New Year, New Practice Goals! As we enter 2023, it’s important that we are ready to tackle new challenges and continue to grow our practices. One of the headwinds many aesthetic practitioners face is not just how to stay current with new trends, but also how to ensure that clients have a positive experience from start to finish. In order to ensure this happens, planning is KEY. Developing a plan for next year is an important step in ensuring success for your aesthetic practice.
Here are 4 aspects of your practice that should be reviewed and adjusted as part of your 2023 strategies and plans.
1. Creating a Growth Mindset
As the leader of your practice, you set the tone for your entire organization. By having a leader with a growth mindset the team can see that learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience. Believing in everyone’s basic abilities is just the starting point for what can be achieved and can often lead to the team wanting to put in the extra time to grow your practice. If you want your practice to reach its full potential, the easiest way is to adopt a growth mindset.
As the year comes to an end, now is a great time to check in with yourself and do some introspection. That often takes time to look deep into your practice and yourself and acknowledge your team and opportunities.
Some starting questions you can ask yourself at the end of the year are:
- What do I want to accomplish and how am I going to get there?
- Who can help me achieve my goals?
- What is going well? Which areas are you thriving in? Which areas is our practice as a whole thriving in?
- Which areas do I know I need help with?
- Have I taken any action to get help?
When you have a growth mindset, no matter how far you’ve already come, you’re always going to be setting new goals for yourself and your practice. That’s because when it comes to your ability to reach long-term goals and keep going despite obstacles, it takes perseverance and determination. Every time you reach a new milestone, celebrate your progress, then create new goals for yourself to stretch even further. And remember, leaders with a growth mindset are always creating new goals as there is always something new to learn and achieve!
2. Implement More Team Training
Most practices have experienced turnover, which leads to lack of institution memory and can negatively impact the patient experience. As we enter a new year, it is a good time to assess your training efforts. Do you have a training program for clinical knowledge and the patient experience? Training is one of the most important business functions to ensure your practice is reaching its potential. Your training efforts are a direct reflection on your retention rate and your success. Make training a habit within your practice and you will see your performance increase.
Last, but not least, assess your patient experience. From the phone call, appointment confirmation, to the check-in, the refreshments, the touchpoints, the actual treatments, the results they achieve, the recommendations, and the check-out process, it must be all orchestrated with perfection and to exceed your clients’ expectations. There is always more to assess, but if you at least assess the patient experience, you will be able to discover what is working and what is not working in your medical practice. Then you can make the necessary adjustments to have a super, successful 2023 and beyond!
3. Update Your Marketing
Have you assessed your online and offline presence and positioning? You may be spending thousands of dollars per month on marketing, but is it effective marketing? Your online presence is your website and social media platforms. What image does your practice portray? Are you positioned as the one of the top choices for consumers? Try to give your positioning and image a facelift to attract the affluent consumers to your aesthetic practice.
Take time to review your competition and check and see how you measure up against them by doing a competitive analysis.
How many reviews do they have?
How does their photo gallery look?
What are they posting on Instagram or TikTok?
As the year comes to an end, assess your marketing and make the necessary improvements to increase traffic and conversion rate. We see many industry experts recommend spending 5%-10% of total revenue on marketing. What percentage of revenue did you spend on marketing in 2022?
4. Review and Improve the Sales Process
One of the biggest mistakes we see is the absence of a sales model. The purpose of your medical aesthetics business is to generate revenue and by having a consistent sales process in place using the best practice available will increase your conversion rates. Setting the expectations for both the staff and prospective clients is critical to a smooth patient experience. One key area is the new clients’ sales process and new consultations – this process is lacking in most medical practices. Many do what we call an a la carte consultation instead of performing a specific consultation with expectations that have already been determined.
On average, what is your same day closure rate for new consultations?
Improving the sales process can involve a variety of strategies and techniques, and the specific approaches that will be most effective will depend on the needs and goals of your business but we are seeing same day consultations closing north of 65% for plastic surgery procedures.
If you have any questions about how to reach your practice goals, or if you would like to speak with a plastic surgery marketing expert with over 10 years of experience about anything digital marketing-related, please contact MD Internet Marketing today. We are happy to assist and offer a variety of complementary services for Aesthetic Surgeons!