Trends Affecting Your Growth (Ep. 221)

Beauty and the Biz

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Hello, and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and trends affecting your growth.

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 and more profits.

Now, today’s episode is called "Trends Affecting Your Growth".

How you attract new cosmetic patients to your practice is quickly changing.

There have been more technological advancements this past year than in many years before.

So here are major shifts happening that are or will affect you big time in the pursuit of attracting new cosmetic patients

The goal is to create a system where you pay to attract a new patient but then you 10X their value because you have a proven system to compel them to return more often, refer more of their friends, give you reviews, approve their photos and share you on social media with their followers.

That’s how you build a cosmetic practice patient flywheel that keeps turning on its own.

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.

If this resonates with you, visit www.KiSS Loyalty.com to find out if you’re a good fit.

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Transcript:

Trends Affecting your Growth

Welcome to Beauty and the Biz. Discover how to grow your practice and a faster way to scale your cosmetic revenues with effective cosmetic patient attraction, conversion, and retention advice from author, speaker, trainer, and cosmetic practice business and marketing coach, Catherine Maley, MBA.

Hello and welcome to Beauty and the Biz, where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and trends affecting your growth.

I'm your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice, What Your Patients Are Saying, and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and profits.

How you attract new cosmetic patients to your practice is quickly changing.

There have been more technological advancements this past year than in many years before.

So here are major shifts happening that are or will affect you big time in the pursuit of attracting new cosmetic patients

The first one is Privacy concerns. They are killing your plans for attracting new patients to your practice.

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

And google is eliminating 3rd party cookies that allowed you to collect consumer data and Apple makes consumers proactively give permission for 3rd parties to collect and use their consumer data on their iPhones.

And now YouTube is discontinuing content targeting options like keywords, topics and similar audiences in their paid advertising.

Frankly, google wants to set up your ad bid strategy and select your audience for you using artificial intelligence (AI) but this makes 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 to you. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

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 would spend a fortune to talk to the masses, rather than a targeted audience most likely to want your services.

That’s why so many of you complain to me your paid google ads are a waste of money. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

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 highly recommend you charge a consult fee so at least, your time is better protected from wasted consults who have no intention of moving forward.

Online advertising has gotten complicated, technical and a lot more expensive, so suffice it to say, it’s going to get even more expensive to advertise for new cosmetic patients with less than stellar results.

Then there’s SEO and Open AI. It’s dramatically changing the way we find information on the Internet. Google switched to an AI-powered Search Experience which is having a big impact on the way search results are being displayed. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

You may have noticed that over the past years, Google has been showing more and more ads at the top of the search engine results page.

That means the organic results keep getting pushed further down below the page, making it harder for you to be found in organic search for patients looking for you.

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

So, you need really good fresh content that entices prospective patients to click and stay put on your website. This way google sees you as a viable resource and sends you more prospective patients.

On the one hand, content creation has been simplified with Open AI and GTPChat since it can create content for you in seconds. But on the other hand, it can do that for everyone else as well, so now the supply of content is much greater than the demand and that’s also making it difficult for you to rank in search engines.

One more thing...Google is all about local search and that makes it difficult for you to expand your market base beyond your local community.

Given the above challenges, you almost have to embrace social media as a real marketing channel and not just a passing fad.

Many practices have given up on updating their website again and pouring money into seo and pay per click advertising and are turning to social media (the big one being Instagram) to find new cosmetic patients.

Other practices pay someone to do this for them because they know it’s important but they have no interest in it OR the surgeons are spending a lot of their own time, in between caring for patients, creating and posting content to build up their audience of followers and to create user generated content, because you need to get your followers to interact with your posts.

Personally, I recommend you do a blend of both. Make one in-house person responsible for your social media efforts but have them work with a videographer, as well as you and your team, to create content organically by posting the “Day in the life of a plastic surgeon”. That way you are the content without too much effort. You’re just doing your thing and it’s getting captured in photos and videos.

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

IG and FB own your followers 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.Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

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 social media 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 to the masses, when really only a trickle of followers are seeing it.

To counter this, I strongly recommend you own the data!

You can no longer trust that audiences you have built on social media platforms will be available to you. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

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

I did want to mention TikTok as well. It’s growing in popularity and the audience is getting older so it’s worth posting there since it’s not as crowded as Instagram. I just would adjust your settings so no one under 18 can see your content or ads since you do not want to anger the parents in your community by enticing their underaged children and hurt your reputation.

By the way, if you are going to advertise on social media platforms, you need super compelling visual content like videos and attention grabbing headlines, along with a killer reason to contact you so go slow and test first before throwing a bunch of money at it.

And this is interesting. Gamification is gaining in popularity. For our industry it’s loyalty programs where patients gain points for special pricing.

However, you have to keep patients engaged or it fizzles out. And it has to be easy and fun. That’s why I offer The KiSS Loyalty Club where we do all the marketing for you to guarantee it stays fresh and active. You can get more details at www.KiSSLoyalty.com.

Another big challenge is cosmetic rejuvenation Technical Advancements. They are coming at patients fast and furiously and that’s increasing the demand for your services, but also confusing to would-be patients.

For example, just google non-surgical nose job, facelift, fat reduction and millions of search results come up. What that means is plenty of patients still need your surgical expertise; however, way more prospective patients will opt for non-sx procedures first to delay surgery. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

It would behoove you to develop that relationship early so they come to you for non-sx AND then stay for sx procedures.

That way, you don’t lose them to non-surgeons and medspas.

So enjoy the surgical side of your practice while ALSO building up your non-surgical as a healthy stand-alone profit center and here’s another reason 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-sx, 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 to over $61BB dollars and has a projected annual growth rate of 15.40% from this year to 2030. This is 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 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, which is a good thing. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

As a side note, we’ve been talking a lot about private equity on this podcast and it turns out the investors want to buy your non-sx as much as or more than your surgical side since the non-sx is more transferable so that’s something to consider if you’re looking to exit in the near future.

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 more of your services when you become a one-stop shop for them.

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 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.

Because the short-term, one-and-done mentality no longer works as it did before because you won’t be able to or want to spend thousands of dollars for a lead that actually turns into a paid procedure.

So, instead, you look inward at the leverage you already have like your patient list that took you years to grow and the relationships you have with patients who would gladly help you grow your practice for free.

But This will take a mindset shift from transactional to relational.

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 by referring their friends, giving you a review thousands of others will read, approve the use of their photos and share you on their social media channels so their followers can get to know you too.

So, given these challenges, how CAN you grow your cosmetic revenues without growing broke?

The answer is to focus on the fundamentals that make all the difference and here they are in this order:

first: Increase referrals and reviews

then Retain more patients

then Add more value to differentiate

provide Ongoing staff training

Increase conversion rate

Increase transaction value

Increase frequency of visits

THEN Increase leads/traffic lastly.

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 where you pay to attract a new patient but then you 10X their value because you have a proven system to compel them to return more often, refer more of their friends, give you reviews, approve their photos and share you on social media with their followers. Certainly one of the trends affecting your growth.

That’s how you build a cosmetic practice patient flywheel that keeps turning on its own.

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.

If this resonates with you, visit www.KiSS Loyalty.com to find out if you’re a good fit.

Everybody that’s going to wrap it up for us today, a Beauty and the Biz and this episode on a faster way to scale your cosmetic revenues.

And if you have any questions or feedback for me, you can go ahead and leave them at my website at www.CatherineMaley.com, or you can certainly DM me on Instagram @CatherineMaleyMBA.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode on Beauty and the Biz, please head over to Apple Podcasts and give me a review and subscribe to Beauty and the Biz so, you don’t miss any episodes. And of course, please share this with your staff and colleagues.

And we will talk to you again soon. Take care.

The fastest way to success is to model other successful surgeons who have what you want, but you can only see their results, not the path they took to get there.

So, you continue to jump from one thing to another, hoping to find something that will work for you too, but it rarely does. So, try this shortcut instead. It’s guaranteed to move you forward. I compiled my intellectual property to grow cosmetic revenues, everything I’ve gleaned over the years into one playbook of the most successful practices and what they do to win.

Go to www.CosmeticPracticeVault.com and let’s grow your cosmetic revenue.

-End transcript for “Trends Affecting Your Growth”.

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