How to build a successful personal brand

To talk about how to build a personal brand in the field of medicine, it was not by chance that we chose Elena Stoyanova, a cosmetologist-dermatologist, as an expert. After all, the name of the project manager estet-portal.com and the chief doctor of the Sandler style studio has long become a brand.

Elena Viktorovna, you can often hear that for a doctor, building a personal brand – something completely unnecessary. How do you feel about this?

Well, it's an eternal debate between marketers and those doctors who rely only on word of mouth. Let's imagine a young professional who is about to open a small private practice. The first thing he encounters – how to get people to know about it and use the services. In order to create a core of customers, it is necessary to focus on their needs and keep direct contact with them. However, many people think that once they reach a certain level, they can stop. Experience shows that such doctors and clinics quickly become unclaimed. The market for cosmetology services is developing very dynamically, new clinics with new services are opening, and patients will go there. With the expansion of private practice, three more problems immediately arise: 1) increase the number of patients; 2) increase the average bill of service in the clinic; 3) increase patient awareness of expanding the therapeutic capabilities of your clinic (new specialists, new equipment, new techniques). It is impossible to solve them based only on existing patients. And a properly built personal brand helps to solve these problems.

Then is it possible to build a personal brand according to a certain scheme or rules?

By and large, in medicine in general and in cosmetology in particular, these rules have always been. Even in the distant years, when we had only state medicine, people sought to see a doctor "with a name." This meant that the doctor had to be a high-level professional, have a scientific degree, and work in a well-equipped clinic. There were always incredible queues to see such a doctor, and sometimes it was only possible to get to a private consultation “through connections”. Today's patients have changed little in terms of wishes to see a doctor. Unless they have become even more demanding.

But if, in your opinion, this is inherent in medicine from the very beginning, why is the issue of creating a personal brand so acute today?

It is interesting that before the system of state medicine itself helped the doctor to make a name for himself. The system took over the solution of many business problems, and the physician did not need to deal with them at all. The most important of them – attracting patients/clients. Today the situation is different. At a medical university, students are given a lot of information about how to treat patients and little about what they will encounter outside of medicine itself. When a young doctor comes to work in a polyclinic or hospital, he is disappointed by the fact that there are many patients and the salary is small. But even when planning to go into private practice, he does not always initially understand what the cost of his services or clinic services will depend on. But these are taxes, rent, utility bills, consumables, salaries of support staff and attracting patients. Doctor "without a name" is unlikely to solve these issues successfully.

What do you need to build a personal brand? Is it necessary to hire specialists – marketers, copywriters?

This applies to politicians and showbiz stars. And if you are a dermatologist / cosmetologist, then there is no need to hire marketers. Do you want to push yourself to the fore and make a name for yourself – do it yourself, sincerely and with full dedication. First of all, as a competent doctor. You can simplify your work and for some tasks involve other specialists, for example, journalists or editors to help write an article that is interesting and understandable to customers, designers to create a website, etc., but there should still be a person in the center. Your identity.

How to build a personal brand without losing yourself?

This is a very important question. Indeed, very often, when we go to websites or personal pages on social networks, “plastic” immediately catches our eye. On the "plastic pages" people always look very joyful, beautiful and incredibly successful. But such pages do not believe! On the other hand, some try to make as many posts as possible (often about nothing), make scandals and showdowns. It attracts attention, but only for a short time. Such pages, and therefore their owners, are also not trusted. After all, potential customers do not need special knowledge to assess whether the person they visited is interesting or not. What you really need is to sincerely love your work, develop professionally and regularly share useful information with readers. Be real! By following this simple advice, you will build a personal brand for sure.

Do you want to learn more about building a successful personal doctor brand, growing and increasing the profitability of your medical business? Hurry up to register for participation in the conference Business Shot, which will be held in Kyiv on May 12!

On Business Shot you will get a lot of valuable information about the main problems that doctors face when they want to open a private practice, as well as how to solve them. Legal issues, modern and effective methods of promotion, creating a personal brand, attracting customers, increasing the cost of your services and much more – you will learn about all this at a unique event from estet-portal.com!