Key Takeaways
- The demand for plastic and cosmetic surgery procedures is strong with a 5% increase in surgical procedures and a 7% increase in non-surgical procedures in 2023.
- Plastic surgery practices face tremendous competition in their industry for new patient acquisition and are faced with overcoming turf wars, social media pressure, and more.
- Learn how a plastic surgery practiced utilized reports, recommendations, and more from The Online Body Guard© to almost double their new consultation volume.
The Demand for a New and Natural Look by Patients Has Surged
According to The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), demand from both men and women for a brand-new look and new body has surged with a 5% increase in demand for surgical procedures and a 7% increase in demand for non-surgical procedures in 2023.
In addition, the advent of more advanced procedures (especially those offering laser procedures) offer precise solutions for shaping, contouring, and tightening. Quite often, the recovery following these types of procedures is faster and allows the patient to either explore additional treatments or procedures or combine multiple procedures to be safely performed at the same time.
The Need for New Patient Consultations by Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeons
Strong competition at the local and regional level has placed an importance on new patient consultations for both plastic surgeons and cosmetic surgeons.
Because of the extensive education, training, licensing, and procedural techniques required to be a successful plastic or cosmetic surgeon, the field does not have to be saturated to be competitive. It is instead the reputation of expertise that can pit one practice versus another for the same new patient.
In fact, there is even deliberation about the career path for a plastic vs. cosmetic surgeon.
When combined, all these factors cause a practice to place a premium on creating the most efficient system for generating inbound leads and new patient consultations.
AI Search for Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeons
It wasn’t long ago that whichever practice spent the most money on advertising in the Yellow Pages was the one who received the most patient consultations.
However, that era of being sought by patients through a paper directory has waned and the digital era has ushered in not only the need to be found through search engine optimization, but also in AI search.
With over 1 billion users engaged with AI search on a daily basis, its importance to how a plastic or cosmetic surgery practice is found by a prospecting new patient has skyrocketed.
Digital Marketing Tools Have Kept Up for Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeons
The challenge for how plastic and cosmetic surgeons’ market their practices hasn’t been all one-sided. Rather, practices have been exposed to tools, services, and platforms that help them to market at greater efficiencies and scale than ever before. Examples of this include:
- Being able to publish content that circulates on multiple digital platforms within seconds
- Crafting a narrative that can reach the local, regional, or national media within hours
- Devising campaigns that are tailored to exact procedures or treatments that increase engagement and lead conversion rates
Plastic Surgery Practice Digital Marketing Case Study – How They Did It
A plastic surgery practice in Michigan utilized the recommendations, reports, and more from The Online Body Guard© to nearly double the inbound new patient leads to its practice.
It planned and executed digital marketing tasks in a sequence that allowed the practice to leverage its online brand and develop a ‘machine-like’ approach to generating new patient consultations.
Let’s explore some of the key tasks and strategies that were undertaken to help create such a tremendous return on investment:
Administrative Alignment and Overall Mindset
- Avoid Task Duplication. A highly organized project action plan was used with regular intervals of communication and reporting.
- Digging Into Reports and Lead Tracking. Knowing the key performance indicators up front was extremely important. By digging through reports, the KPI’s were used as pillars for measuring performance, trends, and when the need to make changes related to budget, creative, messaging and more.
- Talking With and Listening to Patients. Hearing from actual patients the reasons they elected to schedule a consultation and what aspects of the practice they trusted enough to enact their request was extremely important. These nuggets were then used at the front end of the marketing campaign to create tighter messaging, better audience definition, and most importantly differentiation from the local competition.
Strategy
- They Aligned Their Brand. The practice took the time to align their brand on all platforms. This included ensuring the logo was the same, the practice bio was properly summarized, service categories were unified, and all contact information was included.
Platforms and Tactics Used
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO). Earning organic placement in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing for relevant searches and prompts by users was critical for the practice to be found by prospective patients. As a top activity for new business development, search engine optimization earns a place at the top of the digital marketing list.
- Website Auditing. People rarely like the word audit as it sometimes sets the expectation for a grueling review or evaluation. However, when implemented in digestible steps, continual website auditing paid tremendous dividends in the areas of website hygiene, proper URL redirects, page indexing, and asset tagging.
- Developing Inbound Links. High-quality links from other websites were crucial in supporting the organic search engine rankings of the website. Obtaining links from websites and blogs that had a moderate to moderately high domain authority ranking were incredibly helpful in driving niche visits to the website. In addition, the context on these blogs and websites were highly relevant, allowing platforms to group the practice name into procedure and treatment related topics when summarized by AI tools.
- Building Brand Mentions. Mentions and citations for brand equity and AI search recognition were invaluable for the practice. They utilized digital press releases and media mentions to assist in bolstering their brand, as well as to announce new practice procedures and team members.
- Paid Search Advertising in Google. The practice utilized Google Ads to defend its brand, advertise specific high-profit procedures, and generate new patient consultations. Bid strategy, geographic inclusions and exclusions, invalid click monitoring, and brand protection were all pillars for the successful execution of the ad campaigns.
- Targeted Social Ads. Social media advertising is a delicate area for the medical field, especially when it comes to creative assets featuring procedure before and after results. Consistent creative along with strict persona and audience targeting allowed for a low-cost solution for reaching users on social channels who were seeking a brand-new look.
- Broadcast Email Marketing and SMS Marketing. Consistent outreach using email broadcasts and SMS broadcasts was used to provide subscribers with educational material from the practice blog, and updates on procedure and treatment special offers. Open, click, and conversion rates were monitored to determine which procedure, or treatment elicited the highest responses in these measurement categories.
- Review Development and Monitoring. Brand reputation was extremely important for the practice and user generated content about the patient experience highlighted it as such. Constant monitoring and management of patient reviews enabled a stronger ranking profile and much higher trust factors for future patients.
The Return on Investment from Digital Marketing
When the practice reviewed their performance compared to past efforts, the following achievements were highlighted:
- A 97% increase in conversions from Google Ads advertising.
- A 31% increase in website visits from organic search engine rankings.
- A 2X open rate increase and 4X click through increase for email broadcasts.
- A waiting list for new patient consultation times was established.
How The Online Body Guard© Helps Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeons
The Online Body Guard© offers scalable digital marketing and online reputation monitoring solutions for plastic and cosmetic surgeons that create results that matter. We build digital strategies that help practices thrive through brand recognition, lead generation, and reputation management.
To learn more about how we can help your practice, contact us to schedule a free consultation or register a free account with us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What other industries does The Online Body Guard© offer case studies?
There are several industries where we have successfully applied our online reputation monitoring and management services. There is a deep-dive case study we have published for Certified Public Accountants (CPA’s) and tax professionals available for reading.
