Pharma · Medtech / device
HCP and patient budgets were optimized in isolation.
This marketing & margin audit identified $64k in wasted annual spend in a Pharma business, evidenced, senior reviewed, and delivered in 6 days.
The business
A medtech brand ran its healthcare professional (HCP) marketing and its patient marketing as two completely independent budgets, each with its own agency, targeting and optimization. The separation felt natural given the different audiences and messaging requirements, so the two programs were planned and measured in isolation, with no shared view of where their audiences might intersect.
What triggered the audit
Both programs looked efficient when assessed on their own, yet their target audiences plainly overlapped in the real world, where professionals and patients are reached through many of the same channels and placements. The audit examined the two together for the first time, specifically to find where the independently run efforts were colliding.
What the audit found
Run in isolation, the two programs had been unknowingly bidding against each other. Because HCP and patient audiences overlap across shared digital channels, the two agencies were frequently competing for the same impressions and placements at the same time, driving up costs for both while each optimized happily within its own silo. Neither team could see the collision, because neither had visibility of the other’s activity, and both reported efficient results against their separate benchmarks. In practice the brand was paying an internal premium to compete with itself across a shared audience. Bringing the two under a single, coordinated audience plan removed that self competition and cut roughly $64k a year of waste without reducing the reach either program needed.
What we changed
Merged audience planning across the HCP and patient teams, giving the brand a single coordinated view of what had always been a shared audience landscape.
Set shared exclusions and one bidding strategy across both programs, ending the internal competition for the same impressions that had inflated costs for each.
Kept the two messages and creative streams fully distinct, preserving compliance and relevance while removing only the audience collision between them.
Established combined reporting so any future overlap is caught immediately rather than staying hidden across two separate silos.
The result
The outcomes were measured for three months after a 90 day implementation period. $64k a year recovered by ending the internal bidding war between two teams chasing the same people, an annual figure equal to 11× the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee, with reach fully intact. For any medtech leader, the silos looked efficient individually while quietly inflating each other’s costs. If HCP and patient budgets are optimized in isolation, they can bid against one another across shared channels without anyone seeing it. It takes examining them together to catch it. A fixed fee audit does that in days, so your programs keep distinct messaging but stop competing with themselves.
From kickoff to signed off findings: 6 days.
What the client said
$64k a year of wasted spend cut in 6 days
Budget lost to the two teams overbidding: 22% → 3%
“Our HCP and patient agencies were bidding against each other for the same impressions. Cristian examined both programs together for the first time and merged audience planning. Reach held, and the internal premium was gone.”
Cristian BragauSenior Auditor · signed this audit off