Cosmetic Surgery Marketing Plan – Build a Successful Brand

By: Frank DePino | October 26, 2020

Whether you are an up-and-coming cosmetic surgeon’s office or a well-established medical practice, creating a cosmetic surgery marketing plan will help set you up for success. 

You might have heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” and that certainly proves to be true when it comes to cosmetic surgery. 

There is an abundance of Reddit threads dedicated to before and after botched cosmetic surgeries, and the pictures speak for themselves. 

Keep reading to find out how to develop a marketing plan to differentiate you from competitors.

A Winning Cosmetic Surgery Marketing Plan

A successful marketing campaign for cosmetic surgery is beneficial to establish credibility and provide a visual reference for potential clients to perform comparisons. A comprehensive marketing plan will need to outline how to reach the target audience using relevant social media platforms, a company website, utilizing mobile optimization, and traditional advertising.

So, where do you begin the process of creating your marketing plan? How do you know who your target audience is? 

Below you will find an extensive list of tips and tricks to help you get started with tailoring a plan to fit your needs.

A Marketing Pre-Consultation for Cosmetic Surgery

Just as you would want to meet with your client to set realistic expectations before undergoing the knife, you also need to brainstorm your business needs and goals, and how to execute them successfully for your target audience. 

You need to set a plan in place that will have a long-term, and lasting impact that results in positive growth and an upward trending bottom line.

Establishing Your Marketing Needs and Goals

Most businesses are looking for ways to increase visibility and clientele, and a cosmetic surgery practice is no different. 

If you have not already checked out this article on “Alternative Ways to Grow Your Business in 2021”, definitely give it a look. 

 Ask yourself the following five questions on what information is needed to begin constructing your marketing plan.

• How do you make your brand/company more widely recognized? This is typically achieved by traditional advertising such as tv/radio ads, billboards, magazine and newspaper ads, etc. However, the invention of social media provided a new medium to get your company’s image in the hands of anyone with a computer or smartphone by utilizing paid ads on social media websites or influencers who are willing to post about your brand/company with a little incentive.
• What will help with the visibility of the procedures that are offered? If you are a cosmetic surgery office that specializes in only specific surgeries, you should have those surgeries highlighted on your website and social media platforms. If your practice is a one-stop shop for cosmetic surgeries, you can link to additional surgeries by using phrases such as “you may also be interested in” or “clients who had this surgery were also interested in this.”
• Will former client testimonials be a beneficial tool for gaining new clients? As long as the testimonials are positive, they can absolutely be used in obtaining new clients. It is also beneficial to have before and after pictures for a guide that the reader can refer back to.
• What social media platforms will your target audience be more inclined to frequent? Luckily, there are statistics that help you determine which social media platforms are most common for certain demographics. This pew research fact-sheet is an amazing resource to help you determine which platforms will get the most traffic based on who your target audience is.
• Should you hire an outside firm to manage your social media/advertising or can you manage it internally? With an influx of college graduates over the past few years who have turned to social media marketing as their degree, you are likely to be able to find somebody who can help you develop a marketing plan for cosmetic surgery without hiring an outside firm. The benefit of hiring an outside firm would be the experience and resources that they can provide.

Now that you have asked yourself these five questions, it is time to switch gears over to narrowing down exactly what goals you are wanting to accomplish by using the 5 P’s of Marketing.

The 5 P’s of Marketing

The 5 P’s of marketing is a common strategy used when executing a new marketing plan. This can help you focus on specific goals you are wanting to obtain while executing your plan.

• Product – services offered
• Price – not just the selling price, but discounts, payment arrangements, etc.
• Promotion – activities that make the business more known to consumers
• Place – where the service is seen, made, or sold
• People – staff, salespeople, and those who work for the business

Check out this list below when determining the best approach for reaching clients for cosmetic surgery. 

By keeping the 5 P’s in mind, you can add value to your business and help differentiate yourself from a competitor.

Not only do you want to be competitive, but you also want to be an authoritative and educated voice to your potential clients.

Therefore, they trust you and feel comfortable with selecting you as their potential cosmetic surgery provider.

Executing Your Marketing Plan Successfully

Once you have established the needs and goals for your cosmetic surgery marketing plan, your focus will shift to how you can properly execute that plan for your target audience.  

Traditional advertising, social media marketing, website design, and mobile optimization will each need to be approached differently to achieve a combined purpose.

Pros and Cons of Traditional Advertising for Cosmetic Surgery

Traditional advertising such as tv/radio ads, billboards, and magazine or newspaper ads are a tried and true way to get your image out to a mass amount of people. However, there are a few drawbacks that you need to consider to determine if this is the best route for you to take.

Pros

• Harder to ignore – whether your brand is plastered on a billboard or played every morning on the local radio station, the brand exposure to the mass market is enormous.
• DIY options – marketing channels like direct mail/email lists are easily customizable and do not need to employ the additional costs of a marketing agency or firm.
• Less potential risk – you can more easily control your brand image and message.
• More targeted for a certain audience – you can pay for an ad to be read on a popular blog that talks about cosmetic surgery to reach more people who would be interested in your services.
• Deliver specific offers for specific people – direct mail or referral incentives for previous clients are likely to have a more positive response than a social media post advertising the same specials.

Cons

• More expensive than digital marketing – compared to the ease of creating content using free graphics generators and posting on your social media platform, traditional marketing can be exponentially more expensive than digital marketing.
• Not as measurable – Digital media can give you a breakdown of who viewed your content and when they viewed it. Traditional media can only provide estimates.
• Can take longer to execute – Print and audio ads take time to execute and are set in stone once you sign off on the final product. Digital media allows you to go in and tweak things even after you publish to appeal to the demand of your customer.
• Less targeted for a wider audience – Though you can target certain audiences with traditional media, the reach does not go as far as digital media.
• Losing an audience – with the decline in cable subscriptions and the popularity of streaming services, traditional media in the form of tv/radio ads are losing an audience. Digital media can be used to reach anyone who owns a cellphone or a computer.

Most businesses still use a mix of both traditional and digital advertising when they are building their strategy. Try looking into creating a marketing budget to help you determine what would be the most cost-effective advertising strategy for your cosmetic surgery marketing plan.

Utilizing Your Website and Social Media Platform for Marketing Cosmetic Surgery

When creating social media content or blog posts for your website there are a handful of tips and tricks to make your brand stand out among the rest.

• Image – have a distinct and recognizable image. Use the same fonts, color schemes, and logo on all of your content.
• Mobile accessibility – not all content is displayed the same across all devices. Make sure your content can be stream-lined and viewed without confusion while being viewed on a mobile device or a computer.
• Consistency – be consistent with your posts. Create a hashtag or a special day of the week for content to be released to give your audience something to look forward to.
• Customer Service – if you are opting for people to inquire via social media, have a dedicated team or person to answer any questions in a timely manner.
• Plan your content – having a content calendar will help you stay on track and on-trend with the content you are wanting to keep consistent with your brand/business.
• Analytics – pay attention to the free analytics that business pages will offer you on Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can determine the best time to post and see which posts are performing better than others.
• Blogs – if you will be utilizing a blog feature on your website to highlight a procedure or update your business, make sure you link the blog in your social media posts to encourage traffic to the website.

The key is to make both the content on your social media platforms and the content on your website recognizable and an authoritative, educated voice so that potential clients feel comfortable with inquiring about the cosmetic surgery procedures you have to offer.

Optimizing Your Website and Social Media for Mobile Use

One of the goals of a successful marketing plan for cosmetic surgery is to be one of the top results when people are searching for cosmetic surgery. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy that most companies are using to boost their visibility and improve their rankings on search results. 

Here’s a good list of how to optimize your website and social media for mobile use:

• Make sure Google can access your website
• Avoid using pop-ups for ads
• Make sure content is consistent on both desktop and mobile
• Increase site speed
• Optimize for local searches

Choosing the website or social media design can greatly increase the effectiveness of a search engine displaying your business at the top of the list. Stay consistent and update frequently to stay relevant.

Finding Your Target Audience

Determining your target audience will help you make the best decisions regarding the content strategies you need to execute. 

Whether you are using Google analytics or social media insights to gauge how your posts are performing, you should have a clear understanding of who you are trying to reach.  

Some factors of your target audience include but are not limited to:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Employment
• Income

Tools such as Facebook insights will break down the country and city of your viewers. 

You can also view the lifestyle and interests of your viewers based on their additional linked social media pages. 

These tools are usually free and are great for monitoring who your posts are reaching which gives you the ability to adjust your content in a real-time manner to expand your reach.

Conclusion

Keeping up with the ever-changing advertising and marketing opportunities will be detrimental in making sure your company is relevant and credible.  

A well-thought-out marketing plan for cosmetic surgery can take the guesswork out of whether or not your company will grow by providing real-time analytics and the ability to adjust your strategy due to consumer needs. 

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.