Online Pharmacy Marketing Masterclass: How Nurx and Pandia added 45% More Subscribers in 90 Days

If you’re trying to market an online pharmacy or telemedicine service, you already know the frustration.

Pandia Health: 885% increase in leads, 72% cost-per-lead drop.

Nurx: 45% conversion lift, 70% CPA decrease.

Both in under 90 days.

If you’re running an online pharmacy or telemedicine service, you know exactly what you’re up against. Hims and Ro are burning through venture capital on every ad platform. Amazon Pharmacy is leveraging its trillion-dollar infrastructure. CVS owns half the organic search results. And you’re stuck wondering if you can even compete without their budgets.

Here’s the reality most online pharmacies miss: You don’t need Amazon’s war chest or CVS’s brand legacy to win your market. You need a smarter playbook that turns expensive clicks into profitable customers.

Pandia Health and Nurx both proved it. While their competitors dumped millions into broad-match keywords and brand awareness campaigns, we built surgical online pharmacy marketing strategies that dominated high-intent searches and converted visitors into loyal customers at a fraction of the cost.

The best part? The same approach works whether you’re scaling birth control delivery or building a comprehensive digital health platform.

Here’s exactly how we did it—and how you can replicate these results for your pharmacy.

Case Study #1: Pandia Health—The Integrated Approach

The Challenge: Breaking Through in a Crowded Market

Pandia Health had a clear mission: make women’s lives easier by delivering birth control directly through the internet. Founded by Dr. Sophia Yen, a reproductive health specialist in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company offered a compelling service. But getting customers to find them? That was the hard part.

The obstacles were significant:

• Intense competition from well-funded players throwing money at both PPC and SEO
• Sky-high CPCs in the birth control category that made profitable customer acquisition feel impossible
• Minimal organic visibility with fewer than 20 keywords ranking on Google’s first page
• Pressure to scale quickly without burning through their marketing budget

Like most online pharmacies, Pandia Health couldn’t simply outspend the competition. They needed a more intelligent strategy.

The Upgrow Approach: Data-Driven Strategy Across Channels

Instead of competing head-to-head on expensive broad keywords, Upgrow built a comprehensive dual-channel strategy that leveraged insights from both paid and organic search.

PPC Campaign Strategy

When Upgrow took over Pandia Health’s Google Ads account in February 2020, they immediately went to work restructuring everything:

Campaign Restructuring: The team broke down campaigns by keyword themes, giving them tight control over where every dollar went. No more broad campaigns eating budget on irrelevant clicks.

Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs): Instead of lumping keywords together, Upgrow built individual ad groups around single keywords. This created laser-focused ad experiences that improved Click-Through Rates and Quality Scores—which meant lower costs.

Long-Tail Keyword Focus: Rather than fighting for expensive terms like “birth control,” they targeted specific brand-related searches like “gianvi birth control.” Less competition, higher purchase intent, better ROI.

Continuous Testing: Systematic A/B testing of ad copy and landing pages delivered ongoing improvements and revealed insights that informed the broader marketing strategy.

SEO Strategy: Building Long-Term Organic Growth

At the same time, Upgrow rolled out a comprehensive SEO program targeting the same high-intent keywords:

Strategic Content Development: Using conversion data from paid search to inform priorities, the team built out birth control brand pages that didn’t exist and optimized existing content.

Mobile UX Optimization: Since most traffic came from mobile devices, Upgrow redesigned pages with product images, clear value props, sticky CTAs, and cleaner layouts that actually converted.

Site Architecture Improvements: They created directory pages linking from the homepage to individual brand pages, distributing link authority throughout the site strategically.

Internal Linking Strategy: High-authority blog posts were linked to target pages, passing valuable SEO juice where it mattered most.

The Results: Exceptional Growth Across Both Channels

The integrated approach delivered serious results:

PPC Results (First 3 Months)

• 885% increase in leads
• 72% decrease in cost-per-lead
• 42% decrease in average CPC
• 108% improvement in conversion rate

SEO Results (14 Months)

• 341% increase in organic traffic from birth control pages
• 210% increase in orders from birth control pages
• 200+ keywords ranking on page 1 (up from fewer than 20)

These weren’t vanity metrics. They translated directly to business growth and profitability. By crushing it on PPC while building a sustainable organic foundation, Pandia Health achieved the kind of efficient, scalable growth most online pharmacies only dream about.

Case Study #2: Nurx—Building From Zero

The Challenge: Breaking Into Healthcare Advertising

Nurx had a different starting point. The YCombinator-backed company had raised a Series B round and offered birth control plus HIV prevention medication (PrEP). They had product-market fit. They had funding. What they didn’t have was a search presence.

Their challenges were unique:

Regulatory Nightmare: Google requires comprehensive online pharmacy certifications before you can even run ads for prescription meds. The process is complex, time-consuming, and trips up most companies for months.

Starting From Absolute Zero: No existing campaigns. No tracking infrastructure. No historical data. Everything had to be built from scratch.

Hyper-Competitive Category: Birth control and sexual health keywords on paid search? That’s where the big players spend big money.

Two Different Audiences: Marketing birth control versus PrEP means reaching completely different people with different concerns and decision-making processes.

The Upgrow Solution: Strategic Foundation + Rapid Execution

Upgrow’s approach combined careful foundational work with aggressive scaling.

Phase 1: Clearing Regulatory Hurdles

Before launching a single ad, Upgrow coordinated the entire certification process with Google and Bing. This is where most telemedicine companies get stuck for months. Upgrow’s healthcare advertising experience made it smooth. Once approved, the floodgates opened.

Phase 2: Building Technical Infrastructure

With approval secured, Upgrow implemented comprehensive tracking through Google Tag Manager:

• Conversion tracking for all key actions
• Phone call tracking to capture offline conversions
• Cross-device tracking for accurate attribution
• Custom event tracking for funnel analysis

You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. This foundation enabled data-driven decisions from day one.

Phase 3: Strategic Account Architecture

Rather than rushing to launch, Upgrow methodically built the account structure:

Campaign Themes organized by:

• Product type (birth control vs. PrEP)
• Brand names and variations
• Competitor terms
• Customer journey stages

Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) within each campaign delivered:

• Hyper-relevant ad copy that matched search intent perfectly
• Higher Quality Scores from better relevance signals
• Improved landing page matching for better conversion rates
• Granular bid control at the keyword level

Phase 4: Continuous Optimization

With everything in place, the team focused on rapid testing:

• Systematic ad copy testing to boost CTR
• Performance-based bid adjustments
• Negative keyword refinement to eliminate waste
• Landing page optimization recommendations
• Budget shifts toward top performers

The Results: From Zero to Hero in 90 Days

Within three months, Upgrow transformed Nurx’s search presence from nothing to a high-performing acquisition channel:

45% Increase in Conversions: Consistent month-over-month growth brought in more customers while maintaining efficiency.

70% Under Target CPA: They didn’t just hit their cost-per-acquisition targets—they destroyed them. Being 70% under target meant Nurx could scale aggressively while staying profitable.

Quality Scores of 8-10: Most high-traffic keywords hit Quality Scores between 8-10 (out of 10). These exceptional scores meant:

• Lower costs per click
• Better ad positions
• More efficient overall spending

What You Can Learn From Both Success Stories

These two case studies reveal different paths to the same destination: profitable, scalable customer acquisition. Here’s what matters:

1. You Don’t Need the Biggest Budget—You Need the Smartest Strategy

Both companies succeeded by focusing on long-tail, high-intent keywords instead of fighting over expensive broad terms. “Gianvi birth control” beats “birth control” every time when you’re watching margins.

2. Let Your Paid Data Inform Your Organic Strategy

Upgrow used Pandia Health’s Google Ads conversion data to prioritize which SEO content to create. Why guess when you have data showing exactly what converts?

3. Mobile Experience Isn’t Optional

Healthcare searches happen primarily on mobile. If your mobile experience is clunky, you’re bleeding money. Period.

4. Integration Amplifies Everything

When Pandia Health dominated both paid and organic results for their target keywords, their overall visibility and market share exploded. One plus one equaled three.

5. Regulatory Compliance Is Manageable With The Right Partner

Nurx could have spent months fumbling through Google’s certification requirements. Instead, Upgrow’s healthcare expertise got them approved quickly and correctly.

6. Account Structure Is Your Foundation

Both companies benefited from the SKAG methodology and proper account architecture. The upfront work pays off in long-term performance and efficiency.

7. Quality Score Is Your Secret Weapon

In competitive healthcare categories, achieving high Quality Scores separates profitable campaigns from money pits. It’s not magic—it’s relevance, consistency, and technical execution.

What The Founders Say

Dr. Sophia Yen, CEO & Co-Founder, Pandia Health:

“Upgrow has been a key growth partner of ours for the past few years, where they manage our paid media and organic search program. We’ve seen tremendous growth in our organic traffic and sales, and combined with our paid media program, Upgrow has been instrumental to Pandia Health’s success.”

“Upgrow has been key to our growth success, efficiently scaling Google paid search in a highly competitive category. They are masterful in paid search ads, providing valuable strategic input and executional expertise.”

Katelyn Watson, VP of Marketing, Nurx:

“Upgrow helped us rapidly test and scale within our search program, driving us to go from almost no search to a fully functioning SEM machine.”

Is Your Online Pharmacy Ready to Scale?

The telemedicine and online pharmacy space keeps growing, but competition is getting fiercer by the day. Success isn’t just about having a great product anymore. You need sophisticated, data-driven marketing that acquires customers efficiently while building real brand presence.

Whether you’re an established online pharmacy looking to scale or a new telemedicine service struggling to gain traction, the strategies that worked for Pandia Health and Nurx can work for you.

The difference? Having a partner who understands both the technical side of paid search optimization and the regulatory maze of healthcare advertising.

Ready to transform your online pharmacy marketing?

Upgrow’s comprehensive approach to marketing for online pharmacies has helped multiple telemedicine companies achieve breakthrough results. Our team specializes in healthcare marketing and knows exactly what works in this space—from navigating compliance requirements to building campaigns that actually deliver ROI.

Contact us today to discuss your pharmacy’s growth goals and discover how we can help you dominate your market.

Upgrow is a growth marketing agency specializing in performance-driven PPC and SEO strategies for healthcare, telemedicine, and online pharmacy companies. We help healthcare innovators navigate regulatory requirements, build compliant advertising programs, and scale customer acquisition efficiently.