Like many companies we’re using August downtime to prepare for the Autumn onslaught, our busiest time of the year.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to run a series of posts encouraging you to get your marketing house in order to make sure your business is operating at maximum effectiveness.
The economy is on the up and consumer confidence is higher than it’s been since the big meltdown – the next four months are going to be busiest you’ve had in six years – prepare for it!
1. Photography
Show off your practice in the best possible light with a refresh of your photographic portfolio. The summer light makes it the perfect time to revamp your website images or update your brochure.
OFFER: For the month of August we’re offering a photo shoot of you, your clinic or your staff (or all three) for half the usual price.
Our photographic service is for half a day shoot and then editing up to 20 final shots which can be used on brochures or your website.
Usual cost £500 – August price is £250*
* must be booked and completed in August * travel costs apply
If interested drop us a line and we’ll get you booked in.
You may have a brand new machine in-clinic you want to promote or you want to highlight your top procedures and let people know what you do really well.
The microsites can contain different and more detailed information than you main site and by having microsites promote your products or services, you can extend your reach in the local market.
Your microsite can feature a couple of keywords relevant to that particular procedure or treatment whereas your main website will have a much wider message.
2. Location, location, location
Microsite can help you dominate local areas for these key treatments/areas. This can be reflected in the URL – it can be worth taking a look on a domain site such as LCN to see if URLs are available for your key treatments in combination with your local area even if you’re not planning on pushing the button yet on this marketing strategy.
3. Issues with your main site
Sometimes you may have problems with your main site that is making it ineffective in terms of optimisation and also converting visitors to your site. A microsite can free you up to deliver better results than you main site in your prime money-making areas… and they can prove very cost effective.
https://www.bhmmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Katharine-Griffiths.jpg282282Katharine Griffithshttps://www.bhmmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Untitled-1_0006_bhm-slider-logo-white.pngKatharine Griffiths2014-05-15 10:28:562014-05-15 10:28:563 Reasons You Need a Microsite
It’s a real honour to do work for such a prestigious company as The Spire Hospital Group. The Group has 38 hospitals and 11 private clinics throughout the UK and we have worked with a number of them.
This particular project was for Spire in Cambridge.
The brief: Spire Cambridge wanted to achieve two things with their video package. They were keen to increase the profile of a number of its practitioners and they also had two new procedures/treatments that they wished to promote.
So we were engaged to shoot a series of videos of their specialist consultants who performed these procedures. We also did a lovely interview with a very satisfied customers – the best kind of customer you can get.
The finished product: Here is a small selection of the work we did:
Dr Stephen Middleton introduces the Smart Pill
Introducing the Nuss Procedure with Mr Marco Scarci
CC Kat is one of the UK’s leading plastic surgeons. Since leaving her NHS practice, CC and her husband Dr Kat, have built an outstanding private practice in the heart of Birmingham.
Brief: The team at CC Kat Aesthetics definitely have their game on when it comes to social media and blogging on their website, but they wished to explore the possibilities of video for online marketing.
The clinic offers a full range of treatments from plastic surgery consultations (all performed at the top private hospitals in the area) to skincare. CC and Dr Kat wished to produce a series of videos that promoted this range of treatments, including their cutting-edge laser treatments and PRP with the MesoGun.
They also wished to promote that they are able to carry out an increasing number of surgical procedures in clinic, such as VASER – cue us all having to scrub up and poor Dr Kat having to have a pretend VASER treatment to the abdomen.
It’s very much a team effort at CC Kat Aesthetics and the front of camera duties were shared by CC, Dr Kat, Tash and Kelly. The clinic is so beautiful, that our video guy Steve was able to take lots of footage for cutaways. The clinic intro video is particularly amazing and showcases the fantastic set up.
The finished product:We are currently at the editing stage of the videos so please check back…
Professor Laurence Kirwan is a leading plastic surgeon who has busy private cosmetic surgery practices in both the UK and US.
Brief: Professor Kirwan opted for our treatment video package. This consist of seven short informative videos that give prospective patients the chance of ‘meeting’ their plastic surgeon before even coming in for a consultation.
These videos work on a number of different levels. As well as proving a very useful tool for prospective patients, they can be optimised on YouTube for your top cosmetic surgery procedures. Once they are YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine, they can also be used in your website. Any website with video is rewarded by Google in its searches.
We had a great day with Professor Kirwan at his cosmetic surgery practice on London’s Harley Street. We always allow plenty of time in our video shoots to ensure that the customer is comfortable in front of the camera and gets the information across that they want included in their videos. Some customers need a little longer or a few more takes to get all the material they want, but Professor Kirwan was spot on each take.
Plastic surgeon Mr Sudip J Ghosh had commissioned us to move both his own site – SJG Online – and a shared site with plastic surgery colleague Mr Alan Park over to a WordPress platform.
The brief:Platform switch and fresh new design for Just Cosmetic website.
The finished product: Just about to go live so check back…
SJG Online is the website for Mr Sudip J Ghosh, a plastic surgeon based in the Home Counties. He approached us as he’d had a website built a few years ago but it had never worked the way he wanted. The traffic was really not great, it wasn’t appearing in any of his key treatments despite there being extensive content on the site and he wasn’t able to change any of the details which was very frustrating as some were now very out of date.
The brief:Build a WordPress website, with a fresh and exciting design. WordPress is a great platform as Google loves it and it has a easy-to-navigate Content Management System.
Initially, some of the inherent problems in his original website seemed obvious. There was flash on the website that Google doesn’t read and doesn’t really like. However, when we were moving the content over to the new website, a more major problem came to light that would explain some of the problems he was having with Google.
We provide content writing services to our clients and most are happy to take advantage of these – we have a team of experienced writers and our Editorial Director has many years’ experience as a journalist in the beauty, health and medical arena.
With SJG Online, the content was all there so it seemed that it was just a case of moving it to the new site – as a matter of course we always proof content if it is supplied to us, just to ensure it’s as perfect as possible and as our Editorial Director was checking the content she noticed some slightly odd phrases and even a random doctor’s name thrown in. So she CopyScaped the content, which had been commissioned in good faith by Mr Ghosh, and discovered that it had been copied from numerous websites – some American, but some from Mr Ghosh’s UK plastic surgery peers.
Google punishes you for duplicate content and virtually every page of Mr Ghosh’s content had duplicate content on it. We went back to Mr Ghosh and explained the situation to him. Once the site is live, Mr Ghosh has opted for an ongoing content package so our Editorial Director wrote a small amount of holding content for each page and then over the next few months we will be writing comprehensive replacement copy for each page.
The finished product: Just about to go live, so please check back…
What’s a starter website package? These websites are small, off-the-peg websites that get you started without having to outlay the cost of a bespoke, all-singing, all-dancing website that can cost you thousands of pounds.
The great thing about these websites are that they are flexible and can grow with you. We build our starter websites on WordPress which has a fantastic Content Management System. This means that you can add to your website either through pages or posts, increasing and strengthening your online presence.
Then, at any point, you can give your website a new look or revamp and you’ve not lost any of the great online work you’ve done.
Brief:Mr Amit Sinha is a general surgeon with a special interest in Laparoscopic and Minimal Access Surgery. He works mainly in the NHS, but was keen to start building his private practice. At this stage he did not want – or need – a purpose-built website so opted for our Starter Website Package.
Our editorial team wrote the content for the website – maybe not one of their most pleasant jobs as it was mainly about the condition piles and its treatment but it was certainly informative. As the build progressed, Mr Sinha was keen to add a few flourishes to his website so opted to have our designer to create images and sliders to give it a polished feel.
We also added a blog as Mr Sinha is keen – work permitting – to start adding to his website with regular blog posts. We recommend all our clients start interacting with their website in this way, however we are aware that time is tight and many of our clients opt for one of our ongoing content package, either as soon as they go live or at some point down the road.
All our editorial team have a great deal of specialist knowledge and all our material is checked by our Editorial Director, copyscaped and optimised before it goes up to ensure it’s working as hard as possible for you.
The finished product:To see how the website turned out – and some particularly gruesome pictures! – please click here.
We had done a website swap for Mr Tariq Ahmad to a WordPress plastform and he was so pleased with the results he asked us to build him microsites for key procedures he performs in the Cambridge area.
The brief: Microsites are simple websites, with just a few pages and are particularly effective for optimisation purposes. He initially had three microsites – BreastAugmentationCambridge, TummyTuckCambridge and FaceliftCambridge – and then recently he asked for a fourth microsite for RhinoplastyCambridge.
Mr Tariq Ahmad is keen to increase his dominance in the Cambridge area so he’s also asked us to add ongoing monthly optimisation packages for the four microsites to his main website optimisation.
The finished product: Below are the four microsites. We’ve given them all a consistent look and the great thing about these microsites is that they can embed video on the home page to take advantage of the fantastic videos we produced for Mr Ahmad.
This is usually my second question when I first meet a client.
The first, if you’re interested, is: “So, are you looking for more business?” It’s disingenuous of me, really. We’re in business – all people in business are looking for new clients, and sometimes we need to focus the mind and break down what it is that we really do.
In the Private Medical Health and Beauty market we help to cure problems and make people feel better about themselves, but sometimes we forget that we’re in business and that we can apply cold hard business logic to what we do. We’re here to make money. If we don’t make money then we won’t be in business for long. Then it will be impossible to make people feel better about themselves.
So, for a minute let’s strip out the medical and health element of what we do and concentrate on the business bit – I’m going to tell you about CPA:
COST PER ACQUISITION
CPA is what you pay for getting a new client. And if you are looking blankly and thinking, “erm, we don’t really do that?”, the answer is: you do. It’s easy to work out. You divide your annual marketing spend by the amount of new clients you got in that year. That’s your CPA.
So, add up all your marketing spend; from the little ads you’ve put in the local paper or magazine, website costs, web advertising, PR, networking dinners, costs for printing new brochures – anything that was in pursuit of you getting new clients. Add it all up and then look at your customer book and do the sum. It’s probably a lot higher than you thought.
If it’s higher than you thought, don’t worry – it needs to be a decent figure because your competitors are onto this. To give you a yardstick to measure yourself by, a major cosmetic surgery chain is currently budgeting a CPA of approx £1,000 per new client. To those in the cosmetic surgery business it explains nicely why you don’t get as much business as you think you should because it’s my bet that you don’t budget anything like this. Before you get all in a fluster, don’t fret; your CPA probably doesn’t need to be anywhere near £1,000 per new client, these guys are a big chain and have their ‘marketing game’ switched firmly on. However, you do need to be investing some significant budget into your CPA if you want to be generating enquiries like your competitors.
The interesting thing that starts to happen when you think about your marketing in this way is that you get an understanding of what happens when you turn up the dial. If you decide to spend an extra £250 a month on marketing and it gets you an extra 5 clients – bingo! Each client has cost you £50; if you treat them well and they keep coming back then in time they will become a profitable customer.
It also sharpens your mind when it comes to you and your staff dealing with enquiries. Is the person answering the phone converting as many sales opportunities as they could? To be honest, we’ve lost count of the number of secretaries and receptionists who don’t appreciate the value of an incoming call. Get your staff to understand that each new point of contact is actually a potential profit.
Thinking about the cost of acquiring each new customer changes your mindset. It makes you think of your potential customers as little, precious, bejewelled eggs that must be cherished; not just phone calls or incoming emails.
I’ll talk again about CPA in a bit more depth next month – it’s the bedrock of launching your PPC campaign if you ever decide to dip your toe in to search engine marketing.
https://www.bhmmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Gavin-Griffiths.jpg282282Gavin Griffithshttps://www.bhmmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Untitled-1_0006_bhm-slider-logo-white.pngGavin Griffiths2014-02-07 10:18:032014-02-07 10:18:033 little letters that will transform your approach to marketing