What's Your Marketing IQ?

Arguably, marketing is the No. 1 skill needed to grow a thriving urgent care center. The key word in that sentence is “grow.” Yes, location, décor, bedside manner, high-quality care, operational and financial efficiency, and competition are important components, but without the skills to effectively and efficiently market your center, its absolute growth and growth trajectory will be severely restricted.

In subsequent articles we will explore critical components of a successful urgent care marketing plan in depth. In order to help you set the stage and have some fun I have developed this marketing IQ test. To get the most out of this test you should answer the questions without skipping ahead to the answers. This will give you the best insights into your strengths, weaknesses and potential blind spots. So let’s get started.

1. Which of the items listed below fall within the best definition of “marketing”?

a. Location

b. Décor

c. Bedside manner

d. Electronic medical record

e. Staffing

f. Public relations

g. All of the above

OK, I started out with a bit of a trick question, but I did it to make a point. Many of you probably answered “public relations,” which does fit a narrow definition of marketing. However, the best definition of marketing includes concepts such as positioning and branding. Positioning refers to the relative place your center holds in the minds of your target market, in relation to all the potential options, such as hospitals, primary care offices, retail clinics, etc. When would they come to your center? When would they go somewhere else?

Branding is a broad concept related to the congruent, cohesive total picture, and seeing what your target market envisions when they hear your name or see your logo. Here’s an example of why congruence is so important: You’ve built a freestanding urgent care center in an affluent part of town, decorated it to the nines, bought terrycloth robes for patients instead of gowns... got the picture? So far, so good. Now, your new patient walks in and your staff forgets to acknowledge them for five minutes... Wrong! Or your doctor is in and out in two minutes and has an attitude when asked questions... Wrong! Or your exam table has an inch of dust on the legs... Wrong! Or your lab tech uses a lot of country slang... Wrong! It’s all the big and little things that count. Your product, positioning and brand have to be well designed and implemented before you can get the most bang for the buck from your advertising, marketing, and public relations efforts. So the correct answer is “all of the above.”

2. List as many of your potential competitors (by classification such as “urgent care centers”) as you can think of:

How many were you able to list? I’m sure you all listed the easy ones; primary care physicians, other urgent care centers, worker’s comp clinics, hospital emergency departments, and retail clinics. How many of you listed the Ob/Gyn, orthopedist, dermatologist, and optometrist? What about the local pharmacist, WebMD, local bookstore, Google search, discussion boards, family and friends, and even “do nothing”? When people have some kind of health problem they may satisfy their need for resolution in many varied ways, including ignoring the problem. If you are only defining the shorter list as your competition you are severely limiting your analysis and potential clientele.

Proper positioning and branding requires you to design your unique selection proposition (USP). A USP effectively answers the question, “Why should your potential patients choose your urgent care center over any and all other options, including doing nothing?” This requires you to really think hard about what differentiates your urgent care center. Too many physicians’ offices and urgent care centers act like generic clones of each other, lumping themselves all together without any real differentiation. Be creative, brainstorm, and as they say, be willing to think out of the box to develop a unique position and brand.

3. List all the marketing media channels available to your urgent care center:

OK, let’s get the basic ones out of the way: newspaper ads, radio, TV, Web site, patient referrals, and physician referrals. Effective use of these channels requires further examination. Which newspapers? Which sections of the paper? What kind of ads? How about advertorials? Which radio station and show? Is your Web site just an electronic brochure or does it effectively sell your center and bring you new patients? Do you have a comprehensive patient referral program or is it hit or miss? How do you market to physicians?

Now let’s list some other effective media you could use. Did you remember direct mail to patients, physicians, and industry? How about co-op mailings and coupons? Local cable TV can be very effective if targeted appropriately. What about advertising in local movie theaters? E-mail marketing to current and past patients can be an excellent retention strategy. Online local search and pay-per-click ads can also be very cost effective. Blogging, regular newspaper columns and regular radio or TV shows can be extremely powerful for very little direct cost. Have you explored how to best market to the various ethnic groups within your local market? Then there’s the nearly endless list of other potential media avenues such as school and church bulletins, bus benches, shopping carts, table mats, etc. Public relations programs are a much underused and very influential marketing channel.

Referrals by local schools, police and emergency personnel are underused. Other highly effective and underused channels are strategic alliances and endorsed mailings with other area professionals and industry.

The key to a successful marketing program is to develop a plan, list of criteria, and budget, and to stay focused, measure results and demand a return on investment (ROI) on every program. Some of these venues will make sense and some won’t, depending on your exact situation. You should start with just a few media, test your ads, then measure and continually improve results. Once you have optimized your current programs you can layer on additional media channels.

Always try to use your marketing budget efficiently. Advertising in a large city newspaper or on a 50,000-watt radio station may not be cost effective, when your target market is within a five-mile radius of your center. However, a neighborhood paper or local college radio station might be just the thing.

Stay focused, don’t scatter shot and don’t let the salesmen talk you into new venues until you are ready. Always demand your marketing programs show a positive ROI.

4. It’s important to stress which of the following in your urgent care marketing?

a. No appointments

b. Extended hours

c. Fast service

d. No waiting

e. X-ray and lab onsite

f. Family medicine and emergency medicine MDs onsite

g. All of the above

h. None of the above

OK, another trick question, all in the interest of education. How many of you answered “all of the above”? The correct answer is “none of the above.” What? Doesn’t seem right, does it? Well, let me explain.

While all of the aforementioned services are important, they are all “features.” People do not come to your center because of features; they come because of “benefits.” And the benefits for any one feature are different depending on your particular audience. So statements such as “no appointments,” “fast service,” and “extended hours,” to a busy business person, have the benefit of “fitting the doctor visit into your schedule, at your convenience, with minimal lost time and revenue.” To the boss at a local factory the same set of features has the benefit of “minimal lost worker productivity.”

To a worried mother, the feature of onsite X-ray and lab services has the benefit of “we can diagnose your child’s condition rapidly and without the inconvenience of multiple trips to outside labs and hospital outpatient departments.” The same feature to the local fire rescue personnel has the benefit “you can safely refer your non-life threatening cases to a high quality alternative to overcrowded emergency departments.” Many physicians make the mistake of advertising features instead of benefits. Don’t expect people to make the connections; it’s important to spell those out for maximum effect.

5. You’ve spent $500 on a marketing campaign and it’s only brought in five new patients with a total of $350 in gross revenues before expenses. Do you continue the ad or cancel it?

a. Continue

b. Cancel

c. It depends

d. Don’t know

I’ve set you up a bit on this one, because in question No. 3 I said you should demand a positive ROI for all campaigns, which is still true. Based on this principal most of you probably answered “cancel.” The better answer is “it depends.” The key difference is how you measure ROI, and the difference between short-term and long-term. If each of those patients brings in an additional $75 over the next year and $350 over the next three years, then over the long term this campaign does have a very nice ROI. There are specific marketing strategies to increase the back end value of your new patients.

If that campaign was targeted at industry and all five new patients came from one new account, such as a large factory, then you know you will receive more patients and generate a huge ROI over the long term. If this campaign was a newspaper ad aimed at local vacationers who are not likely to ever return, then you would probably cancel the ad. Similar to the industry example, if they were all vacationers who came in after an ad campaign aimed at local hotels, then you would probably continue the campaign, as over the long haul you will see more patients and revenues. 

6. It’s best to delegate your marketing strategy and implementation to staff and consultants.

a. True

b. False

c. Yes and no

d. Don’t know

The correct answer here is “yes and no.” When it comes to the strategy and decision making it is absolutely critical that the ownership and upper management be intimately involved. Physicians often make the serious mistake of taking a hands-off approach, delegating everything entirely to a practice manager or administrator. Just as your CPA and attorney are important advisors, your staff and marketing consultants are important advisors and inputs to your overall strategy and implementation plan. However, just as with your financial and legal decisions, the ultimate decision making should be yours and not delegated. This makes it crucial that you be well versed enough on marketing principals to make the right decisions.

However, when it comes to the actual implementation it is very important to delegate to your team of advisors, consultants and staff, while monitoring results and timelines. In order for you to be maximally effective you must have a well oiled team so you can focus on the higher payoff activities, issues and decisions. Raising your marketing IQ has the highest ROI of any activity you could pursue. I hope you’ve had fun with this test and we’ve helped you up your marketing knowledge a notch or two.

Ira S. Bloomfield, MD, is board certified in emergency and internal medicine. He and his team at Market WelbyTM, currently helps urgent care centers to grow profits through innovative, high impact, easy to implement, cost effective marketing strategies. He can be reached at www.MarketWelby-UrgentCare.com/ICBMY or welby.icbmy@MarketWelby.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines

Read Comments [0]