Digital health keeps progressing in the past few months and will likely follow the same trend in the years to come. It is of paramount importance to take advantage of this opportunity to draft an effective plan to promote your pharmacy online and achieve your goal. Now is the time to grab the chance to communicate with the patients digitally and let them know that your pharmacy can provide them with the things they need.
To effectively promote your pharmacy online, take note of the following:
It is important to communicate with your customers digitally.
Nowadays, more and more people rely on digital communication as a means to reach out and talk to friends, colleagues, family, relatives, and take care of some business transactions. At least 10 million people in the Canada spend around 5 hours a day on social media using their smartphones.
You will be able to gather more customers for your online pharmacy when you go where you can find the majority of your customers. Don’t expect them to visit the brick and mortar store anymore, although there may be a few who will try to drop by.
There is an ever-expanding opportunity in digital marketing.
The various social media platforms and other essential digital channels evolve continuously. Because of this, there’s a need to release new marketing tools each week just to keep up with the evolving social media platforms and digital channels. This presents a wonderful chance for your online pharmacy if you can communicate with the patients, establish a connection, and increase your sales.
You need to market your online pharmacy better to avoid losing to robots.
Automation makes it possible to dispense medicines in a safer, cheaper, and quicker manner. Even the government knows this. You need to come up with an effective plan to promote your pharmacy online to attract more clients and be able to utilize other avenues to create income.
Convenient healthcare is the online pharmacy’s top value.
Digital health makes it possible for healthcare professionals and their patients to talk with each other and have the needed medicines to be delivered the very next day. The digital competition is getting tighter, and you need to come up with an effective strategy for digital health to communicate digitally with consumers to protect your online business and see it flourish.
Understand that you may need to hire the services of some agencies to help you with the effective implementations of the suggested ways of promoting your pharmacy online. You may need to shell out a bit of money, but the return will be more gratifying than you expect as long as you implement everything properly.
Here are 18 ways to tackle your online pharmacy promotion:
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Create a Good Website for Your Pharmacy Business
Having a business website is a must if you own a business. But, don’t just invest in a poorly designed website that lacks the needed support. In the worst case scenario, your poor website might even drive away your customers instead of making them stay and invite their friends and relatives to visit your website.
You can expect a fast return on investment and better sales output when you invest in a good, responsive, mobile-optimized, flexible, and solid website that provides customer support. Your website will serve as your digital hub, which can help you achieve a lot of things. You can do the following:
– Allow your customers to order their repeat prescription.
– Sell items online if you have an e-commerce website.
– Provide information about your pharmacy to your visitors as well as other things they need to know.
– Integrate WhatsApp business, which can help you communicate with your customers and suppliers with ease.
– Allow patients to register to your EPS (electronic prescription service), which enables prescriptions to be dispatched from the one who prescribes a certain medicine and then to your pharmacy.
– It is possible to book the services of your pharmacy online if you have a business website.
Keep in mind that it is mandatory to have a business website, which links every digital channel and makes it possible for you to direct your marketing efforts using the various channels.
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Create an Online Booking System
The rapidly increasing internet access and adoption all over the world is the one responsible for the yearly climb in the number of digital buyers around the globe. Around 1.92 billion people visited shops online to make a purchase in 2019. In the same year, the worldwide sales of e-commerce stores reached more than 3.5 trillion US dollars. Based on the recent calculations, the growth of e-commerce will pick up even further in the years to come, especially now that most people prefer to buy everything online.
In the early part of 2020, millions of people had decided to stay home to prevent contracting the virus and contributing to the spread of COVID-19. The global retail e-commerce traffic had reached 22 billion monthly visits in June 2020. For how long the customers will patronize online shopping will depend on the status of COVID-19 and the purchasing habits of consumers.
While people continue to make an online booking for services, you need to take advantage of the situation and provide them with a better service by creating an online booking system. With the help of the right marketing strategy, you will get to see hundreds of bookings each month for the things you offer. Another good thing about using an online booking system is that you can measure your success more effectively.
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Try Paid Advertising via Google Ads
Google Ads is an advertising platform that you can try when you want to advertise online. You need to bid for space where you want to put up your short advertisements, videos, product listings, or services for web users to see. However, it is one of the expensive options around. But, it is also the quickest and most potent way of attracting possible customers. You may expect to see a quicker return on investment than expected.
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Choose Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
You will be able to boost the traffic to your business website using local SEO when you enlist your business to local directories, such as Yelp.com. Your website can gain a better ranking for terms and keywords that the people in your community often use when looking for products and brands that are similar to what you offer. In most cases, people find it more convenient to shop online or within their community. They would rather choose a product that they can obtain locally than take a long trip somewhere just to get it. You may also choose to guest post on high-ranking local websites.
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Advertise on Facebook and Instagram
Facebook owns Instagram, and it is easy to say that they go hand in hand. Both platforms are the best avenues in reaching out to the local audience. Although the two platforms share the same company, they have different sets of target audience. If you want to create a powerful social media strategy, don’t forget to include Facebook and Instagram.
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LinkedIn, TikTok, and Other Social Media Channels
If you want to establish a connection with other business owners, LinkedIn can give you that opportunity. You can use WeChat to engage with the Chinese community in your locality. Although TikTok is a new platform, it can help you create an effective marketing video. There’s also a local app called Nextdoor that you can use if you want to market your products and services to your neighbours. You have lots of options to choose from and all can help you create an effective marketing strategy.
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Attend Local Events and Gain Good Exposure for Your Pharmacy
Many people love attending different events. Even your local customers like to attend events. You can check out Eventbrite to see the different events that you can attend and have an opportunity to invite customers to your pharmacy. Any event that can allow you to network and talk to potential customers should be your target. You may also choose to create your own event, which will serve as a way to introduce the things that your pharmacy can provide and deliver.
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Using the Right PMR System (Patient Management Relation)
The PMR system can help the pharmacy teams to check whether a patient has issues, such as under compliance, with his/her current medicines. The PMR system is the main dispensing system and also works as a CRM tool. It is advisable to have a PMR system that supports emailing or text messaging to patients. Take note that if you need to change your PMR, you should also consider your CRM.
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Consider Direct Mail to Create Conversions
A Direct mail t is one of the best methods of reaching out to your customers using flyers, leaflets, or postcards, and other types of postal communication. A good Direct Mail must catch the attention of the recipient in a matter of seconds and compel him/her to take action.
As a pharmacy business, you need to think about B2B and B2C. Keep in mind that fostering a close relationship with the primary stakeholders, who have connections to your target audience, can bring you immense influence. Sending them a personal letter can be a great start.
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Go Digital When Having Direct Communication with Patients
Today, there are apps like WhatsApp Business can make communication smoother and easier. Phone calls should only be a secondary option since it is becoming more difficult and annoying to talk about the medication over the phone, unlike when using the said apps. People often leave bad reviews when they can’t connect to your business via phone. It would be difficult to remove the bad reviews once you have them, and it may affect your business in the process.
These apps can also double as marketing tools. You can build lists of people using these apps and conduct direct marketing. The other apps with direct marketing features also have prescriptions reordering app.
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Pay a Visit to Primary Stakeholders and Other Businesses Near You
The other businesses, especially the key stakeholders, in your area may not be aware of the existence of your pharmacy. Take time to visit them and exude an amiable presence before handing out your brochure. Stay awhile and have a good talk that will perk up their interests in you and your business. The next time any of their workers need some medications, they may remember your pharmacy and contact you.
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Think of a Better Design for Your Pharmacy
Having a good design, which includes adequate space and lighting, for your pharmacy can attract more customers and keep them coming back. Don’t expect people to visit again or even step inside your pharmacy if they feel sick or uncomfortable upon seeing the setup and design of your pharmacy. Try to make your customers feel comfortable and can sense that they are in good hands when they visit your pharmacy.
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Prepare Attractive In-Store Posters, Banners, and Other Marketing Tools
It is good to have attractive posters, leaflets, banner-rollers, business cards, and other marketing tools in your pharmacy but keep it minimal and clean. The idea is to put up posters and other marketing materials in an orderly manner and not too much. You don’t want a messy-looking pharmacy.
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Consider Putting Up Digital TV Displays
If you want to bring customers into your store and keep them engaged while they are there, the digital TV displays can help you accomplish that. When you have digital TV displays, you can get rid of some of the marketing tools that contribute to clutter
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Make Your In-Store Products Available Online
You can have digital images of all your in-store products and make them available online. If you have a Google My Business profile, you can include the digital images of your products.
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Let Your Pharmacy Team Undergo Training
To deliver superb service to your customers, your pharmacy staff should undergo proper training in handling customers that they should serve well. Your staff should learn the ethical way to sell multiple products and make the customers feel like a celebrity.
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Hold In-Store Events Every Month
As mentioned earlier, many people like attending events and setting up one of your own every month can make your customers look forward to it. You can showcase your new products in the said events or other activities that can help them improve their skin or body. Of course, they need to buy the needed supplement or tool from your store. You can use Meetup, Eventbrite, and Facebook to set up your event.
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Create a Loyalty Scheme
When creating a loyalty scheme, you need to think of a certain amount that your customers are willing to spend to get a certain discount, freebie, or points that they can exchange for an item in your store. Loyalty schemes can help you market your pharmacy and create profit for your business. Just make sure that when you give out something to your loyal customers, you still get more profit than you have given away.
About Analytics 
It is only right to talk about analysis when marketing is being discussed. You need to examine your marketing efforts to make sure that you are gaining some profits.
Certain things are difficult to check, like the number of people that walk in your store because of your flyer or Instagram post. You can only be certain about it when you have a feedback system installed and could give the data that you need.
However, you can measure the kind of engagement that you get online and have a definite answer on how well you are doing for your paid marketing online. You need to analyze the results every month to know if you are doing it right or you need to change your strategy.