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You already know it, but it’s worth repeating: Your biggest competition isn’t the chain pharmacy down the street, but the ones behind the screen.
Amazon Pharmacy, PillPack, online divisions of CVS and Walgreens, and the like have dramatically changed the post-COVID dispensing world.
Amazon Pharmacy, for example, is projected to reach $2B in sales by the end of 2025, while smaller players like DocMorris and PharmEasy are still raking in hundreds of millions.
Patients flock to these platforms for convenience, price comparison, and accessibility.
But as the National Institute of Health reports, the risks are real: 95% of online pharmacies selling prescription-only drugs operate illegally, often with little oversight. Without the personalization or professional guidance of in-person pharmacists, patients face medication misuse, dangerous interactions, and unexpected side effects.
It goes without saying that independent pharmacies are well-equipped to pick up where online pharmacies fall short. But the question remains: How can pharmacies communicate their value and deliver care that an online pharmacy can’t?
For Nicolette Mathey, CEO of Atrium24 and pharmacist-turned-marketing strategist, the answer is clear: good marketing. We sat down with Nicolette on RedSail Media to explore how independent pharmacies can position themselves for success in 2026.
Nicolette knows the industry is strapped for time, money, and marketing resources—but even two hours a week, she says, can make all the difference.
In this conversation, she shares her most impactful strategies to boost your marketing in the new year (and no, it’s not just starting a social media account).
If you want to stay competitive and prove the value storefront pharmacies truly offer, read on.
Independent pharmacies (and their loyal patients) know the value they offer: access not only to prescriptions but to a one-stop-shop for healthcare.
That kind of versatility is key, but the challenge is showing patients how that key beats the quick-and-dirty model of online pharmacy.
“Patients are being marketed to directly now more than ever,” Nicolette explains. “They want preventative health. They want functional health. They’re interested in peptides, weight loss, hormone therapy—and often don’t realize their local pharmacy can provide those same services.”
It’s your job, then, to listen to what patients want and build your model around it. Maybe that’s functional medicine. Maybe it’s GLP-1s. Or maybe it’s the emerging focus on perimenopause, menopause, and healthy aging. In any case, you have to know what patients want to deliver it to them.
Nicolette recommends starting with doing a bit of market research.
You can use customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Nicolette’s Dotti, alongside your PioneerRx software to segment patient populations, find out who you’re serving, and what those patients want. You can also ask for patient feedback, send out surveys, or ask other pharmacists in your area what needs they’re seeing.
Unlike online pharmacies, you can deliver a full suite of services—but you can’t meet patient demand if you don’t know what it is.
Ask, listen, and then deliver.
Once you identify a need and create a service to meet it, you may think you’ve crossed the finish line.
But here’s the catch: after investing so much in building these services, many pharmacies skip the most crucial step: marketing them.
To put it simply, it doesn’t matter how great your services are if no one knows about them.
As Nicolette says, “We're doing ourselves—and certainly our patients—a disservice by not letting them know what other services we provide, so that we can keep them in-house, take care of them, manage their side effects, [and] give them proper counseling.”
The good news? Marketing doesn’t have to be another drag on your day. A few simple steps can make all the difference:
As Nicolette says, any move toward making your services known is a move in the right direction.
Doctor detailing is one of the most effective—if not tedious!—ways to increase your patient base.
Especially in the digital age, a direct referral or positive word of mouth from a provider can prove ten times more effective than any online campaign.
Nicolette knows doctor detailing can be daunting, so she recommends being strategic. Start by identifying your top 10 prescribers by profit in PioneerRx and then focusing your efforts there.
Then set aside 2-3 hours a week (for you or a team member) to build relationships with local providers. Visit their offices, bring branded materials, meet the staff, and most importantly, put a face to the name.
The key to a good doctor detailing, Nicolette says, is curiosity. Instead of simply listing what you offer, ask prescribers what they need:
Convenience is the online giants’ biggest advantage, but who says independent pharmacies can’t compete?
Leveraging telemedicine offers the best of both worlds so that you can offer convenience and care: the real winning combo.
Partner with a telemedicine provider so patients can book virtual visits directly through your pharmacy’s website or app. You can select which therapies you want to support, then provide the medications, compounding, or follow-up counseling locally.
After the consultation, prescriptions can flow to your pharmacy for fulfillment. This keeps patients in your network instead of defaulting to the big guys.
And on the marketing front, positioning yourself as a telemedicine pharmacy can attract patients who might otherwise go fully digital. For example, someone searching for quick access to semaglutides or HRT might choose your pharmacy if you offer both the telemedicine consult and the prescription fulfillment.
That way, Nicolette says, “[Patients can get the] telemedicine experience [while] staying local and having real human pharmacy staff that takes care of them.”
It’s just one more way to increase your pharmacy’s convenience factor and, with it, your ability to keep patients coming back.
See a list of PioneerRx’s integrated telepharmacy partners here.
On the note of doctor detailing, Nicolette says that pharmacies can take things a step further by targeting prescribers in specialties who may not get a whole lot of pharmacy love.
These specialists have needs; they have networks; and, importantly, they have an entire patient base that can benefit from your services. You just have to position yourself strategically.
Nicolette shares that in her own practice, she worked closely with ENTs, but other specialties like podiatry, dentistry, and plastic surgery can be especially fruitful.
“A lot of specialties are kind of spoiled,” Nicolette laughs. “They get called on by pharma reps all the time. Dermatology is one of them. It's kind of tough to get in with derm, but plastics, nobody was calling them.”
Seeing the need, Nicolette and the team honed on plastics and started with a needs-first conversation. That conversation led to the creation of customized surgical kits for pre- and post-op care—complete with specialized gauzes, wraps, and bandages tailored to their needs.
These kits became a bundled product offering, billable through insurance or available as cash pay, and, as Nicolette notes, “It was a pretty healthy profit margin.”
In this case, it was a win for the prescriber and for the pharmacy.
The lesson is clear:
When you position yourself as a partner who solves problems, you create a win-win: stronger relationships for prescribers and new revenue streams for your pharmacy.
But with all the effort you exert on marketing—from calling providers to creating signage and more—you can do it much more efficiently with the help from technology.
As Nicolette points out, many pharmacies lag behind other industries when it comes to tech adoption, and the right tools can make all the difference.
One of the best tools is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Nicolette is the creator of Dotti, the first CRM built specifically for pharmacy sales, marketing, and prescriber engagement.
As she explains, “[Dotti] lets you track: Which prescribers do you talk to? How often? Where do you document it? How do you train your team on these therapies? How do you get the marketing materials branded for your pharmacy?”
The CRM, then, is a tool for pharmacies to get the information they need to market effectively—and, as Nicolette says, be a “single source of truth” for all things marketing and sales enablement.
You can also leverage your PioneerRx system to feed data into your CRM or other marketing tools—from patient demographics to commonly prescribed medications, top prescribers, and most profitable services.
This allows you to move beyond generic best practices and build a strategy tailored to your pharmacy’s specific needs.
Finally, don’t shy away from AI. Beyond faster dispensing, AI can support marketing by:
Here, technology acts as a tool rather than a replacement.
As Nicolette says, “We need strong technology so that all the data is teed up for us, and then our humans can come in and make the interventions, have the conversations, solve the complex problems… At the end of the day, consistency beats complexity.”
As pharmacies gear up for 2026, the competition isn’t just the chain down the street—it’s the online giants behind the screen.
“If [patients aren’t] hearing from you, they're hearing from other companies, they're hearing from other pharmacies, they're definitely hearing from online options. And you're going to lose business because of it,” Nicolette warns.
The good news? Independent pharmacies have what online competitors don’t: trusted relationships, personalized care, and the ability to meet patients where they are. But to stay competitive, you need to make that value visible.
Setting aside just a few hours each week to refine your marketing—whether it’s building prescriber relationships, leveraging telemedicine, or using technology to speed up prescriber outreach—can make the difference between losing patients to convenience and keeping them loyal to you.
Independent pharmacy can win in the digital age, but success requires strategy.
To learn more about Atrium24 and the Dotti Pharmacy CRM system, visit https://atrium24.io/.
