Life sci marketing budgets boomed in 2023, led by spending on trade shows and websites, survey finds

Marketing cut a bigger slice of the budgetary pie at life sciences companies in 2023, a recent survey has found.

After several COVID-inflected years that saw companies allotting smaller percentages of their total revenues to marketing, 2023 ushered in a return nearly to pre-pandemic levels.

That's according to the annual Health & Life Science Marketing Trends Report from SCORR Marketing, which found that nearly half (49%) of companies devoted at least 2% of their yearly revenues to marketing last year, with 26% spending at least 5 percent. 

That’s comparable to 2019’s tally—in which 53% of companies surpassed the 2% mark, and only 21% put at least 5% of their revenues into marketing—and easily surpasses the mere 39% of companies that devoted at least 2% to marketing in 2022.

Altogether, the survey found, “there was an increase in marketing spending across all marketing functions,” according to a statement from Lea LaFerla, president of SCORR, who called that finding “surprising.”

To compile the report, SCORR surveyed more than 100 respondents in the life sciences industry, more than half of whom identified as CEOs, presidents or directors.

As for where those growing budgets are going, when asked to label various investment areas in terms of spending amount, trade shows and events were the most common “big budget item,” with 55% of respondents categorizing them as such. The trade shows cited as the most effective for companies to attend or exhibit at were BIO, CPhI and DIA.

The next most common big-budget items—each with 20% of respondents placing them in that category—were investments in advertising and in the development of websites, apps and other interactive projects.

Those categories saw sizable increases in investment in 2023, as 56% of companies increased the amount spent on trade shows and nearly 50% upped their spending on interactive development.

Least likely to be named a big budget item, meanwhile, were public relations, marketing collateral, social media and webinars and podcasts.

Despite social media’s relatively small share of budgets, however, respondents ranked it among the best-performing digital marketing tactics. When asked to rate the effectiveness of various tactics on a scale of one to five, social media came in second, with an average rating of 3.6—behind case studies, with a 3.61, and led by LinkedIn, YouTube and X (formerly known as Twitter), in that order.

The worst-performing digital marketing tactics, meanwhile, with average scores below 3.0, were e-books, livestreamed social media events and podcasts.

The report also looked at who, exactly, is carrying out those marketing functions. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said their companies had outsourced at least some work through an external marketing agency in the last year.

Most likely to be kept in-house were strategic planning, social media and trade shows, with more than half of respondents saying those functions were handled internally while fewer than 30% said the same for market research and the development of websites and other interactive content, denoting a tendency to outsource those tasks.

Either way, respondents were largely happy with their marketers’ work: 75% of those who tapped outside agencies said they were either “mostly” or “completely” satisfied with their agency’s work while 80% of respondents said the same for their internal marketing departments.

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