A kick-ass social media strategy is a low-cost way to grow your independent pharmacy.
Creating a social media content strategy for your independent pharmacy increases your online authority and attracts new patients. Consider it your opportunity to connect with your community, build brand awareness, engage with customers, and drive more foot traffic to your pharmacy.
But… how do you do it?
We aren’t fans of pharmacy marketing by accident. While posting anything on social media is better than nothing, you have limited time and resources and need a great ROI. So you need a plan.
Here are some tips to help you get started:
Define Your Goals
Before creating content, take a moment to decide what you want to achieve with your social content first. For example, do you want to increase vaccinations? Increase OTC sales? Get new prescription patients? Pick one to start. Once you have a clear idea of your goals, create content to help you achieve your desired outcome.
Here are some ideas based on different goals.
Increase brand awareness
Brand awareness is making sure your community becomes familiar with your brand. For pharmacy owners, this might mean they recognize you, or it could mean they recognize your pharmacy’s name and logo. If your objective is to grow, then focusing on brand awareness will be important for you.
- Create engaging and shareable posts that showcase your unique value proposition. Highlight the things you do differently than your competitors.
- Leverage your current patients for testimonials and ask them to share on social media.
- Actively engage with your audience through comments and discussions. The algorithms will recognize these comments as signals that you have a real relationship with them and show them more of your content in their feed. Yes, respond to all your comments, good or bad.
When creating content to increase brand awareness, remember it’s all about helping others become familiar with you and your brand. Use consistent fonts and colors, and stay authentic to your brand tone of voice.
More website visitors
If driving website traffic is your priority, your content plan should include the following:
- Informative blog posts. Focus on including the keywords you want to be ranked for. Place a focus on writing blog content that answers your customers’ questions. When your potential client enters a search prompt on Google, wouldn’t it be great if your blog post pulled up with knowledgeable information?
- Eye-catching visuals with direct links to your website. Create free resources for customers to download on website landing pages.
- Ask local doctors or other businesses to post your content on their websites. You can even propose a content swap to help both of you grow.
Make sure your website is optimized for a visitor. It should be clear to anyone what they need to click to do business with you. To get a feel for what your website might need, check out two websites we reviewed: #1 and #2.
Increase sales
While more website visitors and brand name recognition are great, we understand you want more sales. At DiversifyRx, we believe in the ‘educate and invite’ sales process. Many people are uncomfortable with selling. Selling is associated with used car salesmen – being untruthful and manipulative. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The educate and invite method is simple. Tell people why you love a product or chose to carry it, and then invite them to take further action. You can tell them to stop by the pharmacy or call with any questions. When you put education first, people can self-identify if a product or service is right for them. No low-down selling is required.
Optimize your social media profiles
Your social media profiles are an extension of your pharmacy marketing. Is your profile information complete, consistent, and visually appealing across all platforms? Use high-quality images of your pharmacy, logo, and cover photos that reflect your brand identity. These visuals should align with your brand identity, conveying a cohesive and visually appealing representation of your pharmacy.
Stay away from low-resolution (aka grainy) photos or logos. If you don’t have any you are proud of, you can easily get new logos done with services such as 99designs. Also, we don’t recommend using stock pharmacy photos either. Get out your camera and take some real pictures of your pharmacy. Authenticity matters.
Use a content calendar
A content calendar is a great way to plan out your social media content in advance. It can help you stay organized and ensure that you’re posting regularly.
A content calendar that strategically aligns your posts with important dates, events, or promotional campaigns, will save you time and effort in the long run. This planning also enables you to maintain a cohesive and engaging content mix, covering various topics and formats to captivate and entertain your audience.
We create a monthly calendar for our Pharmacy Badass University members to use. You can easily create one yourself by coming up with different posting categories. You can use holidays, OTC products, employee highlights, FAQs, or Rx highlights as some examples. Then rotate through those on your calendar. Now you know what to post about!
Use local SEO techniques
Optimize your social media profiles, website, and content with local keywords relevant to your area.
- When you post, use words such as the name of your city or area and the word pharmacy.
- Share other locally created content from other small businesses or news organizations.
- Leverage tools like Google My Business to manage your pharmacy’s online listing and ensure you post on it regularly.
- Obtain online reviews from satisfied customers to boost your local search rankings.
Maximizing these tips will help potential new patients find you when needed.
Make your independent pharmacy stand out. Creating a kickass social media strategy for your independent pharmacy will take time. You don’t need to do it all at once. Start with one thing and add from there over time. Above all, stay consistent, embrace the need to evolve with new trends, and prioritize giving value to your social media community.
