How to Choose the Best Digital Marketing Agency for the Pharma Industry in India

Brief answer: Start by understanding the type of pharma business you are in, as prescription brands, consumer health products, APIs and CDMO services, and hospitals each have different customers, sales processes, and market potential. Then evaluate agencies according to three factors: if they have done your particular business model before, if they can show you a medical-legal workflow instead of a compliance claim, and if they will take pipeline payment terms rather than traffic.

Why the wrong question is being asked about agency partners

There is no useful answer to the question of what agency is best for pharma because pharma is not one market, but four or more, with virtually no operational overlap.

Prescription brand markets to physicians, specialists, pharmacists, and hospital purchasing boards. Digital marketing for prescription medicines cannot be directed at consumers in any way. Therefore, the strategy must be executed through verified channels, such as medical education programs, continuing medical education, outreach to key opinion leaders, and clinical content aimed at professionals. The success metrics are measured as reached specialists and share of voice among that population, not sessions.

The consumer health/nutraceutical company sells directly to consumers/caregivers with all the tools of marketing and communication available, except those excluded by the rules of advertising and the limits of what the claims can be substantiated with. Here the metrics are straightforward: return on ad spend, repeat rate, and blend cost.

The API/CDMO/contract manufacturing company is selling to procurement, R&D, and quality at other pharmaceutical companies and usually other countries too. The purchasing process typically takes between twelve and twenty-four months, and the decision-making committees involved usually consist of six to ten individuals. Audit history and regulatory performance are much more important than creative here. The only numbers that matter are: qualified requests for quote, cost of a qualified enquiry, and conversion rate from qualified enquiry to site audit.

The hospital, diagnostics, or clinic network is acquiring patients from its catchment, so the activity is local, specialty-led, and strictly claim-controlled. The metric is the cost of booking an appointment broken down by specialty.

An agency that delivered a successful nutraceutical project doesn’t automatically know how to develop an eighteen-month nurture program for a procurement officer in New Jersey. Ask any pharma digital marketing agency if they’ve ever executed one of these four projects, and demand to see the one you need.

Eight questions that distinguish the specialists from the generalists

Ask about the pharma model that they’ve implemented. A good response will mention the pharma model, the type of client, duration of the cycle, and the problems they had. A weak answer would simply mention that they have previously worked with healthcare clients.

Ask how they confirm the professional audience. A good answer will detail the process used to validate the audience, how the gated content is developed, and when platform targeting stops working. A poor answer will be limited to saying that they target doctors on LinkedIn.

Ask to view the process of substantiating claims. A good response will provide files with each claim substantiated against approved labeling or evidence. Poor answer will be that “their writers are meticulous”.

What does it mean to create pharmaceutical SEO that goes beyond keywords? The answer here should talk about the creation of topical authority based on indication pages, formulation pages, and regulatory pages, along with medical review for all the clinical content. Weak answers will just talk about backlinks and keywords.

How do AI answer engines currently portray your molecule, your facility, and your service? A strong answer will have run the tests and will share with you the results and the remedy for any shortcomings they may find. A weak answer shows little thought about the question.

Which single business metric are they willing to co-own with you, rather than report on? A strong answer will include a specific number related to the pipeline and be willing to provide a written confirmation. A weak answer will provide you with a dashboard and call it accountability.

Consider what might happen if another company complained about your marketing practices. The best answer will describe an escalation process, how fast a takedown will be achieved, and what kind of dossier they will compile. A poor answer will state that this is a matter for your lawyers to handle.

Who from the team has reviewed the approved label for your product? The best answer will identify the individual involved in the process.

What good pharma SEO really looks like

A good pharma SEO agency does its SEO based on indications, molecules, formulations, and roles rather than services keywords in general terms. If it’s a contract manufacturing firm, its pages have to revolve around the dosage-form capabilities, regulatory filings, and inspection history, because this is what a purchasing manager is looking for. If it is a hospital, then its website architecture should be based on specialties and location, with each clinical page carefully curated. In consumer health, symptom-focused content has to stop right at the claim ceiling.

There are two things that tell the real deal from a quantity deal. The first one is medical review of each clinical page, both for the audience and via schema markup, because this content type requires expert opinion, which cannot be just claimed, but proven, and it gets the same weight from answer engines as search quality guidelines require. The second one is entity consistency. The company name, founding date, facility approvals, and certifications have to be the same everywhere – on the website, on the regulatory filings, LinkedIn profile and any other directories you can think of.

What metrics to go for

Traffic is not a pharmaceutical metric. Depending on your model, you should go for the contracted number of verified professional touchpoints and educational completion rates, or cost per qualified request for quotation and conversion to audit rates, or blended cost per acquisition and repeat rates, or cost per scheduled appointments by specialties. And however you define it, make sure it is included in the agreement rather than on a slide.

Where TechShu comes in

TechShu, known as TechShu Digital Pvt Ltd, is a methodology-driven B2B digital marketing agency established in 2009, a Google Premier Partner since 2016. We serve more than twenty different industries with the framework, DMFlow, which performs the business and buyers’ analysis prior to taking any channel decisions. For the pharmaceutical industry, this means that, first of all, we identify what model and what regulations limit you have in place.

We will not guarantee compliance-free growth. We will include the approval process in the strategy.

→ Request an audit of your pharma digital marketing activities. An evaluation of your current digital presence in relation to your model, the regulatory limit, and your AI searchability.

This is general information concerning digital marketing practices within the pharmaceutical industry, and should not be taken as legal advice. Always seek individualized advice for regulated products.