The full-service neighborhood pharmacy specializes in custom compounds covering a wide range of therapies, veterinary compounding medication services, and immunizations. They also offer naturopathy and homeopathy, cards and gifts, and most recently, pop-up COVID-19 testing sites.
Grand Avenue Pharmacy became a Digital Pharmacist client at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. After speaking to one of our agents, they signed on for our healthsite, mobile app, and digital marketing program along with secure messaging.
Grand Avenue’s new COVID-focused services and updated healthsite and marketing efforts led to a massive increase in leads and website traffic at the end of 2020.
In the last quarter, Grand Avenue Pharmacy has seen:
437%
more first-time callers in December 2020 than November 2020
431%
increase in December 2020 website sessions over November 2020
18,100+
website sessions on highest-performing webpage for COVID-19 testing
In late November, Grand Avenue Pharmacy launched their first off-site pop-up COVID-19 testing site. According to marketing manager Daniel Britt, the pharmacy worked with a moving company, renting storage pods and turning them into temporary testing sites. The mobile testing sites offer two types of tests: a rapid test and a PCR lab test required by a lot of airlines prior to travel.
Britt and the Grand Avenue team have focused most of their marketing efforts on getting the word out about the new COVID-19 drive-up sites. In just two months, the pharmacy grew their new testing program to 60 locations across Texas, Arizona, and Florida. Grand Avenue Pharmacy worked with Digital Pharmacist to create a new healthsite page for the off-site services. It includes updated locations, a scheduling link, and a booking page for patients to complete payments.
“It’s very user-friendly on the backend, everything’s just easy, simple and has a lot of information for patients to access,” Britt said. “I also appreciate Digital Pharmacist’s speed and commitment. There’ve been times when I needed to update the site very quickly, so I’ll call and they’ll work with me right then and there and get it done.”
Grand Avenue Pharmacy received 223 website visitors in December that were referred from FindCovidTesting.com, which maps known test collection sites around the country. Pharmacies not already featured can fill out a form to promote COVID-19 testing services.
Additionally, to help boost traffic, Grand Avenue bought domain name unitedcovid.com which redirects back to the testing page. Britt also reached out to the When Where What Austin Instagram, which promotes local events and offerings to announce the new testing sites. “That really helped us get traction and we gained a lot of word-of-mouth at that point.”
Finally, they tracked 666 first-time callers in December interested in COVID-19 testing through Digital Pharmacist’s digital marketing lead tracking feature, which traces inbound traffic from marketing efforts through a dedicated phone line.
Britt highly recommends that independent pharmacies take advantage of their websites and make them a central part of their marketing plan.
“It’s a hard, hard world for independents and if we’re paying for the [website] service, we might as well use it.”
Digital Pharmacist is committed to supporting independent pharmacies during COVID-19. Our HIPAA-compliant branded healthsites and digital marketing program helps pharmacies promote services, serve customers online, and boost pharmacy growth.
Learn more about how you can transform your business this year by getting in touch with us today.
