Marketing your clinic is important regardless of where your business is at. If you are just starting out, or you want to grow your business, further marketing is crucial if you want to succeed. However, knowing where to start is where things get tricky. That’s why we have created some top tips, so you develop a marketing strategy for your aesthetics clinic.
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy or plan is a blueprint of how you are going to sell a service or product. The strategy should focus on who your target audience is, how you are going to target the audience (for example, the social channels you are going to use to connect with them) and promotional tactics to win over potential customers, and more.
Why is a marketing strategy important?
Before we get into creating your own marketing strategy for aesthetics clinics, we need to look at why it’s important to have one.
Firstly, it’s important for you to find out your target market and how your business/product/service can benefit it. This would be the very beginning of the strategy, focusing on researching your target audience, the wider market, and your competitors.
Another reason why a strategy is important is because it helps to develop a strong brand identity for your business. This makes it easier for you to stand out amongst your competitors. Not only that, but a plan can ensure consistency and clarity over what needs doing and when. It will also help to identify areas of improvement, so that overtime you are growing your business, rather than stagnating.
8 Steps to Creating a Marketing Strategy for Aesthetics Clinics:
1. Goals for your business
Identify what you want to get out of marketing. You should have some business goals in mind, so that you have something to work towards. Numerical goals, such as 5 new customers per month, can be a great place to start, but make sure the goals are realistic.
2. Researching your audience
Make sure you spend adequate time researching, as this isn’t something that should be rushed. It’s useful to research the age range, and demographics of your target audience, so that you can tailor content to suit these factors.
3. Researching your competitors
You should also spend time researching your competitors and seeing what they are doing with regard to marketing and social media content. This can help give you tips on how they are creating their content, identify the kind of content they are putting out, identify any gaps in the industry, and discover trends, so that you can use this information when making your own marketing strategy. This is also known as a competitor analysis.
4. Create a brand summary or identity
A brand identity is how you choose to portray yourself to your target audience. Usually through a collection of elements, such as
- your values
- your image
- your mission
- your brand’s personality
- your brand’s tone of voice
Creating a strong brand identity can help to increase brand recognition, builds clients trust and loyalty, build your business’ credibility and give you a competitive edge in a saturated market. Especially seen as many aesthetics say that one of the hardest parts about marketing their clinic is standing out.
5. Choosing social media platforms to promote
Finding the right social media platform for you can be confusing, especially as there are so many these days! It’s important to note that you do not need to be active and uploading content to all social media platforms, either. Actually, we would recommend that you are not posting on all social media channels from the outset. Choose one or two platforms to begin with until you feel comfortable with those, and then you can reassess.
It’s also important to think about the most common demographic on the app. For example, Instagram has a wide range of ages, whereas Facebook tends to attract an older audience, compared to TikTok, which attracts a younger audience.
We would recommend starting with Facebook and Instagram, as they go hand-in-hand so you can upload content to both at the same time.
6. Planning your content on the platforms
Now that you’ve decided which social media platforms you would like to use, you can begin to research and plan content ideas. Take time thinking about the kind of content you would like to post, before you create anything. You should spend time researching content, creating design templates, and planning an upload schedule. Make sure to check what other clinics are doing, so that you can tailor your social media marketing to aesthetics.
Once you have planned your content, you begin creating and scheduling content to your chosen social media channels, and sending out emails to your pre-existing customers, which is great for notifying them of any deals or promotions you may have on.
7. Managing and engaging with your community
Now, you should have content going out at consistent intervals (we recommend posting on Instagram around 3 times a week on the same day and time). This is when you will get customers and potential new clients engaging with your social media and/or website. Make sure to answer comments or direct messages, so that you can build the trust and retain your customers.
8. Growing your following
To keep your following growing, you will want to keep with the consistent upload schedule, but also make sure that you are posting unique and interesting content! For example, you could post a before and after shot to showcase your talent, a reel/video of behind the scene’s footage such as a product unboxing, then an information text post, which could be a customers’ review, or beauty advice.
Make sure to continuously review marketing trends and what your competitors are doing, so that you can stay current in the market, too. Your marketing strategy for your aesthetics clinic should be updated or it may need adapting over time, so reporting on results and trends is useful, too.
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