The Art & Science of Plastic Surgery Marketing

Top plastic surgeons are marketing their brand to take their share of the $16.5+ Billion dollar plastic surgery market

The demand for plastic surgery procedures is at an all time high and this demand is expected to grow

The most recent research available shows that almost 18 million plastic surgery procedures were performed in 2018. 10% were surgical procedures, think along the lines of a breast augmentation, and 90% were non-invasive procedures, like a Botox injection.

While demand for plastic surgery is growing across the board, the demographic that shows the biggest year-over-year growth is the 30-39 year old bracket which saw 2% growth in total procedures performed and a 3% increase in the volume of surgical procedures. This growth equates to 2.9 million total procedures with 397,000 of them being classed as surgical.

The growth in this segment is exciting as this demographic actively engages with brands because of their interest in making a purchase. The takeaway from all of these stats is obvious: if your plastic surgery practice isn’t maintaining an online presence and engaging with your (future) customers the surgeon down the street is and you will miss out on those new patients and procedures. Avoid this fate by using the plastic surgery marketing playbook as your guide.

Plastic Surgery Marketing Playbook

Have a decent website

If you don’t have a website or your website is old and broken the time is now to fix that problem. The Google Trends chart below shows 5 years worth of search data for the terms “plastic surgeon near me” and “Best Plastic Surgeon.” Without a website, your practice is missing out on all of this search traffic and without Google Analytics’ tracking script on the site you’re missing out on 2 must have functionalities.

Notice the increase in the use of the term “plastic surgeon near me.” By investing in in a Local SEO strategy your practice can earn a competitive advantage by being a top option in your area (like Miami, Austin, or LA.)

Even though Local SEO is mentioned, SEO fundamentals shouldn’t be ignored. If you don’t have a trusted marketing partner or in-house SEO knowledge start by making well written, useful content that is paired with high quality images or video.

Social Media

There is huge interest in plastic surgery on social media, Instagram in particular. As a brand, you should be creating content that showcases your expertise, services offered, and results. Creating content and posting it to your feed is called organic content. The opposite of organic content is paid content.

Social media platforms have limited the organic reach of brands in recent years. As a way to maximize profits, they prefer that brands or company pages pay to advertise and grow their reach. The #1 social media mistake I see made is to “Boost Post” $50 or $100 at a time with no real strategy or ad framework. Don’t do that.

Remember that Facebook and Instagram are happy to take your money and they want to make that as easy as possible. So, instead of forcing businesses who may not have the expertise to properly run ads into their advertising platform, they have added the Boost Post button to the general user interface.

Because advertising on social media is necessary for brands, get the help you need to run proper ad campaigns instead of hurting your ROI with a series of boosted posts. Hope is not a strategy. A thought through ad strategy is strategy.

Plastic Surgery Marketing 2 Plastic Surgery Marketing 4 Plastic Surgery Marketing 3

Email

Your website is home to some great content and you have strong ads generating interest in your practice. Now you need to use email to help move potential new patients (PNPs) from interested to paying customer.

PNPs should feel like they are getting messaging that is personalized just for them. Did they show interest in a surgical procedure? Tell them more about it. If this subscriber signaled desire for a non-invasive procedure add them to your monthly Botox promo email list.

Putting the Plastic Surgery Marketing Playbook into Production

Website, Paid Social Media, and Email are the holy trinity of plastic surgery marketing. The most important aspect of these channels is to provide valuable information to your audience. Think beyond posting the price of a procedure- show how your results impact the happiness of your patients.

Practices with in-house ads expertise can also add Paid Search (like Google Ads or Bing Ads) to their marketing mix. Be warned, though, that the learning curve is steep and will take a bite out of your ROI if you let your campaigns go off the rails.

Have a question or want to talk shop? Send me a note.

Written by Erik Sunset

Written by Erik Sunset

Erik is the owner and operator of Sunset Marketing Works. Click to learn more about the author.

Stay Informed

More B2B Marketing Content

The Ungated Assets Show #11
The Ungated Assets Show #10
The Ungated Assets Show #9
Scroll to Top