Success is beyond reach when you don’t have clearly defined goals. It doesn’t matter if you are going to create an animation demonstrating the mechanism of a new drug or a video explainer about a new medical device, your first step should be to determine its business goal. We are offering several recommendations that should help aspiring biotech entrepreneurs and brand managers of pharmaceutical companies to formulate the business goal of scientific animation and achieve a higher return.
Define a strategic goal
Before setting the task for an animation studio, it will be useful to formulate the main strategic goal that you want to achieve with the help of the created video. To tell users about the mechanism of action of a medicine or device is a short-term tactical goal. Instead, you need to understand what your ultimate strategic goal is. Why do you need your target audience to have a clear idea of how your drugs work? A “why” question and answer session can help with this. For example:
Q: Why do we need to explain the mechanism of action of the drug to doctors and consumers?
A: So we will be able to demonstrate its advantages over competitors more clearly.
Q: Why do we need to demonstrate the advantages of our pill over competitors as clearly as possible?
A: So doctors will be more prone to prescribe it to patients and patients will get better results (faster recovery, fewer side effects, and so on).
Q: Why should we strive to increase the number of prescriptions for our drug?
A: So we get more orders for the drug, which means more revenue.
Q: Why should we strive to increase revenue?
A: Then, we will achieve more profits.
Q: Why should we strive to increase profit?
A: High profits will allow our company to develop, expand, and succeed, increase employee salaries, invest more in development, etc. In fact, at this step, we have already determined the strategic goal of the company. Nevertheless, you can take one more step and ask yourself – “If creating a video will help achieve the strategic goal of the company, what benefits will it give me personally?” We are all human beings, and the strategic goal of each of us is personal prosperity, isn’t it? Accordingly, the answer may be: “The development of this video will increase the company’s profits. In this way, it will strengthen my position in the company and, when I communicate with the management, I can initiate a conversation about my promotion/salary increase”.
Naturally, your vision of the goals and objectives of the video may initially be complete. For example, your corporate culture may already include a holistic understanding of its strategic goals. Or, let’s say you are a member of a non-profit organization that works to increase awareness about the dangers of smoking or the need for regular breast cancer screening. In this case, the primary mission of the organization is the strategic goal of everything it does.
However, this process is beneficial for the next stage.
Formulate a business goal
The next stage is the formulation of a business goal. Let’s be honest, we live in a society, and society implies a certain degree of hypocrisy. Imagine a world where everyone openly expresses whatever they think. It would be quite a mess, besides a boisterous one, wouldn’t it? The same goes for businesses. Could McDonald’s become a global conglomerate if, instead of describing the composition and merits of their products, in marketing materials, they openly wrote: “Bring us all your money”? Fortunately, the interim answers from the session will serve to formulate a business goal, which you can then safely add to the corresponding section of the brief.
For the above example, such a business goal can be formulated as follows:
“To convey information about the mechanism of action of the drug and its differences from competitors to dispel possible misconceptions regarding the active substance, so that the doctor, with full information, could consciously decide on the prescription of the drug.”
In the case of a biotechnological startup, a business goal may sound like this:
“To give the investor a full understanding of the advantages of our molecules over the competitors so that, they decide to invest in our startup.”
When communicating with your internal or external team of video developers, make sure they understand the whole context of your goal. You will be surprised how many useful nuances this can add to their decisions and the creative component.
Make Sure Your Business Goal is Measurable
Peter Drucker once wrote: “You cannot control what you cannot measure.” Let’s look at two types of goals and methods for assessing them:
- Action-based: downloads, sales, generated links, etc .;
- Knowledge-based: brand recognition, functional know-how, etc.
If the desired action is performed online, discuss with the developers how it can be tracked and recorded. Qualified experts can provide you with many powerful analytical tools.
If the action takes place in real-time, decide how you can track it with the video. For example, if you are trying to usher people to call you, use a separate number exclusively for the video to calculate the number of incoming calls. If you are going to send a video clip by email, you can always track the number of clicks. If your medical representatives demonstrated the video during presentations, the CRM system would allow you to track the duration and number of views.
Even if your goal is based on knowledge assimilation, its measurement is, although much more difficult, but still possible. If you use videos in training programs, consider conducting tests. If you measure awareness, consider tracking Google searches or conducting surveys.
If you evaluate functional familiarity (for example, with a mobile application or medical equipment), track the number of help requests received or the number of users leaving the application.
Define Reasonable KPI
How ambitious is the goal of your video project? The answer to this question will depend on your previous attempts, both in terms of creating videos and other activities. Besides, it will depend on the stage of formation of the company and the product life cycle you are at. Is your company currently optimizing its expenses? Then, be more humble in your aspirations.
On the other hand, if you intend to make your video the main element of the landing page, it will be wise to be more aggressive in achieving your goals.
Are you preparing for a conference or an important presentation for which you need a video? Define the date by which it should be completed. Even if there is no reason for haste, it would be wise to establish a strict time frame for the project so that it does not drag out or distract resources from other tasks.
Summary
To summarize the above, the business goal for scientific animation should be:
- Clearly worded;
- Related to the main strategic objectives of the company;
- Measurable by the appropriate indicators;
- Time-limited;
- Monitored with key performance indicators.
Now you are ready to solve other strategic issues, such as, for example, how big should be the time, money and resource budget for the video.
