The transformation in life science: AI and life sciences marketing
The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already being felt across life sciences and biotech digital marketing. Personalisation, analytics and content creation are some of the first areas to see significant change, and this trend is expected to continue.
But what else can life sciences and biotech digital marketing teams expect from AI in the future?
We examine the positive and negative effects this new technology is predicted to have on the sector in the longer term.
An acceleration of AI trends
If one thing characterises the rise of AI, it’s the astonishing rate of development. Rather than measuring change in decades, experts suggest that AI will transform workplaces in just a few years. And that pace of change is only set to accelerate.
Within life sciences and biotech, we’ve already begun to see this with the increase in drug discoveries driven by Quantum AI. The speed of innovation will likely continue, and new technologies will become more frequent.
This makes AI an existing catalyst. But for life sciences marketers, keeping up with the latest developments will become more challenging.
New developments in AI
From robotics to self-driving cars, AI is having far-reaching effects. However, several areas will particularly impact life sciences and biotech marketing.
The development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is predicted to replace current specialised systems (which can only focus on one task, like creating images) with a generalised system that can adapt to your needs and help with every task.
With your life sciences marketing team, all plugged into one system, you’ll be able to do more in less time, unlock new ways to work cross-functionally and identify holistic process changes that couldn’t be pinpointed before.
AI is also changing search. We’ve already seen the beginnings of this with the introduction of Google Gemini, which offers customers answers within the Google search function rather than simply displaying a list of page results where they can find relevant information.
Optimising content to make your page the preferred snippet will become paramount. Customer behaviour will be more important than keywords in driving traffic, and search will become more conversational, contextual and multimodal.
This is set to change how customers interact with search entirely and has huge implications for life sciences digital marketing that relies on current SEO best practices.
This technology is constantly changing, and we advise digital marketers to monitor developments or seek advice from an expert third-party agency.
AI and patient information
With AI systems predicted to outpace human thinking, questions about how we best use this technology will be raised. More specifically, within the life sciences and biotech sectors, privacy and data handling will become more pressing as AI systems access more patient information.
Marketing teams must work hard to ensure data is safely stored and customer trust is maintained.
Security and encryption will become a higher priority, and businesses must introduce new safeguards to ensure their systems work within agreed ethical boundaries.
Many commentators are suggesting this will be the end of privacy as we know it. What this means for healthcare is yet to be determined.
To counter these fears, governments are considering introducing the first AI-focused legislation.
This means that life sciences marketing teams will need to master additional regulations.
And those working across different countries must reconcile different legal standards across their organisation.
Building brand recognition in the age of personalisation
AI is already beginning to introduce personalisation at scale. And with increased personalisation comes increased iterations of content. Rather than a single experience of a biotech or life sciences website, customers may interact with more versions and content combinations than ever before.
This will improve the customer experience but bring new challenges to brand and marketing teams tasked with developing a recognisable life sciences brand identity or tone of voice.
With so many different versions of the same content, will all customers experience the brand similarly?
This push for large-scale personalisation will need to be underpinned by a strong central brand identity, and guidelines must be applied consistently across all customer touchpoints to strike the right balance.
How AI will shape the role of life sciences digital marketing
While most analysts suggest that AI will change marketing jobs rather than replace them altogether, AI is still set to have a far-reaching influence on the sector. A recent study suggested that life sciences was one of the top three sectors which could see a financial impact from AI.
AI is predicted to become an essential part of marketing, just as computers and the Internet are now. Life sciences digital marketing teams will use AI in every aspect of their roles, from content planning and creation to campaign analytics, social media management, and customer interaction.
This changes how these tasks are completed, teams are set up, and roles are focused.
Many life sciences marketing teams already use third-party experts to integrate AI into their processes and get ahead of the curve.
At Arttia Creative, we understand that this new technology can be daunting. But we’re here to help you understand how AI can help your team, where it’s best applied and how you can get the most from it.
The Takeaway.
The pace and scale of AI-driven innovation are set to transform life sciences marketing in the coming years. We’ve already begun to see the changes it’s brought to content creation and analytics and its impact is predicted to grow far beyond this.
This rapidly developing technology will grow from a novelty to a necessity and successful businesses will be the ones that can maximise its positive effects while managing change effectively to minimise disruption and risk.
Need help understanding how AI will impact the future of your business? Let’s talk
Belinda White | Creative Director