A comprehensive plastic surgery marketing strategy can achieve many goals, including increasing brand awareness and converting leads into patients. But the time and knowledge required for such a strategy can quickly put it out of reach. That’s why at Crystal Clear Digital Marketing in Orlando, FL, we’ve designed the Social Patient Center, a comprehensive software platform capable of easily deploying your marketing efforts.
Plastic Surgery Marketing Made Easy
When cosmetic care providers think of software needs for their practices, they tend to think of digital calendars that easily allow patient appointments to be scheduled. While this is vital, you can gain even more traction with a software suite that covers marketing activities as well.
A Ready Solution: The Social Patient Center
As its name implies, the Social Patient Center (SPC) from Crystal Clear Digital Marketing allows you to engage with patients in a variety of ways, including 100% automated emails. These messages are not new; they’ve been a successful component of most digital marketing plans for over a decade and are now able to reach patients in more versatile ways than ever before.
Email in and of itself is valuable because it remains the preferred way for people to be contacted. By automating this communication tool, the SPC harnesses your existing resources – like your website and patient contact list – to improve patient relationship management, lead generation, and conversions. Internal obstacles this system can overcome include:
- Inconsistent follow-up with digital leads
- Lack of a plan that promotes patient referrals, reviews, and up-sells
- No method for consolidating leads that come in from social media, email, web contact forms, and telephone
The Benefits of Automated Emails
The genesis of an automated email strategy starts with one question: how can value be provided to the intended recipient? This means you must also separate your audiences – past, present, and future clients – so they receive the appropriate content (we’ll talk about this more in just a moment). And to stay competitive, email is nothing less than a necessity. It improves practice operations by:
- Automating appointment reminders to mitigate scheduling inefficiencies
- Nurturing leads with automatic responses to commonly-asked questions
- Increasing patient engagement with testimonial requests, contests, and surveys
- Optimizing the patient experience by providing crucial patient follow-up information during recoveries
- Attracting more leads via targeted email campaigns and web forms
With the SPC, email marketing incorporates a blended strategy so you simultaneously connect with future patients and maintain contact with those you already service. Equally important, this software sends the right messages at the right time. Rather than paying a staff member to identify which patients receive satisfaction surveys and which receive post-treatment questions, the SPC fulfills these tasks for you in an organized and timely manner.
Social Media Marketing
The path from patient to doctor has changed dramatically. In a survey published by the National Institutes of Health, 96% of respondents said social media is the most influential of all online platforms for choosing a plastic surgeon. This means providers can now take ownership of their brands in a way they previously could not. But without committing to active posts, including photos and videos, you’re not taking advantage of this golden opportunity.
This is where the SPC streamlines workflows. It can integrate with your social media accounts to directly connect with your patient base. This means intuitively using the right platform for the right purpose; Twitter, for instance, is a great tool for search engine optimization because Google indexes every tweet. By contrast, Instagram uses high-res videos and photos to engage followers. When used correctly, these platforms can:
- Amplify brand awareness
- Establish confidence with new patients
- Improve patient loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals
- Increase patient retention
The Potency of Visuals
But social media doesn’t stop there. It also allows potential patients to see your skills in action, especially if you post before and after photos. Just as importantly, you can humanize your brand so people get to know you and your staff before they even enter your practice. Before social media, providers couldn’t connect with patients in such a powerful way. Now, it’s expected that you have an active presence on these platforms.
And this is a two-way street; patients get to see you just as easily as you’re able to glean information about them. The SPC, for instance, can help you understand who your base audience is by tracking demographics and monitoring when they’re online to appropriately time your own posts. You can even use this data to promote the right services at the right moment.
Mobile Marketing
Text messaging may seem like the most unlikely of all marketing tools your practice needs, but it enables you to stay in touch with future and existing patients alike. If you think this can be achieved just as easily with a phone call, you should know 64% of adults ignore calls from numbers they don’t recognize. In addition, voicemails are no longer trusty ways to connect; 30% remain unheard for three days or more, and over 20% never get checked.
Texting, on the other hand, is much more reliable. Consider these statistics:
- 98% of all text messages get read
- 95% are read within three minutes of being sent
- Most people respond to a text within 90 seconds
SMS Marketing
You can use SMS to promote exclusive sales and events in a more immediate way than emails can provide. The key is in keeping every message short and on-point. For example, if you’re hosting a live Facebook event, you can let contacts on your SMS list know by sending a quick but persuasive text. And the SPC from Crystal Clear Digital Marketing allows you to quickly and easily compose these messages.
Text Reminders
The last thing you want is a schedule that looks like Swiss cheese, riddled with holes because patients aren’t showing for their appointments. This can force you to overlook so that when all or most of your scheduled patients do show, your office looks like a restaurant on a Friday night – loud, uncomfortable, and crowded. Even worse, some patients may choose to go elsewhere because they want a plastic surgeon who meets their vision of luxury.
The best way to counter no-shows is with multiple contact points for every patient. Well-run practices also ask patients which method they prefer for their reminders: calls, emails, or texts. Alternatively, you can establish a process by which you use each of these communications and send, for instance, text reminders the day of the appointment.
Two-Way Communication
Thanks to two-way text communications provided by the SPC, your staff can also talk in real-time with leads and even past patients. This provides for direct, organized contact that presses the all-important button so many of us have: instant gratification. Most patients schedule with the provider who responds first to their questions. With real-time SMS, you can leap ahead of the competition and nurture each lead in the warmest, most responsive way possible.
Reports and Analytics
Every plastic surgery marketing strategy needs to be measured for efficacy. Collecting the right data enables you to establish the right goals, assess your progress, and grow your practice. For instance, your social media campaign can only flourish if you collect insight into your followers and their online behaviors. This allows you to identify ways to connect with these people in ways that are both meaningful and valuable.
The SPC is designed to give a broad look at your marketing efforts so you know what’s working and what’s not. You can generate reports relative to your lead conversions, scheduling success, and much more, thereby seeing for yourself the ways your practice has benefitted from specific strategies.
Don’t Neglect Your Website
Plastic surgery marketing is no longer a stagnant concept. People are mobile, and marketing messages likewise need to be flexible. Let’s start by talking about your website, often considered the most important marketing channel because it encapsulates who you are. This is where you showcase staff bios, the treatments and procedures you perform, and your credentials.
Because it contains so much information, this site needs to work on all devices, including tablets, laptops, and smartphones. Data indicates Americans check their phones 96 times a day, and people of multi-generations spend between five and six hours a day on their phones. You can therefore see why having a mobile-friendly website is key to your marketing success, and we can help ensure this design seamlessly moves from desktop to mobile device.
Mobile SEO
Perhaps the most important component of your marketing strategy, and the most often overlooked, is mobile search engine optimization (SEO). This uses well-thought website content to earn a better ranking in search engine results. In other words, mobile SEO is the bridge between you and those looking for a plastic surgeon. We can put you in front of these leads in a way that delivers long-term success.
People today use the Internet to find what they need, whether they’re looking for takeout or a car dealer. The Yellow Pages once served this purpose, but they’ve long been replaced by search engines like Google that are, thanks to smartphones and tablets, always within finger’s reach. Mobile SEO can drive visitors to your website and save you money when compared to television and radio ad spots. It also works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Content Marketing
Crafting a story to support your practice’s brand may seem redundant at this point; we’ve already talked about social media, SMS marketing, and your website – all of which rely on content. But custom web pages and blogs that tell stories create a shared human experience. They also help potential patients make decisions about your practice based on emotions rather than logic – and we can help you craft the most memorable stories possible.
Statistics, on the other hand, are not memorable. You can present them to your audience multiple times and in multiple ways, but the messages conveyed by stories are up to 22 times more memorable than numbers. For instance, if you write a blog post about a new device your office uses, touting its benefits with hard data won’t stick. But if you write that same post using patient or staff stories, you’ll reach patients in a far more impactful way.
Software That Works As Hard As You
The SPC platform is a viable way to implement your plastic surgery marketing plan. It can automate emails and SMS messages, generate valuable reports, and support your social media activities. We can also ensure your website connects with visitors. Schedule a virtual consultation today by calling Crystal Clear Digital Marketing in Orlando, FL.
