The medical spa industry is booming.
Brand reputation is a key consideration for any business, but for few is it as crucial to success as in the medical spa industry. When clients seek procedures to change their appearance, they are searching for something far more personal than the usual slate of conveniences and goods offered by the rest of the businesses they frequent.
They are seeking to reconnect with their own sense of identity, the version of themselves they think of as real and true. When they look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person they see, the effect is deeper than temporary disappointment. It’s an emotional dissonance–not just “That’s not what I look like,” but “That’s not who I am.”
To seek the counsel and assistance of a medical spa is to seek to trust one enough to say “I believe you can help restore the external ‘me’ to the version that exists inside.” In essence, the spa is helping their client become the version of themselves they feel they really are.
Part and parcel of this reality is that honesty and straightforwardness can make or break a medical spa. In addition to being the foundation of a long-term relationship with individuals, setting realistic expectations around desired results, procedure experience, recovery time and similar treatment variables will allow your clients to confidently recommend you going forward for the rest of their lives. While overly rosy projections may sell a few procedures over the shorter term, they cost incalculably more over the medium and long terms and can end up costing you your business altogether.
UI Medical Marketing has many years of experience driving proactive, positive, and sustainable marketing. Infusing a sense of confidence, comfort, and reliability; highlighting the unique strengths and capabilities of your business. This is what we do best.
Preserving and curating your integrity is more important now than it has ever been for one simple reason: the Internet.
Long gone are the days when word of mouth was an elusive, difficult-to-quantify marketing metric. From social media platforms to customer-review-driven websites, clients are used to making their opinions known early and often. Those who treat them fairly and well are rewarded, and those who do not pay an ever-more-predictable price over time.
More importantly, you have complete control over your medical spa’s digital presence online. And it is difficult to overstate both the opportunity this provides and the simple truth it represents: To prospective clients, your digital identity is your identity.
Before an important face-to-face client meeting, everyone knows the drill. Significant research and preparation, impeccable professional appearance, confident and welcoming demeanor. You put your best self out there and get immediate, moment-by-moment feedback on how well things are going.
Understand that a version of this very interaction is taking place every moment of every day online. If your website is overly simplistic, outdated, or appears to be an afterthought, you are driving away most of your would-be customers. The level of attention and detail, the consistency of voice, the ease of navigation…each of these factors contributes to not just a visitor’s beliefs about your website, but their beliefs about you.
How proud are you of your business? How much care do you take when conducting yourself in the public eye (and how does this reflect on how much care you likely take when conducting yourself behind closed doors in the privacy of your practice)? How well do you understand what clients want, what drives their decision making? What hours are you open? How do I get to your office?
Your website is your proxy, answering these questions 24/7/365 for your average client, who will visit your website before they ever contact you directly. Do you have a blog with fresh content, demonstrating your ability and willingness to directly engage, to keep your client base current with your thoughts on news and developments that might be helpful to them?
While the transactional nature of in-person meetings and even phone calls provides valuable feedback that allows for improvement in best practices, your online presence needs to anticipate client questions and to avoid common pitfalls well ahead of time. A client not finding the information they want, or finding an overall presentation that falls short of what they expected, is unlikely to tell you that. They will simply move on to your competition.
Existing in the space between your website and your offline practice is social media, the living, breathing, back-and-forth conversation that gives your medical spa a chance to play an active day-to-day role in the lives of clients and potential clients.
Different platforms call for different approaches:
The connectivity between your social media accounts is powerful as well; a picture leading to a video leading to a blog post can easily lead to a first consultation. Exactly what content you provide, however, is contingent upon understanding who you are attempting to reach.