The Key to Patients and Profits: Differentiate Your Pharmacy

If you want to increase your patient base and your profits, then decided today to differentiate your pharmacy. The people who see your marketing should realize that you are obviously different in every way, form, and manner, especially when it comes to relieving their aches, pains, and other chronic maladies.

The key is to be noticeably different to the degree that other pharmacies cannot compete with you. When you do, you create a niche of which you will own 100%!

When your marketing messages clearly disclose how your products and services are so superior, then you will open the floodgates to dozens of new patients seeking you out for your solutions. Beware, however. It’s not about you. It’s about your patients and how they benefit from your advice and your products.

Making your pharmacy unique and superior to your competition increases the number of patients you magnetically attract. It also feeds your bank account as it builds your brand. In fact, you should also be able to say to a patient— or a potential patient— "Mrs. Jones, the pharmacy that serves you best, that you will most likely want to do business with, is one that:

• Provides you with medicines that are customized to your needs— to the needs of your own body.
• Provides you with information and education about how these natural medicines can help you, and how they can be integrated with your prescriptions for maximum re­sults and minimum side effects.
• Has a good assortment of such natural medicines— both herbal and homeopathic— which are absolutely superior in quality, and therefore do the best job and are the best value."

When you convincingly offer the above specifications and parameters (to which your competition doubtlessly cannot comply), you will provide those individuals with sound, valid, and very comprehensive reasons for them to want to do business with you— and with no other pharmacy. That’s building your brand.

Want to build your brand even bigger? Offer a brand name promise. One we recommend to our clients is "when you absolutely, positively want to feel better, live longer, and become more energetic." The result: price becomes more irrelevant.

What about the appearance of your pharmacy? Is that sufficiently different so that it, too, exemplifies what you want people to identify with you, and no other pharmacy. Your ambience must also be superior.

Does Your Pharmacy Really “Matter?”

Is what you’re doing as a pharmacy owner really making a difference to your target audience? What about your team? Is what they are doing really making a difference? Ask yourself: are you just doing the same thing every other pharmacy does? Including chains, big box pharmacies and other independent pharmacies?

When you offer solutions with unique nutraceuticals, you can complete the cycle of decidedly, positively influencing the group of people you want, creating many new patients, and skyrocketing your profits.

You have so many ways to MATTER. How about:

• More and better quality natural medicines. You should have very high quality standardized brands that the chain stores and big box stores do not feature. Ones that provide superior performance day-in and day-out. You should have natural medicines they definitely cannot find in the chain stores and big box stores.
• Customized scripts, more commonly called compounding. From Oprah to Dr. Jonathan Wright, authoritative individuals have said that "one-size-fits-all" is not good medicine. For instance, Dr. Wright has pronounced, on more than one occasion, that your patients’ bodies need the exact subtypes of estrogen and in the same ratios they originally had.
• Dispensing know-how about chronic maladies, for which you can provide more knowledge than a medical doctor has. Share them verbally to patients when they are in your pharmacy and have well researched and highly validated reports to hand out. That’s what makes you the “obvious expert.” That’s what helps you to create your legacy.

Yes, you can have solutions, new ones, that can make a very big difference.

Having a pharmacy that truly matters can make all the difference in the world to your patients, and to your bank account. Providing information one of the ways to accomplish that. What really matters to your patients is how you provide them with solutions to their health problems that they simply cannot get elsewhere. As such, becoming more knowledgeable in chronic diseases is basic and fundamental.

The absolute foundation for differentiating yourself in the marketplace and mattering to your patients and your community may very well lie in having the best business model today for independent pharmacies. Your business model represents the way you do business and the way you serve customers. More specifically, it relates to the products and services you provide and what you get paid for, as well as how you get paid. The right business model that can lead to your having a wellness pharmacy is composed of 4 parts:

• Compounding
• Natural Meds
• Fee for Expertise
• Strategic Marketing

Your strategic marketing should include:

• Direct response marketing, ie, marketing which you can hold accountable for results. Just getting your name out there is not good enough. You simply cannot afford anything less than advertising and other marketing that brings you direct, measurable, and immediate results, without heavy discounting or couponing.

The right marketing messages. Today, marketing is the only element of your pharmacy business that produces results. But any old marketing won’t do. You need to get your messages—the right messages—to your targeted audience quickly, and powerfully.

If you emulate successful pharmacies that have embraced this business model, you can do business entirely for cash. Cash is king in the wellness pharmacy.

The Pharmacy Sage can be reached at (518) 346-7021 or thepharmacysage@rxresultsnow.com