Use this proven system to get more new patients for your medical spa

A step-by-step guide

We aesthetic providers share the same knee-jerk reaction when we need more new patients…“We need more leads!”  But be careful not to paint a broken fence and invest in more advertising before you probe deeply to isolate your real problems.  It may not be obvious. To identify your real issues, use this proven system to get more new patients for your medical spa or aesthetic practice.  Simply follow this process step by step.

 

Why using systems is the key to business success 

1. Your solution may or may not be more leads.
2. As with all business issues, it’s complex.
3. And as with all business issues, the keys to success are systems.
4. Systems allow you and your team to take an iterative approach, break it down step by step, remove emotion…and apply logic.

 

Fix the real issue and get more new patients

• We guarantee that if you use this system, you will isolate the issue, and be able to solve the real problem.
• Once you fix the real issue, you will get more new patients for your medical spa.
• And…if you don’t fix the real issue, you’ll forever have a need for more new patients, regardless of the size of your advertising budget.

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The equation 

Here’s the equation for the proven system to get more patients for your medical spa or aesthetics practice.

Solve for X:  The proven system to get more patients for your medical spa or aesthetic practice.

PROBLEM:  We need more new patients.

HYPOTHESIS:  We need more patients because we need more leads.

SYSTEM:  Solve for X: What steps do we need to take to acquire more new patients?

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Step One – Why do I need more new patients?  Is it a lead problem?

Step One of this proven system to get more patients for your medical spa is to probe and identify if your hypothesis for needing more leads to get more new patients is sound.

 

 

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

 

1. Not enough leads?

Track the number of calls, emails, and web contacts by month for the last three months. Is it enough to grow your practice?

2. Your phone team is not converting enough callers into appointments?

Track the number of calls, emails, and web contacts that converted to appointments in the last three months.

Are you satisfied with the number of callers your phone team schedules?

Will that conversion percentage grow your business?

 

3. Do you have an inadequate (or none at all) lead follow up system,

i.e. you don’t have contact info or you do have contact info but you’re lacking a process to follow up until conversion?

How many calls have not converted to appointments over the last six months? Ten months?

Are you satisfied with spending advertising dollars for this conversion percentage?

How many website lead forms have been completed in the last six months? Will the numbers provide the number of new patients you need to grow your medical spa?

 

IMPORTANT NOTE.  It could also be that you’re getting leads and consultations, but not selling.  If so, you need to identify why your consults are weak.  You can do so with our Solve for X: What steps do we take to convert more consultations? system.  We will walk you through this process in a future article.

 

Step Two – Investigate and Analyze #1, 2, 3

Step Two of the proven system to get more new patients for your medical spa is to methodically go through and probe 1, 2 & 3 separately.  

 

ANALYZE QUESTIONS 1, 2, & 3

I. Your phone is simply not ringing or not ringing enough

 

If your phone is simply not ringing enough, you do need more leads.

Caveat:  Don’t stop here.  Before increasing your google ads budget or making another advertising investment, continue to follow and complete each step of this system.  This may not be your only problem…and without correcting other problems, you may be spending (wasting) money and getting poor results.

 

• Website

 

First and foremost, evaluate your website for costly errors and omissions.  

When was the last time you took a critical look at each page of your website?

Is your website convincing visitors to stay?

Is it capturing their contact information so you can reach out to them?

1. In most cases, you can identify your problem(s) with this step.

 

Be thorough in your evaluation.  Use this downloadable website evaluation checklist to make sure you check off for all the critical elements.

 

 

 

• Data and Metrics

 

Next, ask your current digital agency for tracking and reporting information for your website and for your ads.  Evaluate the data.  As you review, keep in mind that your website must meet each of the four elements of digital marketing:

1. Attract traffic (your ideal client) to your website
2. Capture visitor information (so you can follow up and nurture) and/or convert the website traffic into appointments or sales
3. You must know your customer value so you make smart advertising decisions
4. Utilize tracking reports and use the data from those reports to improve performance

 

• Study and Evaluate your ad campaigns

 

Evaluate your marketing plan as a whole, both digital and offline campaigns.

1. List all your campaigns and your monthly expenditure for each.
2. Answer these questions.

• How much does each campaign return?  What is your ROI for each?
• Are each of the campaigns reaching your ideal target market?
• Can you reach them in better ways?
• Do you need to shift advertising dollars?

 

An outside professional opinion about your website

After going through this exercise, you may decide it’s time to get a consultation or audit from a digital professional to help grow your business.

 

II. You’re getting calls, but too few callers schedule appointments 

If your phone is ringing, but you continue to have too few new appointments scheduled from those calls, your phone team likely needs improvement.

 

If your phone team is lacking, even if you get more leads and phone calls with increased advertising efforts, you will be spending more money and continue to need more patients.

 

Here’s the typical scenario

You have spent a lot of money to attract prospective patients to your website. They read your website, learn about your business, and decide they’d like to know more.

So they call.  But they do not schedule.

 

Why?  What did they hear when they called?  How did the conversation go?

You need to know.

 

Take these steps next.

 

• Evaluate recorded phone calls.

 

Are your calls recorded?

1. If not, get started NOW.  You cannot evaluate and improve what you do not know.

YES.  If so, how often and how many calls do you or your delegate listen to?  When was the last time you did?  When you listen, check for these basic things.

1. Monitor for consistency between team members.
2. Be sure what is said is what you want to be said.
3. Old habits?  It’s easy for your team to go back to using old, unacceptable habits.
4. See more below.

 

• Listen to see if your phone team meets the emotional needs of the patient.

 

Are your telephone team members emotionally in tune with your prospective patients?

Do they understand and properly address the emotional reasons behind your prospective patient’s questions?

 

• Listen to see if your phone team is meeting the Core Requirements of an esthetic practice call. 

Do they answer the phone within 2 rings?

Do they answer with a proper greeting?

Do they avoid placing the caller on hold?

Do they display enthusiasm about both the treatment and your practice?

Do they act interested in the caller?

Do they express empathy and bond with the caller?

Do they answer questions quickly and confidently?

Do they get the contact information?

Do they ask for the appointment?

Do they close the call appropriately?

 

• Listen to how your phone team handles objections and difficult questions.  Does your phone team have prepared responses for the most common objections and difficult questions? 

 

Make sure you are aware and approve of the responses from your phone team for the most common objections and difficult questions.

These responses must be uniform and consistent within all members of your phone team.

• Listen to how your phone team handles questions about treatments you don’t offer and about your competitors.

 

Be aware that callers will ask these types of questions and make sure you approve of the answers your phone team provides.

 

• Train with and use telephone scripts

Do you use telephone scripts?

1. Telephone scripts prepare your office to capitalize on every opportunity…to turn every call into an appointment.
2. And to capture the caller’s contact information for follow up if no appointment is made.
3. Worried your team won’t sound natural?  We hear this concern a lot.  We assure you that practice with the scripts allows your team to use scripted conversations,  feeling and sounding natural.

 

Use this downloadable Telephone Team Checklist to ensure you probe thoroughly.  Is your phone team meeting all the core elements?

 

 

III.  You may be losing leads.  

1.When prospects contact you and do not schedule, you do not get many of them to schedule at a later date…or ever.  

2. You seem to have good enough traffic to your website, but compared to that number, few leads contact you.

 

Step Three of the proven system to get more new patients for your medical spa is evaluating your business’s use of lead conversion tools, i.e. capturing and converting leads.

 

If you don’t have a way to capture contact information from visitors to your website and/or you don’t have a system to follow up on callers who do not schedule when they call, you may need to improve your systems for capturing and converting leads.  Without doing so, increasing your advertising dollars may not yield more patients.

 

Why?  Many patients won’t be ready to buy right away.

They may visit your website and like what they see, then leave your website never to return.

Or they may call with questions, but they are just not ready to schedule, and will likely forget about your business.

 

That’s why you must have and use 

• lead magnets and contact forms on your website (to capture their contact information); and 
• a follow up system to build trust and nurture them until they are ready to buy.  
• Many of them will ultimately buy from you if you nurture them appropriately. Though it may take some of them up to 6-8 months to buy.
• One thing is for certain.  You will lose all of them if you 

1. 1. do not follow up or follow up inconsistently or
   2. fail to nurture them and build trust.

 

• Evaluate your website for Lead Magnets performance

 

Do you have a lead magnet on your website?  A lead magnet is a free item or service, like an ebook,  that is relevant and helpful for your ideal client.  Your client sees that resource as valuable enough to trade her contact information for the free item.

YES.  Calculate the number of leads captured each month for six months.  Is it effective?  Does it capture enough leads to grow your business?  Are you satisfied with that number?

 

• Evaluate your website for Contact Forms performance

 

Do you have a Contact Form on your website?  A Contact Form is a single page or a form on multiple pages of your website that allows visitors to communicate with your business and requires their contact information.  Most prospective patients use these forms to ask questions or make requests.

YES.  How many visitors have submitted the form on a monthly basis over the last six months?  Are those numbers sufficient to grow your business?

1. You should add a Contact Form or page to your website…very soon.   

 

• Evaluate your Lead/Prospect Follow Up Systems

 

Research shows it takes an average of ten touches until a prospect becomes a buying customer.

 

Don’t lose a single lead.  When a prospect calls, (1) capture the contact information and (2) stay in touch over the period of time needed to build a trusted relationship (lead nurturing), by sending them valuable (non-salesy) content.

 

Do you have and utilize a systematized lead/prospect follow up system, with

1. a written protocol, 
2. automated (relevant and non-salesy) emails, and 
3. phone, email and text scripts?  

 

YES.  If so, that’s great! Review the performance of your system.  How many leads/prospects in your system have converted to sales over the last six months?  Over the last ten months?  Are you satisfied your system is working well and that number will grow your business?

1. If you have a system without all the elements listed above, you just need to fill in the blanks.  But if you have no system at all…or an inconsistent, poorly documented system, you will need to design a system with all the necessary elements.  

 

Applying Solve for X: What steps do we need to take to acquire more new patients, the proven system to get more new patients for your medical spa or aesthetics practice is a long complex process, but well worth it. 

 

Did you go through the entire process?  

Part of the process?

What did you learn?  

Let us know in the comment section below.  We’d love to hear your stories.