Are you interested in getting more people into your pharmacy?
While we often preach that volume does NOT equal profits, there is no denying that having more people enter your pharmacy sets you up for success.
There are many strategies and tactics that you can use to increase your daily foot traffic into your pharmacy. Let’s dive deeper into our favorite low-cost methods.
Sexy Product Sells
What makes a product sexy? Something that solves a problem uniquely or has a special offer can make it sexy. Most importantly, there has to be a differentiating factor to it that makes it stand out from similar products.
Ananda PM Blends
Yes, there are lots of CBD sleep solutions. On that front, it is not unique.
What is special about the Ananda PM blend is that it works! I have seen it transform my husband. It works so well that Ananda Professional offers a 100% money-back guarantee on it. Now that is unique and sexy!
Ananda Professional offers an “it works the first night guarantee” for all PM blend products. This way, you can provide a money-back guarantee to your patients. It really helps get patients to buy, knowing they could get their money back.
Approved Medical Solutions Nitric Oxide Product
The unique thing about the AMS nitric oxide product isn’t their supplement. What is sexy and unique is their 15-second saliva test.
Practically instantly, this simple test tells you if somebody needs nitric oxide. Nitric oxide deficiencies can affect patients in so many ways. From erectile dysfunction to diabetes to high blood pressure to energy and more, many of your patients will test deficient.
I recommend offering the saliva test for free. You can’t do it online, so the patient must come into your pharmacy to get it done. Once they see how awesome you are, turning them into longtime patients will be easier. Click HERE to check them.
Antioxidant Scanner
I have had this in my pharmacy for years, and it is responsible for having 1,000s of people walk through my doors because we offer free antioxidant scans.
We would tell people their levels. Most of the time, they were incredibly low, so we would educate them on how to increase their levels. They can change their diet, make some lifestyle changes, or buy supplements guaranteed to raise their deficiencies.
People loved coming to the pharmacy to find out what their score was.
Unique Service Niches Sell
Servicing an underserved market can be a great way to carve out a niche for your pharmacy. By providing services for a unique population of patients, you can quickly become the go-to expert in your community. Here are a few of my favorite services.
Hospice
You might think, Lisa, I lose money on hospice; many pharmacies do. That is because of the PBM. Surprise, surprise, right? If you eliminate the PBM, you can make money.
I had no business when I first opened, so hospice was an incredible way to get patients without paying for marketing or advertising. I met many doctors, nurses, and local families by filling for hospice. Prescribers learned how awesome we were through their hospice patients and started referring other patients to us. Families got exposed to our service and asked to transfer their prescriptions to my pharmacy.
To ensure your hospice scripts are profitable and help boost your local hospice services, I recommend leaning into a company called BetterRx. BetterRx helps streamline the entire process and removes headaches for everyone, including the hospice agency, prescribers, patients, and the pharmacy.
Plastic Surgeons
Working with plastic surgeons can be a great little niche. Many plastic surgeons recommend that independent pharmacies are perfect for fulfilling and counseling patients.
Offer to carry everything the surgeon wants their patient to have and always have it in stock. You can also make it easy for the physician by working with them to create surgery kits for each specific surgery.
That way, when the doctor’s office called, the nurse or the MA would call and let us know which kits they needed for their patients, and it was a streamlined and fantastic experience. We already knew all the details of what was in each kit.
Getting Rich By Giving Things Away For Free
You can make money by giving away free things if you have a robust backend process. The free product or service brings people to your pharmacy, and then you must follow up and convert them into a new paying patients. Here are two of my favorite free strategies.
Free Antibiotics
I prefer to avoid commoditizing myself and playing the race to the bottom for prices. However, the free antibiotic program is worth it. This program brought in so many new patients from a wide variety of prescribers that the cost of giving a medication away for free was actually a cheap marketing expense.
Since antibiotics can be used in a wide variety of practices, you have many options for how to roll this out. What medications you offer will be determined by their availability and cost.
In terms of marketing, giving away a free antibiotic may cost you only $5. That means your new patient acquisition cost is only $5! That is cheap.
The average brick-and-mortar company spends hundreds of dollars to get new people to cross their doors. If you can attract new patients for a few dollars, that is a steal of a deal!!
Free Flavoring
Offering free flavoring is a tactic that I have deployed many times. We would target pediatricians, general doctors, dentists, and urgent care centers and let them know if they sent patients to our pharmacy, the patient would get their prescription and OTC flavored for free!
When visiting the prescriber’s office, we would pass out a booklet of bounce-back coupons so the office staff could easily tear one off and hand it to the patient. On the coupon, it would have our name, contact information, street map, and then details about the free offering.
Patients would often come in with a prescription, and then we would offer complimentary OTCs they may need. That helped increase our revenue from the patient and make the free offer a profitable one.
Wrap Up
These are just a few of our favorite ways to get more people into your pharmacy. We recommend leveraging social media and doctor detailing to help your community learn what you offer. These are both low-cost and highly effective. As always, you can contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions we can help answer.
