How Digital Marketing Can Help India’s Laboratory & Life Science Industry

Today digital marketing has become heart and soul of the marketing plan for every business including the biotechnology and life science sector. India has been a major manufacturing hub for laboratory chemicals, life science products as well as lab equipment. This industry seems to grow at a fast pace thanks to the Government’s campaign ‘Make in India’ and easy policies for manufacturers. However, Indian brands are still not recognized among the top manufacturers.

Presently international brands such as Merck, Thermofisher Scientific, Eppendorf, Shimadzu, Becton Dickinson, Bio-Rad, Agilent technologies form the top players in life. The laboratory equipment market is forecasted to cross $22 billion by 2022 as compared to $6 billion in 2017. This means Indian manufacturers have a huge market to address and now need to take significant steps to reach the global market. Digitalization shall play a key role here, and here we describe a few effective ways of digital marketing.

Using B2B portal would be the most effective way

The first step is creating your own SEO friendly company website with details of your business profile, all your products, contact details and images as well as videos to provide the maximum information. Having a website develops some level of confidence in any new customer who is looking out for you. Adding clear information about your product/s can help a global user to understand if it’s suitable for their needs.

Listing products on online B2B portals should be the second step forward. With the current era of digitalization, many B2B portals have come up which focus on the laboratory and life science industry, rather than the entire consumer industry. Such portals already have a good reputation and a big inflow of targeted visitors coming from all around the world. The entire manufacturer’s catalogue can be listed on the portal along with the brand name providing brand recognition and transparency to the buyer. The secured payment gateways associated with the portal helps to make easy and secure transactions between the buyer and seller, providing maximum confidence and assurance to both parties. The entire business transaction becomes convenient and less time-consuming, a win-win situation for the buyer as well as the seller.

Social media and Whatsapp

Although social media is best for B2C, it is still effective to some extent since most of the end-users have an account on any one of the platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So one can expect to reach their target customers even through social media platforms. Whatsapp is the most common communication app used worldwide due to its free calling and messaging feature, and more, it also has a business app! A lot of business cases get closed even with Whatsapp as it is very easy to communicate with worldwide buyers on the app.

Digital marketing is a powerful tool to promote brands in a targeted manner; requires less investment than the traditional marketing strategies and provides global recognition. The benefits of digital marketing are beyond imagination if done the right way, and can contribute significantly to reach the business goals.

In the life science industry, some Indian brands like Himedia, Tarsons, SD Fine Chemicals, SRL and a few more have already started to invest in digitalization and it’s not far that we shall be able to see Indian brands featured among the top players.

Dr S Jhaveri

Guest Author The author is Managing Director, Biomall.in