As brands engage with the retail pharmacy sector, it’s important to recognize that pharmacy decision- makers and pharmacy team members have competing priorities, including running a healthcare practice and a sustainable business. Knowing this, it’s not surprising that pharmacists on the front lines are time pressured yet are always looking to provide the best care to their patients in the moments that matter. Pharma brands can help provide the right support at the right time for pharmacists and their teams to take the right action with patients and build brand loyalty for everyone involved.
Consider the following six approaches to leverage pharmacy teams to engage with your content and advocate for your brands with their patients:
1. Personalizing the win-win strategy for brands and retailers
As brands build tools for retail pharmacy stakeholders, they should consider how they can personalize the messaging to help pharmacists understand the value of the brand to the business. For example, easy-to-use business calculators designed for use by pharmaceutical sales representatives or for retail pharmacy business owners/managers that allow for input of store-specific data (ie, prescription volume, customer demographics, Rx volume goals) can be an effective way to demonstrate the impact of the brand on the retail pharmacy business.
2. Upskilling the pharmacy team
The pharmacy team is typically under pressure from chain leadership, their licensing boards and their patient population to do more with less time. Providing education to pharmacy teams in a variety of formats (ie, both short and long) will help highlight the commitment brands have to supporting pharmacy team knowledge and their practice. Effective upskilling opportunities for pharmacists can appear in the form of short case-based video vignettes, gamified learning experiences online or at a conference booth or chapterized learning modules for live or self-learning environments. These educational tools can galvanize a brand’s intent to help pharmacists provide top-tier patient care and play a more effective role on the front line of community care.
3. Streamlining point-of-care engagement
Every day there are several key moments when a brand can insert relevance and trigger impactful patient care via the pharmacist and their teams. Pharmacy teams appreciate practice-based tools and resources that are functional and help streamline patient engagement.
Such tools may include:
- Rapid screening and triage tools for use during patient prescription drop-off. These can be used at the semi-private counseling area or during a medication therapy management session (also known as MTM)
- Pharmacist-patient engagement brochures that serve a dual purpose; designed for patient education, but also serve to summarize the conversation/recommendations from the pharmacist and serve as a takeaway piece the patient can refer back to after the interaction
- Easy-to-use prescriber referral forms so the pharmacist can effectively and efficiently communicate the interventions they make with patients and any resulting brand recommendations5
4. Optimizing efficiency of patient care services
As retail pharmacies continue to grow as sites of direct patient care, they offer an expanded set of clinical services (eg, vaccination, medication therapy management, early disease screening and in-store testing). These services can be onerous to organize and deliver to their customers. Retail pharmacists will value tools such as checklists, communication guides, in-store service toolkits that include posters and best practice tips. These tools can help make services more efficient (ie, save time, synergize with existing programs) and can help activate pharmacists at point-of-care. More importantly these stakeholders may begin viewing the pharma brand as a partner to the retail pharmacy team and to promoting their wider role in patient care.
5. Reaching targeted stakeholders
As retail pharmacists and their teams engage more deeply with their patients’ care, they are often specializing in managing complex disease. More and more pharmacists are getting certifications in targeted therapeutic areas, including medical conditions requiring high touch and chronic disease management. The Board of Pharmacy Specialties highlights 15 areas, including, but not limited to, cardiology, oncology and psychiatry.8 Brand resources targeted at these specialized pharmacists can be a very effective way to establish brand awareness and drive early adoption. These specialized pharmacists, armed with valuable branded tools, can be leveraged as brand advocates and proceed to share brand value messaging through peer-to-peer interactions and channels.
6. Accessing a single point for relevant brand content
Retail pharmacies can often appear as if they are in a state of organized chaos. Brands can get lost in the fray and often important messaging can get missed. To alleviate this challenge, pharmaceutical brands can consider creating programs or toolkits that collate relevant assets together. These toolkits can be made available through a central source such as a gated microsite or through the intranet of a retail organization. Having content packaged together can increase the likelihood that pharmacists and their team will know where to access the content and use the tools in a timely manner.
Looking at retail pharmacy as a growth engine for brands
