Is it possible to gain that feeling for yourself – not for your skin, nose, or body – but for your cosmetic medical practice? Just like appearance, aesthetic medical marketing can be a scary monster if you don’t know where to begin or who to turn to.

Today is your lucky day because here it is. Your very own Step-by-step treatment plan to bringing in business for your aesthetic practice.

Step 1: Pre-commit

To pre-commit means to make them a patient before they even come through your doors. Here’s how: have your esthetician block off 30 minutes on Fridays to call new guests scheduled for the following week.

Your patients are bound to be impressed and committed to coming in. More than a recorded reminder, it’s a personal phone call from their actual provider. How many providers do you know that do that?

This is a great time to encourage first timers to write down questions before they come in to ensure any concerns will be covered during their consultation. This small gesture will make a lasting impression and be the first step to creating a strong relationship.

Step 2: Educate

When it comes to aesthetic medicine, seeing is believing. Nothing is more impactful for a patient than perusing through before and after photos on your website or in your waiting room.

Pique interest and generate excitement for new services you offer by putting all of your photos together in one book. A photo album is nice, but with all of the online resources available to the consumer these days, a hardcover photo book is even better.

Websites like www.mixbook.com can create a custom tool to showcase your before and after photos while describing in detail your cosmetic medical services. IF Marketing can also create a customized photo book for your practice – complete with welcome pages, staff profiles, procedure information, and before and after photos. (Make sure to check out the photobook special on our “What IF Newsletter”!).

Step 3: Retain

How often do you go looking for new patients before you stop and appreciate the patient base you have already cultivated? It is a commonly held maxim that it is 7 times more expensive to obtain a new patient than to retain a current one.

Bring in more business by giving your current patients a reason to come back. Give each patient a loyalty card that accumulates points. Initial it, hole punch it, stamp it, hand it to them, or file it with their chart – whatever system best fits your brand and makes it easiest on your patient. Once a client has enough services to fill the card, reward them with a discount or a free treatment.

Step 4: Refer

There is a way to generate new referrals without spending extra funds on promotions. It’s as simple as this one sentence:

“Help us be green by sharing this with a friend.”

Add this ingenious statement to brochures, business cards or newsletters. You are essentially doubling your marketing efforts without increasing your costs – and saving the environment.

Double the use and do the same with your website. Add “Email this page to a friend” to everything you do. Now you are capturing a prospective patient’s email address.

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I challenge you all to be your practice’s care provider. Work with your team to create inexpensive and easy efforts that cover each category. Apply daily and repeat.

Have you been making assumptions about your clients' buying habits?

Several studies have debunked previous myths about the way consumers respond to marketing tactics. Be careful when making assumptions about how your patient demographics will respond to your marketing efforts. How well do you know your patients’ buying habits?
Myth 1: My baby-boomer patients will only come by word-of-mouth. They aren’t into the internet.
Truth: Boomers actually spend more time and money online than any other generation. People in this generation falling between ages 47-55 spend an average of 40 hours online every week. Those ages 56-65 only slightly fall short at 36 hour per week.
Remember this is the generation that saw the advent of the television, computer, and mobile marketing. They may actually be your most adaptive and tech savvy generation. While this generation may discover digital trends a little later than your Generation Y patients, they flock to them at more rapid paces. Women over the age of 55 are actually the fasting growing segment on Facebook as of 2011. Users ages 35-49 are the fastest growing segment on Twitter.
Myth 2: My younger patients don’t have the money to make large purchases.
Truth: In recent years, luxury brands have been targeting young, affluent consumers for a couple of reasons. 1) They are proactively preparing to retain the attention and loyalty of younger consumers. The successful 20-somethings of today are the CEOs of tomorrow. When a brand engages them prior to the peak of their purchasing power, they become pre-committed to the brand. 2) Generation Y has significant buying power. According to recent reports from Ad Age, the average member of this generation has approximately $100/ week of disposable income. Cumulatively, the generation has $150 billion/ year to blow on whatever they desire… including your services. This generation has also grown up in an era of consumerism and bombardment from online, television, and print advertisement, and they are inclined to spend in order to maintain a lifestyle.
Myth 3: I’m a high-end practice, so I don’t have to worry about price shoppers. Those aren’t my kind of patients. Wealthy people don’t price shop.
Truth: In The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy, a book by Thomas J. Stanley and William Danko, the authors identify a study where they analyzed the purchasing habits when millionaires buy a high-cost good, a vehicle. They found that most millionaires actually price shop. (Perhaps this is why they are millionaires.) While millionaires preferred to save money and time by purchasing a new car, they still wanted price options and were not willing to invest more than necessary in car. Thirty-six percent of millionaires were not willing to buy a new car, in order to maximize value for cost. To tackle price shoppers, contact us and ask about our coaching webinars on telephone strategies, credentialing boards, and safety charts. All of these tools are proven to provide price shoppers with the incentive they need to look past price and book an appointment based on the quality of your credentials and service.