Archive for Business Tips
Are You a One-Hit Wonder?
Posted by: | CommentsIf you spend all of your time, money and effort getting a new patient to say yes to you and then never see them again after their procedure, you are doing them, you and your pocketbook a disservice.
The patient liked and trusted you enough to say yes. The hard part is done. The least you could do is reciprocate by staying in touch, following up and seeing how they are. You can do some of that with post-op follow up appointments. It shows you care and gives you more opportunity to bond with the patient.
However, there’s a group of patients who won’t bother with follow-up appointments. They’re happy and don’t feel the need. That’s the group you want to reach out to throughout the year and give them other reasons to visit you.
An aesthetic patient has endless needs so it’s almost guaranteed if they had an issue with their looks, there’s a really good chance another issue has their attention.
Keep in touch to keep them coming back again and again.
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
Guarantee Surgery – Wha-Wha-WHAT???
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s a pretty good chance you don’t guarantee your surgeries so please hear me out.
Consumers in general are skeptical. Patients are even more so since they want to know they’ll get a good result and they won’t have buyer’s remorse. They don’t know whom to trust and often have a tough decision to make between several practices. So how can you stand out?
Offer something your competitors don’t and watch your conversions grow. Offer a guarantee they will be happy with their result or you’ll throw in a revision for up to one year. However, put parameters around it. They must adhere to your directions, show up for their appointments and agree to communicate.
You probably do this anyway if a patient is unhappy so offer it up front to take away their fear of making a mistake by going with you versus someone else. And it tells your prospective patient you’re confident in your ability and that builds their trust in you.
So even if 1 out of 100 take advantage of it and you lose a little money, you’ll get 10x more conversions and 10x more profits by offering something unique. Try it!
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
Cosmetic Surgery Demand is Booming
Posted by: | Comments
I recently read that 1 out of 5 Baby Boomers polled said they have or would consider having cosmetic surgery. So I did some math: 20% of 76,000,000 Baby Boomers = 19,000,000 people (of which I am one) who are open to cosmetic surgery. That’s a lot of prospective patients!
And here’s more good news. Those 19,000,000 Baby Boomers are going to continue aging so they will need your services again and again. Be sure to offer minimally-invasive procedures and surgical procedures since many will start out small and eventually want surgery. Then they will want to maintain their surgical procedure with injectables and lasers. Like I always say, “You have patients with endless needs. Take care of them for a lifetime – not one time.”
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
* Photo Courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
Here’s a Stock Tip for You…
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve gotten several emails today from the top investment groups who have my money and they are telling me to sit tight, don’t worry, blah, blah. Apparently, things are not going well with the government debt level and there is much un-ease.
But it just dawned on me that the best investment you can make is the one that you can control, isn’t that right? So, here’s my stock tip –
Invest in your practice, your patients, your staff and watch your investment grow. Put your resources towards profit-producing activities such as:
- Spruce up your office for a better patient experience
- Train your staff continually so they promote you professionally
- Learn the most effective patient-attraction strategies working now
- Build better relationships with your patients so they return and refer
Frankly, investing in continual improvement in your own practice and your processes is a sure fire investment that will give you big returns now and when you’re ready to exit.
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
Your Best Defense Against Discounters
Posted by: | CommentsSince you’re not going to stop this new wave of discounters, a good defense is warranted.
Your best defense against discounters is the loyal relationships you’ve built with your current patients. They already know how skilled you are. They trust you. They get a good result. They refer their friends to you. They will not be quick to jump to another provider they don’t know, if they’re super happy with you.
Your competitors don’t have the same relationship with your patients that you have, so nurture it and keep it healthy so your patients cannot be lured away by saving a few bucks.
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Posted by: | CommentsWhenever I consult with physicians, they inevitably tell me, “I just want to make my patients happy.” Then I ask them what they are doing to make them happy. I’m told they give them a good result, their staff calls to follow up if they had surgery, they send out email blasts periodically and that’s about it.
But let me ask you this: Would you have your staff call your spouse to see how they’re doing? You wouldn’t? Why not? Because it’s impersonal, right? You have a relationship with your spouse and you need to keep in touch personally.
Same thing with your big-ticket patients. If you want them to return and refer, they have to feel cared for and cared about. If you go the extra mile, that builds mounds of patient loyalty because they’ll remember and tell their friends how caring you are. Take a minute to:
- Make the initial post-op call to check in on your surgical patient
- Send birthday and holiday wishes to your patients
- Write a thank you note to your patient who referred their friend
- Stop by to say hello when your patient is in with your aesthetician
Show you care, because actions really do speak louder than words.
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
Lessons from My Accountant on How NOT To Run a Service Business
Posted by: | CommentsI pay this guy $375/hour to do my taxes every year. I have been loyal, never bother him during the year, bring all my organized receipts every year, paid him big time the one time I was audited and the guy totally takes me for granted. He doesn’t return my calls until I’ve called at least 2 or 3 times. Then he says he’ll do something and then doesn’t and I have to request it yet again. On top of that, he has filed extensions on my taxes the past 2 years because he didn’t get around to it.
What does this cost him? The door is now open for any other financial professional to take my business away. And it has cost him dearly in referrals he will never see from my friends and family because I don’t have anything great to say about him.
How about you? Are you treating your profitable aesthetic patients like my accountant treats me or are you giving them great service and staying in touch so they only think of you when they’re ready for your professional services?
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For a free download of Catherine’s book, Visit www.YourAestheticPracticeBook.com or call Catherine at (877) 339-8833. Her firm specializes in creative patient attraction – conversion – retention strategies to drive aesthetic profits.
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.
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.
