Time flies when you’re publishing benchmarks and hosting annual meetings.

It was only 12 months ago that the SAMPS launched with it’s first series of webinars, covering topics such as strategies to coordinate content marketing plans with a scientist’s unque selling cycle, strategic brand management strategies, the critical need for training progams to ensure internal leadership, and methods to generate leads for different product categories. The speakers brought the cutting edge content and you brought the enthusiasm and the critical questions that left all parties better informed.

Now that the inaugural (and wildly succesful) Annual Meeting is in the books, we’re gearing up the next phase of Webinars for 2013 and 2014. We’ll soon post detailed information about the schedule, but here’s what coming down the pike over the next few months.

Content marketing automation

Content is king and distribution might be queen, but it can take a kingdom (and a well-funded one at that) to consistently create persuasive information and get it to the right people at the right time. Fortunately, the white knight of content marketing automation can ride in to save the day (and the budget, if done right).

To help ensure that your white knight doesn’t accidentally lance you in the foot, Guy Page, founder of the Pacific Biomarketing Group, and Sheila Burns, former head of marketing and sales at Life Technologies and current Managing Director of Building 12 Communications will discuss the core issues behind applying a meaningful content marketing automation strategy.

This webinar  includes a detailed case study that describes the successful implementation of a system within a life science company and the reproducible data the team generated to show a solid ROI.

Competitive analysis and differentiation

If everything is special, nothing is special. This truism and a brutally competitive marketplace speak to the need for frequent and critical self evaluations to judge your approach to sales and marketing against your competition. So how will you evaluate your brand’s competitive position, and after your analysis, how will you permeate your strategy and tactics throughout the entire organization?

Susan Bish, Chief Marketing Officer of Bottom Line Technologies and Brent Keller, an executive consultant, have been helping your competitors answer these questions for decades. Join them for a discussion about the latest approaches to competitive analysis and routes to standing out in a crowded field.

Content strategy: help or hype?

I know what you’re thinking. “Just what we need. Another self-important, overhyped, geek-generated piece of marketing buzz that contains the word Content.”

Nope. Content strategy isn’t fluff. And it’s not the same as content marketing.

Content marketing is the very expensive wedding reception that you’re hosting for your little princess. Content strategy tells you how to plan and carry out the wedding without going broke while simultaneously producing a long-term plan for marital bliss for your daughter’s family.

During this webinar, I’ll discuss the fundamental principles and tactics of content strategy with an eye on saving you money, aggravation, and preparing you for the storm of custom content that you’ll have to produce to succeed in the onrushing era of Big Data analytics.

Stay tuned—more topics are on the way. Watch your in-box for a complete listing and registration information.

Alan Gerstein

Alan Gerstein, SAMPS Digital Editorial Director, is an interactive content developer experienced at blending the oft-conflicting needs of users, clients, and search engines. Along the way he has developed strategies and information solutions to better support the training and education needs of the life science research community. He also had the good fortune to lead the efforts of nearly two-dozen researchers to create The Molecular Biology Problem Solver.