How to grow your medical aesthetics business with digital marketing
Running your own aesthetics business is something to be proud of. But with so much to think about, it’s easy to find yourself spread thin. So, here’s how spending a little time on simple digital marketing strategies can bring more customers to your clinic, and more profits to your business account.
Marketing is often one of the first things to be flung to the bottom of the list. Mostly because you don’t know where to start. But digital marketing needn’t feel like a mystery. Once you get rid of the bluster and bravado and buzzwords, marketing is essentially about human connection.
With just a little effort – and this is a promise – you can create marketing that gets results. Helping you build towards that bulging appointment book you deserve as a reward for all the energy you pour into your business.
Here’s some advice on driving marketing results that are more than skin deep.
One quick thing, before we begin
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“After two paid media campaign tests with other agencies failed to deliver results, I was hesitant to test again with Adbetter. But I am glad we did – we are now generating a steady flow of new customers which continues to grow as we increase the budget each month.”
Remember your reader. Always.
Aesthetics marketing isn’t about smoke and mirrors. Or deception. Or trying to cajole people into becoming your customer. It’s about showcasing yourself as an expert – and building a relationship with people who are likely to be interested in your services. It’s about one-to-one connection: between your brand and the person who is engaging with your content.
Choosing to put yourself in your reader’s position and creating marketing from their perspective – rather than your own – will put you streets ahead of other aesthetic clinics. Cultivate compassion. Have empathy for your audience. Without it, none of the strategies we discuss below will be as successful as they could be.
People visit aesthetic clinics because they want a certain outcome: whether that’s physical, emotional or both. Those outcomes are the things you want to showcase in your marketing. It’s also good to talk about the process that certain treatments follow. Educating your audience about certain treatments can help them visualise whether it’s right for them.
Get your website straight
Your website is the first place potential customers will look to check your credibility. A bad website experience – even in a practical specialism like beauty and aesthetics – will have a serious impact on your ability to convert potential customers.
Take the time to get the fundamentals right.
And on that last point…
Stay away from stock photography
Stock photography is tired, boring and totally impersonal. It’s much better to create your own unique visual assets – or at least have someone do it for you. And there’s a device that’s inches from you right now that has everything you need to capture, edit and publish your own photography.
Showcasing your own photography establishes your credibility as a brand. It builds your identity with something that is uniquely yours. It’s authentic. In an age of consumer mistrust in marketing, authenticity is persuasive.
Here are some ideas for the type of content you could explore:
For a more detailed explanation of how to succeed with aesthetic photography:
SEO: Make yourself easy to find
People in your region are searching for your services. Week in, week out. They want to find you. They want to book your treatments. Why would you limit their chances of doing so? Exactly. That’s why it’s important to get your search engine optimisation (SEO) in shape.
One easy win is to make sure keywords such as “dermal fillers in x” or “teeth whitening in x” – with x denoting the name of your town or city – are sprinkled naturally throughout your web copy.
But there’s more to SEO than keywords.
Google favours websites that are fast loading, easy to explore and engaging to read. When your visitors spend time reading your content and clicking from one page to the next, Google will reward you in the search rankings.
Start blogging. No, really.
As a bare minimum you should look to update your webpages regularly. But you should also seriously consider hosting your own blog as part of your website. Beyond the SEO benefits, blogging is a great way to build your credibility as a brand and establish yourself as an expert in aesthetics.
It’s also a great way to capture email addresses – so include a form field encouraging readers to sign up to a newsletter for similar content. These things take time to build. But every new sign up is a new person that you can build a relationship with, inching them towards becoming your next customer.
More on email newsletters in a moment. But first, what should you blog about?
Aesthetics, obviously. Right? Sort of.
What does chicken broth have to do with aesthetics?
Remember what we said at the start of this article about putting yourself in your reader’s shoes? Think about what they are thinking about. Their ambitions regarding aesthetic treatments. The results they want to achieve. Their anxieties about making their first appointment. Let that be your guide.
Think too about topics that might interest your audience beyond aesthetics. Anti-aging hacks. Health and fitness. Nutrition. Someone curious about the visual effects of dermal fillers may also be interested in how foods like chicken broth, oily fish and eggs help your body to produce collagen – allowing people to eat their way to healthier looking skin.
Google Ads: Soar up the search rankings instantly
Good SEO is crucial. But it can take many months for your efforts to push you up the search rankings. With Google Ads, you can pay to get to the top of the search rankings in your region for services your clinic offers. And the impact is near instant. It’s one of the most accountable forms of marketing on the planet – with the potential to drive significant revenue for aesthetics businesses like yours.
Don’t believe us? Read this:
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Reach your website visitors on social media
Is your aesthetics business on Facebook? Then – if you haven’t already – do yourself a favour and add Meta Pixel to your website. It’s a tracking device that gathers information on how visitors are interacting with your website – and who those visitors are. If it detects they are Facebook users, Meta Pixel will allow you to create ads that appear in their feed, in their stories and more. It’s a great way of giving people who are already interested in your clinic a timely reminder of the services you offer.
Email marketing: A route to customer loyalty
You will remember we hinted at email marketing – back up there when we were talking about blogging. Any email addresses you have, you should be marketing to. With appropriate consent to stay on the right side of GDPR and privacy rules, of course.
Email marketing is a potent tool. If someone consents to you appearing in their inbox, you have a huge opportunity to create a loyal customer relationship that drives sustained revenue for your business.
In terms of what to include in your newsletter, follow the same principles as blogging. Make it relevant to your reader. Solve their problems. Make your message useful. A neat way to work is to promote your latest blog content, then provide a link that drives the reader to your website.
You can also include newsletter-only promotions and discounts that reward subscribers for opening your emails and being part of your community. All while helping to make sure you have a good pipeline of appointments to keep your clinic busy.
Social media advertising
Facebook. Instagram. TikTok. They have over 4 billion active accounts between them. And each platform has incredibly sophisticated audience targeting tools that make it easy for you to display ads to people who are highly likely to be interested in your clinic’s services.
Every penny you spend on social media advertising is tracked – and you can see what reaction your ads get from the audience you have targeted. With a tested strategy to reach new customers throughout the buying cycle, paid social ads can deliver some of the quickest results of all marketing channels – digital or otherwise.
Interested? Learn more about the key channels you could advertise on:
Your social ads go…where?
Broadly speaking, with social media ads you have two options:
Let’s be confusing and look at option two first.
Actions you may encourage your reader to take might include following you or completing a form that’s linked directly to your social media ad. Perhaps signing up to your newsletter, booking an appointment or scheduling a call with one of your clinicians.
Option two can be good at driving results because you are making it easy for people to engage – after all, they don’t have to leave the app. The downside is you are very limited in how much space you have to talk about your services and treatments.
As for option one? Well, it’s great for being able to expand on what you do – because you can link directly to a landing page that focuses on a specific treatment. The downside is the reader knows that clicking your ad is going to navigate them away from their social media app – which they may not be willing to do.
There are pros and cons to each option. Option one – driving users to your website – tends to generate less engagement, but those who do engage are highly interested in your services. With option two – keeping things within the app – you tend to get higher engagement, but the audience is less invested in your services.
This is just one example of why success with social media advertising requires a holistic approach – where your digital channels are working in cohesion and you are all over your analytics.
Too busy? We can get results for you.
We’re not done yet. Here are some bonus marketing ideas.
Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult. Sometimes you barely need to do anything at all. Here are some ideas for grabbing the low hanging fruit.
Brand partnerships
Is there a business in your area that has comparable – but not competing – services? Think about approaching independent hair salons or leisure centres or gyms. Have a conversation about allowing them to give their customers 20% off your treatments, and your clinic giving your customers 20% off their services. It’s hard to think who loses with such an arrangement.
Not you. Not your partner brand. Not the customers.
Referral discounts
Do your existing customers have friends? Probably. Would those friends be interested in your services? Maybe. Give your customers the option to give their friends a 50% discount on their first treatment and find out.
Customer loyalty bonus
Isn’t it annoying when you’ve been using a product or service for years, and they give all the great discounts to new customers? Never forget your regulars. Reward them frequently with loyalty discounts.
Don’t get caught out by regulations
Nobody likes red tape. It’s one of the least fun things about promoting your brand and growing your business. But when you think about it, the regulatory landscape of the aesthetics industry is fair enough. It helps to keep customers safe – and prevents your competitors from doing anything underhanded.
There’s plenty to consider when advertising aesthetic services.
And we’ve written about it here.
Your ad spend is precious. So do your ads, better.
At Adbetter we have proven customer generation strategies for digital channels. Proven. And we only work with businesses where we are 100% sure we can deliver new customers and revenue growth. You can expect us to handle everything on your behalf. No opaque processes. No confusing marketing jargon. Just fully transparent lead generation – and an easy to understand live dashboard report showing the impact we are making on your business.?Could we transform your profits? Find out with a no-obligation, fee-free proposal. Let’s go.