LSIA Awards – CST Embraces Pragmatic Marketing for the Win
Cell Signaling Technology (CST) recently won a Life Science Industry Award for Best Digital Advertising. I asked Rebecca Reppucci, Director of Marketing Communications, how they achieved that.
When Rebecca started at CST in 2013, more than 63% of the marketing budget was dedicated to print advertising. There were no webinars, no SEO or PPC strategy. All they had in terms of digital was a small, unsegmented email list.
She knew things had to change. In 2018 they spent no money on print advertising, 25% is dedicated to webinars and 75% to other digital efforts, including a heavy focus on video and social media.
Change is hard and persuading others to make big shifts takes planning and persistence. In this episode, Rebecca talks about the tough choices she made, moving away from the “peanut butter – spread it everywhere” approach toward a more focused strategy.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, it started with changes in IT so they could get better analytics and measure what they were doing. And every activity has a goal.
I hadn’t heard much about Pragmatic Marketing, but this is the approach she embraced wholeheartedly. Now everyone is speaking the same language.
Recently, we aligned product marketing, marketing communications, digital, development and IT by educating the entire team on the pragmatic marketing approach so we all speak the same language. – Rebecca Reppucci
Finally this approach has had a huge impact on their messaging. They no longer try to reach every basic researcher. Each asset has a defined persona it is tended for. It may reach a broader audience but it works really well on the people they want to attract.