With over 20,000 health and wellness centers in the United States alone, it’s not easy to become a standout name. Not without a plan.

Unless you have a prominent health brand that is a household name, standing out in the saturated marketing place can be hard to do. That’s why healthcare marketing is so vital to the success of any wellness center. The key is to determine what key features and benefits of your wellness center can be positioned in your wellness marketing to immediately resonate with your target audiences.

When it comes to creating messaging that is both differentiated and relevant to your ideal customer segment, it is important to consider the questions and objections that customers may have that may prevent them from using your wellness center. Such questions can be included, but are not limited to:

• Define wellness center and why would I want to go there?
• What makes this wellness center different from the rest?
• Can I afford to go to this wellness center?
• Types of services can I expect? Can I get the same level of services elsewhere?
• What time commitment do I need to make to have an enjoyable experience?

By answering these questions in any wellness marketing you will help customers better understand what they can expect to experience should they choose your wellness center.

7 Pillars of Success for Top Health and Wellness Centers

One of the key differentiating factors when selecting which wellness provider or wellness center to use, is the environment. Customers want to feel welcomed and have a safe space where they can have their medical needs attended to. Likewise, staff wants to work in an environment that is both supportive and friendly as well. When it comes to creating a highly successful retail health and wellness center, here are the pillars to incorporate into your organization.

Culture & Office Environment

The workplace culture you create doesn’t just impact your staff, but it also will influence the type of experience your customers will have.

That’s why it’s important to consider what ambiance you want to create and ensure that you put measures in place to exude that in your workplace. For example, if you want to be known as a fun and upbeat wellness center, then playing music in the waiting areas and offering fun activities for staff to connect with one another are all things that can be incorporated to achieve the desired wellness center culture you want.

Transparency & Integrity

With so many retail wellness and health centers to choose from, patients are often drawn to those that offer a high level of care with an even higher sense of integrity. 

It’s important to keep in mind that authority position that your staff hold and as such, it’s critical to educate your customer base so they are aware of both the benefits and any drawbacks to the services you provide. Additionally, for staff, they want to work in an environment where they can share their ideas, opinions, and concerns in a way that will be taken seriously to help improve the level of care they provide to customers.

Clear Communication

What often sets one wellness center apart from another is the time and attention they give customers. 

Many times, it may be a customer’s first time visiting a wellness center and they may have a host of questions. By creating an open line of communication, where customers can ask questions and get the key information they need (in a way that they can understand) is very important.

Active Listening

Having a medical condition and facing the thought of treatment can be a nerve-wracking experience for a patient. 

This is why making listening a priority is essential to the success of any health and wellness center. Customers want to know that their concerns will be both heard and addressed properly, in the same way that staff wants to work in a wellness center that values their needs as well.

True Caring

It goes without saying that retail health centers must exude the highest level of care and compassion toward their patients. 

In order to achieve this, it starts with the care and consideration that is put into the staff. When staff feel important and know that the organization supports their goals and genuinely is created to help improve their lives, then it makes it easier for them to pass on this same level of caring to the customers they serve.

Authentic Empathy

Creating an environment of care is only one small component of a truly successful wellness center. To take this to the next level, your staff will need to exude empathy as well and be able to connect with the customers on a personal level. 

In order to achieve this, it will be important for staff to empathize with what customers may be experiencing and incorporate this level of care into how they approach, communicate and support patients. In addition, staff wants to also know that their supervisors and the organization as a whole is empathetic to their needs, whether it be needing a day off to tend to personal items or requesting a change in work schedule to increase work-life balance. 

Professional Development

The success (or failure) of any retail health and wellness center often comes down to the level of expertise and fulfillment of the staff. 

Experts have found that medical staff is most fulfilled when they are empowered to continue their education and training. By offering annual professional development training, health and wellness center owners are able to both improve the quality of care and also help their employees achieve their professional development goals.

Organizational Excellence

The most highly sought-after wellness centers are those that have a memorable brand and can offer customers a high-quality, stand-out experience. 

This is often because they have a strong sense of organizational pride where the staff truly embody every ideal within the organization and go above and beyond to accurately represent the health and wellness center. Creating organizational pride can be achieved in a number of ways, including awarding staff recognition, having company-wide events for staff to connect with one another, and establishing a strong sense of mission in the work that you do.

Effective Marketing Method For Health and Wellness Centers

With all of the success pillars for a health and wellness center in place. The next thing that must be done is to share your message with the world to attract customers. The key in implementing highly effective healthcare marketing and wellness marketing hinges on the strategy you create and how well you can execute it to stand out in the market. Here are the top 7 health and wellness center marketing strategies to use right now.

Clarify Your Brand Identity and Core Value Proposition

If you can’t answer the question of: What does my health and wellness center represent? Then it’s time to get clear on what you want your health brand to be in the eyes of your target audience. 

Perhaps you want your wellness branding to exude calm, peace, and safety for your customers. You may want your health and wellness center to be known as the most cutting-edge place for patients looking for alternative care. Whatever it is that you want your brand to represent. It’s important to gain clarity around this. And incorporate that as much as possible in all healthcare marketing that you do.

Build a Great Website

Having an online presence is an absolute must. If you offer virtual services, this will be how patients find you. That may not live near your retail health and wellness center. Likewise, even for local patients, if your center does not appear in a preliminary search. It will be hard for people to know what your health and wellness services exist. It’s important to create a website that is also easy to navigate, fast to load. And clearly communicates the key benefits and features your health and wellness center has to offer. 

And a bad website is like a customer repellant. Don’t let that happen to you!

Invest in SEO for Authority and Visibility

Keywords can be very meaningful in your healthcare marketing plan. With over 20,000 health and wellness centers across the country. You want to be able to remain top of mind and easily accessible for your target audiences. To ensure this, leveraging keywords, including those that leverage location-specific language (i.e. Health and Wellness Centers in 90210 or Miami Health and Wellness Centers) can be a winning strategy to stay at the top of search engine query results.

Leverage Smart Social Media Tactics

With over 82% of the U.S. population using at least one social media platform, this is the best place to market your health and wellness center to gain the most traction. It’s important to consider who your target audience is?  What platform(s) they may frequent as well as what topics or types of content they are most likely to consume. 

For example, older demographics may gravitate more to Facebook.  Whereas younger groups are likely to use Instagram, SnapChat, or TikTok more often. The key is to consider what your target customer wants to see, hear, and experience with your social content. So you can create content that will be highly compelling and get them to engage.

Consider Developing an App

Convenience and ease of use are everything in today’s fast-moving society. By creating an app, you can make it very easy for customers to book appointments.  Get the information they need, and even access key follow-up procedures to improve their overall customer experience. Plus, with an app, using health and wellness strategies like in-app notifications can help to remind patients of appointments, special offers, or other important updates.

Create a Contest for Engagement

One of the most highly effective ways to gain attention is to offer promotional contests, especially on social media. 

This gives potential and current customers the opportunity to be creative. It also helps in engaging with your brand in a low-cost, low-commitment way. Whether the contest is to raise money for charity, name the brand mascot, post the most creative health-related picture. Or submit a brief video explaining why someone should be gifted free services, these are all great ways to generate significant healthcare marketing buzz to get your health and wellness center’s name out in the market.

Promote Your Services With Digital Media

Though the “build it and they will come” model may have worked years ago. Today’s health and wellness centers must be much more intentional in how they attract customers. 

By leveraging a mix of paid advertising, social media advertising, and email marketing advertising, health brands can start to increase their brand awareness.  And drive traffic to their retail health and wellness centers. In addition, with the robust marketing analytic platforms available, health and wellness center owners will be able to target specific customer profiles to ensure that every healthcare marketing dollar spent is maximized to find the right customers.

In today’s wellness-driven world, health and wellness centers are a dime a dozen. Standing out from the saturated market and both attracting customers and the right staff can be an uphill battle. That’s why the role of healthcare marketing cannot be underestimated. And the importance of investing both the time and the resources into crafting a marketing plan that will work cannot be ignored. What ultimately separates health and wellness centers that thrive from those that do not, often comes down to their strategy and level of execution.

If your health and wellness center is ready to delve deeper into digital marketing. There are a couple of ways I can help. I am currently offering a limited number of short consultation sessions. As well as a VIP half-day session with me and my team for a deeper dive. If you’d like to set that up, or if you have any questions, just send me a quick email.