In my decade-long experience guiding aesthetic clinic owners, I’ve encountered numerous marketing mistakes that thwart the flow of valuable patient enquiries.
Things like:
– Clinic owners fussing over logos and branding
– Clinics relying 100% on word-of-mouth referrals
– And not following up with lapsed patients
However, if I had to pick the biggest, most costly mistake of them all? It would be:
Neglecting the proper sequence of marketing essentials—starting with the market and the message before the ‘mechanism’.
Let me explain 🙂
Once you understand these three core principles of effective marketing, you’ll find it a lot easier to attract new clientele and keep your diary filled with bookings:
1. Market
Knowing your patient demographic intimately—their concerns, aspirations, and the specific solutions they seek—is paramount. While it seems straightforward, I’ve often noticed clinics have only a superficial grasp of their patient base’s true needs and desires.
2. Message
The crux here is the cumulative message your clinic communicates. It’s not about just one advert, email or social media post; it’s about consistently speaking the language of your patients—utilising their terminology and directly addressing their pain points. When you can empathise and connect with your target audience in a way that resonates, that’s when you capture attention.
3. Mechanism
This represents the various channels through which you connect your message with your target market. Whether it’s through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, or paid advertising, this is where many clinics falter…
They concentrate almost exclusively on the mechanism, sending out mass communications and special offers and expecting a miracle.
However, the silence that follows isn’t the mechanism’s failure—it’s a mismatched message sent to an inaccurately defined market…
Which is a recipe for a lot of frustration, head scratching, and empty diary days.
So, let’s step back and reassess.
Are your marketing efforts speaking directly to the needs of your patients?
Are you using their language, addressing their concerns, and leveraging the right channels?
If you have any doubts about the effectiveness of your marketing, please have another look at our Six Figure Breakthrough Programme as we have entire modules dedicated to this:
Only by aligning the market, message, and mechanism can we avoid the pitfall of misdirected marketing and instead pave the way for a thriving, patient-focused aesthetic clinic.