Marketing for Pharmacies: How Patients Find You

Pharmacies are the one local business I audit where the marketing problem is almost never awareness. Everybody in the suburb knows where the pharmacy is. The problem is being the second or third option at the moment somebody decides to go to one.

Thirteen years in marketing has taught me that this decision is made fast, usually on a phone, usually within a couple of kilometres, and usually without any brand loyalty at all. The patient searches for a need, not for a shop.

This is written for pharmacy owners and managers who want the local search basics right without turning a health business into a marketing machine. It covers how patients search, what actually decides local visibility, what belongs on a service page, and which details are most often wrong.

How patients actually search for a pharmacy

A need, a decision and a direction

Two searches exist and they behave differently. The first is by name: a patient who already knows you, or who has been sent by a doctor, a family member or a carer. That search is settled before it starts.

The second is by need, and it is the one a website can influence. An opening time. A service. Somewhere on the way home. A late night pharmacy. A shop near a clinic that has just closed. In most of these searches the patient is standing or driving, and the answer they act on is the one that is closest, clearest and most complete.

Local searches are rarely researched. They are resolved. That is why small details, opening hours in particular, decide more of these visits than anything on a homepage.

Some context on how much of this happens each year. Per the PBS Expenditure and Prescriptions Report, the number of subsidised prescriptions dispensed each year "increased by 3.7% to a total of 223.1 million, compared to 215.1 million for the 2021-22 financial year". The same PBS report records that "The average dispensed price (Patient payment plus Government benefit) per prescription of PBS subsidised medicines increased to $81.73 in 2022-23, compared to $74.67 in 2021-22."

Public spending has moved with it. The same PBS report states: "Total Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) Government expense for the supply of medicines under Section 85 and Section 100 on an accrual accounting basis for the 2022-23 financial year was $17.0 billion (excluding revenue), compared with $14.7 billion for the previous year." Wider again, per the AIHW health expenditure report, "In 2023-24, Australia spent an estimated $270.5 billion on health goods and services". A pharmacy sits at the end of a very large number of small decisions, and being the one that gets chosen is worth more than most owners assume.

Searches you can win without paid ads

The searches worth owning are specific and honest. Opening hours, including public holidays. Services your pharmacy actually provides, described plainly. Location and parking. Whether a pharmacist is available at a particular time.

None of these require a patient to be told they need something. They are all answered by information, which is the part of local marketing that keeps working after a campaign budget stops.

What Google sees when someone searches near you

Your Business Profile as the front door

For a pharmacy, the profile that appears in local results is often the first thing a patient reads, and sometimes the only thing. Hours, address, phone, services, photos and answers to common questions all sit there.

Per Google's guidance on local ranking, "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." Complete means every field filled in, including the ones that feel optional. Accurate means matching your own website exactly, down to the format of the phone number.

The parts most often left blank are the ones patients need most: public holiday hours, accessibility details, and the services list. A profile that is eighty per cent finished is read as an unfinished profile.

Relevance, distance and prominence explained

The same Google guidance states: "Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity." I explain these three to every pharmacy owner, because they behave differently and only two of them are yours to influence.

Distance is set by where the patient is standing. Nobody can change it, and any agency promising first place for every searcher across a suburb is either confused or being dishonest. Relevance is about how well your information matches the need, which is where a clear service page and a complete profile do their work. Prominence is about how well known and well regarded your business appears, which is built over time through listings, mentions and patient reviews.

That gives a practical order of work. Fix what you control, which is relevance and the completeness of your own information, before spending money on anything you do not.

Health service pages that answer real questions

What belongs on a service page

A service page for a pharmacy should answer a patient's practical questions: what the service is, who it suits, when it is available, whether an appointment is needed, where in the store it happens, and what the patient should bring or expect.

That is information, not advice. I do not write clinical content, and I would not put a medical claim on a pharmacy page. The page describes how the service works from a patient's side of the counter, and the pharmacist handles the clinical conversation in person.

Plain language beats pharmacy jargon

Pharmacists use terms that patients do not. Staged supply, dose administration aids, medication management, senior health checks. Inside the industry those terms are precise and useful. Outside it, they are a reason to call a competitor whose website says "we pack your medicines into weekly doses for you".

Write each service page the way you would explain it at the counter to somebody who is worried and in a hurry. Then have the pharmacist read it and confirm nothing on the page could be taken as advice about a medicine.

Pages for the services people search for

Repeat scripts and staged supply

Repeat prescriptions and staged supply are searched constantly and described badly almost everywhere. A useful page explains the process from the patient's side: how to set it up, how long it takes, what happens when a script runs out, and whether the pharmacy can manage the timing so the patient is not making an extra trip.

Nothing on that page needs to touch what the medicine is or what it does. It is a page about logistics, and logistics is where the frustration actually sits.

In store and community services

Many pharmacies carry services patients do not know about. Wound care, blood pressure checks, vaccinations by appointment, medicine packing, home delivery, hire of equipment, staying open later than the shop next door. Each of these deserves a short, specific page rather than a line in a list on the homepage.

The test for whether a page is worth building is simple. Do people search for this, and can you describe it honestly without making a health claim? If both answers are yes, build it. If the second answer is no, leave it to the pharmacist in person.

If that set of pages needs to be built to a plan rather than one at a time, that is local SEO for pharmacies in practice, and it starts with the services you are genuinely known for.

Local signals beyond your own website

Directories, listings and community pages

Your website is one of several places a patient can find your details, and the others are not optional. Health directories, local business listings, shopping strip pages, council directories, and any community organisation your pharmacy is associated with.

These matter because search systems weigh consistent information across independent sources. When the same address, phone number and hours appear in the same form in five places, that information is easier to trust and easier to use. When they disagree, a patient trusts none of them and often rings the one that looks most recently updated.

Keeping your details consistent everywhere

I check every pharmacy against a short list. Trading name including any suburb qualifier, exact address format, main phone number, hours including public holidays, and the services listed in each directory.

Then the part most owners have never checked: who controls each listing. An old manager, a previous owner, a well meaning staff member, or a directory that charges a fee to update. Every listing you cannot log into is a listing you cannot correct, and it only takes a couple of them to undermine the rest.

Why location and hours matter more than you think

Address, parking and accessibility details

Patients arriving at a pharmacy are often unwell, elderly, or managing a child at the same time. Parking, entry, stairs, whether there is a ramp, and how long the walk from the nearest car park actually takes are all useful pieces of information that almost no pharmacy publishes.

Write it the way a patient needs it. Where to park. Which entrance to use. Whether the door is automatic. Whether there is somewhere to sit. That is practical content that removes the friction between finding you and walking in.

Two pharmacies, one brand name

If you operate more than one location, each one needs its own page with its own address, hours, services and phone number, and each of those must match every listing for that location.

A single page trying to serve two suburbs usually serves neither, and it leaves the address information ambiguous for a search system that has to decide which location a search relates to.

Measuring whether local search is working

Calls, directions and website enquiries

The useful local measures describe an intention, not a visit. Calls from your profile, requests for directions, and website enquiries or appointment requests. Those three describe people who wanted something specific.

Sessions and page views tell you almost nothing at this scale. A hundred visits from people who are not in your area will not produce a single script, and they make a quiet month look busy.

The monthly check I would run

Once a month, in fifteen minutes. Confirm your hours including upcoming public holidays. Check the phone number on every listing. Look at calls and direction requests. Read the last ten reviews for anything that points at a factual error on one of your pages.

If you want a second pair of eyes on that, talk through your pharmacy's local visibility with me and I will tell you what is missing rather than what to buy.

Where pharmacy marketing usually goes wrong

Pages that read like a brochure

The most common failure is a services page that lists everything in six words each. Patients cannot compare that, and search systems cannot tell what your pharmacy is actually known for.

Three honest pages beat ten thin ones. Choose the services your pharmacy is genuinely known for, give each one a page with real answers, and leave the rest to a short list with a phone number.

Ignoring the suburb next door

A pharmacy near a boundary serves two or three suburbs, and patients describe where they are in their own words. If your pages only ever name one suburb, you are invisible to the people who describe themselves as living somewhere else.

That is not a reason to build a page per suburb with the same words swapped. It is a reason to describe the surrounding area once, accurately, using the places patients actually use: the clinic, the train station, the shopping centre, the school.

The same principle applies to healthcare work more broadly, and if you want to see the shape of it, healthcare marketing work is where I keep the examples. If you would rather read the questions owners usually ask first, they are collected under common questions about working with me.

Frequently asked questions

How do most patients find a pharmacy they have not used before?

Two ways. If they know the brand or the pharmacist, they search the name. If they do not, they search the need, such as a service or an opening time, usually on a phone and usually close to where they are standing. That second search is the one a website can influence.

What should be on a pharmacy service page?

What the service is, who it suits, when it is available, whether an appointment is needed, where in the store it happens, and what the patient should bring. That is information a patient needs, not clinical advice.

Do we need a page for every service we offer?

No. A page should exist where people actually search for that service and where you can describe it honestly. Ten thin pages hurt more than three good ones, and a page that only repeats a heading gives a patient no reason to choose your pharmacy over the one closer to them.

Why does our suburb not appear in local results?

Google's own guidance points to relevance, distance and prominence, and each is influenced differently. Incomplete or inconsistent business details are one of the most common causes, which is why the details in your own listings are worth checking before assuming the problem is your website.

We have two locations. Should they share a website?

They can, but each location needs its own page with its own address, hours and services, and the details must match every other listing for that location. A single page trying to serve two suburbs usually serves neither.

Can you promise we will rank above the pharmacy down the road?

No, and nobody honestly can. Distance from the searcher is not something you control. What you can control is whether your business is accurately and completely represented, whether your service pages answer real questions, and whether patients can act on the information once they find you.