Social Media Growth Hacks for Urgent Care Clinics

Marketing an urgent care clinic on social media can deliver incredible results. In recent years social media has become a source of medical and health information, and not just for the Gen Z and Millennial demographic, either.

Adults are now using social media to seek and share health-related news and information. There are some things you need to focus on, like ensuring that the content shared is timely, and more important, accurate and informative. Some specific regulations and rules must be followed when sharing anything that might be interpreted as medical advice.

Marketing a health clinic on social media is an entirely different animal than promoting a local restaurant or a retail store. But, with the right strategy and an understanding of what content performs well, it’s possible to experience a great ROI from your social media marketing effort.

Let’s dive into some important things to remember when marketing an urgent care clinic on social media. These tips will help you design a social media effort specifically for a medical clinic and build the kind of awareness and engagement that increases clinic patient volume and ultimately contributes to business growth.

You never want the majority of your social media posts to be overly promotional. There is no need to say “come to us for your urgent care and medical needs” to create an effective strategy. A better approach is to build awareness by highlighting interesting health and medical news, sharing some useful information, or highlighting the medical professionals that work at your clinic.

With so much content on social media, you need fresh and exciting content – something that local consumers aren’t going to find elsewhere. This gives them a reason to not only follow your business but also interact regularly. When you provide the value you create a loyal following, keeping your medical clinic fresh on the minds of your followers.

Patient trust is incredibly important, so focus on building awareness in regards to medical news and information, but also as it relates to your urgent care clinic’s experience. Little tidbits of information related to how long you have been in operation and the qualifications of your medical staff are great content to share.

They aren’t viewed as traditional advertisements, and they help to build trust. We aren’t talking about selling the customer a piece of electronic equipment for their house. Getting someone comfortable enough to trust your clinic with their health and well-being requires that you instill an incredible amount of trust through your urgent care clinic’s social media marketing content.

Know where you can attract patients for your urgent care clinic and stay in that lane. While TikTok dance videos might work well for a bar or a D2C brand, it’s not the right strategy for a medical facility.

There are two social media platforms to focus the majority of your effort on, and that is Facebook and Instagram. This is where the majority of adults, old and young, are active. Producing content for social networks with a younger audience is not efficient – it’s their parents making all decisions related to health and medical attention.

A good approach for a social media marketing effort designed specifically for an urgent care clinic is an 80/20 split – 80 percent focus on Facebook with a 20 percent focus on Instagram. Then, apply another 80/20 split on organic and paid efforts on each.

Your organic content should be fun, educational, and designed for awareness. Paid social media marketing on the other hand can be more direct. Use remarketing for both Facebook and Instagram ads and target only users that have previously visited your website.

Match your ads and offers to the specific pages they last visited. When you start to scale this parallel to your website traffic growth your social effort can be the greatest source of new patients and walk-in visits.

What if there was a way to drive even more awareness to your urgent care clinic’s social profiles and attract even more new followers? What if this was in addition to your effort, requiring no content creation and no campaign management?

You can accomplish this by incentivizing your patients to share your content and tag your profiles in the posts. Establish a “Patient Appreciation Program” that rewards them every month for sharing at least one piece of your content.

This could be re-tweeting a Twitter post, sharing a Facebook post, or even sharing an Instagram post in their Stories feed. You then need a way to track it, whether it’s simply them bringing up their profile while in your clinic and physically showing the post – or setting up a way for them to make the posts easy for your staff to identify.

A dedicated hashtag is an easy solution, and if you manage all of your urgent care clinic’s social media profiles in one SaaS dashboard you can quickly identify the posts and DM or Message the patient letting them know you have added them to the list.

Offer something very simple yet appealing enough that the average patient will take you up on the offer. For example, a 30 day supply of a multivitamin can be white-labeled and branded for your medical clinic.

For $1 to $2 per month you are giving out a promotional item that helps build awareness and you get an additional voice for your business across social media. This kind of targeted organic exposure is the highest quality social media engagement you could ask for.

Become a Source for Health News

Aside from politics, health-related news is one of the most popular on social media, so make an effort to share breaking news. Over time this effort will pay off, and your followers will begin to rely on your social profiles for news.

By educating your audience and keeping them updated you position your clinic as a trusted and reliable source of health-related news and information. Share important news, but don’t remain too narrow – try to touch on a wide range of topics to appeal to your entire social following.

Anything related to the procedures and treatments your urgent care clinic provides is a great start, along with breaking health news, and hot (controversial) topics, as they create an incredible amount of engagement.

You can leverage popular and somewhat controversial topics to generate engagement, which further amplifies the reach of your posts. This then puts your clinic’s content in front of more potential patients.

Anytime you post something controversial – and having two sides with strong opinions – it can create snowballing engagement and a viral post. Comments and shares should be welcomed, but tread carefully and only post controversial topics that are fairly lighthearted and won’t attract hateful and rude comments. You don’t want your social media feed to turn toxic.

Final Thoughts

After implementing the above social media tips you will be able to create platforms that serve as distribution channels, connecting your clinic to members of your local community. Whereas some businesses might communicate or relay information via a newsletter, when it comes to health-related news and information, the average consumer is looking for it on social media.

So, rather than try to change consumer behavior (don’t try, you will not be successful) it’s best to adapt and be active where they can be found. By constantly sharing helpful information, breaking news, and tips, you position your urgent care clinic as a reliable and trusted source to follow.

This results in the consumer following your clinic’s social media account(s), and what is going to pop in their mind when they have a situation that requires immediate medical attention or knows someone that does? Your clinic, that’s what. Providing value is the most effective way of building trust and loyalty in any industry.

To learn more about our urgent care clinic social media marketing services please contact us at your earliest convenience. Our team of medical marketing experts will explain the process we use to drive a consistent flow of patients to our clients’ clinics using social media.

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