How to market your pharmacy service?

You’ve looked at introducing new revenue streams and decided that a high-yield service such as travel health is the best option for your pharmacy. You’ve got your training done, your SOPs in place and perhaps got an online consultation platform or just PGDs. You are ready to receive patients. So now what?

In this article we cover key tips on how to capture the attention of your potential audience with various activities. We’ll look at at how you can ladder up your marketing approach from simple, quick and cost effective options to slightly more advanced ventures that may require a bit more investment.

Step 1 - Capture people’s attention in your own pharmacy

Here’s the good news: you already have access to a sizeable audience of people who trust your pharmacy: your existing patients and your community! It makes sense to target them first and grab their attention when they are in your pharmacy or they are walking past your shop window.

Activities we recommend: posters, leaflets, window stickers, bunting, shelf wobblers.

Difficulty/cost: all of these pieces are simple to produce, won’t cost you an arm and a leg and can be done very quickly.

Step 2 - Establish a referral relationship with your GP surgery

One of the best ways to get a steady stream of patients is to work together with your GP surgery as not all surgeries offer travel health, however it is in everyone’s interest that patients don’t return from their holidays with tropical diseases.

Activities we recommend: letters and email to your local GP surgeries, or a personal visit, perhaps even leaflets/posters they can put up that sign post your pharmacy.

Difficulty/cost: super simple and won’t cost you anything (other than your time).

Step 3 - Promote travel health on your own website

Depending on whether you already have a website or not, this can be quick and easy or may require a bit more up front investment into a website. Regardless of which category you fall into, make sure that your travel service has it’s own page so you can direct traffic to it from other marketing pieces (posters and leaflets for example). Also consider an embedded booking function for your website so patients can select appointments easily at any time.

Activities we recommend: website, travel service page, booking function, banner on other pages, SEO.

Difficulty/cost: depending on whether you have a website yet or not, this can be a sliding scale of cost and time requirements, however the impact is usually equal to the spent for your business.

Step 4 - Digital marketing - social media and online advertising

If you have already ticked off the previous activities, you can look at social media and online paid advertising to reach further audiences for your travel service. Organic advertising (where you post your own materials simply on your channel) will only be effective if you have a large following. Otherwise, you’ll need to acquire followers first to create your audience pool.

Alternatively, you can explore paid advertising to grow your following but also to simply get adverts in front of people who may be looking to book a trip as well. This can be time consuming and more costly than other activities, and to make it impactful we recommend working with someone who specialises in audience targeting to make the most of your allocated budget.

Activities we recommend: Google my business, google ads, Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook ads (organic or paid).

Difficulty/cost: requires specialist skills, time and fees for media spend and creating materials to advertise as well, however it can have a huge impact on your business. Like with website marketing, he impact is usually equal to the spend (the more you spend, the more people you reach).

What we recommend

We’d suggest launching your service with at least steps 1-2, then moving onto 3 if you have a bit more cash/time to spare (depending on your setup). Then once you have some revenue you can look at step 4, online and social media advertising as a bit more of an advanced option.

The Nuumad team are happy to help with guidance and creation of any of these pieces for your pharmacy - just get in touch with us on [email protected]