Plastics Web Marketing Blog

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

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posted by benbcraig at 11:29 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

5 Tips for Plastic Surgeons on Twitter

It can be very difficult to be a success on Twitter, especially when you're advertising services that do not have heavy local branding. That being said, you can still reap the rewards from Twitter if you know what you're after. Here are five tips for cosmetic surgeons on Twitter!

  1. Know your audience. Twitter is a great way to get to know your audience over time, but it's good to have a preliminary idea of who you're talking to before you start tweeting. Consider this: most of the active profiles on Twitter are business professionals of some sort or another, ages 25-45. You probably don't want to target soccer moms on this network; they're too busy to be tweeting! However, Twitter can be a great place to advertise things like lunchtime cosmetic surgery procedures.
  2. Find your audience. There are lots of great ways to find your audience. Twitter is beginning to advertise itself more like a search engine, so use it like one! Do searches like "I want a facelift" or "cheap botox" to find people interested in your services. Lists is a new feature on Twitter that is really helpful for finding groups of people to follow in certain locations. For example, Dr. Adrian Lo in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania might use lists of tweeps in Philadelphia to find interested followers.
  3. Ask yourself, "What makes me interesting?" People aren't going to follow you just because you ask real nice-like. Do something special or unique that makes your Twitter account interesting. Post about local events in your area, talk about interesting things you find on the web, etc. It is especially nice if you can offer things like free Botox for contests on Twitter, as in real life, free things always get peoples' interest! Above all, be a real person. Nobody likes automatically generated content.
  4. Bring them back to your website. It's great to have a bunch of interested followers, but that's only the first major step. The next one is getting people to go where you want them to go. Many people pair their website's blog with their Twitter account for an active campaign: by posting links to your blog on Twitter, you bring people to your website. There are other ways of going about this too, for example, if you do that contest for free Botox, you can have a landing page on your site with information about the contest to drive people to.
  5. Close the sale! You might not convert visitors to customers right away, but if you make a good impression with tweeps in your area you're going the right direction. It is important to be a good salesman in this process; be available for questions when people have them, be innovative and unique, and always make it about them, not you. For example, don't post something like: "Hey! I just published a new blog entry! Check it out!". Not everyone is your mom - they don't want to read your blog entry unless they care about you. But people innately care about themselves, so posting something like: "Blog Entry on Thermage, for those of you out there who are curious!" will probably have a much better response.
If you're looking for cosmetic surgery in the Philadelpha, Pennsylvania area, contact Dr. Adrian Lo for more information.

posted by tara.pingle at 2:42 PM 0 comments

Friday, March 19, 2010

Cosmetic Surgery Websites: 5 Design Must-Dos

If you're a cosmetic surgeon and you're having a new website made, there are some elements of the website's design to consider in relation to your potential future patients. The choices that you make in terms of color, layout and images can have a huge impact on the impression your visitors get about your plastic surgery office. Here are five good things to consider when designing your plastic surgery website! We'll use one of our client's websites, Desai Plastics in Jacksonville, Florida, to showcase these design must-dos!

  1. Color scheme. Your visitors want to feel like they're going somewhere luxurious, relaxing and sanitary. Your color scheme can give them this impression. Choose soft hues to give a calm, spa-like feel to your website. Well-balanced tones and colors can give your website an elegant feel. Sticking to cool tones (green, blue, off-whites, purples) can help to make your website give a very clean feeling, allowing visitors to assume that your practice is very safe and hygenic, stay away from having too many earth tones for this reason. The image to the right from Desai Plastics' main page captures these ideas perfectly.

  2. Images. It's tempting to cover your website with images of pretty women, but as with everything else, moderation is key. You want your images to appeal to a wide variety of potential patients, so the images of people that you use on your site need to be aesthetic, but tasteful. Desai Plastics cleverly incorporates stock photos of attractive men and women into their side navigation. I especially like that they changed all the clothes to white, to help keep the color scheme cohesive. Some of the images even tie-in to the images used on the landing pages, such as the Breast Augmentation page.

  3. A good before and after gallery. As a cosmetic surgeon, one of the best things you can showcase about yourself on your website are your results. Like with the other images on your site, it is important to be tasteful. Make sure that your visitors aren't seeing your liposuction before and after images unless they want to see your lipo before and afters! Desai Plastics has an excellent, easy to navigate gallery. I especially like how they used a slideshow element to make their galleries (like the arm lift gallery, to the right) seem very streamlined and professional.

  4. Easy to find contact info. Make sure that your website design carefully incorporates contact information like your official business name, address, phone number, and fax number. Desai Plastics has this information all over their website, and they even have a mini contact form (to the left) on every page, so that there is always an opportunity for a web visitor to convert to a patient. They also have a larger contact form that you can use to contact Dr. Desai. Having your address all over your website can also help to improve your Google Local Listing results.

  5. Navigation, navigation, navigation. Your designer may not be able to control how good your content is, but he or she can absolutely control how easy it is to find the necessary information. Dr. Desai's website features clear navigation on all pages of his site, and a great navigational system on Desai Plastics' home page. A three-year-old could find what they were looking for on this site! It's a great way to ensure that your visitors are able to know everything they need to know about you before they contact your office and make an appointment.

posted by tara.pingle at 10:40 AM 1 comments

Monday, February 8, 2010

Event Tracking with Google Analytics for Plastic Surgeons

Google Analytics is a great, free tool for tracking your online visitors! Plastic surgeons can really take advantage of this free service from Google to help track and guide web visitors through their website! Here are some potential examples of how some of our favorite cosmetic surgeons might be able to use this tool.

Event Tracking is a great tool that lets you specifically track certain clicks on your website. Event Tracking can be used on design elements, such as images, buttons, links, and even flash video. Once Event Tracking is set up, data will begin to appear in the "Content" section of Google Analytics, in the "Event Tracking" report.

Dr. James Barber in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania could use Event Tracking on his cosmetic surgery procedures page to track which procedures are clicked on more than others. This could help to determine which procedures are more interesting to his visitors. In Google Analytics, you can also look at which keywords were used by people who clicked on an Event Tracking element: this means that Dr. Barber could determine whether people who clicked on "Breast Augmentation" were looking for financing, implant size, or other related information!

Dr. Michael Ciaravino of Houston, Texas could also use Event Tracking to track clicks on his many different plastic surgery videos (which look absolutely lovely, by the way). This would let him know, in a glance, which video titles are being played more often than others from his website! Video production can be an expensive process, so knowing which topics to invest in is very helpful data to have.

The Bougainvillea Clinique in Orlando, Florida can use Event Tracking to track different social media buttons on their website. They have buttons for their Facebook page, Twitter profile, and YouTube channel that can all be tracked via Event Tracking! This way, they could get an idea of not only which social media sites their visitors are more interested in, but how those visitors got to the site in the first place, which pages they landed on, etc. What a great way to track your social media efforts!

posted by tara.pingle at 3:46 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Why Bother With a Facebook Fan Page?

Plastic surgery practices are creating Facebook Fan Pages left and right, but few actually understand how the Pages can benefit their web marketing efforts. And without understand why they are so valuable, it is unlikely that practices will use the Pages to their full potential.

For most cosmetic surgeons, a Fan Page can be looked at as a micro-site (complimenting your website). It should be an extension; a place where both existing and potential patients can go to learn more about the practice. If done well, a Fan Page will:
  • Allow your practice to show a lighter side. You can put casual photos, videos, etc. that you would not be able to showcase on your website. Letting down your guard doesn't have to mean that you lose all professionalism, but it can make the practice less intimating and more approachable for new patients.
  • Create a sense of community among your patients. As patients begin to comment and contribute to discussions on your Page, the stronger community will become. And other people will appreciate and want to be a part of the community. It's contagious! This type of interaction on your Page is clearly good for word-of-mouth advertising. Furthermore, when a Facebook user becomes a fan or comments on your Page, all of their friends will see that interaction, which expands your reach even further.
  • Along with building community among your patients and your practice, a Fan Page also offers a very accessible (and low maintenance) form of communications. You can announce events, specials, news, etc., as well as get feedback from your patients.
  • Help you SEO efforts! Search engines, such as Google, regard Facebook as reputable, and it shows in their ranking. For example, if you Google "Page 1 Solutions," you will find the link to the firm's Fan Page 4th or 5th on the first page. Links on your Page can also help with link-building efforts.
  • Be great for branding.
  • Increase traffic to your website. People who find you through friends on Facebook or who stumble across your Fan Page will likely check out your website, too.
And lastly:
  • It's free. And it doesn't take nearly the amount of time that people think it does. Learning how to use Facebook, and the initial set-up can be a little time consuming, but once your Fan Page is up and running, you can spend as little as 10 minutes a week maintaining your page.
Understanding why Facebook Fan Pages are valuable helps practices understand how to best utilize the social marketing platform. While you don't have to be an expert on social media marketing to use it (and use it well), you should at least understand the benefits of it.

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posted by SaraS at 11:34 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Great Blog Entries in Recent Plastic Surgery News!

With the ever-changing world of plastic surgery, how are you as a surgeon supposed to stay on top of it all? Blogs are a great way to not only brush up on the latest in cosmetic surgery news, but demonstrate your ability to stay on top! Here's some blog entries from cosmetic surgeons who know how to stay ahead of the game.

  • More Women Choosing to Benefit from Tummy Tucks by Otto J. Placik, MD, of Chicago, Illinois. Why are more and more women turning to this procedure to reduce the size of their waist? Dr. Placik explains in this detailed blog entry!
  • Size Matters - Choosing the Right Breast Implant Size by David M. Bottger, MD, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So you know you want a breast augmentation, but you're not sure what size implant you'll want. This blog entry helps you make one of the most important decisions of this procedure.
  • Fillers to Cushion the Feet? by the Dr. Vasdev Rai Cosmetic Surgical Center in Dallas, Texas. Women are asking more and more frequently for filler injections in their feet to make wearing high heels, a style back in vogue, more comfortable.
  • What is Rectus Diastasis? by Aesthetic Plastic Surgery of Indiana in Carmel, Indiana. This is a condition that happens in all women who have had children, to some degree or another. Excersize cannot correct it, but one cosmetic surgery procedure can!
  • Requirements for Gastric Bypass Surgery by Dr. Carson Liu in Los Angeles, California. There are a lot of factors a surgeon needs to consider in order to perform gastric bypass surgery safely. Are you a good candidate for this procedure? Find out in this blog entry!

posted by tara.pingle at 4:20 PM 0 comments

Monday, December 21, 2009

Great Blog Entries in Recent Plastic Surgery News!

Plastic surgery has provided the world with quite a few interesting topics over the past couple of weeks. Here are some of our favorite blog entries from recent plastic surgery blogs.

  • G-Shot Procedure by Dr. Otto J. Placik in Chicago, Illinois. Read about this controversial cosmetic surgery procedure designed to give women a heightened sexual experience.
  • Freedom in the USA by Coastal Plastic Surgery Center in Providence, Rhode Island. In this blog entry, Dr. Goldstein responds to a woman who feels that plastic surgery should be illegal.
  • Zerona Non-Invasive Fat Reduction Laser by Dr. Michael Peña in Naples, Florida. A new way to reduce body fat has been introduced into the market!
  • Breast Implants and the FDA by Aesthetic Plastic Surgery of Indiana in Indianapolis, Indiana. An issue that is still misunderstood by many Americans is discussed in this recent blog entry.
  • Fractional CO2 Skin Resurfacing by Summit Plastic Surgery & Med Spa in Lee's Summit, Missouri. Dr. Chhatre describes this skin resurfacing technique and how it is used in his medical facility.

posted by tara.pingle at 9:47 AM 0 comments