Marketing is an added cost in a cosmetic surgery practice that most other types of medical practices don't have.
“Aside from equipment, supplies and employee costs, marketing can be a significant additional cost, and if you use a marketing agency, you have their fees on top of the actual marketing costs,†Jonathan Kaplan, M.D., MPH, owner, Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery, San Francisco, Calif., tells Cosmetic Surgery Times. “… doctors can find ways to tackle marketing in an organic way to keep costs low and even do it in-house, to avoid the agency fees. Keeping costs low is attractive to doctors with ballooning expenses.â€
Dr. Kaplan, who presented on marketing on a budget today during the Vegas Cosmetic Surgery and Aesthetic Dermatology 2016 meeting in Las Vegas, shared four examples of inexpensive ways to effectively market a cosmetic surgery practice:
1. Generate leads by using pricing info as the "carrot" or "hook" to attract your prospective clientele.
2. Use an online scheduling platform — the kind that syncs to your calendar — to efficiently capture patients after hours.
3. Offer online purchasing to capture leads and dollars. This includes the ability for people to make online purchases of non-surgical services, such as Botox and fillers. Patients make the purchase online, but come into the office for treatment. Cosmetic practices should also be able to sell products online that can be mailed to patients.
4. Use email marketing, after capturing leads. The idea is to have 12 touch points during the course of the year with a monthly email newsletter to keep those leads thinking about cosmetic surgery and you as their cosmetic surgeon.
“… marketing on a budget is only a means to an end; not the end itself! As you build more traction with a low-cost marketing strategy and increase your revenue, you can gradually allocate more dollars to marketing through digital ads, TV ads or print ads,†Dr. Kaplan says.
Disclosure: Dr. Kaplan developed the lead generation-price transparency platform, BuildMyBod Health.
