5 Surprising Mistakes That Could Hurt Your Aesthetics Business

Your medical aesthetics clinic may be doing a lot of things right, but spotting the weaknesses in your strategy is never as easy as listing your strengths. Your intentions may be well meaning, but these five common mistakes could be costing your clinic more prospective patients than you think. Read the following to identify your weak points, turn them into strengths, and better boost your clinic’s business success.

Keeping the Waiting Room Walls and Tables “Clean”

When a patient’s time in a waiting room can’t be avoided, keeping the area clean and relaxed to minimize patient anxiety is common practice. But did you know that it’s possible that your waiting room is too clean? Totally bare surfaces, stark colors, and empty tables and walls could make your clinic appear cold and sterile, raising patient anxiety and making a major marketing mistake. These clinics are missing out on the opportunity to better acquaint prospective patients with their work. 

To enhance the effectiveness of your waiting room, use table space to offer a small, curated selection of current health and wellness magazines alongside some well-designed marketing materials containing Before-and-After images of your patients. Alternatively, consider creating a magazine-quality book with articles offering more in-depth details about the services your clinic offers, Before-and-After image galleries, and profiles on key clinic staff. The professional quality of these magazines will be eye-catching to patients, particularly for upscale medical aesthetics clinics, and offer the opportunity to cultivate patient trust before the consultation even begins.

Get even more creative by incorporating powerful testimonials or your key mission statement as artwork on walls and set the tone for your clinic from the moment prospective patients enter. With a little creativity, your clinic’s aesthetic can remain clean, while also optimizing this space to cultivate patient trust and soft-sell services.  

Overexciting Patients

It can be thrilling to have an eager patient, but making a promise you cannot keep will only lead to taking on a patient you cannot keep. Being confident in the results you can deliver is important, but it’s also imperative to ensure that patient expectations are in check. When showing Before-and-After galleries to prospective patients, be honest and open with how the results were acquired; be sure to note all the treatments used in each example so patients are aware of the complete treatment plan used to acquire each set of results. Let them know that while the results they are seeing are possible, every patient’s outcome is unique to their customized treatment plan.

Keeping expectations in order also means approaching the often difficult topic of a backup plan if the patient is not satisfied with the outcome from Plan A. Oftentimes, Plan B might be an easy way to present a long-term treatment plan to an eager patient who is adamant about sticking to a short-term solution.  

Skipping Before Pictures (And Missing Out on the Full Impact of After Pictures) 

On a similar topic, even if a patient does not permit your clinic to use their images in marketing materials, this doesn’t mean you should skip taking photos for their private file. Ensure quality Before photos are taken of each patient once they sign on to a treatment plan, and be sure that the photos capture the treatment area fully from a few different angles. Results per treatment session may be subtle and a patient may suffer a lapse in memory during a longer-term treatment plan. Gradual results can make it difficult for some patients to see the overall impact.  

Keeping a Before image on hand to compare to an After picture is an invaluable tool at the conclusion of any treatment strategy to show patients the results accumulated over time and ensure they leave your clinic happy. (Before images can also be a form of protection from potential lawsuits.) As an additional marketing strategy, you may consider offering print-outs of a patient’s Before-and-After images for them to take home as a reminder of the results achieved and a little bit of proof they can show to friends or family when recommending your services.

Thinking Short-Term  

Currently, patients have a plethora of information available to them online. In fact, if your website is doing its job, patients have sought out your clinic’s services based on a specific device or treatment you offer. While prospective patients may enter with a key idea of what they would like, going with a short-term strategy could lead to a dead-end for your business. Offering prospective patients exactly what they came for may be an easy sell, but it’s also a short-sighted move. Instead, consider recommending a long-term treatment plan that affords improved results as an alternative choice alongside the shorter-term treatment they were seeking. Recommending a long-term treatment strategy offers a better overall outcome for both parties, with the patient seeing and maintaining the results they’re seeking and your clinic developing a stronger relationship with a loyal patient.

Skipping the Initial Consult

While it might be in the best interests of a clinic to ensure treatment providers are fully booked to perform treatments, scheduling a first-time consultation during a time at which the treatment provider cannot meet the prospective patient—even for just 15 minutes—is a significant miss.

Patient care coordinators can often collect intake forms, conduct the initial patient interview, and brief the prospective patient on your clinic’s services and values, patient trust runs thin if they are not permitted the opportunity to meet the person who will be performing their treatments. Most informed patients know that a qualified and experienced treatment provider is a key piece to the overall medical aesthetic treatment decision, so always ensure they are afforded the opportunity to speak to the treatment provider during the initial consult. Treat this first impression as the final piece in building the foundation to a long-term patient-provider relationship. 

By correcting these five mistakes medical aesthetics clinics make that could be affecting your business, this year could afford your clinic your best conversion rates yet. For more tips on how to improve conversions and consultations for better business success, download our invaluable eBook, Mastering the Art of the Aesthetic Consult, today. 

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