Archive for Cosmetic Image Marketing
Do You Want Fries With That?
Posted by: | CommentsCatherine shares a simple, proven method to increase your revenues per patient without ‘selling’ or making them uncomfortable. See how you can learn from corporate giants to give your patients what they want while you increase revenues.
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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.
Effective Patient Follow Up
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have spent the time to bond with the patient and truly listen to them, they’ll tell you what they think, how they feel and where they’re at in the buying decision. It’s when you haven’t built a relationship with the patient that you feel like you’re chasing them down for an answer.
If the patient tells you they have to “think about it”, try to think with them. Ask what their sticking points are so you can address them. Then, ask if there’s anything else since it often takes a couple of questions to get to the real objection.
If that doesn’t help, set up a follow up day and time now, while they are sitting in front of you, so they expect your call.
Another follow-up idea that works well is to leave out one important point from your consultation with the patient so you can follow-up and let them know you forgot to tell them something. This could be just what they needed to jump off the fence.
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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.
Give Your Patients What They Want
Posted 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
Posted 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.
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.
Aesthetic Patient’s Feelings About Their Experience with You
Posted by: | CommentsYou have (or had) patients who feel they were not treated right by your receptionist, a staff person or you. It could have been something benign such as your receptionist did not acknowledge the patient when they first walked in the door and it could be something more serious such as they believe they got a mediocre or bad result and have lost trust in you.
On the one hand, aesthetic patients have elephant memories. They may be prone to holding grudges if they are treated badly in your practice or if they “perceive” they were treated badly.
Frankly, your patient’s perception is your reality so you have to deal with their emotions. Please remember this:
Aesthetic patients won’t remember what you told them.
Aesthetic patients won’t remember what you showed them.
Aesthetic patients will remember how you made them feel.
On the other hand, patients can be quick to forgive IF they feel you value them and want to make them happy. That could mean you simply reconnect with them or it may mean you show significant remorse so they know you understand how they feel.
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth It
Obviously, the best thing you can do is to avoid bad feelings with your patients so you don’t lose them. You want to have the friendliest and most informative receptionist answering your telephones. You want to employ staff that bonds quickly with the patients and knows how to direct the patient to a decision to choose you over your competitors. You personally want to connect with the patient so they like, trust and believe in your recommendations.
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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.
What’s the Objective of Your Website Home Page?
Posted by: | CommentsMost doctors get this wrong. They truly believe the home page is designated to tell the prospective patients all about them, their credentials, skills, expertise and then the laundry list of services they offer.
I guarantee – that’s not it! The true objective of your Website Home Page is to get the casual web surfer to stop-notice-act once they land on your site. How do you ensure that happens? You answer the burning question most on the prospective patient’s mind which is,
“Hey, what’s in it for me?”
The secret is to talk about the patient first – not you. They don’t care about you – yet. Right now, all they care about is do you have a solution to what is bothering me right now? That can be a tall order; however, because you offer many services which is why the most sophisticated practices put up separate Websites for different procedures.
A typical aesthetic consumer is looking for information to a specific procedure so design your Website to give that to them in the form of free reports and videos they can view when they provide their name and email so you can follow-up. Start with emotional copy that addresses their fears and apprehensions, show lots of before/after photos and as much social proof (patient testimonials) as possible. Then, get into you specifically.
I guarantee if you first give the patient what they want which is information, they will then be much more open to learning more about you.
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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.
How Do You Follow Up After the Patient Consultation?
Posted by: | CommentsYou may be under the belief that once a prospective patient leaves your office without booking the procedure you and your office just spent an hour talking about, all is lost. You may be assuming they weren’t interested or they got sticker shock or they just chickened out. Not necessarily….
Patients today can be fickle consumers who shop around. There is a very good chance they visited you as well as several of your competitors so they feel as if they can make an educated decision based on comparison shopping.
Let’s say you did everything right and now you are stuck because you don’t know how or even if you should follow up for fear of looking as if you are chasing the patient. Fear not! Use these tactics to follow up professionally and close the procedure:
- Send a handwritten note to the prospective patient immediately. Express how much you and your staff enjoyed meeting them and that “Sara” will be following up on Friday if you don’t hear back sooner;
- Now be sure Sara calls back on Friday to check in to see what additional questions they may have and then attempts to close the procedure;
- Have your patient coordinator call the patient with an important development that just came up; i.e., CareCredit is offering a new 0% financing program or there’s been a cancellation so if they can book now, they can save $500 or whatever.
- Lastly, mail/email them a current article you just found on the Internet talking about the very procedure they are interested in and, again, ask for a decision
And, if none of that works, simply add them to your database so they can receive your invitations, newsletters and email blasts because you just never know when they are ready for you.
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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.
Why Do You Practice Aesthetic Medicine?
Posted by: | CommentsAt this point, you might be questioning your decision to get into aesthetics. If you’re like other aesthetic practices, you’re probably down 30-70% and don’t see an end in sight.
So, are you ready for a pep talk?
You know you don’t like where managed care is going and you are sure that it’s not going to get better so you were smart to look for other revenue streams. You know you want to practice medicine your way and not have your relationships with your patients dictated to by the government. You now the paperwork nightmare was killing you and draining your staff.
And, on the more positive side, you most likely want to help those patients who have the need and the financial wherewithal to afford aesthetic enhancement so they look good and feel great – thanks to your skill and expertise.
We all know this sluggish economy is not going to stay like this forever but, for now, circle your wagons and reconnect with your current patients. They may need to dig deeper to justify your services so help them with:
- new and improved technology
- patient events
- education on what’s new in the world of aesthetic enhancement
- offer themed, limited-time only offers with tight expiration dates
Reach out and communicate with your patients so they come back now and later. This will give you added enthusiasm for aesthetic medicine and help you stay open to opportunities available all around you.
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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.
Who Gets Plastic Surgery and Why
Posted by: | CommentsI recently read an article that includes statistics on who gets plastic surgery, and why. It is a great reminder that the aesthetic practice is not just selling a procedure, they are selling hope for a better feeling future. Patients want to feel better about themselves, they want to look in the mirror and no longer dislike a part of what they see. They believe revising, rejuvenating or renovating something that bothers them about their appearance will make them feel better and increase self-esteem. So, in essence, they are buying hope from aesthetic physicians. Hope they will get the result they want and hope they will feel better. To learn more about the aesthetic patient, read my book…
If you would like to read the full article, Who Gets Plastic Surgery and Why, click HERE
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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.
