About PharmaForward

Built for how biopharma
marketing works now.
Small, senior, AI-forward.

PharmaForward is a biopharma-focused analytics and marketing technology consultancy. Small senior teams, custom AI tooling, and nothing between you and the work.

Why PharmaForward exists

PharmaForward’s roots go back to the early days of biopharma digital marketing, when websites, email, and online campaigns were experimental additions to largely print- and field-based marketing programs.

The technology has evolved. The volume of data has exploded. Yet the fundamental challenge remains the same: biopharma teams are still making critical business decisions based on fragmented data, complex customer journeys, and an increasingly crowded digital landscape.

Unlike traditional agency models, our work is led by experienced specialists who remain directly involved throughout every engagement. Modern technology and AI-powered workflows allow us to deliver the depth of a larger team while maintaining the focus, responsiveness, and expertise of a specialized partner.

Our team combines biopharma domain expertise with analytics, AI, search intelligence, and business intelligence to create clarity from complexity.

Operating principles
01
Measurement is not a report. It’s a decision architecture.

Most biopharma analytics programs produce data. What they rarely produce is a clear answer to a specific question. The measurement PharmaForward builds starts from the decisions your leadership needs to make.

02
Independent analytics. Objective answers.

Most marketing partners are focused on delivering a specific service: media, creative, technology, or strategy. PharmaForward exists to provide an unbiased view of performance across all of them. By combining analytics, business intelligence, AI, and biopharma expertise, we help organizations make better decisions based on evidence, not assumptions.

03
AI search is already here. Most biopharma brands aren’t.

Patients and HCPs are reading AI-generated answers before they ever reach a brand website. The window to build presence in those answers is open now and won’t stay open.

04
You don’t need another team telling you what you want to hear.

If the data supports the decision, we’ll help you move faster. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too. Our job isn’t to defend assumptions; it’s to help you make better decisions.

How we work

Small teams.
Serious speed.

Every engagement runs on a small senior team — no account management layer, no handoffs to a delivery tier. The people in the kickoff are the people doing the work.

AI is built into how the work gets done, not bolted on. Custom tooling — audit pipelines, schema generators, monitoring dashboards, reporting automation — gets built per engagement, which is how a small team moves faster than a large agency.

Most engagements begin with a measurement or performance audit — two to four weeks of diagnostic work producing a prioritized roadmap: a plan with a sequence, not a deck of recommendations. A 90-day sprint addresses the highest-priority work, and ongoing retainer covers the rest.

Several current retainer clients have been working with PharmaForward for more than four years. Retainers that run that long reflect what the relationship actually produces.

Methodology

The frameworks behind
the work.

01
The Proxy ROAS Framework

Dollar values assigned to the conversion events that matter — treatment center searches, HCP rep requests, support enrollments — producing an ROI signal that connects digital spend to business outcomes without touching HIPAA-restricted patient data.

02
The AI Visibility Index

A measured score of brand presence across Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT — tracked and reported like a media channel, because that’s what AI search has become.

03
The Measurement Audit

The two-to-four-week diagnostic that begins most engagements. Every tag, conversion, and report traced to what it actually records, producing a prioritized roadmap: a plan with a sequence.

The tools.
All of them.

Every platform below is in active use across current client engagements — not a list of certifications. The stack is deliberately narrow: deep expertise in a small number of tools that matter, not surface familiarity with everything.

Analytics & Measurement
Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Google Cloud
Adobe Analytics
Matomo / Piwik
Tableau
Power BI
Profound
OneTrust / TrustArc
IQVIA Customer Match
Search & AI Visibility
Google Ads
Microsoft / Bing Ads
Google Search Console
SEMrush
JSON-LD Schema Markup
AI Overview Monitoring
Perplexity Citation Tracking
Screaming Frog
Ecosystem & Workflow
Veeva Vault PromoMats
Salesforce
ActiveCampaign
Claude API
Make.com
Fireflies / Otter.ai
Notion
Perplexity Pro
The founder

Ben Zipkin is the founder and chief strategist of PharmaForward, an independent biopharma analytics and intelligence consultancy focused on helping organizations make better decisions with data. Over the past two decades, Ben has worked at the intersection of healthcare, technology, analytics, and digital marketing, helping pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies build the measurement systems, search strategies, and intelligence capabilities that connect digital investment to business outcomes.

His experience spans rare disease, oncology, gene therapy, precision medicine, specialty care, and clinical trial recruitment. He has led digital transformation initiatives for emerging biotech companies, global pharmaceutical organizations, and some of the industry’s most complex launches and awareness campaigns.

Before founding PharmaForward, Ben was a partner and Director of Digital Services at Cambridge BioMarketing, where he helped build one of the industry’s leading independent healthcare agencies prior to its acquisition by Evoke. Earlier in his career, he co-founded RDVO, a digital strategy and design firm later acquired by Cambridge BioMarketing. He has led numerous digital launches, winning multiple Healthcare Clio Awards and a Webby.

Ben has been recognized as a PM360 ELITE 100 honoree and is widely regarded as a trusted advisor in biopharma analytics, marketing technology, and digital strategy. His work has helped organizations improve measurement, uncover growth opportunities, modernize digital operations, and navigate an increasingly AI-driven marketing landscape.

Today, Ben remains directly involved in every PharmaForward engagement. Clients work with senior experts who understand both the strategic conversations happening in the boardroom and the technical details required to make them successful. Follow Ben on LinkedIn or at benzipkin.com.

Let’s talk about
what the data is telling you.

Tell us what’s not working, or what you’re not sure is working. We’ll tell you what we see.

Connect with us