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the new pharmacy model
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The New Pharmacy Model

The New Pharmacy Model

Pharmacies in the United Kingdom are undergoing a profound transformation. Gone are the days of simply dispensing medicine from the back of the pharmacy. The emergence of new compliance standards and regulations, alongside advancements in technology and a shift towards more patient-centric care, has paved the way for what can be aptly termed as “The New Pharmacy Model”.

This model, envisioned by our CEO, Saam Ali, encompasses a comprehensive approach to pharmacy spanning four key pillars: products and services, marketing and sales strategies, operational enhancements, and human resources development.

Take a look at the infographic below, which we’ve developed, that showcases The New Pharmacy Model in the industry. Let’s delve deeper into its intricacies.

new pharmacy model

The New Pharmacy Model, as depicted by our CEO and Founder

Products & Services

NHS Services: Pharmacies are at the forefront of providing essential NHS services, with a primary focus on prescription fulfilment. The integration of fully automated prescription fulfilment systems has streamlined the process, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Additionally, pharmacies offer advanced services such as New Medicine Service (NMS), hypertension management, Pharmacy First consultations, flu vaccinations, and access to emergency contraception like the Morning After Pill.

Private Services: Expanding beyond NHS services, pharmacies now offer a plethora of private services under the same roof. These include travel vaccinations, ear wax removal, blood testing, aesthetics procedures, and over-the-counter (OTC) sales of various healthcare products and supplements, catering to diverse consumer needs. In the New Pharmacy Model, the pharmacy is a true health hub in the community.

Online Services: The digital era has ushered in a new era of accessibility and convenience. Pharmacies now offer online prescribing services allowing independent prescribers to sell prescription-only medication (POM), pharmacy-only medicines (P-lines), and General Sales List (GSL) items safely and securely online.

Marketing & Sales

Engagement Strategies: Utilising web-based platforms, pharmacies engage with customers through online bookings, AI-powered health assistants, live chat support, email opt-ins, and dedicated mobile applications, ensuring seamless communication and accessibility.

Marketing Channels: To amplify their reach, pharmacies employ a mix of marketing channels including search engine optimisation (SEO), social media engagement, Google and Meta advertising, digital TV signage, email and SMS marketing, and innovative strategies like QR codes to enhance customer engagement and retention.

Partnerships

Healthcare Collaborations: Pharmacies are now forging strategic partnerships with healthcare providers including general practitioners (GPs), dental clinics, chiropodists, weight loss clinics, optometrists, and medical labs to offer comprehensive and integrated healthcare solutions.

Other Collaborations: Beyond healthcare, pharmacies collaborate with travel agents, local businesses, and corporate entities to extend their services and cater to diverse consumer needs.

Operations

Enhanced Experience: Pharmacies invest in enhancing the customer experience by providing physical premises with multiple consultation rooms designed in a clinical setting. Additionally, technology infusion ensures a seamless and efficient service delivery.

Online Pharmacy: In response to evolving consumer preferences, pharmacies offer online platforms with a smooth user experience (UX), digital communications, and trackable order systems to cater to the growing demand for digital healthcare solutions.

Technology Integration: Robotics play a pivotal role in pharmacy operations with dispensing robots, pill packs, and 24/7 prescription collection systems ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and round-the-clock service. Additionally, pharmacies leverage software and hardware solutions including Pharmacy Management Systems (PMR), websites, apps, digital records, Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems, and automated drug ordering systems to streamline operations.

Human Resources

Training Programs: Pharmacies invest in comprehensive training programs encompassing in-person sessions covering vaccinations, independent prescribing (IP), Patient Group Directions (PGDs), CPR training, clinical assessments, and workshops to ensure staff competency and compliance.

Continuous Learning and Support: Recognising the importance of ongoing learning, pharmacies offer self-learning modules and support mechanisms through online platforms, buying groups, and membership associations to empower their workforce with new skills and knowledge.

People-Centric Culture: Pharmacies foster a positive and inclusive work culture that emphasises recognition, diversity, and inclusion, creating an empowering environment for their employees. This is key for pharmacy growth and has been neglected in the old model.

Leadership Attributes: Leaders embody visionary, innovative, adaptable, resilient, and collaborative traits, steering their pharmacy organisations through dynamic healthcare landscapes and driving positive change.

Embrace Change

The New Pharmacy Model represents a huge shift in how pharmacies operate and interact with their patients and customers. By embracing technological advancements, expanding service offerings, forging strategic partnerships, optimising operations, and nurturing their human resources, pharmacies are not just adapting to change but leading the way towards a more integrated and patient-centric healthcare ecosystem in the United Kingdom.

At Pharmacy Mentor, we’re playing a crucial role in helping pharmacies adapt to the New Model. Our marketing and development solutions help with two of the big pillars in this model in a variety of ways. If you’re keen on understanding how we can help you, please get in touch with us. Our team of experts have helped 1000’s of pharmacies embrace new solutions and engage with their audiences better.

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pharmacy google maps ads

Pharmacy Google Maps Ads: Get seen first on Maps

So many people use Google Maps to get to where they’re going…and a lot of them use Google Maps to find somewhere to go, too. If you’re amongst the first places to show up on Maps, you can be sure you’ll get the lion’s share of people travelling to your pharmacy.

But how do you get your pharmacy to appear first in those results?

There are many factors contributing to a high maps ranking, similar to many factors determining how highly a website ranks on Google.

You can work on these, and organically climb the Google Maps rankings.  Check out our 9 Key Steps to Ranking Higher on Google Maps for a DIY guide to boosting your Google Maps ranking organically.

But there’s a NEW, guaranteed way of appearing first.

Get your pharmacy ranking first on Google Maps with Google Maps Ads

One of the biggest determiners for high rankings on Google Maps is the volume of people who visit the stores. This skews massively to bigger chains, like we see in the image below. Tesco are almost exclusively in the top rankings, because Google tracks people’s mobile phone locations. As people walk around Tesco, Google registers this as a visitor for Tesco Pharmacy. Pharmacies in Shopping Centres also benefit from this.

Google Maps Ads bypasses this, guaranteeing smaller independent pharmacies top the rankings ahead of the big chains.

This is an incredible opportunity for capturing new patients, as people searching for pharmacies on Google Maps clearly don’t have an affiliation or a regular pharmacy. Not only that, but people searching on Google Maps have intent. They’re clearly visiting a pharmacy.

But whilst Google Maps Ads puts you in that position, maximising the appeal of your listing is important.

Let’s run through three quick steps to making your pharmacy look like the best option.

1. Get Google Reviews, as many as you can

As shown in the example, whilst Irwin Mitchell appear top, their overall rating is 3.8 out of 5. Just two positions below them, their competition has 4.4 stars, with more reviews, and because it’s an organic listing, the reviews are displayed.

With more reviews and a higher rating than your competition, it’s more likely that more people will click on your listing.

Of course, being top with a lower rating is better than being 7th with a lower rating, but let’s shoot for the stars.

Want help increasing your Google Reviews? Check out the Google Review section of our shop.

2. Wow with a welcoming Google Business Profile image

When someone clicks on your Google Business listing, it expands into a larger profile. The featured image on this profile is your first impression.

Making a good first impression all but seals the deal. Your shop front makes the most sense, so they can recognise your business from the street. But if you have a run-down shop front, put your best foot forwards. A photo of your interior or your team works, whichever represents your business best. Take a look at what Saam says when he goes through this step-by-step.

3. Keep your Google Business Profile Updated

Special offers, opening hours, and current services are amongst the next things people will see on your Google Business profile.

Make sure they’re updated.

Nothing turns people off a visit to a business more than uncertainty. If you haven’t manually added your opening times into your Google Business Profile, it comes up with estimated opening times for you.

No one’s driving somewhere that might be open when there’s somewhere else that’s definitely open.

Too much for you to keep up with?

We get that. Running a pharmacy is a full-time job. Marketing is another.

We love helping pharmacies rank higher on Google Maps. Hit that button below to get in touch. Whether it’s Google Maps Ads, or helping you rank organically, we can help. Click here to contact us today.

Click me

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is bing losing you pharmacy patients?

Is BING losing you pharmacy patients?

I’m confident that unless you’re one of the few people I’ve spoken to already, you have no idea what is happening on Bing & Yahoo Search for pharmacies.  Fair warning: what you’ll read about in this article might annoy you…

If you Bing “pharmacy”, and you’re a community pharmacist, you’ll encounter a problem. Though you may not realise it.

This is something I noticed by accident, stumbling across the issue when one of Pharmacy Mentor’s laptop browsers was set to Yahoo Search by default.

Big pharmacy companies are advertising on Bing search engine across the whole of the UK for the term pharmacy. You might question why. You might question why you should care. Let’s explore both of these questions step-by-step below.

What is Bing?

Bing is the Microsoft equivalent of Google’s search engine, only less popular. Because Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, it comes pre-installed on all Microsoft Devices as standard.

Other search brands use Bing’s search engine too

Yahoo Search is just Bing search with a different branding, and is the default search function for Mozilla Firefox. Yahoo’s search engine is powered by Bing, which means both Bing & Yahoo deliver the same results, including adverts.

Why should pharmacies care about Bing, or Yahoo Search?

The fact is, Google dominates the search engine market, with 92.47% global market share (91% in the UK) as of June 2021 (Statista, 2022). It seems most people don’t care about Bing or Yahoo Search. So why should you?

Bing Pharmacy PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertising

Advertising on Bing, which feeds through to AOL & Yahoo, has a considerably smaller Cost-per-Click (CPC) than Google.

Still irrelevant to you?

  1. Go to a Bing-powered search engine
  2. Search for “pharmacy near me”, or even your own pharmacy name.
  3. Look at who appears first.

Saving you a bit of time, I’ve already done searches for “pharmacy near me” as well as “Pharmacy John O’Groats” and “Pharmacy Lands End” below, demonstrating the issue for pharmacies anywhere in the UK.

Scroll through the image sideshow below to see the searches.

12345

But here’s where you get annoyed…

What I didn’t search for, was your specific pharmacy name. Open a Bing search, and search for your pharmacy name.

If you didn’t just utter “you crafty cusses”, or words to that effect, you don’t yet understand what is happening.

So let me enlighten you a little more.

(N.B. If you don’t see Ads, it might be that the adverts have reached the maximum daily/monthly budget. But they’ll be back.)

Who uses Bing?

91% of the UK uses Google. 5% use Bing. Whilst 5% doesn’t sound like a lot, it translates to approximately 3.35 million people using Bing.

According to the macro statistics, if you open up your browser and Bing is your default search engine, you probably go into your browser settings and change your default search engine.

You know who doesn’t do that? People who don’t know enough about browser settings, or don’t know how to do it.

You know which demographic doesn’t know how to work the Internet? The one that needs prescriptions the most.

It’s an incredibly savvy tactic.

Have another look at those screenshots. Can you see how minimal the indicators are that the top results are adverts? Again, the people with eyesight sharp enough for “Ads related to: pharmacy near me” aren’t generally the ones using Bing.

Advertising over people’s businesses on Google is noticeable.

Why?

Because the business owners use Google. So they’ll probably see.

But doing this through Bing is sneaky. You avoid a snarling dog, because it’s obvious. But the mosquito that gets you in your sleep bites you all they like.

What can you do about it?

Unfortunately the only way to fight Bing Ads is with Bing Ads. (The same is true with Google Ads.)

If someone puts a poster over a signpost to your pharmacy, preventing that means either asking them to stop, or putting your own poster up over their poster. If it’s a local competitor who’s doing the advertising, there’s a good chance of finding an agreement that works for both parties.

But do you think the companies who’re paying for adverts targeting “pharmacy” all over the UK will stop because you asked nicely?

Are Bing Ads for pharmacy it worth it?

These big pharmacy companies advertising on Bing think so.

It’s worth noting, they advertise on Bing, but not on Google. The budget on Google is too high to cover the entirety of the UK all the time, but because of the smaller user base of Bing, it’s possible.

pay per click costs for pharmacy on Google Ads

But they wouldn’t continue to do this unless they had a valid reason to. The reason is that the predominant user base for Bing is people who don’t know how to change to Google. And that’s pharmacy’s target market.

How much does it cost?

Advertising on Bing obviously has a cost, typically between 25-50 pence per click. Pay-per-click on Google for Pharmacy is more like £1-3 per click, for reference.

But don’t worry about competing with a big company advertising budget. Competing with them in your local area won’t cost anything like that much.

Weigh up whether or not remaining inactive whilst these big companies skim the cream off the top of your catchment area is worth less than to you than a couple of hundred pounds a month.

Worth noting: The patients these companies pick up could be searching for your pharmacy, but they could be from any pharmacy searches in the UK. You aren’t being directly targeted.

Not Just Protecting Your Pharmacy Business

And don’t forget – advertising on Bing isn’t just protecting your pharmacy’s existing patient base. You’re actively promoting your pharmacy and attracting new patients too. Advertising on Bing is probably a worthwhile endeavour even if you weren’t being forced into it.

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5 reasons to use digital adverts
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Advertising Pharmacy: 5 ways digital advertising beats traditional advertising

Advertising always has one goal – getting eyeballs on your offering. But Digital Advertising has some distinct advantages over traditional advertising. Read on for 5 ways digital beats traditional when advertising your pharmacy.

5 reasons to use digital advertising over traditional advertising

Before we begin, it’s worth defining exactly what we mean by both Digital & Traditional Advertising for pharmacy.

  • Digital advertising never leaves a computer network. The adverts get distributed online through platforms such as social media, search engines and websites.
  • Traditional advertising is delivered offline to the real world. You find real-world advertising in any space people look, from the sides of bins and buses to billboards, box offices, and buildings. Of course, there are adverts in the media, too. TV, Radio, newspapers, and magazines traditionally offered exposure on an unrivalled scale before digital advertising came around.

5 ways Digital Advertising for Pharmacy is better than offline adverts

1. Analytics

Traditional Issue

Let’s take a fairly common example. You advertise in a local magazine. It might look glamorous. It might be the best-written ad ever. The problem is, there’s no way of measuring exactly what impact your advertising campaign had on your revenue. Marketing is all about trial and error. Measuring what works and what doesn’t. Knowing when to hold and when to fold.

Sure, you might notice an increase in sign-ups or sales alongside a magazine or a newspaper advert, and you can roughly approximate it to the ad. But when you then run a different campaign and it doesn’t seem to have the same impact, you can’t easily compare the two. Did people just not see the ad? Or did they see it and not feel compelled to act? With traditional forms of advertising, there’s no way of knowing.

Why Digital Works Better

Digital Advertising records and tracks everything. How many people saw the ad? How many people clicked on it? It keeps all your work from all your campaigns. You can run A/B campaigns, where you run two different ads alongside each other and the best performing ad gets displayed more.

2. Interactivity

Traditional Issue

You see an ad in a magazine for a product you like or a service you think would be useful. But you’re reading a magazine. You turn over the page. The ad is gone, never to be seen again. You’re relying on people remembering the ad the next time

I’ve talked before about making it easy for people to buy from you. Advertising offline does the opposite of that.

Here are the two journeys.

Offline Ad

1. See ad.

2. Stop what you\’re doing to get your phone out.

3. See several notifications on your phone and explore what they are.

4. Forget why you got your phone out, put it away.

5. Look back at the magazine, and remember.

6. Get your phone back out again, (if you have data/signal) and search for the pharmacy.

7. Navigate the pharmacy website until you find the product or service you were interested in.

8. Hope it\’s easy to book/buy. (if it isn\’t easy, get bored and give up.)

9. Buy/book.

Online Ad

1. See ad in whatever platform you were using, e.g., Facebook.

2. Click ad and be taken straight to the relevant product/service.

3. Buy/book.

Out of those two columns, it’s easy to see which journey has a higher chance of converting someone into a customer. With today’s attention span, any extra steps in the buying process are just another opportunity for a distraction.

This isn’t the only way interactivity helps, but it’s certainly something that impacts the ROI on your ad budget.

Ads on Facebook, for example, present opportunities for conversation with you and allows questions about the ad they’ve just seen. You can’t quickly send someone a WhatsApp if you see an ad in the newspaper. With digital advertising, there’s often the opportunity to get in touch straight away.

3. Flexibility & Control

Traditional Issue

Now, this point isn’t applicable to every campaign you’ll run, but it is always a risk. If you spend £1,000 on printing leaflets and then realise there’s a GLARING spelling error, guess who’s paying to get them all re-printed?

This same risk applies across most traditional platforms. You have to supply the finalised design/advert ready for a deadline to print or air, and after that, you’ve no control.

Why Digital Works

Made a catastrophic error on your advert? How about just logging back in, rectifying the problem, and continuing your advert? No extra cost, no fuss. Bullet dodged.

4. Value

Traditional Issue

As you’ve seen, there are lots of measures of whether one form of advertising is better than another. But the one most people care about, is cost. How much will it cost me to show this ad to someone?

Well, it costs far, far less to reach 1,000 people using social media than it does through any other form of advertising. (socialaxcessconsulting.com)

Not only that but there’s generally a minimum cost to entry with traditional advertising. I’ve seen local magazines quoting small businesses £500 for a half-page ad. You could feasibly drop that same amount on a Facebook ad. But you’d guarantee people are actually seeing your ad through Facebook. Why? You see the stats.

In 2021, advertisers had to pay an average of 5.6 million U.S. dollars to air a 30-second long commercial during the Super Bowl LV broadcast

Why Digital Works

With digital advertising, there are numerous benefits when it comes to pricing.

Google Ads for instance, only charge you when people click on your ad. This means you can essentially trial whether or not there is demand for your service through Google. If people aren’t interested in your ad, you don’t pay for it. Google also gives you an insight into what your competitor’s budgets are for advertising similar things. (Learn more about Google Ads for Pharmacies here)

Facebook lets you choose how you get charged. Whether that’s the number of people who see your ad, when people like your page, or click on your link. This level of customisation is a welcome addition for people who want more control over their ad spend.

5. Smart Audience Targeting

Traditional Issue

You spend £10k to have an advert on a billboard in a popular location. You’re sold on the fact that it’s seen by 50k people. But how many of those 50k people are your target market? You end up paying over the odds for irrelevant people to view your ads.

Why Digital Works

With the vast majority of digital platforms you can advertise on, you can specify your ideal audience. Advertising NHS flu vaccines? You want to make sure you’re targeting people who are 65+. Advertising a Period Delay service? Obviously, men don’t need that service.

Remember, no matter how you want to advertise your pharmacy, we can help.

We have no bias towards digital or traditional marketing. Our bias is delivering results that help build your pharmacy’s future. In a strategy bespoke to you and your pharmacy business, we recommend the best tactics available to get you there. No matter what those tactics are.

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Google Ads for Pharmacy
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Google Ads for Pharmacies: How to advertise your pharmacy on Google

Google Ads for pharmacies. They’re happening on a small scale right now for Travel Clinics and Private Services, compared to the rest of the business world. But they’re growing, as people realise how much money they can make using them.

How do Google Ads work?

Even if you appear at the top of the page organically, companies and pharmacies using Google Ads appear above this because of the way the Google results are laid out. (Strangely, Google rewards people giving them money?)

Google Adverts for Leeds Travel Clinic

How do they do it?

It’s really simple.

  1. Create a Google Ads account.
  2. Make a Google Ad.
  3. They choose search terms to target, such as “Travel Clinic.”

Then when people search for things that are related to Travel Clinics on Google, e.g., Travel Vaccinations – the ad appears like this:

google ads search results page

Ads display at the top of Google for the search terms they target.

It might seem like a waste of money to pay for ads to appear when you are already ranking at the top organically, but if you don’t, you’re giving advertisers an opportunity to appear above you and steal the customers who were looking for you.

Especially when they’re searching for something like “Travel Vaccines.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t go home and search for Travel Clinics to relax. It’s because I need one. Now assume I don’t care where I get my vaccine from, I just want the damn thing. So I’m going to click on the first relevant thing I see.

And if that’s an Ad, that’s exactly what I’ll click on. If they make it easy for me to book on their site, and they’re the price I’m expecting to pay, then I book my appointment and go on with the things I actually want to be doing.

And that’s it. Deal done. Transaction over. It cost that business however much Google charged them for a click, which on average is between 50p-£1.

How can you get a piece of that sweet, sweet Google Ads pie?

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em. Funnily enough, it’s really simple.

  1. You create a Google Ads account.
  2. Then you make a Google Ad.
  3. You choose search terms to target, such as “Travel Clinic.”

Then when people search for things that are related to Travel Clinics on Google, e.g., Travel Vaccinations – the ad appears as above.

If that all sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the same process that they used to get all the customers unchallenged. Except now you’re actually competing for the business, not just standing by and letting them take it.

The best part? You have something they don’t. You have access to a digital marketing agency that runs Google Ads for pharmacies all the time. 

We know the ads that work, the best times to run them, and the way to set them up for success. Your ads will attract clicks, even when alongside another ad.

Unconvinced by Google Ads?

You’ll likely want to understand how this happens, to get similar results for your pharmacy.

You might have tried Google Ads for your pharmacy and not seen much success from them. You might have heard horror stories of people pouring thousands of pounds down a black hole with no return. This is entirely possible, when Google Ads are run without the proper knowledge of how to get results.

But our results speak for themselves. Here’s an Ad we pointed towards a website. Note – we are showing you SMART Campaigns here, not Advanced Campaigns. We’ll be adding info about Advanced Google Ads at a later point.

 

statistics for a Google Ad

Example SMART Google Ad Campaign

It gave the option to call immediately or visit the website for more information, as well as links to book appointments for that service. 50p/click which is the low end of average. Think we’re showing off? I literally just picked a random ad. Here’s another one. (This was the second one we looked at, I can’t even guarantee it’s the best performing.)

statistics for a flu jab google ad

This Ad targeted flu jabs and averaged approximately 30p a click in North London.

This second Ad was promoting a Flu Jab service (the Pharmacy forgot they’d asked us to do it and were wondering why they were getting private flu jab enquiries!) They got an even lower cost per click at 30p! This one was aimed at driving calls to the pharmacy and physical visits.

Google Ads for pharmacies get found by so many search terms

The search terms this ad got results for.

You lose customers by not showing up when they’re searching online.

Exceptional results even without a massive budget.

Both of these ads are LOW budgets. And we don’t recommend that. For multiple reasons.

  • Our management fee remains the same regardless of your budget (unless you want super serious Ads). So the more you spend, the greater the value is.
  • The same is true of Google’s charges. The more you budget, the lower your average cost per click is. It’s the equivalent of buying in bulk.
  • A limited budget means that your ad switches off during the day when the daily budget runs out. This means lots of people could be searching for your service and your ad stops displaying whilst your competitor’s ad keeps going. And they go back to winning all the business.

Also, please note that the above ads were run on SMART campaigns which is the basic form of Google Ads. Advanced Ads require more budget and management fees because of the data we are gathering. We’re learning exactly how to make the best ROI from every pound we spend.

Want to increase clinical bookings with Google Ads? Book a call and we’ll get you up and running.

 

 

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