Patient motivation and communication

“Consumers are not looking for perfection they’re looking for a business they can trust.” 
Dr. Paul Nassif 

“This is a great time to be in aesthetics.” 
Tom Seery 

Medical aesthetics is rapidly achieving mass acceptance all over the world. you and your patient carry around a supercomputer, everywhere. it allows your patience to stay connected with friends in yourself at anytime and gives you the chance to increase visibility to prospective patients in your area while giving you a better understanding of the local market. 

Social-mobile shifts control to your patients when making purchase decisions. And they expect it at all times. 

“I’m my own dermatologist!“
Tom Seery 

A study carried out by Realself.com found out that dermatologists no longer carry the skincare authority and influence they did just 3 to 5 years ago. They advise their clients to stop adding “Dermatologist Recommended” on new product packaging.

Transparent 

Does your practice have a sales force? You bet. Happy patients advocate on your behalf in patients reviews. Data from Realself shows that the number of reviews positively correlates with patient inquiries via email and phone: 

If Realself.com is not being used in your country, there are plenty of other ways where patients can post reviews about your practice. Whether it is docfinder.at in Austria, jameda.de in Germany or simply Google reviews – patients find a way to share their aesthetic experience. 

Make acquiring reviews a standard process! 

You have to be aware that no matter how good you perform and how well trained your staff is there will be bad reviews along the way. It is vital that you properly deal with these bad reviews! According to Dr. Paul Nassif the best way to deal with bad reviews is to ignore them. Don’t reply! 

If you reply to a bad review it is very likely that you trigger a public discussion and thus attract way more attention to the bad review than there would have been without your reply. The only way to deal with bad reviews is trying even harder to get more good reviews. 

Responsive 

Do your patients largely have sane expectations? No. They have been “Uberized”, which means that they expect instant gratification at any time. Although 85% of weekday phone leads occur between 8am and 5pm, only 51% of email leads take place during business hours. 

Being highly responsive is key to turning an internet “lead” into a patient.

Key learnings: 

• 1/3rd asks about prices 
• They underestimate surgical cost
• They overestimate nonsurgical cost
• Some offices won’t give prices or deliver it in a way to deter customers 

Socially engaged 

Up to 95% of prospective patients expect the practice to engage online! 

High performing marketing teams focus on reaching people where they spend time thus setting their priorities on Social Media Marketing, Advertising on Social and Video Advertising. Under performing teams over invest in their own website. 

With 75% of all Instagram users being outside of the US, the rapidly growing photo and video sharing app owned by Facebook has become an important marketing instrument next to Facebook. It allows you to interact with your patients, create familiarity between prospective patients, the surgeon and the office staff and enables you to show surgical expertise with videos and photos! 

Tips for getting started 

Key learning’s: 

• You are a doctor – don’t use profile pictures of you in a suit/dress! Wear a lab coat!
• Answer questions you get in comments on Facebook or sites like Realself. Engage, don’t just post and forget.
• Get your “influencer” patients posting about their experience with your practice.
• Don’t look or appear as if you are perfect! Spread the message that you are a normal human being. Up to 25% of your social media content may be private life or other things outside of your practice.
• Post pictures of your real self at work and not just products and services.
• Tell a story, beyond the actual procedure.
• Ask patients to rate you and share what procedure they did.
• Take photos and post them when you to a meeting – makes you more human and approachable.
• Show passion for what you do and transport this to social media.
• Be careful on over-optimization, you can lose humanity.
• Avoid stock photos, modified images or overproduced video – be real!
• Consider showing more graphic images/videos.
• Interview patients while doing the procedure – point to the eyes to demonstrate that the treatment is not painful.
• Keep your content on “5th grade” level. 

Patients’ expectations and social media 

Due to the rise of social media it has become more and more common that patients approach doctors with a picture of a celebrity or any other person they want to look like. But how do you deal with patients who have such excessive expectations regarding the outcome of a treatment. 

Per se it’s not a bad thing when patients know what they want, but it is crucial to clarify that they won’t look like the person on the photo. The best way to communicate this message is to tell your patients that you will not make them look like the person on the photo, but you will make them look like themselves – with small changes. If possible, you can support your explanation by analyzing the possible outcome of the treatment trough computer morphing. This part of the consultation allows the doctor and the patient to reach a mutually agreeable set of expectations by demonstrating the planned outcome of and describing the objectives of the treatment.