Adjusting pharma marketing in the rise of community pharmacies

For years, community pharmacies have been the endpoint of care: prescriptions filled, questions answered, and patients receiving their medication. That is no longer the case.

With the government’s 10-Year Health Plan and initiatives like Pharmacy First - enabling pharmacists to offer consultations for common ailments - pharmacists are stepping onto the frontline of primary care, treating minor conditions, advising on medicines, and even initiating treatment. In a move intended to ease GP workload, improve access to treatment, and address ongoing pressures in the healthcare system, this shift is already taking effect. The Pharmacy First scheme has facilitated more than five million patient consultations, whilst the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s stance on P-medicine self-selection allows patients to select pharmacy medicines alongside a pharmacist.

For patients, this means faster access and convenience. For pharma companies, it presents a marketing challenge and opportunity.

Why the old playbook no longer works

Pharma marketing has traditionally targeted GPs, specialists, and procurement teams as the clear gatekeepers of prescription decisions. But pharmacists now influence treatment decisions directly, making them a primary audience, not a secondary one. In some cases, patients may see a pharmacist instead of a GP altogether, particularly for common conditions or minor injuries. Ignoring this shift risks missing a new key influencer in the patient journey.

Implications for the marketing strategy

In a recent M3 survey, 35% of pharma marketers said they rely on patient journey mapping to inform their campaigns. Yet, many still underplay or entirely overlook the role of pharmacies in early-stage decision-making.

A typical patient pathway may have involved a GP consultation followed by a prescription collected from a pharmacy. However, today, in many cases, the patient goes straight to the pharmacy, receives a consultation, and leaves with the required treatment.

Pharma companies must:

• Educate efficiently: Pharmacists have busy schedules, therefore educational materials – from product updates to clinical trial data – need to be concise, clinically relevant, and digitally accessible.
• Tailor messaging: Reflecting pharmacists’ expanding scope and recognising their clinical decision-making responsibilities, messaging needs to be tailored to these updated roles managing product sales and self-care advice.
• Create smarter multichannel strategies: A GP-centric, one-size-fits-all approach will no longer work. Marketers need to integrate pharmacy-specific touchpoints, such as digital platforms, peer-to-peer learning, and interactive tools that are designed for pharmacists’ needs.

The rise of P-medicine self selection and its implications

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s stance on P-medicine self-selection has significant commercial implications. Patient autonomy is increased, therefore decisions are influenced heavily by brand visibility, consumer marketing, and previous healthcare advice.

Also, pharmacists’ role as advisors is more profound; they remain trusted sources of guidance, particularly for new products or complex treatment categories. All this opens up greater marketing opportunities.

This creates a dual-channel opportunity: build consumer-facing brand awareness to drive demand, while also ensuring pharmacists are confident advocates for the product.

In short, pharma marketers must strategically align consumer marketing and professional engagement to gain significant competitive advantage.

This shift, alongside pharmacists’ increased role, must alter how entire brand strategies are built. Instead of influencing the prescribers at the top of the medical decision chain, expecting the rest to follow, brand teams must design integrated strategies that view pharmacists not as an adjunct, but as a primary audience in certain therapeutic areas.

The essential: Insight-led, adaptive marketing

With changes in policy, public health policies, and patient behaviour trends, agility is essential and data-driven insights are key to staying ahead. It isn’t just what pharmacists prescribe or recommend, it is also how they consume information, what clinical pressures they face, and which digital platforms they use that will all be key to campaign success.

Adaptive, insight-led strategies will be the new stratagem for pharma marketing. This means:

• Continuously updating segmentation models to reflect changing clinical responsibilities
• Using real-time analytics to assess message engagement and adjust campaigns dynamically
• Integrating cross-channel campaigns so that pharmacists encounter consistent, relevant messaging, whether they’re attending CPD training, scrolling professional forums, or speaking with a Medical Science Liaison

The new rules for pharma marketing

There are three core rules to consider to compete effectively in this new landscape:

1. Redefine the target audience hierarchy. While GPs and specialists remain vital, the balance of influence is shifting and pharmacists should be a defined, high-priority segment with dedicated messaging and engagement tactics.
2. Invest in tailored pharmacy content. Repurposed GP materials won’t work – pharmacists need bespoke content that reflects their scope, clinical realities, and time pressures.
3. Adopt an omnichannel approach. Face-to-face engagement remains important, but marketers must also adopt digital platforms where pharmacists learn, share, and make clinical decisions.

Looking ahead: The pharmacist influence

Community pharmacies are accessible, trusted, and clinically capable care providers that are increasingly becoming more influential in the patient journey. For pharmaceutical companies, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.

While doctors and clinicians still hold a large influence and importance to patient decisions, pharma brands must recognise the shift currently taking place in who patients interact with. Strategies will need to be adapted to include the pharmacists’ expanded role as clinicians, advisors, and decision-makers, understanding the evolving role and pressures they face concurrently with that of doctors.

As the pharmacy counter begins to play a bigger role at the start of the patient journey, it doesn’t replace the importance of doctors, and pharma marketers’ current efforts directed towards them. Pharma marketing will need to strike the right balance, ensuring strategies resonate with pharmacists’ growing responsibilities, while continuing to prioritise the trusted relationships doctors have long held in guiding treatment decisions.

As patients begin to turn their eye to pharmacy counters for greater influence, so too must pharma marketers.

About the author

Tim Russell is executive vice president at M3, where he is responsible for leading the business’ strategic direction. Russell is passionate about maximising his clients’ results, and leads his team to deliver the best possible service. He specialises in delivering compelling solutions to meet pharmaceutical commercial objectives and offers clear and tangible value. Prior to joining M3, Russell worked both as a pharmaceutical representative and a pharmaceutical marketer, contributing to his 20+ years in the pharmaceutical industry.