Urgent Care Marketing Starts Before Patients Need You

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, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Ashley Petrochenko: Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Ignite: Healthcare Marketing Podcast. My name’s Ashley Petrochenko, the VP of brand marketing here at Cardinal. These conversations are my favorite part of the week. I get to sit down and hear from healthcare marketing leaders on the work that they’re doing.

Today’s episode is going to be no different. We have a wonderful guest lined up, a marketer who has deep experience in education space and consumer research. She’s going to be sharing her thoughts on how she approaches urgent care marketing. Without further ado, please help me welcome Miriam Rose Lee, the chief marketing officer at MainStreet Family Care.

Miriam Lee Rose: Hi. Thanks, Ashley. Glad to be here.

Ashley: Now, can you give our listeners a little bit of background on your experience and the work that you do at MainStreet Family Care?

Miriam: I’ve been doing digital marketing since 2008, before search engine optimization was even called SEO. I remember doing some of the work and we were like, “What are we going to call this,” when I created my agency to start marketing the services. Since then, I’ve always been in marketing. It’s varied depending upon– I’ve had a lot of healthcare clients. I’ve been now I’m working full-time at MainStreet.

In that role, being the chief marketing officer, we have about 67 clinics throughout the Southeast. We have three more coming on board within the next two years. Then we went through a series where we brought on 12 all at once. We opened 12 clinics in about a year and a half, which was a wild ride, I must say. With our clinics, we have two different brands technically. We have MainStreet and we have KidsStreet.

MainStreet is very rural, and it is urgent care. We also offer primary care. There is probably about a 10% overlap between the two. There’s not as much primary care as urgent care by far. Then our KidsStreet brand is more pediatric-focused. Those are in the more metro areas and are focused on providing urgent care services tailored towards kids. We also technically see adults at all those clinics as well.

Ashley: I love this. You have a background in the agency space, and you also have the background as a professor as well. All the things that you’ve learned over the years on how to get people in the door when they’re in that moment when they need to find care urgently. Think about that moment. Maybe it’s a mom who has a sick child late at night. Maybe something happened, and they’re on the road, and they’re really trying to find an urgent care provider in that moment under pressure. How do you think about that? What are the activities that you’re doing upstream to make sure that MainStreet or KidsStreet wins?

Miriam: The big piece here is similar to personal injury law. People don’t need you till they need you. It’s rare that we serve an ad on Meta or Facebook, for example, or Instagram, and then people click on that and immediately come to the clinic. That’s just not how it works in urgent care. One of the things we do is build brand awareness. We try to do community events. We do a back-to-school event for each of our KidsStreet clinics, and we have 16 of those.

In doing that, we give out backpacks and school supplies around the time of school starting. That’s just a way just to be in front of them so they know about our brand. The psychology behind it and the research behind it is once you see someone’s brand, if you see it enough times, it gets encoded into your memory. When you need it, it’s either there, or more importantly, if you see their ad, you can’t ignore it because your brain can’t ignore the familiar psychology of being a human.

For us, it really was tactically about they are probably going to search for us or urgent care. One of the things we do is we make sure we have Google search ads that are specifically tied around urgent care. We are technically running Performance Max ads as well. However, the thing we put most of our time, money, and energy in are those very specific location-specific campaigns that are not Performance Max. They’re not PMax campaigns.

In those campaigns, we fine-tune them so that if people are searching for us, we’re going to show up at the top or we’re going to show up on the map. That’s important because if someone goes to search for urgent care, there are competitors. Competitors are bidding on the terms. If you’re not in the ads, then you’re not showing up. You’re not going to be there.

The other piece we spent a lot of time with, which was a huge pain in the butt, huge, is we really wanted to take advantage of the Google Book Now button, but we didn’t want to have to go through Solv or one of the other third-party services because all of our stuff is proprietary in-house. We weren’t jumping back to your online booking and all of that. Everything is in-house. Literally, our entire LMS is in-house.

We didn’t want to go with Solv or another place like that and be dependent upon them trying to integrate them with our LMS. We had to jump through a lot of hoops to finally get contact with someone at Google and then finally get up the chain to be able to get our own Book Now button, which is what we have, which is great. That took a lot of interaction between us and our technical team in-house and Google. That’s been a big difference as well, because now, whether you’re on Apple or Google or whatever, you can click Book Now and get directly into our system. We had to swap to slots. We had to do time slots in order to adapt, in order to be able to do that.

I think it’s just being aware of what’s going on, how people are interfacing with the website. For us, it’s also knowing between the two brands, those look different. We get most of our online conversions and bookings on the KidsStreet side from the Book Now button. Most of our MainStreet, which is more rural and can be some older clientele as well, they’re going to still go directly to our website. It’s been interesting to see how that works and just making sure we know our customer well enough to know how do we get in front of them.

Ashley: Yes. There’s a lot of nuances between reaching rural, older generations. I actually live in very rural Maine. I’m not from here. It’s been an eye-opener just how different the communities are and how people find information. It’s very different. I think that’s really smart, really understanding who you’re targeting and how are they trying to find care.

What you said about the local. It’s such a local decision. People are not driving an hour necessarily to find urgent care. They want something immediately. You said you are optimizing your Google presence, trying to make sure that you are being in that very first recommendation set and having that Book Now button. Are there any other recommendations or tips that you have making sure you have that local strength so that people know that you are the person in their community that can help them?

Miriam: Yes. I think someone is always going to go back to word of mouth, which I know we’re going to talk about a little later. I won’t go too much into that. I think for us, too, it’s just making sure that location page is created on the website with the search engine optimization that’s needed. Then when we open a new place, we always join the chamber to get that external backlink back to our website to boost up our SEO on that page. Then we create blogs surrounding it.

Then we’ve done a lot more educational content recently. Creating that educational content, right now, we have a summer safety series about to go live. We’re going to post that all over social media on each of our individual pages because we have a Facebook page for every single location. We’re going to post that content there. That actually helps build up awareness in those locations as well.

We’re very targeted in what we do. We have our patient data pulled in, and marketing has access to the map of where our patients come from. We go in, and every six months or so, we refine what ZIP codes are we targeting or what radiuses are we targeting. It just really goes back to where are people hearing about us from, where are they coming from, and trying to meet them there, because people aren’t going to drive 30 minutes to an urgent care unless they’ve had an amazing experience there before or they have to. [chuckles]

Ashley: I think I do have to drive 45 minutes, actually. That’s just the reality of living in rural. I like the local connection in terms of the back-to-school campaign, back-to-summer. You’re really trying to connect with them on those other channels so that you become that little itchy part in their brain that when they do need care, they’re like, “Oh, I remember them.” Maybe this is something that you’ve picked up from retail or e-com or your work in other industries. Is there anything there that you’re like, “Oh, that really translates well to healthcare, and we wish maybe we’re doing it, or we wish more people should do it,” or maybe all of the above?

Miriam: Based on my experience, this just comes from being with an agency. We had B2B and B2C clients across various industries. I was a managing partner and helped create it. I just see the trends of what works where. A lot of the retail and e-commerce stuff, it doesn’t work for us at all. We have our own pharmacy in-house where we have basic prescriptions that people don’t care. They really don’t. They’re fine with going to their normal pharmacy.

My CEOs are like, “We need to sell more of this stuff.” I was like, “Yes, okay, we’ll try. It never works.” What’s going to happen is that’s only going to work if someone’s in the clinic, and the clinic staff is saying, “By the way, we just prescribed your amoxicillin. We have some here for $15. Would you rather buy it here to save you a trip to the pharmacy?”

Marketing can’t make ops do it. It’s just one of those things where the retail-y stuff doesn’t really translate. We can’t send out a newsletter and, “Hey, here’s a deal on these prescriptions.” We try to do something a little different. Since we are not run by a big corporation, all of our marketing is corporate. It’s all in-house. We don’t franchise it out. The local clinics, they don’t do their marketing like we do. Literally, my team does every bit of it.

We will do things, “Okay, we’re going to give a free 30-day supply of select primary care medication for free if you come use us for our primary care visit.” They can come in, they already have high blood pressure, they may be on a certain medication. If it’s on our list of things we already prescribe and the dosing matches what we prescribe them to take, then we’ll give them that 30-day supply for free. That’s what we do. There’s really no other way to overlap it much.

Ashley: To convert them into those primary care patients, that’s a really good idea. Then that first door, how do you make that relationship more sticky and get them to be a primary care patient?

Miriam: Especially in rural areas, which you’ll probably understand. I grew up in rural Alabama. I didn’t have a pediatrician. I don’t remember, granted, I’m 40, so it’s been a minute. I didn’t have a pediatrician. We always went to urgent care. My dad didn’t have a primary care doctor. My mom had a women’s health doctor because she have to, but she didn’t have a primary care.

I live in Birmingham now, which is a lot more metro, obviously. I’ve had a primary care doctor since I’ve moved here. I think there’s some generational things there, too. In these rural areas, if there’s older people, there is a possibility they don’t have primary care, and/or people don’t seek out a primary care doctor until they need one, so they develop those health conditions.

I have people that work for me, they’re in their 20s. They don’t have primary care doctors because they don’t need one yet, but at some point, they will. It’s really on the primary care side, just letting them know we’re here, letting them know we do that, too, letting them know, top of mind, why it’s important to have that. It really just becomes educational because people don’t always know what primary care even means.

Ashley: Yes. If they feel fine, it’s a blip, it’s not a big issue, they just, “I don’t need a primary care.” That education point, you said two things, marketing, for one, can’t do it all. The operational team has a big part in terms of the patient experience, in terms of that recall and getting people to come back. How are you working with operations to build that relationship and help them educate and help them be that partner to make people choose to come back for their next urgent care visit or become a primary care patient?

Miriam: I love our operations team. The person I work with the most, I’m very lucky that she cares and she wants to help, and she’s always, “Can we help with that,” or, “Is there something more we can do?” I think the issue we run into is people are people, and we’re working in a society right now where a lot of people don’t want to work.

There are instances where we’ve had people, we give them all the tools, we’ll make everything that ops needs, ops will put it in the hands of the clinic staff, and they just won’t use it. It’s just a matter of getting people to do what their job is and getting them to understand. Then we’ve done some in-house trainings where the managers of those clinics will come for training. I’ve gone in and explained the importance of positive reviews, and responding to reviews, and giving them incentives.

This is one of the things I first instituted when I started the role. If we mess up, if we fail the customer, my academic research is around customer service, failure, and recovery. If you fail them twice, it’s called a double deviation, and they’re not coming back, especially when it comes to healthcare.

We’ve done a lot of coaching on if they’ve had a bad experience and you get on the phone with them because marketing creates the tickets. This person had a bad experience, every single negative review gets sent up the chain. Then they have to get on the phone with that patient. We’re giving them little cards where they can give them something for free for their time. Whether that’s a, “Let us send you a $5 Starbucks card,” or, “The next time you come in, use this to get a free medication.” Whatever it is, it’s just something to try to make it right.

We’ve had to do a lot of training because people are not trained. Just because they’re managers doesn’t mean they’re trained in how to handle customers that are mad for good reasons. Then, quite honestly, we’ve had other things where we’ve had our LMS billing system go through tech issues. Then we had to resolve those tech issues. Then the clinic staff is having people mad at them because of the tech issues that went on. They’re getting the face of the brunt of negative reviews, which we should talk more about because we do incentivize them for that. They’re like, “I didn’t hit my quota because of a tech issue. I shouldn’t be penalized for that.”

Ashley: I really liked what you said about it’s letting the patient, the customer know that they’re being heard. You’re escalating it up so that there’s someone who’s reaching out to them to actually, “I hear you, this was an issue,” making them feel seen. I think that’s really important advice for people. The more you just ignore it and push it, don’t address it, it will come back in those negative reviews, which we’ll talk about.

I like the second part about you’re trying to make it right. You’re trying to give them something to fix the situation. I think those are both really great recommendations for listeners. You can’t control every situation. Tech things happen. Sometimes things are just bad days, but marketers are responsible for all of this public brand, but they can’t always control everything. It sounds like you have some really great systems that you’re working on to how do you actually try to address it and work with your operations team.

Miriam: Just as a quick FYI, something that helps is we have a customer experience meeting once a month, and marketing’s in that, ops is in that. We have someone who’s over helping us with that customer experience initiative, and our CEO is at the table, and so is our chief medical officer, and our chief technology officer, and our chief financial officer. The whole C-suite is at this table so we can talk about these type of things and be like, “Okay, here’s the customer experience issue. How do we fix that moving forward? “

Ashley: Nice. That’s really bringing everyone who has a stake in the game, the people who can make an impact, a change, hearing firsthand what’s happening. I like that because negative reviews do happen. We talked about that a little bit. We talked about reviews. We talked about brand reputation.

One thing that we see with AI search growing, people turning more and more towards LLMs for information, reviews are playing a greater role into how your brand is being recommended and what’s being said. How are you adapting to this new world where reputations are being pushed forward to consumers in these new AI discovery channels?

Miriam: Yes. I think it should be that way, honestly. I’m a big proponent of if you’re getting negative reviews, and there’s probably a reason you’re getting the negative reviews, and if you’re not doing something to mitigate it, then it is what it is. I think in healthcare, that’s even more important because you have lives on the line. These are people’s bodies and their physical health. Do I think that there’s issues with it? Yes, of course.

AI, as much as people are using it and turning to it, it has some massive limitations still. It’s not great at picking out everything. I have noticed we’ve used AI for a few things to pull data together and make charts. Since we’re using AI, and AI knows about our brand, it’s very easy for all of our stuff to show up on those AI search results just because it knows who we are, because we’re talking to it, and we’re using it as a company. There are pros and cons to it.

For us, I always just push back to, are we creating good content? Are we creating real content? That’s important. If you’re just copying and pasting AI content, you’re not getting anywhere. We still have a real copywriter that does copywriting for us. Then we’re trying to make human decisions in terms of, what does it look like? What type of content do we create?

Then, outside of that, I think it just goes back to, are you doing the correct things in terms of search engine optimization? I think that there are still people not doing the right things when it comes to SEO, or they’re relying too much on AI for SEO. The search engine optimization is important. Now there’s just another component, whereas are you also optimized for AI?

Ashley: You can’t be saying the same thing. Like you said, you can’t be regurgitating generic content. You have to have something differentiated to say, something that is meaningful, is relevant to the audience. Then the negative reviews, I think it’s– you’re doing the right thing for listeners. You want those negative reviews to a degree. You want to surface those issues and not let them fester. That does help. How do you think about promoting those positive reviews? Are you having to reinvest it in that? Anything that you’re changing in the new AI landscape to get more of those positive sentiments out there?

Miriam: There’s nothing we’re changing in AI to get the positive reviews, but I think what is being done is working with our ops team. The marketing team, we created a Google review business card, which has a QR code, which we track, obviously, where they can scan that QR code. It goes directly to Google My Business page for that clinic. The operations team, our clinic staff and managers, they’re given bonuses based on the number of positive reviews that they have. That incentivizes them to ask for those reviews, which is always a really good thing.

Then the other piece of that is we are always reporting on it. I have a patient experience meeting tomorrow. I go through all 78 across all 67 clinics, negative reviews that we’ve had this month, and I’m coding them into which category do they fall under. Is it billings? Is it the kiosk? Is it the check-in process? Is it the experience with the provider? We go over those in our patient experience meetings and then make those adjustments so it’s not a big thing in the future.

The real thing here is working with ops to get the clinic staff to be like, “Hey, if you don’t mind, will you please leave us a five-star review?” We also work with the tech team, and they get a push notification asking them about their experience. Then that also sends them to Google as well to leave the review. A lot of times, it goes back to if they had a good experience in the clinic, which requires the clinic staff to do a good job. Then you ask nicely, they typically will leave a review.

Ashley: [chuckles] It’s not rocket science, but it is important steps that are foundational now. You have to be doing these things, and you have to be working with ops. It sounds like you have a great relationship. The result of that is those meetings where you can sit down and have those transparent conversations about what’s working and what’s not. That’s really good. That’s great.

Miriam: It’s training the staff to how to ask for reviews because it’s uncomfortable.

Ashley: It is. It’s super awkward. I have a small business on the side. I want people to give me reviews. You have to put yourself out there. They might say no. They’re like, “No, I don’t like you.” I think that dictation piece and collaborating with ops and incentivization is really important, too. All of that comes together. You’re giving them the tools and then giving them a little bonus for making it happen. That’s really cool.

That training, that collaboration with ops, and then just going back to what you said about the year that you got to open 12 locations, and just thinking about scaling all of that. How do you actually do that and think about all of those little activities that have to happen across locations? How did you approach that if, say, next year you have three more launching? What’s your game plan? How are you getting ready for it?

Miriam: Yes. Well, we have three launching. One more this year, two next year. Those are into different states, which is also interesting. We also have about five to seven clinics we’re about to purchase, and they’re going to all come on board at the same time. The short answer is we have a checklist. It’s called the new clinic checklist. Every time we open a new clinic, we have this entire list of all the things that have to be done, and then it’s backdated out.

If we’re opening this date 120 days before, what do we need to do? Is there press releases being written? Have we made media contacts? Have we joined the chamber? Have we created the Facebook page? All the lists of everything that has to happen is on that sheet. Then it’s assigned to a person on the team. Every single week, we have a meeting. Even when we don’t have a clinic opening, we have a meeting of just what’s coming ahead. “These clinics are opening. Here’s where we’re at. We’re under construction. We’re about to break ground. This is where we’re at in the construction process.”

Again, with our new clinic development team, and then ops is on there, and tech is on there, and then marketing is on there. Then we just adjust that schedule as needed. If they push back the launch date, then we typically have to push back a grand opening event. Meetings and spreadsheets and accountability.

Ashley: A good spreadsheet and a good checklist should not be underrated. I think research for doctors even, a checklist is important. People can’t remember everything. There’s research that improved outcomes, just a simple checklist that everyone could be held accountable for. I love that. Is that something that maybe through those learnings from that year with the 12 opening, maybe an aha moment, “Okay, that was something that we needed to do”?

Miriam: Creating the checklist was something we needed to do. Yes, it was madness. We were so busy. At that time, I was a full-time professor and teaching digital marketing. I was just consulting. Nobody on the marketing team knew anything about SEO except for one of my former students that I hired, who’s still there, which is just precious. I just adore him.

We were so busy launching clinics that we didn’t have enough time to do the other stuff. We didn’t have enough time to go through and make sure we were doing a good job responding to reviews or coming up with creative content. What content? Who’s launching new clinics? Even today, there’s only four people on my team. There’s only so much you can do with the manpower. I’m really glad we slowed down, and we’re not launching nearly as many because we’ve been able to, therefore, pick up a lot of the foundational pieces that I think got lost in the mix during that time. It led us to the checklist. [chuckles]

Ashley: I love it. Marketing readiness. We have to have the marketing checklist, too, that we’ve made for some of our clients and partners to help them because it’s very important. You just have to do the steps, and then you’ll get to the goal. Thinking about those new brands that are coming on board, and you mentioned the acquisition. Right now, you have two brands. Are these folding into that? Are they going to be retaining their identity?

Miriam: Yes, I can’t talk too much about it. Of course, with any of these deals, who knows, it may fall through tomorrow. There’s really no telling, but they will be turning over to our brand. If the acquisition goes through, and if we acquire any company, this is going to be the case. They’ll be coming onto our website, under our brand, under our processes. We’ll be taking ownership of their Google My Business page and their social media pages. It would all be folding in under our brand, and then their websites will be directed to ours.

Ashley: How do you think about, in this scenario, maintaining any local preference versus if MainStreet is new or KidsStreet is the new brand, how do you think about that transition and ensuring that there’s nothing lost during it?

Miriam: Yes, it’s going to be interesting. One of the good things about it is it’s still urgent care. People are used to going there, and it’s still going to be the same staff. Those things are going to be important, or at least that’s the goal of it. The good news is, too, is the place that we’re considering or the company we’re considering, they have pretty good reviews. I would be more concerned if they had a bad reputation and then we were coming in because there’s a lot more to overcome, as opposed to they have a good reputation, we’re coming in and shifting the brand.

I think urgent care, it depends. In rural areas, urgent care has a high switching cost. If I leave this urgent care and go to another one and it’s 30 minutes away, that’s taking out of my life. There is a legit switching cost there. Where some of these clinics are, it’s way less rural, and so it’s going to be really important to do whatever we can at the start of that to make sure we retain that customer base because the switching cost is a lot less. “Okay, I’ll just drive three minutes to this clinic.”

Ashley: That’s where really that operational alignment and protecting the patient experience is so important. Some of those tech integrations, those things that may be changing. It’s like really keeping that close pulse that you have with your team sounds really– you’re set up for a good year.

Miriam: We’ll see. [chuckles]

Ashley: It’s always a gamble. Looking ahead, it’s May 2026. We still have half the year ahead of us. What is one goal or focus area that you’ve had your team dedicated to that you’re excited about for this year that you want to share?

Miriam: This acquisition is a huge piece of that, but outside of that, just more marketing-specific is we have a lot of our data. We have our LMS, our own systems internally, and then you have marketing data. It’s really hard to make those things talk to each other. It is what it is. We’re using a partner to help pull in data, and it’s a big whole mess. Ultimately, we’re pulling it into Power BI, and then Power BI wants to report things like, “Here’s your data average over seven days,” and Google Analytics says, “No, we want to look at every day,” and we want to look at every day.

I think it’s going through and continuing to fine-tune our reporting, and me and another person on the team are going to get some more advanced Power BI training because right now, we have to rely on the tech team to help us whenever all this stuff doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to, because Power BI is not user-friendly. It just isn’t. I think moving forward is that, I think getting more data in our hands as well.

We have another system going into place where we have a lot of patient data that is in a data lake and that our tech people know how to access, but we have tools that are being implemented where we can access them, and we can go in almost like AI and say, “Based on this huge data set, here’s our question, what’s the answer,” and it just pulls it up.

I’m excited about that because I’m always big on the data, like what are we doing, what needs to be done better? Marketing can get people into the clinic, but if they have bad experiences in the clinic, we can’t make them come back. I like to be able to look at any data that’s not dependent upon operations doing what they’re supposed to do, and this will allow us to do that.

Ashley: It’ll give you better insight into how people are finding you, what’s working. I think that visibility is so important, but building that foundation takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of people on the team, compliance, the IT team. It sounds like that’s the big focus for the rest of the year.

Miriam: Yes, it’s just fine-tuning that.

Ashley: Then to wrap it up, if there’s one piece of advice that you could share with our listeners, with other healthcare marketers, what would it be?

Miriam: I’ll go super broad, even outside of healthcare. I think it’s really just listening to your patients, listening to your clients, listening to your customers. You may not like what they have to say, but their feedback is very important, and I think that’s where you adapt and grow from it. If we can do a better job of listening with empathy and actually caring about what they’re saying instead of looking at it as a business transaction, then I think that the world itself gets better. Then also, so does your product, so does your service, and therefore your reputation. If we go back to realizing these are people buying whatever it is we’re selling, let’s treat them like people we care about, then everything else works out.

Ashley: I like that advice. It’s very true. Listen, be empathetic, and I think always think about what would you also want for your experience, too. Internalize your plan. Thank you, Miriam. This has been a really great conversation. Really enjoyed it. If listeners want to connect with you, can they find you on what channels? Where can they find you?

Miriam: Yes, that’s a great question. I’m not the best at social media because I have to do it all the time. The best place to find me in this concept, because I also have a business on the side, the best place to find me in terms of this type of stuff would probably be on LinkedIn, Miriam Rose Lee. I sometimes respond to those messages, or you could email me. Personally, that would be [email protected], so M-I-R-I-A-M-R-O-S-E-L-E-E @gmail.com. I respond to that. That’s great. Then at MainStreet, it’s M-I-L-E-E @mainstreetfamilycare.com.

Ashley: Great. We will drop those in the show notes. Everyone, thank you for listening in. This has been a great conversation, and I hope you join us next week. Thanks so much.

Miriam: Thanks, Ashley.

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