Life science digital marketing covers a wide spread of buyers who share almost nothing except the regulator sitting behind them. A contract research organisation selling services to pharma, a diagnostics company selling to hospital labs, a device manufacturer selling to surgeons and a biotech raising a round all get pitched by the same agencies, and the pitch is usually identical. What separates a competent provider here from a generalist with a science-looking case study is not vocabulary. It is whether they understand who reviews the copy before it publishes, how long that review takes, and how a buying committee of scientists, procurement and clinical staff actually finds a vendor. This page describes the work, the constraints and the questions that make a shortlist comparable.
Who you are actually marketing to, and how they search
The single most common error in this sector is treating a life science audience as a consumer audience with longer words. A principal investigator choosing an antibody supplier, a lab director specifying an instrument and a hospital procurement officer approving it are three readers with different questions, and the purchase usually needs all three to agree. That shapes the search work more than any keyword tool does. The queries that matter are narrow, technical and low in volume: an assay name, a catalogue number, a protocol problem, a regulatory pathway. They convert because the person typing them is already scoping a purchase. A provider who proposes broad category terms because the volume looks better has not understood the funnel. Ask a candidate to show you the query list they would target and check whether a scientist in your field would recognise it as the language they use at the bench.
The promotional rules that decide what you can publish
Where a product is regulated, marketing is promotion, and promotion has a rulebook. The FDA publishes plain-language guidance on how prescription drug advertising must work, including the requirement that an advertisement present a fair balance of benefit and risk information, and it maintains an office dedicated to reviewing prescription drug promotion. For device and diagnostics companies the constraints are different in detail but similar in shape, and they still apply to a website, a webinar and a conference booth handout. A digital marketing agency does not need to be your regulatory function, but it does need to write in a form your medical, legal and regulatory reviewers can approve without a rewrite. Ask directly how many review cycles their process assumes and who inside their team has sat through one. An agency that treats review as an annoyance will quietly blow every deadline in the plan.
What good evidence looks like on a pitch deck
Named clients you can verify, a case study with a mechanism rather than a curve, and a clear statement of what was done in house. Scientific content is the part most often subcontracted, and subcontracting it is not a red flag by itself, but you should know before you compare quotes. The tell of a serious provider is that they ask about your review process, your product classification and your existing distribution agreements in the first call, rather than about your budget. The tell of a weak one is a deck full of engagement metrics with no line connecting them to qualified enquiries. If you are considering bundling this with search work into a single digital marketing and SEO services engagement, insist that the proposal separates the technical remediation of your site from the ongoing content and demand generation, because those two lines have different timelines and very different value.
Measuring a long, committee-driven sales cycle
A life science sale can take quarters, which means monthly reporting on leads alone will make a good agency look bad and a bad one look fine. Agree a measurement shape up front that survives the cycle length. Search Console impressions and clicks against your technical query list tell you whether the right readers are finding you at all. Form and demo requests, segmented by institution type, tell you whether they are the right readers. Sales-qualified opportunities and eventual purchase orders close the loop, and only your CRM can supply them, so decide early who has access to it and how attribution will be recorded. Insist that every account, analytics property and content asset is owned by your entity rather than the agency's, because in a sector where content takes months to clear review, losing the library on exit is far more expensive than the retainer.
Questions people ask about life science digital marketing
Do we need an agency that specialises in life sciences?
Usually yes, but test the claim rather than accepting it. A specialist should be able to describe your regulatory review process without prompting, name the journals and societies your buyers read, and show writing that a scientist would not wince at. A generalist with one biotech logo is not a specialist.
Can an agency write our promotional copy for a regulated product?
They can draft it, but it still has to pass your medical, legal and regulatory review, and FDA guidance on prescription drug advertising sets standards such as fair balance of benefits and risks. Build review cycles into the timeline and the fee, or the plan will slip.
Why is search volume so low for our terms?
Because your market is small and technical, which is a feature rather than a problem. A few hundred monthly searches for an assay or instrument category can represent your entire addressable market. Judge terms on who is typing them and what a closed deal is worth, not on volume.
What should we insist on in the contract?
Ownership of the analytics property, the ad accounts, the domain and every asset produced. Named individuals rather than a generic team. A deliverables list with dates. Thirty days notice after an initial term. And a clause requiring approved-copy versions to be archived with their approval records.