Easier Way to Scale Practice Revenues (Ep.142) - a podcast by Catherine Maley, MBA
from 2022-02-24T04:37:24
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Easier Way To Scale Practice Revenues (Ep.142)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Beauty and the Biz where we discuss how to get surgeons more patients and more profits through an easier way to scale practice revenues.
This episode is entitled Easier Way To Scale Practice Revenues
And it’s especially for you if you’re struggling to grow your practice without dramatically increasing your overhead.
So, I’ll talk about:
- What is takes to scale your practice
- The challenges coming at you and how to pivot
- How to thrive and survive no matter what is going on in the world.
Because the objective is to set up your cosmetic surgical practice as a business so it’s more profitable, more enjoyable to go to every day, and it frees up your valuable time, so you have more of it to spend doing what you like to do with the people you most enjoy being with.
Because the ultimate goal to scale their practice includes a system that attracts a steady stream of cash-paying patients WITHOUT spending a fortune on advertising, chasing down leads, hiring more staff, discounting services or performing on social media.
To achieve scalable impact, here’s what you need:
Leverage – use your assets you already have to generate more revenues with less effort and overhead
Bankable Profits – not just revenues, but profits you actually take out of the practice and
Transferrable Value – means you have separated you from the practice so you have the freedom to sell to someone else when it’s time to exit
But there are challenges ahead….
Privacy issues are killing your plans for attracting new patients to your practice.
So much is happening behind the scenes with apple, google and FB trying to dominate consumer data capture, so they are no longer sharing data with advertisers like before.
This makes it very difficult for you to attract new PREFERRED patients when you can no longer target specifically to certain audiences. And that means Ad results will become incomplete and inaccurate because you now have only 10% of the data that used to be 100% available and will face more difficulties finding an easier way to scale practice revenues.
So that forces you to increase your advertising budget substantially, as in 30-80% and HOPE the broader, less targeted audience is interested in cosmetic rejuvenation.
It’s very similar to old-school mass advertising like TV. You spend a fortune to talk to everyone, rather than a targeted audience most likely to want your services.
So not only do your ad costs increase dramatically, so do poor quality leads. Since your ads are not as targeted to your preferred patients, you get a mixed bag of the public contacting you.
Now your staff wastes a lot of time triaging these leads to determine who is really serious and who is flaky.
So, you need well-trained staff and processes to qualify leads.
BTW, if you aren’t already, I recommend you charge a consult fee so at least, your time is better protected from wasted consults who have no intention of moving forward.
Regardless of their motives, these few Internet companies affect you big time if you are using paid advertising to attract new cosmetic patients.
And there is cause and effect to everything.
This major increase in advertising costs has now made SEO popular again; however, the supply is much greater than the demand so it’s getting near impossible to rank on the 1st page.
On top of that, Google is turning into an answer engine in which they are answering consumer questions without them having to go to a website.
So, you need really good fresh content that entices consumers to click and stay on your website. This is not an easier way to scale practice revenues since it takes time, money and energy to create that incredible content.
Another huge challenge you want to plan for is your social media strategy.
You most likely are paying someone to do this for you OR you’re spending a lot of your own time posting to add more followers.
But please keep in mind, you are only renting those followers.
IG and FB own them so they are your landlord.
They can raise the rent and/or kick you out at any time, so you lose your data you’ve spent years collecting.
I’m sure you’re aware that social media and plastic surgery don’t get along.
You are showing graphic material that can be offensive or hurt the self-esteem of the public so these platforms can close down your account without notice.
They also decide who sees your organic content. FB & IG continually strangle your list to force you to “pay to play” by buying advertising. The latest stats show only 5.2% of your followers actually see your organic content so you have this false sense of security thinking you’re marketing your practice when, in fact, it’s drying up right before your eyes.
To counter this dilemma, I recommend you own the data!
You can no longer trust that audiences you have built on social media platforms will be available to you.
The 1st party data is the future and the money is in your patient list data.
Your followers become your best targeted list because they already raised their hand indicating they are interested in cosmetic rejuvenation.
Use landing pages to capture your followers’ name, email and cell so you can stay in touch no matter what happens.
I’m imploring you to use the data and resources you already have built up over the years being in practice since it’s no longer easy to come by.
Another big challenge is Technical Advancements are coming at patients fast and furiously.
Just google non-surgical and look what pops up
what that means to you is plenty of patients still need your surgical expertise; however, way more will opt for non-surgical procedures first to delay surgery.
So, meet them where they are now so you don’t lose them to non-surgeons and med-spas.
The point is to develop that relationship early so they come for non-surgical AND stay for surgical procedures, thus, an easier way to scale practice revenues.
So, Give these challenges, how CAN you scale your practice?
- Attract more patients from proven sources
- Return more often & spend more
- Encourage referrals, reviews and sharing on social so you DON’T spend on advertising for new patients.
This will take a mindset shift….
The short-term, one-and-done mentality no longer works. Instead, look at each patient as an unpaid practice revenue-generator who brings you new patients for free.
Once you embrace this “patients for life” mindset, you will treat your patients differently and they will react in kind by building your practice for you organically.
So, here’s what I’m proposing…
Enjoy the surgical side of your practice while also building up your non-surgical as a healthy stand-alone profit center and here’s why….
Patients enter different doors to cosmetic rejuvenation, so you want to meet them where they are. Some will go straight to surgical and then stay for more, while others dabble in non-surgical, some for years, before they are ready for your surgical option and give you a path to an easier way to scale practice revenues.
And the beauty of our industry is that Cosmetic Consumers Have ENDLESS NEEDS
The non-surgical industry has grown to over $3BB dollars and continues to grow thanks to social trends, social media and advanced technologies that continue to fuel the demand.
And let’s face it, we females are hard on ourselves. We stare in the mirror and critique ourselves and then we finally have enough and do something about it and then what do we do?
We find the next thing that bothers us about us and focus on that.
It never ends and that’s what keeps all of us in business!
I also looked up the most recent Aesthetic society stats and non-surgical is now 1/3 of all aesthetic procedures performed and growing.
And, here’s another interesting stat… Loyal non-surgical patients spend 67% more than new patients and that makes sense because If they know, like and trust you, they are open to your recommendations and will gladly buy your packages when offered.
Here’s the best part….
a 5% increase in non-surgical patient retention increases your profits by 25% – 95%.
Because recurrent non-surgical patients tend to buy more, return more often and refer their friends, which is an easier way to scale practice revenues.
This increases their lifetime value and decreases your advertising budget and that makes for a great P&L statement.
So, it’s the Retention of your patients that scales your practice using resources you already have and paid dearly for.
You likely have a database of hundreds or thousands of patients.
Can you imagine what would happen to your bottom line if a majority of them returned for more and referred their friends?
I know for a fact many of them would gladly return and refer if given the opportunity.
Heck, even Google agrees:
One day, I was so frustrated with all the changes going on in digital advertising and tripling your costs to get mediocre results,
I "Googled" how can I get more cosmetic patients and Google said:
- Get more reviews
- Enhance your online presence
- Use social media
- Respond to reviews
- Train your staff
- Build strong relations with existing patients and referrals will follow
BTW, here’s the greatest missed opportunity:
Word-of-mouth referrals. Also, an easier way to scale practice revenues.
Duct Tape Marketing says 83% of business owners claim their main source of new business is referrals.
But here’s the crazy part...
93% of consumers say they would refer their friends to you
BUT only 29% actually do.
So, the smart thing to do is to work on that difference of 64% – that’s where the money is (not your TikTok videos)
Word of mouth referrals are not a happy accident
You need to champion patients by asking them – making it easy and reminding them
To pull this altogether, here is the structure to follow for an easier way to scale practice revenues in this order.
- Increase referrals and reviews
- Retain more patients
- Add more value to differentiate you from your competitors
- Ongoing staff training
- Increase your conversion rate
- Increase your patients’ transaction value
- Increase frequency of patient visits
- THEN Increase leads and more web traffic
But most practices have this backwards.
They focus only on the bottom rung to increase leads, skip the leverage parts so they and their staff work a lot harder than necessary for less results.
The goal is to create a system to scale your practice by 10X’ing the value of your non-surgical patients so if they are typically worth $1K to you, they are soon worth $10K to you because you have a proven system to compel them to return more often, refer more of their friends, give you reviews, and share you on social media with their followers.
So, now you have peace of mind knowing you have a steady stream of patients coming in month after month to give you predictable revenues. You'll agree that this is an easier way to scale practice revenues.
This scalable system needs to be a creative solution that eliminates discounting and decreases advertising.
This will ensure you operate more profitably so you keep more of the revenues you bring in.
And this system needs to be on autopilot so you and your staff can focus on the patient experience.
It also needs to be unique to anything else out there by changing the conversation.
Here’s what I mean…
Most practices don’t realize how insanely difficult it is to get a complete stranger to buy something from them, so they fall back on price, as in discounting their services.
That message attracts price-shoppers but then you’re frustrated that you’re being nickel-and-dimed to death.
All of this discounting hurts your profits and your image and it’s a race to the bottom because you can’t compete if you’re barely covering your overhead.
It’s also not a fun way to run your practice.
So, the solution is to change the conversation from discounting to rewarding your patients with free cosmetic services since the most effective word in advertising has been and will always be FREE, so we use it strategically to create an easier way to scale practice revenues.
This makes it more fun for your patients to work towards winning something and you keep way more of your profits and revenues.
That’s how you scale a cosmetic practice you enjoy going to and are proud of.
If that sounds interesting to you, please check out www.KISSLoyalty.com for the details.
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If you want to talk more about your specific situation, just leave me a message at https://www.CatherineMaley.com, or DM me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/CatherineMaleyMBA.
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👁 DON'T MISS THESE INTERVIEWS 👁
➡️ Robert Singer, MD FACS - Former President of The Aesthetic Society: https://www.catherinemaley.com/podcast/ep-86-robert-singer-md-former-president-of-the-aesthetic-society
➡️ Grant Stevens, MD FACS - Former ASAPS President: https://www.catherinemaley.com/blog/ep-44-covid-19-update-with-asaps-past-president-dr-grant-stevens
➡️ E. Gaylon McCollough, MD FACS - Former President of AAFPRS, ABFPRS, AACS: https://www.catherinemaley.com/podcast/ep-88-e-gaylon-mccollough-md-facs-past-president-abfprs-aacs
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