The Brief
Newstead Medical Centre came to us in early 2020 to discuss their plans to build Tasmania’s first Urgent Care Centre. This local innovation would ease the pressure of non-emergency patients on the LGH emergency department, and create an option for people to get quick medical treatment for urgent medical concerns.
As the first urgent care centre in the state, a well-thought launch strategy was a requirement to build awareness for the service and educate the market on the definition of urgent care. People needed to understand when they could come to the urgent care centre, and when they should go straight to the emergency room.
A strong digital presence was necessary to connect people to the service. When people needed the urgent care centre, they needed to find it urgently – online or offline. The centre needed to be at the top of local search results with a strong digital map presence, especially on mobile devices which people would be turning to in urgent situations.
The Approach
With a few months to go before launch, we took our time carefully unpacking the requirements for the Urgent Care Centre brand and website development.
The strategic thinking was especially important in this category, where a misunderstanding represented far more than just a lost sale.
When our creative team started work on the brand development, we had to ensure the brand was immediately recognisable and easily understood by anyone in an urgent situation. The website had to go one step further by pre-empting the most common needs of users landing on the website – ensuring they had all of the information they would need to connect with the Urgent Care Centre’s services.
brand development
Newstead Medical Centre wanted something to connect the Urgent Care Centre to their own brand, and it had to communicate the brand identity of an urgent medical service without feeling too clinical.
The final iteration of the logo used a modified medical cross as the most instantly recognised symbol for medical services, combined with Newstead Medical’s colour palette and relaxed typeface to convey a sense of trust and familiarity.
Website Development
After the branding we developed a custom WordPress website focussed on providing a seamless user experience to ensure patients could find the information they needed as fast as possible.
We considered the user’s needs and came up with several questions the site would have to answer as soon as users land on the homepage.
- What is urgent care?
- Do I need urgent care?
- How do I get there?
We achieved this with clear, actionable content above the fold, with call-to-action buttons indicating the next action users could take.
Launch Campaign
Following the development of the website, we begun a pre-launch marketing campaign which combined digital and traditional marketing methods to reach a broad demographic of people and educate them about the Urgent Care Centre.
Digital marketing via Google display advertising and social media marketing provided a cost-effective method of reaching a large audience of people online prior to the launch. We also used local radio adverts as a complementary marketing channel to increase recall and reach out to people who wouldn’t be reached by digital channels.
Following the launch, we continued the campaign, introducing TV ads to target a broad audience as well as action-driving Google Search Ads – allowing the Urgent Care Centre to instantly hit the top search results for relevant keywords while the organic SEO rankings were still growing.
The Results
Tasmania’s first Urgent Care Centre opened on March 1, 2021, and hasn’t slowed down since. On the first day, Dr. Toby Gardner said it was “surprisingly busy” – by 1:30pm the team of doctors and nurses had seen a range of patients with a myriad of urgencies including acute allergies, lacerations, potential fractures and sprains.
Originally open from 8am-8pm Monday to Friday, the centre quickly proved itself to the state government and received additional funding allowing them to open 7 days, less than 6 months after their inception.
In the digital world, the organic website traffic quickly grew to over 1,500 visitors per month by the end of 2021. Over 30 organic keywords in the top 3 Google results ensure the website is always easy to find in a patient’s time of need.
Dr. Toby Gardner
In March 2021 the Newstead Medical Group opened Tasmania’s first Urgent Care Centre. We worked with at+m for many months in the lead-up to the launch, creating a new logo and brand which would represent a unique addition to medical landscape in Tasmania, though still retain the association with the Newstead Medical Group.
at+m built a modern and interactive website to represent our new service, including a virtual tour of the facility. The website continues to evolve as our business does, and their designers and developers have remained readily accessible to assist with updates as required.
at+m also coordinated the development, filming and editing of a series of television advertisements to launch our business across Tasmania. The ads were widely viewed and garnered a universally positive response.
Our new business continues to penetrate the virtual medical landscape online across Australia and our reach continues to grow. at+m has been an integral part of our business and brand development and continue to support us as we evolve.