A diagnosis that already accounts for what can be said.
Brand, audiences, channels and competitors, analysed inside the real regulatory frame of the product and the market it will run in.
Why this rarely works
A healthcare strategy written without the regulatory frame produces a plan that collapses at first review. The most attractive territories tend to be exactly the ones that cannot be supported.
And there's a tension that rarely gets named: the medical audience and the patient audience need different messages, in different channels, under different permissions. Treating them as one public is the most expensive mistake in the category.
What's included
Digital presence diagnosis
Site, organic, paid, reputation and competitors. Whatever can't be measured for lack of access is declared as such, not estimated.
Audience and permission map
What can be said to each public — professionals, patients, caregivers, institutions — and in which channel saying it is allowed.
Positioning and territory
Who you actually compete with and which ground is vacant, assessed against what the product can support with evidence.
Roadmap with KPIs
What happens each month, on what budget, measured against which number, with a baseline taken before starting.
Why us
We're the ones who then have to execute that plan and take it through review. That stops us proposing territories that won't survive the MLR cycle — which is the usual reason a healthcare strategy ends up as an unexecuted deck.
The starting point depends on the type of organisation
Pharmaceutical companies with marketed products
Strategy starts from the product's approved information in each market and its prescription status. That defines which audiences can be reached and with what message before channels come up. Where there is a global strategy, the local work is finding where that guideline collides with the country's regulation.
Clinics, centres and providers
They communicate healthcare services to people choosing where to be treated. Strategy is built around trust: who provides care, how to access it and what to expect from the process, without promising outcomes and without using patient cases that lack consent. What local rules require in each case is confirmed with the provider's legal team.
Biotech with products in development
Without an approved product there is no promotion. What can be built is institutional presence, understanding of the condition and relationships with the medical and patient communities. Strategy separates from the outset what can be said today from what can only be said after an approval.
Healthtech and digital services
They combine a digital product with health data, which adds a question other categories don't have: which user information may be used in marketing and which may not. Strategy first defines which data never leaves the product, and then how acquisition is measured without it.
How a diagnosis gets built so it can actually be executed
The diagnosis starts with the frame, not the brand. Before looking at competitors, it defines which products or services are in scope, in which countries, for which audiences and with what prescription status. That frame is what later filters every recommendation.
Then what exists gets measured: site, organic presence, paid media, reputation and competitors. Each area is labelled by how the data was obtained —with account access, from public data, or with no data— and whatever couldn't be measured is declared as missing. A diagnosis that estimates what it didn't measure takes away the client's ability to know how far to trust it.
With that map, the available territories are identified, and each one is tested against two questions: whether the product's evidence supports it, and whether it can get through the client's medical-legal-regulatory review. An attractive territory that won't survive that review is dropped at this stage, not once the campaign has been produced.
The roadmap closes with a baseline taken before starting and a definition of what counts as progress at each stage. In healthcare there is rarely a sale to measure directly, so that definition is part of the strategy, not a detail of the report.
The mistakes that repeat most in healthcare strategy
Choosing the territory before checking what can be supported
It's behind a good share of strategies that never get executed. The most attractive territory tends to be the one the evidence or the regulation won't let you occupy.
Treating professionals and patients as one audience
They need different messages, channels and permissions. A plan that mixes them ends up with a message that serves neither, or with material that can't be approved.
Borrowing a benchmark from another category
What a consumer brand does on social isn't a valid reference for a prescription product. The useful comparison is against whoever competes within the same regulatory frame.
Setting goals that depend on data you can't use
A goal that requires identifying patients in an advertising system isn't ambitious: it's unworkable. Indicators are chosen from those that can be measured without sensitive data.
Writing a roadmap without a baseline
Without the starting point measured before work begins, any later result can be read as progress. The baseline is what tells you whether anything changed.
Questions we get
Does this work if we already have a global agency with locked guidelines?
It's a common case and it works well: the work becomes local adaptation, which is exactly where global guidelines tend to collide with local regulation. We don't propose replacing what's already globally approved.
How long does it take?
The full diagnosis takes two to three weeks depending on how much access is granted. Positioning and roadmap, two more.
Do you work on products that aren't approved yet?
On disease awareness and education material, yes, and under stricter rules than an in-market product. Promotion of an unapproved product is not something we do, and that's a conversation we'd rather have on day one.
What access do you need for the diagnosis?
The more, the better the reading: site analytics, ad accounts, social insights and, if there is one, the email platform. It can start from public data alone, in which case the diagnosis states which areas went unmeasured instead of filling them with estimates.
Does the strategy include regulatory validation of the plan?
It includes designing every recommendation to get through review, but it doesn't replace that review. What applies to a specific product is set by each market's health authority and the client's regulatory team, and the plan goes to that review before it is executed.
The other services
regulatory compliance
Medical and legal validation of every asset, by market and by brand, built into production instead of bolted on at the end.
See the service → 03medical and creative content
Educational and promotional content for professionals and patients, produced with the evidence up front and the craft intact.
See the service → 04omnichannel and engagement
Communication journeys for professionals and patients, coordinated across channels and measured end to end.
See the service → 05paid media and performance
Search, social and programmatic inside each platform's health policies, with no sensitive data ever entering a pixel.
See the service →