Our recent blog titled the new norm for community pharmacy was very popular. It had the highest engagement in a very long time! So, because we like to write content that helps the pharmacy industry with current issues, we have written a follow-up blog.
The blog highlighted that the trading levels for 2022 were an anomaly and the market has since shifted dramatically. We can no longer ride the wave of COVID, where Pharmacies were the answer to many of the public’s needs. Your community don’t have to go to you store now, and they don’t have as much to spend than previous years.
You may remember from previous blogs, the four pillars of sales growth in pharmacies. Customer Numbers, Customer Loyalty, Customer Frequency and Customer Spend. In these times, your communication with your community needs to be at its best and most engaging. Clever pharmacies will look at strategies to drive customer loyalty and numbers, but also strategies to keep up the frequency too. The effort that is put in now will help with future months’ profitability. At the very least preserve the gains you made in prior years!
But how does one put in such strategies? Well, we suggest starting with the basics 👇
Who does your pharmacy appeal to the most?
It is important to understand here, is your average customer will go to different pharmacies for different reasons.
For example, some will go to Chemist Warehouse for products because they will be cheaper. Furthermore, they may go to Priceline for some beauty items that you don’t have. But if you are focused on health, they may go to your store for script and health advice. Knowing how to position your store in relation to your competitors and customer habits is vital. A good motto to remember is, you can’t be all things to all people.
Quite simply, you’re doing your business a disservice if you’re trying to appeal to every man and his dog. Why? Because your pharmacy isn’t going to be seen as valuable to everyone, so it's efficient to focus your time on the people it does.
Spend time understanding why certain types of people visit your pharmacy and how can you reach similar audience. From there you will have some set audiences to focus on, these people are your target audience(s).
What are you communicating to your audience?
Once you understand your customer’s profile and how you are relevant to their health needs, it’s time to create a plan of attack for how you’re going to promote your pharmacy. This is simply the strategy and message you will use consistently throughout all your communication and promotional channels.
Some examples include:
· Positioning your pharmacy based on a particular health issue or service
· Pushing your pharmacy’s expertise: Health advice and knowledge
· Demographical messaging: the local pharmacy (services and products that appeals to your immediate catchment area.)
This is where successful pharmacies excel! Because they tailor their promotions and communication to attract more customers to their pharmacy. They look at what their customers find of the most value and use that to promote back to them. They also speak their customer's language and use common interests to drive interaction. For example, if a pharmacy is targeting first-time mums, then sharing information about nappy rash and lactation would attract mums to engage with the pharmacy.
Lastly, where do you find your audience?
This is the missing piece to driving customer loyalty, selecting the right channels to reach your audience and promoting how you add value to them. Pharmacies understand that they can no longer rely on waiting for customers to physically visit their store. However, we believe there is a gap in knowledge for some of where they should be promoting their business.
Our answer is that it depends on your target audience! What might work for Chemist Warehouse might not work for your pharmacy unless you’re chasing price-conscious customers. Where Priceline is focusing on their promotions might not work either if your audience isn’t female. You need to ensure that what you choose is where your ideal customers will find you.
As a rule of thumb pharmacies should utilise four different channels of communication consistently. We recommend a healthy balance of both traditional and digital channels. An example could be a loyalty membership/email mailing list, Facebook page, sponsorship of a local footy club and in-store events.
The above may seem like basic exercises however, it is something that many pharmacies don’t review regularly. The more you understand about your customers and why they’re loyal to your pharmacy, will help put motions in place to drive further customer loyalty. You need a foundation to actively seek new customers. Furthermore, having a foundation is key for measurement and tracking for success. If you’re being sporadic with your promotions and communication, you will find it hard to gauge what is and isn’t working.
Where to now?
Our number one pastime is watching pharmacies flourish and excel in their field. So, we couldn’t just write two blog articles and call it a day. We have decided to bring back webinars!
The first webinar for the Peak calendar will expand on the concepts discussed in this blog and how to maintain customer loyalty post the covid bubble. Walk away from the session with tried and tested strategies that can be implemented straight away into your pharmacy.
REGISTER TODAY 👇
Blog written by Sarah Rendell.