Patient empowerment.

That seems to be the buzzword in health and wellness these days. We’ve been using it as it relates to medicine flavoring for the past few years.

Last fall, I saw John McNeil (President of Global Sales and Services for Tesla) speak at a marketing conference. He spoke about selling without selling, a  fascinating concept that can be adopted by many pharmacists who don’t want to be perceived as sales people, but would rather be thought of as problem solvers.

We are living in the golden age of change.  In the past 10 years alone, 40% of Fortune 500 companies have been replaced on the Fortune 500 list.  If you’re like me, you find this equally fascinating and terrifying.  In my opinion, the only consistent theme that has occurred is “change”, so I’ve learned to keep an open mind and adapt to the times.

When was the last time you thought about your pharmacy’s marketing plan? Has it been a while? If it’s been more than a few years – say three to five – it may be time to revisit. To the entrepreneurial minded pharmacists who took a business class or two (in addition to your pharmacy school obligations), you might remember the “4 P’s” – or Price, Product, Place, Promotion – from Marketing or Business 101. Right? Just as consumer shopping habits and expectations have changed over the years, your marketing approach to attracting and maintaining customers should evolve as well.

Every year the U.S. experiences cough, cold and flu season, with outbreaks beginning as early as October, and lasting well into Spring. There’s a good chance you’ll be impacted directly or indirectly by the flu this year as it is estimated that between 5% and 20% of U.S. residents get the flu each year.  Yikes.

Back to School season is officially here and there is no better time to start thinking about how to grow your business during the upcoming cough and cold season. For independent pharmacies, growing your appeal to young families will be key to growing your business. Below you’ll find five ways that implementing this service will help you attract new families to your pharmacy this fall: