Meet the Mavericks of Healthcare Marketing

Where do people turn to when they need health-related information?

They google it.

However, the performance and search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing strategies of most pharma and healthcare companies are far from effective – and often non-existent. With this drastic industry gap in mind, Matt Lowe launched performance-io as the first-ever healthcare-centric SEO agency in 2018, which is now officially celebrating its expansion on Indian shores.

Having spent over a decade in pharma and working across a range of commercial sectors, Matt Lowe noticed that big pharma routinely ignores the very first step in nearly every one of its customers' user journeys: a search engine. Instead, they base their website content on their own brand priorities, key performance indicators (KPIs), and crucial success factors (CSFs) – things that their audience simply doesn’t care about.

Born out of this observation and with a passion for digital marketing in healthcare, Lowe left pharma to set up healthcare's first specialist SEO agency, leading to the launch of what we now know as performance-io – winners of the PM Society Digital Agency of 2022.

Early on in the agency’s rapid growth, Lowe tapped into the tech talent pool in the Indian market to ensure economies of scale and efficiencies that could be passed on to clients. After several years of successful partnerships, he formalised performance-io’s presence in India.

On the 8th of February 2023, the performance-io PIOneers officially celebrated their brand launch across multiple locations in India, with their HQ in Kolkata, the ‘Cultural Capital of India’, and an extended team in Bangalore, the ‘Silicon Valley of India’.

To mark the expansion of performance-io in India, Matt Lowe visited the team in India, together with Siobhan Robertson (Director, Global Head of SEO) and Michail Apokoroniotakis (SEO Account Director). The managing director of the India branch, Ronny Kar said, “Only a few SEO companies deliver a detailed breakdown of their clients’ online performance and provide a strategic plan to reach their targets. Also, the leadership team has a continued belief in people’s potential to grow, which is refreshing, as most multinational agencies treat India only as an offshore firm. This is very different from how we work at performance-io.”

Seen as the ‘mavericks’ or zeitgeist in the healthcare digital marketing space, performance-io has become the go-to agency for SEO and SEO content in pharma and healthcare.

Over the years, performance-io has worked with many global and well-known brands in the pharma and healthcare industry, some of them including :

● AstraZeneca
● Galderma
● Leo Pharma
● Sanofi
● Novo Nordisk
● Elanco
● AbbVie
● Janssen
● Novartis
● HANX
● Biogen
● GSK
● Aimmune
● BMS

The company also works with some major non-profit organisations, some of which include:

● PeaceLove
● All About Obesity
● VMA

As performance-io is launched in India, it now has a scope to be the go-to agency for Indian pharma businesses to increase their digital presence. As a European company, it is an excellent opportunity for performance-io to improve its PAN India presence, to which Matt Lowe said, “We’d like to continue to work with progressive partners/leaders across the marcoms mix to ensure their campaigns reach and help as many people as possible. This involves going on a journey together and not always doing what has been done before.”