Plastic surgery marketing refers to the marketing strategies plastic and cosmetic surgery providers, and practices use to attract new patients and increase awareness of their plastic surgery or cosmetic surgery business. Plastic surgery marketing has evolved almost 100% to internet marketing.
People are increasingly turning to plastic surgeons to enhance or augment a wide array of cosmetic issues. At the same time, prospective clients are becoming increasingly concerned about the quality and level of trustworthiness in the surgeons that they ultimately choose to visit. Your prospects are doing their online homework prior to considering any particular procedure or surgeon.
As such, it is important to have an effective plastic surgery marketing plan in place in order to reach potential clients both in the research phase, as well as the phase when they are going to select which plastic surgeon they will do a consult with.
What Should Your Plastic Surgery Marketing Look Like Today?
Marketing your plastic surgery clinic will take on an entirely different shape than it did a mere decade ago. You must begin by refining your brand and then ensuring it is reflected throughout all of your online and offline marketing efforts.
This includes the following:
- Your Website
- Your Landing Pages
- Clinic Blogs
- Social Media Pages
- Email Marketing Pieces
- Online Advertising
- Offline Marketing
- Patient Reviews
- Clinic Sponsored Events
- Loyalty Programs
- Budget Planning
If you can account for each of these items, you will be well on your way toward establishing an effective plastic surgery marketing plan for your clinic in the 21st century.
Marketing Strategy for Plastic Surgery
You would not begin driving on a road trip without first knowing which direction you are heading. Likewise, you should not implement a marketing plan for your clinic without first having a refined strategy in place. Your marketing plan needs to be well thought out, and it needs to be comprehensive in scope. People today receive information from so many places, so it is important to have a visible presence almost everywhere if you want to be noticed. This guide will highlight many of the places where a smart marketing strategy should focus when promoting your plastic surgery clinic.
Branding your Plastic Surgery Practice
If you want people to recognize and remember you, your brand needs to be well-established. This is important. Your message might reach people who, at the current time, are not considering plastic surgery as an option. In the future, this may change. If you have a properly defined brand, then you will be the clinic that they are likely to look at first. This is an important step for plastic surgery marketing.
Plastic Surgery Brand Messaging
Your message should appeal to the emotions of your potential patients. You have something to offer them that they want and need. This should be reflected throughout your brand, including your medical spa marketing efforts. You will want to avoid any type of negative wording, and you want to be realistic with the expectations that you convey. It is not prudent to promise the moon if you cannot deliver. Prospects value honesty in a brand more than they do in a way that is misleading and presumptuous.
Use conversational language in your messages and avoid using overtly medical terminology that the average prospect will not understand. You want prospects to be able to know why they should have a procedure done and why they should choose you. This should all come from the message that your brand conveys. Understand who your target audience is and actively work to craft a message that is designed to hit home with them. You can effectively do this by writing in the second person, making sure that you refer to prospects and yourself as ‘you’ and ‘we.’
Plastic Surgery Brand Visuals
Part of knowing who your target audience is involves using visuals that are realistic and appealing. You want to make sure that the pictures you use reflect the actual work that you are able to accomplish with the average prospect. This goes back to the principle of not over-promising anything. Your prospects want to know exactly what you are able to deliver to them, and this should be reflected in all of the visuals that you use in your plastic surgery marketing material.
It is also important that you do not appear to be too exclusive. If you do that, you will limit the number of prospects that come your way. Focus on the interior design of your office. You want it to be modern and comfortable but also appealing to a broad client base. If you have doubts about this, consult with an interior design specialist to learn more about the type of furniture and wall hangings to incorporate into your office structure.
Finally, all marketing material that you produce should be proofread and double-checked for accuracy. You do not want to make any obvious mistakes here.
Your Plastic Surgery Website
Gone are the days when people drove around looking for a plastic surgeon’s office, only to walk in and start asking questions. That just does not happen today. People begin their search almost entirely online, so you will want to view your website as your storefront. This is where you get to make a positive first impression and encourage them to come inside and have a more detailed look. You need to operate under the assumption that nobody is going to walk into your clinic before they first have a look at your website.
If you already have a plastic surgery website, but it’s not ranking well, Digital Logic offers free SEO audit services.
Why Is Your Plastic Surgery Website So Important?
When considering why your website is so important, you just need to think about the types of prospective clients that you are hoping to reach.
Your website is a way to do just that: think of your website as the ultimate plastic surgery marketing tool.
You can incorporate many types of media into your site that can provide the information that your prospects need to make a decision to come and see you. If you focus on providing content on your site that is easy to understand, you will appeal to the broad base that you are hoping to target. The more people understand about the plastic surgery process, the more likely they are to make the next step and contact you personally.
Plastic Surgery Website Design
As you consider the design of your website, you will want to think about the role that plastic surgery SEO and SEO content play within its structure. It does little good to have the most professional and chic-looking website published online if nobody is able to find you. Remember that your prospects will be searching for a plastic surgeon in your area, but they will not know you specifically. In order for them to find you, you need to design your website with keywords and content that get picked up by the major search engines of the world.
In order to keep people on your site, once they do find you, it is important to have an updated and modern design in order to capture their interest. Sites that have not been touched in two to three years should be considered taboo. Also, keep in mind that more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the Internet. As a consequence, it is also important to incorporate responsive design into your site. This will allow it to be equally as great on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop monitor.
Plastic Surgery Website Content
Your website should not just be a placeholder for your contact information. Think, how can my website help my efforts in plastic surgery marketing?
First, do not waste the time of those who visit. You want to focus on providing relevant content that really matters to your target audience. To do this, you will want to be clear about informing your visitors about the types of procedures that you offer, as well as your geographic location. Because you’re considered a local service provider, you’ll want to heavily invest your time or resources into local online marketing services. You want to do this because your prospects have a desire to know exactly what it is that your clinic does. You also want to provide this type of content because it will plant those seeds that will eventually water into a desire to learn more about various types of procedures.
It is equally important that you use your website to highlight your specialty areas. Make these clear and inform prospects of your training and experience that have brought you to this point. This begins to instill a level of trust and familiarity among your prospects. Also, use different pages in order to highlight different procedures. This keeps everything clear, organized, and easy to understand.
You also want to include all clinic-related information that could prove useful to your prospective clients. These include:
- Surgeon Bios
- Landing Pages for Procedures and Special Offers
- Awards and Accolades
- Financing Options
- Extra Services Offered
- A Blog That Is Regularly Updated
If you can include this content on your website in a visually appealing fashion, then you will be more likely to attract the type of prospect you are hoping to target.
Plastic Surgery Before and After Galleries Are Your Best Testimonials
One of the most effective promotional pieces for a plastic surgery clinic involves before and after pictures. This gives your prospects a real-life example of what the procedure can potentially do for them. To make this effective, you will want to include a variety of different photos in your galleries. Each photo should also be relatable. Your prospects should be able to locate a patient who looks similar to them. This will motivate them that change can come as a result of the work that your clinic does. You should look at each photo as its own silent salesperson promoting your practice in the background.
Make sure that these picture-based testimonials work for you. You can effectively do this by not using before and after mugshots. You need something bright and appealing, so look at including nice lighting and pleasant backgrounds in the shot. Also, don’t just leave it in the picture. This is your chance to market the procedure, so explain what the goal of the procedure was and how you went about achieving the positive results reflected in the photos.
Under the Skin
In order for sites to effectively provide marketing for plastic surgery clinics, the website needs to be adaptable. While templates look great on the surface, they do not allow for new technology and future improvements to be implemented easily.
Instead, you want to have a professional put in a solid back-end system of coding so that the site can be easily expanded on in the future as your needs dictate. You will probably not have the time or expertise to do this yourself. As a solution, you will want to consider hiring someone who can actively update and back up your website on a regular basis.
Plastic Surgery Landing Pages: Where Visitors Convert to Leads and Leads Convert to Consultations
You will want to focus heavily on your landing pages, as this is where you convert your visitors into solid prospects. You want each page to be specific. Some pages might focus on educational content, while others might focus on getting visitor information so you can engage them in your marketing campaigns at a later date.
Here are some examples of landing pages that you will want to consider incorporating into your plastic surgery clinic website:
- Subscribe to a Blog or Email List
- Download a Variety of Educational Tools
- Request Additional Information
- Schedule a Consultation
- Sign Up For a Loyalty or Rewards Club
- Sign Up To Attend a Special Event
Each of these landing pages is designed to elicit a response from your visitor. When done correctly, you will find that you will gain more prospects than you otherwise would have.
Plastic Surgery Landing Page Content
As you consider the content that you include on each landing page, you need to think about the value of your visitor’s time. If you request a lot of information, they will not be as likely to respond. Instead, you want to focus on just asking for a few details that will give you the information that you need to follow up with them at a later date.
In other words, the fewer details the request will result in a higher likelihood of people responding. It is also important to entice your visitors with something that will encourage them to take action. You can do this in numerous ways such as through patient stories, tip sheets, links to various videos, and info-graphics.
Think about what content you can promote to get people in the door. Perhaps a Facebook ad promoting one free session of underarm hair removal, then once they come in, you can up-sell them on injectables or any other type of elective surgery they might have also been thinking about. There are dozens of these types of offers you could run to get people in the door for up-sells.
Dive Deep Into Niche Content for Services Offered by Your Cosmetic Surgery Practice
Just as you have probably developed specific specialty areas within your practice, there will be unique areas of plastic surgery that certain segments of your population will be more interested in than others. As such, you will want to consider writing niche content that appeals directly to this unique segment within your targeted marketing audience. This will help you to attain a better quality of leads because those individuals will know that you provide a service that they are already interested in.
Content With a Twist
Here is where you can really begin to appeal to a broad segment of your target population. While it is ok to use medical jargon when you are at a plastic surgeon’s convention, you want to avoid it like the plague on your website. Remember that your clients do not understand the medical aspect of your practice. They want to be able to relate to the content that you provide on your website.
You have heard that pictures can speak a thousand words. This is true, so use this principle to your advantage by providing infographics when appropriate. This visually shows the benefits of a procedure that you offer without confusing the visitor with too many words that mean nothing to them. You want to focus on clear descriptions, supplemented with visual aids whenever possible. It is this type of contact that provides a twist to your website that can be highly effective in your plastic surgery marketing campaign.
Landing Page Design
When you set out to design each landing page, make sure that you focus on what you are trying to accomplish. You want people to be drawn in and encouraged to respond, so the page itself should be attractive and professional. You are representing your practice with these pages, so make them count. If you have a poorly designed page it will convey the image that you do not care much about your practice as well. Instead, make your landing pages clean and relevant. This will give you maximum exposure and provide a positive impression to your visitors that you are aiming to convey.
Landing Page Promotion
Now that you have put so much work into your landing pages, it is important to consider how people are going to find them. There are many ways to do this, but the key is to be visible across a variety of media channels so that people will end up on your landing page and be encouraged to take action.
Here are a few suggested ways that you can make this happen:
- Promote offers at your clinic so that people can find your landing pages.
- Issue calls to action.
- Incorporate targeted, on-site advertisements.
- Promote your landing pages on the homepage or other pages that are frequently viewed by visitors.
- Have links on any pages that discuss specific surgical procedures, effectively inviting readers to download any educational material that you have placed there.
- Use blog articles, social media posts, email marketing campaigns, the signature lines on your emails, and any offline channels that you use to promote your landing pages.
The key is to remember that landing pages should be seen as a versatile and effective way of converting visitors into prospects for your plastic surgery clinic.
Plastic Surgery Blog: Relevant Content to Attract Attention
Blogs have proven to be a highly effective way of marketing plastic surgery clinics. People who are wanting to learn more about the procedures that you have to offer will often turn to blogs to do their research. For your blog, you want to focus on using it to create relevant content and to draw attention to your clinic.
Your blog should be viewed as the second most effective resource that you have to add to your inbound marketing toolbox. It is how you can brand yourself as an expert, and it will enable you to meet prospective new patients. At the same time, you can use your blog to educate prospects about a wide range of procedures that you offer.
Blogs also help to increase your search engine optimization ranking because it results in the production of content that is indexable. Your visitors will also appreciate your blog if it allows for better educational awareness. This will result in consultations that are more meaningful because your clients will already have some knowledge of the procedure that they want to be performed.
What Makes a Plastic Surgery Blog Great
Blogs should be approached in a methodical manner. You need to be focused on the creation of content that really means something to your patients. As such, you really want to focus on the topics that you write about. A common approach is to educate your readers about popular surgical and nonsurgical procedures that you have to offer.
You will also want to consider writing articles that talk about new procedures in the field of plastic surgery. This will further set you apart as an expert in the field, and your blog will be perceived as much better as a result. The great blogs are those that your readers want to share with others because of the quality content that you provide on a consistent basis. Here are a few suggested ways that you can make this happen:
- Offer information about a healthy lifestyle: skin care, exercises, food choices, and more. This will help increase patient loyalty.
- Announce any new developments and updates that relate directly to your practice and clinic.
- Let your readers know about any awards you have recently been given. This includes your practice in general and for your staff.
- Introduce any new staff members and facilities. Doing so makes your practice appear to be more personable.
- Provide case-study summaries that tell the story of some of your patient’s, but make sure you do not violate any HIPAA laws in doing so.
- Remember that successful blog posts are not always traditional. Feel free to think outside of the box.
- Consider adding videos and infographics to your blogs.
These ideas and others will help to make your blog successful in the end. The key is to create excitement and increase your readership over time.
Keys to Successful Plastic Surgery Blogging
Just like your website content, your blogs should not be overly wordy either. You want your articles to be conversational in nature. It is also important to consistently publish new articles. This will encourage your readers to keep coming back to see what you have to say, and it will help your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking as well. Remember to promote your blog so that others can find it easily, but do not over-promote your own practice. You want to be seen as a practitioner who wants to educate the public and not just win over new patients.
The same holds true for MedSpa SEO.
You Don’t Have to Write it Yourself
You are probably thinking that all of this information about blogs sounds great, but how are you going to find the time to write all of these articles? The simple answer is that you do not have to. After all, you chose the medical profession for a reason. You might not even be a writer. That is OK. You can have someone else write your blogs for you.
However, the key here is to remember that you need to hire someone who you can trust. The content must be of the highest quality, and it must be accurate. You do not want to end up publishing erroneous information on your blogs because you hired someone who did not really understand the practice of plastic surgery. If you want to get some good ideas, then you can also look at how some of the top hospitals create content. The top websites in hospital marketing do a fantastic job of creating content, and you can see it because they often dominate search results for medical-related searches.
YOU COULD ALWAYS HIRE A PROFESSIONAL MARKETING AGENCY THAT SPECIALIZES IN PLASTIC SURGERY MARKETING.
Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgery Marketing
If it seems as though just about everyone in the world today has a presence on social media, that is because it probably is not far from the truth. Part of your plastic surgery marketing plan must incorporate the use of social media.
Doing so will help you build a solid fan base in a specific location and with the demographic group that you are hoping to target. Social media helps you to effectively engage with your current clients and with potential patients. You will also have colleagues who will refer others to you via your social media site.
Since everyone is on social media these days, you need to be as well. However, your mere presence on social media will not achieve marketing results on its own. You must have a social media campaign plan and be an active contributor in order for that to happen.
How to Use Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgeons
Social media can be useful in a variety of different ways. You will want to choose which of the following strategies works within the context of how you operate your plastic surgery clinic.
Some possible ideas include:
- Promoting special offers
- Providing links to content on your website
- Answer questions that are commonly asked relating to plastic surgery procedures
- Display before and after images
- Run various surveys and contests
- Use Instagram to promote cosmetic healthcare, such as MediSpa products
- Use Twitter to give quick announcements with links to all of your followers
- Use Facebook to invite followers to various events. You can also post content on your Facebook page. Make sure you keep your business and personal Facebook pages separate.
- Use Snapchat to share videos, engage your followers in question-and-answer sessions, conduct interviews, and share news.
- Use YouTube to publish short videos where you explain a certain procedure or talk about various products or treatments that your clinic provides. However, stay away from videoing the actual procedure itself.
- Use social media to implement a targeted ad campaign.
These are just a few of the many ways that you can use social media to your plastic surgery marketing advantage. The key is to be visible and to stay vigilant. Do not just post something one day and then leave it to sit for a year. That sets the wrong impression. Staying active will gain you a following that will result in prospects.
General Plastic Surgery Social Media Marketing Rules
You will want to remember that social media is a two-way street. It needs to be interactive. This is not a digital billboard. Interaction is the key. You will want to listen to what your followers have to say.
The more that you do, the more you will learn what your prospective patients want from the plastic surgeon that they choose. You can then use this information to create even more valuable content to post on your website, in your blogs, and on social media.
At the same time, you do not want to come across as a salesperson on your social media site. This is a fine line. Of course, you want to promote your practice, but you want to do so in a subtle manner that does not sound like you are making an overt sales pitch.
You want to always present yourself in a professional manner. Remember, you are not a comedian. People are coming to you because of your medical expertise. That needs to be reflected in your interaction online. When people do express concerns or ask questions on your social media page, you want to answer them as soon as possible. If you’re interested in growing your cosmetic surgery practice, Digital Logic is an industry-leading internet marketing service agency!
Strategic Marketing Planning for Plastic Surgery Practices
You want to plan out your social presence. Think about what you want to achieve. Your goal should be to do the following:
- Generate more solid leads
- Build your personal brand
- Develop a brand for your practice
- Nurture existing leads
- Target a specific audience
If you keep your goals and objectives in mind, you will find that your social media presence becomes much more effective in the end.
Email Marketing for Plastic Surgeons
Many people make the mistake of thinking that email is outdated and no longer effective. That is simply not the case. This is a classic marketing tool that is still productive if used in the right way. You will want to use your email marketing campaign in conjunction with your website and with social media. It can be a way of nurturing leads, and it will help you to target a specific group of prospects.
Email Converting Contents
Email needs to be designed in such a way that the contents are meant to convert readers into prospects. You want to make sure that your email is sent in such a way that people will be more likely to open it when it arrives in their inbox. This begins with a powerful subject line. Make it catchy and creative. You also want to ensure that your email contains valuable information. Always be mindful that your reader will only invest a few minutes at most into going through your email. Make them count. Do not put a great deal of fluff in there, or you will just be wasting your time.
Another part of email conversion is to insert links to your website or blog in strategic locations throughout the message. This will get you the visitors you desire, where it counts most. It is also important to issue a compelling call to action. Give the reader a reason for spending their time going through your email. An actionable request will result in many people following through. Here are a few other principles to keep in mind as you consider drafting your next email to send out:
- Make sure that email is addressed to a real person. These are more likely to be taken seriously and opened.
- You can send out group emails to highlight one-time promotions.
- Use a service that will provide you with detailed email analytics that will tell you conversion rates. It is important to know how many people have read the email and what percentage are actually following through on your various links and calls to action.
- Keep in mind that it is far less expensive to retain customers than it is to go out and find new ones.
- Use your emails to offer discounts to patients who have shown their loyalty to your practice.
- You can also segment your email and send them to particular demographic groups. You can target readers by age, procedure type, socioeconomic status, and more.
Following these guidelines will help with your email conversion rates. Take time to ensure that you are getting the most out of every email that you send out to your list of subscribers.
What Makes Email Marketing Work?
When beginning to create your email marketing strategy, it is important to keep in mind that you need to have permission from everyone that you email regarding your practice. This is a legal requirement. To make your email marketing work, you want to ensure that you stay within those parameters.
You also must provide a way for each individual to unsubscribe from your email list. This option should be included in each and every email that you send out. As you send out our emails, you also want to make sure that they have a Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) signature. This attaches your domain name to the message, which gives it authenticity.
You also want to make sure that your email is formatted for mobile devices. The principle here is that more and more people do much of their computing these days right from their phones or tablets. Your email needs to look good on that smaller screen so that your audience can easily read it.
Also, you need to study the results from your inbound marketing campaign in order to effectively plan the emails that you send out in the future. If something is not working, you will want to know that so that you can tweak your strategy moving forward. On the other hand, campaigns that are working should be continued.
Remember that relevance and timeliness are the two motivating factors for the readers of your email. You want to think about the messages that you send out and the time that your email arrives in your reader’s inbox. This is what makes email marketing work in the end.
Make sure as well that you use captivating words and phrases such as perfect for you and affordable in your emails. Conduct some keyword research related to your practice to determine what the subject of your email should be.
Online Marketing for Plastic Surgeons: Paid Media
When you are ready to promote your clinic beyond the realm of free online advertising, you will want to look at options for paid plastic surgeon marketing. This is a cost-effective way of reaching even more people with the options that you provide in your practice. This section details some of the many options that are available in terms of paid online advertising.
Pay-Per-Click or PPC
Traditional marketing efforts required businesses to print up large amounts of brochures and distribute them to the masses. The problem is that most of those individuals would have no interest in a plastic surgery practice. However, this had to be done in order to get the material into the hands of those who could possibly become prospects. This has been shown to be an ineffective form of marketing to the masses.
Pay-per-click advertising, on the other hand, is a way of getting your advertisements into the hands of only your target audience. It does this based on keywords and Google AdWords. When people conduct searches in the area of your practice, they will see your marketing message. It will appeal to many who look at it. When the reader clicks on the ad, he or she will be instantly taken to your website or other location of your choosing. This is regardless of whether you own a private practice or are part of a bigger hospital PPC campaign program. You will pay a small fee each time a click is made. Learn more about our PPC Management services.
Display Ads
These are also known as banner ads. They are marketing messages that you see at the top of Internet search pages or other locations on the Internet. Again, these can be targeted to a specific demographic group and are an effective form of paid online advertising.
Social Media Ads
You can now jump on the social media bandwagon by openly promoting your practice there. You can do this via the use of paid and targeted ads. Again, search algorithms now make it possible for your advertisement to be delivered to the very type of social media user that you are hoping to draw into your practice. This is also a way to boost your existing social posts, which gives you more visibility across a variety of digital media channels.
Mobile Ads
Since so many people today are using their mobile devices in a number of different ways, it is prudent to target these types of users with advertisements relating to your plastic surgery clinic. Catering directly to your prospects who use mobile devices for most of their online needs is critical today for your lead generation efforts. It is yet another way of drawing in more serious prospects for your plastic surgery marketing campaign.
Retargeting Ads
Technology has evolved to the point that you can now determine who has visited your site before. When they return, you want to re-target them with another effective marketing approach. You can appeal to them directly with a new pitch about your plastic surgery practice, knowing that they are already interested in you, given their return visit.
Native Advertising
You can also look at native advertising as a way of increasing your exposure. This is the modern, digital form of traditional marketing. You pay a fee to place some of your informative content on another platform on the Internet, where people from your target audience are known to visit in large numbers. While there are advantages to doing this, there are some drawbacks as well.
This is a longer approach than you will get with standard advertising. In addition, your content and message will match the background of the site that it appears on. This could be confusing to your prospects as they begin to see that you have a different design approach. It is also a more indirect form of advertising, so it is difficult to measure the results.
Paid Online Advertising Offers Major Advantages
If you are going to pay for something, you want to be reasonably assured of positive results. For its part, there are some major advantages to engaging in paid online advertising efforts. One of those is that the results you achieve can be quick. There is no waiting around for paper to be printed up and then delivered into the hands of your prospects. Paid online advertising gets your message in front of those you intend almost instantly. You can begin to notice results soon thereafter.
Online advertising also allows you to both track and evaluate the results. You can visualize how many people you are reaching with your messages and how many of those are actually taking action. There are a variety of online tools and resources that will help you analyze the effectiveness of virtually any digital media campaign that you engage in. You or a marketing professional can then study this data in real-time and make any necessary changes as you see fit.
Another major advantage of paid online advertising is that your campaigns can be turned on and off with the touch of a button. This will enable you to fix any mistakes you notice or tweak your messages to reflect current promotions and updates that you might have. There are many reasons why you might want to halt your online campaign, and this method allows you to do just that. In addition, you can use the information gathered from your pay-per-click messages to help with your organic listings as well.
Pull It Together
In summary, paid media can prove effective at lead generation efforts and triggering conversions from visitor to prospect. At the same time, it is also complex and requires a strategy to be implemented in order to be effective. You need to consider the following areas as you begin to approach the possibility of paid online advertising:
- The position of your ad
- The design of your ad,
- Your content
- Who to target the ad to
- The selection of keywords
- The tracking of those same keywords
- Bidding prices
- The strategy of your landing page
- How to effectively manage your marketing campaign
- Tracking and analyzing the performance of the campaign
As you begin to run your digital marketing campaign, you will want to track click-through rates. If they are not as high as you would like, you will need to consider your keywords. You need to constantly be refining that part of your strategy in order to get your message in front of as many members of your target audience as possible. You also want to determine the number of conversions that you get from this strategy, allowing you to determine the cost of each conversion. This will help you to determine the value of your online marketing efforts.
If you end up with many click-throughs but relatively few conversions, then you are not getting any return on your investment. This is an obvious indicator that you need to change something within this part of your marketing approach. Remember that paid media will just be a waste of money if it is not properly implemented. This is why you will want to consider having an expert handle any type of paid online advertising campaign. They know how to get your message in front of the right people in order to maximize your conversion rates. Remember that paid advertising is more effective if it is only one part of your complete marketing approach.
Offline Marketing for Plastic Surgeons
As we shift towards talking about offline marketing opportunities for plastic surgeons, let us just say that online advertising should be your first priority. It is simply much more cost-effective in the long run. That being said, there are offline opportunities that you should keep your eyes open for. You want to specifically focus on those strategies that best align with your specialties and the demographics of your patients.
Print Ads
If you choose to go with a print-based brochure for your plastic surgery clinic, you want to carefully consider the readership of that particular publication. You will want to look at opportunities with exclusive golf or country club publications. These have the readers that are more likely to be interested in material related to plastic surgery. You can look at putting your advertisement in local or regional lifestyle magazines. This further refines your demographic audience. You can also look at advertising with national magazines that offer local targeting options. This enables you to only pay for your ad to be included in the editions that go to readers in your local area.
Billboards
Billboards can still be an effective form of advertising in many situations, but only if they apply to you. These can be an excellent way of marketing your practice if you are in a smaller market area, but they are not so good if you are in a major city. Your content and message must be brief and to the point. You have mere seconds for the reader to determine what it is you are trying to say and whether or not your message is for them.
Television
In rare instances, television advertising may work for you. However, keep in mind that ads are extremely expensive making any return on investment that you might achieve to be small in comparison to other forms of marketing. You will want to consider economies of scale here, as this may not be the best use of your marketing dollars. If you want to go to the television route, you will want to consider narrowing your focus only to morning shows. They may be a lot more open to negotiating a good price for your promotional campaigns.
Radio
Radio advertising is another form of offline marketing that is not typically recommended today. There are simply better ways of reaching your target audience. If you do decide to go down this path, perhaps because of your specific market, you will want to look for a local radio that contains health-related programming. This will allow you to potentially reach much of your target audience.
Direct Mail
While this used to be one of the more popular forms of advertising, it is not an effective one today. However, there are still some occasions when you might want to make use of it. Direct mail marketing is still seen as an effective way of introducing a new clinic. You can also target promotional pieces to certain zip codes where high-wealth individuals tend to live. You can also use this form of marketing to send birthday cards or letters to current and former patients as a way of keeping your name in front of them.
Giveaways
Almost everyone likes to receive something for free. If you choose to do this, make sure that it is promotional in nature and that it looks professional. You never know where your giveaway is going to end up, so you should view it as a way of marketing to people you have never seen before. At the same time, make sure that your giveaways are not perishable, or you will lose that marketing potential quite quickly. You want something that people can display or use for quite some time.
Things Change
When you look at any offline marketing campaign, remember that things are subject to change at any time. The tastes of your prospective patients change, as do what they tend to focus their attention on. What is in vogue today might be outdated tomorrow. You need to work constantly at changing things in order to keep up with this shift in opinions and tastes. At the same time, you want to test out your advertisements to see which are working and should be maintained and which are not effective and should be scrapped.
Patient Reviews: Nothing Beats Word of Mouth for Plastic Surgeons
Most people today research the things most important to them almost entirely online. This includes any person who is considering plastic surgery. If they find you and are seriously considering you as their plastic surgeon, you can bet that they are first going to look into your practice online. With more and more people posting reviews online, this is the place they will start. Prospective patients want to hear from your current and former patients. This speaks to the truth that nothing beats word-of-mouth advertising for plastic surgeons.
This is your chance to make a positive first impression before you even get a chance to meet a prospect face-to-face. You want to make it count. Make sure that you treat each of your patients with the utmost respect. Promptly address any concerns that they might have, and follow up with them often after a procedure has been completed. These gestures will go a long way towards encouraging them to leave you a positive review online. What follows are some general guidelines to keep in mind as you use the review process as yet another way of marketing your plastic surgery practice.
Get More Reviews
The more reviews that you have, the better. You want your prospective clients to gain a broad overview of your practice and what others have already experienced. You will want to learn about various review sites that deal with plastic surgeons in your area. Put a sign up in your clinic informing your patients of these sites and give them an invitation to review you online. You can also use the end of every appointment to ask your patients about their experiences. If it is positive, it is acceptable to ask them if they would write a review for you online. Another way to generate more reviews is to use text messages or email reminders. You can send these out shortly after an appointment, complete with a few review sites already linked, to further encourage your patients to take the time necessary to complete the process. After every procedure, you could send out a thank you email to your patients. Once again, conclude that email with an invitation to write a review. Remember that the quality and professionalism of these messages are important, so make them count.
Manage Your Reviews
You should be actively managing your reviews. No, that does not mean that you write them, nor do you get to become angry at the odd negative one here and there. What it does mean is that you are actively looking at them in order to track the conversations that are taking place. You want to have the chance to respond to certain reviews, but this is only effective if you do it right away. If you wait too long, the damage will already have been done. There will be some reviews that will be asking for a response from you. If you fail to do so, it will look like you are not paying any attention to your patients. This will lead to an erosion of trust quite quickly online.
Positive Reviews
Hopefully, the vast majority of your reviews will be positive. When someone is complimentary of you, your practice, or a member of your staff, you should work hard at posting something short in response. It is also a nice gesture to send the individual a personal email to express your appreciation if they have made their contact information available in the review. Be careful that you do not post the same response in reply to every review. You do not want to risk looking like a robot. Be unique in what you post.
Negative Reviews
Nobody is perfect, and you cannot please everyone all of the time. As such, you should plan on the odd negative review here and there. Remember that your patients deserve a voice, and your prospects want to hear both the good and the bad. That being said, you can still help turn around a negative review. It all depends on your approach to the situation. Begin by never failing to address a negative review. If a general complaint has been made, respond to it publicly. Do not be afraid to apologize and let your readers know what you are doing to correct the problem moving forward. If the review is more personal in nature, take the conversation offline by sending a personal email to the individual.
Key Review Sites for Plastic Surgery Practices
While there are many different sites online that allow people to review plastic surgeons, there are some key ones that you should focus your attention on. They include:
- Yelp
- Realself
- Vitals
- Healthgrades
Once you start getting reviewed quite frequently on some of these sites, make sure that they are the ones that you promote to your patients. These sites also make it easy to post a review. This is key because most people will not want to spend much time navigating through a bunch of red tape just to leave a review about you and your practice.
Publicize Your Great Reviews
Over time, you are likely to get some really great reviews. Not only will these make you feel good, but they will also make for effective promotional pieces for your plastic surgery marketing campaign. You will want to publicize your great reviews by sprinkling short quotes from them on various marketing materials that you have at your disposal. This can include on your website, via social media, your blogs, emails, and elsewhere.
You can also use these quotes in marketing material that is designed to promote a specific procedure or product that the review is about. Another suggestion is to create your own testimonials and review page right on your website. If you want to tell a patient’s story, ask for their permission to create a case study and then publish that.
Augment Patient Testimonials With Other Third-Party Verification
Unfortunately, many people have grown skeptical of online reviews because it is often difficult to determine their authenticity. To add a level of trust to the reviews that you publish, you will want to include third-party verification of the quality of your practice whenever possible.
One way to do this is to create a page on your website that highlights the awards and honors that you have received through the years. It is also helpful to showcase any accreditation and formal recognition that your practice has earned and received. You will want to display third-party icons and links for social media directly on the website.
Events: Any Excuse for a Party
If you really want to focus on meeting new prospects, you will occasionally want to get out of the clinic and out in the community. Any excuse for a party should see you attending. This will expand the awareness of your practice. The more people that know about you, the better. By attending or hosting a variety of events, you will also strengthen your patient retention numbers, and they will become more loyal as a result. When your patients see you at various events, they can introduce you to friends and colleagues who could very well become your next prospects.
When you attend certain events, you want to show the lighter and more personal side of your practice. You want people to see you as a person who they can relate to. When you host your own events, you can consider a grand opening or reopening to get things started. You can also throw an annual thank you party where you invite patients and members of the community alike to attend. You can have holiday parties, educational seminars, and much more. Anything to get people active and involved is what you are looking for.
Cause Marketing
As a practice, you should be involved in causes that are important to you. Not only is it the proper thing to do, but it also shows that you care about the community outside of your practice. You will want to consider partnering with a well-known charity in your area. You can show your support of their special events by becoming a sponsor or donor. This effectively increases the awareness of your clinic as well. You can also consider hosting an event that supports the cause you have partnered with. Some other ways you can be involved in cause marketing are to donate a gift certificate to be given out at a special event or volunteer your time to the organization.
Educational Marketing
There are many educational opportunities that you can be involved in that will highlight the various services that you have to offer as a plastic surgeon. Facebook actually provides a great opportunity to do this. With Facebook Live, you can discuss non-surgical procedures with all of your viewers. This is a cost-effective way of promoting your clinic in a more personable manner while providing something educational to your viewers as well. You can also partner with related providers that are offering educational initiatives in your area of practice. It is also beneficial to host an event away from the office once in a while in order to further increase your exposure.
Anatomy of a Great Event
Great events do not just happen by chance. They are well thought out in advance and executed according to plan. Some components of a great event will include:
These are just a few of the items that you can include in an event to make it a great one. This is your opportunity to really make your plastic surgery practice shine. Make sure that you take full advantage of it.
Loyalty Programs for Plastic Surgery
You will also want to look into offering some type of loyalty program at your plastic surgery clinic. The principle here is that repeat customers tend to spend more than first-time customers. In addition, your repeat customers are likely to send some first-time customers your way. As such, it is to your advantage to reward them from time to time.
Happy patients will become your own best evangelist. They will post reviews and tell their family members, friends, and co-workers about you. The more face time that you have with your patients, the more opportunities you will have to up-sell various products and services that you have to offer.
What Kind of Rewards Should You Offer
In determining what kind of rewards you should offer your repeat patients, it depends on the type of clientele that you have and the range of services that you provide. You will want to change up the type of rewards that you offer periodically in order to keep the program fresh. It is typically advised that you base the rewards on either points or a dollar amount that has been spent at your clinic.
With your loyalty program, you can offer special deals to any patient who likes you on their Facebook page. You can also have monthly specials contained in your emails that are marketed directly at current or former patients. Provide one time offers directly to your most loyal or frequent patients. You can give them priority access to appointment times and invite them to special events. Depending on your clientele, you can create a membership club that makes them a part of an exclusive group. In so doing, you could even charge a one time or monthly fee to join.
Make it Simple
You want to keep your rewards program simple. Do not litter it with a bunch of terms and conditions, as this will just limit its effectiveness. While you do have the right to add in certain limitations, you do not want to limit the program so much that your patients become disinterested. It should also not take forever in order to get a reward. Programs that are too difficult to achieve the reward will mean that it is not worth it to most patients. You do not need to give patients a card. This is the modern age, so use your CRM software to track patient progress in-house. You can also provide online access to your patients so that they can track their own progress at home.
Promote Your Program
If you want your loyalty program to be successful, you must promote it effectively. This means that you need to let everyone know that you have the program. Keep it promoted right in front of your existing patients so that they will know about it with each and every visit. Offering rewards programs will also help you to attract new patients. Because of this, you will want to post signs relating to your loyalty program in strategic places throughout your clinic.
In keeping with a contemporary look and feel, you should also have tablets located in your reception area where patients can register for the program in-house. Avoid giving them a form to fill out at home, as those will have a low rate of return. Getting patients to buy into the program at the office is the best way to get it off the ground and running.
Budgeting for Plastic Surgery Practices
When setting your plastic surgery marketing budget, you will want to keep in mind the important principle that you need to spend money in order to make money. However, that does not mean that you want to throw your money away. You need to spend it effectively. Only engage in programs that are going to offer you the potential for a great return on your investment. You will want to treat your marketing budget as an investment because that is exactly what it is. 
What Should Your Plastic Surgery Marketing Budget Be?
It is always difficult to determine the right amount to spend on marketing. This will obviously depend on the size of your practice, how much competition is in your area, and how well-established your practice already is. In general, it is recommended that you commit 10 percent of your total revenue to your plastic surgery marketing budget.
Initial Setup
To get started on any marketing-related endeavor, there are a few things that you should do initially in order to get it set up properly. This begins with the development of your brand. Make sure that it is well-defined and clear to all who see it. You will also want a logo that represents the goals and objectives you have set for your plastic surgery practice.
Make sure that you build out your website prior to beginning any marketing campaign in earnest because this is where most people will head once they hear about you and become remotely interested. You will also want to automate your social media and marketing platforms. Finally, ensure you have print-based collateral ready to display in the office and for use during patient consultations.
Ongoing Marketing Budget
You will want to constantly evaluate the marketing campaigns that you run and are a part of. This is because a proper marketing mix is always evolving, and a great deal of it has to do with the progression of your practice. You will want to consider hiring an experienced team or agency to deal with much of the marketing-related matters in order to allow you to focus on other areas of your clinic. Remember that you need to be constantly working on your plastic surgery marketing campaigns in order to stand out above the competition. You will want to create a marketing calendar that will enable you to make the most of peak periods and to build upon the potential that exists there.
Refining Your Marketing Budget
The budget you set for marketing today is going to change. Remember that it is not only a matter of how much money you spend on each campaign, but it is also reflective of where you spend your resources. In order to spend your money as effectively as possible, you will want to track and analyze the performance of all your marketing campaigns. Running a system of ongoing tests and refining your actual marketing budget is important to your overall effectiveness.
Hire The Plastic Surgery Marketing Experts
There has never been a better time to be in the field of plastic or cosmetic surgery. The future is bright, so you will want to begin now to build up your practice through the implementation of an effective marketing strategy. You have more opportunities today than ever before to attract new patients. To do this, you will want to implement a smart and strategic marketing strategy that is designed to set yourself apart and build up your own brand awareness and practice. The fact that your prospects today are moving targets explains why digital marketing works. It is all about the potential patient right up until the time that they ultimately select you as their private surgeon of choice. Does the idea of marketing your clinic excite you, but you have no time or idea where to start? Give us a call! Digital Logic is a Shreveport based company that specializes in healthcare marketing!
