If you are an established med spa, plastic surgery center, or aesthetic practice, and are only focusing on acquiring new patients, you are missing out on incredible opportunities that will make your practice thrive even more. The fact is that while patient acquisition and practice growth are important, the most valuable patient is the one that you already have. Your current patients have already made the choice to commit to your practice, and can be one of your best tools in marketing to other potential patients. The process of keeping patients who have visited your practice via retargeting and in-house marketing strategies should be one of the key components of your marketing efforts. By taking the right steps with your current patients, you can increase both patient retention and acquisition.

Why Your Current Patient Base Matters

Patients who have already visited your practice offer you a plethora of valuable opportunities. Many potential patients use review platforms like Groupon or Yelp during the process of finding and choosing a provider, so it is crucial that your current patient base is leaving positive reviews on these platforms to increase both your exposure and likelihood of potential patient bookings. Positive reviews are essentially free marketing for your practice, so it is important that you both provide your patients with a positive experience and encourage them to review your practice (while following platform guidelines for soliciting reviews).

You can also encourage patients to leave reviews by putting up different marketing materials in your practice or by linking to your review profiles like Yelp or RealSelf through your different marketing channels. Moreover, your current patient base is likely to make personal referrals to friends and family. Furthermore, current clients are your best chance at upselling to higher-value treatments that you offer, like injectables or more invasive procedures that will result in more revenue for your practice.

Own the Upsell

If you have a client who consistently comes in for minimally invasive treatments like dermaplaning, microdermabrasion, or facials, don't miss the opportunity to market your more profitable services to them. Be sure to use every appointment with your patients to talk about their aesthetic concerns, so you can offer them information about your other services. For example, if you have a patient who has been trying to treat fine lines with a treatment like dermaplaning, you may want to suggest other options that could offer them better results and exceed their expectations, like an injectable or laser treatment. This is why it is crucial your entire staff is knowledgeable about all of your treatments - so they are able to educate patients both inside and outside of your practice. If your patient is already in the office receiving a treatment, this is also a great time to talk about current specials or promotions that may open them up to trying other treatments.

Don't Ignore Your Patients

One of the most prominent mistakes practice owners make is not putting forth a concerted effort to retarget patients that have already been to their practice. By retargeting your patients through different marketing channels in a strategic way, you can ensure patient retention and an increase in the number and types of treatments you provide.

• Offers-Based Marketing: One of the best ways to bring patients back in is by promoting specials, offers, or events your practice is having. A great way to get your practice's phones ringing is by offering flash sales. When asked about the best ways to increase bookings immediately, a Las Vegas med spa manager remarked that "time-sensitive offers always get our phones ringing." Be sure to promote these offers through all of your marketing channels, but especially through the ones that go directly to your current patient base, like email and text marketing.
• Email Marketing: It's crucial that you build up a quality email list of patients who have visited your practice. When a patient books, always make sure you add them to your email list so that they are the first to know about specials, promotions, and new treatments your practice is offering.
• Text Marketing: It's no secret that today almost everyone always has their phone on them; this is why text marketing offers such a valuable opportunity to retarget patients. Encourage your patients to opt in to your texts both in your practice and through your different marketing channels, like social media. Methods like 1) offering an incentive such as "$5 off your next treatment" or 2) hosting a social media contest where people enter by opting in to texting have proven to be extremely effective ways of growing a practice's list of text subscribers.

Direct marketing channels like text and email offer some of the best opportunities to stay on your patients' minds and to retarget them on a regular basis. When done effectively, using these strategies and direct marketing channels can make a huge difference in the type of patient retention your practice sees.

Make the Most of Your Patient Base

Getting a patient into your practice requires an immense amount of marketing and outreach efforts, but once that patient has chosen you as their provider, they have become an extremely valuable aspect of your marketing efforts. Don't miss out on the opportunities that your current patient base offers your practice. Med Aesthetics Group is a full service digital marketing company dedicated to the aesthetics and medical industries. We are experts in both getting patients into your practice and keeping them coming back. Our digital marketing campaigns that implement search engine optimization, PPC, social media management, and email and text marketing have helped hundreds of practices see a marked increase in their patient acquisition and retention.

At Med Aesthetics Group, we don’t just talk about results, we make them happen. Our results-driven marketing campaigns have increased calls and consultations by over 300% for many of our clients. See your practice reach its potential and switch to us today. To learn more about our services and what we can do for your practice, give us a call or book a free demo.