NORTH LOGAN, Utah — When Cache Valley Pharmacy saw a 12 percent decrease in business in 2020, a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no rebound by January of 2021, pharmacist Phillip Cowley turned to social media.
Cowley was introduced to the idea of social media marketing through Kubex Fitness, a local gym that does a fair amount of advertising via social media.
“I started to think, well, maybe this is a new outlet,” Cowley said.
Turning to social media was against pharmacy tradition, but Cowley thought maybe he could use it to hit a demographic unfamiliar with a pharmacist’s role.
“The older generation knows pharmacy and so they know to go talk to a pharmacist,” Cowley said. “But there’s an age gap there where there’s a lot of people have no idea what a pharmacist does, what useful information they have, or how to access it.”
Cowley’s Instagram page, titled PhilsMyPharmacist, includes pharmacy hacks and nontraditional social media information. He uses it to share interesting tidbits regarding the usage of over-the-counter medications, as well as personal stories for others to relate to.
“It allowed for me to give them information,” Cowley said. “If you have stomach acid issues, if you got motility issues, if you’ve got constipation, I have the information. And there’s a whole generation that was waiting to have something like this.”
As his Instagram page began to grow, a couple of social media influencers came across his page, including makeup artist Jocelyn McClellan and blogger Corrine Stokoe. After he helped McClellan with a pharmacy need, she reposted his Instagram on her story and his follower count started growing fast.
Cowley took to TikTok in October. Within a week he had hit 42,000 views. A week later he had 20,000 more views. As of late March, he’d accrued 840,000 followers and 4.7 million likes, with videos regularly reaching hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of views.
The social media presence has proved to be a boon for business at Cache Valley Pharmacy. From May 1 to now, the company has seen a 16-17 percent increase in business.
“Which really is almost all attributed to the social media presence,” Cowley said.
His TikTok also brought other things to Cowley’s business, such as online sales, brand deals and offers to be in infomercials.
He has learned a lot from joining the TikTok world, especially that there is an audience out there for anyone.
“Each one of us have their own special things about us,” Cowley said. “Build your audience around who you are and what you know. And then that audience will grow naturally. If you try to be like somebody else, it’s a lot harder. It’s hard to be special in a world where everybody’s doing the exact same thing. Some of people’s favorite TikToks are just people talking who are just real.”