Whenever anyone talks about marketing or advertising, the term target audience will usually pop up. What is a target audience? How do you find out who “they” are? And why should an aesthetic surgery practice even care?

The target audience for your practice is the group of patients or potential patients most likely to be interested in and able to afford the type of services you offer. They should be the patients you want to attract with your marketing communications, not just the type who already respond to your messages.

You should be able to identify these patients by looking at their lifestyle, including occupation, income, where they live, their ages, their ethnic background, and even how they spend their free time, energy, and money! You need to try to get inside their heads to understand what motivates them to seek your services. Are they wanting to gain self-confidence or looking for the competitive edge in a job interview? Do they want their pre-Mommy body back?

You and your office staff should have a pretty good feel for the answers to these questions gathered from their daily interaction with patients. You can also get up-to-date information on plastic surgery patient demographics from websites such as ASAPS (www.surgery.org) and ASPS (www.plasticsurgery.org) and other online resources. You can also ask patients for the info in online polls offered in your e-newsletter. Keep it fun and patients will respond.

Just remember, in order to effectively market to your target audience, don’t simply identify who they are. You need to make sure you are sending them the message that they want to hear and can understand quickly.

Wishing you aesthetic beauty in all you do!

Candace Crowe

“I NEVER THOUGHT MUCH OF MARKETING. Practices do it in my area: billboards, magazines and things like that, but I’ve never had to. I’m not sure what good it would do me or where I should start – if I decide to – and how much is “fluff”? When is good, good enough? Do I really need great design? What do I need, and what is best for my practice? I’ve had a fairly busy practice until 2008. Things are a little slow now, but we’re making it. It would be nice to have a few more bookings, but I’m hesitant to start marketing.”

These are questions and concerns I hear weekly. For an industry that historically has believed marketing is wrong, these are legitimate concerns. “Everybody’s doing it” just doesn’t fly with me. And as you’d imagine, just average design doesn’t either.

My industry, the advertising and marketing industry, still really doesn’t know the plastic surgery industry deeply enough to always do you the best good. It is even more difficult because each practice is so unique. For some, you’ve found that a cable TV buy generates calls. For others, your website is your top dollar producer, and for yet others, your patients are your best advocates.

The most important thing I can tell you is that your marketing needs to resonate with your target audience. PATIENTS ARE ATTRACTED TO PHYSICIANS AND STAFF WHO COMMUNICATE VALUES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS SIMILAR TO THEIR OWN. Any marketing effort you engage in needs to be a trust builder, a genuine relationship builder. It’s got to be emotionally beautiful, respectful, just right for the personality of the practice, and the very best quality you can afford.

SO, WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR MARKETING, WHAT IS FLUFF? FLUFF IS A WASTE OF MONEY. Fluff happens when you don’t know what your goals are for each particular marketing effort. Fluff is not having an emotionally engaging and beautiful brand. Fluff happens when you have to do a project over, you don’t use vendors you can trust – or you don’t take time to understand your contract and what you’ve purchased. Fluff is spending too much money on external marketing when you already have a good-sized database of loyal patients who love your practice. Fluff is not looking at your consultation process through the eyes of a patient. Fluff, to me, is marketing efforts that don’t produce. Fluff is a waste of money.

Let me encourage you not to be afraid of marketing but to be purposeful about your brand, and especially, to be aesthetically smart. Give me a call, I’d love to hear what you think is fluff.

Candace – 877 884 7676

If you are among the many practices who have discovered the value of keeping in touch with your patients through regular emails and newsletters, you are most likely getting a nice return on your investment. Permission-based email marketing is relatively inexpensive and is a great way to build long-term relationships with your existing patients and gain referrals of new patients.

But, how can you really measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns if you don’t have a great reporting tool? If the phone rings and you book consults, that is an obvious indicator that your communication worked to some degree. However, you can’t see the total picture unless you have a robust reporting feature that provides you with the details on who opened your email and what links they clicked on. How many people never received your email because it got caught in spam filters or how many bounced out because of bad addresses? REVENEZmail.com offers an email newsletter service that offers those reports, so you can accurately measure the effectiveness of your efforts and realize the potential of email marketing.

Wishing you a beautiful day!

Candace Crowe

Marketing is fundamentally a conversation between your patients/potential patients and your practice. All marketing whether it is internal or external needs to have the heart of great customer service and guide, educate, and encourage your patients. External marketing tells your target audience you have a service that can help them reach their goals. Internal marketing’s goal is to create and retain loyal patients who will recommend you.

Your website is a great example of external marketing. At its basic level, it can help new patients find you – but it can be much more than that. A great, patient-focused website will project an image that inspires confidence in your services.

Loyalty programs, keeping in touch with consults and patients through email, personal notes, phone calls, seminars, great patient education, a video loop that features all of your services for your waiting area, are all great examples of internal marketing. Internal marketing generally costs less and produces a higher return.

LONG-TERM SUCCESS. THE RIGHT MOTIVATION.

Did you know that fear motivates 400% more than pleasure? Do you really want fear to motivate your marketing decisions? It’s better to stick with your well thought out plan. While you may see immediate results from your marketing activities, achieving a balance in your marketing is really a long-term investment and like most investments, it requires patience, determination, consistency and commitment if you want to realize your desired goals. Let me encourage you to work towards creating a strategic, integrated marketing plan based on measurable goals that are right for your practice. Especially in today’s highly competitive marketplace, it is well worth your time.

Wishing you a superb plan,

Candace Crowe
President, Creative Director
Candace Crowe Design

Educating Patients. Marketing You.
www.CandaceCrowe.com

The color style prognosticators at Pantone® have named the color of the year as honeysuckle – a confident shade of pink that is said to be energizing and uplifting. Just what the country and the world need with all the challenges we have been facing lately.

Colors have indeed been proven to influence emotion and behavior. Deciding to have cosmetic surgery is an experience packed with all kinds of emotions – anticipation, excitement, trepidation, and happiness. So, you might want to consider the emotion messages you are sending through the colors in your marketing materials. Or at least consider using a color you’ve never considered before, like honeysuckle!

Wishing you aesthetic beauty in all you do!

Candace Crowe