How being online can attract new types of customers to your pharmacy

Attracting new customers and selling more to existing customers are the two main ways to grow your pharmacy, however, selling more to existing customers can be challenging when your pharmacy is based in a low-income area.

You already understand how much financial strain some families experience just to meet their basic healthcare needs and for these customers, focusing on patient care and filling their prescriptions efficiently and safely is your priority.

So, what does that mean for your pharmacy and its ability to grow? It means turning some of your attention to attracting new customers. Today, we’re going to look into some of the different customer groups you can reach by building an online presence for your pharmacy:

Customers far and wide

The conventional wisdom is that pharmacies generally serve their local communities. And this is mostly true – but it’s not 100% true. By getting online, you can reach beyond your traditional boundaries and serve customers from all over the place. See how one community pharmacy attracted online orders from all over the country and abroad.

Being open for business online is particularly valuable as your existing customers move around. If you’ve had a great relationship with a customer for years, and that customer moves, the fact that your pharmacy is online means that they can still be your customer! This is great for them, because they get to keep the pharmacist they know and trust, and it’s great for you, because you get to keep them as a customer.

Being online is also great for snagging customers who are just passing through, or who are temporarily in your town. If someone is in town for a week or so, and they need some cold medicine, they’ll probably search online for nearby pharmacies. If your pharmacy has what they’re looking for online, you’ll come up in those searches, and they’ll stop in to get what they need.

Changing neighbourhoods

The area around your pharmacy may be mostly low-income and you’ll do a great job serving these people – providing health and wellbeing advice and filling scripts efficiently!

But neighbourhoods change over time – average income levels increase, average ages decrease, and in ten years, you might have lots of young professional families where you used to have lots of pensioners.

Getting online gets you ahead of these changes. Your current customer base may hardly look at your website – but as the neighbourhood changes, a website and online store will guide its new residents through your doors.

Customers with more disposable income

People who shop online tend to have more disposable income than people who exclusively shop in person. This means that getting your pharmacy online can put you in front of a new set of customers that has more to spend.

Attracting these higher-income customers can be a particularly useful strategy if your current customer base is lower-income. By getting online, you can continue to serve your local community’s healthcare needs, while also growing your business. It’s not an either/or proposition!

It's easier than you might think

The really great thing about all of these new audiences is that it’s easy and relatively inexpensive to get online. So even if the new audiences you reach are relatively small, or they take some time to grow, the investment of your time and money is reasonably low – especially when you compare that investment to the potential returns of having more customers, different types of customers and customers who stay with you for longer than they otherwise would. We’re biased, but we think these are some pretty compelling reasons to get your pharmacy online, today.