For facial plastic surgeons who are already realizing increased patient consultation requests from their online marketing efforts, the primary concern often becomes implementing additional tactics and strategies that can keep their online marketing fresh, relevant, and effective. This article creates a framework for evaluating advanced online marketing opportunities by analyzing each opportunity according to the variables of possible return, average cost to implement, probability of success, and implementation time. Within this framework, 11 distinct tactics are discussed, with special emphasis on the most common marketing needs and challenges of facial plastic surgery practices.
Many facial plastic surgeons who have already invested in online marketing are seeing the returns in terms of increased patient consultation requests. To these surgeons, the primary concern becomes implementing additional tactics and strategies that can keep their online marketing fresh, relevant, and effective. With so many opportunities to promote the practice online and new channels for promotion emerging every month, choosing which tactics to use, and in which order, can be daunting. This article lays out a plan for advanced online promotion and explains the supporting methodology used to order the recommended tactics.
The online promotion matrix
Surgeons have the ability to create an objective measurement for every tactic that can be implemented to improve online marketing performance and/or extend communication with new audiences on the Web. In some cases, these measurements can be highly specific and quantifiable (for instance, measuring the number of leads coming in from the Web site), whereas in other cases, tactics can be evaluated only in terms of broadly scoped metrics (for instance, attempting to track the return on investment [ROI] of a social media marketing campaign).
Table 1 is an online promotion matrix that organizes tactics based on 4 variables: possible ROI, average cost to implement, probability of success, and implementation time. These tactics have been grouped into tiers based on possible return, with tier 1 tactics offering the greatest possible ROI. Tier 2 tactics have been proved to deliver a timely and respectable investment return when properly executed. For the remaining tactics, grouped in tier 3, little evidence is available to convince facial plastic surgeons to expect a rich or reliable investment return. Although these new or novel tactics present the largest risk, they can be successfully deployed to reinforce search engine optimization or to expand communication beyond the audience that is typically reached with tactics in the first two tiers.
The online promotion matrix can be approached as a “ladder” in which tier 1 tactics are implemented before tier 2 and tier 3 tactics are not started until a solid foundation in tier 1 and tier 2 has been achieved. Tier 1 tactics, at the base of the ladder, are used to build a strong site that is engineered to rank well, motivate consultation requests, and generate data about those requests as to inform marketing decisions.
Tier 2 tactics help a surgeon put the practice in front of qualified potential patients. Examples include direct-to-consumer advertisements, in the form of e-mail newsletter blasts, paid regional placement, and programs to encourage online referrals. These tactics are particularly effective for those surgeons who see the rate of return on their tier 1 investments beginning to level out.
For mature campaigners, tier 3 contains tactics that embrace emerging technology, such as video and social media, to extend branding messages, engage prospects, and cultivate long-term relationships. Layering tier 2 and tier 3 tactics on top of the solid footing achieved through tier 1 activities increases the likelihood of success and maximizes the possible return for all of a practice’s online endeavors. Picking and choosing from tactics without an understanding of the possible return and other critical variables can often lead to wasted effort, frustration, and competitive disadvantage.
The remainder of this article provides an analysis of each tactic presented in Table 1 , starting at the base of the ladder, tier 1 tactics.
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