Archive for Marketing
Effectiveness Of Print Ads from Your Local Plastic Surgery Society
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the ads I typically see from the medical societies, my overall opinion is that they are not effective. These types of “branding” ads tell the reader why you’re the right choice. Hence, the problem. It’s all about you and not the patient!
The patient only cares to learn about solutions to their problems and what’s new in aesthetic enhancement. For now, they just want to know more about what they can do about something that bothers them. Later they’ll want to know more about you – after you have educated them on the possibilities.
So, while I realize the intent is to forewarn the patients to stick to the board-certified specialists, you’ll get a much better response by answering the patient’s question, “What’s in it for me?” before diving in to why you are the best choice.
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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.
Patient Retention is the New Acquisition
Posted by: | CommentsThe ‘churn and burn” practice business model is outdated, dangerous to your profits and getting evermore expensive to bankroll.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.
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.
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.
How the Aesthetic Physician Can Thrive in the New Economy
Posted by: | CommentsThe 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
Posted 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.
Reactivate Your Lost Patients
Posted by: | CommentsAfter 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.
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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 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.
Challenge of Promoting a Service vs. a Product
Posted by: | CommentsYou, the aesthetic physician is in a tough position when it comes to promoting aesthetic services. You don’t have a product your patient can hold, touch and feel. You don’t have a product she can use all of her senses to see, feel, hear, taste and touch a tangible product to then determine its value to her.
With an intangible service such as aesthetic enhancement, she can’t “see” the quality of your materials or the effort that went into the details of producing the finished piece which is the result she gets.
Since the aesthetic patient can’t see the excellence of your expertise and cannot touch or feel the superiority and knowledge that will go into the aesthetic service you will provide her, you are at a disadvantage.
The aesthetic patient has to go by proof such as photos, testimonials, your credentials, celebrity, your office, your shoes, your greeting, your staff and any other detailed detective work she can do to give her clues to help her determine if you are the right physician for her to give her what she wants.
Give her as much social proof as you can so she can comfortably and confidently choose you over all others.
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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.
