Archive for Business Growth
How a Multi-Million Dollar Practice Becomes Just That
Posted by: | CommentsThe multi-million dollar practice becomes just that because they get good at the fundamentals which are to:
- - Attract high-value patients
- - Qualify them to ensure they are a good fit
- - Convert them to procedures, treatments and products
- - Retain them for a lifetime
- - Testimonials – document all the good things they say about you
- - Referrals – continually encourage referrals from other like-minded patients
The successful aesthetic practice realizes every step in the patient’s experience is vital so they spend time, money and resources to train, retrain, enforce, and reinforce never-ending improvement in their staff, in their processes and in their promotional efforts.
They see the value of one patient and do all they can to attract, convert, nurture and retain that patient as well as their friends, family and co-workers.
They most likely are no more skilled than you are in aesthetic medicine; however, they are skilled at patient relations and promotion. Those skills make the difference between a 6-figure and 7-figure aesthetic 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.
Fix Your Phones
Posted by: | CommentsWe offer a mystery-shopping service for our clients. That means we call their office many times asking various questions about their services and then we critique them to determine how the calls could have been handled better.
Boy, do we get an earful! Many of these calls go so poorly that when I report back to the doctor my findings, they almost don’t believe what I am telling them we heard. They are sure I’m exaggerated so, we now tape these calls.
I continue to be amazed at how much physicians complain to me their business is down, their schedule has holes in it and their marketing doesn’t work when I know their issue is “bad phones”. Nothing else you do means anything if the patient can’t get through, is put on hold or is handled in a curt way. Almost as bad is a nice person answering the phone but having no idea how to answer questions and not having enough sense to admit it, get the caller’s name and promise to have a more knowledgeable staff person call them back with the answers to their questions within the hour.
The average practice loses more than ½ million dollars per year on bad phone techniques. Please get your front office staff trained properly on how to answer the phone, bond with the caller, answer their questions and book the appointment. It could make the difference between thriving and surviving this year.
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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.
Optimizing Your Aesthetic Practice Website
Posted by: | CommentsMake it as user-friendly to the prospective patient as possible. Include a major benefit statement that depicts the patients’ vision – not yours. Keep it simple, add credibility such as medical association logos and any PR you’ve gotten and add a video of you welcoming them to your website. The more interactive, your website, the better.
And give your visitors a good reason to interact with you Allow them to ask you a question download a special report or submit their photos for a virtual consultation.
Prospective internet patients are typically looking on the Internet for a solution that bothers them. They are frustrated, tired of, or disgusted with something and want to change it – now. They are super motivated at the moment so you want to leverage that to your advantage. And, the patient will turn to the physician who answers their questions now and who made them the most comfortable to go the next step to learn more. So, how do you do that? Your website:
- - Includes benefit statements to tell the patient what they will experience when they choose you
- - Video of you welcoming them to your practice
- - Video introducing each of your staff members they will meet when they call, visit and have surgery/procedures performed.
- - Other patient videos saying how great you are and how they love their result
- - A downloadable special report to answer their burning questions
- - A downloadable gift card to experience your practice for the first time
The better and most complete experience your prospective patient has on your website, the more chance you have of them converting to a call, then an appointment and then a procedure.
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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.
Marketing to Aesthetic Patients in Tough Times
Posted by: | CommentsThere is still much you can to help keep your own aesthetic profits consistent while our economy corrects itself.
For starters, this is not the perfect time to fish for new aesthetic patients. It will take much more time, money and effort to attract total strangers to your practice. These people don’t know you so it would take expensive repetition and effort to get them to spend their disposable income with you rather than with someone they already know. Or, not spend any money right now.
This is the perfect time for you to go inward and concentrate on your low-hanging fruit. The patients, who already know, like and trust you are much more likely to respond to your marketing efforts. If you have been ignoring the very patients who could sustain your practice during this shaky time, you better start communicating with them before they drift off to your competitor.
Marketing to Your Current Aesthetic Patients
Be smart about your internal communications. Start with your more mature, affluent patients. They have the most need and wherewithal to actually want and pay for your services. They have been on the planet longer and are now showing signs of aging – wrinkles, folds, fat, droopy body parts and sagging skin. They also are more likely to have the financial means to afford your services. Perhaps they are married and a homeowner and have built up a nice nest egg for rejuvenation.
It would behoove you to invite them to your in-house seminar to discuss new solutions to crepe skin and sun damage. Send them fun, themed postcards with a special offer to try a new service they haven’t yet experienced. And, inform them of anything new in your office they should check out such as new technology or new staff. Bottom line – educate these more mature patients on what they can do to turn back the clock easily and quickly.
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
What You Can Do Now to Ensure a Successful Year
Posted by: | CommentsThe media is scaring your cosmetic patients. All of this doom and gloom about the economy is paralyzing to a majority of your patients who are or could be affected by the dips and turns in the economy.
Don’t buy into it! There is much you can to ensure you float through these choppy waters safely and profitably.
I’ve put together a timely audio and visual presentation, with me personally narrating, entitled:
What You Can Do to Ensure a Successful Year
http://cosmeticimagemarketing.com/media/What_To_Do_For_Successful_Year.wmv
It’s full of simple strategies to keep your phones ringing, your patients buying and referrals coming to you.
The point is to first check your mindset. Are you buying into this pessimism? If you are, you are not going to be open to opportunities and possibilities so fix that first.
The next step is to do something. I know your first instinct is to lay low for now but that’s the worst strategy. Your aesthetic patients need more compelling reasons to invest in aesthetics so, now more than ever, give them those reasons.
Educate them on little things they can do right now to look fantastic. Motivate them to act now with a special offer and a tight expiration date. Encourage them to refer their friends so; they too, can look fabulous.
Those who strategically act now will conquer. Those who sit back and do nothing will perish.
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
New Success Strategy #7: Create Systems to Execute the Successful Strategies and Repeat
Posted by: | CommentsThe top aesthetic practices know something that others don’t.
They realize it’s not one email.
It’s not one newsletter.
It’s not one event.
The secret is to set up systems so you are regularly attracting new patients to your practice, keeping them coming back for more and more often and taking care of them so well they refer others.
The financially successful aesthetic physicians do what needs to be done consistently to keep their name in front of their patients so they return again and again and bring their friends.
Their on-going efforts and attention to patient attraction – retention – referrals keeps their schedule filled with cash-paying patients.
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
New Success Strategy #6: Grow Your Word-of-Mouth Referrals
Posted by: | CommentsToday’s fragmented media outlets have your preferred patients scattered all over the universe. There’s no easy way to get to them so you have to spend way more money trying to be everywhere they are – very expensive, tiring and ineffective.
Truly successful aesthetic practices know that word-of-mouth referrals are the life blood of their practice and worth the effort.
Here’s something interesting I learned from aesthetic patients when I was interviewing them for my book Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying. They told me they would have referred you to others if they were only asked.
…….You cannot take patient referrals lightly
As much as you think (and hope) that patients will gush about you to their friends and family — don’t leave it to chance.
It’s imperative to your financial future you set up a system that keeps patient referrals flowing so at least 70% of your new patients come from other patients.
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
New Success Strategy #5: Reclaim Your Lost Patients
Posted by: | CommentsWant to know why your patients disappear? You 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.
…….It’s because of your indifference.
They are being ignored by you so they don’t feel compelled to return.
Make your patients feel your concern for them and their welfare by keeping in touch with them and reaching out to them continually.
I promise you – they want to hear from you!
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 – they did not stop wanting to look good.
They just went somewhere else where they are treated better.
Where Did Your Patients Go?
- -Perhaps they were having a bad day when they visited and couldn’t connect with your staff.
- -Perhaps your staff was having a bad day and scared them off.
- -Perhaps they got sticker shock.
- -Perhaps they went to your competitor and want to return to you but are too embarrassed.
You are never going to know unless you reach out to them. Because……
There’s even a good chance they were not saying no –
They were simply saying “Not Yet” or “Not Now”.
Since 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, reconnect with these patients.
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
New Success Strategy #4: Increase Revenues Per Patient
Posted by: | CommentsYou are leaving money on the table if your patients don’t realize everything you offer.
I guarantee if they don’t buy from you, they will from someone else.
Have strategies in place so you never hear, “I didn’t know you did that” and they had it done by your competitor.
Value of Just One Patient
I conducted a case study where I went back through a plastic surgeon’s practice records and followed one of their favorite patients. I was able to piece together her history with this practice for almost 10 years.
What I found was that this one patient not only was worth $40,000 in minimally-invasive as well as surgical procedures, but she was worth more than an additional $90,000 in terms of referrals from her friends, family members, coworkers, the woman’s business group she belonged to and her hair stylist. And, I’m not even including all of their referrals.
It’s imperative you have a system in place to attract referrals……
Need more tips, tactics, strategies and resources to drive patients to your practice? Please watch my free videos by filling out the form to the right, now.
Thank You, and I encourage you to leave any comments or questions below.
Article by Catherine Maley, MBA, Author, Your Aesthetic Practice and President, Cosmetic Image Marketing
