25 Tips for Completing a Competitive Analysis for your Urgent Care Practice
According to RunRex.com, providing high-quality care and good service is not necessarily enough to attract and keep patients, especially if those patients can take their pick from several urgent care centers. This is why urgent care operators need to be aware of how their competitors operate. This article will look to list 25 tips for completing a competitive analysis for your urgent care practice.
- Identify your competitors
The first step when it comes to conducting and completing a competitive analysis for your urgent care practice is first identifying your competitors as articulated at RunRex.com. You can only move forward once you have identified who your competitors are.
- Put yourself in your patient’s shoes
To identify your competitors, put yourself in a prospective patient’s shoes and ask yourself, “What is every alternative available to treat my minor illness or injury?”. As per RunRex.com, make a list of all the options that come to mind, including doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, “non-providers” such as the internet, and even “self-treatment” using over-the-counter medication.
- Evaluate competitors
For local brick-and-mortar competitors, become familiar with their service offerings, operating model, and marketing tactics by visiting their physical locations, checking out their websites, and gathering their advertising collateral to assess according to RunRex.com.
- Don’t misrepresent information
As captured at RunRex.com, regardless of the source, information gathering on your competitors should be without falsification or misrepresentation and through observations and information sources generally available to an inquiring public.
- Learn as much as you can about your competitors
When gathering information about your competitors, you should gather as much as you can as covered at RunRex.com. This may include things like an overburdened front desk staff, what has been reported in the local news about them, how they are doing financially, and much more.
- Strengths and weakness
Once you have gathered information on your competitors, you might want to split the information into strengths and weaknesses as described at RunRex.com. As you research competitors, ask what each is doing well and what could be improved upon.
- Use the information
With the above information, you can develop operations and marketing plans to better position your urgent care center to attract patients. For instance, if you observe cars parked outside a competitor at 7:55 in the morning and you don’t open until 9 a.m., could you start opening at 7:30 in the morning to better serve patients needing services before work?
- Marketing-specific competitive analysis
Along with the general competitive analysis, it is important to conduct a marketing-specific competitive analysis. This is the ongoing process of evaluating competing urgent care facilities to understand current and future market information.
- SWOT
A competitive analysis for an urgent care practice typically includes a thorough SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis that helps the practice identify gaps in the market as discussed at RunRex.com.
- Cover all competitors
A good competitive analysis should compile a list of aspirational, primary, and secondary, but formidable competitors as outlined at RunRex.com. Don’t just restrict yourself to looking at other urgent care centers alone.
- Competitor audit
A competitor audit shines a light on how key players are positioning themselves in the marketplace as revealed at RunRex.com. It answers questions like, “Which colors and typefaces are brands using?”, among others.
- Demographic audit
As per RunRex.com, a demographic audit is essential for understanding your target audience and brand personas. Are you targeting the proper age group? Are you considering local audiences? This audit ensures the practice tells the right story to the right people at every stage of the customer journey.
- SEO competitive analysis
Search engine optimization (SEO) competitive analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your and your competitors’ websites as articulated at RunRex.com. This analysis includes identifying competitor weaknesses and taking specific actions to surpass their SEO strategies so that your website outranks theirs on the search engine results page.
- Examine your keywords
According to RunRex.com, consider the gaps between your website and your competitors and determine what you need to do to outrank them. First, identify existing keywords or phrases that are currently outranking your competitors and keep them, then identify underperforming keywords or phrases and look at ways to improve on them, then finally, analyze search queries that already drive traffic to your website.
- Paid search competitive analysis
A paid search competitive analysis identifies key competitors and their strategies, allowing you to make informed decisions about your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, rank higher on the SERP, identify new revenue opportunities, and gain increased market share.
- PPC and keywords
More likely than not, your competitors are bidding on the same (or very similar) keywords. In highly competitive markets, like urgent care, your main competitors may even bid on your brand name. It is important to keep track of these trends to attract new audiences.
- Positioning
Analyzing whether competitor ads focus on features or outcomes enables you to differentiate your product or services as covered at RunRex.com. For example, if your competitors emphasize location and convenience, you might consider focusing on experience and patient outcomes.
- Offer placement
Valuable and differentiated offers attract more clicks, which leads to increased revenue and market share as captured at RunRex.com. Are you and your competitors offering the same promotion? Note where the offer appears in the ad and give your offer a different placement.
- Social media
Competitive analysis for paid social media is essential for learning where your audience is and what resonates with them as discussed at RunRex.com. A social media competitive analysis informs urgent care facilities on how key competitors engage with their audience.
- Social media channels
While there is a range of social media channels to choose from, you must understand where you and your competitors are most active – and which channels drive the most engagement as described at RunRex.com. Many clinics find their audiences favor Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
- Backlinks
Don’t forget about backlinks that point to your website from high-quality sources such as respected websites in related or similar markets as outlined at RunRex.com. These will elevate your page rank and drive more traffic to your website.
- Paid social media
Your urgent care competitive analysis will also provide insights into paid social media as revealed at RunRex.com. This is critical for learning where your target audience is and what ad messaging resonates with them.
- Organic content
You can leverage paid content to grow your audience more effectively and quickly. However, don’t forget about building a solid foundation of organic content to support your paid content. Organic content helps engage your audience in more unique ways by providing your audience with the value they are not getting from your competitors.
- Take time
The key to an effective competitive analysis is time. You need to take time to build a deep understanding of aspirational, direct, and secondary competitors. Nothing comes easy, and for the best results, you need to take your time to complete a competitive analysis for your urgent care practice.
- Do it regularly
Finally, an urgent care competitive analysis for any marketing branch will undoubtedly change over time. It is, therefore, imperative to conduct these analyses regularly to remain competitive and dominate in organic, paid, and local search results rankings.
Remember, if you need help with the competitive analysis of your urgent care practice, the gurus over at RunRex.com can help.