Plastic Surgery Marketing Strategies (2024 Guide)
Plastic surgeons struggle to attract surgery patients. Generating patient inquiries isn’t the issue; converting them is. Most marketing strategies are expensive and don’t generate enough patients. This detailed guide provides a data-driven analysis of plastic surgery marketing strategies to get maximum surgery patients without spending a fortune.
1. Why are plastic surgeons struggling to get surgery patients?
2. Where most plastic surgery centers think patients come from
3. We tested multiple plastic surgery marketing strategies (here’s what we found)
4. Where top plastic surgery centers get patients from
5. Best plastic surgery marketing strategy to get more patients
Plastic surgeons are facing serious competition. New surgery centers are popping up everywhere, making it even harder to stand out. With so many options, patients are pickier than ever and less likely to commit right away.
If you are like most plastic surgeons, generating patient inquiries isn’t the issue. You can get patient inquiries throughout the day through calls and emails.
The main issue is getting new surgery patients. Most marketing strategies only get you patient inquiries but don’t convert them into actual patients.
That’s what this guide is all about, helping you get new surgery patients.
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Why are plastic surgeons struggling to get surgery patients?
Why? Because most marketing strategies just don’t work well enough to bring in new patients. Sure, they can get you lots of inquiries, but those don’t always turn into real consultations.
Did you know that about 85% of patients start their search for a surgeon online? And yet, many plastic surgeons rely on outdated methods like print ads and billboards that don’t reach these online searchers.
Budget is another big problem. Many plastic surgery centers have a limited budget, which they spread across too many different marketing strategies. This means they don’t put enough money into the strategies that actually work.
To really see results, it’s better to focus on a few key strategies that bring in new patients.
Where most plastic surgery centers think patients come from
Many plastic surgeons believe their patients mostly come from old-school methods like print ads, word-of-mouth (WOM), and social media. They think putting an ad in a local magazine or getting a good word from a friend will bring in enough patients.
But is that really where most of your new patients come from? It’s a common belief, but it’s not entirely true.
Print media, like newspaper ads or flyers, can seem like a safe bet because it’s what’s been done for years. But did you know that less than 10% of people looking for plastic surgery will actually find their surgeon this way?
Most potential patients now use the internet to search for the best surgeon in their area. So, spending too much on print ads is not the best way to attract new patients.
Many plastic surgeons also lean on word-of-mouth because it’s free and doesn’t require a lot of effort. While WOM is powerful, it’s slow and unpredictable. It doesn’t bring in the steady flow of patients you need to keep your surgery center growing.
Others use organic social media, thinking it’s a quick way to get the word out. But social media likes and shares don’t always turn into surgery bookings.
These strategies often lead to a lot of inquiries, but not many actual patients.
To really boost your practice, you need a strategy that converts those inquiries into patients who are ready to book a surgery.
We tested multiple plastic surgery marketing strategies (here’s what we found)
Are all marketing strategies the same? Which ones really help plastic surgeons get more patients? These are big questions, right? We took a close look at ten of the top plastic surgery marketing strategies to find out which ones work best.
We used a data-driven approach to answer these questions. We picked the top 10 marketing strategies for plastic surgery and rated them on five key criteria:
- Cost
- Effort
- Results
- Time to results
- Scalability
Then, we added up the scores to see which strategies came out on top. Want to know what we found?
Each criterion is graded on a scale from 1 to 5. And each strategy has a total score of 25.
Print media
Imagine flipping through a glossy magazine in a waiting room. You see eye-catching ads for various services, including plastic surgery. It’s a traditional method that’s still used by many plastic surgeons today.
If you’re a well-established plastic surgery center with a significant presence, using print media can enhance your credibility and visibility.
However, if you’re a small-mid size center looking to maximize your marketing budget for direct patient acquisition, print media might not offer the best return on investment.
It’s expensive, difficult to track ROI, and lacks the immediacy of online marketing channels that drive direct inquiries and surgery patients.
According to our analysis, print media has the following scores
- Cost: high cost (Score 2)
- Effort: medium effort from plastic surgeons (Score 3)
- Results: bring very few patients (Score 2)
- Time to results: produces slow results (Score 1)
- Scalability: scalable if you are willing to put more cost and effort (Score 2)
- Overall score: 10
TV and OOH ads
Turn on the TV. Listen to the radio. Drive down a busy street. Chances are, you’ll see or hear your competitors everywhere. Television and outdoor ads are how plastic surgeons have traditionally advertised.
But are they the best? And do they give you the most bang for your buck (and time)?
If you’re a big plastic surgery center, then using these channels makes sense. You have the budget. But if you’re a smaller or mid-sized surgery center without these advantages, it’s too expensive and won’t pay off.
That’s because these channels are more about building awareness than getting new patients. When people see or hear a plastic surgery ad, they don’t suddenly decide they need surgery. People look for plastic surgeons when they have a surgery problem and need help.
OOH and TV ads has the following scores based on our analysis
- Cost: costs are very high (Score 1)
- Effort: moderate effort from plastic surgeons (Score 3)
- Results: bring very few patients at very high cost (Score 2)
- Time to results: takes a lot of time to bring very few patients (Score 1)
- Scalability: limited scalability (Score 2)
- Overall score: 9
Organic social media marketing
Using social media to grow your plastic surgery practice can work. But only if you have many followers or time to build them up. Think of it as a way to connect with people, not just to get tons of new patients right away.
It’s important to keep your social media profiles updated and active. When potential patients look you up, they should see a legit surgery center with good reviews.
Most plastic surgeons don’t have time for social media, so they hire someone else to do it, which costs a lot. And unless you already have lots of followers, you might not see much return on your investment in social media.
Organic social media marketing has the following scores:
- Cost: no real monetary cost, just costs time (Score 2)
- Effort: requires effort to create content, manage social media pages (Score 2)
- Results: bring only a few patients (Score 2)
- Time to results: takes forever to get patients (Score 1)
- Scalability: somewhat scalable if you have time (Score 3)
- Overall score: 10
Email marketing
Email is a great way to market because it makes sure people see your offers and might even click on them. But this only works if you have large number email subscribers.
You can’t expect lots of new patients if your email list is just 100 subscribers. Email marketing takes time to build. You need to grow your list using other methods like website, newsletter, Paid Ads.
So don’t rely on email marketing to generate new patients. If you have a big marketing budget then you can spend on email marketing. Otherwise put all the marketing budget into high-conversion marketing strategies to get more patients.
As per our analysis, email marketing has the following scores:
- Cost: medium cost, also cost time (Score 2)
- Effort: medium-high effort (Score 3)
- Results: bring some patients over time (Score 2)
- Time to results: takes long time to show results (Score 2)
- Scalability: require bulk email subscribers to scale (Score 2)
- Overall score: 11
Paid social media marketing
Social media ads can bring traffic to your website as ads are highly targeted. You create an ad, target people who might need plastic surgery, and see the traffic coming in. Each time someone clicks on your ad, you pay a fee. If nobody clicks on ad, you don’t pay.
But here’s the deal, clicks are far from actual bookings. The thing is people don’t go on social media to look for a plastic surgeon. So if you need new patients right now, paid social media might not be the best choice.
Paid social media ads are helpful in bringing more visibility to your plastic surgery center over the long haul. Ads can make people remember you when they need plastic surgery.
Paid social media marketing has the following scores based on our analysis:
- Cost: medium cost (Score 3)
- Effort: effort to create ad and run campaigns (Score 3)
- Results: bring a few patients (Score 2)
- Time to results: takes some time to bring patients (Score 3)
- Scalability: medium scalability (Score 3)
- Overall score: 14
Content marketing
Did you know that about 85% of patients start their search for a surgeon online? Content marketing help potential patients with their research. When people need a plastic surgeon, they start their search through google.
You want to be present at the top to help them with their research journey. You need to create text and visual content to answer their questions and help them move to the next stage. If you help them now, chances are they would you want to perform surgery on them.
By picking the right keywords and creating useful, valuable content that your audience wants, you can rank higher and faster in search engine results.
Without a team of writers and planners, you’ll spend a lot of time learning and writing to get high rankings and turn visitors into patients.
Content marketing has the following scores:
- Cost: high costs based on agency and writers (Score 3)
- Effort: medium effort to create content based on your involvement (Score 3)
- Results: bring good amount of patients through search (Score 4)
- Time to results: takes time but good for long-term results (Score 3)
- Scalability: more content means more scalability (Score 4)
- Overall score: 17
Website marketing
In the digital age, websites hold the key to your surgery center success. It helps with converting a traffic into consultations. If your surgery center doesn’t have a website, go and create one. I guarantee, it will be worth it.
Having website is a prerequisite to ranking on search. A good website is the one that is built to convert. First you send traffic from all sources to your website then your website converts it into inquiries and consultations.
After analyzing 100s of plastic surgeon websites, we have found an obvious flaw. Although they are as visually appealing as any website, they are not optimized for conversions causing you to lose patients.
But website is probably the most technical marketing channel. With all the coding and tech involved, you’d want to hire an expert preferably someone who has experience with creating plastic surgery center’s websites.
Our analysis for website marketing is:
- Cost: medium cost to hire an agency (Score 3)
- Effort: effort based on how involved you are (Score 3)
- Results: bring max patients as it’s the main conversion platform (Score 5)
- Time to results: take some time (Score 4)
- Scalability: highly scalable (Score 4)
- Overall score: 19
Paid search ads
Getting the top ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) leads to high conversion. One way to get the top ranking is by paying for it, and another is to organically rank on top.
Paid search ads get you to top ranking. Paid ads generate more patients fast. So if you need patients right away, start running paid search ads. You still need a solid website to convert inquiries into patients.
Only issue is paid ads are expensive. And it require a lot of testing and analyzing to create good ads and target best keywords. It gets expensive and won’t generate desired results if you do it wrong. So its better to have an expert agency do it for you.
Based on our analysis, it is a must have marketing strategy for plastic surgeons:
- Cost: high cost for paid ads (Score 2)
- Effort: low effort if you hire an expert agency (Score 4)
- Results: bring max patients through qualified patient inquiries (Score 5)
- Time to results: take some time to get results (Score 4)
- Scalability: low scalability (Score 3)
- Overall score: 18
Local SEO
Local SEO helps you show up in search results for people looking for plastic surgeon near them. Local results rank under paid ads on result pages. It shows local plastic surgeons through google maps listings. So having an optimized google my business (GMB) profile is must.
For plastic surgeons, it means getting seen by people who are nearby and need surgery. It’s crucial because most patients want a local, trusted surgeon.
Local SEO is great for getting more foot traffic and building a local reputation. But it can take time to see results and needs regular updates.
Managing GMB profile is fairly easy and generate good amount of local patients.
Our analysis shows Local SEO has the highest scores:
- Cost: low cost, just require some time (Score 4)
- Effort: require some effort (Score 4)
- Results: high potential to bring local patients (Score 5)
- Time to results: take some time (Score 4)
- Scalability: somewhat scalable (Score 3)
- Overall score: 20
Traditional SEO
Traditional organic SEO helps your website rank higher in search engines without paying for ads.
Good rankings mean more people see your site when they search for plastic surgery. For plastic surgeons, this means more potential patients finding you online.
Organic SEO is difficult to do as it involves a lot of stuff and it also gets technical. It involves things like:
- Building backlinks to build authority and drive people to your website.
- Website optimization for search engine to get high rankings.
- Doing technical SEO to rank your web pages.
- Doing on-page SEO to create optimized web pages.
This list isn’t complete but gives you an idea of the different tasks and the time needed. It’s not a weekend project — it’s a full-time job and too tough to handle on your own. Your best option is to hire an SEO agency to do it for you.
Our analysis shows traditional SEO is the second best plastic surgery marketing strategy:
- Cost: medium cost based on the agency (Score 3)
- Effort: low effort (Score 4)
- Results: bring max number of patients (Score 5)
- Time to results: takes some time (Score 3)
- Scalability: good scalability (Score 4)
- Overall score: 19
Where top plastic surgery centers get patients from
Based on the data backed analysis above, its clear that most patients come from the digital channels mainly from google search. But plastic surgery centers still heavily invest in channels that don’t generate many patients.
Top centers know that people start their search for a plastic surgeon online. They use Google to find nearby surgeons and check reviews.
These centers focus on showing up in Google search results and on Google Maps. This way, they’re easy to find when patients are looking for help.
Despite the clear benefits of search marketing, many plastic surgery centers still spend big bucks on things like print ads and TV commercials. These channels might get their name out there, but they don’t bring in as many patients as search marketing.
Top centers invest in what works: a strong online presence and being easy to find on Google.
Best plastic surgery marketing strategy to get more patients
Based on data above, 5 strategies – website, paid search ads, local seo, traditional seo, content marketing are like the dream team for plastic surgery marketing.
Website optimization ensures your site is user-friendly and informative, turning visitors into potential patients. Paid search ads get you noticed quickly on Google, while local SEO makes sure you show up when people search for surgeons nearby. Traditional SEO boosts your overall visibility on search engines, and content marketing helps you attract interested patients.
Using just one of these strategies is like using a single gear on a bike—it might work, but you won’t go very far. Combining all five creates a powerful engine that drives more patients to your practice.
For example, a well-optimized website supported by strong SEO and engaging content can attract and retain more patients, while paid ads bring immediate traffic and visibility.
You might think using all these strategies would be super expensive, but it’s actually cost-effective in the long run. Instead of spending big bucks on one or two tactics that may not work, a balanced approach gives you better results for your money.
By investing in a mix of these strategies, you spread out the cost and increase your chances of success without breaking the bank.
Seeing the success of these strategies, we put together an integrated search marketing framework. This plan combines website optimization, paid ads, local SEO, traditional SEO, and content marketing to cover all the bases. It ensures that no matter where potential patients look—be it Google searches, local listings, or content pieces—they find you and your services.
The numbers don’t lie: an integrated approach brings in more patients. Surgery centers that use this strategy see a significant boost in patient inquiries and consultations. This is because the combination of tactics creates multiple touchpoints, ensuring your practice stays top-of-mind for potential patients.
Simply put, Integrated search marketing strategy gives you the best chance to attract more patients, helping your surgery center grow steadily.