10 Amazingly Simple Digital Marketing Strategies for Growing Plastic Surgery and Cosmetic Surgery Practices
Providers of plastic and reconstructive surgery often find it difficult to maintain a foothold in their respective fields. Potential elective surgery patients must take into consideration factors like affordability, benefits, and convenience, which makes for a more competitive environment.
Much of the research that prospective patients are conducting, such as various treatment options, cost, providers,etc., is taking place over the internet. The providers who get the most attention are those who establish authority across different platforms.
Here are our Top Ten plastic surgery marketing strategies to help ensure that you acquire many new patients and distance yourself from your competition.
1. Target Potential Clients Who Have Higher Value
You should be focusing on patients who have enough maturity and affluence to devote the time, money, and energy to obtain your services. Facebook is still the ideal platform in this regard. And it goes beyond mere demographics. Factors that you can leverage include annual income level, shopping behaviors, relationship status, dating interest, activities and purchases, and interest in beauty topics and products.
Google Ads is another platform that allows for convenient patient-targeting based upon different factors, including income level.
2. Maintain Connections with Previous Patients
Your, no doubt, happy patients are a tremendous resource for new referrals; their social proof is a far more effective form of advertising than any other alternative. It is also free. That does not mean that this is a passive process. You must continually offer them new information regarding current services or practices that they can share with others.
Don’t let them forget about you and the services that you provide.
3. Turn Unhappy Patients Into Happy Patients
Many times, it is not the actual service that you provided that makes a patient unhappy. It may be as simple as a patient having unrealistic expectations due to poor communication. Good communication is the key to building lasting relationships. Offer them a free appointment, and educate them on every step of the proposed procedure. You might show them some before-and-after photos so that they can obtain a realistic picture of what your service can offer them.
4. Building a Great Plastic Surgery Site
Regardless of where a potential patient learned of your practice, they will eventually do some online research and find your website for more information. It is critical that your site is persuasive enough to convert visitors into patients. It needs to have a good appearance and intuitive layout. Be sure to include some patient testimonials for social proof.
5. Rank High on Google
It doesn’t matter how great your practice is if potential patients cannot find you on the internet. And the way that they do that is through Google searches. You want to rank highly for search phrases like “best plastic surgeon near me” or “best plastic surgeon in [city name]” so that new patients can locate you when looking for the services that you provide.
6. Instant Ranking Through Paid Searches
When you just can’t wait for traffic to slowly roll in, paid searches like Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are a great choice. This is where you place bids through Google’s auction system so that you rank highly for relevant and local search terms. The amount that you allocate for your budget will depend upon your competition.
7. Use Content to Establish Your Authority
If you think of your website as the vehicle, content is the engine driving it to its designated audience. Providing content that is informative, relevant, and engaging is the best way of increasing your ranking for desired search keywords. It also helps establish your brand as an authority in the field of plastic surgery.
Creating an informative blog on your site with useful and relevant information goes a long way to establishing authority. Be sure to include infographics, videos, case summaries and blog posts. Always include relevant search keywords in your posts. Don’t neglect social media for the distribution of your content.
8. Utilize Remarketing
Prospective patients typically require multiple visits for conversion. Remarketing allows you to remain in the forefront of their minds while they are researching. Use Facebook algorithms to accurately target prospective clients. You can target repeat visitors to your site or retarget with Facebook ads. They can even schedule a consultation without leaving Facebook.
9. Zealously Guard Your Reputation by Managing Your Reviews
Reviews represent social proof. They are extremely influential to prospective clients because it gives them a preview of your services before they have spent any of their hard-earned money. It is critical to gather as many positive reviews as possible.
Providing outstanding service is the best way to gain positive reviews and establish a stellar reputation.
Naturally, mistakes will be made, and you may receive a few negative reviews along the way that can harm your online reputation. Using Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a great way to manage all of your online reviews.
Digitally, prospective patients view reviews as equally important as personal recommendations. Be sure to prominently feature glowing reviews and testimonials throughout your website. Create an entire page on your site devoted to testimonials, which will be regularly indexed by Google and boost your search rankings.
10. Spend More on Videos
In this digital world that we are living in, video pulls in customers. Studies have found that having a good video leads to a competitive advantage. Most videos are viewed on social media platforms like YouTube. This means that you must increase your budget on videos to establish and maintain your reputation.
The Takeaway
Now is the time to significantly expand your practice. In today’s digital world, it is no longer enough to simply rely upon your outstanding services to attract new patients. This is particularly true when your local competition is already offering services at least as good as yours.
It is critical to catch and hold the attention of your prospective patients. By following the plastic surgery marketing strategies outlined here, you will put some distance between you and your competition.
If you would like some expert advice to guide you in acquiring new patients, please reach out to us today.