Closing the deal: The life science market analysis firm harnessing Content Catalyst to grow sales

Science and Medicine Group uses the Content Catalyst platform to publish and deliver between 50 and 100 market reports a year which account for around 30% of the firm’s revenue. The market analysis firm benefits from a software system that not only enables it to attract new customers but also for the commercial team to have solid insight into customers and their use of high-value content.

Devin Holland, Science and Medicine Group’s Director of Business Development, finds that the Content Catalyst system successfully helps drive customer growth and create cross-selling opportunities. The platform enables the sales team to glean invaluable client insight through user analytics, allowing them to quickly transform their customer engagements into further revenue.

“The strong usage reporting abilities of Content Catalyst are probably one of the most useful elements harnessed by the sales team to both cross and up-sell customers to additional products in our research portfolio,” he said. “The site enables us to monitor and identify the number of overall reports accessed, to see which content areas are of most interest and who is requesting access to them. The more insight we have, the easier the conversation is with our client,” added Devin.

High returns & reaping value

The usage stats reporting is also something the sales team leans on heavily for leveraging the value a customer has gained from using the platform. This is particularly effective when approaching clients regarding subscription upgrades or renewals. Even during the 2020 pandemic, Science and Medicine Group had over a 90% subscriber retention rate.

Devin explains: “Having the usage stats to show clients the value they receive from Science and Medicine Group’s content – which is usually between four and five-fold their spend – as a resource for their work is incredibly valuable and often makes a potentially tricky sales conversation pretty easy. We are able to make data-driven arguments that buying our content is a necessary part of our clients’ (now more limited) budgets and means that, if required, we can use this data to justify the price they pay for access. For example, we are seeing the same scenario across many clients where a department has purchased Science and Medicine Group’s content but it is actually being used by their whole organisation. Usage data is vital in justifying an acceptable fee increase for company-wide licenses.”

Devin added: “We find that using the platform for our own internal use not only generates revenue but also gives us a significant competitor advantage. Customer intelligence really is pivotal for the purpose of driving our future growth. Understanding customer research trends using Content Catalyst’s enhanced analytics capabilities means we can continually fine-tune our offering to build trust and reliability, to further reinforce our position as one of the leading research resources in the industries we serve”.