Author Archive
Get People To View Your Website (Part 3 of 6)
Posted by: | CommentsThere are other sites online that can give you access to potential patients. Catherine covers how to decide on which doctor directories to use, and how to incorporate sites like YouTube, Yelp, and other media sites to work in your advantage. She covers how to use keywords, where to post various content, and why.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Getting High Quality Referrals
Posted by: | CommentsYou get quality referrals by offering quality. The quality of your materials, your receptionist, your staff, your office, you and your services all dictate your values and what you deem important. If you have the finest quality everything – you will attract patients who see that as attractive and be drawn to you (this will also deter patients who are uncomfortable with quality and just want cheap). So, use quality to attract quality.
Then, by all means, when you do attract a quality patient to you, do everything humanly possible to keep them loyal to you. These patients can be golden to you so build a golden fence around them to they stay, pay and refer their other like-minded friends. Suggestions include inviting them to be an exclusive member of your VIP Club where they get special perks and invite them to be part of your Aesthetic Advisory Board so they can offer feedback and, of course, have them bring a friend so they, too, can get to know you.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Email Marketing To The Aesthetic Patient
Posted by: | CommentsEmail marketing is a fantastic way to keep in touch with your patients. It’s quick, easy and best of all – cheap. But beware! Email marketing is not as easy as it looks. You not only need really good copy to make it appealing to your audience, you also need technical coding and know-how to get it through today’s company fire walls and SPAM filters. That means you need permission from your patients to send email and you preferably want their personal email address. You then need to work with someone who specializes in html coding so they can prepare the email to be read by different email services, on different computer processors and in different resolutions.
Even when you do everything right, the average open rate of an email is only 15-20%. So while email is a great medium, it’s only one way to keep in touch. Don’t count on it as the only medium to use to communicate with your patients. You still need hard copy communications to get through to your patients.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Utilizing Your Database for Effective Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsYour database is the holy grail of sales leads for you. The patients who already know, like and trust you are much more apt to respond to your promotional efforts so always start with them. However, do it strategically.
To be truly effective, you need:
-The right message
-Going to the right patient
-Using the right media channel
It’s called target messaging and here’s an example. You want to promote your fractional skin rejuvenation laser, but how? First, you treat the perfect patient with it and that would be a female in her 40-50’s with skin damage and aging skin concerns. Now have her provide you with a testimonial and permission to use her before/after pictures in your promotional materials. Now, send out a patient letter that includes her testimonial and pictures to other females in their 40-50’s who also most likely have skin damage and aging skin concerns. That is a super targeted message going to the right patient using the most effective media channel. In marketing we have a saying, “The Riches are in the Niches” and it’s as true in aesthetic medicine as in any other industry. Today’s consumers want something just for them.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Get People To View Your Website (Part 2 of 6)
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle adwords. Do you use them, or not? How do you know whether it works or not? It doesn’t have to be a mystery, and this short video gives you a plan on how to use Google adwords to your advantage without being married to the strategy forever. She includes other tools on how to get found on the internet beyond your own site and Google.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Effective Patient Follow Up
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have spent the time to bond with the patient and truly listen to them, they’ll tell you what they think, how they feel and where they’re at in the buying decision. It’s when you haven’t built a relationship with the patient that you feel like you’re chasing them down for an answer.
If the patient tells you they have to “think about it”, try to think with them. Ask what their sticking points are so you can address them. Then, ask if there’s anything else since it often takes a couple of questions to get to the real objection.
If that doesn’t help, set up a follow up day and time now, while they are sitting in front of you, so they expect your call.
Another follow-up idea that works well is to leave out one important point from your consultation with the patient so you can follow-up and let them know you forgot to tell them something. This could be just what they needed to jump off the fence.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Effectiveness Of Print Ads from Your Local Plastic Surgery Society
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the ads I typically see from the medical societies, my overall opinion is that they are not effective. These types of “branding” ads tell the reader why you’re the right choice. Hence, the problem. It’s all about you and not the patient!
The patient only cares to learn about solutions to their problems and what’s new in aesthetic enhancement. For now, they just want to know more about what they can do about something that bothers them. Later they’ll want to know more about you – after you have educated them on the possibilities.
So, while I realize the intent is to forewarn the patients to stick to the board-certified specialists, you’ll get a much better response by answering the patient’s question, “What’s in it for me?” before diving in to why you are the best choice.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
Good News/Bad News About Internet marketing
Posted by: | CommentsFirst the Good News: roughly 3/4ths of wealthy Americans use search engines when shopping for luxury goods and services (so I’m not talking specifically to searching for aesthetic enhancement but the point still applies). Google dominated the searches with 77%.
Now for the bad news: it led to comparison shopping, even to affluent Americans who did not typically shop by price and comparison.
That means the ease of on-line search and research is re-training consumers who didn’t used to buy by price to now consider it. That’s why your staff often says “they are all price shoppers” about the callers because they are sitting in front of their computer researching different practices on a particular procedure. The next logical step is for them to call and ask about price because you didn’t give them anything else to consider.
That’s reality and you need to deal with it. Go to your website home page right now and be sure the following are covered:
- you gotta be different than everyone else
- have better bragging rights than your competitors
- be more niched so the visitor says “that’s me”!
- your copy must be patient-focused on their emotional wants and NOT all about you or what you want.
- you gotta position yourself as something in the prospective patient’s mind: the cheapest (bad), the most procedure X performed in the area, the only practice with this technology within a 60-mile radius or reassuringly expensive with the ultimate “take care of you” package including private recovery suite with private nurse, etc.
The take-a-way here is if you do not give your patients parameters they should consider when choosing an aesthetic physician, they will fall back on the only one they know – price!
Source: www.luxuryinstitute.com
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.comand see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
My Aesthetic Patients Are Cheap!
Posted by: | CommentsThe American consumer is alive and well. As much as you believe your patients have taken a good hard look at their conditions and debt and have stopped spending and extinct when it comes to investing in aesthetic enhancement, you should know the true facts.
Fact: they recently spent $40 million on the latest scary flick Shutter Island. Did they really need to pay cash to get scared out of their wits? They also donated tens of millions to the Haiti recovery effort as well as $2,000 scalped tickets to watch curling at the Olympics (I don’t even know what curling is).
The point is there’s still plenty of money out there changing hands. The trick is to be where the money is flowing to – not where it’s leaving. And to be strategic about who you are attracting to your practice.
The practice that grows is the practice that retains patients with above par, premium prices. Do you do 10 things every month just to retain your present aesthetic patients? I’ll bet you spend all or most of your energy to lure new patients and nothing to motivate, inspire, encourage, bond with, obligate and keep the ones you’ve got.
Well guess what? While you are spending time, money and energy luring away patients from other practices, your current patients are being lured away by your competitors! That’s crazy!
Here’s the success tip: the aesthetic physician prospering in these un-prosperous times are devoting more time, thought, energy and money to retention then to new patient acquisition and have spent much less doing it while increasing revenues at the same time while their short-sighted competitors are cutting back on expenses incurred in current patient relationships.
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Get Your FREE Marketing Checklist on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com and see how you compare to top aesthetic practices. Catherine’s firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
