Your independent community pharmacy’s social media informs and educates patients, shares meaningful health advice and tips, and is a significant source of marketing for your pharmacy. But, how do you get new patients to come to your pharmacy through social media?
A social media call-to-action is the answer.
A call-to-action lets your followers know what you’d like them to do. Whether you want to promote a sale on front-end products, get people to come to an event or have more patients use your flu shot services, you need to tell them what to do.
Here are five tips for writing social media call-to-actions that bring more patients into your pharmacy.
1. Offer patients a deal they can’t refuse
Offering your Facebook or Twitter followers a great deal may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be difficult to craft the right call-to-action. It’s important to write something that will attract patients to take action after they read your post.
Give patients a good deal—and get them to act—by writing a call-to-action around the idea of trying a product or service for free. People often fear making a commitment to a product or service that they may not like. Make it easy for patients to try your product or service—without an upfront commitment.
For example, if you want to promote your medication therapy management (MTM) services, try this call-to-action: “Come in for a free medication consultation!” Or, if you want to boost interest in your delivery service, use something like, “Try our pharmacy delivery service for free for one month.”
2. Gear your post for success
The most successful call-to-actions are the ones that directly correlate with what you want your audience to do.
For example, if you’re writing about your new smoking cessation program, the call-to-action “Call now!” may not be the best way to gain traction on this new service. Instead, ask your followers to “Visit us today for your free consultation!”
3. Use action words
For your call-to-actions to be most effective, you need to make your followers take action. To do that, construct your posts with action words that tell your patients to do something.
If you’re marketing an event at your pharmacy and want your followers to take action by attending the event, you should write something like, “Secure your spot today!” Or, if your pharmacy has a monthly newsletter, ask your social media followers to, “Download a copy today!” or “Sign up now!”
4. Keep it brief
Keep your social media call-to-actions short and to the point. Being concise lessens the sales pitch feel of your posts and tells your followers exactly what they need to do.
An effective call-to-action shouldn’t be more than a sentence or two. Simple words or phrases can do the trick. A few examples include, “Visit today!” “Click to learn more!” or “Try it now.”
5. Measure your results
Measure the success of your call-to-actions to find out what’s working for your pharmacy’s social media pages—and what isn’t.
Monitoring your social media analytics on Facebook and Twitter along with your financials can help you identify which posts had the most affect, and what you can do in the future to attract your target audience and gain new patients.
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