How successful are your independent community pharmacy’s seasonal marketing efforts?
Seasonal promotions, holidays and annual celebrations are a great way to spread awareness about your pharmacy and boost your bottom line.
But if you want your seasonal campaigns to work, you have to strategize.
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Here are seven tips to make the most of seasonal marketing efforts for your independent community pharmacy.
1. Get an early start
Instead of waiting to roll out your seasonal promotions, start your marketing early—before that season starts.
For example, send coupons for popular summer products in the spring. This will create demand as patients get a jump-start on shopping for summer items, like sunscreens, aloe vera gel and anti-itch creams.
2. Use seasonal images
A creative way to spice up your marketing is to enhance your website or social media accounts with seasonal images.
For example, add a winter lifestyle image to the scrolling banner on your website in the winter. Or, update your social media cover photos to reflect annual celebrations, such as switching to a heart-themed image during American Heart Month.
3. Customize your services
Use holidays or seasonal events to offer a service that your pharmacy may not be able to offer year-round. For example, offer free blood glucose screenings during American Diabetes Month.
You can also offer a service that’s only applicable during a particular season, such as offering flu shots during the fall and winter.
4. Assess the competition
Take a look at what your competitors have done in the past to evaluate what works—and what doesn’t. You can use this information to your advantage by choosing to adapt their strategies and improve on them.
For example, maybe you noticed a competitor promoted Valentine’s Day products last year, but didn’t see much movement. Try a new approach this year by taking products you already sell in your front end and repackaging them for Valentine’s Day.
5. Look at last year’s trends
Pay attention to last year’s trends, so you can build on them the next year.
Did most patients respond when you presented them with offers via social media last year? Or, did you attract more patients with your direct mail campaign?
Analyze the success of previous seasonal marketing campaigns to determine what worked best, and improve on those ideas this year.
6. Recycle content
Once you create a few promotions or marketing materials that work, keep those assets to use in the future.
For example, if last year’s Christmas email marketing campaign was a success, re-use the content this year rather than wasting time designing a new campaign that may or may not achieve the same results.
7. Connect with patients
Your seasonal marketing efforts will only work if you find a way to connect with your patients.
Use holidays or annual celebrations to do something that really resonates with the people in your community.
For example, send personalized ‘thank you’ notes to patients every Thanksgiving to show your appreciation for their business. Or, donate a percentage of the proceeds for items sold in your front end to breast cancer research during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
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