Your pharmacy marketing focus should change with the seasons!
We have compiled some popular pharmacy marketing tips that you can deploy to help grow your pharmacy during the summer.
The ever-changing of seasons affects our daily behaviors, and it should impact your business behaviors too. Your patients and community change the type of activities they participate in and the focus they have. Summer is a time for increased physical activity, more time outside, travel both near and far, and changes in daily schedule due to school closures and longer days. Summer is the perfect time to capture the attention of new patients and get them into a new habit of coming to your pharmacy.
Here’s an overview of our tips for pharmacy marketing for summertime.
- Partner with travel agents.
- Promote relevant summer products.
- Partner with summer camps.
- Target parents in your marketing.
Partnering With Travel Agents
While the number of traditional brick and mortar travel agencies may be waning, the industry of travel agents is stronger than ever. Like many professions, travel agents have transitioned into an online presence. Many specialize in niches—trips to Disney, cruises, international, and many more. When people are planning their travels, they often have questions about medications.
- How do they bring them?
- Do they need extra?
- What else do they need to protect themself?
- Do they need any vaccines?
I have found that travel agents would rather refer these types of medical questions to healthcare professionals. So how do you earn this referral? You simply need to begin a relationship with these agents.
For your local agents in a brick and mortar location, here’s what you should do:
- Introduce yourself in person
- Drop off travel-specific pharmacy marketing materials and referral coupons
- Ask them how you can help them with medical information for travel
- Ask how you can earn their referral for their clients
- Follow up with a thank you card and check-in periodically
For travel agents online only, you may need to do a little more legwork to identify them. Chances are some of your current patients and followers are also travel agents. Make a few posts on your social channels calling attention to local travel agents and offering to partner with them to improve their clients’ experience. Another tip is to pretend to be someone looking to travel and do some quick Google searches for keywords they would use. Here are some ideas: travel agent near me, Disney travel agent, cruise travel agent . These results will give you a list of agents you can call and develop a new relationship with.
Promote Relevant Summer Products
The products your patients and community are looking for during the summer changes. Your pharmacy marketing should highlight what you offer that solves these same challenges. Think of ubiquitous items such as bug spray and sunscreen, and then think of what may be needed specifically for your local area. Does your area have a lot of poison oak, or maybe you are at high risk for ticks. Help protect your patients and increase your OTC revenue by changing your pharmacy marketing and your in-store marketing for these highly sought-after items.
Partner With Summer Camps
Summer camps for children are big business. This pharmacy marketing tip is more relevant to some geographic areas than others; however, every state has a summer camp. The managing of children’s medications while away from home is a big challenge for camp counselors. Some camps have started to require unit-dose packaging for prescriptions that are brought onsite. Many times the camp personnel’s only recommendation is to find a pharmacy on your own. By partnering with camps, you can earn their referral as a place where parents can get their children’s medication adequately packaged. You can do bubble packing or strip packaging. Most camps will accept both types.
Target Parents In Your Pharmacy Marketing
There are many channels you can use to target parents in your community specifically. The easiest and cheapest is going to be Facebook. Other options include local parent’s magazines, mailing lists, and partnering with schools.
Why should you target parents for the summertime?
During the summer, parents’ schedules change drastically. With kids out of school, life gets chaotic and creates new challenges that you can solve. Perhaps highlighting your free delivery service would be noticed and appreciated by parents. Kids also have different needs during the summer for medications. Some children change their ADHD meds, travel to visit family or start participating in new activities. Often the best time to form new habits is during a time of change. So, attract these parents during the summer for yearlong increased business.
Pharmacy Marketing Planning
Ideally, you should be planning your pharmacy marketing strategy a couple of months before you need to put it into action. If you are that prepared, that’s ok! You can quickly deploy these pharmacy marketing strategies in your community.
Step 1 is to decide what angle(s) you will take.
Step 2 is to create some flyers and coupons to highlight your services and products.
Step 3 is to get your message out to the right people, either online or in person.
If you need any assistance in creating materials or brainstorming ideas, please reach out to DiversifyRx at info@diversifyrx.com.
