Business Media’s B2B Advanced Leadership Program at Northwestern University next week so stay tuned.
  

• Drive myself and our team to develop new and creative solutions to address your marketing communications and business development challenges.

• Continue to work to understand and meet our audiences’ information and knowledge needs.

• Not letting our commitment to the creation of leading edge editorial waiver.

• Professionally making recommendations to assure that your Pharmaceutical Manufacturing marketing communications programs meet and exceed your expectations.

I am excited about this year and look forward to working with you to achieve your 2012 goals and maybe to helping you to work on one or two of your own resolutions.

I wish you peace, blessings and success in the New Year.

Location, Location, Location: Delivering Your Messaging Where Your Customers and Prospects Are

It used to be pretty easy. If you wanted to open a general store in the 19th century or first half of the 20th century, you would rent, buy or maybe build a space within the downtown area of your town. Everyone had to come into town to shop and....there you were.

I am sure if we could have a conversation with a 19th century merchant, he would tell us it was not quite that easy to make a living. But, given the highly sophisticated site selection processes large retailers and restaurants use today, our 19th century entrepreneur faced far fewer decisions and variables. He had a market that all came to the same place, he just had to figure out what they wanted to buy, offer great service and fair prices.

Today, consumers can buy similar goods in many different places so retailers and restaurant chains know that while site selection may not be quite everything, it is critically important.

A similar trend has happened in the media industry. It used to be pretty straightforward. Even in B2B media, entire industries were served by three or four magazines and a few trade shows/conferences. This is obviously no longer the case, which makes it challenging to “be where you customers are.” Or, since you can’t be everywhere, to have a meaningful voice in an effective assortment of communications outlets.

Although I cannot wave my magic wand a design a media plan for you, what I can say is if you are solely using print vehicles, or if you are solely using digital vehicles, or if you spend your entire marketing budget on trade shows, you are missing the opportunity to communicate with a very big portion of your customer and prospect base.

In decades past we knew that marketing communications were good for us - sort of like eating broccoli. Today, they are critical as customers and prospects are much further along the buying cycle by the time they talk to you than used to be the case. So if you are not communicating with them, your competitors are.

At Pharmaceutical Manufacturing we have been studying and surveying our audience in a disciplined fashion as our audience’s needs are change and as new technologies emerge and mature. In a recent audience survey completed by 110 pharmaceutical industry members, we learned that 79.44% regularly read pharmaceutical industry websites and e-newsletters and 69.17% regularly read pharmaceutical industry print magazines.

It should not come as a shock to us that 79.44% are consuming information online. What may be surprising to you is that so many (69.17%) regularly read pharmaceutical industry trade magazines.

I hear every day, multiple times per day that “digital is where it is at,” or “print is dead, right?” Digital media is incredibly important. It is extremely challenging, but incredibly important. However, 69.17% of your customers and prospects read industry print publications…doesn’t it make sense to be there with your messaging?

I understand that it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of print media, but I submit to you that it is incredibly difficult to measure the effectiveness of digital as well. Yes, digital media offers us click and other conversion data that can be incredible useful. However, the goal of marketing is to alter human perception, preferences and behavior.

Given our complexity as human beings, it really sells us short as a species to completely measure our attitudes and emotions in terms of clicks and downloads. If we were in highly transactional, low engagement businesses like selling movie tickets online my position would likely be different. But, most of you are selling high investment, high risk, high engagement solutions to a highly regulated industry.

Those marketers who determine ways to measure a fuller range of customer and prospect behavior will have an enormous competitive advantage. More specifically, marketers who communicate effectively with their customers and prospects where they are – in print, online and at trade shows – will have an enormous competitive advantage.


**If you are interested in seeing a pdf report of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s most recent audience survey, please e-mail me at tbecker@putman.net.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Magazine Wins Gold ASBPE Awards

Itasca, Illinois (PRWEB) August 22, 2011

Putman Media's Pharmaceutical Manufacturing has won one gold 2011 National award and two gold Midwest/South regional awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE). These prestigious annual awards recognize the best in B2B magazine editorial, design and Web and digital content development strategy and implementation.

Read Full Press Release

Join Me in Congratulating Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s Editorial Team

Over the years many of you have regularly read, watched and listened to articles, special reports, webcasts, podcasts and columns labored into existence by Agnes Shanley, Editor-in-Chief, Paul Thomas, Sr. Editor and Michele Vaccarello Wagner, Sr. Digital Editor.

Others of you have worked in partnership with them to collaboratively create pieces to support Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s mission of being a key catalyst for the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries’ drive to improve manufacturing and operations, enhance the quality of products and minimize risk with a passionate dedication to public health.

Agnes, Paul and Michele are dedicated to delivering content both in print and online that supports the needs of our readers and industry on topics of interest and within the now wide-range of information delivery formats that are a part of today’s media landscape.

They work hard and are constantly striving to do things just a little bit better. It is my utmost honor to work with them in chartering the course of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s present and future.

Please join me in congratulating Agnes, Paul and Michele on winning three Gold AZBEE Awards – honors bestowed by the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) to reward journalistic excellence.

National Gold Award
"Best Use of Social Media"

Midwest-South Region Gold Award
"Editorial/Editor’s Letter"

Midwest-South Region Gold Award
"Regular Column, Staff Written"

Congratulations and continued success Agnes, Paul and Michele!

Honored,

Tonia Becker, Publisher
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, PharmaManufacturing.com and PharmaQbD.com

P.S. If you would like to congratulate Agnes, Paul and Michele please comment below.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s Print Magazine Investment

Many of your know that Putman Media, the publishing company that owns Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, has invested heavily over the course of the last seven years in digital media. We have invested heavily in technology tools, continual optimization of our websites, and most importantly in human capital (knowledge and training of our people).

Digital media investment is continuing at Putman Media, there is no question about that, but I would like to call attention to our renewed investment in our print property.

Have we lost our minds? “Print is Dead” has been the rallying cry within the B2B marketing press for several years now. I could wax poetic about our emotionally attachment to the printed word (including why I still get excited when the new issue of the magazine arrives at the office or how I have always loved the smell within the stacks at a university library), but our decision to invest in print was a specific and thoughtful business decision. There are multiple reasons, but I will highlight three:

1. From audience studies, we know that half of our audience (roughly half of your clients and prospects) prefer print and engage more heavily with Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine than with digital media. We needed to add investment dollars to a medium half of your customers prefer – hopefully you will see the importance of this too.

2. We know that print still carries an authority that digital media does not always. How do I know this? When our editors approach their sources and share that the source's contribution will run online only, there is typically mild enthusiastic. When our editors share that the piece will run in print and online – the source is excited.

Many of our clients today only want to spend against digital media, but want their PR activity to run in print and online (the magazine typically being the priority). Hmmmmm……scratching my head over this one. If digital media is most important for advertising, shouldn’t it be most important for PR as well? From my experience, this is not the thinking of many of our clients and it does not make sense. Actually, I understand why some companies are thinking this way (measurability primarily) but, when you put the strategy/tactic against the light of reason it does not make sense.

3. Everyone’s e-mail box is jammed and their mail box is pretty sparse. We believe that we are offering an expanded opportunity for our clients to break through the marketing clutter allowing them to better communicate with clients and prospects.

So….what will this investment mean in reality?

• 18-20% more editorial pages per issue
• An even greater emphasis on content quality (and the bar was awfully high before)
• The addition of some new regular features and content approaches that we have not had the space for in a while
• More premium advertising positions to offer our advertisers

For more on these sentiments, you might be interested in a blog post on this topic: “Seven Reasons Print Will Make a Comeback in 2011”

Is Digital Media Testing a Sign of Weakness?

There are many days I feel like a broken record as I interact with our Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team internally and with our clients. To settle internal debates (and the very occasional professional spat within the ranks), my favorite response is...."I am not sure if we know how our audience will respond, let's test it." I often have a similar reply when working with our clients. "Our previous experience suggests that 'this' approach will perform the best, but we should do some testing."

Part of the reason I love digital media is that it is humbling and challenging. Every time I feel that I have the game figured out, our audiences prove me wrong. I fully believe that digital media success requires the confidence in one's professional knowledge and abilities because we will be wrong on regular occasion. But, digital marketing then requires that we dive in passionately to figure out how to fix or to optimize whatever it is we were wrong about.

Back to the question posed in the title of this post, "Is Digital Media Testing a Sign of Weakness?" The question beneath this question is..."Is a lack of certainty a sign of weakness?" Absolutely not in my opinion. In fact, I believe just the opposite it true. Too much certainty (without very specific analytical reference points) makes me nervous and it should make you nervous too. A lack of willingness to test will deliver nearly certain failure over the long haul.

There is a difference between a dedication to accomplishing the objective and knowing with 100% confidence precisely how the objective will be achieved. There have been plenty of times on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team in which we have an objective to achieve, but our original plan simply did not work. If Plan A does not work, the smart digital marketer starts testing Plans B and C. On particularly rough days, I am thankful that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and a frosty beer at the local sports bar.

I think that you will find this post from Marketing Profs quite interesting. "One Very Convincing Reason to Test." Fascinating and further proof that some of the sharpest minds in digital media and marketing can be dead wrong.

Happy testing!

Pharma Replay - Newest PharmaManufacturing.com E-Newsletter

This morning Pharmaceutical Manufacturing deployed the first edition of Pharma Replay, the newest additional to our suite of digital products. Pharma Replay will be a monthly deployment containing "Quips & Quotes Heard 'Round the Industry."

Pharma Replay is designed to deliver important information about issues within the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in a fun and interactive manner. Although the first edition has only been out for about two and a half hours, the initial open rates and click thru rates look quite promising. Stay tuned for more information, or contact Jeanne Freedland, Sr. Digital Specialist, at jfreedland@putman.net to learn more.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Included in List of Top 40 FDA Websites

Within this blog, I really do try to refrain from self-serving bragging about Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and PharmaQbD.com. However, I am going to brag just a little bit in this post.

FDAzilla.com, a blog written by Tony Chen, has the mission of publishing content, data and information on "How can we work smarter with the FDA?"

I am proud to report that PharmaManufacturing.com was included on FDAzilla's Top 40 Websites (and Tweeters) on the FDA.

We are proud to have been included on the list and are happy that we are seemingly striking some balance between the serious (and probably too often stuffy) world of B2B publishing and a lighter view of the often comical pharmaceutical industry.

I must confess that this balance is not easy to strike and is often the subject of our internal team discussions. As a brand, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing does serve the very serious role of helping pharmaceutical manufacturing, operations, QA/QC, engineering and R&D professionals improve product quality, manufacturing/operational efficiencies and compliance. However, scientists and operations folks, just like the rest of us, need a good chuckle on a regular basis.

Hopefully, we will continue to successfully navigate this balance and we are always open to your ideas - ideas either on the serious or lighter side.

Optimizing Your Webcast Efforts

The pharmaceutical industry has become overrun with webcasts of various sorts. I am not making this statement in a judgmental fashion as I believe webcasts can be a very effective part of a marketing mix. However, I have seen a good number of cases where our clients are not optimizing their energies.

It is more and more difficult to secure an audience for webcasts today - there is simply a lot of competition for an audience. We have undeniably seen the effects of webcast audience competition via Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's own programs and the programs we produce and promote for our clients. Thankfully, we have developed some approaches that have worked quite well and these approaches are continually evolving as our audiences change.

If hosting webcasts is part of your marketing mix, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing might be well-suited to help you to: extend your potential audience beyond your own CRM database and help you to think of ways of creatively extending the value of the energy you expend to produce your webcasts.

If you are interested in learning more about some of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's approaches to working with clients to enhance their webcast programs, please contact Jeanne Freedland, jfreedland@putman.net or Tonia Becker, tbecker@putman.net.

Is Saving Children’s Lives Just Another Business Opportunity?

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing does several surveys and research studies over the course of the year to track pharmaceutical industry trends.

It is common market research practice to offer an incentive to survey respondents and for several years we followed the fairly uninspired practice of offering the chance to win one of three $50 gift cards, the chance to win an iPod or fairly conventional offers of this nature.

This year we decided that rather than standard survey incentives. we would donate money to a charitable cause in honor of survey respondents.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team selected St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as our charity of choice. We felt good about the idea of helping to support, in at least a small way, St. Jude’s important work of “Finding Cures. Saving Children.”

In addition, based on our knowledge and coverage of the industry, we know that St. Jude is doing some outstanding work.

In December 2009 we deployed our first research study in which we notified our audience that we would make a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in honor of survey participants.

In fairly short order we were contacted by the Corporate Affiliates department of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (I did not even think to call them in advance). Great I thought! One less phone call I had to make to determine where to send the checks.

We would not make huge donations ($150 - $200 at a time which is our typical incentive budget per survey—$1500 – $2,500 over the course of the year), but I believe every bit helps when you are working toward something big and important.

Although I certainly did not expect to be given V.I.P treatment, I did expect that our donations would be politely received and perhaps we would even enjoy some level of feigned gratefulness.

I was informed that St. Jude was not interested in “our opportunity” and that the minimum donation for their corporate affiliate program was $250,000.

As a highly specialized information source, I don’t even believe that Pharmaceutical Manufacturing benefits much from offering any kind of incentive for the completion of our surveys. However, I view our research incentive budget as a small opportunity for us to do a little bit of good.

The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital does outstanding and important work, but their “business,” their “brand,” is not interested in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s “opportunity.” I am O.K. with that. Non-profits have been hit hard by this recession just as businesses and individuals have. Plenty of organizations are seeking donations of any size.

Maybe this situation worked out for the best. CharityNavigator.org, a resource I find to be quite helpful, features some interesting information that points to the potential need for St. Jude to improve fund raising and administrative efficiencies. Click here if you are interested in reviewing CharityNavigator.org's ALSAC-St. Jude Children's Research Hospital profile.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing brand is not ours, it is yours. Without our loyal audience and advertising supporters, there would be no Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. In this spirit, please e-mail me at tbecker@putman.net or post a blog comment naming the organizations you would like us to support. We will maintain a list of organizations we donate to on our website PharmaManufacturing.com.

Because we made a promise to the respondents of our 2010 Career and Salary Satisfaction Survey that we would donate to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a donation of $150.00 has been sent.

Please understand, our donations will not be huge. But as Mother Teresa so beautifully said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”