The Role of Infographics in Effective Life Science Marketing
Life science marketing often requires thinking “outside the box” in order to tell the story of your mission, vision, values, products, and services effectively. It involves careful consideration of which tactics convey your brand messaging most powerfully to your target audience, and the old adage of “show rather than tell” certainly applies here.
As a life science marketing agency working with companies all over the world, we have found that story-driven infographics are an excellent tool for gaining the audience attention and traction you seek. Let’s be real, though: the word “infographic” is tossed around a lot, and not all info that is graphically displayed really deserves this title. To that end, let’s take a moment to define what an infographic is and what makes it most effective for life science marketing.
3 Types of Graphically Represented Information
In life science marketing, we think about graphically represented information in terms of three basic categories:
- Infographics: Through an effective combination of visuals, content, data, and applied narrative, infographics make a story, process, or concept easier to understand at a quick glance.
- Visual stats: Visual stats are a way to dress up straight-forward facts that don’t rely on other information and aren’t intended to convey implicit meaning or tone (i.e., a “pretty bulleted list”). They are a way to direct attention to important information, but shouldn’t be mistaken for an infographic.
- Interactive: Both infographics and visual stats can be presented as interactive, where the format makes it possible for online audiences to engage with the information in some way.
In summary, interactivity stands out as clearly discernable through its ability to be engaged with. Visual stats emphasize key data in an eye-catching way, but graphically displayed information with depth that tells a story is an infographic. As you can see, there are particular nuances that help us discern what type of graphic representation we are engaging with or wish to use.
Essentials for Life Science Marketing Infographic Greatness
Digging deeper into what makes an effective infographic …
- Visuals: Infographics are, at their core, visual-based content. Every design choice, from the color scheme to the imagery, needs to be carefully considered to draw in your target audience and make the biggest impact.
- Content: Copy adds context to the visuals. To function well in this graphic space though, it needs to stay brief and punchy, working in service of the graphics.
- Data: Infographics are typically informative, using hard data to educate your audience. The more you can support your message with data and research from reputable sources, the more compelling it will be. Keep in mind, though, that quick and punchy applies here, as well. For a real-world example, think about how you might convey data to a colleague. It’s simpler to remember and repeat messaging along the lines of “1 in 5 people prefer X over Y” versus “I read that process X uses data set Y to achieve Z result.” Clunky isn’t easily repeatable, but succinct is.
- Narrative: Your infographic should tell a story, whether you’re highlighting the state of your industry, packaging the results of a survey, or offering tips and advice to your readers. Every bullet point, visual element, and word of copy should tie into that overarching concept.
You will also want to ensure that your infographic is highly sharable. How? Make sure it’s not overly promotional, coming across to your audience as educational and entertaining first and foremost. It can be counterintuitive to avoid salesy copy and imagery when what you want most is to increase revenue, but establishing a reputation of thought leadership in your industry will encourage potential buyers to trust your brand. To be clear, you can weave in tangential promotional tactics, such as social media posts or presentation language. The goal here is to ensure your infographic itself doesn’t come across as promotional, regardless of which other promotional tactics you employ supportively around it.
And when it comes to narrative, avoid throwing a bunch of loosely related facts together and hope your audience gets the picture. Make sure you’re highlighting information that works well together, supporting your overall topic and theme and taking your audience on a journey through your messaging.
Want to up your story-driven infographic game? SCORR Marketing is an industry leader, with numerous awards under our belt for creative marketing graphics. Our passion is bringing this creativity and expertise forward to help you ensure that your marketing data tells the right story to the right audience — every time.