Urgent care marketing and advertising

Attracting patients looking for urgent care involves building a digital foundation that’s reliable and consistent. This foundation includes:

• An optimized practice website. Your medical website is often the first impression patients have of your practice and expertise. Websites should contain original, relevant content that highlights the services you offer and your diagnostic and treatment expertise. Proactive content should also answer the questions your prospective patients have when searching. In addition to top-notch, informative content, you also need a site that loads fast, is easy to use, and has optimized pages that search engines can find.
• Profiles on online or healthcare directories. With your well-designed website in place, you also need to evaluate your overall web presence. Doing a Google search of your practice name helps you find your practice profile on online directories, like Vitals, Google My Business, and Yelp, that you can update to add your hours, facility details, photos, and list of services. These details increase both your website traffic and your authority among urgent care clinics.
• Your online reputation. Your online reputation can make or break the confidence a potential patient has in your practice and expertise. Reviews are the no. 1 decision making factor among patients choosing a provider. What’s more, 69 percent of patients won’t choose a provider with an average star rating under 4.0. Frequent online reviews also help Google and other search engines realize that your practice is relevant, which may help move you higher in search engine rankings and attract patients now and in the long-term.
• Content marketing tactics. Regularly publishing timely content on your website and social media solidifies your brand and boosts your online presence. Content strategies include consistent blog posts, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns. Blogging is especially beneficial for your practice’s search ranking. Video content is gaining more momentum among prospective patients looking for answers about their health.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. With an eye on your SEO strategies, you can drive more traffic to your website. Strategies include using keywords that prospective patients search for about their urgent care needs, such as COVID-19 testing, flu, physicals, and X-rays. Your content should also feature long-tail search terms that your patients are asking, such as “when should I seek urgent care?” and “what are the benefits of urgent care services?”.

Effective advertising for urgent care practices includes paid search advertising and social media advertising. Paid search advertising helps push your practice to the top of the search engine results. Paid search allows you to target exactly the urgent care patients you’re looking for and helps you rank above other urgent care clinics in your area. You can direct people to your website to increase website traffic and your local visibility.

Creating online ads that feature key words like urgent care specialist, walk-in visits, allergies, and flu help people find you in their searches. You can also highlight urgent care specialist services such as birth control, DOT physicals, and skin rejuvenation.

In conjunction with your existing print ad or direct mail campaigns, paid social media ads help supplement your organic content and give you more opportunity to reach a broader audience. You may also try banner ads on websites are another effective way to drive more traffic to your website and give you a boost over the competition.

Strengthening your online reputation can help boost business from new patients and can serve as a great foundation for long-term patient retention. While not every aspect of your online reputation is under your control, there is a lot you can do to put a searcher’s focus on the positive.

For some urgent care practices, asking for online patient reviews can be awkward. However, by staying focused on providing the highest quality experience, you can keep the door open for a positive review by asking for feedback at the time of the visit.

There are also strategies you can put into place within your practice to facilitate authentic, positive reviews from your existing patients, such as:

• Enhanced convenience. Convenience is already a primary focus of urgent care. By adding even more convenience to your practice through online scheduling, automated appointment reminders, text messaging, and telehealth services, you can retain your existing patient base and attract new patients who are tired of emergency room hassles and inflexible scheduling.
• Patient satisfaction surveys. Automated satisfaction surveys allow patients to share their experience while they still remember the details. In addition to the automated surveys, your practice needs to be mindful of all sources of patient feedback, including social media posts, email, and online reviews outside of your website.
• Be responsive to feedback. There’s no better way to improve the customer experience than by listening to what your patients have to say. To increase the likelihood of a positive review, your practice needs to respond to both positive and negative feedback in a timely manner. This boosts their confidence in your values and their motivation to provide a positive review online and off.

Investing in patient satisfaction improvements increases your potential for more online reviews that bolsters the confidence search engines have in your business, so you rank consistently higher. It’s also important to have an online reputation management system that can help you monitor your incoming patient reviews, send patient satisfaction surveys, and respond to feedback directly.