Cosmetic practices focused on bringing in new patients often spend 10% or more of their projected revenues on marketing initiatives. But budgeting the money is only the beginning, says Catherine Maley, founder of Cosmetic Image Marketing (www.cosmeticimagemarketing.com). In order to optimize marketing efforts, she recommends that physicians undertake a simple exercise to track their prospect-to-patient conversions: Go through your schedule and look at the last 20 to 100 patients who had high-ticket procedures performed in your practice. Now look for important trends, such as:
• Patient Demographics. Is the patient younger, older, married, single and so on?
• Was this the patient’s first visit to your practice or have you treated her before?
• If she was new to your practice, how did she find you? (i.e., through the Internet, local news coverage, a referral from another patient, etc.)
• Does the patient live locally or did she travel to your practice from a distant place?
The answers to these questions will tell where you should be focusing the majority of your marketing efforts and dollars.
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