According to surveys by Dr. Pablo Ifran, people take an average of up to a year to investigate and interact with a professional before beginning their journey in aesthetic procedures.
We must remember that each patient is unique. Their consultation begins before managing their first appointment, so it is vitally important to respect, value, and understand the time and trust that a patient invests in a doctor or beauty center.
Just as science is exposed to arduous and constant research work to present us with ever-greater technological advances, where new surgical procedures appear, as well as minimally invasive procedures that expand the portfolio of available options for patients to select the most convenient, the patient also puts in much hard work before deciding to undergo an aesthetic procedure.
It is essential to identify these previous steps to reduce doubts and thus begin to create a relationship of trust with the patient before the interaction in their first consultation.
Below we share a guide where we explain each step a patient takes before considering a professional as part of the solution and what actions you should take to improve your authority in the industry and thus increase the number of consultations with patients who identify you as a reference professional.
The patient is informed.
The truth is that each year the demand for aesthetic, cosmetic, and regenerative medicine increases considerably. Although until a few years ago, the most common profile was that of women aged 45-50, currently, more and more men and women under 45 decide to take care of their appearance.
Science advances with greater agility every day. With the appearance of multiple treatments and procedures aimed at the same objective, the physical benefits that patients can experience are diverse. They can be very subtle or spectacular. This depends on the needs of each patient and the treatment.
For this reason, a patient’s first exercise is to investigate the multiple alternatives in terms of treatments to identify which one satisfies their needs to a greater degree.
Step 1: Share Valuable Information.
In this first step, it is vitally important to have valuable information and that it is properly disseminated so that it reaches the right person. And who is the right person? At this point, we refer to our future patients, these people interested in starting their journey in the world of aesthetic procedures, as well as the group of people who surround them (family and friends), people from their social circle who know their need and, in turn, can share this information.
80% of the population uses the internet as their primary source of consultations, which is why a point in favor is creating valuable content where all the procedures of a surgeon, specialist, or beauty center are explained. This information must be detailed and complete, accompanied by a professional and friendly vocabulary. It is useless to have extensive content using technical terms that the reader needs help understanding; the key is to generate proximity with the patient with explicit content that adds value and builds trust.
Generate Content That Educates, Instructs, Informs, And Creates Proximity.
The creation of blogs within your website is an excellent tool.
We must remember that people do not know about us. They do not know that your name is xxx or that your office is called in a certain way. At this point, people only have the need, so the searches they carry out will be aimed at finding the ideal procedure. It will be something more similar to how to reduce spots on my skin, how to increase the volume of my lips, etc.
This way, if you have content that resolves these questions, you will appear in the search engine to provide an answer.
Creating written content will allow you to provide information and resolve the first concerns, generating traffic to your website; people will read your article because you managed to capture their attention by generating interest through content that provides answers. In this way, they will contemplate you as an option in the decision process to provide solutions to their concerns.
An educated and well-informed patient will have better communication with their surgeon.
Here you already have a good part of the way Won! You went from being unknown to being exposed.
The Patient Selects A Professional.
Once people have the necessary information about the procedure they want to undergo, the next step is finding the ideal professional and space. At this point, two channels influence the decision: referrals and information.
Referrals:
Here we deal with the closest circle of the patient—family, friends, or acquaintances who underwent similar procedures.
We must remember that under this communication channel, we only have a narrow field of action to interfere with since we are talking about previous choices made by other people. But we should be aware of the power of this social circle, as it is also a channel of communication with our ideal patient.
I give you the following example: your sister or friend wants to undergo a breast augmentation. You are browsing the internet, and you come across information that deals with this topic: they explain the procedure, which people are suitable to undergo this intervention, recovery time, etc. The most logical thing is to share this content with the interested person so that they can be educated, resolve their doubts and thus increase their panorama of options that will lead them to the final decision.
Information:
Seeking information and finding out about the different specialists and recognized clinics in the procedure is essential; at this point, the patient seeks confidence and security.
Step 2: Share Visual Content.
When it comes to aesthetic issues, visual content is significant. Most patients request before and after images. Images of former patients who recently underwent the same procedure, as well as older patients, this will generate greater confidence in your future patient since they will be able to see how the passage of time has affected the work of said specialists (this graphic material should be of excellent quality). If you include this visual material within the blogs of the first step, you will be enhancing your authority and prestige.
Step 3: Share Informational Pieces
- Informative Material: Another critical piece that can be very functional is having a brochure or informative material available that explains what to do before, during, and after the procedure.
- Exposing Professional Information: Finally, revealing your professional information, education, experience, certificates, etc., will elevate your authority in the industry.
The best space to share this information is your website.
Working Together With A Content Strategy, You Will Build Greater Trust And Increase Your Authority.
The patient requests a first appointment.
It is the first instance where you meet with your patient in person.
At this point, you already have an educated and informed patient thanks to the content you shared, which is why you have created a bond of trust and security at a distance due to the value provided. In turn, your patient already sees you as a reference in that specialty because you created authority, and it was validated by your certificates of education, experience, exposed testimonials (photographic material), and valuable material provided in the previous stages.
In this first consultation, confidence will be reaffirmed thanks to the last journey, doubts about the treatments will be evacuated, and the needs and objectives of your patient will be carefully analyzed.
As we have seen throughout this article, increase the volume of queries if possible, and the answer to how to do it lies in: creating valuable content and generating informative articles supported by images and graphic material.
An additional point, and no less important, is that you will interact with your future patients 24/7. You can just appear at any time, even while you sleep. This type of content allows you to add value and generate interaction regardless of the time and place where the doubts appear.
So that you know, you already have all the necessary information to increase consultations in your beauty center. If you are now thinking about generating this type of content and want to be accompanied by an expert to work on a strategy, do not hesitate to contact us. At Wordly, we are ready to help you in the planning and execution of your articles so that you can achieve the desired position.
