If you are one of the many aesthetic practices able to be open right now, you’re very fortunate. For many practices, this isn’t the case.
If your practice is closed, however, it is important not to panic and instead, focus on being prepared for your reopening.
One mistake made by many business owners, including owners of aesthetic practices, is to react from emotion in times of distress. Instead, there is an opportunity in the midst of every crisis and ignoring this would be a huge mistake, and we’ll explain why below.
Outside of keeping your website live through your hosting provider, here are the 6 ways your aesthetic practice can be prepared to gain momentum after the shutdown:
1) Website: Your website is the mothership of your digital operations. You put a lot of energy into getting it where it is today, and it is an income-producing asset. In lean times, one cannot afford to allow your most valuable digital asset to become broken or worst yet, stop working altogether. You will need this when you re-open.
2) SEO: Visibility is the lifeline to your business and must not be ignored. Maintaining visibility, traffic and lead generation isn’t an option. Many of your competitors will lose sight of this and there will be search share to be gained.
3) Digital Maintenance: you need to ensure all your digital assets are checking out as healthy and fully functional. This means checking for broken links, broken images, speed issues, schema issues, as well as updating your plugins and WordPress website. Not to mention all the additional software, their integrations, and preventing and quickly fixing errors is critical not only for user experience right now but also for SEO in the long run.
4) Communication: patients and prospects need to know your plan. They should be alerted of any temporary closures as well as your practice’s plan to deal with COVID-19:
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- via email
- via text
- on social media
- on your website
- on Google My Business
- on Yelp
This communication right now is critical, but it will be even more important when you open back up as you game plan for ways to make up for lost revenue.
5) Specials: Many patients have been cooped up and will be ready to get out and feel “normal” again. Now would be a good time to game plan what specials or promotions you will want to begin after the shutdown.
Again, during times like we are faced with now, it is natural to focus on saving money; you can bet your competitors are. However, the winners are gearing up to invest in their businesses.
**One additional opportunity with specials is to not wait until after this shutdown and start running them now. Even if you are closed, if you have an e-commerce store that can accept payments you can sell discounted gift cards and other packaged services that your prospects and patients can pay for themselves.
If you need help setting an e-commerce store up and promoting any offers right now, we can help!
6) Lead follow-up: do not neglect leads that come in now, that would be a huge oversight. If you are like many of our practices you are still seeing leads coming in, even if you’ve cut off your ad spend.
Whatever you do, do NOT ignore them. Every lead is potential future revenue you need to get back on your feet.
**One additional opportunity with leads you’re following up with that cannot come into your practice is to host virtual consultations. This allows you to interact with prospects digitally and book treatments so that when you re-open you’re better prepared for your revenue to rebound.
The last thing to neglect in times of chaos is sales and marketing, even if you’re closed. By shutting down everything you’re potentially hurting your aesthetic practice’s ability to survive the shutdown and bounce back more quickly when life returns to “normal.”
As Mark Twain said: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
If you would like help with your plan for getting back on your feet when we are past the shutdown schedule a strategy session our growth expert Sonja Vaisz.
