What should be the first step in marketing an online pharmacy store?

[Bort]

Hello

We have just launched our Pharmacy's online store http://www.tweenspharmacy.com

We are a small business local pharmacy that has been selling over the counter goods on Ebay and Amazon for the past two years, and have now built our website (mainly to avoid the high ebay & amazon fees). Our site still needs tweaks here and there which we will do over time. We are known in the community, as it is a small town on the outskirts of London (UK). However due to front of shop sales reducing, we want to build a presence online.

Our aim is to grow our business, expanding our customer base worldwide. Obviously we will never be able to compete in the long-run with the big stores such as Boots, so half of me thinks there is no point, but the other half thinks why not try.
Our first target would just be able to make enough to run the site profitably.

I would appreciate any help on what the first steps we should take. Our knowledge of online marketing isn't that good, but I do generally understand concepts such as SEO, but don't know what the best order to start everything off without wasting a lot of money. For this, I would hire a freelancer, but would like to know what qualities I should look out for to gauge how good the freelancer is.

Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank-you

 

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[NVaz]

I would say... define your buyer persona as your 1st step.

 

[The-J]

I would start with an e-mail list if you don't have one already.

Offer something in-store for people who join your e-mail list. Say, a free item every month, with access to great deals every week.

If you have a direct mail list, try and get them onto your e-mail list too.

---

If you know that other e-commerce stores are going to beat you... you have to play offense.

Around here we say 'don't build e-commerce sites, build sales funnels'. This is what I do.

Online, you will have an offer to get people onto your mailing list, then you will offer more and more things, in sequence, that solve more and more of their problems.

As a pharmacy, what could you offer that will scratch one itch, then another, then another?

(You can build a sales funnel within an e-commerce site. Amazon does it, always getting you to add more and more to your cart, suggesting more and more items.)

For example...

...you have a button that takes people to buy whey. They buy whey...

...then you offer a bigger size of whey! (Increase your order for 50% OFF)

Then you offer creatine monohydrate...

...if they say yes, offer a bigger size!

Then have a bunch of muscle supplements right before they click 'buy', that they can instantly add to their cart.

---

I think the design is nice, but there's little to no copy. Also, I couldn't find your store hours. I think those should be visible, as well as a phone number people can call.

 

[Bort]

I would say... define your buyer persona as your 1st step.

Thanks mate. Is what you mean by this is to instead of selling a variety of general products to a non-defined general population, specify the demographic we want to target and then only sell certain products to them?

 

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[Bort]

I would start with an e-mail list if you don't have one already.

Offer something in-store for people who join your e-mail list. Say, a free item every month, with access to great deals every week.

If you have a direct mail list, try and get them onto your e-mail list too.

---

If you know that other e-commerce stores are going to beat you... you have to play offense.

Around here we say 'don't build e-commerce sites, build sales funnels'. This is what I do.

Online, you will have an offer to get people onto your mailing list, then you will offer more and more things, in sequence, that solve more and more of their problems.

As a pharmacy, what could you offer that will scratch one itch, then another, then another?

(You can build a sales funnel within an e-commerce site. Amazon does it, always getting you to add more and more to your cart, suggesting more and more items.)

For example...

...you have a button that takes people to buy whey. They buy whey...

...then you offer a bigger size of whey! (Increase your order for 50% OFF)

Then you offer creatine monohydrate...

...if they say yes, offer a bigger size!

Then have a bunch of muscle supplements right before they click 'buy', that they can instantly add to their cart.

---

I think the design is nice, but there's little to no copy. Also, I couldn't find your store hours. I think those should be visible, as well as a phone number people can call.

Thanks a lot for the response, it is really helpful.
We currently do not have any kind of mailing list. I like your suggestion of offering customers in store deals for signing up.

We are not looking to grow our actual shop customer base, just our online customer base.

 

[Kevin Peter]

Ravi, Are you an INDIAN?

Basic WP website looks good.

For any campaign online:
1. Research about ideal customer - what they want, who they are, what they needm what their habits are like (pain points)
2. Define your audience - not everyone who needs a prescription folled and is within driving distance from the store is you're audience. Find the demographics, psycographics, kind of media they consume, what they are looking for in a pharmacy, what motivates them to buy and what keeps them coming back.
3. Plan - Have a calendar, pre-post launch deliverables, marketing budget and media channels to use.
4. Program time to promote - analyze effectiveness and benchamrk the milestones of performance.
5. Evaluate - Try and have nurture programs to ensure you reach the goal and success. Do changes and re-run if needed. Connect with right people, at the right time and with the right message.

Always look at inbound and outbound flow of leads. All you need to do is attract patients and their peers. More than that you're buyers persona are Nursing homes, doctors offices, HR departments of companies in the vicintiy and heealth related businesses in your locality.

First step, as you are known in the neighbourhood, I would suggest you to run PAID ADS. People can better know you now that you are online and targeting is simpler for you.

Advertise with new inaugral offers.
Get a doc on-board and have free basic health care screening.
Gift cards for services
Collect phone numbers and email address when someone purchases at the store and offer them immediate 10% off.
So, now you have your own database created over a month and you can do email marketing.

For content, always use education as a sales and marketing platofrm. Focus on attracing prospects by sharing helpful information.
Have videos, blog posts on regular intervals for hot topics and issues.

ANDY BLACK from the forum, is the person to get in-touch with for all your Adwords doubt.

Social media presence is an essential part for your to grow. Join pharmacy groups, take part in industry conversations, share information with a wider audience.
Use it professionally adhereing to the standards and policies without violating any.
Facebook - general audience
Twitter - Yonger audience
YouTube - Video content

Keep in mind that not all social media sites works the best for you.

Share credible information to develop yourself as a though leader in the industry.
More over, interact and engage, use it as an avenue to create conversations. Spend time to post comment is a constructive way. Do not delete negative comments and respond to them to improve the situation.

How social media helps:

Establish trust
Brand recognition
Easy visibility
Accesible to each suspect, prospect and customer
Improve loyalty
Gain presence on multiple networks
Exposure
News feed from world wide
Generate leads
Build relationship
Listen to positive behavior
Less cost
Healthy competition
Helps search engines to rank your website
Open line of communication with company and clients
Direct conversation
Way to have potential consumers reach out to you
Explain your business easily by being accessible
Find out what your end users want
Humanize the brand
Transparency
Customer service immediate
Expand audience, target and reach
Easy to use for all age groups

 

[Bort]

Thank-you Kevin, great response, a lot to dig into.

Yep, my family is of Indian origin, but I was born and raised in the UK, so have the best of both worlds. Also how did you find out my name?

Ravi, Are you an INDIAN?

Basic WP website looks good.

For any campaign online:
1. Research about ideal customer - what they want, who they are, what they needm what their habits are like (pain points)
2. Define your audience - not everyone who needs a prescription folled and is within driving distance from the store is you're audience. Find the demographics, psycographics, kind of media they consume, what they are looking for in a pharmacy, what motivates them to buy and what keeps them coming back.
3. Plan - Have a calendar, pre-post launch deliverables, marketing budget and media channels to use.
4. Program time to promote - analyze effectiveness and benchamrk the milestones of performance.
5. Evaluate - Try and have nurture programs to ensure you reach the goal and success. Do changes and re-run if needed. Connect with right people, at the right time and with the right message.

Always look at inbound and outbound flow of leads. All you need to do is attract patients and their peers. More than that you're buyers persona are Nursing homes, doctors offices, HR departments of companies in the vicintiy and heealth related businesses in your locality.

First step, as you are known in the neighbourhood, I would suggest you to run PAID ADS. People can better know you now that you are online and targeting is simpler for you.

Advertise with new inaugral offers.
Get a doc on-board and have free basic health care screening.
Gift cards for services
Collect phone numbers and email address when someone purchases at the store and offer them immediate 10% off.
So, now you have your own database created over a month and you can do email marketing.

For content, always use education as a sales and marketing platofrm. Focus on attracing prospects by sharing helpful information.
Have videos, blog posts on regular intervals for hot topics and issues.

ANDY BLACK from the forum, is the person to get in-touch with for all your Adwords doubt.

Social media presence is an essential part for your to grow. Join pharmacy groups, take part in industry conversations, share information with a wider audience.
Use it professionally adhereing to the standards and policies without violating any.
Facebook - general audience
Twitter - Yonger audience
YouTube - Video content

Keep in mind that not all social media sites works the best for you.

Share credible information to develop yourself as a though leader in the industry.
More over, interact and engage, use it as an avenue to create conversations. Spend time to post comment is a constructive way. Do not delete negative comments and respond to them to improve the situation.

How social media helps:

Establish trust
Brand recognition
Easy visibility
Accesible to each suspect, prospect and customer
Improve loyalty
Gain presence on multiple networks
Exposure
News feed from world wide
Generate leads
Build relationship
Listen to positive behavior
Less cost
Healthy competition
Helps search engines to rank your website
Open line of communication with company and clients
Direct conversation
Way to have potential consumers reach out to you
Explain your business easily by being accessible
Find out what your end users want
Humanize the brand
Transparency
Customer service immediate
Expand audience, target and reach
Easy to use for all age groups

 

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[Ronnie Bryan]

Alright , I am looking at your website right now,going off my experience teaching myself SEO 12 months and looking at a lot of websites while learning to develop my own another 8 months. I would say the font is too small for one looks like "Times New Roman" I always found "Verdana" or "Tahoma" Better Fonts. the eyes will scan a website from the upper left to lower right so the most important features of your web site should be in the upper left corner the upper right then Lower left then lower right corner.

In learning they showed it as a z pattern.You did good with your internal links having them on the far right of the page.5-6 is the recommend limit I counted 6 so good on you.your breadcrumbs look good my understanding this is matching words from address bar to page ie/shop and Shop is the bolded word on the webpage.[and not a long url or a lot of numbers]

Colors seem good, they are not distracting or going to cause seizures,no way to collect emails is on the page.Look at some blogs to see how this is done. One I suggest and recommend http://www.loriculwell.com/ she makes a living building websites she even built a website for Jhonson&Jhonson time for you to meet lori culwell,good luck.

 

[Kevin Peter]

Thank-you Kevin, great response, a lot to dig into.

Yep, my family is of Indian origin, but I was born and raised in the UK, so have the best of both worlds. Also how did you find out my name?

We are Marketers! It is easy for us to dig into any details that we really need to substantiate our stand.

 

[JoeB]

Alright , I am looking at your website right now,going off my experience teaching myself SEO 12 months and looking at a lot of websites while learning to develop my own another 8 months. I would say the font is too small for one looks like "Times New Roman" I always found "Verdana" or "Tahoma" Better Fonts. the eyes will scan a website from the upper left to lower right so the most important features of your web site should be in the upper left corner the upper right then Lower left then lower right corner.

In learning they showed it as a z pattern.You did good with your internal links having them on the far right of the page.5-6 is the recommend limit I counted 6 so good on you.your breadcrumbs look good my understanding this is matching words from address bar to page ie/shop and Shop is the bolded word on the webpage.[and not a long url or a lot of numbers]

Wow.

 

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[Bort]

Thank-you Ronnie. I noticed that when I search "tweens pharmacy" into google, our .com site does not show up, instead our old obsolete .co.uk is there.

Could anyone help?

 

[Ronnie Bryan]

Thank-you Ronnie. I noticed that when I search "tweens pharmacy" into google, our .com site does not show up, instead our old obsolete .co.uk is there.

Could anyone help?

Wish I could do more, I have not done any Seo or website creation since, 2010, I did Google and there does seem to be a lot of ranking videos on you tube for 2015, wont hurt to search in you tube .

 

[JoeB]

Thank-you Ronnie. I noticed that when I search "tweens pharmacy" into google, our .com site does not show up, instead our old obsolete .co.uk is there.

Could anyone help?

If you're no longer using the .co.uk then put a 301 redirect to the .com site and update any links pointing to the website if possible.

Stuff that will be hurting your SEO are the crap pages below - that's just a start, there are loads more indexed (search "site:tweenspharmacy.com" in Google to see what is indexed)

http://www.tweenspharmacy.com/services/ - template page
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/ - broken page
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/departments/
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/timetable/
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/category/aristotle/
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/author/admin/
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/home-layouts/home/
http://demo.tweenspharmacy.com/about-us/testimonials/
http://www.tweenspharmacy.com/about-us/our-mission/
http://www.tweenspharmacy.com/about-us/price-list/

plus all your product listings link only via images, not anchor text, which would help.

Fix all those, fix all your product descriptions so they actually provide useful information, not just copy & pasted descriptions then start thinking about how you can get some links.

You may also want to look at blogging about ailments in a Q&A setup and then linking to your products which would be helpful e.g:

What is bacterial vaginosis?
Q: My doctor has told me I have an overgrowth of bacteria (he said vaginosis – I think) not an infection, he said it was very common and just a nuisance rather than an infection, so I was quite surprised they prescribed antibiotics anyway, he also said there was a high chance of it returning after taking antibiotics and I would probably have to have them again in the future!! So I thought what’s the point of stuffing up your body with them in the first place!! Please can you help?!

A: Bacterial Vaginosis is very common and occurs when the delicate balance of good and bad bacteria in the vagina has become disrupted. An overgrowth of ‘bad’ bacteria then causes an unpleasant fish-smelling discharge, which can be white or grey, or thin and watery. Causes of this condition include sexual intercourse, scented/chemical soaps and body washes, using scented vaginal products, having a uterine coil.

This allows you to cater to real life searches rather than people specifically searching for products.

If you just want to cater to people only looking for products then you could try Google Shopping and Adwords

Once you have a solid site (titles, content, descriptions etc) then it's mainly about getting high quality links and having good user metrics (how long people stay on your site, do they share it etc)

 

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[Bellini]

Hello

We have just launched our Pharmacy's online store http://www.tweenspharmacy.com
...Our site still needs tweaks here and there which we will do over time.
...Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.

Hi - Just a few observances:

• You know there is still a lot of Lorem Ipsum filler text all over your site, right? I would remove that asap as it makes it look very unprofessional, like you just threw up the site before you were ready. As a customer, if I land on a website that has filler text everywhere, I would never return to that site.

• Also, is there a way you can get the images to slow down from disappearing off the home page? They are moving away so rapidly I barely have time to read the label or see what it is.

• You have many "shop by" product links that go to nowhere. I would say if you're not selling that type of product, don't have it in the drop-down menu as a choice to search for. It's very disappointing for a customer to see something they are interested in, only to click a link and see "no products were found". Are you going to be selling those products eventually? Put something there. If not, take the product category off.

• The color palette is pleasant, but you might consider changing the background image of doctors doing surgery. This was obviously a medical template which is fine, but unless people perform surgery at pharmacies in the UK, I don't think this image is helping you.

I could say more but I know you are still tweaking. Good for you for getting something started.

how did you find out my name?

Your name is on your email in the 'contact us' section

 

[Andy Black]

Thank-you Ronnie. I noticed that when I search "tweens pharmacy" into google, our .com site does not show up, instead our old obsolete .co.uk is there.

Could anyone help?

Start by creating a paid ad directing traffic to the page you want.

www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/please-bid-on-your-brand-name.61311

 

[Kevin Peter]

Ah! As I did mention, ANDY BLACK is our guy here for paid ads.

 

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[Andy Black]

Ah! As I did mention, ANDY BLACK is our guy here for paid ads.

Thanks. Actually, there are many people here killing it with paid ads.

 

[Kevin Peter]

Thanks. Actually, there are many people here killing it with paid ads.

Andy do want a couple of suggestions on the paid ads for a few products. Will write to your inbox soon

 

[Tyler Ellison]

Hello
Our aim is to grow our business, expanding our customer base worldwide. Obviously we will never be able to compete in the long-run with the big stores such as Boots, so half of me thinks there is no point, but the other half thinks why not try.
Our first target would just be able to make enough to run the site profitably.

To do this, you should write a few advertorials for your best-selling products and test them on inexpensive traffic like content.ad. Cheap traffic goes to the advertorial, which recommends the product and links to the checkout page for that product on your site. Preferably there should be registration for customers so you can followup with great customer service, and upsell or cross-sell additional offers. Also use the customer interaction to get reviews/testimonials for additional social proof to boost the strength of all of your marketing across all platforms.

You should also have your site set with remarketing pixels from Facebook and/or Adwords or use a third party system like Perfect Audience to build a list of people you can inexpensively target with remarketing ads since they are targeted prospects.

 

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