“The work of the students was incredible. They brought to light several strategies we can implement immediately to help with clarity and visualization strategies to improve our operations. We have begun to make website changes and have already had a contact from another institution about sharing resources. Over the next few months, we expect to see increases in our specimen utilization as we implement the strategies they proposed.”
-David Haas, MD, MS,Robert A. Munsick Professor of OB-GYN, IUSOM & BBPB Principal Investigator, IN CTSI
Project summary by Chris Anderson- MBA Candidate Class of 2022
This Spring, a team of three MBA students completed a project deliverable aimed to help The IUSM OB/GYN Department Building Blocks of Pregnancy Biobank (BBPB), with recommendations to build a sustainable customer base in the pregnancy research sector. The team focused primarily on marketing initiatives – particularly consumer acquisition and retention strategies – to regain a demand in their samples after experiencing a series of halts from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The BBPB is a centralized pregnancy sample biobank for the IU School of Medicine, providing a resource supporting sample collection and banking to researchers who are leading the way in OB/Gyn studies. This biorepository holds thousands of samples that are available to academic institutions, private research firms, and pharmaceutical companies. However, the biobank had struggled to maintain a consistent customer base because of the pandemic’s disruption with collecting and distributing biosamples, making it apparent to the team that we needed to focus mostly on supporting their marketing initiatives.
We spent the two months actively engaged in weekly meetings with those in charge of the biobank and identified some of the primary challenges and opportunities to address: outstanding customer service provides them a competitive advantage, building awareness and relationships with local research groups and institutions allows them to cast from a wider net, and improving their website will help them reach a larger audience to increase the number of leads.
Graphic by IU School of Medicine Obstetrics and Gynecology, Biobank website
These opportunities for growth were derived from asking for feedback from current customers, investigating the websites of competitor biobanks, and working through the Marketing Process, particularly with Creating, Delivering, and Sustaining Value. We spent several weeks engaged in Zoom call meetings with many of Building Blocks’ customers and asked them what made them continue to purchase samples from BBPB, as well as how they could continue improving as a supplier. Additionally, the website improvement suggestions came from asking customers what would make it easiest for them to request samples. Lastly, we decided to focus on the relationship building aspect of creating, delivering, and sustaining value, since the OB/Gyn research community is vastly connected with one another, and we identified many chances to strengthen those partnerships.
Our team’s primary goal was to provide the biobank several recommendations that would equip them to market themselves in a way that was authentic, communicated value, and reached a wider audience. The strategies with pursuing feedback and quick response times displays a dedication to meeting the needs of customers, an improved website allows potential customers to easily identify all the value Building Blocks provides, and the enhanced focus on relationship building forms a pipeline of retaining customers and improving word-of-mouth strategies. We were excited that the BBPB team received these recommendations with eagerness and zeal, and we look forward to seeing how they grow in the future!
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