Like most small businesses, LTC pharmacies must spread resources between serving existing customers and finding new ones. The prospect of losing a major customer when you’re not investing in finding new ones should keep you up at night.

The challenge is to find the time and resources to manage a marketing program while continuing to fully serve existing clients. Allocating a marketing budget will help.

A Look at Your Pharmacy’s Market

Have you taken time for a deep look at your competitors and potential new customers? If not, you’ll probably be surprised to see how many new LTC pharmacies have opened and how many potential new customers are within your service area. A review of my own tracking of pharmacies that now have taxonomy codes associated with LTC shows a steady increase. The institutional LTC market is expanding, with nursing homes growing at 3.4% per year and assisted living at about 5.5%.

LTC pharmacy is a local business. If your pharmacy is in Maine, you don’t worry about finding customers in Hawaii. This fact focuses your marketing efforts on channels that target local customers. You may conclude that your market focus should be SNFs and ALFs within a 100-mile radius. Read more >