Plastic Surgery Marketing Strategies That Attract New Patients

Many plastic surgery groups, cosmetic offices, and skincare brands, like you, are in the fight to gain market share and online visibility today, too. Consumer behavior has shifted over the course of a decade with the rise of internet usage for research and communication. A huge part of this is to find out about various treatment choices, suppliers, price, maintenance, etc., all of which are occurring online. 

So as you can imagine the practices that are ranking higher online are grabbing everybody’s attention first and leaving the rest of the businesses to catch up. It’s not a difficult conclusion to make that if a practice in your market is dominating search then they are most likely attracting and obtaining new patients. So let’s talk about how they’re doing it and the plastic surgery marketing strategies that attract new patients so you can build a comprehensive, competitive aesthetic marketing plan that is effective in increasing your new patient acquisition. 

Plastic Surgery Marketing Strategies

Qualified Leads Turn Into New Patients

It’s one thing to get a ton of leads from your website and other marketing efforts, but it is another thing for those leads to turn into actual patients of your practice. A qualified lead is a lead that fits your target audience persona but is also ready to buy a plastic surgery service. In order for plastic surgery marketing strategies and plastic surgery advertising to be effective, you must be targeting the correct demographic with your marketing efforts. 

One proven marketing platform for precise targeting is Facebook Ads Manager. Within Facebook Ads Manager, you can set up highly targeted ads that are branded and promote a specific message to people who are similar to your current patient mix. For example, if you know your target audience consists of mostly stay at home mothers who enjoy cooking and yoga, then you can select these attributes as a way for the algorithm to only show your ad to people that fit those categories. It’s important to note a change to Facebook targeting due to the Facebook Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018 there are restrictions on location, income and purchase history categories. 

Stay Connected with Past Patients

Those happy and satisfied patients of yours are a fantastic source of referrals, and even in the age of the digital world word-of-mouth advertising is still paramount to a businesses success. Even after a successful surgery, continuing to stay connected with those past patients is an important part of using plastic surgery marketing strategies and aesthetics marketing ideas that attract new patients. 

I recommend continuing to nurture those relationships by not being too quick to remove them from your email and SMS text lists. Unless the patient has opted out, this is a great way to continue to update them on new services, providers, and any post-procedure support your practice offers. Because plastic surgery is such an intimate thing it can be beneficial to even use social media as a way to keep in touch and engage with their posts. Another oldy but a goody is sending out Holiday cards to all past patients wishing them Happy Holidays and well wishes in the new year. These little things add up and keep your brand top-of-mind. 

Offering Complimentary Consultations 

Offering a free or complimentary consultation for any surgery, treatment or the like is one proven plastic surgery marketing strategies that attract new patients. Deciding to have a plastic surgery procedure done is a big decision for anyone. So it has been effective for plastic surgeons to offer complimentary consultations as a way to create fewer barriers for leads to reach out to them, meet, and ultimately become a paying patient. 

Here is your opportunity to educate them about the process, and show them your before and after results, while answering any questions or concerns they may have. Setting expectations with your prospective patient creates trust and eases the decision-making process for them. 

Content Marketing 

Many prospective patients have heard a number of myths about getting plastic surgery or horror stories of plastic surgery gone wrong, and most likely have anxiety about a botched operation. The very best way to facilitate that anxiety would be to show them what to expect, educate, inform through myth-busting, and highlight your expertise. 

Content marketing is an amazing tool of aesthetic brand marketing when comparing plastic surgery marketing strategies to employ at your aesthetic practice. Creating content that addresses your target audiences’ concerns or hesitations with your content marketing makes you an authority figure in the space and builds trust. This will naturally attract new patients to your practice and your work. 

Search Engine Optimized Website 

A new patient could potentially hear of you and your aesthetic practice from a number of different sources, but one thing that is for certain, they will Google you. What will they find when they search for your practice? It goes without saying you need your practice to rank high for your geotargeted target keywords, but it’s another thing to say you have a fully search engine optimized plastic surgery website. 

Your website is an introduction to your value, why you’re the best in your market, your real patient before and after photos, and patient testimonials. It’s a lot of work to put all of this together for your website, and it is certainly costly to have the website built and maintained. So make sure it can be found! 

To ensure your website is visible online, start with gathering the geotargeted keyword of your main and ancillary services.  For example, searches like “top plastic surgeon close to me,” “top nose job expert in [your market ],” etc. These types of keywords normally indicate powerful buying intent and that is why getting visitors for them is tremendously valuable. Something that is often overlooked is your business listings and local directory listings linking back to your website. You want to make sure the NAP data (title, address, and telephone number) are consistent across all business and local listings, and that your website, content, social media profiles, etc. all reflect the same information.

Pay-per-click Advertising 

Organic or SEO keyword plastic surgery marketing strategies are a long-term game plan and can drive an incredible number of new leads, however, sometimes it is worth playing the short-term game to gain new leads. This is where Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) comes into the picture. With PPC, you get full control over your website’s local search position. Of course, depending on your budget and how expensive clicks are in your market, PPC can allow your practice to rank #1, #2 or #3 for top-converting local keywords for your industry. 

This can get very expensive and in my experience of managing digital marketing campaigns for plastic surgeons, PPC leads tend to not be the most qualified lead. It’s important to strategically approach your PPC campaigns and to not just target any and all keywords for your services. Attracting new patients with PPC advertising requires some testing and possibly a few custom landing page experiences to convert the right type of leads for your practice. 

Retargeting 

Potential plastic surgery patients usually do not convert the initial visit on your own site. By the time they’re prepared –after having considered other choices –they might have already forgotten about your practice. Retargeting is one of the best and most effective plastic surgery marketing strategies available today. By retargeting website visitors with a pixel or cookie (a part of code) that is stored in their system via their browser when they come to your site, you are able to display advertisements (such as the Facebook advertisements ) on any website they visit after leaving your website. 

It’s important to note a few regulations that have popped up regarding browser cookie use called GDPR. You may have seen over the past couple of years a number of websites now notify you when you enter a website that they use cookies for things like retargeting and you are asked to accept or agree to the terms. 

Reputation Management and Review Generation

Reviews play a large part in your potential patients’ decision-making process. That is why you have to collect as many testimonials as you can. If your service is top-notch, you will receive largely positive reviews which will increase your reputation. However, because nobody is ideal, you might obtain a couple of negative reviews that require managing. Implementing an online reputation management (ORM) solution can help you effectively manage every aspect linked to internet testimonials –amassing them, directing them to examine websites, reacting to them, as well as analyzing them to learn unique aspects regarding your support and the total patient experience.

Patients expect testimonials as part of their online research and private recommendations, therefore why don’t you reevaluate their reach into the highest amount of patients? Pick a few of your top reviews and scatter them as testimonial quotations throughout your website. 

Monitoring Social Media Trends and Using Social Listening

Monitoring social media trends and using social listening are powerful plastic surgery marketing strategies. Not only does this allow you to tap into what the public opinion is of your brand, but it also allows your brand to stay relevant. Plastic surgery is a hot topic on social media but especially social media and there is a big opportunity for your brand to learn how to market aesthetic services effectively and generate new patients at the same time. 

A highly effective social media trend breaking through the noise of social media is the behind-the-scenes look at plastic surgery procedures and facilities. Plastic surgery being something that was taboo for so long has taken the spotlight as many patients are proud to have had plastic surgery causing more and more people to want to know more. 

Boosting Vidoes and Video Markting 

Video content has been king in the marketing world so-to-speak for some time now and it’s not going anywhere. In fact, it is predicted that by 2021, 80 percent of online visitors will probably driven by video marketing. The majority of the video content is going to be absorbed through social networking platforms, like Instagram and YouTube. This offers a huge opportunity for plastic surgery practices to direct their advertising budget to boost videos and creating videos to attract new patients. 

Hire An Aesthetic Marketing Partner

You are busy running a practice and performing incredible surgeries every day. Worrying about how to market a plastic surgery practice and implementing these ever-demanding digital marketing campaigns can be a lot to manage. Now is the time more than ever before to hire an aesthetic consultant marketing partner who can help build a strategic marking plan that is custom to your practice’s needs and business goals. Reach out to me today to discuss how I can partner with you to achieve growth for your practice!