Most acquisition playbooks assume the person who wants your product is the person who can say yes to it. In biotech and pharma, that's almost never true – a physician has to write the script before a patient can start treatment. We build acquisition systems that move patients toward diagnosis and move prescribers toward confidence, on parallel tracks, with the handoff between them mapped end to end.
The Problem
The buyer and the user are different people
A patient can want your treatment and still never get it if the prescriber won't write for it. Standard demand-gen treats the end user as the decision maker and optimizes every touchpoint around them. That approach fills a funnel with patients who then hit a wall at the prescription pad, and the team has no idea why conversion stalls.
The patient population is small and hard to find
In rare and specialty disease, you're not marketing to a mass market – you're finding a few thousand people scattered across the country who often don't have a name for what's wrong with them yet. Broad-reach channels burn budget on people who will never qualify. Without a diagnosis-first content and search strategy, most of the spend never reaches an actual candidate.
Physician trust doesn't come from an ad
HCPs are skeptical of promotional content by training and by regulation. A banner ad or a sponsored post doesn't move a prescriber the way peer data, medical education, and rep relationships do. Companies that run pharma acquisition like a consumer campaign get impressions and no scripts, because they're using the wrong currency to earn trust.
Acquisition doesn't end at 'yes'
Getting a patient to agree to treatment is only the start. Specialty pharmacy enrollment, prior authorization, benefits verification, and distribution logistics sit between agreement and first dose, and each step is a place patients drop off. If acquisition strategy stops at lead capture, the company has no visibility into where real patients are actually being lost.
How We Help
We start by mapping both funnels as they actually exist in your therapeutic area, not as a generic template. That means sitting with your commercial, medical affairs, and market access teams to trace the real path: how a patient gets diagnosed, how a prescriber first hears about the option, where those two paths cross, and where specialty pharmacy or distribution introduces friction after the decision is made.
From there we build a two-track acquisition strategy. The patient track focuses on getting in front of people during the diagnostic journey – search behavior around symptoms, patient community presence, disease-education content that positions you as a resource before it positions you as a product. The prescriber track runs on a different logic entirely: peer-reviewed data, KOL amplification, medical conference presence, and content built for someone who has to justify a clinical decision, not someone reacting to an ad.
Execution runs both tracks at once with a shared measurement layer, because they influence each other. A prescriber who sees credible peer data is more receptive when a patient asks about your option by name. A patient who arrives informed makes a faster, easier conversation for the physician. We build the connective tissue between the two instead of running them as separate departments that never compare notes.
On the distribution side, we work with your market access and patient services teams to instrument the handoff from 'patient agreed to treatment' through specialty pharmacy enrollment and first fill. This is where most acquisition investment quietly evaporates, and it's rarely owned by marketing – which is exactly why it goes unmeasured.
Measurement is built around the full path, not top-of-funnel vanity metrics. We track patient identification through diagnosis-adjacent channels, prescriber engagement through content and rep-enablement assets, and the enrollment-to-fill rate on the back end. Every 90-day sprint closes with a real number: more identified candidates, more prescriber engagement on qualifying content, or fewer drop-offs between agreement and first dose.
We also build the enablement your field team actually uses – not another slide deck nobody opens, but content and targeting data that makes their conversations sharper. Sales and medical affairs get an acquisition system that works with them, not something IT and marketing built in a silo.
The result is one acquisition strategy with two coordinated tracks, instrumented all the way through distribution, instead of a patient campaign and a prescriber campaign that happen to share a logo.
What we deliver
- Dual-funnel map: the actual patient diagnostic path and the actual prescriber decision path for your therapeutic area, documented and agreed with commercial and medical affairs
- Patient acquisition system: diagnosis-stage content, search, and community presence built to reach undiagnosed or recently diagnosed candidates before they know your product name
- Prescriber engagement system: peer-data-driven content, KOL and conference presence, and rep-enablement assets built for a clinical audience, not a consumer one
- Distribution-instrumented measurement: tracking from patient identification through specialty pharmacy enrollment and first fill, so drop-off is visible instead of assumed
You don't have one funnel with two audiences. You have two funnels that have to sync up at exactly the right moment – and most acquisition strategies never build the sync.
Our Methodology
We run every engagement in 90-day sprints because biotech and pharma commercial cycles don't reward a 12-month strategy document nobody revisits. The first 30 days are assessment: we audit your current patient and prescriber touchpoints separately, identify where they're supposed to connect and don't, and set specific targets for both tracks – not a single blended KPI that hides which funnel is actually broken.
The next 30 to 60 days is build and launch. We stand up the patient-facing diagnostic content and search presence in parallel with the prescriber-facing data and enablement assets, coordinating timing so a prescriber conversation and a patient inquiry can reinforce each other instead of arriving months apart. Compliance and medical-legal review are built into the workflow from day one, not bolted on at the end.
The final 30 days is measurement and iteration. We report on both funnels independently and on the handoff between them, including what's happening on the distribution side after a patient says yes. Every sprint ends with a decision point: what worked, what to cut, and what the next 90 days should focus on. No engagement runs on autopilot past a sprint boundary without a real checkpoint.
How We Work
Days 1-30 is diagnostic. We interview your commercial, medical affairs, and market access leads, pull existing performance data on both patient and prescriber channels, and map where the two funnels are supposed to intersect. You get a written assessment with specific gaps, not a generic audit template.
Days 31-60 is build. We stand up or rework the patient and prescriber tracks simultaneously – content, targeting, KOL and rep-enablement assets – with weekly working sessions so your internal team stays in the loop on every decision. Nothing ships without your medical-legal review process; we build to your compliance workflow, not around it.
Days 61-90 is measurement and first iteration. We report results on both funnels plus the distribution handoff, and we make the call on what continues, what changes, and what the next sprint targets. Typical engagements run $15,000 to $40,000 per month depending on the number of channels and the complexity of the specialty pharmacy relationship involved.
Team structure is lean by design: one senior strategist who owns the whole engagement, plus specialists pulled in for specific work – content, paid media, KOL relations – as the sprint requires. You're not handed off to a junior account team after the pitch.
- More qualified patient candidates identified earlier in the diagnostic journey, measured against your actual addressable population, not generic funnel volume
- Higher-quality prescriber engagement on clinical content, tracked through the assets your field team actually uses in conversations
- Fewer patients lost between treatment agreement and first fill, with the drop-off points on the distribution side made visible for the first time
If your biotech & pharma company needs customer acquisition leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does biotech and pharma customer acquisition work cost?
Most engagements run $15,000 to $40,000 per month, depending on how many channels you're running and how involved the specialty pharmacy or distribution side is. A single-asset company with a narrow patient population costs less than one running multiple indications with separate prescriber audiences. We scope it after the initial assessment, not before.
How long until we see results?
The first 90-day sprint is built to produce a measurable result on both funnels, not just a strategy document. Patient-side movement, like more qualified candidates identified, tends to show up faster than prescriber-side movement, since clinical trust builds slower than search intent. Expect early signal by day 60 and a real read by day 90.
Will this replace our internal marketing team?
No. We work alongside your commercial, medical affairs, and market access teams, not instead of them. We typically own strategy and execution on the acquisition system itself while your internal team keeps ownership of brand, medical-legal review, and field relationships. Weekly working sessions keep everyone synced.
How is this different from a pharma marketing agency?
Most pharma agencies build a patient campaign and a separate HCP campaign and call it done. We build one strategy that accounts for the fact that the patient can't act without the prescriber and the prescriber often won't move without patient demand. We also instrument the distribution handoff after acquisition, which agencies rarely touch because it's not their line item.
How do you measure ROI on this?
We track three things separately and together: patient identification volume against your real addressable population, prescriber engagement on clinical content tied to actual field conversations, and enrollment-to-fill rate on the distribution side. Blended vanity metrics like impressions or click-through rate don't tell you whether a patient actually started treatment, so we don't lead with them.
What kind of company is the best fit for this?
Series A through growth-stage biotech and pharma companies with a commercial or near-commercial asset, typically $5 million to $100 million in ARR, where the patient population is defined enough to target but the prescriber relationship still needs building. If you're pre-clinical with no commercial asset yet, this isn't the right engagement – talk to us about go-to-market strategy instead.
