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Year 2020 was off to a great start and then COVID-19 happened. It completely halted business for months. However, it also created a massive increase in social media usage by would-be cosmetic patients. And that, in turn, created stiff competition among surgeons to come up with a cosmetic patient attraction and grab the attention of patients who are ready for cosmetic services.

While most surgeons are currently enjoying the surge of pent-up demand for cosmetic rejuvenation, nobody knows what the future holds. That means if you want more leads, more inquiries, more conversions, more money, and more growth, it’s smart to adapt your patient attraction plans accordingly.

Improve Your Brand

The increase in non-surgical technologies makes this industry very attractive to non-core providers who want to cash in so now you are competing for cosmetic revenues with internists, gynecologists, NPs, PAs, RNs, med spas, laser techs, and even aestheticians.

cosmetic patient attraction

It’s time for you to brag about your extensive surgical training and experience. Show off your medical degrees, board certification, awards, plaques, PR and your pro-bono efforts.

Educate patients on surgical vs non-surgical procedures and when surgery is necessary to get the results they want. Then show off your surgical expertise with your great before/after photos of your other real patients who had the same problem you were able to fix.

In other words, make a big deal out of things your competitors can’t, won’t, or don’t.

And, as Jeff Bezos of Amazon says, “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

It would behoove you to build your brand based on trust, safety, and excellent customer service.

Deal with Discounting

When it comes to price, you can no longer ignore what prospective patients see in the marketplace. They are bombarded with special deals and promotions. When price cutting is rampant, it’s confusing for patients to distinguish price from value. So discounting has to becomes a part of your cosmetic patient attraction plan.

If you have not done a good job explaining why you offer so much more value than your price-cutting competitors, these prospective patients don’t have a good enough reason to pay your higher prices.

Please don’t take this lightly. Obviously, you shouldn’t compete on price alone. But you MUST compete on brand.

That means you more spend time and effort educating prospective patients on your superior skills and expertise, you give them a great result, and then you WOW them with added-value customer service.

cosmetic patient attraction

It’s the way you make patients feel that makes them willing and happy to pay more to get more.

The point is to spend the time, money, and effort on attracting the best quality patients to you who care about your status, develop a relationship with them and keep them coming back because they “value” you and your services more than saving a buck.

With that said, you also want to encourage and acknowledge those patients who help you grow your practice organically by returning, referring, and reviewing so check out the KiSS Rewards Club to automate that process.

Social Media Dominates

Posting on Facebook and Instagram used to be a fun thing to do and now it’s a must. It’s time to learn how to get traction using these communication platforms since this is where all the eyeballs went.

You can post for free using educational and entertaining posts; however, the platforms are only showing your posts to 5-10% of your audience since they want you to pay for advertising.

To combat that, be sure you are connecting with your patient list using email as well since most of your patients are not seeing you on social media like you think they are.

And, here’s another challenge with social media. You don’t own the data. The platforms can turn off your account on a whim and make you disappear from the platforms.

To combat that issue, have your posts link to your website so you can collect your audience’s name, email, and cell and nurture that relationship. It’s a great attraction for cosmetic patients and an easy way for you to get their information for following up.

Here are more strategies to help you gain social media traction:

Ad Campaigns

As you are painfully aware if you have been trying to advertise on social media platforms, plastic surgery does not get along well due to the nature of your content.

You are one step away from porn, you are seen as persuading consumers to have medical procedures and you are hurting the consumers’ self-esteem.

That’s why it’s so difficult to get your ads approved.

You are forced to “pay to play” to get the audience reach you need like you had to with TV, radio, and newsletters because they strangle your organic reach, but do you see the catch 22?

The platforms force you to advertise YET they won’t approve your ads – crazy!! Here’s what you do….

User-Generated Content

It’s called “User Generated Content”. This is great attraction for cosmetic patients as it makes them part of the conversation. They are the comments your audience makes about your posts so most of your efforts should be going towards user-generated content that engages your audience to interact with you.

You see plenty of examples of this on social media when the surgeon asks his audience a question and has them respond below and now you see a stream of responses. You can also use polls and contests to get your followers to leave comments.

I read a stat that said 85% of consumers find User Generated Content more influential than brand content so please spend extra time on creating content that inspires your audience to engage with you.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is having someone with a good following of loyal fans talk you up by posting about you to their followers, in hopes they will choose you for cosmetic rejuvenation.

Start with your current patients to find out what kind of following they have and if they would be willing to spread the word for you.

You can also google “influencer marketing platforms” who will partner you with influencers; however, consumers are waking up to the fact that most influencers are promoting for the sheer motive of getting paid, and that hurts your brand so choose wisely.

Conclusion

As you can see, a lot goes into your branding social media presence and it takes effort since you are the star of the show. Today’s prospective patients want to get to know you so show them your surgical side as well as your softer side.

See you online: @catherinemaleymba

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TESTIMONIALS

5/5
"Catherine outlined a plan that put key metrics in place, gave us a clear plan to follow throughout the year and trained our staff to increase their conversions by at least 10%. Since engaging with Catherine, I’m happy to report that revenues are up 15% over the last three months - 22% in the last month alone! I highly recommend Catherine’s consulting services to any practice looking for “best practice” additions to their operation."
Robert Sigal, MD
Robert Sigal, MD
"I have finally tapped into the most efficient way to grow my cosmetic practice and that is to “fish in the pond of my own patients”. When patients return to my practice, over 85% will purchase another service, product, or procedure. Not only was it worth over $200,000 in revenues this past year, it also reminds my patients I’m still around so they don’t wander off to my competitors. Catherine’s group has far exceeded our expectations and goals we had set up for them to achieve."
Victor Ferrari, MD
Victor Ferrari, MD
"Our consult conversions were running at 40-50%. Then we attended Catherine’s online training and implemented her strategies. They immediately increased conversion rates to 75-80%."
Anthony Corrado, MD
Anthony Corrado, MD
"I know how to run a profitable practice; however, it was not without major staff issues, inefficiencies and unproductive drama. With Catherine's guidance, I reorganized staff, set up processes for them to carry more of the workload and hold them accountable so I have more time to focus on patient care. The changes we put in place and the staff training to convert more callers and consultations will easily increase my revenues by 15% as well as save us time, money and costly mistakes. "
Evan Sorokin, MD
Evan Sorokin, MD
"Working with Catherine and her team has been very profitable. We’re only half way through the year and I’m up $200K and I’m booked out for the next 2 months even though we typically go into our slow summer months now. Her recent promotion brought in an extra $63,782 with more surgeries scheduled. I never realized how much money was sitting in my patient list but I’m a believer now!"
Robert Langdon, MD
Robert Langdon, MD
"Catherine Maley has one of the best Marketing Minds in the aesthetic industry, bar none. She understands the aesthetic patient and she also understands the challenges and frustrations we face as aesthetic surgeons. You will benefit from Catherine's tools whether you are new in practice or a seasoned professional.Turn to Catherine for guidance - she knows what she's talking about."
Edwin Williams, MD
Edwin Williams, MD
“Catherine’s Cosmetic Patient Marketing Service has been a great addition to our practice-building overall plan. While we still invest in our online presence, we also found immense value in the internal marketing efforts. We especially like that all results are tracked so we know we are getting a great return ... last year it was 1,148% and no staff time was used. That’s a much easier way to grow my cosmetic practice.”
Mark Mason, MD
Mark Mason, MD
"Catherine Maley turned our practice around. We converted more consultations in one week than we did in an entire month. Our practice went from a painful 50% no show rate to a remarkable 85% show rate. Even more impressive was our close ratio - from 35% to 80% and still increasing. We would recommend her to any practice that’s looking to not only increase their profits today, but sustain a healthy flow of income for many years to come. Thanks Catherine!"
Sam Assassa, MD
Sam Assassa, MD
"Catherine found me the best patient care coordinator I could have asked for. She worked out a payment plan that was fair to me and motivating to my coordinator. She also provided training tools to help my coordinator convert better, even though she was already experienced. The results have been phenomenal. So good, in fact, that my income increased 250% and I’m booked out for 3 months. Don’t waste any more time or money doing it yourself. Outsource to someone you trust!"
Andrew Lofman, MD
Andrew Lofman, MD
"Since we’ve been working with Catherine and her team for the past 5 months, we’ve brought in $79K in surgeries and have booked an additional 17 surgical procedures and 20 non-invasive body procedures since then. This does not include the additional new patient referrals and revenues we are seeing from the on-going nurturing of my current patient database."
Verne Weisberg, MD
Verne Weisberg, MD
"I had given my staff the goal to convert at least $35K per week in surgeries AND I gave them the tools to help which was Catherine’s Online Learning Center at More Patients Academy. They watched Catherine’s modules and implemented her strategies and converted $80K! That equaled a 2,550% ROI. Nice!"
Adam Stein, MD
Adam Stein, MD
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Catherine Maley

Catherine Maley

Catherine is a business/marketing consultant to plastic surgeons. She speaks at medical conferences all over the world on practice building, marketing and the business side of plastic surgery. Get a Free Copy of her popular book, Your Aesthetic Practice: What Your Patients Are Saying View Author Profile.

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