Marketing is an essential practice for all healthcare professionals, regardless of specialty. This especially applies to urgent care businesses: Patients typically turn to urgent care clinics when there’s an immediate problem in need of fixing, so it’s important to make your practice easy to find. Nobody who’s feeling unwell wants to dig around for help.
Even if you’re lucky enough to boast the most experienced providers and the latest technology at your urgent care clinic, you need to effectively get the word out about your business in order to thrive. Below, we dive into some effective marketing strategies urgent care businesses can implement.
How to market urgent care
To effectively market your urgent care business you want to pay attention to both your brick-and-mortar outposts and your online presence.
Identify target audience
Before you launch any marketing strategy, first identify your target audience. Urgent care patients usually fall into one of these categories:
- Families with kids who get sick frequently
- Active individuals who may be prone to injuries
- People with chronic illnesses
Your target market also depends on your location, and even, the time of year. During flu season, you might see people of all ages come in with respiratory illnesses. In rural areas with limited access to healthcare, people might head to urgent care for issues urban dwellers might head to a PCP for.
Identifying your specific target audience can help you narrow down marketing tactics, so you can reach the people most likely to engage with your practice.
Location matters
Along with finding providers online, many people find urgent care clinics simply by walking or driving by one in their neighborhood. You can draw attention to your practice by ensuring it’s in a location that receives a lot of foot or drive-by traffic and has clear signage.
Urgent care marketing: 3 types
Now that you understand these two factors, you should understand the three different types of marketing commonly used by healthcare providers.
Paid media
If you’re in urgent care, you need to have an online paid media strategy. These days, most people find their urgent care providers on the internet, so it’s crucial to differentiate yourself from the competition.
You can buy ads on search engines like Google to appear atop of search results. This can help you target people searching for care in your area. You can also invest in ads on social media platforms like Facebook, to capture the attention of anyone who might not need urgent care immediately, but can bookmark your practice for the future.
Owned media
Owned media, or any content you create or own, is another part of the urgent care marketing puzzle. Your website, social media presence, and any other assets you create — photos, articles, videos, or graphics, to name a few — can all help establish you as an expert in your field while creating an awareness of the services you offer.
Plus, you can use these assets across several channels, such as email campaigns and social media.
Earned media
Lastly, earned media is any marketing that stems from trusting relationships you’ve built with all of your happy, healthy patients. Think of earned media as word of mouth in all its forms: By providing excellent care, you earn exposure because satisfied customers will be motivated to spread the word about their experience. Patient ratings and reviews featured on your website and sites like Zocdoc are a great examples of earned media.
Urgent care marketing ideas
Not quite sure where to start when it comes to urgent care marketing? The below strategies are simple-yet-effective places to start.
Focus on website
Most patients search for medical providers online and your website is the first encounter they have with you and your clinic.
Creating an aesthetically-pleasing, easy-to-navigate website with consistent branding is an important investment for any urgent care provider. Along with familiarizing potential patients with your services, you can publish keyword-driven health content on your website’s blog, which can boost your search engine rankings (and ultimately make it easier for people to come across your urgent care clinic).
Expand social media
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are becoming popular places to connect with patients. You can create owned media such as photos, videos, and graphics that inform people about common health conditions, and in the process, establish you as an expert in your profession. This content can drive people back to your website, where they can learn more about you and your clinic.
Streamline services
After you develop an online presence through your website and social media, make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch with you and make an appointment. Sites like Zocdoc streamline the process of finding providers and booking appointments, along with offering opportunities for satisfied patients to review their experience, all in one place.
It can be time-consuming to market your urgent care practice, but if you’re strategic, your investment will pay off.