Patient Growth Made Easy: Smart Strategies for Mature Cosmetic Practices

You know your practice’s identity. You have honed your mission, vision, and values. Your practice is established, and your dream team is in place. What is the next step to take in attracting and keeping new patients?

In my experience working with cosmetic healthcare practitioners, many have understood the importance of recruiting, converting, and retaining patients. In this current economic environment, practices are facing increased pressures. Patients face financial hardships, and practices face more competitors in the marketplace as well as low-cost competition dangling “cheaper” alternatives. In times like these, it’s crucial for practices to stick to their established identity and focus on best practices in recruiting, converting, and retaining patients.

Working with practices in today’s environment, there are two main barriers for patients new to an aesthetic procedure:

1. Identifying the best practice for their aesthetics needs

2. Price

The great news is that there is still a significant untapped market with nearly endless opportunities. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), there were more than 9.2 million aesthetic surgical and non-surgical procedures performed in 2023.1 There is still an incredible opportunity to grow your patient base, as there are still more than 67 million consumers interested in facial injectable treatments alone.2 How can your practice claim your fair share of these potential patients? 

What Are You Willing to Invest to Attract Your Ideal Patient?

A good understanding of your current marketing spends and associated results may be crucial to dialing in a successful updated marketing plan. A ballpark rule of thumb (varies by market and specialty) in the marketplace is a 3-to-1 ratio of revenue-to-marketing spend.  

To determine your practice’s rough new patient acquisition cost, as well as what revenue your practice generated from these patients, you may consider the following equations:  

Marketing Spend / Number of New Patients = Marketing Spend per New Patient (Most practice management systems can identify a patient’s first appointment made in the last 12 months.)

New Patient Spend / Number of New Patients = Net Revenue per New Patient 

Example

Spend of $20,000/50 New Patients = $400 Marketing Spend per New Patient 

Your New Patients last year spent $60,000/50 New Patients = $1,200 Revenue per Patient

Start with the End in Mind

It is always helpful to focus on your desired result from a revenue standpoint. Once you understand that, you can determine your budget constraints and fine tune your marketing plan. In your consideration to run a new marketing campaign, first decide on what your end revenue goal is for these new patients and work backward to reach this goal to set your new marketing budget. Once you have determined your new marketing budget use it to target accordingly. An example:

If your growth goal is $100,000 this year:

$100,000 Revenue/$1,200 Revenue per Patient = 83 New Patients

83 New Patients x $400 Marketing Spend per New Patient = $33,200 New Marketing Budget

What Steps Can You Take to Attract and Retain New Customer Visits?

There are several best practices you can use to help new customers find your practice through various channels, to manage those leads, and to retain those patients in the long-term. These include optimizing your Google Profile, lead management, phone skills, and financing.

1. Google Business Profile (GBP)

More people search for businesses online than anywhere else, so it’s important to make sure your local business listing can be easily found on Google and Google Maps. With a Business Profile, creating a great listing takes just a few minutes and doesn’t cost you anything. 

Keeping your GBP up to date with an assigned point person can be a cost-effective way to differentiate your practice and celebrate what makes it great to potentially attract new patients.

2. Lead Management, Tracking, and Nurturing

Top practices assign these tasks to specific individuals and set exact timelines to follow up with patients. Many patients often reach out during off hours, so consider adding an automatic reply letting the patient know they will be contacted shortly.  

Ensure you have a staff member follow up with a prospective lead within the same or the next business day. Patient surveys show that four out of five patients say that an “immediate” response is important.3 Also, we see that 76% of customers expect a response from social media within 24 hours.4,5 Again, this adds an element of investing in staff training and getting your team’s buy-in on the importance of prompt follow-up. 

3. Phone Skills:  When Your Patients Call

This step is crucial in creating that strong first impression and helping to set the tone for patients to see the value of your practice in this competitive environment. Do you know what your conversion rate is? Even top practices can struggle with converting a higher percentage of callers into new patient consultations. Many patients don’t know exactly which questions to ask when they call, so the conversation can quickly turn to price.  

Top practices invest a significant amount of time and resources in properly training staff in phone skills in addition to responding quickly and efficiently to direct messages on social media. Practices with higher conversion rates create excitement through positive first impressions and quickly establish rapport by engaging the caller and credentialing their practice, providers, and procedures. Upon doing so, they have potentially educated their patient and have assured them that they are there in the right place for their aesthetic concerns. Additionally, they capitalize by taking the opportunity to close that customer for either an appointment or for a follow-up engagement (if they’re an undecided patient). 

1. The Aesthetic Society (ASAPS). Aesthetic Plastic Surgery National Databank Statistics 2022. Published 2023. https://www.theaestheticsociety.org/media/procedural-statistics

2. AMI Elevate. Aesthetic market sizing. Published 2024.

3. Paperform. What to do after form submission. Accessed 2023. https://paperform.co/blog/what-to-do-after-form-submission

4. Sprout Social. Social media response time. Accessed August 2023. http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-response-time/

5. Sprout Social. Sprout social index. Accessed August 2023. http://sproutsocial.com/insights/index