The past twelve months of pharmacy have provided a lot of challenges, including the never ending vaccinations, rapid antigen tests, staff sickness (if you’re lucky enough to have staff) and empty shelves waiting for orders to arrive. Which were all addressed by the Guild at the WA Forum. For those who attended it is clear that some of these issues (I’m talking about the staff shortages) aren’t going away anytime soon. However, despite the exhaustion most pharmacies have come out of the storm with a healthy bank balance.
The growth in GP$ from Covid related services and products is undeniable. But, as we head into the 2023 financial year we have to take the rose tinted Covid glasses off and realise this income is not forever. The Covid pot of gold under the pharmacy rainbow is not a never ending solution and it has already begun to dry up as we look at recent reports.
As we say goodbye to the Covid storm it is not all doom and gloom. It is just about re-evaluating your strategy. It is time to tighten the belt and focus energy where you will see future profits. In community pharmacy this means making the most of your health services and community relationships.
It does not mean cancelling that Canva subscription and stopping your monthly email newsletter. Instead it means readjusting the strategy, taking a magnifying glass to your business and realising the overlooked opportunities.
During the past couple years many pharmacies have jumped on the bandwagon setting up Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and even Tiktok accounts. Many have been very successful in growing a following, and many have been very successful in monetising this audience too. If this is you, well done. The challenge now is to keep that momentum going when customers have less reasons to find themselves in your store.
If you read that and thought, I have no idea what I am doing with social media or how to turn your followers into dollars. Don’t worry, this is the perfect time to start.
Focus On Your Marketing Strategy
Marketing without a strategy is like dispensing medications without a script. How can you know what is needed, how much and of what without knowing your audience.
I apologise for my terrible pharmacist analogy, but I hope it gets the point across. You need a marketing strategy if you want to be deliberate and successful in your marketing efforts!
So, what do I mean by marketing strategy?
I will break it down into 3 questions you need to ask yourself.
Who is your target audience?
What do you want to achieve?
How will you achieve these goals?
Who is your target audience is one of the most important questions to ask yourself before you begin any kind of marketing activity. That is why it is the first lesson of our Marketing Module.
Who you are targeting will determine your imagery, colours, text and channels. Remember, we are talking about multiple groups here. It is common to see a large population of elderly and young families in the same community. You may reach these young families on Facebook & Instagram but you are less likely to reach your elderly population here.
Does that mean these channels aren't right for you? No. It means that when you want to promote services for elderly you use imagery and language that is targeted towards those who are on these platforms - their children or carers.
Once you know who you are targeting you will be able to answer the other questions.
Point Of Difference (POD)
Arguably, the most important takeaway from this blog is to reevaluate what your point of difference is. During the pandemic people were focussed on convenience. Most pharmacies offered vaccinations, masks and RATs. It was a game of who has the stock and is able to get this message out the quickest.
The pace has changed now, but this is an advantage. You will always have your convenience shoppers from your local community. But what can you offer better than any other pharmacy? Something people are willing to travel for.
If you were at the WA Forum think about that concept of full scope health destination for pharmacy. As a pharmacist you are able to help everyone, but who do you really want to help? It is okay to not market everything you do but just focus on marketing what you want to do. This is a great conversation to have with your team. What do they enjoy doing?
A few points of difference I have seen work well are, gut health, natural health, baby care, diabetes care, sleep apnoea, fertility, podiatry, naturopathy, audiology and men’s health.
The opportunities are endless; it is just about finding a niche that has a large enough audience and demand to be profitable. To determine this it is a lot of research and sometimes some trial and error!
Marketing Pillars
The next part of a marketing strategy is your marketing pillars. You may have heard us talk about marketing pillars before as it's one of the modules in our Marketing Module. The reason we use pillars is simple, it makes your life 100% easier when planning and scheduling content.
In our Marketing Module we teach the pillars of entertain, educate, inspire and convince. This can roughly translate to 3-4 posts per week. To make it really simple for your team do this:
1 post per week about your POD - service based
1 post per week about your POD - product based
1 post per week team or store update
1 post per week related to health day/community event
Something I see my clients struggle with at times is wanting to make every post about something different. It comes from the idea that we don't want to be repetitive or bore our audience, but there is little worry for that. Consistency is key when it comes to marketing. The way to ensure your audience knows your point of difference, is to post about it, over, and over, and over again.
To avoid making it ‘boring’ this is why we have our pillars of educate, entertain, inspire and convince. There are a million ways to say the same thing. Let your team get creative here and remember social media is about being social. You want to create content that is worth sharing and starting a conversation about.
The key takeaways from this blog is that now is the time to shake up your marketing strategy and adjust your goals for the next 12 months.
John will be releasing a blog next week which will go into detail about how pharmacy owners should be preparing themselves financially for 2023, including budget forecasting and cost evaluations.
If you are wanting to launch your marketing strategy for 2023 but need help getting your team trained on all things marketing for pharmacy, check out our Marketing Module.
Or if your team are marketing gurus but are just looking for that extra momentum, we can offer monthly marketing consulting services.
Send me an email if you are interested to learn more: renee.giesemann@peakstrategies.com.au