By Courtney T.  for our “99 Ways to Make a Positive Difference in Your Pharmacy” blog series

An essential part of any business plan is the marketing plan. While a business plan gives an organization direction, the marketing plan contains the tools to help the store move in that direction. A good marketing plan supports your store vision and brand and offers a clear understanding of your target market and how they can be reached. To develop your marketing plan, start with the outline below.

• Describe your services
  • Does the product assortment you sell contain anything that might be considered out of the ordinary for a drug store or do you focus on serving those core healthcare needs?
  • What is your pricing strategy?
  • Do you offer unique services that make you stand out from the crowd?
• Identify your target market
  • Who are your customers?
    • Describe them demographically including gender, income, age, etc. and psychographically – attitudes, values, lifestyle
• Know your competition
  • Who else offers similar products and services – list and evaluate your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
  • Identify your competitor’s business methods, target market, and product assortment – what differentiation do you offer?
• Determine your competitive advantage
  • Why should consumers come to your store?
  • Describe how your business can better meet the needs of your current and desired target customers
• Develop a marketing strategy
  • What message do you want to send your customers?
  • What mediums will you use to raise awareness?
    • Print ads
    • Social Media
    • Broadcast ads
  • How much have you budgeted to promote your business?

Developing your marketing plan is something you should put careful thought into and re-evaluate annually if not more often to adjust for social, economic, and local community changes or shifts. Following these steps and identifying crucial elements to your business should give you a good start on the direction you need to create a plan for your store to achieve success. Don’t forget to also consider your store’s appearance inside and out, in-store events, partnership opportunities, and how details like customer service, merchandising, and signage can make a difference.

Using the process and procedure guides in place, Courtney uses intelligent transcription to enter and proof information related to product attributes, back of package information, marketing language and packaging changes. Courtney is responsible for ensuring our image library is complete and accurate by visiting stores to review packaging. Courtney also assists with reaching out to manufacturers to procure product samples, both for our core processes and on behalf of our clients. For the processes that she is responsible for, Courtney proactively maintains documentation and implements process improvements.