Content is a slow burn, not a quick hit. Kat Arney explains how to create a sustainable life science content marketing strategy that drives credibility, trust, and long-term ROI.
“We wrote a blog once. It didn’t work.”
“We didn’t get enough listeners on our second podcast episode, so we stopped it.”
“We spent all our marketing budget on a video, but nobody watched it.”
As a long-time creator of scientific content, from books and blogs to white papers and podcasts, hearing things like this from life science marketers breaks my heart.
Of course it’s discouraging to invest time and effort in content only to see lacklustre numbers. But the problem usually isn’t the channel — it’s the strategy.
Why your life science content marketing fails
The biggest mistake is misunderstanding the role of content in your communications and marketing mix.
Many teams expect fireworks — a flashy viral post that instantly drives traffic and attention — but all too often end up with what feels like a damp squib.
And even the most impressive fireworks burn fast and fade out. If your first piece doesn’t take off in the way you’d hoped, enthusiasm quickly fizzles out.
Instead, think of content as a bonfire: a slow-burning source of brand visibility, credibility, and trust. A well-planned life science content marketing strategy is something that compounds over time, continually adding fuel to produce a steady glow of awareness and leads.
Why your life science content marketing strategy matters
Whether you’re selling reagents, software, or a new therapeutic platform, content marketing is a proven way to:
- Showcase expertise and scientific credibility
- Build trust with potential customers, partners and investors
- Generate qualified leads that already understand your value
As sales guru Blair Enns says in his book The Four Conversations, content is a vital part of the first conversation in the sales process that happens without you even being there. It explains not just what you do, but how you solve your customers’ problems — and why you are the right people to help them
And for R&D-focused biotech startups, you still need a scientific content marketing strategy — just in a different way.
You may not be selling a product, but you are selling your ideas, vision, and talent to investors, partners and future hires. A coherent, consistent digital footprint signals that your science and your story are credible and investment-ready.
Four steps to creating a sustainable life science content marketing strategy
1. Define Your Audience and Message
Ask yourself who is this for, and why should they care? Clue: your audience isn’t you, your CEO, or your board.
Content isn’t there to buff your (or their) ego. It’s your chance to speak directly to the people you want to reach, in their language, about their problems.
Your aim should be to demonstrate your understanding of your audience’s needs and problems and provide specific evidence of how you address them.
2. Prioritise quality and value
AI-generated slop won’t cut it — and search engines increasingly agree.
The don of content marketing, Neil Patel, has repeatedly shown that original content — such as proprietary data, case studies and new research — consistently performs better in engagement and search than AI-only or entirely recycled content.
In a world increasingly flooded with generic AI-generated content, the well-worn EEAT framework (that’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is only becoming more important for surfacing life science content in AI overviews and searches.
The message is crystal clear. When it comes to your life science content marketing strategy, creating data-driven, human-first assets — such as original insights, case studies, thought leadership, or explainer blogs — will always win over generic clickbait.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity are useful for helping with ideas, structure, drafting and editing (we use them here at First Create The Media!). But make sure you don’t lose the scientific data, unique human insights, and creativity that make your content distinctive, useful and engaging.
3. Optimise for discoverability
A “one and done” approach to publicising your life science content won’t get you anywhere.
Just posting once on LinkedIn and assuming that’s enough is like trying to light a bonfire with a single match. In a hurricane.
Share each piece of content repeatedly across all the platforms you’re active on, tweaking the post wording and images each time, and encourage your team to amplify it to their networks.
Don’t forget to sweat your assets, as we like to say. Repurpose larger pieces of life science content — such as white papers, webinars, or podcasts — into smaller, digestible chunks like graphics, carousels or clips for LinkedIn, newsletters, or handouts.
Write for humans, package for machines. For online content such as blogs, pay attention to structuring and formatting your content to increase the chances of your content — and, by extension, your brand — turning up in search and AI overviews.
AI tools like ChatGPT are useful here, although it’s essential to carefully check anything you’ve run through it to make sure it’s still readable and true.
You may need to run paid promotion for your keystone content to support an important campaign. And consider paying to boost LinkedIn posts that are popping off. That’s a signal from your target audience that you’ve made something interesting, so capitalise on that engagement.
4. Commit to consistency
Content marketing is a long-term investment in building your life science brand and audience, not a one-off campaign.
You probably won’t see immediate ROI, which may make your commercial team twitchy if they only care about short-term metrics.
But if you commit to a steady cadence over six months or more, you’ll start to see the trend line go up — and, if you’ve got the messaging right, the leads coming too.
Don’t overlook qualitative feedback, either. A customer saying “Hey, I really enjoyed your blog!” can be a leading indicator of growing trust.
From a spark to a flame: Using your life science content to build brand credibility and trust
A solid life-science content marketing strategy isn’t built on sloppy AI shortcuts and unrealistic short-term metrics. It’s about slow, steady growth through original, useful content that builds awareness, credibility, and inbound leads over time.
So give your content the attention, structure, and consistency it needs to burn brightly.
And if you’d like expert help building your bonfire — from strategy and story to creating high-quality, creative science-led content — just get in touch with our team at First Create The Media. 🔥