» Video Post

Internal Marketing: Training your staff

tevaonlineforbusiness — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:38:42 +0000

Ken Wong addresses the challenges of marketing a service, focusing on why you need to train the people that have the most contact with your clients, your staff. What promise are you making to the customer? Your employees need to understand that customer promise.

We have a winner!

Nita Patel of Westmount Pharmacy is the winner of this week’s prize draw. Nita has chosen a one-year online access subscription to the Natural Medicines database, a one-year subscription to Canadian Business magazine, and a one-year subscription to Money Sense magazine for his prize package.

The Right Volume: Loyalty Management

tevaonlineforbusiness — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:55:47 +0000

Why do customers change suppliers? Are you losing key accounts? It costs more money to acquire new accounts than to maintain current accounts. Ken Wong uses an insurance company as an example of how increased volume does not always equal increased profits.

The virtuous cycle is explained. Don’t think of your customers as one sale but a stream of sales. If you spread the cost of servicing a client over a series of sales, you can spend more money to maintain the account. What else can you sell to your current customers? Ken discusses why “front of store sales” are so important.

We have a winner!

Dan Yurchuck of High Park Pharmacy is the winner of this week’s prize draw. Dan has chosen a one-year online access subscription to the Natural Medicines database, a one-year subscription to Canadian Business magazine, and a one-year subscription to Money Sense magazine for his prize package.

Campaign Planning

tevaonlineforbusiness — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:23:12 +0000

Once you have decided that you will embark upon a marketing campaign, you should start to think about the specific nature of the campaign and its “project management”. In order to insure that you have accounted for everything, a useful model to follow is the so-called “Six M’s”.

1. Market - who do you want to reach?

2. Motivation - what is your behavioral objective (e.g. more awareness, trial or adoption)?

3. Message - what will you say?

4. Media - where and when will you say it? How often?

5. Money - how much will you spend?

6. Measurement - how will you know if it worked?

The answers to questions (1), (2) and (5) will already be known if you have undertaken a forecast of your plan’s impact, for a review please see Estimating the Plan’s Impact. So let’s focus on the other elements

Message

There are two aspects to the message. The first is what you want the audience to know after hearing your message. The second is finding a creative way to say the message. The information you need to communicate can be obtained from your value proposition, see Evaluating your ads, since your goal is usually one of:

a. Building an association between you and a problem the consumer faces

b. Informing the consumer of what you offer

c. Highlighting the one or two major benefits of doing business with you

d. Presenting “evidence” that supports your claims in (a)-(c)

e. Establishing (a)-(c) as a point of difference between you and competitors

The “test” here is a simple one: given your MOTIVATION, identify the information you need to communicate (i.e. (a) thru (e)) and then ask “are we conveying this”? The creative component of the message is much harder to specify and is much more complex to develop. However generated, there are some rules of thumb to bear in mind when considering any piece of communication:

a. Are the words and images (i.e. its personality) consistent with how you want to be seen by your MARKET

b. To be effective, a communication must be (1) seen, (2) understood and (3) remembered.

Is this a communication that will achieve all three objectives given the competition for the consumer’s eyeballs.

Media

Media refers to three parts of your campaign: the medium used (e.g. newspaper, radio, flyer), the timing of the message’s delivery and the frequency with which the message will be delivered.

Decisions about medium are often based on budget issues (“can I afford this”). However, no one ever gained anything by using the wrong medium, regardless of how inexpensive it was. Ideally then, your choice of medium should reflect considerations such as:

a. Am I trying to generate awareness, trial or adoption? As you move from awareness toward adoption you likely need something more direct and personal in order to give the audience enough motivation to increase their loyalty to you

b. Where is the buyer and what are they doing when they see your marketing? Are you competing for their attention during the media exposure?

c. How much control do you have over placement? For example, if advertising in a newspaper, can you specify the section in which your ad will appear? If radio, the time of day?

Decisions about timing should similarly reflect the buyer’s behavior. Because most community pharmacists will turn to advertising in order to stimulate immediate sales, the ideal is to have the communication attended either as close as possible to when the customer is about to buy or at a time when they are planning shopping trips. If you cannot identify when those times are most likely to be because your target customer is inconsistent, then you have no choice but to spread your dollars across several time periods which reduces the frequency of your ad’s appearance during any one time period.

A common mistake made by businesses is to assume that advertising one time is enough. It almost never is. Even if your ad is perfect, a consumer might not see it for any number of legitimate reasons beyond your control. This is why you would like multiple opportunities for the customer to see your ad. This frequency of advertising can follow different patterns depending upon what you are trying to do. For example, your frequency can be the same all of the time. Alternatively, you could start a campaign with a heavier than normal frequency to create an impression of excitement and then reduce that frequency over time. Finally, you could start with a relatively light frequency but build excitement over time by increasing the frequency as you approach a certain date.

Measurement

Measurement is often the forgotten element in campaigns. Its importance stems from the simple notion that we learn over time if we review past practices and the results they generated.

That said, the subject of how to measure a campaign’s success is a complex one. While most people immediately think to use sales results, it is not always clear whether the sales can be attributed to the campaign or to something else. For example, sales of hand sanitizers went through the roof as a result of H1N1: featuring a sanitizer in an ad might help communicate its availability but clearly the sales would have occurred regardless. Unfortunately, the determination of whether this is occurring requires either very sophisticated statistical analysis or the ability to use coupon redemptions (or something similar) to track sales back to an ad. Still, you can get a rough guide by keeping a “diary” of campaign experiences, the sales results generated and a notation of whether there is an alternative source of those sales (like H1N1). This will help you see any patterns in sales depending upon the other “5Ms” characterizing each campaign

In summary

There is no magic formula that can be used to generate great ads or campaigns every time. Even the most sophisticated firms, spending millions, can have some campaigns that fail to live up to expectations. However, we can avoid making big mistakes by taking the time to make deliberate decisions about the factors that impact on a campaign’s success. The underlying analysis is very nitty-gritty and requires a lot of discipline to complete, but without it, your marketing spending becomes more a “bet” than a reasoned business decision.

We have a winner!

James Jin of Pharmacy 101 is the winner of this week’s prize draw. James has chosen a one-year online access subscription to the Natural Medicines database, a one-year subscription to Canadian Business magazine, and a one-year subscription to Money Sense magazine for his prize package.

Cost Reduction: Process and Product Development

tevaonlineforbusiness — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:52:59 +0000

Ken Wong talks about analyzing customer sales data to determine what aspects of your pharmacy are perceived as adding ‘quality’ to your business by the client. What’s your value curve? What costs can you eliminate or reduce so you can focus on creating value for your client?

Ken reiterates that if you are going to reduce prices, you need to reduce costs to maintain profitability. Ken describes how market shares leaders dictate costs through volume pricing. If you are going to compete with a bigger competitor, then you should not try to sell the same things. Ken describes where independent pharmacies can compete with big box stores.

We have a winner!

Michael McLoughlin of Pharmasave 198 is the winner of this week’s prize draw. Michael has chosen a one-year online access subscription to the Natural Medicines database, a one-year subscription to Canadian Business magazine, and a one-year subscription to Money Sense magazine for his prize package.

Creating the Perception of Quality

tevaonlineforbusiness — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:48:18 +0000

How do you change the customer’s mind? If you can’t differentiate yourself from the competition, the only thing left to do is work at creating a perception of quality. Ken uses examples from different industries to illustrate the principle. How do you identify the key points of ‘quality’ in the customer’s eye so you can show case those qualities in your pharmacy?

We have a winner!

Jeff Yurek of Yurek Pharmacy is the winner of this week’s prize draw. Jeff has chosen a one-year online access subscription to the Natural Medicines database, a one-year subscription to Canadian Business magazine, and a one-year subscription to Money Sense magazine for his prize package.