Archive for Aesthetic Marketing
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.
Patient Retention is the New Acquisition
Posted by: | CommentsThe ‘churn and burn” practice business model is outdated, dangerous to your profits and getting evermore expensive to bankroll. A constant stream of strangers running through your practice – tying up your staff, draining your marketing budget and stealing your valuable time is not how to run an aesthetic practice today. It never was a good way to run a practice; however, you could get away with it when the marketing costs were less and the ROI was greater. Competition has reversed that equation and it’s now all about spending an appropriate amount of time and money acquiring new patients to your practice and then spending more effort, time and money keeping them there because it’s your current patients who fund your on-going acquisition costs.
Think about it this way: How does a total stranger become a good friend of yours? Typically, you feel a connection with them, you feel safe, comfortable and interested in what they have to say. You talk and find things you have in common. You make time for them, make them a priority, take their phone calls, respond to their emails, talk fondly about them to others, invite them to events and make plans to get together. Well, that’s exactly
how you should be treating your current patients. You want to take them from fickle, skeptical stranger to friendly, loyal friend.
New Economy patients have been conditioned to be more cautious and conservative. To be more skeptical so they are more difficult to obtain other than from a referral or recommendation from a family member, friend, associate or peer.
As the cost of acquiring new patients through advertising and marketing continues to rise, and the time costs of acquiring new patients through traditional prospecting rise, securing every possible referral grows exponentially in importance.
Think back what it’s like when you explain a procedure your current patient asks you about and when you explain a procedure to a total stranger who is a prospective patient sizing you up.
Isn’t it all around easier, smoother, more relaxed and effective to have a conversation with that patient that trusts you implicitly then the stranger who is questioning everything you are telling her?
I agree you need new patients but only if the majority of them come from your endless chain of referrals because if you get one patient and she/he gives you at least one referral and then that referred patient gives you at lease one referral and you keep that going, you never run out of new patients.
The second tier to that is you strategically increase the revenues-per-patient by:
- Encouraging them to return more often
- Cross-selling and up-selling them on additional procedures and products
- Keeping them loyal to you so they don’t wander off your competitor
So, do you really need new patients or do you need a steady stream of cash-paying patients? Not only that, you get a patient for a Lifetime rather than One-Time.
My advice to you is to invest a lot more of your attention and resources on what happens before, during and after each and every patient interaction than you do on finding more new prospective patients who would take time, money and effort transitioning them to loyal, returning patient.
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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.
The ONE Marketing Strategy Every Aesthetic Physician Should Be Using
Posted by: | CommentsHow do you develop a continual relationship with your aesthetic patients, remind them of your products and services, substantially increase their spending with you and increase referrals?
Answer: A well-written, direct-response patient newsletter that gets read and acted on!
Now before you slam that door shut and scream it’s too expensive, it’s too much work, it doesn’t help or whatever – hear me out. Because all of those objections are true IF you don’t do it right.
As I always say – you are not selling aesthetics – you are educating patients about the possibilities. Newsletters work so well because they tend to be read as informational. That makes them more welcome when they are received. Patients also tend to be more receptive to what you have to say in your newsletter because they aren’t meant to be sales tools. They are designed to be a resource of information. That means your patients will be less resistant to reading information.
Who to send your patient newsletter to? Most practices only communicate with their current patients but they are missing out on a huge untapped profit stream from their past patients they haven’t seen for awhile and prospects who contacted them but then never booked. Many of these patients just weren’t ready but now they are. Life changes and minds change.
Your newsletter can be used as your practice brochure much more effectively. It’s newsy, personal and friendly so patients and prospective patients will “hear” you more than if you use an obvious sales tool such as marketing collateral. Here are ways to use your newsletters that will put money in your pocket:
- Include them in your patient information packets
- Hand them out at events
- Give them to strategic alliances to pass out to their customers
- Pass them out at community events and fundraisers you participate in
- Post a pdf copy on your practice website
What should be in your newsletter? This is where most doctors fall short. They want to talk all about them and their practice. While the patients certainly want to learn more about what’s new with you and your practice, they are also acutely interested in the world of aesthetic enhancement and other fun and interesting stuff to help them look good and feel younger. Your patients also want to be entertained so here are the components to include in a good patient newsletter:
- welcome remarks from doctor
- patient profile: their story, their result, photos and testimonial
- fun facts about the doctor
- interesting stuff about new technologies and procedures
- what’s new in your office and your staff
- interactive component such as quiz or contest and humorous cartoon
- special offers so they call now
This type of newsletter gets responded to and gets passed around to friends, family and colleagues. But know that it takes 3-6 months for your newsletter to show substantial results and most offices do it one time and give up because it was a hassle or expensive or the phone didn’t ring off the hook.
If you would trust the in the process, your patient newsletter can be the pinnacle component to attracting new patients, keeping current patients loyal and creating a buzz to increase referrals.
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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.
Mass Media Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsFind out how mass media marketing can help you attract more patients by standing out, giving credibility, boosting your credibility, and more..
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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.
5 Most Common Mistakes Made When Marketing Your Aesthetic Practices
Posted by: | CommentsI gave a talk at the AAFPRS Annual Meeting on the common mistakes made when marketing an aesthetic practice. These mistakes seem incidental until you add up the tens of thousands of dollars they cost you every year you don’t address them. Please take a look at this 9-minute video and then have a meeting with your staff to go over what you are doing right and what could be improved now.
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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.
Where is Facial Aesthetic Medicine Heading?
Posted by: | CommentsI recently interviewed two top facial physicians about where their industry is heading. Both physicians, Drs. Edwin Williams, NY and Theda Kontis, MD are prominent members of the American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (www.aafprs.org) and they had much to say.
For sure, the trend with aesthetic patients is less downtime and less surgery. The patients today still want to look fantastic but simply don’t have the time to recuperate so this forces aesthetic physicians to modify what they might do if the patient did have the time to take off. Listen to the entire 25-minute call here!
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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.
Do You Want More Aesthetic Patients or Profits?
Posted by: | CommentsYour aesthetic patients want to go to you because they know, like and trust you. They get a consistent experience every time, a consistent result, and a relationship with you and your staff that keeps them coming back for more and bringing their friends with them.
In the New Economy, the point is not to see how big you can grow your database. It’s to cost-effectively and creatively attract your preferred patients to your practice and then nurture those relationships so you grow your practice organically from within rather than from random, expensive, external efforts.
Tip: It’s not a contest to grow your database with anybody and everybody – It’s all about quality of the patient and NOT quantity
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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.
Communicate With Your Aesthetic Patients
Posted by: | CommentsYou thought you had a good relationship and now you realize you haven’t seen them in over a year – What happened?
The #1 reason patients leave your practice is not because of a bad result.
And, it’s probably not because they didn’t like you and your staff.
…..It’s because of your indifference.
They are being ignored by you so they don’t feel compelled to return. And, they still wanted aesthetic services so they drifted off to your competitors.
Did you know you lose 10% of your patient database with every month that goes by without you staying in touch?
They did not stop wanting aesthetic services….
They just stopped wanting aesthetic services from you…..
How Many Thousands of Dollars Do You Lose Each Year
By Ignoring Your Aesthetic Patients?
Make your patients feel your concern for them and their welfare by keeping in touch with them and reaching out to them regularly.
I promise you – they want to hear from you as long as you are educating them and giving them compelling reasons to return.
You most likely have a database full of prospective patients who came in for a consultation but didn’t book, who came in a couple of times and then wandered off and then those you haven’t seen in months or years.
I guarantee you – they did not stop wanting to look good.
They just went somewhere else where they weren’t ignored and were treated better and made to feel special.
Tip: It’s always faster, cheaper and easier to reconnect with patients who have visited you before than it is to attract total strangers to your practice.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
