Marketing urgent care: what would you do?
A friend of mine is opening an urgent-care center, and I’ve been talking with him about the right way to allocate his very limited upstart marketing dollars. I’ve had a lot of fun with the topic – it’s good exercise. What would YOU do, Dr. So-and-So, to market your brand new urgent care facility?
I would spend a few bucks to have a smart, hungry graphic designer develop a logo. I’d have that same designer develop interior and exterior signage, and spend a few thousand dollars to get those produced in a high-quality fashion.
I’d spend a few more thousand dollars to have a professional, user-friendly, inviting website built. That website would provide critical info such as hours, services, directions, and staff bios. It would list insurance accepted and how the facility charges. It would allow patients to fill out registration forms before they ever enter the front door.
Importantly, it also would be set up to cultivate a bit of community conversation via the social web. To complement and support, I’d establish staff incentives to be sure my healthcare pros participated online with members of the local community, listening, answering questions, engaging in issues of concern to the neighborhood, and the like.
But where I’d really spend money is on a fantastic front-office staff, fantastic nurses and P.A.s, and solid training on cleanliness and administrative efficiency. You see, I view urgent care centers as similar to restaurants and drug stores. If they’re convenient and their storefront is inviting, people will come in. That’s when patient experience takes over; people have got to have got to have a great experience. If they do, they’ll tell people. If they don’t, they’ll really tell people. There are gadgets and tactics (Twitter coupons, discounts for referrals, etc.) that can help word of mouth. But people need to walk out of the place thinking,“That was really great.”
Said another way, no amount of fancy marketing materials, public relations, or painstakingly selected signage colors will compensate for mediocre customer experience. This is 2010. It doesn’t work that way any more.
But I’ve never marketed an urgent care facility. What do I really know? If you know more, I’d like to hear it.
Tags: Kinkennon Communications, Shane Kinkennon, urgent care facilities
March 4th, 2010 at 12:11 am
I would suggest marketing the difference in cost of using an emergency department at a hospital versus an urgent care center. To me this should be front and center e.g. ED $1000 Urgent Care $300. Actually list out some of the prices for common occurrences such as broken arm, migraine, etc. Use average billed cost from both places.