BUSINESS
Digital Rx: The Complete Guide to Online Pharmacy Marketing
If you ask around at small businesses, you’ll find that the average business is spending around $75,000 a year on digital marketing alone. If you’re running a small pharmacy online, you’re probably spending that much on your total pharmacy marketing budget. However, with the help of some online tactics, you can stretch every marketing dollar a little further.
Here are four tactics to get the most out of your pharmacy marketing efforts this year.
- Start a Blog
One of the most searched for topics on the internet is healthcare. People are constantly looking for ways to get better, asking questions about symptoms, or looking up drug interactions. People are also looking into what their other options are when they’re prescribed an expensive medication.
When you start a blog, you provide a lot of value to your potential customers. The people who are looking for products and services like yours are going to want to get as much information as they can in advance. When you start a blog, you can share vital information, studies, and data that helps consumers decide on what products they need.
When you have a blog, you also get the chance to show off your company’s expertise. Talk to consumers at their level and let them know that you care about their concerns. Write about the issues that you get the most questions about and respond to any feedback that you get to show that you’re listening.
Search engines rank sites that have an active blog higher than sites without one. Make sure you update your blog often. If a certain product is in the news, capitalize on that by linking to some of the recent research or dispel some of the myths you’ve seen in the media.
- Build Subscribers
While some people don’t realize the power of email marketing, it’s still a powerful tool for contacting users directly. If you’ve had people buy your products in the past, talk to you at trade shows, or sign up for updates, you need to keep their information organized. Tools like MailChimp are great for organizing all the subscribers that you gather and to contact them at the push of a button.
Once you’ve gotten the consent of consumers to contact them, you can start sharing the information that they find valuable. Organize your lists into as granular of groupings as you want. You can even organize between different products ordered since you already have their information
One subscriber list is great and you can get one with the help of your social media profile. However, multiple subscriber lists ensure that you’re able to target different groups with different information. This way you’ll be able to offer sitewide discounts when needed or inform certain customers of new products.
No one is going to be looking at the yellow pages for pharmacy information anymore. They’ll be going to your website. Make sure you have a call to action on every page that gets people to enter their email for discounts or more information.
- Make Social Media Work For You
While you might think of social media as just a place for photos of kittens and babies, it’s actually a great medium for sharing information. Where once the audience for social media was college kids and teenagers, those people have grown up and the net has widened. There are more people using social media now than who are watching anything on TV or listening to the radio, meaning this is the place to market.
The difference between marketing on social media and other types of advertising is that some tactics won’t work. The social media audience is savvy and sees through those old standard ways of selling products. They’re not interested in boring sales tactics and demand something new.
You have to have a hook on social media, but thankfully with the ways that social media channels support images and video, it’s never been easier. You can produce commercials on your phone or crowdsource material for your social media profile. In exchange for discounts, you could have real people talking about how your products have helped them.
Pharmaceuticals need to walk a delicate line when it comes to HIPAA regulations. You can thank your audience for sharing their stories but you often can’t acknowledge their conditions or what doctor they go to. Make sure you’re operating above board and you can get a lot out of social media.
- Host Events
One of the best ways to market your online pharmacy is by creating some real-world events. While you might not be located in proximity to your customer base, you should bring your products to them whenever possible. Whenever people can put a face behind a company, they inherently trust it more.
If there are health fairs and trade shows around, you should participate in those. Hire a few reps who handle social media and appear on your feed. Have them post Instagram stories and photos with other people in the industry on a regular basis.
Find major health markets and send reps from your pharmacy to get the word out. Give out coupons with unique codes to see how many people you can get to turn your conversation with them into a sale.
You can offer information about medication, free pill cutters, or pill organizers with your brand name on them. Then whenever they’re looking for a cheap deal or a Canadian pharmacy, they’ll turn to you.
Pharmacy Marketing is a Challenge
If you’re struggling with your pharmacy marketing tactics, you’re not alone. Many small businesses have struggled to make the transition from regular marketing to online marketing. Thankfully, you can look at examples that work and try to learn from what other people are doing if you want to get started.
If you want to boost your search engine ranking, check out our guide for some tips to get started.
