5 Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Pharmacy or Holistic Healthcare Practice 5 Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Pharmacy or Holistic Healthcare Practice
Renee Moore, MBA, CPhT Much Moore Marketing
1. Know what problems you solve This may sound like a no-brainer but take a few hours and write down what solutions you provide for people. It may be that you help a client alleviate physical or emotional pain. Or maybe you provide people with learning to change a self-defeating behavior. You help people improve their self-esteem after a job loss. Whatever problem you solve, keep that at the forefront of your conversation. That is what people want to know - how you will help them solve the problem they have.
2. Create “attractive” marketing questions for your marketing materials Attractive marketing questions are not ones that are pretty or beautiful. Rather these are questions that get the customers (both patients and doctors) to yes to you. For example, when writing your brochure or website content, ask questions such as: Are you the breadwinner in the home and you’ve just lost your job? Are you having night sweats and traditional medication is not working for you? Have you recently lost a loved one and you are not sure how to pick up the pieces? Do you feel stressed because of the current economic conditions? Most people will say yes to any of these. Once they have said yes, then they will keep reading to find out your solution to the problem. In fact, after you have asked the question, add your solution below. Create a complimentary white paper on how your service answers those and many other questions. When they sign up for your newsletter they will get the white paper which explains the answers to those questions and how you can help. You can also pass it out to patients who want to know more about a particular service you offer.
3. Create a newsletter for patients and prescribers Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with your customers. You can print them and have them in the office to pick up, mail them out or use an enewsletter service such as Attain Response or Constant Contact. I prefer the e-newsletter because I don’t have to print, stamp and mail anything so it saves on postage and printing. You can update it when you want and track who opened the newsletter and if they clicked through on any of the links. Make the content relevant and keep it simple. Send it out regularly which could mean weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly. Put it on your website so that people can download it or sign up for it. Think about the information that you already know and use that as your starting point. Divide the information up so that you can create more content. For example, you may want to write about stress but that is such a huge amount of information to cover. Why not divide it up into stress and new job, stress and caring for an aging parent, stress and weight management, stress and men’s health, etc. This will create more content for you to cover and will appeal to a variety of audiences.
4.
Use testimonials to sell your services
When you have a satisfied customer, make sure that you get a testimonial. I suggest getting one when you make your follow up calls. If the patient says that because of your service they are doing much better, ask if you can use that in your marketing materials. Ask your patients to provide testimonials that sell. Many service businesses use the SAR method to do this. SAR stands for Situation, Action and Results. Ask your patients to describe the SITUATION that occurred before they used your service, the ACTION they took which should be using service X for Y time-frame and finally the RESULTS they received after using your service. You can have a form made up that they can fill out while they wait or ask about it during a follow up call. One chiropractor I know used an inexpensive journal to capture all of his testimonials. He asked each of his patients to write in the journal about their experience and naturally once a person had written their testimonial, they would read what others had written and want to try those services as well. He sold most of his services this way and recently moved into a much larger facility because his practice had grown so much.
5.
Have a Call to Action on everything
Before you write the first word of an article or presentation or sit down to design your website, consider what you want to accomplish. Do you want new consultations, new patients, to sell a product or to inform people that your practice exists? Each of these goals requires a different strategy. And each of these goals requires a call to action. A call to action means that you want to the reader to do something. You may want them to sign up for a consultation. Or maybe you want them to buy a lecture series. There is a theory in sales and marketing, that people really want to be told what to do. That is why infomercials tell you to “go to the phone and call in the next 10 minutes” or to “go to the website and order now!” They tell the customer what to do so that a sale can be made. When you write a letter, don’t just make it an introduction, make sure you tell them what you want them to do. If you want them to call you for a consultation, then tell them. If you want a patient to sign up for your webinar, tell them. By adding in a call to action, you will get more responses for the services that you are offering.
Next Step
Now I am going to use Step 5 on you! For more information on how to effectively market your pharmacy, sign up for my monthly e- newsletter and weekly e-postcard 1derful Wednesdays. You will get great marketing tips to help grow your business.
• Are you a holistic practitioner who is struggling to attract more customers? • Do you know that you need to market but you are not sure where to start? • Do you feel like it isn’t important to market if you have a great product? • Do you struggle with telling people what you do in a clear and concise manner? • Do you dislike marketing because it seems to sales-y? • Have you tried using traditional methods of marketing such as newspapers, radio or TV and not gotten the results you expected? • Are you ready to make a commitment to an action oriented marketing plan? Then take a moment to go to my website and check out how I can help you grow your compounding or alternative healthcare business. Not quite ready to make a commitment as a coaching client? Sign up for my monthly e-newsletter to receive helpful marketing tips for your compounding practice. I look forward to working with you soon! Renee
About the author Renee works with compounding pharmacists and holistic healthcare practitioners who love what they do but don’t love the marketing quite as much. She helps them to focus their marketing so that they attract Moore patients, make Moore compounds and ultimately make Moore money!
She has a BS degree in Chemistry, an associates in Digital design and an MBA in Marketing.
Renee lives in Temple Hills, MD just minutes from Washington DC where she grew up. She is a single mom of 18 year old daughter Rakiya. In her spare time she enjoys bicycling, digital scrapbooking and shopping for shoes!
Renee Moore, MBA, CPhT Much Moore Marketing www.muchmooremarketing.com renee@muchmooremarketing.com