Creative marketing key to fighting tough competition - retail pharmacy promotional efforts - Pharmacy - column

Creative marketing key to fighting tough competition

Nearly 100 times a season some 2,000 music enthusiasts stream into Cleveland's Severance Hall to hear the Cleveland Orchestra perform its magic on string, brass, reed and percussion instruments. During each orchestra performance, individually-wrapped Revco cough drops are made available through the ushers to concert-goers who feel a tickle in their throats.

According to A.J. Poderis, the orchestra's director of development, the cough drops, which are donated by Revco, "serve a valuable purpose...the potential is great for a lot of coughs and a lot of disruption during a performance." Since the performances are taped and played over several radio stations around the world, a clean, clear, cough-free performance is management's goal

In Sacramento, the board of trustees of the California Pharmacists Association (CPhA) approved a comprehensive marketing plan to guide the association's activities in 1989. According to an article in the California Pharmacist, CPhA's monthly journal, the association's goal of "enhancing the ability of pharmacists to market themselves and their services to the public and to improve the position of the association" becomes particularly important as competition increases for the health care dollar.

Some of the items included in the plan is to launch a health column to be used in local newspapers, develop and distribute new public service radio announcements, make the public fully aware of the value of a pharmacist's consultative services, and increase consumer's awareness of the pharmacist's role in protecting the public's health and safety through a "freedom of choice" marketing campaign.

In Tallahassee, the Florida Pharmacy Association launched One-on-One, an 11-step program that promotes the image of pharmacy to state residents (see story this page).

And in hundreds of independent and chain pharmacies throughout the 50 states, pharmacists are making use of sophisticated and easy-to-use computerized desktop publishing programs that run on personal computers to provide their customers with weekly and monthly newsletters. A newsletter is an ideal way of communicating with customers whom you may not see on a day-to-day basis.

It is a relatively inexpensive way of delivering health care information and promoting your store at the same time. It is one more way that pharmacists can get involved in the community and cement their relationships with other health care professionals.

What do Revco, CPha and hundreds of independent and chain pharmacists have in common? The answer, I think, is obvious. They are fighting the extraordinary competition facing them in today's retail pharmacy marketplace with creative marketing. Making customers happy through innovative marketing strategies is an important part of doing business.

According to an article that appeared in the NARD Journal which recaps a report from Management Horizons, the answer is clear: happy customers buy more. Customers in a good mood "are better able to process and remember information, more apt to make impulse purchases, more positive in perceiving merchandise, price and service and more satisfied with the store and its products."

And, according to the report, to produce results, the retailers' efforts to put customers in a good mood need not be as aggressive as a monthly newsletter, but can be as subtle as changing the level of lighting, creating pleasant odors, changing store design to create an open feeling, using background music, or changing color decor to soft neutral colors.

All too often, pharmacists react to increasing competition with a knee-jerk reaction. But by then, the competition is smothering you, choking you out of business. Do something before it's too late. Work out a strategic marketing plan and stick to it. Make your customers happy, the payoff can be rewarding.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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