Some great business and marketing techniques
Congratulations and well done on taking this first step into the exciting world of medical aesthetics. The anti-ageing market is booming – not only are more consumers using these services than ever before, but more healthcare professionals are entering the field, which means more patients, but much more competition.
Those who succeed in the face of this competition will be those who prepare well, have the right business and marketing strategies in place, those who listen and respond to their patient’s needs and those who constantly strive to be the best: innovating and growing as they learn and develop their skills on a continual basis. And I don’t mean just the essential clinical skills, but the equally essential business and marketing skills, which are often overlooked and left to last.
In order to grow a profitable Medical Aesthetic company today, business owners must have a wealth of knowledge in all areas: branding, marketing, social media, customer service, astute financial skills, fundamental business skills and of course exceptional clinical skills. Which is a tall order and also quite a challenge as you try to manage the fine balance between working IN your business, treating your patients and working ON your business, marketing it and managing it on a day-to-day basis. Marketing is a kind of economic warfare – for any given patient, there is only one winner, but for the market there could be several losers.
Goals and plans
First things first…why are you really setting up your new business? Do you want this to be a lifestyle business? Extra income in addition to your day job? Or do you want to build the most successful and profitable clinic in your area and become known for being one of the top practitioners in the UK, working hard to build a business that is profitable, sustainable and will give you the freedom you desire? One that can be sold on, or retired from in the future?
Whatever your goals and dreams for your business are, you will need to answer the following questions to form your business and marketing plans. Your plans don’t need to be ‘war and peace’ but working documents that will help you to promote and run your new business effectively. They will help to keep you on track, ensuring you measure and improve as you go and ensuring you don’t wait til year end (please don’t!) to see if you have reached your financial targets and business objectives.
A good business plan needs to address a variety of important topics, including: budgets, profit & Loss (P&L) analysis, product line evaluation, product and technology assessments to name but a few. Ensure you know the direct costs, indirect costs and overheads that are associated with your new business and keep a close eye on each.
Most people start a new business by getting a logo, setting up a website and then hoping for the best. But the days of ‘open your doors and they will come’ have long gone, so start with: A clear vision of what you want your business to become, a clear understanding of your target market, a clear understanding of what your ideal patient will want from you, what motivates them to buy and what keeps them from buying. Have a clear grasp of your competition, a clear understanding of the marketing media you plan to use, a practical timeline and an ample budget and one that is often the hardest, particularly in the first year: a commitment to stay the course and succeed.
Standing out
Where is your practice going to be this time next year? What will it look like? What are each one of your patients’ worth? Where are they coming from (marketing source)? What are they worth in the first month, year and lifetime value? Is one more valuable than another based on what they buy, what they don’t buy, what aftercare they require? How long will they stay?
Ask yourself which services will bring the most patients through the door—and keep them coming back: Which product and service offerings are most needed in your area? Which will be most profitable to deliver? What equipment will you need for the procedures? How do you choose which supplier(s) to use? Should you buy or lease equipment now, or wait until you have mastered injectables? Do you have sufficient insurance? How do you establish a pricing structure for your new treatments? Where will you establish your new business? Will you rent a room from a salon, or will you find your own premises?
Remember what anyone in the property market says – “location, location, location” – as this applies to you too. And perhaps the most important one of all… do you know which marketing efforts it will take to get a steady stream of your ideal patients through your door – once you have exhausted your list of friends and family? How will you keep the patients coming back? If you start by marketing yourself too cheaply, or even using a discount coupon companies to attract patients (please, please don’t!!) you will only end up with the bargain hunters, those who will move on to the next best deal and never become a loyal patient.
Your unique offering
Make sure you stand out by offering a special something which defines you and your business and sets you apart from the crowd: What is your unique offering (USP)? Is there something that sets you apart, something that will attract qualified patients? If so, find it and capitalise on it. If not, you may wish to reconsider your move into aesthetics, as there are many providers who don’t offer anything unique and compelling. Ask yourself: “What unique skills or experience can I bring to my patients?”
One of the greatest pitfalls of any business – and especially in aesthetics – is trying to be “everything to everybody.” When you offer too many choices, trying to cover too many services, you ultimately just confuse the patient while reducing your potential profitability. Creating a service menu offering competitive (but not too cheap) prices – is essential at the start. But your ultimate goal is to create a solid concept of who you are and what your aesthetics business is, something that maintains your integrity while being marketable.
If you want to be really wealthy, take a step back, look at the marketplace and ask how you can massively disrupt it: You can disrupt by price, by innovating and charging more (like Apple), by using technology, by sheer quality of service, or by becoming a master of marketing. Successful marketing tactics involve external and internal methods as well as creative and innovative thinking. Internal marketing starts with making sure your clinic has an ambience that is inviting, comfortable and is a representation of you. Too many clinics feel just that, clinical! Like a doctors waiting room.
The best ones manage to find a balance between a clinical feel (after all you are offering medical treatments), but one that encourages your patients to relax, return and refer. Let’s face it, the majority of your aesthetic patients are looking for ‘corrective’ procedures, but many of your competition offering a swift ‘in and out’ conveyor belt type service that don’t naturally encourage you to attend more frequently than you ‘have’ to. Being new to the industry, you will need to offer more than that – something to entice those patients away from elsewhere. Start with a compelling and unique experience, one that makes your patients feel listened to, valued and special, one they will remember, one that gives results and value for money. Remember, people will forget what you said or did, but they will never forget how you made them feel, so provide an experience to ensure your ideal patients return and refer.
Advertising in focus
Minimise or avoid ‘traditional advertising’: You are not an established brand yet, so concentrate your marketing efforts and budget on more ‘laser focused’ marketing, rather than the ‘spray and pray’ approach. Think about it, traditional advertising methods are likely be the most expensive part of any marketing budget, so anyone considering this should research very carefully, before they decide on (or get talked into) anything. I know many new businesses who waste money on radio, print advertising in local papers and magazines and even billboards and it still amazes me to this day. Let’s face it, if any aesthetic patient happens to actually see or hear the advert at the time it is placed, are you really going to convert them if they are happy with their current practitioner? If it was you, would an advert on the radio, or a billboard with a pretty face convince you to stop and take a chance on someone new? Probably not!
Whenever possible, find the lowest-cost alternative that works: Think outside the box. Don’t do what your competition is doing. Consider actually go in the other direction and create new services and packages they don’t offer. Creating an overlap of services is acceptable, but work hard to create unique solutions to unmet market needs. See what patients are looking for, create surveys and run local focus groups to ask what they need. Analyse your local market and determine what will connect with your target market most effectively. Ensure your message portrays you as the expert in your field and the No. 1 choice for them.
Getting involved in your community can give you tremendous exposure. Every community has its “movers and shakers,” so get to know them by attending their events and offering to speak. Get involved in local charities and fundraising events. There is great PR in being seen as caring and committed to your community. Aesthetic patients are web savvy and they do most of their research online before they even call you to get more information or book. The more you educate your potential patients via blogs, articles and educational marketing messages, the more chances you have to start earning their trust. Once they see you as the expert and valued potential partner for their procedure, they will feel comfortable calling to book their initial consultation.
Getting off the ground
When you are ready to begin: Consider how you will convert an enquiry into a paying patient, how you will ensure you retain them after their first treatment, your plans for follow-ups, how you will encourage them to see you more frequently by offering them appropriate new services, products and treatments. How you will generate referrals (don’t forget this is a very powerful marketing and promotion tool). How you plan to create strategic alliances with local businesses who serve, but do not compete for, your target audiences (i.e. hairdressers, gyms etc). Always remember they will be asking “what’s in it for me” so find creative and legal ways of incentivising these potential partners to stay motivated and be a useful referral source. To measure your marketing success, you must effectively and consistently track your new patients and prospects. Find out how your new patients are finding their way to you as it is essential to know what is working, what isn’t working and where to concentrate your efforts and spend.
The easiest way to track results is a log near the telephones to remind the receptionist to ask. Make sure you use technology and not paper records to log and track every aspect of your patient’s journey with you from the consultation, medical and treatment records and photos to the follow up and aftercare. Make sure you can easily pull up reports to track trends, spend and results. Constantly review your business from your patient’s perspective, by making sure there is a smooth transition in every step of the patient journey. Did you know…? The number one reason patients will leave your clinic is not because of a bad result. It will be because of ‘Perceived Indifference’, meaning they didn’t feel valued, so they don’t feel compelled to return. So make sure you communicate to your patients regularly; use emails, newsletters, postal mailings and social networking – to stay in touch, motivating them to return and to refer others.
Social media
When using social media to attract an abundance of potential patients, you need to do much more than just show up and post about the treatments and discounts you offer: Your patients want and need more from you than that. Imagine you’ve just waved at a random person across the street and their immediate response it to thrust a flyer in your hand and suggest you buy something? Would you feel inclined to seek them out and spend time with them again? It is no different online. If you come on too strong, you’ll likely get the metaphorical door slammed in your face. Remember to be useful: It’s not about you — take every piece of content, quote or idea you plan to share and flip it around so that it is much more about the reader than about your company. If it’s too overwhelming then choose just one or two social networks that you enjoy spending time on, where you know your ideal patients are ‘hanging out’, focus on them and ignore the others.
Put aside time every day to create posts that build trust and relationships. Once they get to know, like and trust you, they will want to know more. Ensure you capture contact data from social media, just in-case access stops, we all know businesses who have had their Facebook pages shut down….! Be unselfish. Are you reading other streams and retweeting other people’s stuff, or are you only pushing your own material?! Use both “value adding content” (blogs, white papers, webinars etc) and “conversation” (personal-sounding posts) on social networking sites to maintain contact and attract new followers who can be converted into patients.
What about you?
So, if all of the above is in place, what about you? You may have big goals and dreams but have you asked yourself if you have what it takes to be a leader in this fast-paced market? Do you have what it takes to run a business? Developing a can-do and will-do attitude – staying the course no matter what may try to derail you – is the essential character-defining attribute of any successful entrepreneur. Start with a rigorously-honest self-assessment – to make sure that owning and running a business is right for you.
Ask yourself: Do you have resilience? An optimistic mind-set (critical for any business owner), do you have support from family and friends, is funding in place, or has it at least been identified to help you through the start-up phase and any tough times? How will you cope when its six months down the line and not much is happening, will you give up or will you learn from your mistakes (and those of others) and fight even harder to succeed? Running a business, any business, is not easy and I’m sure you’ve heard the failure statistics, so don’t be one of those businesses and do what you can to set yourself up to thrive, not just survive.
As industry consultants, not a day goes by when we don’t see a business owner making ‘questionable’ decisions about their marketing spend, often replacing the essential 20-30% of revenue that should be used to promote and market their business in favour of fancy clinic décor or the latest new equipment. Please try not to fall for the latest sales talk about a brand new product, service or marketing gimmick. Anything ‘new’ needs to be in the market for at least a year first to prove itself. Please do remember it takes time, intensity and consistency, a good mix of online and offline marketing and enough budget to be effective. Strive to get the most out of your marketing spend: “Not bad” or “Okay” should never be good enough. Plan on earning success the hard way, one patient at a time and follow the tried and tested methods detailed overleaf to build a long term, sustainable and profitable business.
YOUR TOP 8 ESSENTIAL MARKETING STRATEGIES:
- Google Ad-Words / PPC: Use this type of advertising selectively and very carefully – they do work often giving over 1000% or more in return on investment (ROI), but test them and stay on top of the costs. Do not ‘abdicate’ any of this to a so called expert without understanding the basics yourself. This is measurable marketing at its very best and you can tell at a glance if it is generating a positive ROI.
- Facebook: The best thing about Facebook is that you can select a very specific demographic for advertising so that it only displays to your targeted audience. As with all advertising, the key is to determine which ads work best for you, so test different versions to find the top two or three that work. A presence on Facebook does not mean just a fan page and some ‘Likes’. It means a sustained commitment to ongoing, regular and frequent outreach to your friends and fans via images, blogs, video blogs and shorter posts. Facebook is a complex and ever-changing landscape. And remember that ‘Likes’ are vanity but the number of new patients and profits that are sanity!
- YouTube: adding video to your marketing strategy is a smart move. Videos are indexed higher by the search engines because the current trend is that people would rather watch a video than read. Video gives you the perfect opportunity to educate your prospective patients and start the relationship with them by showcasing your personality. Make sure your website and contact information is prominently displayed so that it’s easy for people to take action and contact you. Use ‘pre-roll’ ads in YouTube to get traffic to your website.
- Twitter: use this social networking site to share your content to attract patients. When you focus more on educating your followers rather than selling to them, you are laying the foundation for a strong relationship that will build over time. Twitter success requires regular and frequent posts –several times per day, along with a willingness to engage others in conversations, rather than just posting about you! Keep to 140 characters – about 20-to-30 words.
- Your Website must be professionally designed with the aesthetic patient in mind. It must be easy to navigate and offer a clear ‘value proposition’ on the homepage, which is a clear statement of how your service solves their problems, improves their situation and why they should choose you. Your home page must offer a ‘call to action’ to engage with a prospective patient by offering them something free but of value. Use your free downloadable content to collect visitor data. Replace ‘sliders’ with a personal video from you that promotes your free giveaway. Use short videos to explain your services and FAQ’s, and to feature patient testimonials. Use black text on a white background and break up the content with bullet points, images (that you are licenced to use) and sub-headings. Ensure your content is professionally written and is focused on your prospective patient and not you. Use the word ‘you’ more often than ‘me’ or ‘we’ – even on your ‘About Us’ page.
- A system for referrals must be in place to encourage referrals from your patients and then track them to ensure they are thanked, acknowledged and encouraged to refer even more friends, family members and colleagues.
- Low Cost Marketing Ideas include promotional evenings, targeted lunches, networking events, joint ventures such as fashion shows, charity talks and fundraisers, regular information based seminars and webinars to attract the public into your clinic on an informal basis (i.e. how to care for your skin). Make the events fun and educational and use them for patient appreciation, as well as patient attraction. They will go a long way in building trust and loyalty.
- Fast Acting Internal Marketing: Use eye-catching signage and other creative tools in your reception and treatment rooms to prompt patients to ask about certain procedures and to avoid the dreaded words, “I didn’t know you did that!” Use each tool to clearly explain the outcome your patient can expect – in a way they will most likely understand. We all learn through hearing, touching, seeing and feeling so use as many senses as possible to help your patient comprehend what is possible for them. Display patient testimonials in story form describing what their concern was, what you did for them and how they feel now. Display a testimonial album and digital photo frames filled with before/after patient photos of good/great/exceptional results. Use a variety of patient ages, ethnicities and skin types so your patient can identify with others just like them. Finally, don’t forget direct mail, newsletters (online and offline), gift certificates, VIP Cards, speaking at events, networking and educational blogs and art
Many thanks to Pam Underdown of Aesthetic Business Transformations for this guest blog
