Online pharmacy – the cornerstone of the pharmaceutical industry
About the company: Mēness Aptieka is part of the Recipe group, which is one of the largest distributors of pharmaceutical and healthcare products in the Baltics. Mēness Aptieka is the largest pharmacy network in Latvia. The development of e-commerce was started in 2019.
Period: January 2019 – October 2020
Strategic objectives
2019 - Increase internet sales by at least 7 times (Revenue, EUR); promote brand recognition in the e-commerce environment.
2020 - Continue increasing sales in the e-commerce environment by offering new products on the market.
Become the leader of pharmaceutical e-commerce.
Communication and performance objectives
Get the buyer involved in communication with the brand by creating a comfortable environment for online shopping (comfortable functionality, new products, attractive promotions, a variety of delivery methods, high customer service level).
Segment the audience into new, returning, and portfolio when making personalised offers.
Stimulate shopping using e-commerce settings in Google Analytics, Google Ads, and dynamic personalised offers.
Solutions to communication objectives
Installing and setting up the e-commerce module:
Google Analytics e-commerce is installed in 2019. All advertising campaigns are adapted to it.
Installation of e-commerce opened the following opportunities:
- Use Google automation strategy Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend);
- Use dynamic remarketing (personalised product offers);
- Segment new and returning audience in detail;
- Analyse TOP products sold in the basket with the objective to create beneficial product offers and coordinate product availability in the warehouse;
- Analyse the buyer’s shopping progression and abandonments: all sessions - product views - add to basket - checkout - transactions:
Result:
Revenue EUR
2019, the month when e-commerce is installed
2020, the same month: growth by 276%
Number of purchases
2019, the month when e-commerce is installed
2020, the same month: growth by 193%
Impact of advertising on Revenue (%)
2019, the month when e-commerce is installed: 32% of the revenue is from the impact of advertising
2020, the same month: 84% of the revenue is from the impact of advertising
CPO (Cost per Order) changes
2019, the month when e-commerce is installed
2020, the same month: decreased by 57%
Promotion. Targeting. Personalisation. Automation.
Result:
In 2 years the revenue has grown by + 2179%.
The effect of the pandemic on the result: visits have grown by + 277%.
The result is also affected by the significant increase of the budget allocated to marketing.
TOP 10 most purchased product groups before and after the pandemic are practically the same.
TOP3 – dietary supplements.
TOP10 – dietary supplements (vitamins and minerals) and beauty products.
Marketing channels
Google Search, Display (classic remarketing is prohibited):
Advertising automation. Several advertising automation solutions have been tested: Target ROAS, maximise ROAS, Target CPA. Conclusion - all automation strategies need to be tested and their results need to be analysed. The ROAS strategy recommended by Google does not always provide the best sales result.
Account structure. A correct account structure results in the user immediately finding current information about the goods with prices and discounts, and being redirected to the section with the goods they searched for. This results in a decrease of CPC (Cost per Click) and an increase in the number of ad impressions. A higher sales result is achieved with a lower advertising budget because ads are maximally close to what the potential buyer is searching for.
Manual advertising campaigns. These are created in conjunction with automation strategies because all manual campaign settings can be managed and influenced. The main condition is to focus on ROAS and CPO.
Additional automation tools. Automatic ad text settings where one ad text is automatically paused and another is turned on. An excellent tool for successful big sale and short-term promotion campaigns. This tool’s settings eliminate human error, and as a result, inactive promotions are not shown to the user.
The objective of Google Display is Reach (addressing a wider audience), for example, during sales. Classic remarketing is prohibited in the advertising of OTC medications, medical goods and dietary supplements. Addressing of the returning audience is covered by so-called dynamic remarketing.
Dynamic remarketing
Sales during big promotions are increased by adding promotional skins to Creatives:
Audience segmentation is performed according to the following:
- adds goods to basket;
- time period when the item was added to the basket, e.g. 1 day ago, 1 week, or 2 weeks ago;
- goods prices, for example, not showing goods with the price below X euros.
Social networks
Creatives. Different Facebook & Instagram types of Creatives are tested.
Dynamic remarketing is used. Different segmentation tests are performed according to the prices of goods, for example, to show goods with prices from X euros and from Y euros. The results obtained are analysed according to the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
Audience structuring: new (those who have not been on the web for at least 30 days), returning (various interactions with offers, cross-sales, up-sale), and look-alike audience.
Diversity of offers. Offers are updated on a regular basis with the objective to hold one user’s attention for longer. There are many promotions; these are best updated with a 5-7 day interval.
Automation of offers. Similar to Google, automatic specific settings are introduced, which pause ads if they do not reach a benchmark (ROAS, max CPC, frequency). If an ad does not reach a benchmark, it is turned off, and other ads are turned on.
Determination of the client look-alike audience is based on the analysis of the buyers’ lifetime values. It is based on the buyers with the highest ROAS and revenue.
Conclusions
- Online sales of food supplements significantly increased during the pandemic, which shows that people’s trust in online pharmacies is growing.
- Shopping in online pharmacies has become convenient thanks to the variety of delivery methods and its speed.
- Shopping in online pharmacies limits physical contact, which is an important safety aspect. Online pharmacies are reacting to the current situation and quickly adapting to the pandemic, making online shopping convenient, thus allocating an even larger marketing budget and personalising offers.
- For the successful promotion of online pharmacies, marketing specialists not only need to know advertising platforms and their tools but also the restrictions in the legislation and on advertising platforms. Not all digital solutions can be implemented in the promotion of online pharmacies.
- A correctly chosen strategy and e-commerce structure, sufficient marketing budget, as well as the use and continuous testing of new audience segmentation tools, form the promotion strategy for online pharmacy products. Result – increase in sales by 2179%!
