Social Media Marketing Strategy for Plastic Surgery
One of the biggest struggles of any plastic surgery practice is bringing in enough leads to keep their surgeons’ calendars full. There are many ways to bring in these leads, including SEO and PPC. However, social media has grown into a primary method of finding potential clients and nurturing leads to conversion.
Patients often discover plastic surgeons through social media as well as check social media profiles of surgeons they’re considering for a cosmetic procedure. By producing content across platforms like TikTok and Instagram, social media can be a significant lead generation source for plastic surgeons.
When it comes to less invasive procedures like fillers, B—x, or microneedling, social media can help maintain relationships with existing patients. It can also reach new patients for procedures like facelift, rhinoplasty, and Brazilian butt lift through high engagements such as likes, comments, and shares.
Before we get into the top tips for plastic surgery social media marketing and what platforms are important, it’s best to begin with the overall concept of social media marketing—what it is, why it matters, and how it can help your plastic surgery practice.
Social Media Marketing
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the use of different social media platforms to promote your plastic surgery practice. It connects you with your ideal audience, builds your brand, and drives traffic to your website. This is why social media, even for plastic surgeons, is an important marketing channel to scale your practice.
How Plastic Surgeons Use Social Media to Grow Their Practices
Social media marketing provides a space where you can inform, educate, and entertain in hopes of encouraging people to not only engage with your clinic but to earn their trust and keep you top of mind should they ever consider a treatment or cosmetic procedure.
Even more, once someone finds your social media profile, their engagement can often place your practice in the social media feeds of their social networks. Your posts could go viral, or your follower base could explode. All of this leads back to your plastic surgery practice.
In short, plastic surgery social media marketing allows you to connect with your ideal audience in a more personal and intimate way that builds trust, spreads the word, and presents your practice as the trusted clinic for their facelift, liposuction, or breast augmentation.
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
There are three large benefits of using social media marketing to grow your plastic surgery practice:
- Increased brand awareness and trust
- Increased traffic to your website
- Continued engagement with past patients
Social media makes your practice known to new clients and helps it stick in the minds of existing patients.
Linking to your website in your social media posts will garner more traffic to the place that’s most important. Your website, if optimized correctly by an SEO, holds your service pages for B—x, facelifts, microneedling, etc., as well as consultation forms, phone numbers, and more. If someone is truly considering your practice, they will first go to your website, which makes social media ideal for routing your traf
Plastic surgery social media marketing also promotes your services. Whether you’re posting a before and after photo or a behind-the-scenes look at a treatment, you’re showcasing your expertise. This encourages patients to not only consider getting the procedure but to trust your plastic surgery practice to do it.
While there are many benefits to plastic surgery social media marketing, if done incorrectly, it could be a major waste of resources. This is why working with a professional social media marketing company is more reliable than going it alone.
Tips for Plastic Surgery Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing may seem like a simple task with everyone using it, from the college student to the hip grandma, but it’s much more than it looks. There are professionals that dedicate their careers to this type of marketing. When done correctly, it can help your plastic surgery practice grow significantly, but if you’re missing the mark, you could see little to no payoff and a lot of time wasted.
Below we’ll outline the top tips to help you maximize your social media marketing efforts.
Be Unique on Every Social Channel
There’s nothing more boring than identical posts found across all social media platforms. If you post the same picture or video with the same caption on every platform, your followers will get disinterested and won’t want to continue engaging with you on multiple platforms. While you can recycle ideas, it’s best to say them in different words, use different photos, and make the post itself unique.
Even further, not all audiences are the same on each platform. This means what content works on Instagram likely won’t work well on TikTok and Facebook. Each platform is unique, which means each post should be unique. Varying your posts can help you stay relevant on the platform you’re posting on.
Later in the article, we’ll be discussing the social media platforms you need to be on as a plastic surgeon and what to post on each one.
Engage with Your Audience
Plastic surgery social media is an engagement-focused type of marketing. It’s not the one-way communication of other types of marketing like broadcast media. Instead, patients can comment back and ask questions. This means there’s more responsibility to interact with your audience rather than just putting up your media and calling it a day.
You don’t need to write back to every person that leaves a comment in the chat, especially if you have a significant following. As long as you engage with a few people on each post, you’ll show that you care about your audience and what they have to say. This builds a relationship with your followers and trust in your brand.
Only Post High-Quality Content
While posting on social media doesn’t require the most expensive tech, it’s important to only share high-quality content. Try to avoid posting blurry, unclear, or half-hearted content. Your followers will value crisp pictures that tell a story and showcase your practice while also being aesthetically pleasing.
Even using an iPhone can produce quality pictures and videos. You just need to choose your pictures wisely and take many—not every picture will be perfect. The more options you have, the more likely you are to post quality content.
Post at Specific Times
While it may feel counterintuitive to sit on ready content, there are specific times that engagement is at its peak. For example, the best time to post on Instagram is 11 a.m. on Wednesdays. However, each day has its own best time to post, and some days, like Wednesdays, are better than others.
If you post at low engagement times during the day, meaning times when your followers aren’t using the app, you will likely get posts that aren’t seen by a lot of people and thus won’t have good engagement. Your likes, comments, and overall routed traffic to your website will be low. It’s best to save your content for when your audience is on the platform and ready to engage with you.
Use Hashtags
While you may be thinking how cliche or outdated hashtags are on social media, they are still an effective way to add more people to your audience. By using plastic surgery-related hashtags, your posts will end up in front of people who are searching for similar topics and those specific hashtags.
Don’t use just any hashtag. There are certain hashtags that are the most popular or that better target internet users interested in plastic surgery.
Get Help From a Professional
The best way to ensure that your plastic surgery social media marketing strategy is sound, you’re posting at the right times, and posting quality content is to work with a professional. This takes the pressure off of you and puts it on someone who knows how to navigate this marketing space.
Sagapixel offers plastic surgery social media marketing with experience working with other cosmetic practices. Our social media marketers are professionals who can help you scale your practice with proven social media tactics.
Now that we’ve discussed best practices for plastic surgery social media marketing, we can focus on each platform individually.
Instagram is the Top Social Media Channel for Marketing Aesthetic Medicine
While other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are growing exponentially, Instagram remains the best social media channel to promote your cosmetic medicine practice. Regardless of its massive user base, Instagram has been around for a while, and thus the methods for marketing have become practices.
With newer platforms like TikTok, social media marketers are still learning the best ways to reach their audience. When you get started on Instagram, you can rest assured that there’s already established best practices that you can easily follow.
Who is the Audience on Instagram?
The biggest age demographic on Instagram is between 25 and 34, followed closely by 18-24-year-olds and then ages 35-44. These younger ages are ideal for targeting with medspa services such as chemical peels, microneedling, and even B—x. You will also reach prospective patients in their 30’s and 40’s that are beginning to see signs of aging, such as wrinkles and fine lines. This is the perfect opportunity to present pictures that showcase procedures like B—x, facelifts, and more.
Types of Posts
When it comes to posting on Instagram, there are specific types of plastic surgery content that audiences respond to the best. However, it’s important to note that Instagram is no longer just photographs. Videos are now in the mix and vital to plastic surgery profiles.
Below we outline the best types of posts you can use to promote your plastic surgery practice on Instagram.
Before and After Photos
Before and after photos work in a lot of different ways to promote your plastic surgery practice. Anyone considering a cosmetic procedure will look for before and after pictures to see what types of transformation they can expect. They will begin to assess if the procedure, such as a rhinoplasty or facelift, is going to meet their cosmetic desires.
Additionally, before and after photos promote brand trust. By showing the beautiful results, your cosmetic doctors create, prospective patients will gain trust in the services you can provide. When it comes to choosing who to go to for their procedure, they’ll remember that they were impressed by the results you showed on Instagram.
Patient Testimonials
Patient testimonials are another tactic to build audience trust in your plastic surgery practice. Real patients with real cosmetic stories and positive opinions of their experience with your practice will showcase the quality of your treatments.
You can get these patient testimonials by asking your existing clients to fill out a questionnaire about their experience following their cosmetic procedure. If you have a Google My Business account, you also likely have reviews of old clients on there that you can use for Instagram posts.
Educational Information
Getting a cosmetic procedure, especially when it’s invasive, like a facelift, rhinoplasty, or chin implant is a big decision. This means potential clients will have a lot of questions about how the procedure works, what techniques you use, what recovery and aftercare will look like, etc.
Posting educational content can do two things: reassure potential clients and direct traffic to your website. You can begin to talk about a common question patients have and then point your audience to your website, where you have a blog post that talks in more detail about that specific concern or question.
Getting more visitors to your website will help them land on service pages and ultimately call for a consultation.
Tik Tok Is a Rising Social Media Channel for Plastic Surgeons
TikTok is the rising star of social media platforms. It grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic with over 850 million downloads. It continues to be a prominent social media platform and ideal for plastic surgeons to optimize.
Who is the Audience on TikTok?
While the primary audience is young (ages 10-19), a wide variety of age demographics are on TikTok. Ages 20-29, 30-39, and 40-49 are all relatively close in range for the number of users on the platform. This makes the audience on TikTok inclusive to the audience of plastic surgeons.
Your younger followers may be more interested in rhinoplasty, B—x, or microneedling. Your audience in their 30’s and 40’s may be considering a facelift or neck lift to maintain a youthful appearance.
Types of Posts
The content users post on TikTok is generally videos, edited and otherwise. Below are the most common types of videos your plastic surgery practice should post.
Medical Education
Posting medical education videos on TikTok is a great way to disprove false information, promote open discussion about cosmetic procedures, and educate your audience about your plastic surgery practice.
Whether it’s posting about how to replace a ripped glove while remaining sterile or about the products you use, these posts will generate engagement and trust in your brand.
Before and Afters
Just like for Instagram, client transformation will make users stop in their scroll. Transformations are satisfying and an opportunity for your audience to live vicariously through your patient. They can imagine the type of transformation they would have by getting the same procedure.
For TikTok, use clips of your client during a consultation and after their body heals from the procedure. This will give your audience satisfaction by seeing the instant results.
Behind the Scenes
Behind-the-scenes posts give prospective patients a look behind the proverbial curtain. It invites potential clients, medical professionals, and random Instagram users alike to see what it’s like to work as a plastic surgeon.
You could post behind-the-scenes content that’s as intimate as you want—videos of preparing implants or a look at the middle of a procedure. There’s a curiosity there for people that will make them keep coming back for more.
Trending Content
TikTok is known for its trend culture. Whether it’s challenges, dubbed videos, or dances, this type of content is a great way to provide entertainment for your followers. More than that, it will allow your audience to see you on a more casual level, more like a friend.
Posting trending content will also help you become more known. Trending content spreads which makes it a great way to grow your social media following and your pool of potential clients.
Facebook is Best for Promotional Information
With recent algorithm updates, videos have also grown more popular on Facebook. Videos do significantly better than photos on this platform. However, a combination of the two is good for promotional information like promoting new blog posts, special events, special discounts, and more.
Who is the Audience on Facebook?
While Facebook is similar to Instagram and TikTok, with the highest age demographic being between 25-34, the older demographic of 45-54-year-olds is more likely to be on this social media platform than other channels. This makes it ideal for targeting an older audience that wants cosmetic procedures to look younger.
Types of Posts
As the best social media platform for promotional content, videos, discounts, events, and links are some of the best types of posts to make on Facebook. Below we’ll break down each one and how it can positively impact your plastic surgery practice.
Videos
This type of content has become increasingly popular on all social media platforms, including Facebook. Videos are a good opportunity to promote procedures, drive awareness of your business, and solidify your brand in the minds of your audiences. With the emergence of TikTok, it’s best to note that the attention span of many social media users is shortened. It’s best to keep this type of content to around one minute in length, but anywhere up to 3 minutes can still perform optimally.
Events
For plastic surgery clinics, events are a great way to get connected with your local audience. While it’s common for patients to travel for plastic surgery procedures like facelifts or Brazilian butt lifts, creating a local presence is also important. Events are a great way to establish interest in events that your clinic is hosting. Set up an RSVP list, include the date and time, and start a conversation with audience members who intend to participate.
You can also use this event type to schedule webinars and other online events to connect with your audience across the globe.
Discounts
Discounts are exactly as they sound, promotions that you share on Facebook. If you’re offering a discount on a procedure or want to promote your free consultations, discounts are a great way to encourage your audience to act now before the offer disappears. It’s a call to action with an enticement to convert.
Links to Blog Posts
Getting prospective patients onto your plastic surgery website gets them one step closer to converting into a client. Blog posts are often used for this purpose. With Facebook, you can promote these pieces of content, encouraging your social media followers to visit the website, learn more about their procedure of interest and see your plastic surgery clinic as the solution.
Twitter is the Platform for Engagement
Where Instagram is good for branding and Facebook is good for promotional content, Twitter is the best social media platform for engagement. While Twitter has slowly decreased in its popularity, it is still the social media that is optimized for conversation, sharing, and other forms of user-to-user and user-to-brand interaction.
Joining this channel as a plastic surgery practice will allow you a direct line to your audience and a unique opportunity to form more intentional and long-lasting relationships.
Who is the Audience on Twitter?
The largest age group on Twitter is users 18-29 years of age, closely followed by 30-49-year-olds. The demographic that is nearing their 30s are beginning to consider cosmetic procedures to keep their youthful appearance, while those in the 30-49 demographic are typically those getting procedures like facelifts and tummy tucks. This makes it an ideal platform for plastic surgery practices.
Types of Posts
The best types of posts to optimize the engagement design of this social media platform are news, gifs, and links to blog posts.
Trending Industry News
Twitter is a hub of shared news and resources, a platform commonly populated by journalists. This provides a unique opportunity for plastic surgeons to share news regarding the plastic surgery industry. You can inform your audience about specific procedures, your unique company success, and industry trends. The more informed someone is, the more likely they are to convert into a client. Even more than that, though, sharing news often sparks conversation as people share their thoughts.
Gifs and Designed Images
While Gifs and graphics may sound unprofessional, this type of content is fun and often garners a wide variety of responses from Twitter users. This is a great way to make your account and company feel casual and personal. It takes away some of the pressure some viewers might feel toward plastic surgery and eases their anxiety by being reminded that there is a real person behind the screen and behind the scalpel.
Links to Blogs
While this was one of the promotional content types mentioned in Facebook, it’s also another great way to garner conversation. Posting blog links with conversational questions can stir up engagement and ultimately get users to your website.
Snapchat is Popular with Younger Audiences
While a younger audience isn’t typically who plastic surgeons target with their social media efforts, it would be careless not to target a wide demographic if you have the social media bandwidth. Snapchat is a great way to target a younger audience that is already thinking about cosmetic procedures to enhance their appearance.
Who is the Audience on Snapchat?
It’s commonly believed that Snapchat is for a young audience, those in their teens, which is true, but it doesn’t capture the whole story. The top age group on Snapchat is between the ages of 18 and 24. This is a good audience to target as a plastic surgery practice because 18 is the age of consent for procedures. While age-related procedures might not be popular with this group, other aesthetic procedures will be like rhinoplasty or liposuction.
Types of Posts
The types of posts you’ll be making on Snapchat are focused on building interest and trust around the procedures you provide. Videos and testimonials are the optimal ways to do this.
Videos
Through videos, you can give behind the scenes of the day-to-day of your practice, introduce staff, and even do informational content about procedures and techniques. This builds intrigue and trust around your business by being transparent and personable.
Testimonials
Another important content type for Snapchat is testimonials. This also builds trust with your younger audience by showing them others their age getting the procedures they’re considering. With visual testimonials of clients with beautiful new noses or bodies, this is a great way to entice viewers to trust your plastic surgery practice with their faces or bodies.
Sagapixel Offers a Comprehensive Social Media Marketing Strategy for Plastic Surgeons
Social media is a complex form of marketing and is very different from just participating as a user. If you aren’t sure how to optimize these channels for your plastic surgery practice, Sagapixel can help. We are a digital marketing company that has experience in plastic surgery social media marketing. To learn more about how we can help you scale your practice with social media, contact our digital marketing team today.
