Strategies for Success to Scale the Modern Anti-Aging Clinic
Anti-aging medicine is a growing industry that helps patients not just look better but feel better from the inside out. As the industry continues to expand, providing immense value to patients and remaining competitive should be top priorities for any anti-aging clinic.
This can only happen by developing an effective marketing and sales strategy. While challenging for many in this competitive landscape, there are thankfully a wealth of resources to help you create an action plan for success.
That is why we were so pleased to sit down with marketing expert Audrey Neff during our most recent webinar to discuss the importance of marketing and sales strategies for anti-aging, functional medicine or any other healthcare clinics looking to scale their practices.
Audrey is a national speaker, aesthetic marketing professional, and most notably Director of Marketing at PatientNow, an online solution that provides practice management tools to thousands of aesthetic and anti-aging practices across the globe.
Here are our main takeaways from the live webinar Strategies for Success to Scale the Modern Anti-Aging Clinic featuring Audrey Neff:
Marketing and Sales Are Essential
You Have to Market Your Services
As consumer awareness of the aesthetic and anti-aging industry continues to grow, so do the competitors in the marketplace. It’s easy to rely on your excellent care and reputation alone, but the reality is that your target market has a choice.
This choice isn’t just which aesthetic office they choose for treatments. Due to the elective nature of aesthetic treatments, it’s a choice about whether they will spend their money on these procedures at all or simply spend their money on other expenses altogether.
Over the years the healthcare industry and insurance has defined what is seen as necessary, but oftentimes aesthetic treatments can be life changing for the patient, so making your services and their benefits known to your market is crucial.
Additionally, it’s important to note that while marketing is about increasing exposure through promotion, it’s also about educating clients and improving your products and services.
Sales Is Not A Bad Word
If sales makes you uncomfortable it’s important to shift your perspective: you’re already selling. Sales is about educating, solving problems and providing value to clients not about forcing someone to make a purchase.
In fact you really aren’t selling a treatment at all but rather you should be focused on selling…
- Your expertise
- The desired outcome for the patient
- The final result/how the patient will feel
- The overall experience
By doing this you won’t have to compete with other clinics on price, but instead be able to communicate that the overall value that you can provide to a patient is more than worth the money.
Top Five Marketing Strategies for Achieving Success
1. Set Goals
Setting revenue goals is essential to scaling your practice. Without setting goals you can’t measure whether or not your efforts have been successful. It’s important to set a revenue goal and then structure your business activities around that goal.
A great method for setting goals is the SMART goals method. SMART goals stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time based.
In addition to figuring out what your goals are, you also need to examine who will be responsible for fulfilling the requirements to achieve those goals. For example, who will be in charge of promoting the business, who is in charge of improving products and services, etc.
In addition to large goals as it pertains to profitability, be sure to set micro goals in order to incrementally meet your larger goals. Check in on these such as monthly goalposts.
2. Implement A Blended Marketing Strategy
There are two different types of patients, those who are new to the anti-aging market and those with prior experience that decide to work with you. Therefore, you need to have a multitude of strategies to reach these different markets.
So how do you go about getting these new or experienced patients into your office as opposed to another clinic? Leveraging the internet is key.
A few channels online include…
- Search Engines
- Your Website
- Social Media
Nearly all of online experiences begin with a search engine such as Google. As for elective medical consumers they require a strong online presence prior to trusting you with their care.
The best way to ensure that patients choose you once they access your online resources is by optimizing your business profile on google, and receiving great reviews.
Once patients have viewed the content about your practice, they will then visit your website. You need to ensure that your website is aesthetically appealing, easy to use and that your reviews are prominently featured when patients visit. Additionally, make sure that your website is mobile responsive so patients can find you on their phone.
Blogs are a great way to drive engagement to your website as well. You can write them yourself or you can hire an agency to provide you with optimized blog posts. Don’t keyword stuff your articles in hopes that Google will rank your article higher, this will backfire. Instead write articles that your base will want to read and that will drive engagement.
Social media is also an under utilized tool for aesthetic practices. Most people cite not having enough time, but it may be worthwhile to hire a social media assistant or dedicate one of your team members to be in charge of social media. Always post something worthwhile, educational or of value, not just a stock photo.
Finally, don’t forget to obtain potential patient’s email address and phone numbers after a consultation. Once you receive this information you need to create a follow up strategy for these patients, you can automate through a CRM or manually.
In summary, you need to be leveraging all of these elements as well as targeting both experienced clients and brand new clients.
3. Track Your Leads and KPI’s
One way that you can differentiate your marketing strategy from those in the industry is by tracking your leads and KPI’s. Audrey cites that less than 10% of practices track leads and Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s.
The barriers that prevent most practices from tracking leads, is lack of knowledge, tools or time.
However, adopting a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, such as the one available inside PatientNow, can help to eliminate these barriers. The system can guide you on how to implement marketing techniques as well as automate marketing and follow up communication, manage your reviews, track leads/KPI’s and more.
4. Relationships, Retention and Experiences
When it comes to relationships you have a few ways to foster them. One way that Audrey highly recommends is implementing a membership or other financial incentive for loyal or recurring patients.
Another way to build relationships is to enhance the experience that patients have with you and your staff. This is one of the most important aspect of your sales efforts because it builds trust and promotes retention.
Audrey also shared with us that patient perceived value is the key to selling your services to patients. This perceived value is how they feel they will benefit from the service minus the treatment plan cost. If the value is higher than the cost the patient will choose to work with you and to continue working with you.
5. Unique Selling Proposition
Finally, what makes your products and services unique? Many people say that their brand is what separates them from the rest of the competition.
However, if you were to ask every clinic what makes them unique and the answers are the same, your brand may not be your differentiating factor. If this is the case, sit down with your staff and find the ways in which you are unique and use this to your advantage.
The first thing you should do is create a USP statement in your practice to determine what makes you unique!
Want to Learn Even More?
For more information from this presentation such as…
- Additional tips
- Google search trends and statistics
- How to optimize your google business profile
- Additional data and resources…
Watch the full video presentation above or contact Audrey Neff, aneff@patientnow.com, (407)-793-9254.