Patient Retention is the New Acquisition
By · CommentsThe ‘churn and burn” practice business model is outdated, dangerous to your profits and getting evermore expensive to bankroll.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.
How 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
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.
Give Your Patients What They Want
By · CommentsSo much money is left on the table because you don’t give the aesthetic patient all they want. Watch my presentation I gave at the AAD for pearls on how to increase your average order size per patient. Enjoy!
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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.
Work ON Your Practice – Not IN It
By · CommentsYou will be way ahead of your competitors once you realize it’s not so much your skills in aesthetic medicine that win you patients; it’s the marketing of those skills that keep you busy with cash-paying patients.
Your marketing efforts will succeed only if time and energy are regularly devoted to them. You can do the marketing yourself or designate promotional duties to someone else. Be sure that “someone else” you delegate to is enthusiastic, confident, high energy, full of joy and curiosity, open to opportunities and has a killer instinct to maintain, track and develop successful marketing efforts.
They must be accountable for creating, executing, tracking and following up on all efforts so you know what’s working and what needs to be tweaked or dropped.
The more time you and your team spend strategically planning how you will stay in front of your prospective patients and current patients so they choose you over your competitors, the less money you waste and the better results you will enjoy.
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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.
I 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?
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.
The Old Economy is gone; never to return. Aesthetic patients no longer spend like drunken sailors. A majority of them have pulled back on aesthetic enhancement due to the uncertainty of the bad economy. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have the money anymore. It could simply mean they are not willing to spend it without a good cause.
To thrive in the New Economy, aesthetic physicians must better understand their patients’ decision-making processes. Here are four main points that should be carefully considered:
- 1.)The aesthetic patient has all the power to decide who gets their business (and cash).
- 2.)The aesthetic patient does not tolerate average treatment.
- 3.)Money will be spent more judiciously by the aesthetic patient.
- 4.)You will need to earn the right to your patients’ needs and interests.
To enjoy endless cosmetic patients in the New Economy, get smart about your messaging, your marketing and your customer service. It will pay off for you handsomely. Click Here To Read Full Article
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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.
Growing a Multi-Million Dollar Aesthetic Practice
By · CommentsThe most successful aesthetic practices today work on never-ending improvement of their processes to ensure their aesthetic patients get the care, result and feelings they are looking for. They understand it’s the fundamentals that never change and always need to be focused on and perfected for endless cosmetic patients to be attracted to their practice. Click Here to Read About The 10 Endless Patient Success Strategies
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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?
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.
