A brand is a representation of your pharmacy’s identity, and in today’s fast-moving world of busy lives and constant communication, a strong brand is more important than ever to attract and retain patients.
Your brand includes every aspect of contact you have with patients, partners and the community. It includes everything from your logo and signage, to the appearance of your storefront and back-end, to how you speak with patients in person and over the phone.
Excellent customer service and accurate, timely fills are not enough to build brand identity for your pharmacy, but they’re an important part.
Whether you’re planning to develop your pharmacy’s brand for the first time, or you want to put your current brand to the test, ask these questions to determine your brand’s strength and to make your business even better.
1. Does your brand reposition your competitors’ strengths as weaknesses?
While it may seem like a strange thought at first, you’re probably already using this branding strategy to some degree.
Big box store and national chain pharmacies’ strengths are their high volume of sales, which enable them to offer lower prices for cash-paying patients and on front-end items.
But those strengths also lead to weaknesses, such as their inability to offer personal care and to develop more intimate relationships with patients and their health care needs.
An excellent level of customer service, plus any niche services you offer, should be the centerpiece of your branding. For example, if your pharmacy offers diabetes care, make that known in every interaction patients have with your brand.
Here are some additional points to consider:
- How does your logo and signage share what’s special about your pharmacy “at-a-glance?” Will patients see this information when they’re shopping or filling prescriptions in your pharmacy? What about if they’re just walking or driving by your store?
- Do you mention this information when answering the phone, such as, “Thank you for calling Example Pharmacy, specializing in diabetes care, how may I help you today?”
- How does your website and social media showcase this information? Is it consistently represented across all digital platforms?
2. Do you have brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the familiarity level patients have with your pharmacy’s identity, and the services it offers.
Strong brands elicit certain feelings when a customer thinks of them, which is how brand loyalty is developed.
Whenever a patient interacts with your brand—whether it be online, in print, or in person—you want to reinforce certain feelings. That’s brand awareness.
For example, you might want to reinforce feelings of health, cleanliness, wellness and professionalism.
If your pharmacy’s logo is busy, uses too many colors, or tries to fit too much into a small space, it will create the feeling of disorganization and discomfort. But, if your logo is simple, clean and pleasing to the eye, it will generate feelings of professionalism, order and trust.
The cleanliness and order of your front and back ends, and ease and efficiency of patient interactions should also reflect those characteristics of a clean, orderly brand.
3. Is your brand authentic?
You could spend a great deal of money having a designer create an excellent logo and signage for your pharmacy, but they’ll be useless unless your customer service and genuine care reinforce the image.
Trust that your patients are smart, and can tell if you genuinely care about their health and well being. As a community pharmacist, the value you place on positive patient outcomes and care is necessary to distinguish your pharmacy’s brand from national chain pharmacies.
If you begin your branding process with the most important thing—quality patient care—and work backwards from there, then patient communications, store design and signage will follow easily, and emulate your authenticity.
4. Do patients interact with your brand?
The more positive contact your patients have with your brand, the more comfortable they’ll feel with it, leading to increased loyalty.
For example, the majority of interactions with your pharmacy’s brand shouldn’t be product deals or advertisements on your Facebook page. Instead, offer three or four posts on your page with valuable health tips and advice for every deal you offer.
Also consider how often your patients and prospective patients see your brand outside of your brick-and-mortar store, and what context they see it in, too.
Do you offer health information or resources that would lead them to visit your website? Consider how often a patient has a meaningful interaction with a refrigerator magnet or pen with your pharmacy’s logo versus a water bottle or pill organizer.
The most substantial interactions your patients have with your brand are in your physical store. The cleanliness and organization of your store is a direct indication to patients of the identity of your pharmacy. Likewise, a professional logo and advertisements could be deemed worthless if your dialogue with patients does not also emulate health, professionalism and authenticity in your care.
5. Does your brand communicate a message of health?
No matter how you brand your pharmacy—as diabetes experts or compounding experts or family-centered—your brand should always make people feel comfortable trusting you with their health.
Does your logo and design instantly let prospective patients know without any words that your business provides health care? Or even better, does it let them know just from glancing at your logo that you’re a pharmacy?
The simple design that incorporates professionalism and health care should be carried throughout the rest of your store and operations.
6. Is your brand consistent across all platforms?
Consistency is key when strengthening your brand to promote trust, familiarity and authenticity. In its simplest form, this means using the same formatting, logos and slogans in your store, in-person and online. But a consistent brand goes a little deeper than that.
Every aspect of your pharmacy should have a consistent “voice” and tone in its communications. For example, the way you reach out to patients through social media may be a little less formal than the material on your pharmacy’s website, but it should still be apparent that it’s coming from the same business.
Similarly, this “voice” should be carried through to how you interact with patients face-to-face.
To maintain consistency, consider creating a written branding guide or outline for employees to reference. It should include your standard practices for your website, social media, store layout and patient interaction and care.
It’s helpful to remember when creating a branding guide for your pharmacy to not be overly formal. Health care professionalism doesn’t mean you have to omit a personal and human touch, or even a sense of humor.
7. Is your brand trustworthy?
Trust ties back to consistency. The more consistent your branding is across all platforms, the more you’ll create a cohesive, professional identity. And, when patients always know who you are—and what you stand for—it leads to trust and loyalty.
Want to improve your pharmacy’s brand? Marketing services by PBA Health can create a one-of-a-kind logo for your pharmacy, plus in-store signage, business cards, brochures and more. Learn more at pbahealth.com/marketing.
