How To Best Promote Your Plastic Surgery Practice
It's a tough thing to juggle managing your practice, fulfilling the role of employer and meeting the varied needs of your patients. But marketing must be at the very top of your to-do-list for 2019 if you intend to keep ahead of the competition in a fierce consumer market. Putting together an annual marketing plan is time consuming but it will help to ensure the success of your practice in the long run.
Whether you choose to make use of in-house staff for your marketing needs our outsource to a proven marketing agency, keep in mind that their are numerous avenues you can take to promote your business. We spoke with the brains behind successful cosmetic surgery practices such as Manhattan Aesthetic Surgery as well as the 14 below marketing pros who all gave us their two cents on what works best.
1. Don't Be A Clone
“Be very clear about what differentiates you versus a sea of competitors who do similar things. Take the time to understand your specific target customer – whether that’s a specific procedure, condition, age group, or similar – identify their needs or pain points, and where they go for information. Then articulate how you solve those needs uniquely, and put your message in the format (words, pictures, videos, etc) and location (online or offline) where your prospects go for information.
Don’t follow the flavor of the month or just do to the same things your competitors will do – you won’t stand out.”
By Rajat Kapur of &Marketing
2. Retargeting Ads to Keep In Front of Your Captive Audience
“Retargeting is yet another practice I highly recommend. Cosmetic surgeons should use this in particular because those searching for plastic surgery often don’t take action immediately. They may feel more biased toward a surgeon they’ve used before. With retargeted ads, it reminds visitors the other choice was ultimately better while visiting related websites.”
By Mike Khorev of Nine Peaks Media
3. Frequently Asked Questions
“Cosmetic surgeons should add a mini FAQ section to every service page, and add the FAQ schema markup. Generally speaking, people who ask specific questions about a service are farther along the buying process than people who are simply searching for the name of a surgery and what it entails. So by incorporating common questions and their responses on key service pages, surgeons will be able to capture organic traffic from users that are close to making a decision.”
By Elizabeth Bradshaw of Canvas Art Boutique
4. Focus On Your Reputation
“Whether online or offline, your reputation is your most powerful asset, especially in today’s age of suspicion and distrust. Put deliberate processes in place to build it, especially on social media and through review websites, where people are continuously watching you. Identify the social media platforms most appropriate for your businesses and use platform-specific tools that can help you gain demographic insights about your audience and competitors. For instance, Fanpage Karma or Facebook Insights for Facebook, Tailwind for Pinterest & Instagram and Twitter Analytics for Twitter. As a final step, use tools like Cyfe to track key social media metrics. Be an industry leader by publishing high quality content that is optimized for search engines.”
By Sameer Somal of Blue Ocean Global Technology
5. Video Marketing Must Be Embraced
“In 2019, doctors need to be embracing video as a part of their digital marketing strategy. Today many patients will start with an online search of their ailment, concern or procedure. Video can help maximize your search imprint and give you a larger funnel to capture potential clients. For example, the term ‘gynecomastia surgery' has an estimated search volume of 8,100 per month. If surgeons are able to create valuable, meaningful videos to capture this type of search, you’ll be that much more likely to attract clients looking to have that procedure done. In addition to impacting your bottom line directly, video can also help educate potential patients, and increase their trust in your facility.”
By Dr. Robert Caridi of Westlake Plastic Surgery
6. Let Others Build Trust For You
“Your best approach with any type of medical or cosmetic services is going to be to share and promote the positive first-hand accounts of your clients. Let them tell their stories, capturing them on video if you can, and then turn this into onsite content, ad content, etc. Building trust is best done by letting others sing your praises rather than doing it yourself. Also, use live video for Q&A sessions about procedures is a great way to engage with your audience in real time.”
By Bernard May of National Positions
7. Fear Based Marketing?
“For 99% of the businesses that I consult to I advise on an optimistic perspective on marketing, for plastic surgeons I suggest the complete opposite. Fear based marketing will be your best friend for something like plastic surgery, producing content based around specific common key features that make someone insecure (Nose, Breast, Wrinkles) and how you can fix those features will play a big role in getting people in the door. Then promoting that content through social media so it’s right in the consumers face will be very helpful.”
By Andrew Fein of Saturn Agency
8. Another Vote for Client Reviews Above All Else
“Client reviews are the heart of all marketing efforts for a cosmetic surgeon. That's because all other marketing will cost more and bring in fewer new clients if the surgeon's practice has poor reviews. Likewise, all other marketing efforts will cost less and bring in more new clients if reviews are stellar.
The best way to make sure your practice has stellar client reviews is to pre-screen clients before asking for a review.
Shortly after a client sees the results they were hoping for, when their emotions are still strong, send the client an email or text message asking for private feedback on how they would rate your practice on a 5-star scale.
If the client says they would give you 5 stars, thank them and ask if they'd be willing to share their experiences on the review website that matters most to your practice.
If the client says they would give you fewer stars than your average online star rating, don't ask for a review. Instead, ask for private feedback on how you could have earned their 5-star review so you can make improvements in the future.
By pre-screening every client for positive reviews, you'll optimize your online review profile's star rating and number of reviews.
And with a strong review profile online, every other marketing program you implement will have the wind at its back instead of facing a headwind.”
By Chas Cooper of Rising Star Reviews
9. Text Message Marketing
“In 2019 plastic surgeons need to be taking advantage of text message marketing. People don't read marketing emails anymore, and really don't appreciate phone calls from your business. But they will read text messages, and since we're basically glued to our phones the days the research says they'll read your text almost immediately. When it comes to staying in touch, offering exclusive deals, even confirming appointments — there's no better way to do it than over text. Text message marketing is simple to set up and if you find the right provider you can get a turnkey solution that's hassle free and easy to use.”
By Matt Baglia of SlickText
10. Targeted Paid Facebook and Instagram Marketing
“One area that I highly recommend for marketing online is through Facebook and Instagram. This is because you can target age, location, sex and income. This allows you to really target your best potential clients. With this type of advertising, you can then add images and videos, targeting those age groups and sexes, making each specific. I highly recommend that you add before and after images, as we have seen those get the best results. Your ads should link to a consultation page or even lead generation form. Make it as easy as possible for them to set up a consult with your office. Going through this process will give you some amazing results to increase your client base.”
By Jeff Moriarty of JMoriarty Marketing
11. Text vs No Text on Photos
“Plastic Surgeons have a unique opportunity to digitally market themselves online for 2019.. Transformation (or before/after) photos outperform generic product photos on a regular basis. Plastic Surgeons should also use video to educate their audience on the services they offer and the procedure, this could be as simple as showcasing a video of Botox being injected or a coolsculpting treatment being done. Also, be mindful of what photos include text on each platform. Text on photos does not perform well on Instagram (in fact you won't be able to run paid advertising if you do use it), but text on photos on Pinterest performs exceptionally well.”
By Cynthia Hoyt of Darling Digital Strategy
12. Create A Podcast
“You can start by using a super simple service like Anchor which is free to start your podcast and embed it in a section on your site. To get started I would put together a list of the most frequently asked questions in your field and answer them on an episode of its own, even if it only is 5 to 10 minutes long. All of this will get picked up by the search engines if you add a very detailed short description about the content for each episode and platforms like Anchor distribute your content on every single podcast platform out there from itunes, Google Play to Spotify! So it will make it easier for people to find you.”
By Christian Lovrecich of Lovrecich Media
13. Focus On Organic Rankings
“For cosmetic surgeons practices, I recommend that you focus your efforts on search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click ads, and content marketing. Over 70% of clicks go to organic searches that rank on the first page of Google.
Start by creating a keyword and keyword phrase list that your audience would use in a search. Remember to add local search terms like your city and state. Second, use AdWords keyword tool to see what the search volume and competitiveness for each of your keywords. Third, develop an editorial calendar and write articles around those search terms. Finally, post them and track your search terms in Google Analytics.”
By George Schildge of Matrix Marketing Group
14. Use A Call Tracking Service
“Cosmetic surgeons looking to maximize their marketing dollars should use a call tracking service that offers dynamic number insertion (like CallRail). With one piece of code, dynamic number insertion will change the phone numbers on your website, depending on the referral source of the call (i.e. display ad, search engine marketing, email, organic search traffic, etc). Figuring out what campaigns and sources are driving leads and clients to your business is incredibly important and informative when trying to decide what marketing to cut, and what marketing to invest more in.”
By Frank Ramey of Enotto
