Location, location, location
It is reasonable to expect that patients would prefer to go to a clinic that is local, and would prefer to have to travel less than 1 hour to get there. It is equally understandable that patients prefer a solo clinic to a national chain of clinics. The latter is perceived to patients as being more impersonal and less exclusive. A small, single clinic in the patient’s town or city could be perceived as offering a more personalised type of service and friendly environment.
The issue of convenience also clearly ranks high among consumers considering cosmetic procedures. Being able to stop in for follow-up appointments without having to travel far, and having access to parking and public transportation serve to make patients feel more comfortable about making such a big decision.
However, there is no doubt that patients today are also willing to travel, especially for large surgical procedures, including face, brow and necklifts, rhinoplasty, abdominoplasty, breast lifts and reductions, lower body lifts, and combined procedures. These are considered major events in a patient’s life so they are more willing to leave their local area, region, country or even continent to find the best possible surgeon to perform these operations. Furthermore, patients are even more willing to travel, and to travel further for procedures with a perceived higher degree of complexity, and for revisionary or secondary surgery. They are also keen to travel far and wide to save some money, which accounts for the rise in cosmetic surgery vacations and medical tourism that is seen primarily in Thailand, South Africa, Poland, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico and an increasing number of countries worldwide.
Price sensitivity
There is no doubt that cost factors greatly into patients’ decisions, no matter what their income bracket or socioeconomic status may be. In many cases, high costs are the number one or number two barrier to having treatment. The number two barrier may be fear, as in fear of having pain, a long recovery, or not being happy with the result, or looking too different or distorted.
For patients who are on a budget and are pinching pennies to have a mommy makeover or a rhinoplasty, a saving of a few hundred pounds or euros may make the difference between having the procedure done this year or waiting until next year — or possibly longer. Wealthy patients, on the other hand, also love to get a deal and are even more inclined to negotiate and bargain fees down in a post‑2008 world.
The Netherlands study findings indicated that clinics offering fees of approximately 15% less than average fared best among patients seeking cosmetic procedures. Therefore, if you consider an average surgical fee for breast augmentation in central London is about £5000, 15% would represent a saving of £750. That can be significant for a great number of patients. In this economy, where unemployment rates are still topping 20% in some countries, every little bit counts.
These findings also demonstrate that patients are absolutely comparing fees, and that they are more price-sensitive than ever before. They also have a lot more choice when it comes to surgeons and clinics. With the advent of daily deal aggregators like GroupOn, Living Social, and many others, patients are faced with tremendous offers on branded procedures and everything from a bit of BOTOX® to fillers, hair removal, skin tightening, and breast implants flooding their inbox every morning.
For clinics considering their pricing strategy, there are three basic choices:
- Exclusive or low volume/high fees
- Middle or good value for money
- Low end which means high volume/low fees.
The safest way to go is to be somewhere in the middle which allows you to charge higher fees for some procedures to allow for lower fees for a selection of faster, less invasive or non-surgical procedures to remain competitive.
Online presence
Although patients preferred a more extensive online presence in the aforementioned study, this factor had only an overall importance of less than 9%. While this may be true in the Netherlands, I would argue that this figure is likely to fall at the opposite end of the spectrum in more highly developed and crowded cosmetic surgery markets.
For example, estimates in the US are that 80% of consumers go online to read information about doctors in general2. Not only do American patients search for doctors online and research them carefully, they are keen to access doctors’ websites on their mobile devices. Therefore, even if they get a referral from a family GP or a hairdresser confidante, the natural inclination is to Google that doctor’s name and visit his/her website before taking the referral any further. If they don’t like what they find, chances are they will not act on the referral — even if it is from a trusted source.
According to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS.org), 7% of prospective patients used social media to research doctors and procedures in 2012, and 57% got their information about plastic surgery online, with 33% relying on referrals. ‘Patients are getting increasingly more sophisticated about their knowledge of plastic surgery largely arising from the upsurge in online research and validations,’ said Ed Farrior, MD, AAFPRS President. ‘We are seeing a much more educated consumer base than ever before, based on the increased availability of information online.’
Proactive clinic marketing
The authors of the study noted that cosmetic surgeons should be proactive with their marketing strategy. The number of patients undergoing cosmetic surgery declined sharply after 2008, and although the statistics indicate that more people are having surgery in 2014, patients are more educated, price-sensitive, and selective. The authors added that knowledge of consumer preferences is an important factor for developing a solid competitive marketing strategy.
It is vital to understand what patients are thinking and what resonates best with the specific target audience(s) you are trying to reach. For cosmetic clinics, it is a good idea to conduct surveys and use patient questionnaires to find out what your patients want. This can be easily accomplished in a number of ways; SurveyMonkey.com offers a simple format for doing studies, Facebook has a built in survey tool that can be used from your clinic page, or you can create a questionnaire in an email programme, such as constantcontact.com or vocus.com, or any format you may already be using. You may be quite surprised at what you learn from this exercise, and it can be a guide to formulating an effective clinic marketing plan.
