There is a fleeting moment that determines the success of an over-the-counter pharmaceutical brand. It occurs every time a pharmacy professional makes a recommendation, whether at the dispensary counter or in the front shop. This moment happens thousands of times daily and lasts less than a second.
This is the Recommendation Moment, a critical 0.7-second window in which a pharmacy professional decides which product to suggest. In that instant, a brand’s reputation, recall, trustworthiness, and clinical clarity either work in its favour or against it.
Brands that surface in this moment do not arrive there by chance. They have invested in sustained professional education, built credibility, and reinforced their presence in the clinical mindset of pharmacy healthcare professionals. Those who have not are simply overlooked.
The reach and access gap
The challenge is reach. In a market of more than 13,000 pharmacy healthcare professionals in South Africa, traditional sales models lack the scale and frequency required to meaningfully influence behaviour.
Field teams are inherently limited. They cannot consistently access every pharmacy, nor can they engage every healthcare professional with sufficient depth or regularity. Interactions are brief, often interrupted, and primarily transactional. Even where access is achieved, the opportunity to build lasting clinical understanding is constrained.
At the same time, pharmacy professionals are increasingly stretched and selective about who they give time. They’re less reliant on sales representatives and less responsive to brand-led communication channels. This creates a gap between pharmaceutical brands and the professionals they aim to influence.
Without sustained, credible engagement, brands fail to build the familiarity and clinical confidence required to be recalled in the Recommendation Moment.
This is where continuous education becomes a critical growth driver.
Continuous pharmacy HCP education as a growth driver A single recommendation is not a soft influence. It is one of the most powerful and measurable growth levers in pharmacy marketing, yet it remains underutilised. Ongoing education enables brands to remain top of mind when a pharmacy professional makes a recommendation.
Educational marketing is the structured delivery of clinically relevant, evidence-based content that builds knowledge, confidence, and trust in a brand. It is not promotional in nature. Instead, it focuses on improving clinical understanding, product application, and patient outcomes. When executed effectively, it positions a brand within the professional decision-making framework of the pharmacy healthcare professional.
Critically, this education must be delivered online, enabling on-demand, anytime access. Pharmacy professionals operate in high-pressure, time-constrained environments and do not engage consistently with scheduled, sales-led interactions or static brand websites. They prefer independent, credible platforms where learning is accessible, unbiased, and clinically rigorous.
Trust is central. Content must be scientifically grounded, peer-aligned, and delivered within environments that prioritise education over promotion.
When delivered within trusted educational environments, data consistently shows that brands embedded within these ecosystems outperform their competitors.
1.8–2.5× faster category growth for pharmacist-recommended brands 5–12% price premium retained by recommended brands 60–90% purchase conversion rate from pharmacist recommendations, versus 20–40% from price promotions 55–75% repeat purchase rate for recommended products, versus 10–15% for discount-driven purchases (OTC category analyses, 2023–2025)
Despite this, many OTC marketing strategies remain anchored in awareness, visibility, and price. While necessary, these are no longer sufficient. The underlying issue is a persistent disconnect between pharmaceutical brands and pharmacy healthcare professionals.
The pharmacist–marketer gap
82% of pharmaceutical marketing teams believe their HCP engagement is effective, yet only 28% of healthcare professionals agree.3 Pharmacists do not rely on brand websites for clinical information, and direct access to professional marketing teams is limited. Most prefer independent, trusted sources of online education. This preference is reflected in behavioural data.
Data from Pharmacy Institute demonstrates a strong demand for ongoing, clinically relevant education aligned to everyday patient needs. Pharmacy professionals spend 11 to 17 minutes per session on the platform and log in several times a week,2 compared to pharma-owned websites, which are visited infrequently and often only once. This disparity highlights a critical reality: the engagement gap is not a technology problem. It is a trust problem.
Additionally, 60–80% of pharmacy professionals prefer educational content over promotional messaging.4 They seek clinical evidence, not marketing narratives. When brands invest in credible education that builds real clinical confidence, the commercial return is tangible: 30–60% sales uplift, twice the likelihood of recommendation,5 and sustained professional loyalty.
How do brands own the Recommendation Moment?
The brands that will lead the next decade will do so not because they have the biggest awareness budgets. They will invest in clinical clarity, credible education, and sustained knowledge building, and will be present where pharmacy professionals learn, not alongside that learning, but inside it.
The shift to educational marketing moves beyond awareness to advocacy. From campaigns to clinical capability. And from impressions to behaviour change at the point of recommendation.
In a world of endless over-the-counter options, customers want a professional they can trust to guide them. When brands invest in educating pharmacy HCPs, they build clinical confidence that translates directly to the patient. That doesn’t just influence decisions. It owns them.
For further information please visit www.pharmacyinstitute.co.za
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Author: Michael Gullan from Angelfish Pr and Events on behalf of Pharmacy Institute.
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