Episode Details

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Hello, and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and teaching your practice to market itself.

I'm your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice – What your patients are saying, as well as consultant to plastic surgeons, to get them more patients and more profits. Now, today's episode is called "Teaching Your Practice to Market Itself."

Some surgeons have a "one and done" mentality so they spend a fortune advertising for new patients and their staff spends a crazy amount of time working those "leads" to find the diamond in the haystack who is ready to move forward with surgery.

Other surgeons realize its smarter, easier, cheaper and faster to create a great experience and connect with their patients so those patients, in turn, refer them to others who also become surgical patients.

Neither is the right way; however, creating a referral-based system teaches your practice to market itself. That way, you energize your staff, attract more of your ideal patients, deepen your patients' engagement with you and solidify your own commitment to build a practice worth talking about.

AND Referred Patients = a Healthy Practice

In teaching your practice to to market itself, the health and success of your practice can be gauged by this simple factor – how many patients refer you to others they know. If you don't know the answer, pull a report called "revenues by referral source".

I have surveyed top cosmetic practices all over the US and the average mature practice gets 45% - 70% of their revenues from referrals. That's good to know and tells you where to spend your time, money and efforts proportionate to external advertising efforts.

And, if your percentage is less than 45%, that indicates you spend a lot more time, money and effort attracting new patients to replace these "one and done" patients who are NOT bragging about you, which is the key take away with teaching your practice to to market itself.

But here's what we know… referred prospective patients are more likely to convert to paid procedures, and more likely be willing pay a premium for the added social proof of a referral.

That leads to lower advertising costs as well as labor costs since these are highly qualified leads that convert, and that leads to increased staff satisfaction and morale.

Here are strategies to grow your own referral-based practice so that you can begin teaching your practice to to market itself…

Develop a Referral Mindset

This starts at the top. Your staff probably treats your patients about the same way you treat your staff. And, if you have a customer service mentality, then your team will likely adopt one as well.

Think about ways your everyday behavior might be affecting your practice's ability to generate referrals while adopting this mindset, "The surgeon takes care of the staff, the staff takes care of the patients, the patients take care of the practice".

Give your patients "Braggable" Service

This starts with the right team and everyone in your practice is part of customer service. This