Cosmetic Surgery Marketing and Social Media in Your Medical Practice

Social media is a fairly "new" skill for those of us who do marketing for businesses online. It requires: training through reading and by watching videos, as well as putting what you've learned into practice. With everything about social networking changing so much, it's hard to keep up, especially when you have a medical practice to run. Therefore, we recommend contacting an SEO firm that specializes in social media marketing so that you can have that aspect of your marketing taken care of; worry-free.

If you're like most plastic surgeons, you've come to realize that communication with your patients is the absolute key to your practice's success. Without friendly communications by your staff, potential patients won't schedule an appointment. Without expert communications to educate your website visitors, they won't trust you enough to schedule a consultation. Finally, without regular communication with your existing patients, you won't receive the most profitable form of business possible: patient referrals and repeat business. With social media as one of your cosmetic surgery marketing tools, you're able to connect with your patients in friendly, professional, and personal ways. This builds rapport with them, helps them trust your expertise, and makes you the "go-to-doctor" for their cosmetic surgery needs (as well as the needs of their loved ones).

In your medical practice, you likely have plenty of existing testimonials either up on your website or listed in your printed brochures and marketing kits. Why not transfer that information into your social media accounts? You can easily link to pages of your website so that people can click in to that exact page on your site and see more of what they came for. On Facebook, for example, you can make "notes" in your account that read as blog entries and can link to pages inside your website. This is a great way to use cosmetic surgery marketing to get your potential patients directly to a specific topic-related page on your website. If they are looking for rhinoplasty or tummy tuck information, they will easily find it in your "notes" area on Facebook.

Additionally, use Facebook to start forum "discussions" on specific topics. We recommend starting a topic for every question you get from your patients as well as one discussion per procedure you perform. This is the perfect way to mesh a Q and A with the corresponding pages on your website. Pop in there every few days and answer questions from patients, suggest some helpful advice, and offer to meet them in person. "If you don't ask for the sale, you won't get it" is how the saying goes. It's the same thing for plastic surgeons in cosmetic surgery marketing. You need to ask for the consultation, in a helpful, friendly, expert way, in order to win over your potential patients.

Personalize your Facebook account with detailed information about yourself, your Board Certs, and your staff. You can state your core values as a medical practitioner, put up a picture of yourself, and even add staff pictures to your Facebook photo albums! Get as personalized as possible to differentiate your Facebook account from other plastic surgeons. It will be well worth the extra effort.

Twitter is something that many people of certain, ahem, age groups though would go away as fast as it became popular. Why is a message of only 140 characters worth your time and effort anyway? Here's the truth about Twitter - when doing Google Analytics measurements on site referrals from Twitter visitors on our own website, It turns out that we receive about 20% of our total website visitors from Twitter! Think that's amazing? So do we! Use Twitter in your own cosmetic surgery marketing for your practice.

For your medical practice, when marketed properly and helping patients connect to your Twitter account through your website, in printed materials, on your Facebook, in blogs, inside of your email newsletters, and everywhere you appear online, you'll quickly build a base of followers. The number is not as significant as the quality of followers you get. You don't care to broadcast a message to an audience who isn't listening, so why do it, right? When you build your Twitter followers the right way, through existing patient and site visitor contacts, you have a base of followers who want to hear what you have to say and are many more times likely to schedule a new office visit.

Twitter can also be personalized. Simply go to your settings are of your profile and change the background image to something more practice appropriate. Maybe a picture of yourself, your staff, or the outside of your office works for you. A logo is good to, but the more personal your account (i.e. if your Twitter visitors can see your face), the better chance they will interact with you in person as well. Cosmetic surgery marketing is not only about having a presence in the same online places your potential patients are hanging out; it's about going that extra mile to reach out to them wherever they are online. What a difference the latter makes!

Words are wonderful tools that plastic surgeons can use to sculpt their consultations into lifetime patients. Simply by seeing what other patients have to say about you, people will have instant trust in your capabilities and make a decision to choose you for their procedure. It's not as easy as it sounds these days, however. In a world where everything is "on deman" and in video or pictures, you have to keep up with the times.

Get your testimonials (pictures and words) converted into short videos to post up on YouTube, oon your website, in your blog, and in your social media accounts. You can link your social networking sites to your YouTube channel, showing everyone your expertise and craftsmanship. This is what patients want to see; someone who has the skills to do the procedure well and the technology to show them the final product. Take the time to make a short video or hire someone to do it for you. Videos can be done quickly and they help convert visitors into patients better than any other means. If you don't spend much on cosmetic surgery marketing, spend your dollars on having videos made! They will pay handsomely in the number of patients they result in.

Be sure to continually recycle testimonials from patients in your social media accounts. Change the introductory wording slightly to keep it looking fresh, but link to the same YouTube and website pages that show your testimonial videos. Since they are the best way to build trust in your online visitors, you'll want to remind them of your videos, make new ones several times a month, and reward patients for participating in the testimonials. Give out gift cards for their participation, encourage them to refer their friends and family, and give them incentives for referring people to you. Ask them for their testimonial and referrals at the time of their final follow-up appointment; this is the time when they are most happy with the work you've done. You can also use your social media accounts to announce your incentives, promotions, and contests for patient referrals and testimonials. It's a great way to get your patients even more excited about you - and that's smart cosmetic surgery marketing!