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Teach Your practice to market itself with a referral based system

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Teaching Your Practice to Market Itself

Some surgeons with a “one and done” mindset spend a fortune advertising for new patients.

And their staff spends immense amounts of time working on those “leads” to find the one in a million patient who is ready to move forward with surgery.

Other surgeons realize it’s smarter, easier, cheaper, and faster to create a well-structured patient experience.

They connect with their patients, who eagerly refer them to their friends and families, that also become their patients.

Teaching Your Practice to Market Itself With a Referral Based System

 

There is no one way to grow a successful practice; however, setting up a referral based system helps your practice to market itself.

That way, you energize your staff, attract more of your ideal patients, deepen your patients’ engagement with you and solidify your own commitment to build a practice worth talking about.

Referred Patients = Steadily-Growing Practice

The efficiency and success of your practice can be gauged by one simple factor –
how many of your patients refer you to other people.

If you don’t know the answer, pull a “revenues by referral source report” 

I have surveyed top cosmetic practices all over the US, and the average mature practice gets 45% – 70% of its revenues from referrals.

That’s good to know and tells you where to spend your time, money, and efforts proportionate to external advertising efforts.

And, if your percentage is less than 45%, that means you spend a lot more time, money, and effort attracting new patients to replace these “one and done” patients who are NOT bragging about you.

But here’s what we know… referred prospective patients are more likely to convert to paid procedures and are more willing to pay a premium for the added social proof of a referral.

That leads to lower advertising costs and labor costs since these are highly qualified leads that convert, leading to increased staff satisfaction and morale.

Here are the 9 key strategies to help you grow your referral-based practice:

Develop a Referral Mindset

Everything starts with YOU. Your staff treats your patients the same way you treat your staff. And, if you have a customer service mentality, then your team will likely adopt one as well.

Consider how your everyday behavior might affect your practice’s ability to generate referrals and adopt this mindset, “The surgeon takes care of the staff, the staff takes care of the patients, the patients take care of the practice”.

Create A ”Braggable” Service

This starts with the right team, and everyone in your practice should be a part of  customer service. This idea must be a part of everything you and your staff do, think, and say. 

Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill

You can train someone to do the tasks required; however, you can’t train them to be naturally friendly, kind, and compassionate. Hire people with these innate characteristics and people skills.

Continual, Never-Ending Improvement

Regularly meet with your staff to remind them of your vision and the standards of behavior you expect.

You must show them how important customer service is to your practice’s success. Have them read your reviews, both good and bad, review before/after photos of great results and make a big deal out of “thank you” gifts, cards, reviews and social media posts you get from your happy patients.

Adapt a “Give to Get” Mentality

Focus on the question, “How can we serve our patients?” This question makes your mind think of how you can add value to your patients’ lives, and that changes everything. Find ways to empower your team to create, deliver, mend, and extend the total patient experience.

Exceed Expectations

Identify every potential touch point of a patient’s journey with your practice. Do a patient walkthrough with one staff person focused on visual, another on smell, a third on auditory, and a fourth on kinesthetics. Then, brainstorm how to make the patient’s experience even better.

Surprise & Delight

Everyone loves surprises (at least the good ones). So, how could you make them a part of your practice?

For example, when a patient puts down their deposit for surgery, thank them with a “goody bag” full of pre-surgery products to help with scarring and/or faster recovery.

Be Different to Stand Out

Look at what your competitors are doing and do the opposite. Examples include:
“No wait or Starbucks is on us,” “We want you happy” guarantee, give patients the morphed computer printouts, and anything else you can think of that would differentiate you.

Get Social to Get Referrals

You should highlight all your efforts above on social media since this is engaging
and authentic content worth sharing and can grow your reach exponentially.

Interact with your audience and encourage them to participate by asking them questions, getting feedback, and inviting them to share their thoughts and selfies!

Use these strategies to set up a systematic approach to generate word-of-mouth referrals, so your cosmetic patients voluntarily participate in your marketing and attract new patients for your practice.

Get ready-made “Swipe and Deploy” files from the Cosmetic Practice Vault to get thousands of referred patients for your practice who are eager to say “Yes” to you!

Cosmetic Practice Vault

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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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