Running a successful medical spa requires a thorough, yet cohesive, marketing strategy. Because of group discount sites such as Groupon and Living Social, it’s more competitive than ever. It’s gotten so ridiculous that some med spa owners are willing to take a loss on a given treatment in order to get new patients in the door.  In this article I’ll give you some detailed tips so that you never have to subject your practice to such inane tactics.
I encourage med spa owners to look at the big picture first before breaking down their marketing approach into individual strategies and tools. You need to evaluate your own team just as much as you evaluate outside vendors. Here’s a neat breakdown of one way to examine your new patient funnel, with some important questions to ask yourself:
1) Do you have the right systems and processes in place? Before spending a dime on any marketing you need to make sure you 
have the right tools in place to maximize your efforts. This starts with having a Customer Relationship Management software. A CRM will help you track all your leads, manage your calendar and appointments, and follow up with patients via email. It should be tied into your website so that if anyone submits a form they’ll automatically receive an immediate follow-up email (known as an auto-response). The right CRM will keep you organized and on top of all of your clients.
In addition to the software, you need to have the right staff, or at least a properly trained staff. This means delegating appropriately. Don’t just assign your secretary the task of maintaining your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ page because she loves social media. Also, don’t let your receptionist field calls without having a practiced script. These are no-brainers for some med spas, but you’d be surprised how many people do not have the right software, systems or processes in place.
2) How will you generate leads? This is the key question once you have the systems in place (and we’ll assume you have a well-optimized website as well). There are many different marketing strategies that you can implement, but here are a few important one’s you need to consider…
- SEO: Also know as search engine optimization. In order to help boost your organic rankings, you need to be consistently publishing content to your blog. Focus on building high-quality backlinks to your website as well. Here are some tips for improving your medical practice’s SEO.
- Internet Advertising: This is often referred to as search engine marketing, or SEM; however, I feel that is somewhat misleading because internet advertising entails not only search engine advertising (Google AdWords), but also banner advertising and advertising on other websites (Yelp, CitySearch, etc). This is something that’s become very competitive in the past 5 years, leading to higher costs-per-click. That said, it may be worth investing in to see what kind of results you can generate, especially if you haven’t achieved high organic rankings yet. Just make sure you have the tools and analytics in place to gauge your ROI.
Social Media Marketing: Get active on social networking websites. You focus should be to build up your networks and engage your fans. This will lead to more repeat business and better customer service. Here are some social networking tools you should consider.- Email Marketing: This is essential to any practice. With the right software in place, as mentioned above, you can seamlessly run effective campaigns. More importantly, you can automatically follow up with patients.
- Video Marketing: One of the most overlooked and underutilized elements of almost every med spa. Video marketing is essential because it gives your patients an outlet to tell the world how great your practice is. This is infinitely more powerful than a written testimonial. Here are some basic tips for improving on your video marketing and YouTube presence.
TV and Radio: Like any kind of advertising, TV and radio may or may not work for your practice. You never know unless you try it. The problem is that it can get very expensive to do this kind of advertising, so my advice is, if you’re already going to spend a large sum on these outlets, spend a little more to ensure that you can fully track everything. This means implementing special landing pages, promotion codes and analytics to better track ROI.
Word-of-mouth clients are usually the best, and when you’re getting a lot of these leads life is great. The reality is that at some point this funnel will die down and you’ll need an actual strategy to become more visible to your target market. Now that it’s 2013, you HAVE to have an internet marketing strategy. More importantly, you HAVE to be able to track
3) How will you follow up with these leads? The software mentioned above will help you automatically respond to web inquiries You should follow up with these leads by phone within one day, preferably on the day the lead comes in. If you cannot book a consultation, ask for their permission to communicate with them via email. Make it clear that you’re available on all of the social networks. Also, consider implementing live chat on your website for instant web communication.
Strategy without tools, and vice versa, lead to ineffective marketing. You need to have the right pieces in place internally in order to truly gauge the effectiveness of your marketing.
To learn more about how you can improve your marketing strategies and tactics leave TRBO a note here or call us at 877-673-7096 x2.
