Read how Michelle’s Pharmacy, Holt’s Pharmacy, and Coastal Pharmacy leveraged different marketing strategies to attract new patients to their pharmacies.

1. Set specific goals for your marketing.

Michelle Dyer, the owner of Michelle’s Pharmacy, wanted to increase the number of digital refills that were generated through her pharmacy’s website. By focusing her staff on promotion and incorporating their online strategy into their overall business strategy, the pharmacy was able to achieve a 95 percent increase in digital refills.

To achieve this increase in online refills, Michelle’s Pharmacy began to track key metrics on their monthly reports, ensuring visibility into the performance of their digital products. Michelle paid special attention to the “hours saved” metric,  incorporating this metric into their annual plan and setting a goal for the pharmacy to save more time each quarter. She then educated her staff on the digital tools so that her staff could inform and educate their patients on how to use the products. The biggest increase in digital refills was attributed to these conversations between her pharmacists and patients at the point of sale.

By setting goals and tracking how they were pacing against these goals, Michelle was able to achieve the pharmacy marketing results she was looking for. In seven months, digital refills increased by 95 percent and her staff saved six and a half hours of time each month.

2. Get creative. 

Holt’s Pharmacy increased their digital refills by 344 percent over the course of one summer once they began to use the Digital Pharmacist mobile app and website.

When they signed up with Digital Pharmacist, they knew this would be the foundation of their digital success, but took it upon themselves to ensure their app and website were used by their patients. They decided to run a campaign to get the word out of their new digital tools by raffling off four YETI products to patients who signed up for their mobile app or website. This campaign generated over 300 entries.

To ensure their patients knew about the promotion, they boosted a few posts on Facebook to reach over 7,500 people in their area and garner 250 post engagements. They also told their patients about their services at the point of sale and helped patients check out with the installation process.

This creative pharmacy marketing idea was a huge success that led to more patients using the app which helped save a lot of time for their staff members.

3. Leverage email marketing.

Coastal Pharmacy recognized the power of email marketing and made this a focus for their pharmacy. Located in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, the small town has a population of a little over 17,000 people. Despite this small population, they have more than 500 customers who subscribe to and receive their email newsletter on a weekly basis.

One great example of the way they used email marketing was by raffling off New Orleans Saints football tickets. To enter, patients had to fill or refill a prescription at the pharmacy. Shelby, Coastal Pharmacy’s marketing manager, included an announcement of this promotion in their weekly eNewsletter. As a result of including this event in the eNewsletter, they saw a significant influx of customers that week take advantage of the raffle.

For help marketing to your patients, give us a call at 877-959-7550 or email connect@digitalpharmacist.com.