What Makes Highly Engaged Scientists Different?

Highly Engaged life scientists seek out information for themselves.  They aren’t bound to or reliant upon colleague recommendations.  Instead, they require “first-person” or “hands on” information about the products they use, or may use in the future.  They don’t necessarily believe everything you tell them via marketing materials, but they want to know what you’re saying so they can find out for themselves.

Highly Engaged scientists aren’t only different in terms of the frequency with which they consume marketing information.  They also differ regarding their preferences for media.  In general, they prefer those media that they can control.  The widest differences in media preferences between Highly Engaged and other scientists are for those media types that can be carried with or manipulated by the scientist.  For example, media such as direct mail, Web sites, and email alerts skew much more strongly toward Highly Engaged scientists than do scientific meetings, visits by sales reps, and telephone calls from vendors.  Highly Engaged scientists clearly seek control and the ability to use the information you give them for further exploration.

In addition to preferences, Highly Engaged scientists also require different factors to be in place before they feel comfortable making a purchasing decision.  The implication of this finding is clear for life science marketers.  Since Highly Engaged scientists rely on marketing more than colleague recommendations, marketing information should be tailored to their needs.  These needs include: more emphasis on free product samples, new technology or techniques, and product demonstrations.  On the other hand, Highly Engaged scientists are less interested in information such as specific protocol requirements and literature citations.