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?
Through a call-to-action.
A call-to-action tells your followers directly 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 convince more patients to get a flu shot, you need to tell them what to do.
Here are seven tips for writing social media call-to-actions that bring more patients into your pharmacy.
1. Offer 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.
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. Give followers a mission
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.”
Clear language with a straightforward directive makes taking action feel less like a choice and more like an obvious next step. Instead of suggesting patients come into the pharmacy for a flu shot with a post that says something like, “We have flu shots available,” tell them to visit the pharmacy with a more assertive, “Get vaccinated today!”
3. Use action words to create a sense of urgency
The fear of missing out is real, and you can encourage your followers to act on that by writing social media posts with a sense of urgency.
Put a time limit on special offers to encourage patients to act quickly, with posts like, “This week only, buy one, get one free on cold and flu products!” If you’re marketing an event at your pharmacy and want your followers to take action by attending the event, emphasize the timeliness by writing something like, “Secure your spot today!”
When you use language like, “Before we run out!” you encourage patients to come in sooner rather than later so they can secure the coveted product or service.
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4. Stand out from the crowd
When people are scrolling through their social media feeds, everything starts to blend together. An eye-catching graphic can make them double back to see what they missed.
Use bright colors, large logos, or interesting photos to get people’s attention, and make sure it’s accompanied by interesting copy that gives followers a specific action to follow through on.
5. Keep it brief
Keep your social media calls-to-action 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.
While Twitter gives you 280 whole characters to play with, the ideal length of a tweet is only between 71 and 100 characters. On Facebook, even though you have more room to write an essay, the ideal post length is even shorter: only 40 to 80 characters. Longer posts also get cut off in followers’ news feeds, meaning the longer your posts are, the more likely people are to miss the message.
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.”
6. Measure your results
Measure the success of your calls-to-action 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 effect, and what you can do in the future to attract your target audience and gain new patients.
Using social engagement as a litmus test is a good place to start, but just because people are liking and commenting on your posts, that doesn’t necessarily translate into business for your pharmacy.
Looking at website referrals can help you get a better sense of if your social media marketing is working. By analyzing your referrals, you can tell how a person landed on your pharmacy site. If the amount of referrals from sites like Twitter and Facebook is growing over time, that means your social posts are generating interest in your pharmacy.
7. Polish your presence
Your Facebook and Twitter posts should have a clear and consistent voice, free of typos or other grammatical errors. Followers will have a hard time taking you seriously if your posts are riddled with misspellings.
A defined brand voice will also help you engender trust with your followers. If your posts swing from casual to professional, it will be difficult to build a rapport with followers, which means they’ll be less likely to turn their social engagement to pharmacy patronage.
By using a unified brand voice, you can create a lasting “brand marriage” that leads to long-term loyalty.
An Independently Owned Organization Serving Independent Pharmacies
PBA Health is dedicated to helping independent pharmacies reach their full potential on the buy side of their business. The member-owned company serves independent pharmacies with group purchasing services, expert contract negotiations, proprietary purchasing tools, distribution services, and more.
An HDA member, PBA Health operates its own NABP-accredited (formerly VAWD) warehouse with more than 6,000 SKUs, including brands, generics, narcotics CII-CV, cold-storage products, and over-the-counter (OTC) products.
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