Promoting Pharmacist-Provided Patient Care Services

Summary

Few residents of this client’s province were aware that pharmacists could diagnose and prescribe remedies for minor ailments. Instead, patients were needlessly accessing their health care providers for small medical issues such as cold sores and allergies.  

Challenge

Our client needed to raise awareness of pharmacists’ increased capacity for care. They enlisted Time & Space to help promote the pharmacist’s association message, grow their online community, and to drive in-store sales.

Solution

Time & Space used proprietary research to identify key opportunity segments based on their susceptibility to the three common ailments selected by the pharmacists’ association to emphasize throughout the campaign– susceptibility to cold sores, urinary tract infections and allergy/sinus issues.

Our findings revealed that women aged 18-39 are prone to getting cold sores; women aged 19-49 are more inclined to have urinary tract infections; adults aged 18-54 are more likely to experience allergy/sinus issues. We created consumer profiles to gauge each segments’ media and consumption habits and found that each of these three groups are extremely active online with email and social media.

Armed with these insights, Time & Space developed a creative and consistent multi-channel messaging strategy to inform residents of pharmacists’ increased capacity for care. Paid social media platforms provided the client the opportunity to participate in meaningful conversations about health. We also implemented paid search using Google AdWords to target potential customers who were actively searching phrases like, ‘pharmacists,’ or minor ailments such as ‘cold sores,” in the search engine.

Display ads were deployed as part of a test and learn strategy, where a range of ad sizes were placed and assets were optimized based on their performance, size and placement throughout the campaign to build awareness.

Results

The paid social media campaign drove 21.6 MM impressions, 14,602 engagements, 44,819 clicks, and 41,441 site visits. There was also an increase of 370 new followers – substantial growth for the client’s pharmacists’ association.

This campaign was extremely successful in driving consumers to the pharmacy for minor ailments and building its online community. According to the pharmacists’ association, there was a noticeable lift in in-store visits and increased traffic to the website to locate the nearest pharmacy.