Boosting Your Pharmacy's Revenue: Effective Over-the-Counter Sales

The value of the UK over-the-counter market is around £3.3bn a year in sales, presenting a huge proportion of pharmacy revenues.

These products are effective for self-care and are safe for patients to take without pharmacy or GP advice, they are intended for minor conditions like headaches, colds, allergies and other such conditions.

Around 92% of the UK population uses OTCs each year to treat their minor ailments and illnesses, and these medications present a massive commercial opportunity for community pharmacists.

Community pharmacies are clinicians first, but they also need to be profitable retailers and make the most of additional revenue streams outside of prescriptions.

With that in mind, this blog will provide you with effective strategies to boost OTC sales so you can grow your revenue and become more profitable.

Optimising product placement

Random placement of goods can deprive community pharmacists of additional revenue and profits. Instead, store layout and product placement should be treated as an opportunity to make sales, and planned to get the most out of the available stock.

Strategic product placement can put popular items in easy view so customers can easily find them, it can ensure cheaper products are placed near the counter to encourage impulse buying, and understanding how products can complement each other can create the opportunity for cross sells.

Properly planning your pharmacy layout and stock placement can:

• Increase sales
• Optimise your space
• Improve the customer experience
• Help with inventory management

Top tips for product placement:

Use acrylic risers

Acrylic risers can help pharmacies highlight multiple products in a more organised and eye-catching way. For example they’re ideal for showcasing a category of product in a designated area.

Use countertop displays

Countertop displays are ideal for promoting smaller items that can become impulse purchases near the counter. They can also be used for promoting literature about Advanced Pharmacy Services.

Use correct signage

Signage plays an important role in helping consumers navigate your store and easily find what they’re looking for. Proper navigational and promotional signage should be placed through the store to help people find what they need while also promoting other products and offers.

Themed displays

Themed displays are perfect for grouping products and allowing consumers to buy “bundles” of related products. For example bundling sun protection items together during the summer or cold medications or remedies during the winter.

Leveraging Digital Displays

Digital displays help community pharmacies enhance their commercial strategy to increase sales through product promotions and deals, while also helping to improve customer service by providing useful information and advice.

For improving over-the-counter sales, digital displays are a brilliant resource for promoting products in a dynamic way.

Digital designs can capture attention (both in store and as window displays to attract passersby) and are far more effective than other types of displays, as they can carry both static and video ads.

Content can also be updated more quickly, allowing you to vary the products you promote on the screen (even allowing you to promote multiple products throughout the day).

In fact, digital signage instores can increase the purchase amount from customers by 29.5%.

Plus, 80% of brands that use digital signage record an increase in sales of up to 33%, particularly noticing a greater appeal towards impulse purchases.

Implementing Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Targeted marketing campaigns, like email, PPC and even content marketing can play a big role in increasing over-the-counter sales, particularly when it comes to capturing trends and increasing demands for certain products.

Understanding trends in search volume for certain medications and products - like hayfever medication - can help you get ahead of the curve and target consumers with specific adverts and marketing to promote what they’re looking for.

Offering discounts and promotions on certain items can also help increase OTC sales through marketing, whether it’s offering multi-buy discounts on popular items, or creating your own loyalty programs to increase repeat purchases.

Using Cegedim’s Pharmacy Display

If you’re looking to increase OTC sales, Pharmacy Display is an innovative solution that can help you promote products and services directly to customers.

The high quality digital displays can be placed either in-store or can be used as an effective window display to grab attention and captivate customers with targeted offers and promotions.

As a content management system your pharmacy can easily schedule content to constantly deliver fresh, relevant and compliant marketing campaigns.

With Cegedim you can be as hands on, or off, as you like with your display marketing and advertising.

Our system is fully flexible, and you have the support of an experienced content marketing team to help you get the best return on your investment.

Digital displays can compliment your product placement initiatives by directing customers to specific items or displays that you want to promote to increase sales and promote specific products during peak periods.

Working as part of an omni-channel marketing strategy, Pharmacy Display can help deliver a wide range of direct marketing assets to use in marketing plans that capture attention.

Weldricks is one Pharmacy group that has used Pharmacy Display to improve marketing. Head of Operations Jackie Steel has this to say about the experience:

“As a Pharmacy group, we have long liked the idea of having screens both in store and in the windows of our branches to engage customers with our products and services. Pharmacy Display allows us to do this in a bold, colourful way, allowing informative content and ads to be played.”

Find out how to boost OTC sales with effective display and digital marketing

Understanding how to effectively market OTC products is a key opportunity for community pharmacies to increase their sales and revenue.

By implementing the tactics we’ve outlined here, you’ll be able to see a boost to OTC sales without huge investment in complicated marketing tactics.

If you want more information about effectively marketing your community pharmacy, we’ve updated our marketing guide with more information and useful tips to help you grow your business.

Download our updated Ultimate Guide to Pharmacy Marketing now and start to see the benefits for yourself.