Plastic Surgeon Marketing

Plastic Surgeon Marketing: Tips & Strategies to Get Clients

Effective marketing strategies are critical to a successful plastic surgery practice and staying ahead of your competition in an ever-growing market. Free and paid advertising methods are abundant, offering opportunities to secure clients seeking plastic surgery. However, the first step in increasing sales is dependent on building a trustworthy, recognizable brand.

In this article, we’ll cover our top fifteen plastic surgeon marketing tips and strategies to help you build your online presence, attract clients, and turn testimonials into a marketing tool. We’ll also talk about expenses so you can develop a marketing budget.

15 Effective Plastic Surgeon Marketing Strategies

Demand for plastic surgery was high in 2019, as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced that figures totaled 18.1 million for cosmetic and 5.9 million for reconstructive procedures. With so many people considering and undergoing plastic surgery, there’s the potential to draw in masses of patients with the right marketing approach.

Below are the marketing strategies we’ll be covering to help you build a thriving plastic surgery practice. By implementing the tips and advice described here, you’ll build a strong marketing foundation that will reward you with new clients for years to come.

1. Develop a brand
2. Build a user-friendly website
3. Content digital marketing via blogging
4. Refine your SEO strategy
5. Interact on social media
6. Implement video marketing
7. Create an email funnel
8. Promote free consultations
9. Know your clients
10. Develop a loyalty program
11. Advertise online
12. Advertise offline
13. Collect reviews & testimonials
14. Manage Complaints
15. Design events

1. Develop a Brand

Effective plastic surgeon marketing begins with developing a brand. There are two main parts involved with this: brand messaging and brand visuals.

When creating your brand, remember that you want to build an image of your practice that’s easily recognizable and memorable. Often, patients don’t choose a plastic surgeon upon first learning about them. It’s the repetitive brand visuals and messages that build familiarity and trust over time.

Brand Messaging

When it comes to brand messaging, choosing words that resonate with—and not trigger—your potential patients is crucial. It’s often an emotional experience for a patient to decide to undergo plastic surgery. Therefore, choose words with positive connotations that compliment a person’s beauty, such as “enhance,” “boost,” and “natural.”

While you should avoid negative words for your brand’s messaging, it’s beneficial to incorporate comments about poor body image via reviews from your patients. Quotes and videos from former patients whose lives have been transformed by plastic surgery will resonate with your potential patients.

Successful brand messaging puts the patient first. Address your prospective patients in second-person, using “you.” Similarly, your service revolves around a team of employees, so use “we” and “our” when referring to your company.

Brand Visuals

Imagery plays an integral part in building a brand, and it starts with your logo and colors. As a general rule, you should aim to have a maximum of three brand colors. These colors will be used on your logo, across your website, printed materials, and possibly even in your office. Over time, people will recognize the logo and colors as belonging to your brand.

Simplicity is more when it comes to brand visuals. A clean, modern look for your logo, on your website, and in your office will exude professionalism and foster respect amongst your prospective patients.

2. Build a User-Friendly Website

An easy to navigate website design is critical for plastic surgeon marketing. Nowadays, most people turn to the internet to find and research plastic surgeons. Having a website that’s visually appealing, easy to navigate, and speedy will offer your prospective clients an excellent first impression of your services—a similar kind of experience they’d get from walking into a well-designed store.

Qualities of a Successful Plastic Surgery Website

Plastic and cosmetic surgery involves a variety of surgical and non-surgical specialties. The best performing plastic surgery websites make their services easy to find and understand from the moment a prospective client sees the landing page.

When developing your plastic surgery website, aim for the following:

• A modern, clean design.
• Your services are showcased with links to more details on each one.
• Positive reviews from former patients.
• Biography detailing the surgeons’ expertise. Bios that talk about a surgeon’s family, hobbies, etc. help to make them feel more approachable to patients.
• A link to pricing and financing. Being upfront with costs and financing options will save you time by connecting you with patients that are a good financial fit for your services.
• Acknowledgements, certifications, and awards relating to your practice.
• A link to your blog showing either your latest or most popular blog posts featuring plastic surgery topics.
• High-quality website hosting to ensure your website runs efficiently and securely.
• An effective landing page.

Landing Pages

Your website’s landing pages are arguably the most crucial part of your website because they’re designed to convert prospective patients into leads, and those leads to sales.

Landing pages encourage people to take action after reading through a piece of content on your website or your list of services. The best landing pages for plastic surgeon marketing include one or more of the following:

• Setting up a consultation.
• Signing up for your online newsletter or blog.
• Emailing or calling with a question about your services.
• Downloading special content you’ve created, such as an infographic or ebook.

In all cases, you should aim to secure your prospective patient’s email address. By doing so, you’ll gain another sales tool via email marketing and safeguards you against losing those clients should algorithms change for search engines or social media.

3. Content Digital Marketing via Blogging

Blogging allows businesses to establish authority in their niche. According to HubSpot, blogging is one of the three most widely used strategies for digital marketing.

For example, someone might type “The benefits of a tummy tuck” into Google. If you have a blog article on this topic, the person could click on it, receive the answer to their question while developing an impression of you as an expert.

They may take action according to your landing page at that moment. Or, at a later time when they research tummy tuck plastic surgeons, and they come across your brand, they’ll recognize you from your blog post.

That example is the driving force behind blog content marketing. As with branding, the most effective plastic surgeon content marketing puts the reader first. Build trust with your reader by addressing their problem (the topic of the blog post) first. Then show them how you can help with the services you offer.

In addition to avoiding overpromotion, below are some other tips to keep in mind when blogging:

• Blog about topics that pertain solely to your expertise and services.
• Set a schedule and publish consistently. Search engines favor blogs with consistent content, and your readers will too.
• Be friendly, relatable, and use terms that don’t require a medical degree to understand.

4. Refine Your SEO Strategy to Attract New Patients

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a metric that search engines use to determine your website’s quality—and thus, your ranking. Brightedge Research found that 68% of online traffic comes from organic or paid searches engines. Therefore, a solid SEO strategy is imperative for gaining new patients via online plastic surgeon content marketing.

The Advantages of Google

Google is the most widely used digital marketing search engine tool. When developing your website and blog, decide which keywords you most want to rank for in Google. If your website ranks in Google, chances are it will rank on other search engines too.

Assuming your plastic surgery business runs out of a single area, targeting niche keywords will serve you best. For example, “plastic surgeons in Miami” or “Rhinoplasty surgeons in Cleveland.”

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, incorporate them naturally into your website’s written content and in your blog posts. By implementing solid SEO practices, you’ll help your potential clients find you online.

5. Interact on Social media

Social media is an essential marketing strategy for plastic and cosmetic surgeons since it builds authority and brand recognition. It’s important to build a voice on social media that’s consistent and reflects your brand. According to a study by Adzooma, 51.2% of consumers based their purchase on how a brand spoke online.

You can use several social media platforms, with some of the biggest names being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

While it isn’t necessary to use every form of social media out there to be successful at plastic surgery marketing, you should aim to use at least a couple. If your budget allows, consider hiring a social media manager to save you time from juggling the intricacies of these sites yourself.

Benefits of using social media for plastic surgeon marketing include:

• Creating a FOMO effect (fear of missing out). By posting photos and stories from people undergoing plastic surgery, you’ll help normalize the procedure and instill others’ desire to join.
• It’s a place to share your blog posts. Articles that involve lists (such as “Top 10 Plastic Surgery Procedures) tend to have the greatest number of shares on social media.
• The chance for a post of yours to go viral. Even if it doesn’t go viral, when your followers like and reshare your content, it opens the opportunity for people outside of your followers to see your content and begin familiarizing themselves with your brand.
• An opportunity for you to publicly answer people’s questions/concerns/fears about plastic surgery and put their minds at ease with your professional expertise.

Regardless of the social media method(s) you use, keep in mind that the most successful social media accounts regularly interact with their followers.

6. Implement Video Marketing to Entice New Patients

Online videos are expected to encompass more than 82% of internet traffic from consumers by 2022. Plastic surgeons have a unique advantage for video marketing since it’s easier for new prospective patients to connect emotionally with former patients by listening to a story about someone’s plastic surgery journey rather than reading it.

Consider hiring a professional videographer to interview your team’s surgeons and previous patients about how happy they were with your services. Talented videographers can emotionally draw in your prospective patients by piecing the videos together and setting them to background music—music that could even become part of your brand recognition.

Once your video(s) are made, post them to your website, social media channels, blogs, and include them as part of your email marketing strategy.

7. Create an Email Funnel

With the help of your landing pages, your email list should grow. What you do with those email addresses is a critical factor in how successful you’ll be with your plastic surgeon content marketing strategy. An email funnel is a series of carefully crafted and timed emails that will automatically send out to your email list. The goal of email funnels is to convert potential patients into sales.

Below is an example of how an email funnel could look for someone seeking a facelift:

Email #1: A welcome email describing information the reader can expect to learn and a link to an article on your blog related to face lifts. For example, “5 Signs It’s Time For a Face Lift”.

Email #2: Another piece of content about facelifts such as, “The Benefits of a Face Lift.”

Email #3: Talk specifically about the kinds of facelifts you offer. Include a piece of content about one of your facelift services.

Email #4: Offer a facelift discount for subscribers only or talk about financing options.

Your email funnel should be set automatically so that the first one sends out to your potential patient as soon as they send their email address. You can create multiple email funnels to cater to different patient needs, such as a facelift funnel and a liposuction funnel.

You can also send out occasional emails to your entire email list. Doing so would be useful if, for example, you run a holiday promotion or offer free consultations.

8. Promote Free Consultations

Undergoing plastic or cosmetic surgery is a big decision. Promoting free consultations is an excellent way to get more potential patients through your door and begin the trust-building process between surgeon and patient.

Free consultations offer you the opportunity to show the patient your compassion and knowledge. It’ll also give them the opportunity to confirm that your practice is as clean and professional as your website led them to believe.

Your time is precious, which is why it’s important to talk about plastic surgery prices and financing on your website. By doing so, you’ll spend your free consultations with clients who already know your rates.

If you offer free plastic surgery consultations, make sure to promote this on your website, social media, emails, and paid advertising.

9. Know Your Clients

Plastic surgery is no longer only for the elite wanting expensive services or the elderly looking for a facelift. Since people of all ages and backgrounds seek plastic surgery for countless reasons, you need to determine who your marketing audience is.

Are you marketing to a particular age group? A specific type of plastic surgery? Patients seeking affordable options? High-value patients?

You’ll draw the types of clients you want by implementing the right plastic surgeon marketing technique for that group of people. Of course, it’s okay to serve a variety of client types. But when you’re developing your marketing materials, make sure all clients you want to attract can find relatable images, videos, and comments.

10. Develop a Loyalty Program

Repeat clients are happy clients. They are the core of any business and the ones who spread the word about their positive plastic surgery experience to their friends and family, sending more patients your way.

Developing a loyalty program is an effective plastic surgeon marketing strategy. Your loyalty program can be based on points, credit towards a future service, or upgrades to a particular service.

Below are some examples of plastic surgery loyalty programs that you can consider implementing as part of your marketing strategy:

• Special appointment availability for loyalty members.
• A surprise gift after so many appointments or money spent.
• Benefits for people who like and reshare a specific piece of content on social media.
• Emails describing special prices for loyalty members.

A loyalty program can either be something that a patient signs up for or automatically becomes a part of after their first plastic surgery.

11. Advertise Online

Increase brand awareness and reel in potential patients with online advertising. There are a variety of paid online advertising you can do, which varies in price and scope. Below is an overview of the most popular forms of online advertising.

Social Media Ads

Nearly all social media platforms offer advertising options. Even if you have a large following on social media, the unfortunate truth is that most algorithms are set so that only some of your audience sees any given post. By paying for ads on social media or paying to boost a post you made, you can be sure more eyes will see you.

Pay-Per-Click with Google

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising concept used by search engines. Google Ads is the most common company offering PPC. You choose your keywords, and the search engine will show your ad to people using that search term. You’ll only be charged for the ad if someone clicks on it.

Display Ads

Display ads, commonly referred to as banner ads, are blocks of text or video that show up when you scroll through an article online. Display ads are typically billed on an impression (number of views) basis.

Advantages of online advertising for plastic surgeons

It takes time to build plastic surgeon marketing growth by creating your website, blog, and email funnel. By advertising online, you’ll have quick access to your target market so that you can pull in patients while working on long term growth.

12. Advertise Offline

In today’s modern world, online advertising is the most popular way for businesses to market themselves. However, plastic surgeons who understand their preferred client type may benefit from traditional forms of offline marketing.

Examples of offline marketing include:

• Newspaper
• Billboards
• Radio
• Television
• Magazine ads
• Mail

When considering offline advertising, think about your desired patients’ habits, hobbies, and the environment. For example, do they play golf? Read craft magazines? Are they active in their children’s school?

Whatever forms of offline advertising you may use, make sure your marketing money is spent wisely. If you run a small practice, put up a billboard in your county. Test out the local radio or put an ad in your local newspaper.

Regardless if you choose online advertising, offline advertising, or a combination of the two, your plastic surgeon marketing will be most effective by taking a slow and analytical approach. In doing so, you’ll be able to identify the best marketing strategies for your practice.

13. Collect Reviews & Testimonials

Positive reviews and testimonials are essential to a thriving plastic surgery practice. Potential patients want to hear about—and see photos of—the quality of work your team performs. Reviews refer to feedback collected by third-party websites, whereas testimonials are collected directly by you, the plastic surgery practice.

As part of your plastic surgeon marketing strategy, your goal should be to seek out reviews and testimonials from happy patients constantly. Lots of good reviews and testimonials directly correlate with increased trust and interest among prospective clients.

Popular plastic surgery review mediums include:

• Facebook
• Google
• Yelp
• RealSelf

Patients happy with their plastic surgery will want to boast about your business, although they may need a gentle nudge. Below are strategies you can implement to gain reviews and testimonials:

• Ask your patient for their feedback at the end of an appointment. If they’re happy with the service you offered, ask them to leave a review online or permission to use their words as a testimonial. Never mention reviews to a dissatisfied client.
• Send a follow-up email or letter that mentions leaving a review. Patients who had intensive plastic surgery won’t be thinking about reviews after coming out of the operating room.
• Advertise your review platforms at the front desk of your office.

Take note of glowing in-depth reviews and testimonials to promote on your website and social media, as this is an effective plastic surgeon marketing technique for gaining new clients.

14. Manage Complaints

Negative reviews and complaints are bound to happen, so you must be equipped to handle them. Regularly checking your review sites will ensure you catch negative reviews early. To maintain a good reputation at your plastic surgery practice, you must respond to the negative review and do so in a timely fashion.

Often, prospective patients place as much or more weight in how a business responds to a negative review as the content of the review itself.

If you sense your client is unhappy, address the situation at that moment. Ask them questions, listen to their concerns, and find a solution they’re happy with—or at the very least one that appeases them.

Making an unhappy plastic surgery client satisfied will likely require extra time and money. But in the long run, it’s better than the permanency of them posting a negative review online.

15. Design Events

Hosting events is a great way to draw attention to your practice and showcase your plastic surgery field expertise. Your events can range from fun, holiday-themed to roundtable discussions to a more formal, informational presentation.

Regardless of the types of events you host, in all cases, you should aim to make them inviting and comfortable, since many people may be intimidated or embarrassed that they’re seeking plastic surgery.

The following ideas will get you started on designing a successful plastic surgeon marking event:

• Pick a theme such as a part of the body, type of plastic surgery, etc.
• Partner with a charity. You’ll help a good cause, raise brand awareness, and earn respect in your community.
• Center your events around holidays and get your patients involved. A Halloween event, for example, could ask attendees to dress up like a body part.

Design your events with the end goal in mind—to increase plastic surgery bookings. But run your event with your patients in mind. Be down to earth, listen to their concerns, and help them identify the best plastic surgery option for their needs.

Budgeting for Plastic Surgeon Marketing

The cold hard truth is that you will need to spend money to make your plastic surgery marketing strategy successful. The Small Business Administration (SBA) recommends spending 7 – 8% of your yearly revenue in marketing and advertising, assuming you’re making under $5 million in sales.

Initial Plastic Surgery Marketing Costs

If your strength isn’t in website development, the initial costs of getting your plastic surgery practice online will be one of your most significant investments. Website development with an experienced developer can run in the low tens of thousands of dollars. You may also need to hire experts for logo design, and social media management, among others.

At the beginning of your plastic surgeon marketing endeavors, most of your clients will find you via paid advertising. But as you build other marketing resources, such as word of mouth, email lists, and blog posts with solid SEO, you’ll gain organic patients.

Long Term Plastic Surgery Marketing Costs

While organic traffic is a key goal of plastic surgeon marketing, you should never assume that organic traffic alone will be enough. New competitors can and will arise. Algorithms on social media can change. SEO best practices can evolve, negating the work on your blog and website.

Paid advertising should always be a part of your plastic surgery marketing. As your practice grows, your marketing budget should evolve with it. Your marketing should always be based on a percentage of your revenue.

Excel at Plastic Surgeon Marketing

Demand is higher than ever for plastic surgery. New technology, trends, and increasing social acceptance makes now the perfect time to enter the plastic surgeon marketing world. It’s imperative to develop a solid marketing plan to stay ahead of your competition.

Know where your patients spend their time—whether that be social media, researching on Google, or reading magazines—and target your marketing energy in those places. Always diversify, test your plastic surgery marketing strategies, and seek to improve. These efforts (and perhaps the help of a professional) will make your plastic surgery practice excel.

Suggested Reading

• SEO for Plastic Surgeons: Tips + Best Practices to Get Clients
• Lead Generation for Plastic Surgeons: Tips + Best Practices
• Web Design For Plastic Surgeons: Best Practices to Get More Clients
• PPC for Plastic Surgeons: Tips + Best Practices to Get Clients