What does a pharma reporter need from you that they cannot get from your press release? Context. A release tells them what happened. A useful source tells them what it means for sales, pricing, competition, patients or the rest of the industry.
That is the core of how to get featured in Fierce Pharma: bring the context, not just the announcement. Published by Questex as part of its Fierce Life Sciences and Healthcare group, Fierce Pharma covers the commercial side of the drug business. Its readers work across pharma companies, investors, agencies, contract manufacturers and the policy world. They read it to understand which launches are working, how pricing fights are playing out, where manufacturing is struggling and what deals are reshaping the industry. Its reporters are looking for stories that help those readers make decisions.
This guide covers the four angles that most reliably earn coverage, how to match your story to the right reporter and the mistakes that end pharma pitches early.
Know the difference between Fierce Pharma and its sister titles
Before you pitch, be sure you are pitching the right title. This sounds basic, and it is the mistake we see most.
Fierce Pharma focuses on the business of medicines, especially once they reach or near the market. Think commercial launches, quarterly sales, marketing campaigns, direct-to-consumer advertising, pricing and access, patent litigation, manufacturing capacity, supply problems, layoffs and mergers. Fierce Biotech, its sister title, leans toward earlier-stage science, clinical trials, venture funding and startup news. Fierce Healthcare covers providers, payers and health tech.
A company announcing positive Phase 2 data is usually a Fierce Biotech story. The same company announcing a commercial launch plan, a pricing decision or a co-promotion deal is more likely a Fierce Pharma story. A contract manufacturer expanding capacity for a blockbuster drug class sits squarely in Fierce Pharma’s manufacturing coverage.
Getting this right shows the reporter you have read their work. Getting it wrong signals a mass email.
When in doubt, read a week of each title and ask where your competitors have appeared.
The four angles that work
The first angle is commercial performance with context. Fierce Pharma covers launches and sales closely. If your company has an approved product, the story is not that it launched. It is how the launch is going and why. Prescription trends, payer coverage wins, share gained against a competitor, an unusual patient support program or a market that turned out bigger or smaller than expected all give a reporter something to analyze. Public companies already disclose much of this in earnings. Private companies and smaller players can stand out by sharing numbers others do not.
The second angle is pricing and access. Drug pricing is one of the most heavily covered topics in pharma, from list price changes and rebates to Medicare negotiation, state laws and patient affordability programs. If your company is making a pricing decision that departs from the norm, has data on how patients are affected by access barriers or has a clear view on a policy change, you have a story. Be prepared for hard questions. Reporters on this beat are well informed and skeptical of claims that sound like talking points.
The third angle is manufacturing and supply. Shortages, quality problems, plant investments, onshoring decisions and capacity deals all get covered, especially when they affect important drug classes. A manufacturer announcing a new facility should explain what it will make, how much capacity it adds, how many jobs it creates and why the location matters. A company dealing with a supply problem is better served by being open and quick with facts than by staying silent and letting others tell the story.
The fourth angle is marketing that breaks the mold. Fierce Pharma reports on pharma marketing, including TV campaigns, social media, influencer work, unbranded disease awareness and the rules that govern them. A campaign gets covered when it does something new, takes a risk, reaches an audience differently or runs into regulatory trouble. Agencies and brands that can explain the strategy behind a campaign, with numbers on reach or response where they can share them, have a far better chance than those that just send the ad.
Deals and legal fights are also core coverage, but they usually find the reporter rather than the other way round. If your company is in one, make sure your spokesperson is reachable and your facts are ready.
Build a pitch a pharma reporter can use
We run every pharma pitch through what we call the So-What Ladder. It has three rungs. What happened? What does it mean for this company? What does it mean for the industry? Most press releases stop at the first rung. Good pitches reach the second. The pitches that earn features reach the third.
Here is how that looks in practice. “Company X launched drug Y” is rung one. “Company X priced drug Y 30% below its main rival, betting on volume and payer goodwill” is rung two. “Company X’s pricing could pressure rivals in a crowded class as payers push back on list prices” is rung three. A reporter can write a story from rung three. They will often ignore rung one.
Keep the pitch short. Lead with the news and the most important number. Add one sentence of context and one on why it matters now. Offer a named executive for an interview, with a clear window. Link to the release and any data rather than attaching files.
Find the right reporter by reading recent bylines in your topic area. Fierce Pharma’s reporters tend to follow specific companies, therapeutic areas and themes, such as marketing, manufacturing or pricing. A pitch to the person who covered your competitor last month will be read with more interest than one to a general address.
Timing matters. Earnings weeks are crowded, and major medical meetings bring floods of news. If your story can wait, a quieter week gives it more room. If it cannot, send it early on a weekday morning.
What vendors and agencies should pitch instead
Many of the people reading this do not work for a drug company. They work for the agencies, contract manufacturers, data firms and technology providers that serve one. Fierce Pharma does cover them, but almost never because of the vendor’s own news. A new client win, a rebrand or a new service line is rarely enough.
What works is turning your vantage point into industry insight. A contract manufacturer sees demand across many clients, which means it can speak to capacity trends in a drug class, the effect of tariffs or onshoring policy on supply chains or the timelines companies now face to bring a plant online. A healthcare marketing agency sees how dozens of brands are shifting budgets, which means it can speak to the rise of connected TV in pharma advertising, how brands respond to regulatory warnings or what patients respond to in disease awareness campaigns. A data company may be able to share anonymized prescribing or access trends that no single manufacturer would release.
The pitch then becomes a story about the industry, with your company as the source. Offer your data or expert, explain what it shows in two sentences and make clear you are not asking for product coverage. Reporters remember sources like that, and the coverage that follows often mentions your company in a far more credible way than any announcement could.
If you have a client story, get the client’s agreement to be named before you pitch. A named pharma client speaking about a specific result is worth far more than an anonymous case study, and reporters will ask.
Prepare before you press send
A good pharma pitch depends on preparation the reporter never sees. Line up four things before you contact anyone.
The first is legal and regulatory review. Anything you say about an approved product has to stay within its label, and your medical, legal and regulatory reviewers need to approve the pitch, the release and the talking points in advance. Build their review time into your schedule. A reporter will not wait three days for a quote to clear.
The second is your numbers. Decide what you can share on sales, patients, pricing, capacity or timelines, and have the figures ready in a short note. Reporters on this beat will ask, and “we do not break that out” is an acceptable answer only if you have something else to offer.
The third is your spokesperson. Choose someone senior enough to speak with authority, brief them on the reporter’s recent work and run a practice interview with the hard questions. Pricing and access stories in particular draw pointed follow-ups.
The fourth is your outside voices. If a physician, patient advocate or analyst can speak to the story, ask them in advance whether they are willing to talk, and share their details only with permission.
With those four pieces in place, you are ready for the part most guides on how to get featured in Fierce Pharma skip: answering the follow-up questions fast enough to make the story.
Mistakes that end pharma pitches early
The first is promotional language. Pharma is a regulated industry, and reporters know that companies cannot say whatever they like about their products. Avoid superlatives, and never make claims about safety or effectiveness that go beyond the approved label. A pitch that sounds like an ad tells the reporter you may not be a reliable source.
The second is hiding the number. If you are pitching a commercial story, a reporter will want sales, patients, prescriptions, price or capacity. If you cannot share any number, consider whether the story is ready.
The third is unavailable spokespeople. Pharma news moves quickly, and a reporter working on a deadline will move on if your executive cannot talk until next week. Line up your spokesperson before you pitch.
The fourth is ignoring bad news. If your company has a recall, a failed launch or a lawsuit, reporters will cover it with or without you. Companies that respond quickly and factually tend to get fairer coverage than those that decline to comment.
Knowing how to get featured in Fierce Pharma once is useful. Knowing how to stay a trusted source is better. Coverage in Fierce Pharma lasts. It reaches the people who make commercial decisions across the industry, and it becomes part of the record that search engines and AI assistants draw on when someone asks about your company, your product or your market. Earn it with stories that reach the third rung of the So-What Ladder, and you will find reporters coming back to you.