Your pharmacy brand is your reputation, your identity, your connection with your audience, it’s what makes you, you. It’s what makes you different from the competition. It’s the reason why your customers stay loyal and the reason you give to visitors to pick you.
You’ve been running a great brand offline, but how does your digital profile compare? Being in a digital era where consumers have instant access to shop anywhere makes it more important than ever to be on the top of the list. Especially after COIVD where **insert stat about how many ppl will remain shopping online****. COVID has caused a shift where people are shopping more online. All data points to a growth in e-commerce. It doesn’t mean brick and mortar pharmacy store fronts are dying, it’s an opportunity independent pharmacies can capture and capitalize on to grow their business and future proof it for the years to come.
Building your brand helps you get recognized
Online and offline where consumers are constantly seeing different names of brands in their daily routines, chances are if your pharmacy name appears one of the first things people see is your logo. Although it’s only a visual reference, your logo is essentially the face of your pharmacy. Investing in a good high-quality vector logo is a good start to branding. The same file should be placed across mediums that your customers interact with like brochures, pamphlets, your private label products, and digitally across social media.
Forbes says the average American consumer is exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads per day. Consumers like to buy with companies they recognize. Making your brand memorable helps stick out from the stack.
Build trust
People buy from brands that they trust. When dealing with one’s health, trust is even more critical. Your pharmacy interacts with customers daily filling prescriptions or fulfilling their OTC needs. In the process, you are making a promise to the customer.
Builds an emotional and loyal connection
Creating a relationship doesn’t happen overnight. The same goes for your pharmacy’s brand. As independent pharmacy owners, we’re at a huge advantage because this is what we already do and what we’re known for. We go out of our way to personalize our customers’ experience and cater to their individual needs. This relationship wasn’t built overnight, but it was built with being in touch with the customer every 30 or 90 days when they got their prescriptions. This strong emotional connection is what people associate your pharmacy with. When they see your name or logo on the medicine bottle, the way you built your brand and foundation of how you served your customers makes it memorable.
It gives your customers a reason to share:
Consumers are after experiences. By serving your customers in a memorable way you will want them to tell their friends and family of the awesome experience and value your pharmacy was able to provide them. Your brand online is the first thing people see when your customers are sharing their experiences (good and bad). Use this as an opportunity for free word of mouth marketing!
Let’s you charge more:
Why do customers continue to pay more for brand Tylenol vs the generic? As pharmacists we know it has the same active ingredient and will do the same thing right? Yes, but the key difference here is how Tylenol successfully branded their product and can demand that premium. Independent pharmacies are in a position where they can private label (this is a whole discussion in of itself that we’ll save for another day) vitamins for example, but the question is how much can they charge? Branding will enable your pharmacy to take the same product and add a premium simply because it is your brand, and the relationships, beliefs, and values you built around it gives you the boost to add your premium.
Increases the value of your pharmacy:
Since branding is a relationship with our customers, great brands tend to have more loyal customers. When dealing with potential products independent pharmacies can offer their customers for sale, the majority of these products are personal care items that consistently need to be replenished.
In fact the average person spends $500 per year on personal care items. Imagine a loyal customer base of 1,000 customers whose prescriptions you already take care of. But now you can offer them a greater digital experience and a wider variety of products they can select from what if they pick you and spend that $500 per year at your pharmacy.
Your brand enabled you to dramatically increase your Average Customer Value, and now your pharmacy commands a greater resale value because of the brand it was built on.
The bottom line
Times are changing with the digital era and independent pharmacies should embrace this change with positivity. The way independent pharmacies have operated for the past century with pharmacists going the extra mile to serve their customers is the building block of branding. Given the history of pharmacists and relationships along with the fact pharmacists are health experts makes pharmacy’s an edge over the competition.