4 Strategies for Successful Lead Generation in Aesthetic Practices
Now more than ever aesthetic practices are relying on digital marketing for lead generation to drive traffic to their website. A typical aesthetic practice will spend thousands of dollars each month on pay-per-click, social media, and other paid advertising with the goal of booking an appointment. No matter how large or small your marketing budget (it should be on average 10% of overall revenue, up to 20% if you are a new start-up), leads don’t amount to anything if they are not followed up with, nurtured, tracked, analyzed for effectiveness and able to be converted by a trained and knowledgeable team.
The average aesthetics practice generates 52% of its leads from its website—more than any other source (including social media, physician referrals, patient referrals, or other marketing sources). If you don’t have a plan in place to track and convert these web leads, you are leaving a ton of money on the table.
1. The Importance of Timely Response and Follow-Up
Quick response time is vital to capturing prospects from web leads. A recent MIT study showed that if you respond to a web lead within five minutes, the conversion rate is 79%. If you wait as little as 30 minutes, that number drops to 34%. When waiting any longer, there were virtually no conversions.
Patients are often making “spur of the moment” decisions to solve a problem or fulfill a need based on an emotion that they are concerned about at that moment. That’s why it’s so important to respond right when they act (submitting an online form) if they are checking out your practice online. You can bet that if they are checking you out, they are checking out your competitors as well. Excellent response time could be the deciding factor between your practice and the one down the street.
If you have the staffing resources to have someone in your practice monitor web leads in real-time as they come in, that is optimal for high conversion rates. If that is not feasible, then your front desk staff, patient care coordinator, or office manager should enter these leads into your Practice Management Software (PMS) and reach out within the hour with a call, followed by an email, followed by a text message.
If you don’t have the staff resources to respond hourly, make sure you have an automated response email set up that generates when someone submits a web inquiry. This email should be friendly and informative, welcoming them to your practice and assuring the prospect that someone will be following up with them within 1 hour (ideal timing).
After your initial effort to reach the prospect, make sure you follow up within 48 hours with another phone call, an email, and then a text. Finally, make one last attempt seven days later to follow up. Even if you don’t reach the prospect, keep their information for your mailing list for upcoming newsletters or promotions going on in your practice. Our sales training course within our APX Platform covers converting both web and phone leads in great detail as well as the follow-up process for aesthetic practices.
2. Maximizing Lead Conversion Through Convenience
Roughly 50% of patients who are researching various treatment options or services do so after normal business hours in the evenings or on weekends. While it can be expensive to have staff monitoring your web leads when the office is closed, it can be a huge area of opportunity to capture and convert more leads. Weighing out the costs of creating a motivating bonus plan to ensure web leads are being handled in a timely manner after hours can result in additional revenue and increased potential lifetime value. This strategy might just differentiate your practice from others and become part of your Unique Value Proposition (also covered within the sales training course within APX Platform).
To analyze taking on the additional compensation vs. the potential revenue that might be generated, you must first know your numbers. APX’s financial calculators consist of robust plug-and-play calculators as well as all the financial tools and financial training courses you need within the platform to evaluate performance in real-time so you can become more profitable.
3. Building a Personal Connection with Prospects
Even though we live in a digital world, the lost art of personal connection is SO important. You’ve probably heard me say it a hundred times, but a personal touch (using the person’s name when you call them to follow up), asking them the right questions, and engaging them in a conversation can make or break converting a prospect into a patient. So, after you gather all the information and input it into your software, make sure you pay attention to the form they filled out, what their area of concern is, the referral source, their timeline, and interest level (immediate, moderate, or if they are just gathering information). Then, use this information to engage them in dialogue. Again, our sales training course within APX goes over the LAER (Listen, Acknowledge, Engage, and Respond) communication method in detail.
4. Effective Measurement for Lead Management
When you are spending money every month on lead generation across various marketing channels (Facebook, Google ads, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.), being able to track and measure the effectiveness is the ONLY way to determine whether your lead generation plan is effective. You need to evaluate the data and have access to reports on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) needed to measure performance, so you can make data-driven decisions on which channels are most effective. Monitoring analytics on a monthly (or even weekly) basis can help you understand what’s working and what’s not--instead of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Our dashboard helps you keep a pulse on how your practice is performing.
Remember, our team is here to help your practice thrive and make your lead-generation efforts more profitable! If you would like to learn more about APX Platform, book a discovery call with our team today.