My practice recently ran a “Medical Minute” on one of the local TV stations, KRON4, here in San Francisco. It’s an informative 60 seconds discussing our ability to perform non-surgical, permanent fat reduction with CoolSculpting in half the time of most practices and also highlighted our in-office operating room and aesthetician. At the end of the minute of TV advertising, we direct interested consumers to the Pricing page of our website, since ultimately, that’s what everyone wants to know about cosmetic surgery – how much it costs!
After each airing of our Medical Minute, we can tell there’s an increase in traffic to our website because of how many ‘wishlists’ consumers submit. In other words, when visiting our Pricing tab on our site, we don’t just list all of our services with their cost. If a patient wants to know the cost of a procedure, they must add procedures of interest to their virtual wishlist and by entering their name, email address and phone number, they’re automatically presented with a breakdown of the costs associated with those procedures. Our office gets the patient’s contact info to follow up with them, but most importantly, the patient has easy access to the cost information that is so elusive on most sites.
What I have learned from this is that, well, consumers still watch a lot of TV and notice the ads! It’s easy to assume that with the advent of social media, computers, tablets and smartphones, that consumers would be oblivious to TV and TV advertising, but based on the response I’ve seen, that’s not the case.
During the month of August (last month), there were 84 wishlists from 50 different consumers through the Pricing page of our website. Once the Medical Minute started airing Wednesday, September 3rd, and through half the day on Wednesday September 10th (one week later), 74 different consumers submitted 133 wishlists! Some of them have come in for a consultation or treatment already, some of them haven’t, but there are two important take home points here:
1) People actually watch TV still and act on the ads they see
2) By directing them to our website and allowing them to access information they want but can’t find elsewhere (cosmetic surgery pricing), they’re willing to provide their contact info in exchange for that pricing information
But what if our website just had the same information that other sites have? Pages about breast augmentation. Comparison of silicone vs saline. Before and after photos. Basically, what if our site was just a repetition of any other cosmetic surgery-related site? They might glean a few bits of information but there would be no incentive for them to delve deeper and leave their contact info. But because our site has embraced price transparency, our patients are finding something they can’t find elsewhere and so they leave us a “thank you card” that essentially says, “hey, I came to your website, thanks for the pricing info in exchange for my name, email address and phone number, feel free to contact me in the future!”
That’s what I call a satisfied future patient!
