Plastic surgery is a growing industry around the world, particularly in the United States. More people than ever before turn to modern cosmetic surgery, and while this means that your potential client base is growing, so are your competitors. The plastic surgery marketing tips below will help you stand out from the competitors and overcome the crowding in the industry to reach the right people at the right times.
Your Website is an Extension of Your Practice
In today’s digital day and age, your website serves as the face of your practice. People will garner their first impressions of you and your practice based on your site, and they often have a solid opinion in 10 seconds or less. For this reason, it’s important to build a website that accurately reflects the way you want both existing and potential clients to feel about you.
Things like font and color often play a critical role in generating a subliminal emotional response. Fonts should be pleasant and easy on the eyes without any excessive embellishment. For colors, think about blue, which has a naturally calming effect and is common in the medical industry, or perhaps even yellow or gold if you want to portray an air of happiness and peace. Finally, make sure images and text are properly balanced to provide a satisfying aesthetic.
Short Videos are Great for Showing Your Expertise
For many years now, plastic surgeons have relied on a bevy of before-and-after photos to show prospective clients their work. Many people immediately view these galleries to help them decide which plastic surgeon is best for their unique needs based on the procedures they want. Though before-and-after photos will always be an important part of your website, plastic surgeons who educate their visitors about the procedures and provide videos are often more popular on both the web and in practice.
Videos should be kept relatively short, and they should be assigned to the appropriate webpage. For example, if you have a webpage that focuses on lip augmentation, the only videos on that page should also be about lip augmentation. You can make yourself the focus of the video, talk about the procedure and how it’s performed, and perhaps even show some diagrams or photos to help visitors better visualize what you are saying.
Educate Visitors with Your Content
The content on your website should be divided into three very distinct categories. The first set of content should be your promotional content – the text that describes you and your achievements, your practice, and perhaps even your staff as well as your mission statement. The second should be your blog, which might cover a variety of topics ranging from new techniques and modern technologies to highlights on specific procedures. The final set of content should make up most of your webpages and focus on educating the client.
Having a separate webpage for each individual procedure is a great idea. When it comes to medicine and surgery, the more someone can learn about the procedure in advance, the more at ease they will feel when it comes down to scheduling the procedure. Each webpage should describe how the procedure is performed, when the patient can expect to see results, and what the recovery is like – including the steps your practice will take to keep him or her comfortable. The more information you can provide, the more useful your site, and the higher it will rank.
Plastic Surgery Blogs are Critical
Plastic surgery blogs give you the opportunity to really make your content your own, and they can also help your website’s ranking. Blogs are a great source of dynamic content, which is valued very highly by Google, especially when it contains popular and trending keywords and phrases. It’s important to use the tools available to you to determine what people are searching for, then write a blog that homes in on those phrases.
Some amazing ideas for a plastic surgery blog include focus pieces on nonsurgical treatments that can provide amazing results, new technologies in the plastic surgery industry, a focus on new products and procedures that are currently being tested, and sometimes even statistics based on specific procedures or demographics that show how the industry continues to grow as people become more accepting of plastic surgery in general.
Don’t Sell Procedures; Sell Happiness
When people visit Amazon, they have a very specific product and price range in mind. Plastic surgery is different because people aren’t exactly shopping for a procedure. They may know what sort of procedure they want – at least to a degree – but what they really want is happiness, and they want to buy it from someone they can trust. If your website and marketing campaign is set up to sell facelifts or Botox injections, you may still get traffic, but your visitors’ emotional responses will be lacking. Instead, sell them happiness. Show them how the procedures you offer can help them feel, and built trust and rapport along the way.
In order to achieve that happiness, people who visit a plastic surgeon’s website do so with a handful of goals in mind. Some of them want to improve their appearance, some want to improve their self-esteem, and others just want to feel better about their overall appearances – while some want all three. Your website should serve as a source of information that helps these individuals discover the exact ways you can deliver that happiness in the form of microdermabrasion, Juvederm, a chin implant, facial feminization surgery, or anything else you may provide.
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into digital marketing, and that’s especially true for your website. Remember that your site serves as the window into your practice and is responsible for creating that all-important first impression. If it is visually appealing, offers the right type of education, and shows these visitors how your practice can provide them with happiness rather than attempting to sell them a surgery, you’re already on the right path to success.
