Our team has been investing marketing dollars in the aesthetic industry for over 10 years. Having the drive to open a practice starts with a vision but marketing is what keeps the business thriving and can even underpin its growth. Some doctors believe that marketing is a scam, an optional extra, or even something that will have to wait until practice grows. While other physicians even perceive it as an investment that perhaps they don’t have the funds available. The truth is, these perceived biases could not be wrong.
If you want to be a successful practice owner, the success of your company depends on the willingness of potential customers to learn more about you and become loyal followers. Turning your dream brand into reality requires a lot of hard work and careful planning. But building a brand without the required resources, investments or marketing strategies is like taking your Porsche 911 to the race track without fuel.
Even if your budget is small, marketing should be a top strategic initiative for your business, so you want to make investing in marketing a standard expense on your chart of accounts. You are destined to be out of business if you’re not investing in marketing. Here’s why:
Having no marketing plan in place means your team lacks direction!
A lack of a written marketing plan is a surefire sign of a practice with an underdeveloped roadmap. And without a sense of direction and an agreeable plan, a practice can easily be swayed in many directions and be more prone to failure. Without a clear plan in place, a practice risks wasting valuable time and resources on ineffective marketing campaigns or activities that don’t align with the overall business goals. A marketing plan and budget can help a business stay on track, keep focused on its priorities, in order to measure the success of its marketing efforts.
Your brand lacks active social media presence using best practices
Social Media has been a proven strategy to drive customer awareness and increase brand loyalty. By not investing resources in an attempt to maximize the use of social media, you are missing out on a large audience and giving those impressions to your competition. To leverage the benefits of social media marketing, businesses should invest in developing a comprehensive social media strategy(using social proof) that aligns with their overall marketing goals and objectives. This includes identifying the target audience, selecting the right platforms, creating compelling content, engaging with followers, and measuring the success of the marketing efforts.
Website and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves many moving parts ranging from keyword targeting to both onsite and offsite content optimization. Most of the top competitors in any medium to large market are paying over $2000.00 per month for SEO and website optimization. Without investing in this critical function, your practice could easily fall off the search results and hurt your digital visibility. When you find your practice being overshadowed by competitors in search engines, this can also mean that they are investing more of their marketing dollars into their SEO efforts.
Tracking and analyzing data in order to pivot!
With the ongoing advancements of technology in marketing means that every practice owner can access data tracking and analysis as they are no longer limited to a marketing company to provide them information. For instance, practice owners should have access and use Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Business Profile (formally Google My Business) and easily track their marketing efforts’ successes and failures on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. By observing your website’s bounce rates and impressions you are able to leverage this information to adjust your marketing efforts further. Otherwise, you can be waiting weeks to find out from your marketing company there is an issue, if they even disclose the website is not performing well. Without tracking and analyzing critical data, marketing becomes a bit of smoke and mirrors, particularly in modern marketing.
Pay-Per-Click and Sponsored Social Media Posts
In 2023, an effective marketing plan should include budget allocations for sponsored content and pay-per-click advertising. Both PPC and sponsored social media posts allow practices to target their advertising to specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behavior. This means that you can ensure your ads are seen by the people who are most likely to be interested in your procedure and services.
PPC and sponsored social media posts are powerful tools that businesses can use to reach their target audience, increase brand awareness, and achieve their marketing objectives. By investing in these forms of advertising in combination with other marketing tactics, businesses can create an omni channel marketing strategy.
Investing in nothing is not effective marketing
Once you have grasped the absolute necessity of investing in marketing, it’s essential to ensure you invest your resources where it will be most effective. With over 15 years of experience in marketing aesthetics practices and having managed over a million dollars in resources each of the past 10+ years, we have a proven strategy to deliver real growth. Unfortunately, due to limited marketing experience or expertise, some practices often waste valuable time, resources, and budget on ineffective marketing, yielding poor results. A more efficient marketing approach is to create an omni-channel marketing system that will build brand awareness, reach prospects cost-efficiently, and allow you to grow your customer base consistently.
To learn more about the benefits of investing in marketing for medical practice, be sure to read more of our recent blogs. Or, if you’d like to speak with one of our experienced marketing managers about setting up your own marketing plan, feel free to contact MD Internet Marketing today.