It's no secret that over the years the vast majority of clinics and beauty salons go online to promote their services, the share of the online advertising market is growing by leaps and bounds. If we take the beginning of the 2000s, then the priority was advertising on TV, television programs, gloss. Now it is fading into the background. And there are only a few magazines that are really effective for aesthetics.
In an exclusive interview on estet-portal.com, learn all about the features of promoting services and developing a personal brand in the field of aesthetic medicine from an expert practitioner in the field of Internet marketing and business process automation, executive director of a large aesthetic medicine clinic ;(St. Petersburg), teacher of the Russian School of Management, author of publications on medical marketing, Andrey Avramenko.
Medical marketing as a separate direction in the promotion of services
AA: Indeed, medicine and aesthetics are starting to move more and more actively on the Internet. Accordingly, this work, as a rule, begins with: the clinic turns to an advertising agency with a request to increase the number of patients on the initial appeal. An advertising agency classically offers us those services that are profitable and worked out by them.
Most often − contextual advertising and SEO promotion. And since the market is highly competitive, this is an overheated and very costly channel for us. We can get patients from him, but we will have to pay dearly for it. And we must state the fact that until now the lion's share of the budget of medical companies goes precisely to contextual advertising, which is not always cost-effective.
Follow us on Instagram!
Blogger under the gun: how to collaborate with influencers
Therefore, managers and owners are beginning to count and analyze costs. Many understand that they "ate" with advertising agencies and contextual advertising, which does not always lead to results. As a result, they begin to pay attention to promotion in social networks. And today in Russia it is one of the main trends. I’ll make a reservation right away that there are slight differences in different countries and for different areas of medicine.
But now aesthetic medicine is mainly promoted on Instagram.
Plastic surgeons were the first to use social networks as a resource for promoting services, it was 5-7 years ago. Two or three years ago, cosmetologists entered there, now dentists, trichologists and gynecologists are pulling up. And we can say that there is a real boom in the promotion of the doctor's personal brand in social networks. In the field of aesthetic medicine, all patients come to a specific person, to a specific surname.
Therefore, globally, we cannot limit ourselves to promoting only the brand of the clinic, since it is much easier and cheaper to attract primary patients to a strong personal brand of a particular doctor. Therefore, in social networks, in addition to the accounts of the clinic itself, it is advisable to develop personal accounts of specialists.
The need to create a clinic website to promote services
А.А.: Very often, owners who open a new clinic, and there are quite a lot of them now, are interested in whether it is possible not to create a website at all, but to deal exclusively with social networks. There are several aspects here: firstly, the first and most important thing I want to say is that legally the Law on Advertising of the Russian Federation obliges a medical clinic to have its own website, where certain information must be disclosed. Therefore, whether we want it or not, the clinic should still have a website.
Basic Marketing: Touching the Client in Aesthetic Medicine
Second point: even if the main source of patients for us is a social network (Instagram or VKontakte), but if the clinic is large, serious, and we position ourselves not just as some small one-day company, in which the cheapest services, but still as a reliable partner for patients, then, accordingly, the website − this is another reputation tool to convince a person that the clinic is serious and reputable, it can be trusted. Now patients do not make decisions in one touch with the brand of the clinic. As a rule, they evaluate information on several resources before making a decision. And in this case, social networks and the site will in combination increase the impact on the consumer.
In aesthetic medicine, sometimes patients make decisions for a long time, 6 or more months, before they actually come to their doctor.
Key links in the promotion of services in aesthetic medicine
А.А.: If we are talking about the content part - what we fill information resources with, then we must constantly remember that a person wants to get a specific effect from a procedure or operation. Therefore, in the first place, in terms of the impact on the patient, we will definitely have before/after results, without which it is impossible to create a selling account.
Second − these are reviews: no one will go to a plastic surgeon without first reading reviews about him. If the competition is high, then you can move from reviews to publishing patient stories. The third point, which we must also constantly demonstrate in the – this is the professionalism of a doctor, his regalia, certificates, and so on. And ideally, the impact on the patient in terms of intelligence (qualification) is important to complement the emotional component.
This is actively used by Western colleagues, who act more on the level of emotions, constantly show social evidence of contact with the patient, his positive mood, smiles, joy on his face. In my experience, this technique works great when we take photos of our satisfied happy patients day after day, and these can be the most ordinary people. I am glad that gradually in the post-Soviet countries they are also coming to this.
When promoting in social networks, many try to find an easy way, for example, the story with bloggers, when they say "now we will find a famous person, a beautiful blogger, and immediately all patients will come running to us." But in fact, in most cases, this scheme does not work.
Secrets of the success of a doctor in the field of aesthetic medicine
The role of content in promoting a personal brand
A.A.: The audience's requirements for content are also changing. Take, as an example, cosmetologists two years ago: to attract patients, it was necessary to place just a beautiful picture or photo in the profile, that was enough. Now the situation has become more complicated, as there are too many static photo posts. Be sure to make video content, and in large quantities. This is a great way to show the doctor live, to show the procedure, equipment, clinic in dynamics. We convince our doctors, whom we help to promote personal brands, to broadcast live. Through video, through live broadcasts, you can level and "remove" all objections of patients, for example, if someone is afraid of injection or laser procedures.
Storyteller: Story rules the world
The role of hashtags in building a personal brand
A.A.: I'm pretty cool about hashtags. However, I think that they should be used, as these are elements in social media promotion that do not require costs. Putting a hashtag is not difficult, and it does generate some small amount of new traffic in the form of subscribers.
But, of course, if we want to attract the "primary", then for me the hashtag is not the way that will give you a big global result. This is just one more step in the huge amount of personal branding work.
Alena Kotlyar: successful marketing strategies and goals
The main stages of promoting the brand of the clinic and the brand of the doctor
A.A.: There are three steps to work through. The first − this is our positioning: how we differ from competitors, what are our strengths. Before we engage in attracting patients, we must create some picture, some attractive image. The second moment − it is content filling or packaging. And the third most important stage, which doctors and clinics often forget about, is attracting traffic to your account. In it, I single out three main sources: advertising, mass following, and the third – when your profile is mentioned in other profiles (for money or for free).
If we talk about mass following, then it is considered "gray"; prohibited method. However, if you take Instagram, Internet marketers will almost unanimously tell you that it is still an effective method. I always say that if there is no budget for advertising at all, but there is time, then we use mass following. If you need a quick result and have at least a small budget, then we launch advertising (including targeted advertising on VKontakte).
Here are the top three sources today. And if we are talking about a personal brand, it is rare when a doctor has a large budget, so the use of mass following is advisable.
Cosmetologist social media content: 9 best topics and ideas for a content plan
Facebook and YouTube to promote aesthetic medicine services
AA: I always tell my clients that you first need to decide on the purpose of who you plan to profile for? If we are promoting services for patients, then it will be Instagram, VK will be in second place.
As far as promoting a personal brand among colleagues, if a doctor who has been working for a long time wants to become known in the professional community, then it will be Facebook. From the point of view of attracting patients, Facebook practically does not work and there are practically no cases of receiving patients from there. YouTube certainly has its advantages.
On the one hand, advertising is inexpensive there, on the other hand, you need to understand that in projects on YouTube, the main costs go not to advertising, but to the production of the video material that we plan to place there (hiring a videographer or buying video equipment). And these costs in total will be much more than for Instagram, and getting a large influx of primary patients from YouTube is quite difficult.
I would recommend using YouTube as an option to "warm up" the audience, another small step that should be used in order to promote services.
About the reputation of the doctor and negative reviews on the Web
Share:
Add a comment