Mastering Digital Pharmacy

Of those pharmacy businesses who do conduct some sort of business activity online, the vast majority do so without any sort of plan in place. Countless times have I come across a stagnant Social Media profile that’s been set up with only one post ever to have been published or a website that offers e-commerce and sells nothing. This isn’t how online business should be and it’s all because no planning has been done beforehand. You wouldn’t be putting out Christmas stock on your shelves or random hours on a staff rota without planning first. The same absolutely applies to any activity you do online.

Before any of the marketing methods and strategies discussed in this book are implemented, you need to understand WHY you are marketing, WHO you are marketing to and HOW you’re going to do it.

Digital marketing is the umbrella term that covers a range of marketing methods that can drive your pharmacy business online. For many of these, the reasons WHY you should be implementing them will be similar throughout, and that’s what we’re going to cover in the next chapter. Once you understand the base reasons why these marketing methods are important and who we’re going to market to, only then should you create a plan around these strategies.

You’ll see below that I have listed the most important benefits of digital marketing for pharmacy from (1) to (10). This is so that I can assign them to the Chapters that will follow…you’ll see what I mean when you get stuck in 😉

Below is a list of benefits that going digital and conducting your business online can offer but there are many more! I have simply selected the ones that I feel are the most important and relevant to pharmacy.

Again, I have to refer to your customers/patients and how they behave as one of the main reasons why you need to be online. With over 3.5 billion searches made on Google every day and 1.94 billion monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook, plenty of your customers are looking for information before they leave the house to go about their activities. Practically everyone has a smartphone today making it super easy to access digital services and information. If your customers and patients are online, you should really be there too.

Now, you might say that most of your customers/patients are over the age of 65 years, and because of that, they don’t really use Social Media or aren’t online. Your conclusion from this is therefore “it doesn’t really apply to me”.

This simply isn’t true!

Just have a look at these statistics here. I remember not so long ago I rang up an 83yr old patient of mine becuase I had forgotten to put a patient information leaflet in her trimethoprim box. She came back with:

“Oh don’t worry love, I Googled it anyway”

I was so happy that she was ok with this but more so that she had an iPad and was Googling away! As time goes on, the percentage of internet users inevitably rise. Going online goes hand-in-hand with the behaviour of your customers and will set you up nicely for the future of business.

Having no website (or a poor website), no Social Media profiles and minimal online activity makes you less visible for your consumers.

But that’s what NHS Choices is for, right?

Wrong.

While NHS Choices is great, it only gives you some degree of visibility. When someone is looking for a service online, which most people do these days, then it’s a completely different story. Let me explain in an example.

Let’s say a lady visiting or living in Sheffield is in need of the Emergency Contraceptive tablet. The first thing she may well do is go onto Google and search for the term “morning after pill sheffield”. I know this term is being searched for because Google’s Keyword Planner tells me it is:

Apparently, there are 40 searches a month on average with this exact term but this is usually an underestimate according to established Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) firms such as MOZ. It is likely to be more. This specific term pulls up the following results on Google:

NOTE: Since the first release of this guide, I have published a highly optimised blog post focussing on the keywords “morning after pill sheffield” for a small independent pharmacy chain which has topped Pg 1 on Google. Therefore, the results you now see will be be different. This is how pwerful content marketing can be and we will talk more about this later on in the guide.

As you’d might expect, the Sexual Health Clinic’s and Boots come out on top, with Lloyds a bit further down. In fact, there is only one mention of an Independent Chemist in the first 3 pages, and that’s the biggest Independent in the city.

Pretty much every Independent Community Pharmacy in Sheffield provides the Emergency Contraception, but from this simple search alone, the lady is less likely to come and visit you, because she simply can’t “see” you.

Big Corporations 1 – Independent Contractor 0

However, let’s say you did have a website where you were promoting the Emergency Contraceptive service AND you created an excellent blog post about the service, focussing specifically on the keywords “morning after pill Sheffield”. Honestly, from the results seen on Google and the analytics of this search term, it probably wouldn’t be difficult to top the first page. In fact, since I’m currently building a website for an Independent in Sheffield, I’m going to write an optimised blog post around these keywords to see if I can top it. I’ll post about this on the Pharmacy Mentor blog.

See note above becasue this article topped Google after 3 weeks of me publishing.

The same goes for the key words “weight loss Sheffield”, “stop smoking sheffield” and “flu jab sheffield”. All are searched for on Google but there are no Independent Pharmacies to be seen for pages. Can you imagine if we all started optimising our websites for these kinds of keywords and we began showing up on page one of Google? Not only would it mean more business for us but it would be so valuable to the sector as a whole.

The biggest limiting factor that stops Independents from innovating and implementing new things is TIME. I understand. I’m a pharmacist too. I’ve managed dozens of pharmacies and I work very closely with many pharmacy owners. HOWEVER, by harnessing the digital world, you’ll be saving time in the long-run. Let me break it down for you.

Communication

The ability to communicate so quickly and efficiently with a large number of people at one time is going to save you time compared to talking to people one by one. For example, let’s say you post a notice on your Facebook page for your Christmas opening hours and pin it to the top of your page. This could easily save you phone calls down the line. Or let’s say you and the surgeries around your pharmacy have formed a group on Facebook where you discuss administrative things, like opening times and out of stock medicines. By communicating in here, this is going to save you so much time than calling each surgery individually. Likewise, by accepting email and social as a form of contact, you’re able to answer customers at times where you’re not busy.

Analysis

Through social listening and analysing data, you’re able to make better business decisions and augment your strategy which will no doubt save you money and time in the long run.

Materials

By having a website and a Social Media presence, you’re able to save time and money by not having to print promotional material. If you need to contact patients about collecting medication they have forgotten to pick up, what’s stopping you from emailing them instead of calling them up one by one or sending out time-consuming letters?

These are just some of the ways going online can save you time. Investing in good tech and building a digital strategy will, if done correctly, inevitably save you time (and money) in the long-run.

Having an online presence means that a consumer can access your products and services 24/7. Why wouldn’t you want your consumer to have that?? Give them the opportunity to find out more about your company outside the normal 9-5 business hours. Like here, for example.

Allow them to book in for a Health Check through your innovative online booking system just before they go to bed or give them the opportunity to buy some medicine to be delivered to their door the very next day. Maybe your pharmacy operates a Travel Clinic, like this one. Check how easy it is to book online.

One major benefit of having a website is that you can operate an Online Prescription Reordering, Collection and Delivery service meaning the patient won’t even need to contact the surgery. We are increasingly demanding 24-hour service and those who provide it will win over.

Digital marketing is a very effective and
inexpensive way to drive revenue, both directly and indirectly

Indirect ways are all the things you do digitally that don’t generate a direct sale but over time will help put you in a better position to generate income online. Indirect ways might include blogging, improving the SEO of your site, publishing posts on Facebook and giving excellent customer service.

In contrast, you’re able to generate revenue directly. You just need to look at Pharmacy2U as an example, to understand how this is done. Things like building in e-commerce, an Online Doctor and Service Provision means that payment can be taken directly over the platform. But there are also things like email and affiliate marketing which can also lead to direct sales, and more social media platforms are beginning to icorporate e-commerce now, such as Instagram and Facebook.

By being online, you’re giving your customers another way of contacting you e.g. through email or a contact form, Social Media chat channels and more. A lot of people still prefer to call you but more and more people are reverting to email and Social Media communication because it’s easier and we simply expect 24/7 service and a quick response. Besides, wouldn’t you want your customer emailing you instead of calling you at the pharmacy? How many times a day are you frustrated by the phone constantly ringing? Ideally, you want to be taking urgent calls only by telephone and the rest to contact you by email. Offering another method of contact will improve your workflow in the pharmacy while still offering great customer service. It’s a win-win.

Digital marketing is much more cost-effective than the traditional way of marketing. Furthermore, by investing in better technology, you’ll be improving business efficiencies which will ultimately lead to cost-savings.

It’s understandable that pharmacy owners are looking to cut back on expenses, however, the reality is that for many of them, their current systems are actually costing them more money. Technology is designed to make our lives easier and at less of a cost. When it comes to digital marketing, most of it is free or very inexpensive anyway. Social Media marketing is free and email marketing costs pennies for example.

We need to harness digital and tech
in this tough economic climate, not stay away from it.

Marketing online allows you to reach so many more people through the click of a button. Through Social Media, you can influence 100’s or even 1000’s of people with a single post and by email, you can reach your list of 2000 patients in a couple of seconds, all for free. The speed at which we can deliver information now is at it’s quickest and we really need to capitalise on it.

This is a huge benefit. Marketing digitally allows you to track your performance in real-time and measure it against how you may have been performing last month for example. This will help you see exactly what’s working and what’s not and so you can adjust your strategies appropriately. You can analyse your website data through Google Analytics, Facebook activity through their inbuilt Insights and NHS data through PharmData. This vital data also allows you to see how your competition is doing so you can stay ahead of the game.

People consider you a more professional and credible company if you have a website, according to a 2015 study. It makes complete sense though.

Let’s say a person lived equidistant from two pharmacies, both of which offer exactly the same service, and they went online to find out more information. One pharmacy has a really well-built, professional-looking website, like this one, but the other doesn’t. They simply have an NHS Choices entry or a listing somewhere else, for example. Which pharmacy do you think the consumer is more likely to end up visiting?

The same applies to Social Media accounts. Which one of the following would you think was the more credible company:

• Pharmacy 1?

• Pharmacy 2?

NOTE: As an add-on to this, however, I believe it’s better to have no website than to have one that is poor, broken or never updated. This is unprofessional, could damage your brand and you could even lose customers.

Online business and business that occurs in-store isn’t the same because your customers will be different. Although I mentioned in point (1) of the last chapter that the elderly are increasingly active online, as I write these words in November 2017, they are not your target audience online. In the next 5 years, you can expect to see double the percentage of over 75’s active online, so of course things will begin to change, however, your primary target audience right now will be the population younger than this.

Now, we deal with such a range of demographics in pharmacy that we really can’t just target one of them, for example:

• Pregnant women

• Menopausal women

• Balding men

• Obese people

The list goes on. However, your target market will change throughout the year as your seasons change, whether there are health campaigns running locally or if there is a national epidemic outbreak for example.

Your target customer can also change by which channel you choose to market through and by acquiring data through social listening and analytics. It can vary quite a lot. So you have to be receptive to these changes and market the right products at the right time.

The other thing you’ll need to take into account is the profit margin you’ll be generating from the products you promote. It doesn’t make sense to market a Regain product where you generate 1.5% rev share commission online compared to Orlistat at 10% online.

As an example, let’s say it’s Winter and it’s Flu season. You and your Healthy Living Pharmacy team will be getting geared up to promote the Flu Jab Service you offer in-store which is applicable to most demographics. You should devise a digital marketing strategy and embed it in with your overall marketing strategy. An example of a digital marketing strategy for this could be something like the following:

As you test things along your journey, you’ll begin to understand more about who your most receptive audiences will be and so you can adjust your strategies accordingly.

On the topic of flu, here’s a short video I created that has helped pharmacies across the UK, the US and Canada create a mini digital marketing campaign to promote their flu jab service. You can use it as a template to promote other services you offer too, for example, travel vaccinations or a stop smoking service.

You might not be an expert in digital marketing but if you’re reading this book, then you’re either thinking about marketing digitally, or you already are. In both cases, it’s important to know and understand the following acronyms when conducting business online. If you’re a business owner, you’re probably aware of some of them already.

ROI: Return of Investment

You need to aim for a positive ROI all the time. Every pound you spend on your business, including digital marketing, should result in more than a pound coming back. This doesn’t necessarily mean immediately. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend money on building a website or hiring someone to look after your digital strategy. These are long-term investments. It does mean, however, that if you’re spending money on paid advertising and you’re not seeing a positive ROI, you need to adjust your strategy.

KPI: Key Performance Indicator

Every business should be measuring their most important KPI’s. For example, a KPI in pharmacy could be prescription items, MUR’s and retail sales. In terms of digital, this could be email signups, online flu jab bookings or e-commerce sales. If your KPI’s are not improving regularly, something needs to change.

CTR: Click-Through Rate

If you’re marketing through email, one thing to keep an eye on is your CTR. This will give you an indication of whether people are opening your emails and/or clicking on links within them. If you have a low CTR, this indicates that people are not interested in the content you’re providing them which is a sign you need to change your strategy.

CTA: Call To Action

Whatever content you produce, whether it’s on your website or on Social Media, you need to end with a CTA. In other words, you need to get your audience to do something. Without it, your customer will forget about what you published and move on. CTA’s are one of the keys to effective digital marketing.

CPA: Cost Per Acquisition

This means how much your spending on your marketing to acquire a customer. In essence, whatever you spend on marketing, you need to be making more back through your customers. For example, if you boost a post on Facebook for £10, you need to be selling 2 bath sets worth £10 each for a positive CPA.

LTV: Lifetime Value

This means how much your customer is worth to you over time. In pharmacy, this is generally high. For example, if you sign someone up for your online repeat prescription service and you provide good service each time they order, they will stay with you long-term. Your good service will increase loyalty and these people will be easier to up-sell to. This is the beauty of great customer care.

Throughout the rest of this guide, you’ll see these acronyms here and there but always keep them in mind when you’re doing business. Maybe you do something where you won’t see an immediate ROI but over the LTV of the customer, you will through good service and dedicated support. Persistence and patience are required a lot of the time.

It really does bewilder me that there are still hundreds of pharmacy businesses across the UK who still don’t have a website. Your business might be doing ok without one, but without one, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity for growth. Your website is your “digital pharmacy” and a central hub for your entire online marketing strategy.

BENEFITS: All numbers from (1) to (10)

A website is an effective and cost-efficient business tool that encompasses many of the other marketing channels that I’ll be discussing further on in this guide. As customer behaviour changes and technology advances, a website may become somewhat essential for the survival of Independent Community pharmacy businesses.

A thought process that I need to QUASH right now…

One of the things I hear from Independents is that because they are a local business, having a website “isn’t necessary” or “isn’t worth it”. They’ve come to this conclusion because they:

1) Believe having a website is only necessary if you have many stores or are purely an online pharmacy.

2) Have had a website up and running in the past but didn’t see a positive ROI.

For the first point (1), I’m not sure how this conclusion has been formed. Yes, you’re a local business, but does having no website address the behaviour of all of your customers? What about the 1000’s of other people that live in and around your pharmacy that are not your customers? Do you not want to reach out to them?

And for the second point (2), this comes down to the functionality of your website and what you’re actively doing for it. On too many occasions have I seen websites go up wit nothing happening on them – no blogging, no booking calendar activity, or EPS sign-ups. It’s actually an epidemic. You’ll find masses of pharmacy websites that have been created but then left on its lonesome. The same goes for their Social Media profiles. There is a misconception that once a website has been set up, people will magically land on it and even make a purchase.

Unfortunately, this is not how online business works. If it did, everyone would be flying high and rich!

A website will naturally help with your visibility online, provided that it has been optimised accordingly. However, in order to see an ROI from the products and services you have on there, you have to MARKET them. You have to TELL people about it and tell them consistently enough to get more and more traffic to your site. You have to provide value and build trust in order for people to engage with and then buy from you. You have to publish great content using specific keywords so that when people type these words into Google, you’ll be seen first. Once you have created a good digital marketing strategy, only then will you begin to see real results.

Take a look at this website as an example. This is a complex website build, but we are having to market this through SEO and Paid Ads to generate the returns that they are getting (and they are returning a lot).

That’s the way online business works

If you don’t have a website for your business yet, there are plenty of options for you to get started. Let me repeat that last bit…”get started”. That’s the main thing. Get a website up there for you to build upon gradually and make sure the website is professional-looking, of good quality and mobile responsive.

Like I mentioned before, having a poor website, like this one or this one (which says it’s fully optimised for mobiles and clearly isn’t) or this one (honestly, they’re endless) could be detrimental to your brand so that shouldn’t be an option.

Build your own website

It’s actually not that difficult to build your own website these days, with the likes of WordPress, Wix and Squarespace on the scene. Furthermore, there are thousands of courses that show you exactly how to build a website, such as this one.

Advantages

The great thing about building your own website is that it’s free (or cheap) to do and you’ll be learning a range of important life skills. As you create your website, you’ll be understanding more about online business and how it all works. This is exactly how I got started in the tech world more than 4 years back.

Disadvantages

Of course, this is going to take you time (something that we really don’t have much of these days!) and you’ll be limited to building an informational website. You’ll struggle with optimising the site and pages for keywords and any functionality like payments are more complex processes.

Hire a web developer (recommended)

This is the option you’re most likely to go for, and you have plenty of them to choose from. At Pharmacy Mentor, we offer a bespoke service with unlimited functionality. Let us take care of the website for you so you can continue running your business from within.

Advantages

It’s done for you by professionals in their field. You’ll have a website up and running in no time and you get unlimited support and advice throughout. Getting a web developer in the field of pharmacy is also highly recommended so that they understand your business and can guide you in the build.

Disadvantages

There isn’t really a disadvantage. You simply need to get a website for your pharmacy, and we can help.

Now, let’s say you already have a website set up. It’s either an informational one, like this, or one that has e-commerce functionality and more advanced features. Here’s an example, which is a template produced by The Pharmacy Centre.
Your job is not done. In order to see customer engagement and an ROI, you need to work on the marketing side of things. Although your website is a digital marketing tool itself, there are other forms of marketing that you can conduct through your site that will drive your business online. We’re now going to take a look at some of those that matter most to a pharmacy business.

Although email marketing has been around for decades (literally) it is still an extremely valuable form of marketing that all good online businesses use. It’s a concept that excites me a lot about Community Pharmacy because I believe there is significant potential for growth, yet no Independents seem to be using it. There’s a huge hole that can be filled here.

BENEFITS: All numbers from (1) to (10)

Email marketing is a highly targeted and very personal form of marketing. It’s a place where you can talk to your customer away from the immense noise of Social Media. Furthermore, a pharmacy website is the perfect lead magnet to attain customer and patient information quite easily. Let me refer to the Online Prescription, Collection and Delivery Service as an example that can be easily integrated into a pharmacy website. More and more people are looking for free, time-saving services online and that’s exactly what you can offer them. Let’s look this example in a bit more detail.

When a customer enrols onto your Online Prescription Service, they will willingly give you a wealth of information about them. More so because you’re a healthcare business than, say, a business selling shoes. You’re dealing with their confidential information and medication which is something very important and personal to them. Take a look at this sign-up form and the information they will be receiving as a consequence. Since the pharmacy will be obtaining demographical information, noticeably their age and sex, this will allow them to perform relatively targeted email campaigns. The signup form could even have options for ethnicity, disability or whether they have children or not. The more information we’re able to acquire about a person, the more targeted we can get.

Email marketing is strategic, requires experience and you must understand who you are marketing too. I will be delving much deeper into this area as Pharmacy Mentor ages but below are some fundamental items one must consider when going down this route.

Email Acquisition

In order to conduct email marketing, you need email addresses to market to. Now, this is what is so interesting. There are so many ways we can do this, both online and offline.

Acquiring Online

If you don’t yet have the ability to capture details online through a signup form, this really is worth investing in and promoting. Have several options where a customer can input their email address in various parts of your site and connect your signup form to your Social Media profiles. You need to offer something valuable for free in order to maximise the number of signups you’ll receive.

Acquiring Offline

By creating a simple form to hand out to patients and customers upon check out, you can get them to give you their email address in a jiffy. You can do this electronically with an iPad even. Augment your EPS signup form to include an email address and state that you will be “sending updates and promotional material occasionally by email with discounts on your favourite products etc, etc”. If you do this correctly and in a professional manner, you’ll have a solid user base in no time.

Email Marketing Software

By using an inexpensive and efficient email marketing service, such as MailChimp (which I use) or Campaign Monitor, you’re able to sort your emails into “lists”, produce professional looking emails and market your products and services with lots of flexibility and targeting options. Furthermore, these services have inbuilt analytics so you can track things like CTR’s. If you’re conducting email marketing then I believe these kinds of services are a must and will deliver improved customer LTV.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be exploring email marketing in a lot more detail and will update this publication in due time, but please contact me if you want to get started on this right now.

Now, one item that I’m looking at right now is something called Swipii, which is an innovative loyalty scheme that is helping many small businesses generate revenue. As part of their service, they send out targeted emails so this could be a really good option for you. I will be examining the benefits of Swipii in the pharmacy once I’ve finished writing this epic guide but there is no harm in you contacting them now to see what they could offer you. Just let them know I sent you 🙂

This guide I’m writing is content marketing. The videos you see on my website is content marketing. Most of the information you read on Facebook is content marketing. It’s literally everywhere, updating your knowledge and influencing your thoughts. Content marketing is considered the lifeblood of digital marketing and without it, it will be difficult to get seen and you’ll struggle amongst your competition. This is one of the cornerstones of a good digital pharmacy.

BENEFITS: Numbers (1), (2), (3), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9)

Content marketing is something that I delve into regularly throughout my journey with Pharmacy Mentor because there is a huge gap in the market. Our visibility, as Independents, is very poor in general on search engines, such as Google, but more so for keywords related to our business. Improving our visibility online will help us achieve more business while competing against the corps.

Begin Blogging

One of the best forms of content marketing is blogging. As I discussed briefly in point (2) of Chapter 2, creating good quality blog posts can really help you with visibility on search engines for keywords that you want to target. If you offer an erectile dysfunction clinic in Manchester, then one solid, optimised blog post will get it seen more. Countless times have I encountered a pharmacy website with a section for a blog which either has nothing there or returns a 404. Not only are these pages serving no purpose, they look unprofessional and could put people off from doing business with you.

Now, there is a bit of a skill to blogging. Take a look at this article which shows you the 5-steps to creating an excellent blog post. You can blog yourself of course, but because time is of the essence, you may want to outsource this. Getting your pharmacy student or pre-reg to write some blog posts for you as part of their projects might be a good place to start.

We offer a blogging and SEO service as part of Pharmacy Mentor. We create highly optimised blog posts to help pharmacies promote their services, and we’re gunning for Page 1 on Google for services in the locality. If you’d like me to help you with this, just give us a shout. 

We don’t just help pharmacies either. We help all kinds of healthcare businesses, like Private Doctor Clinics, Dentists and other healthcare professionals. Spread the word!

Improve site content

Just like blogging, by improving and optimising the general content of your site, you’ll improve overall SEO and it will make you look much more professional. Look at the service information provided by Everest Pharmacy. Everest have clearly taken time to create much more compelling content that will help engage their audience more as well as improve their site’s performance.

Again, if you’d like help to improve the content of your site, then I’m all ears. Give me a call or send me a message.