Catherine Maley, MBA - Attract More Patients and Profit» Aesthetic Patients Topics from Catherine Maley Cosmetic Marketing Expert

To Discount or Not To Discount

Catherine — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:58:02 +0000

Once you lower your prices, it’s nearly impossible to increase them again without losing patients so I don’t recommend offering temporary discounts. You are always better off adding value instead. Patients love a good deal but it doesn’t have to be a cheap price. Bundling services to add more value is a great strategy. For example, free sunscreen with every laser treatment or every laser hair removal leg package comes with a free underarm treatment. This way the patient gets a little something extra and you keep your profit margins up.

Another great strategy is to offer a special price for a very limited time for a very specific reason so the patient knows this is special. For example, if the patient can have surgery on a Wednesday during a certain month, they can save $500 on the OR room since it’s less on a Wednesday than a Friday during that month. Or, a special Birthday Gift Card your patient can use to look their best on their special day and it includes a tight expiration date. The point is for your patient to feel as if they got great value. If you discount, make it feel special rather than random or ‘cheap’.

——
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.

Increase Aesthetic Patient Conversion Rates

Catherine — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:36:04 +0000

You increase conversion rates by getting back to the fundamentals: ensure your aesthetic patient goes step-by-step through your process so they are most likely to say yes at the end of it. This a well-oiled machine with no shortcuts and every step must happen every time to ensure the patient is comfortable, informed and compelled to move forward. The steps include:

-         Efficient Phones
-         Welcome Packet
-         Trained, friendly Staff
-         Comfortable, Clean Environment
-         Educational and Compelling In-House Signage
-         Initial Consultation with Staff (who are trained in effective aesthetic consultations)
-         Social Proof
-         Consultation with Physician
-         Closing with Staff
-         Thoughtful follow up

In today’s competitive climate, it’s all about the quality of the patient experience rather than just the sheer quantity. The “churn and burn” theory is no longer viable since it’s getting much too expensive to advertise that way. If a patient has called your office, taken time out to drive over to see you, meet you and ask questions, it’s your job to do everything possible to help them make a great decision.

Email Marketing To The Aesthetic Patient

Catherine — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:24:48 +0000

Email 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.

Utilizing Your Database for Effective Marketing

Catherine — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:21:40 +0000

Your 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.

Good News/Bad News About Internet marketing

Catherine — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:59:45 +0000

First 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

——
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!

Catherine — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:56:13 +0000

The 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.

Do You Want More Aesthetic Patients or Profits?

Catherine — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:06:51 +0000

Your 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

—–

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.

Attract New Patients by Networking

Catherine — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:15:40 +0000

When you align with another business owner and they introduce you to their patients or customers as their aesthetic expert, you get instant credibility with a whole new group of prospective patients who already trust you through your association with someone else they already trust.

However, before you approach others, be sure to prepare an answer to the question they will be asking themselves which is, “What’s in it for me if I share my clients with you?” Be sure you set this up as a win-win relationship because this can be a double-edged sword. Your alliances can sing your praises or cut you to the quick if they feel like they were used by you so be sure they get as much from this alliance as you do.

Tip: Set up a win-win relationship with your strategic alliances so they introduce their high-value clients to you.

—–

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.

Reactivate Your Lost Patients

Catherine — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:21:33 +0000

After your current patients, the next group of aesthetic patients to concentrate on are those lost patients you haven’t seen in over a year.

The good news is that while it takes 10 times the effort to gain a new aesthetic patient, it can take much less to win back a patient who already knows you. It’s well worth the effort to develop a campaign to win back your long lost patients – no matter why they left you in the first place.

Some reasons your aesthetic patient left your practice:

- Perhaps the patient was having a bad day when they visited you and couldn’t connect with your staff.

- Perhaps your staff was having a bad day and scared them off.

- Perhaps you made them wait too long.

- Perhaps they saw dust and clutter in your office and were turned off.

- Perhaps they went to your price-discounting competitor and want to return to you but are too embarrassed.

Well, you are never going to know unless you reach out to them….

It costs a small fortune to acquire a new aesthetic patient – but it costs next to nothing to keep them. The financial beauty of this relationship-based practice is to dramatically decrease your marketing and advertising costs since you are nurturing your patients and growing organically with their word-of-mouth referrals.

Winning back these lost patients will take extra effort. If they left you because they didn’t feel they were treated special, you’ll want to put in extra effort to make them feel wanted. Personalize your communications to them to get the point across how much they are valued by you.

Tip: Aesthetic medicine is all about the relationship the patient “feels” they have with you and how they “feel” when they are in touch with you – either on the telephone or in person.

—–

Use the Right Media and Time to Communicate

Catherine — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:08:29 +0000

Have you ever spent a lot of money on mass advertising like newspapers, magazines, radio and TV and not been happy with your results? There was and is an art to it but that’s quickly becoming mute since media is dramatically changing.

Aesthetic patients no longer flock to their local newspaper, their local news station and their favorite radio station for news. Thanks to media fragmentation, your aesthetic patients now have hundreds and thousands of choices where to go for information.

How in the world can you reach new patients when they are EVERYWHERE – and Nowhere?

They jump from website to website, TV to cable, radio to satellite, magazines to etc. You do not have enough time, money and patience to be everywhere these patients are so you must be much more strategic in today’s divisive media world.

Direct Mail Makes a Come-Back
Direct Mail is fast becoming the cheaper way to communicate with your patients in a personal way that will get a better response than an impersonal ad or a mention in a magazine.

For the price of an envelope and stamp, you can get your patient’s undivided attention (for at least 5 seconds) when she is rifling through her pile of mail. You simply cannot get that kind of 1-on-1 attention anywhere else.

Hot Button Times to Communicate with Aesthetic Patients
There are certain times of the year your aesthetic patients will most want to hear from you. They are most likely to want to do something special for themselves during these times so use these as opportunities to reach out in a personal way to help them celebrate.

—–