Social media marketing of pharmacies across the Republic of North Macedonia

Abstract

Internet marketing or digital marketing, is the fastest growing type of promotion for brands and companies to connect with potential customers. There are as many specializations within digital marketing as there are ways of interacting using digital media. This study evaluates and describes the usage of social media marketing as most common type of digital marketing used for self-promotion of the pharmacy sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. Social media marketing is raising brand awareness by engaging people in discussion online. The most popular platforms for social media marketing are Facebook and Instagram. For the purpose of the analysis, data from social network profiles Facebook and Instagram and from the websites of the 1000 pharmacies is used. This data includes: profile content, frequency of posts of health related articles and products, presence of relevant information and links to sites from which the content is shared, frequency of posting offers and sales at the pharmacy. The conducted research shows that the use of Internet as a digital marketing tool in Republic of North Macedonia is not sufficiently developed, especially when websites are used as a marketing tool for promotion of the pharmacy business and their services. The results show that Facebook as social media is used most frequently for posting health advices, promotion of new products and answering customer’s questions. Promotion of the professional pharmaceutical services is lower than the promotion of products. This leads to insufficient data for the implementation of the principles of evidence-based medicine in daily practice. Keywords: Internet marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, promotion, pharmacies, Facebook, Instagram, website