Meeting Patients Where They Are: Multichannel Strategies for Urgent Care

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast. The only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinals experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex: What’s up? Good morning, afternoon, evening to our members listening. Thank you to our three listeners. I always love welcoming you back today. We are always in for a treat, but very, very in for a treat. Welcome, Kristy, to Ignite.

Kristy: Thank you, Alex. So glad to be here.

Alex: We’re in for a treat because you run the marketing for a large urgent care, and I love that because there’s nothing more low acuity and retailified than urgent care. We get to talk about a lot of fun stuff like paid media and patient experience, and all that fun stuff. Tell them where you work, Kristy.

Kristy: I am Vice President of Marketing at WellStreet here in the Atlanta market. You probably know us as Piedmont Urgent Care. We partner with health systems across the country. We have four partners right now, and Piedmont is certainly one of our largest here in the Atlanta market.

Alex: Had my first baby at Piedmont 16 years ago.

Kristy: Great organization.

Alex: Yes. They’re not known for the baby stuff, but I want to tell everybody now, they made a good baby.

Kristy: You have the proof.

Alex: Yes. I got a proof. Turned out to be a good kid. Tell us a little bit more about WellStreet. What’s the size? Then we’ll talk focus for 2025.

Kristy: Right now, we’re getting close to 150 offices across with four partners and growing. We just opened a new office in Clemson, South Carolina, last week. That’s our brand-new one in the Prisma market. We love urgent care. It’s something that is so needed in communities. It’s a great way to get patients in, get them what they need, but also develop some of those long-term relationships.

Alex: I hear, Kristy, that a lot of our generation doesn’t go to primary care anymore. You guys are very in vogue.

Kristy: We are very, very popular, but we want them to have those relationships. We want to help connect them to primary care, fill that need when they need it.

Alex: That’s probably why those health systems are so interested in urgent care, I suppose, and they get them into the PCPs, and then they use Piedmont for everything.

Kristy: That’s right.

Alex: When I go to one of your locations, for context, I live in Atlanta. I have a better understanding. If you’re not in Atlanta, let’s help them understand. When I go, do I see WellStreet on the sign, or do I see Piedmont? Do I see WellStreet by Piedmont?

Kristy: No, no, no. As a patient, you should not know who WellStreet is. That’s on purpose. We always lead with the health systems brand because it’s the strongest. Piedmont and our other partners have spent years and years building this brand. It’s so trusted, so recognized. We take great pride in that. We really focus on the brand standards, brand guidelines, and that’s the brand that we lead with patients. Patients don’t know who WellStreet is. That’s on purpose.

Alex: On purpose. That’s interesting. It’s almost like you’re running a house of brands. You were in ortho before My Ortho. It just got bought by Smile Doctors, right? Also a big fan. What is your goal for this year? What are you focused on? Then I want to talk about how you market through other people’s brands.

Kristy: Really, two big goals. Number one, we are expanding patient access to care, which I know every healthcare marketer does. We are on track to see 2.4 million patients across our urgent care this year. That’s huge. That’s a lot of people to provide care to. Then specifically, on the marketing side, we have traditionally focused on paid search, which is still incredibly important. Our goal is to diversify some of that paid media. Let’s do some mid and upper funnel, do some things that make paid search work even harder for us. That’s really our focus here.

Alex: Love it. We’ll talk media in a second. That’s exciting. 2.4 million. Is that a similar amount of locations? Are you adding more patient visits into locations through getting more providers or opening [unintelligible 00:03:37]? What are you doing?

Kristy: Yes, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s new location, it’s adding providers, and it’s growing wherever we have the capacity. We want to max out our capacity of getting as many patients in where we can. We have providers when we need to. Then we are really focused on new locations. There’s 25 new locations across our partner plan for this year.

Alex: All right, cool. Getting more into the current locations, adding locations, adding providers, the whole shebang.

Kristy: Whole shebang.

Alex: I know you believe in patient experience. Muy importante for the marketers. Talk to us about what a great patient experience– Urgent care does it better. Urgent care and dental do it better than anyone. What does that look like for you guys?

Kristy: Yes, I think it is so important. I think, a lot of times, we forget that patients are customers, and customers have choices. We have to make that patient experience as great as it can be. We’re all about removing the friction. What is friction? Little annoyances that pop up throughout the process. For us, it starts when the patient is looking for us. We want it to be easy to find. We want it to be easy for them to figure out how to come in and get care. You can walk in, you can book ahead, you can do virtual. Even from the registration paperwork to going through the process in the center, we want it to be quick. We want it to be easy. We want to get them back feeling better.

Even the follow-up. Making bill pay really easy. No one likes to pay a bill, so let’s make it as easy as we can. We look at every touch point of that customer journey and just try to remove as much of that friction as possible.

Alex: Kristy, does bill pay fall on you and the marketing team?

Kristy: It does not fall on me, but I do sometimes support with communications around bill pay.

Alex: Absolutely. I was asking a rhetorical question because I want our marketing managers to know what it takes to become a VP of marketing. It takes understanding the business goals and working across the other business leaders, and caring about what ops and finance is doing.

Kristy: That’s right.

Alex: Not just getting more ads into market.

Kristy: I think it’s incredibly important to think about the impact outside of the marketing metrics. We, as marketers, love our metrics of impressions, clicks, all of that. We’ve got to tie it back to people in the center, patients that we are seeing. If you can’t prove that out, then you need to take a little bit more of a closer look of what you’re doing and how you’re measuring it.

Alex: Yes. Oh, I can’t wait to get to measurement. I want to start back with the education piece because we’re talking about funnels, right? How do we get more people in urgent care? You’re a believer in educating people that urgent care can do more than what is perceived. Everybody thinks kid got sick. We’ll go to urgent care. I stubbed my toe, go to urgent care. You think it’s more than that?

Kristy: I think it’s so much more than that. Everyone knows you can come in when you have the flu, you’re vomiting everywhere, but we are such a convenient option for many other things. If your kid’s going to camp, you realize that camp form, that camp physical is due tomorrow, and you haven’t gotten in with your pediatrician and get that scheduled. We do camp physicals in our office. Where else can you go in at seven o’clock on a Thursday, 10:00 AM on a Saturday, and do that? We do X-rays on site. Certainly, it’s not a replacement for your other healthcare relationship. It’s a really convenient option that then can move you into some of those other providers.

Alex: How do you educate patients on those options without breaking the bank?

Kristy: We do a lot of email. That’s another big focus this year, is that educational piece with email. I’ll call it SEO. SEO is so important. We know that patients are out there searching for a camp physical. They’re searching for where can I get an X-ray? How can we leverage SEO? How can we leverage email, leverage some of these other channels so that we’re not just spending our entire budget on research?

Alex: That is smart, guys. You heard it here first. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it, but SEO can be an upper-funnel tool, right? It’s often a lot cheaper than trying to bid on those keywords or continuously show more Meta ads. Educating people on camp physicals are available here. Trying to rank for those keywords. Sometimes we’re seeing Cleveland Clinic and Mayo dominating a lot of that stuff, but they’re not dominating camp physicals and X-rays near me. Brilliant, Kristy. I like that. I know you’re believing in trying to get people to convert in different ways and using video to try it. Tell us how you do all of that fun stuff.

Kristy: Every patient is different, and we have to meet them where they are. I talk to people within my organization that are like, “I would never do a book ahead.” I’m like, “Well, I’m never going to an urgent care if I didn’t do a book ahead.” Everybody is different, and our patients are not one-size-fits-all. That’s the beauty of urgent care. We really are such a broad audience and broad base. We have to meet patients where they are. We look at things like where do they want to convert? Where do they want to consume media? Maybe direct mail works for one group, but it doesn’t work for all of them.

We have to match up that marketing channel. Then we have to make sure that we are available the way that they need it to be. We have so many patients that probably don’t ever visit our website. They know we’re there because they’ve driven by. We have to be able to accept them as a walk-in. We don’t necessarily need everybody to go through an online channel, but we know those online channels really support getting people in the door.

Alex: I love it. How are you guys working with the website? Let’s just call them websites. Is it Piedmont.com, slash? Is it subdomain, Wells Urgent Care? What control do we have?

Kristy: We have dedicated websites. We’re piedmonturgentcare.org, and then we have a website in each market. We follow the partner’s brand guidelines. We want to feel cohesive for the patient. We want them to know that we are part of that larger health system. Our website is really focused on conversion. When you land on our website, you’re going to see immediately it’s easy to get in. It’s easy to do a book ahead. It’s easy to do virtual. Really tailored to that easy virtual experience.

Alex: I love the book ahead. I’m with you. I wouldn’t go without a book ahead. Oh, Kristy, I’ve also noticed, when I do the book ahead, I get there and I still wait 45 minutes. I’m like, “Why am I still here?” They’re like, “Someone else walked in.” When people do that, does it actually keep a slot open with the HR, the management, or the scheduling system?

Kristy: Yes, it keeps a slot. Because we’re urgent care, some things are more urgent than others, so we do have to triage, but I guarantee you’re going to wait less time in an urgent care than you would in an emergency room. Even at 45 minutes, it’s still a win, but we do try to keep it.

Alex: That’s what they were trying to convince– What was I in there for? A physical. I was in there for a physical, trying to get blood work done. Yes, they said someone walked in, and then I wanted to say, “How was it more important than my physical?” They’re like, “Oh, it’s HIPAA.” I was like, “You’re just saying that.” All right, let’s talk a little bit about media, because I know you’re trying to expand out of the PPC drug. Thank you for doing that, because it’s only going to last so much longer. You’re seeing all of the different channels, starting to take some of Google’s share. It still has the vast majority, but the patient journey is changing, and I see my wife is finding care for a dermatologist on TikTok. You guys have noticed that, too. Now, let’s start with this, how much of your total digital media expenditure is still on Google as a percentage channel?

Kristy: Right now?

Alex: 99? Yes.

Kristy: A lot.

Alex: To start branching out, how did you know– We are about to do a ton of content on this. I just recorded it yesterday, I want to see if I was really wrong. How did you know it was time to start getting out of PPC little by little? What channels did you decide on, and what budget are you going to put against it?

Kristy: Honestly, part of the way that we know that it’s time to get out of it is we know that we have some brand awareness opportunities. Some of this has come about, not necessarily from direct online measurement, but from surveys in the market where we realized, “Hey, there may be some markets that we’re going into where there’s not as strong brand awareness, there’s not as strong awareness around urgent care in general.” We still have some room to grow on PPC. I’m not saying that PPC is completely mapped out for us at all, but I think that if we can implement some brand awareness at a little bit of a higher level, we’ll start to see a little bit harder working PPC.

Alex: I love it. You will. We ran the test with PCPs in UCs, and you will. It’s hard. Leadership gets so sketched out. A month in, they’re like, “Oh, we gave you a hundred grand last month to run up our funnel. Where are the appointment?” It takes a little bit of time.

Kristy: It takes some time.

Alex: What are you going to measure differently? In healthcare, we can’t say view through stuff, right? It’s harder to attribute those upper-funnel things. How are you looking at measuring? Are you going to separate out location? How are you going to get buy-in and keep the buy-in?

Kristy: We’re going to pilot it at a couple of locations. We’re going to do some testing where we look at, overall, the website. We’re going to look at search for those markets. We believe that by adding some of this upper mid-funnel, we’re going to see search behavior change. We’re going to look at things like what is our cost for conversion in those markets? Does it go down because we’re adding these additional tactics there? Honestly, at the end of the day, we’re going to look at volume changes in those clinics versus the ones where we didn’t launch it. It sounds so simple, but if we’re holding everything else the same, [unintelligible 00:12:02] how that’s moving.

Alex: That is exactly the right way to do it. That is exactly the right way to do it. That can make people uneasy. It’s like, “Yes, but what are your marketing metrics? Because there was norovirus in those areas that month.” Dude, come on. That is the extent of the measurement. We controlled the locations. We had the experiment locations. That’s exactly right, guys. You’ll have to be comfortable with that. Did you say we’re going to Meta first, or are we doing–

Kristy: Going to Meta. We’re going to do a little bit of OTT. We’re doing a little bit of mobile display. We’re trying a little bit of everything. I’m a huge fan of pilot, but I think getting that measurement right and looking at it in terms of the end business KPI is key. I think that’s where a lot of pilots fall short. They can’t connect it back to the business performance.

Alex: Did you go around WellStreet’s leadership, the rest of y’all’s leadership team, and you say, “Lisa, et cetera, I need y’all to know this isn’t what it’s going to look like and we have to be okay with these being the KPI.” Is it okay? Like, “Hey, listen, I know what it’s going to be. I don’t need to talk to anybody about this.”

Kristy: No, we set the expectations. We want the leadership team to know that we in marketing are thinking through these things. We have a plan. We’re looking at it holistically. Yes, I think that’s really important. I think it’s important to keep your leadership team informed of what you’re doing and why, connecting it to the why. At WellStreet, we’re comfortable running some tests. We want to try things, but we want to quickly know, is this working or is it not?

Alex: I love it. I love it. I love it. Back to the media. Sorry. OTT, you’re going to run through a healthcare-type DSP thing, or how are you choosing the [unintelligible 00:13:33] buys and all that fun stuff?

Kristy: Yes, we’re still just dipping our toes into that, to be honest. We’re pretty early in that. Right now, we’re working on launching across Meta. We’re still figuring out a lot of the details and the setup for that.

Alex: Keep us posted, guys. We will have Kristy. She has not accepted or even heard this invite, but later this year, it’s scaling up. Come and tell the story at our virtual summit. There will be more than three listeners at it. Then we can talk about how the branching out and upper funnel went, because this is what all healthcare marketers need to know. You’ll have six months of data. I’d love to learn how it all went.

Kristy: Hopefully see good results.

Alex: Good, bad, and ugly. Even if they’re not, that’s important, too. You’ll save a lot of groups from some things. As we know, when you start branching out into those other channels, creative matters. How are you guys tackling that strategy here, execution there? How are you thinking through video [unintelligible 00:14:21]? How are we doing all of that?

Kristy: Over the past couple of months, we’ve been gathering a lot of content. We’ve done some video shoots that we’re editing together. We’ve started to really beef up our creative. I think it’s really important for us that we partner with our health system counterparts to make sure that it looks and feels like Piedmont. We still want everything to feel cohesive for the patient. That’s a little bit of an added complexity on top of it, but really focusing on the creative and how it connects to the local market. We look at things like demographics in the local market. We look at ages. Our creative for a center that’s in a college town is going to look very different from something in McDonough, Georgia.

Alex: How are you going to scale that? When you’re eventually running at 150 locations, do you think that you’re going to be able to scale that and say, “Hey, Augusta gets this, Atlanta gets–” Atlanta’s too broad. “Brookhaven gets this, Alpharetta gets that?”

Kristy: Yes, I think you start to leverage AI to scale it. I think you have to. No, we’re not going to have one person who’s switching this out individually for all of them. I think right now, we’re still figuring out the framework of it. Then I think we start to leverage AI to help with that.

Alex: Spot on. Just saw last night that ChatGPT is coming out with its own social network within it. Who knows what is going to be included in it? Yes, that guy hates Elon Musk. He’s going to try to compete with X. I love it. It’s fun watching these folks. What is so fun about watching their competition is it won’t matter, and the robots are going to take everything anyways. The robots are laughing right now.

Kristy: Just say thank you when you talk to ChatGPT. Remember that. Always say thank you.

Alex: I teach the kids manners with Alexa. “Stop yelling at her.” I only have one more question for you. We’ve talked a lot about digital media footprint, expanding, upper-funnel, all kinds of fun stuff, and getting more patients in the door beyond 2.4 million. I know you also believe in community engagement. Why is that important? What do we do there?

Kristy: It’s so important. At the end of the day, healthcare is about trust. We have to build trust with the community, trust with patients. Part of how we build trust is by being there. Being involved in the community. Our centers are so local. They’re next to the Publix you go to every day. They’re across the street from your kid’s school. We are truly serving the community, so I think it’s on us to be a part of that community. We do things like health fairs. We partner with schools. We really encourage our centers to be out, be present, and be part of that community. I think it’s hugely important for trust building.

Alex: When you get your logo on the websites of the schools, et cetera, it goes to piedmonturgentcare.org, right?

Kristy: Right.

Alex: That’s good. Then we rank for camp physicals. It’s all coming back. Kristy’s got a hold on everything. This was a blast. Like I told you, guys, urgent care, dental, always been ahead of the game on all things marketing. They’re the first ones to start testing in the different channels. Guys, you can’t use “we are low acuity” as an excuse anymore if urgent care is doing it and going into new channels, and understanding the PPC thing is going to lose some interest in the patient journey team, then everybody’s got to follow on board. Kristy will hopefully share the news of how all of this went in six, seven months, any of that, and we’ll go from there. Kristy, thank you for joining us on Ignite.

Kristy: Thank you, Alex. I had a blast. Thank you.

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