How to Create a Killer Life Sciences Thought Leadership Campaign
The term thought leadership gets tossed around a lot these days. Especially in the life sciences.
Some define thought leadership as content that shares a cross-section of expertise, experience, and opinion. But in some sectors, the bar is higher: thought leadership content consists of original ideas that push industry progress forward.
The confusion stems from the recent uptick in “thought leadership” content, much of it falling short of the label. Or, as SEMrush puts it: there’s plenty of noise but not nearly as much substance. Edelman and LinkedIn’s Thought Leadership Report underscores this challenge, explaining that the rush to “go digital” during COVID-19 led many companies to churn out low-quality content.
In some cases, content is branded as thought leadership when it really is closer to traditional content marketing, like your average case study or long-form blog post. While thought leadership technically falls under the broader content marketing umbrella, the distinction is critical, especially in industries like life sciences, where trust and credibility carry extra weight. Which is why thought leadership campaigns for life sciences brands need to be stronger, more strategic, and more authentic than ever.
In this article, we’ll break down what makes a successful life sciences thought leadership campaign—from defining your strategy and creating content, to building credibility and measuring results—so you can cut through the noise and lead with impact.
What are life sciences thought leadership campaigns?
Life sciences thought leadership campaigns were around before LinkedIn became a social media platform and personal branding was an entire industry. Industry leaders have long created and distributed thought leadership as a way to influence trends and accelerate innovation in human health.
Thought leadership campaigns in the life sciences and healthcare ecosystem should include the following components:
Strong research and data, derived from clients, partners, patients, or other stakeholders.
Insights based on expertise and experience.
Unique viewpoints on industry topics or challenges.
Thought-provoking solutions, suggestions, or predictions.
Storytelling components with case studies and real-world examples.
Typically, these campaigns are multi-channel, with a main report and supporting blogs, webinars, events, and articles about the topic. In some cases, the report is a tried-and-true long-form document, while other times it’s a slide deck.
Strategic consulting companies like McKinsey, Deloitte, and KPMG are known for putting out annual thought leadership content that becomes the go-to resource in a particular topic area. We use these types of reports as references all the time. For example, in our recent article “How to Manage Multiple Life Science Brands”, we quoted data from Deloitte’s fourteenth annual report in its “Measuring the return from pharmaceutical innovation” series.
Large-scale life sciences service providers like Thermo Fisher and IQVIA have divisions that focus exclusively on delivering thought leadership content that aligns with the work of the larger organization. At IQVIA, this division is called the IQVIA Institute (they happen to be a client of Lauren Perna Communications), and the focus is on using IQVIA’s human data to identify trends in topics like oncology, global medicines, U.S. medicines, and digital health.
These organizational thought leaders typically lean on multiple Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to author the content. While many people might work on the report, generally a handful of KOLs are the face of the organization, like Kristin Pothier at KPMG or Murray Aitken at IQVIA Institute.
Then, there are thought leaders like Francis Collins, who founded the Human Genome Project or Jennifer Doudna, who co-discovered CRISPR gene editing. Those incredible humans are thought leaders on another level–they could put out a piece written in crayon and it wouldn’t matter.
For everyone else, though, thought leadership campaigns should be highly strategic and goal-oriented.
How do you define your thought leadership strategy and campaign goals?
Like any content marketing initiative, you want to start by establishing your objectives. What is the purpose of this campaign? What do we hope to achieve?
Let’s be realistic–almost all objectives are going to drive back to sales in some fashion. After all, we did say this falls under marketing. Here are some more specific objectives:
Build a pipeline of warm leads
Bring in new clients
Retain existing clients
Drive traffic to the website
Remember, though, the overarching goal of any life sciences thought leadership campaign is to build trust and authority. Because trust ultimately leads to sales. Edelman reports that 9/10 of decision makers and c-suite executives are moderately or very likely to be more receptive to sales or marketing outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership.
Once you’ve identified your objective, you can think about the target audience, asking questions like:
Who are the key decision-makers?
Who are the second-tier targets?
What resources do they need?
What conversations are they having?
Like with any good marketing campaign, your next step is to do some competitive research. You want to identify what content is already out there and how your campaign will be different. Of course, your campaign will be different because you are harnessing your research and insights, but still, you don’t want to reiterate the same old story.
The goal here is to be an authority, an innovator, and a conversation starter–not a copycat. This is especially important if you are a small business or new to the space. According to LinkedIn, 60% of buyers say thought leadership builds credibility when entering a new category where the brand is not already known.
How do you create and distribute thought leadership content?
Once you’ve identified your goals and audience and narrowed down the topic, the fun can begin!
Well, “fun” if you’re a writer. Not to worry, we can help with your thought leadership campaigns if this sounds like a little too much fun. But if you want to try your hand at all, here’s a brief overview of our proven process.
Collect and analyze the data.
Ask questions like: What is the data telling us? What is jumping out? What is most surprising? That information will lead the way into the next part.
Glean topics from that data and identify discussion points.
Leverage KOLs who can speak to the topic and organize discussions with them.
Identify questions for each KOL and remember to seek out KOLs with varying points of view.
Synthesize all the data and research into key points and findings.
Gut check these findings with others on your team before you begin the writing process.
At this point, we finalize the assets we need, distribution channels, and promotion strategy. While we typically have an idea of the logistics of the campaign before all of the above steps, we often find it’s critical to reevaluate once we’ve done the research and interviews.
Then, we can begin writing The next steps include:
Rewrite 10 times.
Submit the first draft to the campaign team.
Rewrite 10 more times.
Ok, kidding on that last part. Er, sorta.
Remember that a thought leadership campaign isn’t like writing a blog or an email. It involves heavy-duty research and analysis. You can’t just pop it out in a few hours and call it a day. You want to create high-quality content that is relevant, valuable, and backed by data.
How can you measure the success of your thought leadership campaign?
Speaking of data, just like any other marketing campaign, you want to be tracking the metrics around your thought leadership campaign. Not only do you want to be tracking total downloads and clicks, but you also want to track metrics around each of the individual assets and on each of the distribution channels.
Don’t forget about qualitative metrics like audience sentiment and engagement. How are people reacting to the content in the comments online? Are people referencing the campaign in their own reports? Is it being shared on larger stages and in public settings? These are all cues on how the report is doing and if it’s being taken as a serious authority.
This leads us to the next and final question: if you’re just getting started or tackling a new topic, how do you go about building authority? It’s the question of which came first. Does the report build authority, or does having the authority lead to the report? Perhaps a little bit of both.
How can you build trust and authority for your thought leadership campaign?
Long before the thought leadership campaign is even an inkling of an idea, you want to be consistently talking about your areas of expertise. We don’t just mean posting about them on social media.
Here are other ways you can build your authority before, during, and after the thought leadership campaign:
Post about your topics on social media AND foster dialogue in the comments.
Share insights in an email campaign.
Showcase real-world impact through case studies.
Give quotes to authority-building publications or speak on panels.
When you consistently build authority, and your idea evolves into a fully formed campaign, you have a solid foundation to stand on.
Let’s take Lyra, the leading provider of mental health benefits, as an example of a company that built authority before delivering a thought leadership campaign. Since 2015, it has been building its authority in mental health through various initiatives, including press coverage of high-profile funding, engagement with subject matter experts, and collaboration with fellow mental health innovators.
As a benefits provider, the company collects employer and employee data around mental health. Using this critical data and their existing authority, the company has successfully delivered an annual State of Workforce Mental Health Report.
The report is ultimately a sales tool to drive companies to sign up for their service, but it is also a known resource in the mental health world, valuable for stakeholders across the healthcare system.
Need help with your thought leadership campaign?
In today's world, thought leadership has become synonymous with brand positioning. In the life sciences sector, this is true, but it's much more about credibility, trust, and industry discourse.
A life sciences thought leadership campaign has the potential to influence critical healthcare decisions and accelerate biomedical research. And it doesn’t hurt that in the process, it generates awareness around the incredible work your company is doing.
Need help defining your unique thought leadership voice? Download our free worksheet on “The Biology of Thought Leadership.”