Hello! My name is Laura Cunningham and I am the Marketing Communications Manager at Cutera, Inc.
I'm excited to blog about a variety of marketing ideas to promote aesthetic procedures such laser hair removal, laser skin rejuvenation and skin tightening to your existing patient base as well as give you ideas on how to attract new patients.
Some of the tips and suggestions posted may come from successful customers or from Cutera's partners.
My goal is to help you build up your business and increase your practice revenues; I'll cover both marketing basics and then getting creative with some advanced tips. In this economy, we have to think out of the box so no idea is too far-fetched. Let's get started....
We know how important first impressions can be - on a job interview, on a date but also to a client who is visiting your practice for the first time.
Take a moment every day to survey your entrance, your reception, your exam or treatment rooms and even your private spaces where patients would not enter.
Look closely. Do you see any debris? Disorganized materials? Empty holders for patient education brochures? Any dust or cobwebs? Do countertop signs obscure your staff or other messages or products?
Sit down in your reception seats. Take a look around. Be critical.
I visited a medical spa recently who offered laser based technology aesthetic procedures such as laser hair removal and skin tightening. I noticed things I liked - good lighting, lots of product in a retail area but organized well. Lots of messaging. Good use of texture (tile, wood). Very friendly receptionist. The impression was one of a busy, thriving practice with a nice variety of procedures and product.
What I felt needed correction (and I mentioned to the nurse) was: counter signage was obscuring the receptionist so she could not see us when we sat down. There was a cobweb hanging from a can light in ceiling. The TV over the doorway was primarily showing testimonial videos but the sound was off. It would be better to either have small wireless speakers by the seating (so the message was heard) or switch the video to photo loops which do not require sound.
These are all easy fixes.
If you prefer - have a friend visit your practice and task them to notice anything that seems off. Better you see it and fix it than for a less-than-ideal first impression be made by a new patient. It's nice to know that some things - we can control.
According to a Dove survey of 8,000 men between the ages of 30 and 55 in seven countries, it appears that men are bothered by how they're portrayed in advertising. According to Michael Kaufman, Dove gender expert consultant, "These are bad news about what our standards of men's bodies should look like, they're impossible images. Men can't live up to that."
Dove launched an ad campaign during the NFL's Super Bowl for its new line of men's skin care products. What Dove's new ads convey and what their survey reveals is that reak men are not the fit, toned and buffed male models we see in ads. Men are just as frustrated by those portrayals as women are annoyed by fashion images suggesting all women should looked like photoshopped-to-perfection super models.
Sharon MacLeod, a director at Unilever which owns the Dove brand reports "What our campaign does is look to celebrate men who have different responsibilities in life and are comfortable in their own skin," Ms. MacLeod says. "These are not guys who are ladies men or heroes or power-hungry. These are real men with real lives" -- film directors, business people -- and the campaign is "about their definition of success."
Of note: Dove's survey found 65% of Canadian men are comfortable using women's skincare products but only 24% are prepared to admit to using women's products to their friends.
Outside of toiletries; other articles indicate that male demand for fillers, injectibles, liposection, laser hair removal and other cosmetic procedures are on the rise. Does this indicate that it is time of use promotional marketing materials (brochures, posters, countertop displays, DVDs) which show men - in and around your practice? Should your web site and advertisments appeal to your male patients? Should your practice offer product lines for retail with a focus on male concerns? Are male patients the new demographic? It's an equal opportunity world of aesthetics!
Carlson Laser Aesthetics in Michigan has leveraged wonderful local media coverage of their practice and services.
Nisha McKenzie, PA met with two hosts on Wood-TV's eightWest show and presented her patient who had a Pearl laser skin treatment two weeks prior. Nisha discussed the procedure while setting appropriate expectations, showed video of the Pearl Laser procedure, detailed her practice's other services and mentioned current specials.
This segment was a great opportunity for Nisha to highlight her clinic's aesthetic laser procedures and drive new patients to her practice. Great job!
I just read a very interesting article by Brent Foster in Practical Dermatology. It's entitled "Nonverbal Communication in the Patient Consultation".
Brent recommends using the clues patients provide to help you during a consultation; i.e. are they uncomfortable, interested, undecided with what you are explaining or proposing?
Perhaps you are discussing laser hair removal but they just learned about vascular treatments or they are concerned about pigmented lesions and they want to change the subject? See if these visual clues can help you with more successful consultations - with better closure rates!
Wendy Lewis, acclaimed author and expert in aesthetic consultancy, has a helpful article on "Instilling Loyalty in Cosmetic Patients" in the October 2009 issue of Plastic Surgery Products.
Wendy recommends offering your loyal clients a reward program to encourage repeat business and referrals.
Customer Loyalty Programs may include:
courtesy vouchers
offer of extra service
complementary product
volume discount
refer-a-friend bonus
discount on particular treatment
trial of a new product or technology
Even offering a "thank you - using personal notes, calls or emails can be enough to make them feel special. I highly recommend saying thank you after any aesthetic laser treatment such as laser hair removal or skin rejuvenation or injectible; and keep them coming back for more.
Cutera's Clinical Forum earlier this month had a panel of great presenters on a variety of clinical topics. In addition, we had several presentations that focused on practice marketing.
Karen Lederman gave two consecutive talks about practice marketing; the second focused on advanced techniques such as using social media. Follow Karen on Twitter!
Shelena Lalji, MD (Dr. Shel) also gave an excellent presentation on how to successful add and market aesthetics to a practice. Dr. Shel is also on Twitter! She said quite a number of things that I'll blog about shortly, but I'd like you to focus on these right now.
"Work ON your practice, not just IN your practice."
In other words; be completely invested in your practice's success. It is not enough for you to be working hard, treating patients and performing procedures. You must take a day a week to really focus on your business plan - your marketing, your ROI, your plans for growth, your profitability. Take time to step back, look at both the big picture and the small details that make up your practice and be sure everything is in alignment.
During Dr. Lezaic's popular webinar on practice marketing this week, she shared many helpful tips and ideas. She started her talk discussing how she started a brand new practice, in a new part of Florida where she had no contacts or existing patient base from which to draw upon and market.
She emphasized the importance of having the right staff, working as a fully vested member of your team, dedicated to your practice's success - not competing with you, not sabotaging you, but always producing and having a can-do attitude.
Some of the creative things she and her staff do include:
Going to happy hour events at local restaurants, bars and clubs to network
Frequenting businesses near her location and introducing themselves to other professionals, merchents and employees of local business (examples include grocery stores, book stores, nail salons, hair salons, other medical professionals)
Hosting open-houses or events monthly
Thinking out of the box - all the time
Dr. Lezaic had a number of great ideas; rather than my repeating them all here, I invite you to listed to her webinar which is available for your convenience On Demand.
During a conversation with Dr. Jill Lezaic with Laser Skin Solutions Jacksonville, she used the term "e-myth" which stumped me. What was an e-myth? Dr. Lezaic explained it as a business term for companies whose founders are very good at creating products but not necessarily good at running a business to sell those products.
How would an e-myth work in aesthetic practices? Physicians are trained to perfom medicine. They are not trained in medical school how to operate a business and market their services.
Physicians must learn the skill sets needed to be an entrepreneur. It's not intuitive to know how to advertise laser hair removal or to differentiate their ability to treat vascular conditions on all skin types, safely. For tips on jump starting your aesthetic practice, consider registering for Dr. Lezaic's webinar on practice marketing. It's taking place live on July 28, 2009 from 4-5pm PDT but afterwards will be available on demand for your convenience.
I heard from a colleague who recently attended a customer event at an aesthetic practice. The event was sponsored by Allergan and primarily promoted Latisse to their event attendees.
The physician was offering a discount on Latisse to any attendee who purchased that evening or within a few days.
I thought it was interesting that the physician did not promote her other services or products. She sold ~10 units of Latisse at the event and of course, there will be a great opportunity to market additional services to those buyers going forward but I think it would have been a more profitable event had the physician enlisted additional vendors for support and opened up her event to more promotion. She could have promoted laser hair removal (which can be safely performed year-round with CoolGlide Nd:YAG, even on tanned patients), non-invasive skin rejuvation (Laser Genesis, again, safe on all skin types, year-round), Titan, fillers and BOTOX.
Open houses and customer events are a great way to have current customers (patients) bring friends and family, enjoy some wine and hors d'oeuvres while learning about new products and services and enjoying special attention (receiving goodie bags, being offered special discounts for packages paid for that evening or within 48 hours, referral $ or points if their friends/family buy product or sign up for packages).
Customer events are great marketing tools - just be sure to leverage the event for all it is worth!
"Aesthetic medicine is an evolving field in both the medical and business arena. Commonly referenced business strategies and tactics used in retail and health care industries may not fit as well into our world.
Retailicine is an approach that embraces the luxuries of retail while never compromising on our primary responsibility—doing the right thing medically for our patients."
In speaking to owners of aesthetic practices, they tell me that while business slowed down last Fall, it has picked up again over the past 4 months.
A few tips they provided influencing their increase in business:
Don't drop prices (much) - instead concentrate on package deals, being very mindful of consumer price sensitivity
Leverage existing patients - reward them well for referrals
Market internally - use brochures, email newsletters, posters, dvds, photo frames, before and after books, countertop signage
Work social media - encourage patients to post positive reviews on as many review sites as possible such as Yelp, RealSelf.com, CitySearch.com...
I saw a billboard by the freeway the other day sponsored by CBS5.com, our local CBS affiliate. It said (and I am paraphrasing) "The thing about recessions is... recessions end.". Nice thought! Hang in there, folks and keep taking care of your patients.
Karen and her team offer ancillary marketing services to Cutera customers. She has a wealth of experience managing and marketing several successful and competitive aesthetic practices in Palm Beach county and has conducted meticulous marketing research. She will share her tips for success for marketing services using aesthetic laser systems, fillers, injectibles, retail products and body shaping. If you or your staff need a boost with your practice marketing - please attend Karen's session on Saturday, August 15.
Are you baffled by Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? We are also considering a session on "Understanding & Leveraging Social Media Networks" at the San Francisco Intercontinental hotel on Friday afternoon. Karen has dived into social media and has great tips and ideas on how (and why!) to use these tools (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter).
Please post a comment or contact me if you would be interested in attending this informal session with Karen on Friday right before the Clinical Forum.
Skin Disease Education Foundation sent a very interesting newsletter by email. They co-hosted the Cosmetic Dermatology Seminar 2009 this past weekend in Santa Monica, CA. Skin and Allergy News provided real-time coverage on Twitter. Reading the Tweets was fascinating - what a great idea!
We recently released a Multimedia News Release on Pearl Fractional and the benefits to this treatment for "Eye-Juvenation" - treating that difficult periorbital area successfully.
Examples of some of the pickup (video and/or news sites and blogs) are shown below:
Good luck with YOUR PR efforts to promote your skin rejuvenation and aesthetic services - PR can be a lot of work but getting PR is always worth the effort.
We used a Multimedia News Release (MNR) for the first time to promote the Pearl Fractional laser for "Eye-Juvenation" -- results and coverage have been impressive.
Rather than just releasing a press release, our MNR included:
Press release
Video footage (interview with Brian Biesman, MD and treatment footage)
When you prepare media documents to promote your services or a new treatment such as Pearl Fractional for skin resurfacing and dramatic skin rejuvenation, gather up other supporting documents, videos and images to expand your story and make it both dynamic and content-rich. Your efforts will pay off in the long-term!
Do you have a diverse patient population with all or most skin types and many different ethnicities?
Are you able to offer aesthetic treatments to all of these patients?
Do they know you have aesthetic products and treatments for THEM?
In other words - are you doing a good job letting your patients know exactly what you can offer them, and which services are safe and effective for their individual needs? Do you use marketing materials that feature models of different age groups? Different ethnicities? Both male and female models if your clientele is both male and female?
Cutera recognizes this need exists. We offer a way to create customized patient brochures to help our customers reach out to their entire practice. Customers visit CuteraPatientTools.com, choose the application, then select a brochure cover model(s) who best suits the patient group they are targeting. They can customize the back panel of the brochure with their practice information as well.
For example, if you want to offer customized laser hair removal patient brochures, you can choose from photos of men and women of all ages, from skin types I -VI. A specific example -- create and print a vein treatment brochure that features a woman of Mediterranean heritage or show an older couple who are contemplating fractional skin resurfacing such as Pearl Fractional.
Think about your patient base, what you can do for them and ensure they know it.
I was thrilled to see Cutera's Pearl laser mentioned on BeautyStyleWatch -- a prominant beauty blog yesterday. Pearl was also mentioned on Tee-Se Bender's daily newsletter - which acts as a news flash. Thank you Te-see! She also mentioned The Kopelson Clinic, a Cutera customer in Beverly Hills. Yay.
When your products or services are mentioned by others in a non-paid advertisement fashion, this is public relations. PR is much more credible than advertising and is the preferred way to create buzz about your company, your products, your services, YOU.
What can you do to re-leverage the mention to get more mileage out of it?
Mention it on your web site (with a link back to original site)
Tweet about it on Twitter (with a shortened hyperlink)
Bookmark a link to the original site on your practice's Facebook page
Email a mention on your newsletter to clients
And this is just a partial list. How do you leverage your PR? Let me know your ideas.
Alright - I know this is not part of "Marketing" but I just read an interesting article by Bryan Durocher on Employee Compensation published last December in Skin, Inc. and thought I would share it with you.
I know a number of Cutera customers struggle over how much they should compensate their employees - for promoting their practice, referring friends/family, closing consults to appointments, performing aesthetic procedures such as laser hair removal, skin rejuvenation, etc. There is no one answer as every practice is different.
Some pay commission on top of salary - others use monthly or quarterly profit sharing. I thought this statement was sobering. "If a business owner is paying more than 50% commission or is offering some type of benefits in conjunction with a commission structure greater than 50% they are losing money."
Hello! My name is Laura Cunningham and I am the Marketing Communications Manager at Cutera, Inc.
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