First of All, is Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgeons Even Necessary?
What started out as a friendly digital medium for sharing days at the beach with the family or pictures of your dog has grown into an aggressive marketplace with competitors fighting over the eyeballs of potential patients. In the United States alone, 79% of all Americans have at least 1 social media profile. In a country with a population of 327.2 million people multiplied by that 79%, that comes out to a total of 258.5 million people that have at least 1 social media profile. According to a study done by MarketingNewsWatch.com, the average internet user has an average of 7.6 social media accounts. As if that information wasn’t powerful enough, the average time per person spent on social media per day is 116 minutes. If the average person works and sleeps both 8 hours per day, this means that internet users are spending nearly 25% of their free time each and every day on social media! So, to answer the question of whether or not you even need to market on social media… YES! Social media marketing for plastic surgeons is 100% necessary!
What Type of Content Should You Incorporate into Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgeons?
Engaging Content
Engaging content is content produced by a practice to attempt to establish an emotional connection with its social media following and connect with potential patients on a human-to-human level. Given current trends in social media marketing for plastic surgery, when a doctor thinks about where to start building the foundation of their online presence, the answer is almost unanimously Instagram. Instagram is a social media platform on which users can share photos and videos and write captions about the content they are posting. Users can include hashtags (#), which will group their post with other posts sharing the same hashtag to allow other users to search for that specific type of content. Using hashtags is a great strategy for effective social media marketing for plastic surgeons. Some examples of highly searched hashtags on Instagram are #tummytuck, #plasticsurgery and #botox. Instagram is the most personal social platform available to the public today, and it is very important that practices are incorporating this powerful, personal medium into their social media marketing initiatives when it comes to plastic surgery or non-invasive aesthetics.
You Can’t Just Rely on Instagram for Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgeons, Though…
As great as Instagram is, it is only one social media platform. It is easy to get caught up in Instagram because some consider it to be the most popular platform right now, but we cannot forget that the average person has 7.6 social media accounts. Practices need to be posting to other platforms as well in their social media marketing strategy as it relates to plastic surgery. For example, other proven platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Other engaging content in social media marketing for plastic surgeons could include pictures of the doctor doing charity work, raising money for a local cause or a warming welcome video that highlights your practice to potential patients.
It cannot be stressed enough how important social media marketing for plastic surgeons is, especially when it comes to creating those emotional connections and patient engagement. Engaging content is one of the two keys needed to unlock the full potential of social media marketing for plastic surgeons.
The Important Role of Conversion-Driven Content in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
The second key is to blend this engaging and entertaining content with strategic conversion-driven content intended to drive revenue. While most practices can handle their engaging content on their own, a common practice is to outsource the duties of conversion-driven content to a company like Crystal Clear Digital Marketing. The most important reason for outsourcing this is the amount of time and effort it takes to post multiple times a day. Additionally, the technical aspects of creating landing pages and associated backlinks for these posts take even more time. Here at Crystal Clear, we recommend posting conversion-driven content in your social media marketing for plastic surgeons strategy twice per day across four platforms minimum. Remember, though — this is in addition to your engaging content. Each conversion-driven post should be focused on your top treatments and backlinked to a correlating landing page on your site. The ancillary benefit to the backlinking of social posts is that it provides a significant amount of SEO impact points towards the organic Google rankings of the practice.
When evaluating the actions and results of social media marketing for plastic surgeons, a lot of the same questions arise. “How many likes did we get? How many new followers did we earn this month? How many people watched our videos?” While these are all great questions and having the answers are extremely important, there is one more question that we need to ask ourselves: “Why am I marketing on social media?” The answer is the same for every plastic surgeon out there… to increase the quantity and quality of qualified patients! We always need to remember what our goal is when we first start posting to social media — to make money! So, the real questions we should be asking are, “How many patients saw a post and filled out a form or called my practice? How many of those patients scheduled and showed up to their consultation? How many of those consults booked a treatment?”, and ultimately, “What did we spend on social media to actually generate those patients?” A practice can have all the followers in the world, but if those followers aren’t converting into loyal, paying patients, then what’s the point?
What to Take Away as it Relates to Social Media Marketing for Plastic Surgeons
- Every plastic surgeon looking to drive revenue from social media needs to be posting daily with a specific goal associated with each post.
- The most effective way to attract a new patient from social media and into the practice is through a blended strategy of engaging and conversion-driven social media content.
- Backlink every conversion-driven post to a specific landing page on the practice’s website with clear calls to action available for the patient to provide their information.
- Remember why social media marketing for plastic surgeons is so important — to make money!
Crystal Clear Digital Marketing offers a fully-integrated digital marketing and social media platform. Please contact us today to learn more. We look forward to speaking with you and helping you find, serve and keep more patients profitably!
