Social Media Campaign Strategy - Tenent Urgent Care

Social Media Campaign Strategy – Tenent Urgent Care System

Erik Goodfriend | May 3, 2015©

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Tenent Healthcare corporation is a national, for profit healthcare provider of both inpatient and outpatient services. In response to the rapidly expanding urgent care market - and patient demand for healthcare delivered at the time and place of their choosing – Tenent rebranded their urgent care system as MedPost in May 20141.

The MedPost urgent care chain began with 23 locations in Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia, quickly growing to 39 locations and continues to expand. All locations are in rapidly growing metropolitan areas.

Concurrent with launching the MedPost brand, Tenent launched a comprehensive social media campaign2 created by Social Control, a social media company (www.socialcontrol.com) to promote the brand to a targeted customer segment. This campaign won a 2014 Shorty Award for Best in Health and Fitness.3

Product In addition to providing traditional urgent care services for non-acute healthcare needs, MedPost also offers pediatric urgent care, wellness visits, seasonal care - such as allergies and flu, and minor occupational health injuries.

MedPost’s value proposition is based on access, convenience and price:

We know that illness and injury can be frustrating, and that your regular doctor may not always be available. Our goal is to provide quality care that not only fits into your schedule, but is also much more affordable than a visit to the ER.4

The MedPost website offers on-line appointment functionality indicating next available appointment timeslots and the ability to book a doctor visit immediately. Price information is not available on the website.

Points of Parity and Differentiation The care delivered by MedPost is not significantly different than the care delivered by competing urgent care or doctors’ offices. While MedPost can offer rapid access to an appointment that most doctors cannot, competing urgent cares do the same. The ability to book appointments on-line and convenient clinic locations are points of parity for most customers, depending on where they live or work and their comfort with technology.

MedPost uses social media channels to build a unique brand image to create the impression of differentiation in a highly competitive market with very small

MKTG 544 – Social Media Analysis Submission Date: May 3, 2015 Erik Goodfriend

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variations product – outpatient urgent care. This is a strategy commonly deployed by retail businesses but not often seen in healthcare.

Target Audience Based on the social media channels used and the tone of the content posted, my assumption is MedPost is targeting an audience of young, professionally employed people who may not have an existing relationship with a doctor.

To verify this assumption I looked at census data for the zip codes in which MedPost urgent cares are located. While the adjusted gross income varies from state to state, the median across all locations is $65,6615. This appears to roughly correlate with a target audience of young professionals.

By focusing on the young, professional market segment with their social media campaign, MedPost is able to tightly focus posted content on topics this group finds relevant and valuable. An additional benefit is the “sharing” frequency of this demographic on social media channels, resulting in peer-to-peer referrals and endorsements.

Social Media Mix The MedPost social media campaign leverages clever, humorous health and wellness messages posted to multiple social media channels each week. These channels include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. With the exception of LinkedIn the content is identical on each channel with links between channels and to the MedPost website. The content posted to LinkedIn takes a slightly more formal, traditional tone.

The content posted never directly promotes the services available at MedPost. Instead it promotes living healthy, active lifestyles, eating well and not taking workplace stress too seriously. The strategy mirrors the target customers’ lifestyle aspirations, sending the message “we are just like you.” Through this messaging MedPost hopes to build a brand image that differentiates them from other urgent care providers offering very similar products and services.

The functionality, linked content and traffic on each channel are summarized below.


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Channel Update Frequency Traffic Content

Facebook 1x per week 53,000 likes 3,885 comments

Ability to “like” posts, comment and share with friends Aggregation site for all content – videos, tweets, images

Twitter 3x per week 549 followers Ability to “re-tweet” Links to recipes and wellness tips

YouTube 1x per week -- Weekly health and wellness videos Host platform other channels link to

Google+ 1x per week 19 followers Ability to “like” posts, comment and share with friends Linked to YouTube and Twitter content

Instagram 1x per week 62 comments 13 followers

Ability to “like” posts, comment and share with friends Linked to YouTube and Pinterest content

Pinterest 1x per week 28 pins 7 followers

Ability to “like” posts, comment and share with friends Linked to YouTube and Instagram content

LinkedIn 1x per week 166 followers Stress management and office wellness focused content Limited content Primarily portal to MedPost website

Strengths and Weaknesses The MedPost social media campaign is well managed and cleverly crafted. The campaign strives to stake out a unique position in the crowded and competitive urgent care market place by promoting a brand image customers can relate to personally. In a healthcare sector with few opportunities to differentiate one company from another this focus on brand image has good potential.

The weakness of MedPost’s social media campaign is primarily resource based. Developing high quality, clever content every week, such as the infograhics posted to Instagram and Pinterest, and video shorts like those on YouTube requires continuous engagement of an outside advertising agency. These


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promotional costs hit the profit/loss statement each month. In a low margin business such as urgent care these promotional costs must demonstrate a measurable ROI to be sustained. If costs are seen as exceeding benefits and the quality of the campaign is reduced, the impact and success of the campaign could be greatly diminished.

There are multiple strengths to MedPost’s integrated social media strategy. The greatest is the focused targeting of a specific customer segment in a healthcare marketplace slow to adopt social media techniques. A second strength is the consistent set of messages that appear multiple times, in slightly varying formats, reinforcing their brand image and building familiarity in the minds of their customers. These include “sick days aren’t meant to be sick” and “did you know…” (followed by a wellness tip) which appear every few weeks in differing formats.

Opportunities and Risks MedPost benefits from being early to market with a creative social media strategy. They have succeeded in attracting a large number of followers on Facebook and have consistently delivered quality content through the most commonly used social media channels.

It is almost certain their competition will soon adopt a similar strategy, creating the risk of loosing the brand advantage they have developed. This could threaten their revenue and patient volume pipeline. There is also the challenge of organizational growth. MedPost is aggressively expanding into new markets. If the social media campaign cannot keep pace with the organizational growth it will loose its impact and influence, both internally and in the marketplace.

It is not clear from the MedPost website if the social media channels are used to gather customer feedback and proactively provide customer service and manage their brand image.6 Leveraging their large group of followers as advocates and promoters through personalized customer service and dialogue is a significant opportunity to differentiate them from the competition and build brand loyalty.

Conclusion MedPost and Tenent Healthcare have crafted a well thought through social media campaign and have dedicated the resources to insuring consistent quality content across a full range of channels. This has resulted in an impressive number of “followers” on Facebook, representing a unique opportunity for peer-to-peer promotion.

While they are early to market in the social media realm, their early advantage is not self-sustaining over the long-term. They have an opportunity to aggressively capitalize on their early successes and continue to build


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momentum. This will require an on-going commitment of internal, external and financial resources. As a for-profit corporation Tenent will be closely monitoring the MedPost social media campaign ROI. A sustained commitment to leveraging the early social media success may result in the MedPost brand establishing a unique and well-differentiated position in the urgent care marketplace. A reduced commitment could have the opposite effect, losing what has been so quickly gained.


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Appendix

Demographics MedPost urgent care centers appear to be primarily located in upper middle class neighborhoods, based on zip code census data and average adjusted gross income.

Zip Code State

Adjusted Gross

Income

Zip

Code State

Adjusted Gross

Income

85296 Arizona $65,613 30331 Georgia $36,577

85339 Arizona $46,419 02038 Massachusetts $88,733

92808 California $94,134 48304 Michigan $202,657

92821 California $64,900 38654 Mississippi $55,951

90703 California $69,636 63131 Missouri $247,221

90807 California $65,708 38138 Tennessee $105,552

93446 California $49,866 79925 Texas $38,236

30062 Georgia $79,159 75961 Texas $37,582

Sample Posts The following screen shots were taken from the MedPost Facebook and Instagram pages. The content is representative of that regularly posted to MedPost’s accounts. Comments and “likes” can be seen in the margins.

The clever, well-crafted content speaks in an informal voice and differentiates the MedPost brand from more traditional healthcare providers.


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1 “Tenent Rebrands Its Urgent Care Centers;” Gales, A. Dallas Morning News; May 2014.

2 Based on a survey of Facebook posts looking at post initiation dates.

3 http://industry.shortyawards.com/category/7th_annual/health-and-fitness

4 MedPost website “about us” description; http://www.medpost.com

5 2011 Adjusted gross income data source: http://www.melissadata.com

6 “Should Healthcare Organizations Use Social Media?;” Lee, J. Lorincz, C. Drazen, E; Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices; 2011.

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Social Media Campaign Strategy - Tenent Urgent Care