Urgent Care Marketing Strategy for 2023 - Part 2: Occ Med Focus

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Part 1 of this series discussed the current state of the urgent care industry and how community marketing can be used to build your urgent care visit volume. In this article, we move on to discuss community marketing for the occupational medicine side of your practice. While community marketing is a great tool for urgent care, it is pretty much required on some level if you aim to maximize an occ med program.

If you don’t offer occ med and/or other ancillary services, Part 3 of this series is for you – we’ll be looking at a variety of ways to build on the foundation of your core urgent care services. If you already offer occ med or you’ve been thinking about adding it, read on!

In urgent care, the decision makers we need to reach are either the consumers or their family members. In occupational medicine, the primary decision makers are the business owners and managers who make decisions about employer-paid services or workers’ compensation care for their employees. These businesses-to-business relationships are best built with a one-on-one approach including both online and in-person touchpoints – starting with community marketing.

To be clear, while community marketing can be done by a sales representative who begins with marketing and continues working with prospects until contracts are signed, this is not required. Community marketing can be done by anyone with good interpersonal skills who knows enough about your business to make a basic introduction. As long as they understand the core value propositions of your practice from both the urgent care and occ med perspectives, they can help spread the word. When that person isn’t a sales rep, they just need a clear system for identifying good prospects and connecting them with the person who is responsible for closing the sale.

Who to Approach

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, the easiest place to start is right in your neighborhood. Even if these businesses aren’t the ideal occ med clients, they will be easy to approach and can help warm you up as you begin spreading the word about your practice’s services. Beyond this hyper-local segment of your neighbors, the possibilities are only limited by the make-up of organizations in your area along with the exact set of services that you offer. Here is a list of places to consider when doing outreach. (Note: Some of these will be potential occ med clients, others will be potential referral sources or other marketing channels, and some will overlap and have the potential for both.)

What to look for

Types of organizations to target:

schools
camps
after school programs
gyms
yoga studios
primary care physicians
orthopedic physicians
places of worships
tourist attractions
hotels
bus/train stations or significant stops

Places in town with bulletin boards for posters or tables/racks for flyers:

supermarkets
office buildings
apartment buildings
community centers
schools
libraries
government buildings
parks
coffee shops or casual restaurants
malls

Super social people – possible brand ambassadors:

local healthcare providers
former patients
community leaders
social media influencers focused on local happenings

Referral partners:

Primary care docs
Pharmacies
Retailers
Schools
Workplaces (independent of any occ med opportunity)

Places where lots of people gather:

Convention centers
Arenas and auditoriums
Churches and other places of worship
Schools – public or private, from nursery school through post-graduate
Hotels
Restaurants
Outdoor venues

Family-oriented activities:

Amusement parks and theme parks
Water parks, pools, etc.
Zoos
Museums
Parks and gardens
Arts and crafts businesses and activities

Of course, all of these categories won’t be present in any one market, but this list should give you some inspiration regarding who you can connect with in your community to get the word out about your practice’s services.

In Part 3, we will discuss Complementary Specialties and Ancillary Services.