By now you know that marketing is essential to growing your business, better serving your patients and maximizing profits.
Which means every marketing mistake affects the health of your pharmacy.
But as an independent community pharmacy owner, you’re busy keeping your business humming, so sometimes marketing falls to the wayside.
Being continually short on time and resources, when’s the last time you evaluated your marketing strategy?
Take a moment to see whether you’re making these common marketing mistakes and how you can easily fix them.
1. You don’t have a written plan
Just like trains can’t run without tracks, businesses can’t run without plans. Without plans—whether for growth, sales, marketing, or operations—your business has no direction.
A marketing plan tells you and your employees where you want to go and how to get there. It aligns your strategy, content and metrics to meet specific business goals.
But it’s not enough to simply talk about the plan. A report by the Content Marketing Institute found that those who wrote out a marketing strategy were twice as likely to say their marketing was effective as those who didn’t.
Develop a marketing plan, write it out clearly and stick to it.
2. You don’t have a website
Nearly half of all small businesses in the U.S. don’t have a website.
You may think you don’t need a website because you’re a small business with local customers. But the vicinity of your customers doesn’t change the need for an online presence. Ninety-seven percent of local consumers search online for products and services.
So, patients are likely to look up your pharmacy online before ever walking through your doors. Make sure you have a website that wins them over.
For tips and guidelines on how to put together an effective website, check out this article.
3. You don’t track results
You could be wasting time and money on your marketing without even realizing it.
Too many small businesses implement marketing plans and then close their eyes and hope for the best.
Tracking your marketing results allows you to see where you’ve gone wrong and where you’ve gone right. You’ll know to try something else if a strategy isn’t increasing sales. Or, you’ll know to keeping doing something if a strategy is bringing in patients.
Commit time to evaluate the results of your marketing each quarter. To start, analyze your online marketing with Google Analytics and get first-hand analysis the old-fashioned way through patient surveys. (Here are even more ways to track results.)
4. You don’t differentiate your business
The truth is, your competitors are marketing too. They offer the same prescription inventory and have a similar selection of over-the-counter (OTC) products.
So, why do patients come to your pharmacy? Your marketing needs to convince patients of your unique value.
What do you do better than the rest? Do you offer specialty services? Are your wait times the lowest around? Do you offer a rewarding customer loyalty program?
Evaluate what makes you better than your competition and make that your overarching marketing message. Otherwise, your marketing will be white noise alongside the rest.
5. You don’t do any marketing
“I don’t have time for it.” “I don’t have the budget.” “I don’t need it.”
Those are a few of the excuses small businesses use to forego marketing. About 20 percent of small businesses do zero marketing.
It’s true that as a pharmacy owner or manager, you’re overworked, your budget is tight, and you’re focused on improving patient outcomes.
But none of that matters if you don’t continue to attract new patients and grow your business. Because then, instead of overworked you’ll be out of work.
You and your staff can easily implement a marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be splashy and expensive.
Start small with, say, social media and work your way up from there. There are plenty of resources at your fingertips to get you started.
Grow your business and your profits by avoiding these common marketing mistakes.
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