Prepare Your Practice to Survive and Thrive (Ep. 211)

Beauty and the Biz

Hello, and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and how to prepare your practice to survive and thrive.

I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice – What your patients are saying, as well as consultant to plastic surgeons, to get them more patients, more profits and stellar reputations. Now, today’s episode is called "Prepare your practice to Survive and Thrive".

This podcast is for you if…

• You are the main revenue generator in your practice
• You can’t figure out how to grow your practice without dramatically increasing your overhead and working harder
• You’re looking for a plan to turn your practice into a sellable asset if and when you are ready to exit

But, times are changing so quickly and will continue to change at a rapid rate due to the economy, Artificial Intelligence and other cosmetic rejuvenation advancing technologies.

Prepare now so you’re able to adapt to weather the good times and the bad times, since nothing stays the same so knowledge is power and acting on the knowledge is everything!

Because the objective is to set up your cosmetic surgical practice as a business so it’s more profitable, more enjoyable to go to every day, and it frees up your valuable time so you have more of it to spend doing what you like to do with the people you most enjoy being with.

Because the ultimate goal to scale your practice includes a system that attracts a steady stream of cash-paying patients, WITHOUT spending a fortune on advertising, chasing down leads, hiring more staff, discounting services or performing on social media.

In other words, a "faster, easier, cheaper way to more cosmetic patients and profits.”

So here are 3 things you need to grow a scalable practice and to prepare your practice to survive and thrive:

Leverage – use your assets you already have to generate more revenues with less effort and overhead to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Bankable Profits – not just revenues, but profits you actually take out of the practice and

Transferrable Value – means you have separated you from the practice so you have the freedom to sell to someone else when it’s time to exit

But there are challenges ahead to prepare your practice to survive and thrive…

Did you hear what happened?

Privacy issues are killing your plans for attracting new patients to your practice.

So much is happening behind the scenes with Apple, Google and FaceBook trying to dominate consumer data capture, so they are no longer sharing data with advertisers like before.

This is making it very difficult for you to attract new PREFERRED patients when you can no longer target specifically to certain audiences. And that means Ad results will become incomplete and inaccurate because you now have only 10% of the data that used to be 100% available.

So that will force you to increase your advertising budget substantially, as in 30-80% and HOPE the broader, less targeted audience is interested in cosmetic rejuvenation.

It’s very similar to old-school mass advertising like TV. You spend a fortune to talk to everyone, rather than a targeted audience most likely to want your services.

So not only do your ad costs increase dramatically, so do poor quality leads. Since your ads are not as targeted to your preferred patients, you get a mixed bag of the public contacting you.

Now your staff wastes a lot of time triaging these leads to determine who is really serious and who is flaky.

So, you need well-trained staff and processes to qualify leads.

BTW, if you aren’t already, I recommend you charge a consult fee so at least, your time is better protected from wasted consults who have no intention of moving forward.

Regardless of their motives, these few Internet companies affect you big time if you are using paid advertising to attract new cosmetic patients.

It’s complicated and technical so I’ll leave that to your internet company to explain but, suffice it to say, it’s going to get even more expensive to advertise for a new cosmetic patient with less than stellar results.

This major increase in advertising costs has now made SEO popular again; however, the supply is much greater than the demand so it’s getting near impossible to rank on the 1st page.

And now AI has taken off and can write content for you and everyone else so that will add a whole new level of complexity and

On top of that, Google is also using AI and turning into an answer engine in which they are answering consumer­ questions without them having to go to your website.

Another huge challenge you want to plan for is your social media strategy.

I believe this is where we need to head so I would spend time understanding it and getting good at it because it’s your only differentiator in a sea of massive content coming at prospective patients.

However, please keep in mind, you are only renting those followers.

IG and FB own them so they are, in essence the landlord.

That means they can raise the rent and/or kick you out at any time, so you lose your data you’ve spent years collecting.

I’m sure you’re aware that social media and plastic surgery don’t get along.

You are showing graphic material that can be offensive or hurt the self-esteem of the public so they can close down your account without notice.

They also decide who sees your organic content. FB & IG continually strangle your list to force you to “pay to play” by buying advertising. The latest stats show only 5.2% of your followers actually see your organic content so you have this false sense of security thinking you’re marketing your practice when, in fact, it’s drying up right before your eyes.

So, to counter this, I recommend you own the data to help prepare your practice to survive and thrive!

You can no longer trust that audiences you have built on social media platforms will be available to you.

The 1st party data is the future and the money is in your patient list data.it’s become your best targeted list because they already raised their hand indicating they are interested in cosmetic rejuvenation.

Use landing pages to capture your followers’ name, email and cell so you can stay in touch no matter what happens.

I’m imploring you to use the data and resources you already have built up over the years being in practice since it’s no longer easy to come by.

Another big challenge is Technical Advancements are coming at patients fast and furiously.

Just google non-surgical and look what pops up. What that means to you is plenty of patients still need your surgical expertise; however, way more will opt for non-surgical procedures first to delay surgery

So, meet them where they are now so you don’t lose them to non-surgeons and med spas.

Develop that relationship early so they come for non-surgical AND stay for surgical procedures and they come for SX and stay for non-SX for years to come.

Given these challenges, how CAN you scale your practice and prepare your practice to survive and thrive?

• Attract more patients from proven marketing channels that worked for you to prepare your practice to survive and thrive
• You encourage these patients to Return more often & spend more at each visit to prepare your practice to survive and thrive
• Encourage referrals, reviews and sharing on social so you DON’T spend on advertising for new patients to help prepare your practice to survive and thrive

This will take a mindset shift to prepare your practice to survive and thrive...

The short-term, one-and-done mentality is a tough game to play in today’s world. Instead, look at each patient as an unpaid practice revenue-generator who brings you new patients for free.

Once you embrace this “patients for life” mindset, you will treat your patients differently and they will react in kind by building your practice for you organically.

So, here’s what I’m proposing to prepare your practice to survive and thrive…

Enjoy the surgical side of your practice while also building up your non-surgical as a healthy stand-alone profit center and here’s why…

Patients enter different doors to cosmetic rejuvenation, so you want to meet them where they are. Some will go straight to SX and then stay for more, while others dabble in non-surgical, some for years, before they are ready for your SX option.

And the beauty of our industry is that Cosmetic Consumers Have ENDLESS NEEDS.

The non-surgical industry has grown dramatically thanks to social trends, social media and advanced technologies that continue to fuel the demand.

And let’s face it, we females are hard on ourselves. We stare in the mirror and critique ourselves and then we finally have had enough and do something about it and then what do we do?

We find the next thing that bothers us about us and focus on that. It never ends and that’s what keeps all of us in business!

I also looked up the most recent Aesthetic society stats and non-SX is now 1/3 of all aesthetic procedures performed and that’s growing.

And, here’s another interesting stat… Loyal non-SX patients spend 67% more than new patients and that makes sense because

If they know, like and trust you, they are open to your recommendations and will gladly buy your packages when offered.

This increases their lifetime value and decreases your advertising budget and that makes for a great P&L statement.

So, it’s the Retention of your patients that scales your practice using resources you already have and paid dearly for.

You likely have a database of hundreds or thousands of patients. Can you imagine what would happen to your bottom line if a majority of them returned for more and referred their friends?

I know for a fact many of them would gladly return and refer if given the opportunity. Heck, even google agrees:

One day, I was so frustrated with all the changes going on in digital advertising and tripling your costs to get mediocre results,

I googled how can I get more cosmetic patients and here’s what google said.

How to increase patient volume in your cosmetic surgery practice:

• Get more reviews for your cosmetic surgery practice
• Enhance your online presence
• Don’t miss out on the social media platforms
• Positive or negative, respond to reviews
• Train your staff
• Build strong relations with existing patients, referrals will follow

I happen to have a solution that addresses most of these so check out KissLoyaltyClub.com for details.

BTW, here’s the greatest missed opportunity

Word-of-mouth referrals to prepare your practice to survive and thrive.

That should be growing every year for you so if it’s not, something is off.

Duct Tape Marketing says 83% of business owners claim their main source of new business is referrals.

But here’s the crazy part...

93% of customers say they would refer their friends to you

BUT only 29% actually do.

Work on the 64% difference – that’s where the money is (not your TikTok videos)

Do you even ask referrals?

This cannot a happy accident. It needs to be a process.

Treat your patients well, give them a great experience and results and then ask them to refer their friends.

So, To pull this altogether, here is the structure to follow to scale your practice in this order.

Increase referrals and reviews to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Retain more of your patients to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Add more value to differentiate you from your competitors to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Offer Ongoing staff training to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Increase the conversion rates of callers to appointments and consultations to paid procedures to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Increase your patient’s transaction value to prepare your practice to survive and thrive

Increase their frequency of visits and then when you have these fundamentals down to prepare your practice to survive and thrive,

Now you Increase your leads/traffic because you are on your game and firing on all cylinders to prepare your practice to survive and thrive.

But most surgeons have this backwards.

They focus only on the bottom rung to increase leads, skip the leverage parts so they and their staff work a lot harder than necessary for less results.

The goal is to create a system to scale your practice by 10X’ing the value of your non-surgical patients so if they are typically worth $1K to you, they are soon worth $10K to you because you have a proven system to compel them to return more often, refer more of their friends, give you reviews, and share you on social media with their followers.

So, now you have peace of mind knowing you have a steady stream of patients coming in month after month to give you predictable revenues.

This scalable system needs to be a creative solution that eliminates discounting, advertising and hiring more staff.

This will ensure you operate more profitably so you keep more of the revenues you bring in.

And this system needs to be on autopilot so you and your staff can focus on the patient experience.

And this system needs to be unique to anything else out there because it changes the conversation.

Here’s what I mean…

Most practices don’t realize how insanely difficult it is to get a complete stranger to buy something from them, so they fall back on price, as in discounting their services.

That message attracts price-shoppers but then you’re frustrated that you’re being nickel and dimed to death.

All of this discounting hurts your profits and your image and it’s a race to the bottom because you can’t compete if you’re barely covering your overhead.

It’s also not a fun way to run your practice.

So, with the creative system I’m proposing, you change the conversation from discounting to collecting KiSSes for free services to prepare your practice to survive and thrive.

This makes it more fun for your patients to collect KiSSes to win something.

And, the most effective word in advertising has been and will always be FREE, so we use it strategically.

So now your patients have fun collecting kisses and you keep way more of your profits and revenues.

That’s how you scale a cosmetic practice you enjoy going to and are proud of.

I want to introduce you to the KiSS Loyalty club where your patients get KiSSes towards Free Cosmetic Services, rather than discounts so you keep more profits AND we do all the marketing for you so you don’t have to hire more staff.

Its sole purpose is to grow your revenues by encouraging your patients to return, refer, review, approve their before/after photos, shoot a video testimonial, share you on social media and complete a surgical procedure is optional.

If that sounds interesting to you, please check out the details at KissLoyaltyClub.com and let’s see if you’re a good candidate for The Kiss Loyalty Club.

You’ll go through a quick, 1-minute assessment and then we’ll talk.

And, if you do that before 4th of July, I have a killer offer going on where you save up to $17,997 and get lots of free bonuses so go now to KissLoyaltyClub.com and I hope to talk to you soon.

P.S. Please review!

📲 If you’re thinking about making a change and could use a different perspective, let’s talk. Schedule a Free 30-Minute strategy call with me at: https://www.catherinemaley.com/apply/

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