Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is getting a lot of attention in pharmaceutical and life sciences marketing and for good reason. When budgets are tight and audiences are hard to reach, targeting specific organisations rather than chasing volume makes sense.
But there’s a pattern that comes up again and again across the industry.
ABM campaigns are well planned, well targeted and often expensive yet they quietly underperform. Not because the strategy is wrong, but because everything after the click hasn’t been thought through properly.
In regulated industries like pharma and medical devices, ABM doesn’t succeed or fail in the ad platform. It succeeds or fails on the website.
And this is where a principle I’ve used for years in digital marketing really matters: you have to think beyond the click.
ABM Brings the Right People. The Website Builds the Trust.
ABM is very good at answering one question:
Are we reaching the right companies?
But pharma stakeholders arriving on your website are asking something else entirely:
Can we trust this organisation? Do they understand our world? Would this stand up to internal scrutiny?
By the time someone from a target account lands on your site, whether that’s via LinkedIn, programmatic display or direct outreach, they’re no longer a “lead”. They’re often a regulatory, medical, digital or commercial stakeholder quietly assessing risk.
This is exactly why you have to think beyond the click.
They judge what they see through signals most ABM strategies don’t really account for:
- how clearly audiences are separated
- how visible and accessible prescribing information is
- whether the tone is neutral and credible
- how consistent the experience feels across pages
- whether compliance looks embedded or bolted on
If those signals aren’t right, ABM momentum doesn’t collapse dramatically, it just fades away.
Why Generic Pharma Websites Undermine ABM.
Many pharma websites are built to be safe, broad and inoffensive.
That sounds sensible but it’s often the opposite of what ABM needs.
ABM depends on relevance. Most pharma websites are designed for reach.
When teams don’t think beyond the click, we see the same issues repeatedly:
- one set of messages trying to serve multiple audiences
- HCP and public content bleeding into one another
- ABM traffic landing on generic corporate or product pages
- compliance content technically present, but hard to find
- no clear journey for different buying roles
The result isn’t rejection – it’s disengagement. People arrive, skim, and leave. Not because the proposition is weak, but because the digital experience doesn’t help them do their internal due diligence.
In Pharma, the Website Is the ABX Layer.
This is where ABX (Account-Based Experience) becomes genuinely useful.
In pharma, ABX isn’t about flashy personalisation or clever UX tricks. It’s about delivering a consistent, confidence-building experience over time, across multiple visits, often by different people in the same organisation.
Thinking beyond the click means accepting that:
- buying committees don’t move in straight lines
- stakeholders visit independently and asynchronously
- decisions are validated internally, not “converted” online
An ABM-ready pharma website supports this by:
- clearly signposting audiences from the first interaction
- offering depth without being promotional
- making compliance visible and credible throughout
- allowing different roles to find what they need without friction
In practice, the website becomes the shared reference point that all ABM activity points towards.
Programmatic ABM Makes This Even More Important.
Programmatic ABM amplifies the need to think beyond the click.
You may be doing an excellent job of:
- targeting specific organisations
- reaching multiple stakeholders within them
- reinforcing messages over weeks or months
But programmatic ABM rarely relies on forms or immediate conversion.
Success shows up instead as:
- repeat visits
- deeper content consumption
- internal sharing
- quiet evaluation
If the website isn’t designed to support that behaviour, ABM dashboards may show “engagement”, but nothing ever moves commercially.
What an ABM-Ready Pharma Website Actually Needs.
From what we see in practice, ABM works best when the website is treated as strategic infrastructure, not a brochure.
That requires teams to think about end user needs and focus on:
- clear audience entry points (HCP, patient, partner, corporate)
- content structured around real stakeholder concerns
- consistent compliance signals across the entire journey
- modular page design that supports campaign-specific entry points
- analytics focused on engagement patterns, not just form fills
None of this requires aggressive personalisation.
It requires intentional design, structure and governance.
ABM Isn’t a Channel. It’s a Stress Test.
In pharma, ABM doesn’t fix weak digital foundations. It exposes them.
If the website lacks clarity, feels generic, buries important information or treats compliance as an afterthought, ABM will simply deliver the right people to the wrong experience.
That’s what happens when teams focus on the click, but not what comes next.
My final thought and next steps.
I don’t see ABM as something separate from websites and digital platforms.
In regulated industries, ABM works when:
- targeting is precise
- messaging is aligned
- and the website is built to support trust, scrutiny and long consideration cycles
That’s why, in pharma, ABM doesn’t live or die in the campaign.
It lives or dies on the website and on the willingness to think beyond the click.
Related reading
If you found this article useful, you may also find these helpful:
- Healthcare Website Success Blueprint eBook – plan smart, build strategically, govern effectively. Read now.
- From Lab Bench to Launch: The Digital Readiness Playbook for Life Sciences Start-ups – how to build a credible, compliant digital presence in the early stages of growth. Read now.
- Your New Healthcare Website: Are You Asking the Right Things? – a practical checklist for commissioning a healthcare website that’s built to last. Read now.