Mommy Makeovers for Mom's Day

Mother's day is just right around the corner. Husbands and children are thinking about ways to make this day special for moms. A makeover and pampering may just be the right gift for her.

Mommy makeover is a marketing strategy and a marketing term which has gained popularity over the years. In a study conducted by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 62% of mothers who want to regain their youthful look before giving birth.

Mothers who want to restore or improve their post-pregnancy bodies undergo multiple plastic surgery procedures which include tummy tucks, liposuction, breast implantations and breast lifts.

Medspas may capitalize on this by providing discounts for bundle procedures, especially with the celebration of Mother's Day.

How Your Competitors Might Be Destroying Your Medical Spa Business Using Google Maps

Almost anyone can damage your medical practice business or reputation by turning Google against you.. and it's not very hard.

Here's an example from Wired Magazine detailing how a restaurant's business was destroyed: Read the article.

It began in early 2012, when he experienced a sudden 75 percent drop off in customers on the weekend, the time he normally did most of his business. The slump continued for months, for no apparent reason. Bertagna’s profits plummeted, he was forced to lay off some of his staff, and he struggled to understand what was happening. Only later did Bertagna come to suspect that he was the victim of a gaping vulnerability that made his Google listings open to manipulation.

He was alerted to that possibility when one of his regulars phoned the restaurant. “A customer called me and said, ‘Why are you closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday? What’s going on?’” Bertagna says.

It turned out that Google Places, the search giant’s vast business directory, was misreporting the Serbian Crown’s hours. Anyone Googling Serbian Crown, or plugging it into Google Maps, was told incorrectly that the restaurant was closed on the weekends, Bertagna says. For a destination restaurant with no walk-in traffic, that was a fatal problem.

In the case above the business owner is actually trying to sue Google, claiming that a competitor manipulated the restaurants business and that Google didin't do anything about it.

He's not going to get anywhere with that, but it serves to highlight just how vulnerable a local business can be if you're not keeping abreast of what's going on.

Beneath its slick interface and crystal clear GPS-enabled vision of the world, Google Maps roils with local rivalries, score-settling, and deception. Maps are dotted with thousands of spam business listings for nonexistent locksmiths and plumbers. Legitimate businesses sometimes see their listings hijacked by competitors or cloned into a duplicate with a different phone number or website...

Small businesses are the usual targets. In a typical case in 2010, Buffalo-based Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry saw its Google Maps listing changed to “permanently closed” at the exact same time that it was flooded with fake and highly unfavorable customer reviews.

“We narrowed it down as to who it was. It was another jeweler who had tampered with it,” says Barbara Oliver, the owner. “The bottom line was the jeweler put five-star reviews on his Google reviews, and he slammed me and three other local jewelers, all within a couple of days.”

The first thing you should do is go to Google, Yelp, Yahoo, and Bing and search for your business in different ways using your street address, name, zip code and your name (with misspellings if that's possible) and see what the returned results are. That should give you a sense of whether or not you might have an issue. All of the search engines have a method for creating a local business listing and changing it once you have it.

Not addressing new technology is really just whistling past the grave yard. Your business and reputation are vulnerable and makeing sure that you have clean information online is the first step.

Non-conformists, Dissenters & Rebels

“Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among non-conformists, dissenters, and rebels. Think different—the best thinkers often do.” --David Ogilvy

If you're seen by your market as an also-ran, your clinic is going to be among those that are fighting for the scraps left over by the market leaders and you'll be forced to compete on price... not where you want to be.

To set yourself (and your clinic) apart, the first thing you have to do is be something of a non-conformist.

Non-conformity is what allows businesses to break out of the pack to become extraordinary. Non-conformity means that while everyone is following the rules, you are in your garage building Microsoft or out flying a kite in an electrical storm, or floating across the “Big Pond” to “discover” a new world.

Apple, famous for its “Think different” approach to problem solving, famously defied the conventional wisdom that compters had to be big and complicated to run, thus creating the first personal computers. Brilliant problem solvers often do more than find answers to existing problems. They create entire new industries. 

And that’s when things get interesting. The medical spa market is no longer new and novel. It may be that the med spa buzz has died down a bit, but with technology advancing faster than ever, the med spa industry is becoming more mature, and the competition will only grow for the forseeable future with the expansion of the new medical technologies that rely on tech over specific physician knowledge and skill.

Marketdata estimates that revenues of the 2,100 U.S. medical spas reached $1.94 billion in 2012, and will hit $3.6 billion by 2016. Average revenues per facility are $924,000—with about 80% coming from procedures and 20% form retail product sales. The market is forecast to grow 18% per year. Fully 58% of med spas expected sales to grow more than 5% last year.

How do you define non-conformity in business? Being a non-conformist isn’t limited to what you do; non-conformity might be displayed in how you answer the phone (value chain), how you build and market your products (positioning), your manufacturing (cost advantage, sustainability), your technology (speed and efficiency = cost)or any number of metrics. 

If you’re a non-conformist, a dissenter, or even a rebel, how have you broken away from the pack? What makes your business extraordinary?

Inbound Marketing For Aesthetic Clinic

There are three things that all doctors running cosmetic clinics want to know; which technology to buy, how to effectively manage staff, and how to get more patients.

If you're looking at the latter, getting more patients, you'll need a decently comprehensive understanding of what your needs and options are. Here's a very good graphic in a recent post from Rand Fishkin  the effectivley shows the split between what's become know as 'interruption' marketing (really more along the lines of advertising), and inbound marketing.

All of the stuff on the left is where you'll find the advertisers who are constantly dropping by your clinic to  "help you grow your business". I'm not a fan for the most part since; once you stop paying the spout is turned off, you can blow through a lot o money to little effect, bigger budgets win.

I tend to stick to the right where; it's never turned off, it's more effective when done well, and it grows organically. 

To be sure, it's a lot more work on the right. You have to actually do things that provide value and that's not easy, but if you do it effectively, there's nothing better.

Client Referral Rewards

Legitimate Marketing Or Unacceptable Practice?

Your client tells you they will send lots of friends your way, if only you will give them a discount for their goodwill. Or you decide that because your neighboring practice offers a $200 incentive for every referral, perhaps you should do this too in order to compete. You want to show your appreciation for the new business that might have otherwise incurred advertising costs, so why shouldn't you offer financial acknowledgement of the referral?

Hair salons and massage practices rely heavily on referral rewards programs. So why not Medical Spas or Cosmetic Centers? Well, if you are a physician and you offer consideration of any kind for referrals, you are in direct conflict with AMA Code of Ethics Opinion 6.021. You may also be violating your state Board of Medicine regulations, many of which simply defer to the AMA Code for ethical compliance. The opinion argues that the reward may incent the referring client to alter the information and expectations to others in an untruthful or unrealistic way. 

Early in my practice, prior to the AMA opinion, I succumbed for a short time to clients requesting rewards. The referred clients never seemed to have the same level of motivation to have a procedure as someone who came on their own accord. Now when a client asks me for a discount or a free service because they will send lots of friends, I simply tell them the following:

"A referral is the greatest compliment you could ever give me. And I appreciate the kind mention of your pleasant experience. I promise to always give you and those you send to me my very best work."

Push & Pull Marketing Within Your Medical Spa

Push Marketing is any type of marketing that pushes a client through your medical spas door.

It may be a referral from a satisfied client, or possibly a business partner. It may be an article in a publication, a video interview or a promotional video you made. To put it simply, it's marketing that covers everything except ads.

Pull Marketing on the other hand is anything that "pulls" a consumer through your door. These are mainly your marketing materials such as your main website and your advertising, especially those "Specials" ads. Don't forget that these "Specials" are targeting customers that are either unfamiliar to your practice or unfamiliar with your products/services.

It's obvious that higher conversion rate is expected from Push Marketing because people already have a general idea of what you are offering. Before they arrive at your door, they already hold a positive opinion of you. That is unless there's anything unfortunate that comes along the way. These bad marketing bridges may be as simple as poor office behavior, overpricing, etc. Generally speaking, you should be able to convert over 90% of all your push consumers.

In order to increase your conversions in the Pull marketing, it is important to focus on the consumer's trust. If you own an aesthetic practice, adding high quality before/after photos (this needs permission of course!) will definitely increase the consumer's trust as well as adding testimonials to your marketing materials and website from your customers. You can do so by providing testimonials in both writing and videos to your blog, newsletters and auto-responder emails.

If you are able to have access to passers-by that are potentially customers, consider putting banners in your windows showing before/after results. This is great if you're offering aesthetic treatments. But again, make sure you have the patient's permission to use their images, especially if it's in a very public form.

Your Medical Spa's Front Desk

It's easy find sub-par front desk staff in medical spas.

I got this complaint (I'm not sure why it was even sent to me) of someone who ended up leaving a clinic less than impressed...

Here's the comment:

If you're a cosmetic surgeon, a cosmetic dermatologist or even a cosmetic dentist, the gals at the front should somehow represent your practice. Your's have much to be desired.

I recently had an appointment at your clinic I was able to make the following observations.

1. She had blackheads
2. Too little makeup (which made the blackheads visible)
3. Chewing gum
4. Her hair in a ponytail in a way that looks like a rat's nest thingy
5. Wearing some kind of jammy looking top.
6. Could have used a more supportive brassiere.

I left very disappointed...These things should never be seen in any medical spa.

The front desk should be the bus drivers! It means they are the first person you'll see when you enter the bus and the most likely person to cause an accident. Do you understand? If you don't like the sight of the girls you see out front, then there's something wrong about the "Aesthetic" services you're providing.

Now, look at your girls out in front. If they look anything like what I observed, then you should talk to them. Perhaps you need a dress code. Maybe you should provide them the product and treatments that your office is offering. Pamper your staff a little. Besides, it will be easier for them to sell your services since they have first hand experience.

However, one should not be to brash in saying these things since people can be very sensitive, especially women. Consider it from a perspective of a prospective client when they walk through your door. Will they wonder, "why doesn't the front desk person look anything like the product they're offering?" and "what's she doing in a place like this? She doesn't seem to belong".

While the email is obviously not actually for me since I no longer own any clinics, the sentiments represented are spot on. I don't know what clinic gave rise to this email but you'll want to make sure that your medical spa's front desk represents you the way you'd want it to.

The importance of responding to "ALL" Online Reviews

In this day and age of Internet “authors” almost all of us that own aesthetic practices have a new challenge to meet.  

How to deal with online reviews? We all know the impact of online reviews that are negative. In looking through over a 50 websites with reviews I found a troubling statistic. 97% of these websites only responded to negative reviews and missed out on a golden opportunity to improve their search engine ratings by responding to every review.

Let’s look at the first impact of only responding to negative reviews and that’s being put in a reactive mode that is going to almost always be defensive and will stand out like a sore thumb. I urge you to think like a patient when reading reviews and especially replies to reviews. If you were a patient and had taken time to write a positive review wouldn’t you liked to be thanked for it? Wouldn’t you like to read that the owner/physician of this practice also took their time to reply back to you?

By only replying to negative reviews we usually create a negative stream of content to and from.  In most cases that I read through, the negative review would generate 2 replies from both the poster and the owner/physician and the more post, the higher the positioning will be. Now contrast that with replying to all reviews. If you have 30 online reviews on Google and reply to all of them, you effectively have 60 reviews. 

It does not need to be lengthy. Something as simple as “Thanks so much for taking the time to let us know of your outstanding results. My team and I love what we do and look forward to seeing you again soon”. If you were a perspective patient looking for a place to visit and read how engaged the practice is with their patients, wouldn’t you be more inclined to visit a place that looks like they really, really care? Of course you would…

The other positive aspect of replying to reviews as the owner is that you can quickly bury a negative review off of page one. All it takes is the creation of and responding to 3-5 positive reviews and the 5th down negative review is now on page two. When replying to negative reviews also try and think like a perspective patient.  Try not to engage the patient unless they misrepresented their visit. Something like, “I was sorry to learn of this negative experience.  We greatly value both your treatment and our reputation.  Please email me at () with the details of what happened so I can get involved and work at trying to find a solution to this issue and thanks so much for letting us know”.  Now if you were again a perspective patient and read the owners reply, wouldn’t your image of the practice still be very high despite a negative review.

Now get to work on finding a mutually agreeable win/win solution. In most cases, you will be able to find some way to satisfy the patient. If not at least the reader will see that you tried by your initial response. If however you try and “air” the defense of the negative review online, it will usually result in an ugly exchange that will benefit no one.

So, embrace all the online pontificators. The old adage, “if you can’t beat them, join them” applies as does “silence is acceptance”. Let everyone read how much you care by replying to all reviews.

---

Medical Spa MD Members get a Podium patient review marketing account and save $1,257

Protect your reputation. Get new patients. Medical Spa MD Members receive a special, full service Podium account that includes: no setup fee (save $300), a 10% discount forever (save $330/year) and on-demand patient review marketing training for your entire staff ($597 value).  This offer is not available anywhere else.

Medical Spa Branding: Getting Started

The big shots are only the little shots who keep shooting. - Christopher Morley

Your actions, over time, equal your brand.

It's determined through your output: the work you do, the products sell, the services you provide, and the content you create.  It determines how much money you make, and how much control you can exert over your career and your lifestyle.

If you're not exercising, you'll lose muscle tone and gain fat. If you're not working on your own brand, it'll backslide too. Rest too long on your laurels and you run the risk of undoing all of your hard work and fading in to the background. If your behavior, attitude and output contradict your existing position, your real positioning will change.

You're not going to need much to get started, just and understanding of how all of this fits together (this guide), some thought about your goals, and the effort to take action. Once you've determined your capabilities and decided where you want to be, you should be able to manage everything in your head, and a few bookmarks in your browser.

Your goals and were you want to be are up to you. We're going to focus on what actions you need to take to get you there.

Success is measured in years, not months.

To get started, read through this guide, give it a little thought, then act.

Bad Reviews Of Your Medical Spa? Yelp Accused Of Extortion

Are you being extorted to keep your medical reputation clean?

Wired.com posted a story about a complaint filed in California that the online review site Yelp.com manipulates the reviews, and therefore the business ratings, through business practices that amount to extortion.

From the story:

 “Yelp’s sales tactics amount to high-tech extortion,” said plaintiff attorney Jared Beck in a press release. “The victims tend to be small businesses, such as our client, who often have no choice but to pay Yelp exorbitant sums in order to prevent further harm to their livelihoods.”

Yelp released a written statement in response to the lawsuit.

“The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews,” the statement read. “These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven’t seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively.”

Read the entire article here

Your reputation is one of your most valuable assets. If you're looking to protect and control your reputation in a real way, check out this review marketing product from Frontdesk.

---

Medical Spa MD Members get a Podium patient review marketing account and save $1,257

Protect your reputation. Get new patients. Medical Spa MD Members receive a special, full service Podium account that includes: no setup fee (save $300), a 10% discount forever (save $330/year) and on-demand patient review marketing training for your entire staff ($597 value).  This offer is not available anywhere else.

If You Can’t Lower Prices, Offer Higher Value

Our MedSpa, as most others, is severely limited in how low we can go on our prices. All of us in the industry pay roughly the same amount for our products, whether it be Botox, fillers, or equipment.

However, especially in this tough economic climate, our clients are looking for bargains. Price comparison shopping is a fact of life, and is made much easier for the consumer by readily available pricing information on the internet.

But low prices are not the only way (nor maybe the best way) to attract patients to your facility. To us at Canyon Lake MedSpa, the answer is VALUE: meaning, if we can’t lower prices, we have to offer more value for the money.

In our case, we offer free microdermabrasion/chemical peel (we almost always combine the two together) to any patient who purchases any other product or service. Additionally, if we hold a seminar or any other promotional event, we entice people to attend by offering free microderm/chem peel to all registrants. It takes very little time, and limited resources, to perform these procedures. And it gets people into our facility, gives us a chance to evaluate, speak with, and get to know them. Established and new patients alike can then be assessed for possible further interventions.

Even though these treatments are free, we never want the patient to feel rushed or feel less special just because they’re getting a free treatment. Taking your time now will pay off in dividends later on, when more lucrative procedures are scheduled.

Most importantly, our patients feel like they have received more value for their dollars, and it keeps them coming back.

In summary, service and value will trump lower prices in most markets and situations. Consider if it might be valuable for your facility.

Facebook Advertising For Your Cosmetic Practice - Results From A 3 Day Trial

Facebook marketing for your cosmetic practice: Is it worth advertising your clinic on Facebook?

I've advertised with facebook before and thought it to be somewhat useful.  I liked how it didn't waste paper.  I already think there's too much waste in this world.  But at the same time, these online ads don't sit around for a long time like some advertisements in physical print. This time, I decided I was going to try a 3 day experiment and see if I thought facebook ads were worth the investment.

Advertising format on facebook

The ad format I chose was one of those ads that show up on the side of the screen.  Currently, facebook has rotating ads in this area so that more ads could be shown. One downside to this method of advertising for facebook is that currently these ads don't show up on mobile devices. There are other ways of advertising on facebook which involve getting a status update to show up as sponsored notices - this does show up on mobile devices in the standard newstream (which is essentially the main page of facebook).  The reason I didn't choose this format for myself was that I couldn't customize the audience reach as much as I could if I had chosen one of the ads on the sides.  Thus I chose the side ads. Then I also chose the link to be that of my own facebook page for my practice rather than my own webpage. This means that when they click on the ad, they will be directed to my facebook page.

I made a few ads that were very similar but they would bid through the facebook system via different methods. One was a pay per click and the other was pay per view. Then I also added a few different pictures - one was our logo and the other was the picture of our plastic surgeon (my wife).

Intended audience

I narrowed my audience to women, age 20-50, located within 50 miles of my practice's city, and not associated with my facebook page.

Budget

I assigned a budget of $50 a day to be spent per on all the ads that I had created (pay per click, pay per view, picture of logo, and picture of surgeon), and the ad was to run for 3 days.  Thus I spent $150 on this brief ad campaign with facebook.

What was I advertising?

My wife normally charges $200 for breast related consultations.  She decided for the month of October to charge $25 instead, since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

What did I get out of this facebook advertising campaign?

I got 20 more new members on my facebook page.  Sometimes these members are called "fans."  I think these are potentially new patients in the future.

More importantly, I got 3 calls which all turned into consultations. These were 3 calls that could be tracked back to directly seeing this advertisement on facebook. There were other consultations that booked as a result of seeing free status updates on our facebook; these consultations were not counted as part of this experiment. 

Was it worth it?

It was worth it to me. $150 for 20 new facebook members and 3 consultations in 3 days.  The immediate measure of the worth of this advertising campaign would be the conversion rate of our practice. If even one of the 3 consultations turns into a surgery.  It would have covered the $150 expense of the advertisement.  I stopped the advertisement because we didn't have any other spots available in October for any more consultations.

There's so many other strategies one could employ to get more patients. The $50 limit per day x 3 days was my self imposed limit. I can imagine that others could set a $200 per day limit and run the ads for a month. Furthermore, one could advertise via the promoted (non-free) status updates which then would have a broader reach, but I would rather narrow down my audience to women only, age bracket, etc.   I'm sure that facebook would welcome more aggressive strategies. I have advertised several times with Facebook before, but it got somewhat addicting and I found myself being happy to spend more and more money as I saw the clicks roll in. In many respects it felt like tracking stocks with graphs that facebook provides. I thought I'd try a disciplined approach this time and I'm happy to share the experience here.

---

Medical Spa MD Members get a Podium patient review marketing account and save $1,257

Protect your reputation. Get new patients. Medical Spa MD Members receive a special, full service Podium account that includes: no setup fee (save $300), a 10% discount forever (save $330/year) and on-demand patient review marketing training for your entire staff ($597 value).  This offer is not available anywhere else.

Media Training Boot Camp For Health Care Professionals - A Wow Experience

Media training for doctors (or medspas)?

The media loves covering the cosmetic medicine industry.  The public hunger for this information is insatiable.  For providers of these coveted services, the media can serve as a powerful tool to spread the word to the masses of the latest and greatest – what’s hot and what’s not.  It can also help define WHO is hot or not.  In the competitive tussle of the cosmetic medical marketplace, whether or not your business is successful is determined, in part, by the media ‘footprint’ you cultivate over time.  With so much competition, those who conquer the visibility factor can separate themselves from the fray.  A good web site and blog , smart use of social media and speaking to groups of potential patients are critically important.  Yet, as the competitive heat continues to rise, there may be a need to transcend to the next level.  Becoming a media ‘personality’ is a great way to achieve this end.  This requires a unique skill set that we are all capable of acquiring but whom many find intimidating. 

I was fortunate to attend the “Dr. You” Media Training Boot Camp for Doctors program presented in a joint effort by the Discovery Channel and Harvard Health Publications held October 19 – 21 at the Discovery Channel Global Headquarters.  This excellent course is designed for health care professionals who want to step up their media exposure.  It is ideal for those who either want to stand out more visibly in their local market or are interested in advancing to become a nationally recognized "Go-To" expert and thought leader.  Features of this course included:

• Live TV interview practice
• Video sessions using a teleprompter
• Tips on how to become a sought-after professional speaker or “Go-To” expert
• Insights in obtaining and working with a publicist
• Radio interview coaching
• How to become a best-selling author
• Strategies to maximize your online presence

 A tall order indeed, and they delivered!  Their top notch faculty included a 15 year producer for the Oprah show who also works with Dr. Oz, the Chief Medical Expert for the Discovery Channel, the Chief Editor of Books at Harvard Health Publications, and several top notch media experts, web strategists, and literary agents.  The training was very personalized and the immediate feedback was right on (sometimes painfully so!). The class mix ranged from rank amateurs (most of us) to savvy professionals wanting a little polish.  The faculty went over and above to 'bring us along' and made this a great experience.  We all ended the program wanting more – and hopefully they will let the huge success of this 'pilot' program convince them to expand upon this even further in the near future.

 If and when this course is offered again, I recommend you jump on it.  You will be very glad you did.

Facebook Offers Aesthetic Practices A Chance To Put Their Best Face Forward

Facebook has become a prime marketing tool for aesthetic practices.

Facebook has become an internet addition to our aesthetic websites. It's the interactive version of a website. Just like on our websites, we can share pictures, share practitioner biographies, and share directions on how to get to our office. But facebook offers more interactivity. It is offers a record of our customer service. It shows how we handle questions and it shows specials that we've offered before. And it can also show the human side of our practices - such as pictures or videos showing our birthday celebrations of our staff, etc.

Facebook shows our human side

Why not show off our staff's accomplishments and celebrations as human beings? I think many patients are attracted to practices that value the fun side of life. When patients come to us, they want a great experience, and to be treated as human beings by other kind individuals. Facebook gives us a chance to show that. Patients are also used to facebook being a bit on the lighter, less formal side. How about showing off some staff hobbies too?

Facebook requires good customer service skills

Like a telephone which likes to be answered before the 3rd ring, facebook comments are probably best answered within a few hours. This also shows good custmer service. If we have farmed out the job of facebooking, I would recommend that we regularly check our facebook pages to make sure questions are answered appropriately, and that impressions made are in line with our own brands of customer service. Poor customer service on facebook could cause us to lose patients. Facebook requires a time commitment, but I really do think it pays off.

Facebook has worked well for me

I run my own facebook pages. It takes me about 6-7 hours a week.  But I think it is well worth it and I have fun with it. I know my involvement style may not be right for others, but I do think that someone on the staff can help grow our facebook presence. I have a personal page and two plastic surgery related pages.  But I think one page is enough. I have different pages so that I can experiment. About once or twice per week, I'll get someone who inquires about a procedure through facebook and turns into an actual patient at the office. A few weeks ago, we ran a special event with Obagi with their Blue Peel Radiance. I posted about this special on facebook (free posting - not even considering the $5-15 advertising fee that facebook offers currently). Within 3 hours, the event was filled up with 18 chemical peel patients. Obagi reps said that they have done special events with many other offices with the same setup, but we had the most successful result (in terms of Obagi product sales that day) that they have seen so far. We had flyers printed, but we ended up not using any of the flyers because there was no more space for further peels that day, and I wasn't willing to do any additional peels - due to a bit of laziness on my part.

I do think that if someone wanted to be focused and have a facebook page 2-3 hours per week would suffice for a wonderful aethetic practice's facebook page. I spend more time on it because it has become a hobby for me.

Facebook is a record of prior interactions

Always be polite on facebook and know that patients can scroll down on the facebook timeline and see how others were treated.  If there are spammers - sometimes they needed to be treated gingerly. There's also a "hide" button that can be used.  It's never wise to get into a public war on facebook.  I have to remind myself of that at times.  We can use facebook to put our best face forward.

Add Allergan's Brilliant Distinctions Program To Your Website's Social Media Buttons

What is the Allergan Brilliant Distinctions Program?

Brilliant Distinctions (BD) is a frequent user program by Allergan for their products of Botox, Juvederm, Latisse and their skin care line. This program gives the patients coupons and rebates. Many practices in the US who inject Botox have the opportunity to join this program. Your Botox/Allergan representative would have more information. In my location, Brilliant Distinctions is well utilized.

New Patients look for Brilliant Distinctions

I have also found that when experienced Botox and Juvederm patients move to my area, they sometimes come armed with Brilliant Distinction discounts which they would like to use. They have called my office asking whether we take Brilliant Distinctions  These patients usually come from different states, and the transition process is painless. We just need their name, zip code, and birthdate. With that information, the patients can use their points and earn new ones at our practice. With any patients who have somehow created multiple accounts, a quick call to the toll free hotline provided by Brilliant Distinctions usually solves the problem.

Creation of the Brilliant Distinctions Button 

I thought it would be useful to create a button that goes along with some of our social media buttons. I presented the idea to Allergan, and they actually helped me create some of their logos that matched the size of frequently used social media "buttons." By buttons, I mean those icon or logos that represent Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. I have had links from my website before to Brilliant Distinctions, but they were big clunky pictures, and I've never matched it up on the page with the Facebook or Twitter logos. I asked Allergan about the idea and they sent me basic BD logos to work with. I spent some time trying to make these logos match, and I've shown them to Allergan.  Allergan has a section on their website for physicians which has logos to use on their websites, but when I contacted them, they didn't have ones of this design. I thought I'd share these logos with you so you can put them on your websites yourself or have your trusty webmaster do it if you like the idea.

Please feel free to copy the Brilliant Distinctions Buttons (ie. Right click/save-as). 

I've seen many beautiful websites out there with beautiful social media buttons. Now you can also add a matching BD logo to the collection.

I made a website displaying the logos that Allergan and I tweaked to match most common social media buttons which are already used on many plastic surgery, dermatology, and aesthetic websites.

What's Your Gimmick Doctor?

Anyone running a private practice in plastic surgery now should be quick to realize that the media can be a powerful resource. 

The sad fact is that the public does not know of your talents unless you let them know about them. My father's long held statement that "the cream floats to the top" is naïve to say the least. People do not know the best. They only know the doctors of whom they have heard. They just assume that they are the best. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't.

Early in my interactions with the media, it was apparent that they prefer to feature "breaking news items." Their definition of breaking news is something new and different.  Most of us in medicine know that these "breaking news items" we see tend to more often be not-so-new news. Some are factually incorrect. You may also add unadulterated bull pucky. Breaking this news to your friends in the media will get you rarely featured unfortunately.  They want what they want.

When dealing with the media, they in essence want to know "what's your gimmick?' They want a pitch. They want a story. Those who are more successful with them give them what they want. I give them the truth branded somewhat with my opinion. So I have made the truth my gimmick. It may not be so frequently successful, but I sleep well at night.