In the pharmacy landscape we have both independent pharmacies, and different brands offering various things. From the pharmacies we work with, we cannot identify a real trend between top performers and the poor performers when it comes to brands vs independents. It mostly comes down to the skill of the owner. Of course, there are exceptions with some brands we know performing better than the market.
What I find most interesting however, is brands have a lot more resources at their disposal than the average independent pharmacy owner, but some of their pharmacies are missing a golden opportunity. What is this you ask? Well, read along..
If you’ve engaged with any of our content, you would have heard discussions about brand marketing versus community based marketing. Brand marketing is about building the brand and most do an exceptional job at this. However, what we believe at Peak Strategies is that brand marketing is the supporting act and local marketing is the headliner. Therefore, it is the connection to a specific pharmacy’s community that makes all the difference. So, the missing link to a branded pharmacy’s marketing plan is how to connect the resources from your brand to help build a strong local presence.
The pharmacy owners we have as part of our Pharmacy Mastermind program are taught about the 4 critical success factors in pharmacy.
● Customer Numbers
● Customer Loyalty
● Customer Frequency
● Customer Spend
All these factors are critical when it comes to sustainable growth in pharmacy. A well-structured community-based marketing strategy is critical to achieving successful outcomes in all of these.
So, the golden opportunity for brands is to help their owners with local community based marketing strategies. Brands have already set a beautiful foundation for their members and it is then time to hold their hands to personalise their marketing. Some suggestions include:
1. Ongoing support from a Local Area Marketing Manager. The marketing experts would work with each member to show them how they can drive their businesses by employing local community based marketing strategies.
2. Help each store owner identify their target audiences and their particular needs. Each store location has a different demographic profile. You cannot have a one size fits all approach. We have seen several pharmacies struggle because of this.
3. Help in creating an individual store-based content calendar. Show each member the types of social media content they should be posting each day and the types of email content that focuses on issues relevant to their target audiences and the local community. This step is vital.
4. Providing strategies, templates, and content that they can adapt to each store’s needs within the brand’s resource hub.
5. Encourage the Pharmacies to personalise. Create personalised social media templates for members to use. Being relevant to your local community is vital. It is important for each pharmacy to show they are a critical part of the local community health needs. For example, showcasing your team members, your team engaging with the local community, hosting community events, and participating in charity causes.
6. Good data means good decisions, and marketing is about data. To understand whether any strategy is successful you need to look at the key underlying data. Social media is all about engagement numbers. Email marketing is all about open rates. Website is all about the number of hits, bounce rate, what have they looked at on your website and how did they come to your website. Then there is the ultimate KPI of Total Reach. Brands should be helping members understand the key marketing data, helping them track it and interpreting it for them.
7. Providing opportunities for the pharmacies to send a personalised email campaign every month. Loyalty Programs are a vital element. The only reason for loyalty programs to exist is the customer database, particularly names and email addresses. Email campaigns are a very important component in a pharmacy's local marketing strategy. Particularly the positioning of being a vital link in the community’s health needs. Educating your local community on issues that are relevant to them. Understanding what topics your target customers feel is important to them.
Brands have a wonderful opportunity to work with their individual members and help them to create a local community based marketing strategy. If done well, the members, the brand and their patients will all benefit. The patients will have their health needs met. Pharmacies will be more relevant to their community’s health needs, they will gain more customer numbers and improve loyalty and customer frequency. If the community benefits and the pharmacy members benefit, then the brand will benefit.
Currently, we believe there needs to be a stronger focus on local area marketing across the pharmacy industry. This is how a pharmacy can compete with other pharmacies and grow their customer numbers. So, we believe the opportunity for brands moving forward is to further design or re educate their members on how working with their brand will help them create a local strategy.
This blog has spilled some tea about some of the topics we tackle in our Pharmacy Mastermind. If you’re interested in learning more, click here for more information.