It takes a marketing mix to grow your aesthetic practice
It takes a marketing mix to grow your practice
By Catherine Maley, MBA
Aesthetic medicine is a lucrative business that has created a fiercely competitive industry. Clinicians in the core and non-core specialties, as well as companies, want to capitalize on the demand growing cosmetic improvement. This means that patients have more choices than ever. So what would make them come to you and stay with you? It begins with marketing.
There are several methods of marketing. No one method works all the time, and all methods work part time. Therefore, you need to develop the right marketing mix, which is defined as the methods you use to promote your products and services. This using various long-and short-term messages and avenues, until you get the results you want. Methods must work in synergy.
Marketing Your Aesthetic Practice begins by defining your patients preferred. You then have to be where they are constantly so that when they are ready for cosmetic improvements, they think of you and not your competitor.
Definition Your favorite patient
When it comes to your patients, keep in mind the importance of target marketing. You probably heard: "You can not be everything to everybody. "There is great truth to it. We meet the group you consider your patients perfect. Read their demographics and needs. This is important because only a certain percentage of the population will purchase procedures for improvement cosmetic products or treatments. By promoting your marketing efforts for the right market niche, you become more productive. You will not lose your efforts, time or money by throwing your message to anyone.
Individualized Marketing
Commercialization strategies are also increasingly focused on the individual. Using sophisticated software, practices can develop a database allowing them to approach individual potential and existing patients. This approach provides a solution to a specific problem they may have and relays information in the format the patient wishes to receive this information. An example is the patient who has had cosmetic treatment of wrinkles fill you and agreed to receive e-mail from your office to send the newsletter to your e-tellimg them on the latest wrinkle filler approved by the FDA that lasts longer. Successful practices of Relationship Marketing is achieving much greater than the market transactions. Therefore, keep patients being more important and less expensive than trying to attract new ones.
long-term strategies to build your reputation and your practice. Strategies short term to create a temporary income, immediate boost by giving patients an incentive to buy now. By implementing long term strategies marketing in the short term, you can earn immediate income while building your reputation and practice.
In the long term Strategies
Branding. This is your image. It all patients see, hear or read about you from your advertising, public relations, print, office, staff or any other details about yourself and your practice. It is the feeling "the patients receive from you. Take an objective look at every detail of your practice to ensure that you give the right message to your potential and current patients.
Internal Image. Make sure your office is the friendly atmosphere, clean and comfortable. If you not updated your practice in three years, it is time to paint and decorate with new colors and textures. Include soft lighting, music and art to represent the aesthetic interest. It is also a good place to submit work. Show your credentials, testimonials and photo albums so that patients feel as if you know even before you met.
And be sure your staff is friendly, professional and attentive to each patient, every time. Nothing is more important than patient relationships, and an excellent staff is essential to your success. Make sure they are properly trained on your procedures, powers and relationships with patients. Hold regular meetings of staff so that everyone is on the same page, and provide additional procedures so they can relay firsthand experience your patients.
In addition, examine the experiences of your patients, their point of view. Be sure there is a smooth transition of each step in the process of patient flow. This includes greeting patients, ushering them into an exam room, they do not speak first with the staff, the doctor then again the staff to discuss next steps. It requires training and awareness on the part of everyone to make this smooth and effortless.
View from outside. To ensure that your message reaches its target your ads under review and other major projects, such your website and public relations efforts. Make sure it presents you as the expert in your field and the # 1 choice for them. In addition, make sure Information for your photo and contact to date. Ask your website address on any given URL, pamphlets and information kits patients – that people can easily find yourself on the Internet. All these tools help or hurt the image you are trying to portray. So make sure that high quality, positioning you as successful and experienced.
Public relationships. You want to establish yourself as an expert in the industry who knows the latest technology and procedures. However, keep in mind that public relations can be tedious and expensive if you go through a PR agency. It can take months to get coverage, but it can pay off. Not only can you make good public relations for new patients, but it can also reinforce the decision of your patients to choose yourself and stay with you.
Community Outreach. Get involved in your community can give you great visibility. Each community has its "influential persons" in order to know them by attending their events and offering to speak. Involved in local charities and fundraising events by offering gift baskets and other forms of support. You can get a great PR out of it and be seen as caring and committed in your community.
Speaking Opportunities. Offer to speak in your community and meetings of your medical industry and the local media on topics you know well. This will help the brand as "the go-to" physician in your specialty. Prepare a package of multimedia information that includes articles you have written, past PR you have received your information identification, your photo and anything else that differentiates you from your competitors.
Engine Optimization. Internet marketing and pay-per-click search engines Search is another way to become visible to new patients. For exposure Internet access you want, use professionals who understand the world intrinsic meta tags and page positioning. This is the opposite of what you would normally do in marketing, which is to determine your target market and communicate with them.
With Internet marketing, you are displaying your practice and learning that interests them and what they are interested because this great net is thrown over your practice, you may need to spend scanned the surf on the Internet compared to those who are really serious about the review of your services. You want to review the performance of your website monthly reports to see how many hits you are getting and you also want to review the e-mail you get directly from your website from your "Contact Us". If you are getting too "tire kickers," and not enough qualified leads, you may want to develop a response Automatic answer general questions about yourself and your practice and then the prospective patient calls your office to schedule a consultation.
Mass Media. You can not enter this arena of marketing lightly, either press print, television, radio or cable television. It takes a lot of time, resources and patience to see this work marketing channel for you. A typical American sees more than 3,000 messages per day. Therefore, your message must speak to the patient who is perfectly willing to listen. That requires creativity, repetition and persistence. If you want the phone rings, you must offer an irresistible special patients can not refuse. If your goal is to build your brand awareness, you need a message designed with taste, which explains why you're the best.
Short-Term Strategies
Start with your current patients. While you wait for your term marketing strategies throughout understand, implement some "early action" marketing projects that give you recipes now. Start with your current patient base. They already know and you trust. Therefore, they are much more likely to meet your marketing efforts. Thus, the use of marketing mix to promote cross- comparable procedures and treatments and encourage referrals.
If your patient is interested in photorejuvenation, there is a good luck, she is also interested in vein therapy, soft tissue augmentation and medical-strength retail products. Be sure to check with your company by individual laws to learn the back and not make marketing your services. According to the specialty, it can be either goods or services.
Newsletter. Send a quarterly newsletter to your database to educate them on the latest news in enhancing the cosmetic world. You can also include a special offer.
Direct Mail. Work with your suppliers to sponsor a play that promotes comarketed you and them. Vendors are usually happy to help you promote their products and services, and they can help you cover your marketing costs.
Internet Marketing. Having a designer to create an HTML message with a special offer that can be sent by email to your database of patients per month. Make sure you have permission to send an e-mail your patients, and they must be able to withdraw if they wish. This is by far the cheapest and fastest way to communicate with your patients. This is the time to collect e-mails at every opportunity. Make messages short and interesting so that patients look forward to the next.
Word-of-mouth referral program. Provide some incentive for your patients to refer friends or family. The best references come satisfied patients who were treated well and got an excellent result. Thank them with a personal call and / or a note every time they send someone to your practice. VIP cards. Americans love frequent buyer programs. So take care of patients who regularly you see for cosmetic improvement. They want, and perhaps even expect, some incentive to be faithful to your practice. Talk with your suppliers, because they may be able to assist you with a VIP program. For example, manufacturers of Botox ® Cosmetic and Restylane ® offer a frequent user VIP card that offers a discount on your next treatment. Gift Certificates. Make sure the display of gift certificates hooks your patients see. If they are happy with your services, they will buy them for friends, family and colleagues. In-House events. Invite your patients and their friends, and institutions Spa neighbors, Salons and retail store personnel, at your office for an evening of education. Present what is new in the improvement Cosmetics and sell products.
Monitoring results
Make sure your staff asks every new patient how they heard the doctor. They need to know how patients are finding their way to your office. The best way to track results is a newspaper near telephones to remind the receptionist to ask. It can then enter that information in one software. You will be able to make regular reports to monitor trends and marketing results. You can also code your ads, use a special phone line or to present a coupon for the special price you have mentioned in your ad.
Remember, we need different messages and different avenues to connect with your favorite market target. If patients are not ready aesthetic today for your services, they will be three, six, nine months from now. Make sure you are there to meet their needs.
For more free tips, strategies and resources to grow your aesthetic practice, V ISIT www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com or call (877) 339-8833.
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