Study examines the marketing perspectives, practices and strategies of aesthetic professionals

eRelevance Corporation, a leading customer marketing service for small-to-medium-size businesses, today announced the release of its new study: The State of Aesthetic Healthcare Marketing 2017. Although the report is based on a survey of US aesthetic healthcare practices it includes key insights into marketing attitudes, goals, tactics and results that may be of interest to the UK market. 

eRelevance, in partnership with Modern Aesthetics, commissioned the survey to better understand how today’s aesthetic healthcare practices are approaching marketing.

“Aesthetic healthcare practices that want to thrive in today’s competitive environment must find a way to reach the most qualified consumers, with the most relevant messages, in the most cost-effective way. Most practices, through the survey, acknowledge the best way to do that is by generating more repeat business from their existing patients,” says eRelevance chief marketing officer Adam Weinroth.  “We found that while most of the practices surveyed are aware of the unmatched benefits of effectively marketing to their existing patients, they simply don’t have the resources or expertise to execute the kind of sophisticated marketing campaigns necessary to effectively reach their patients to business growth.”

 Several notable themes emerged from the data:

• Strong patient connections and education are necessary for revenue generation and growth: While primary revenue sources vary among aesthetic practices, repeat business from existing patients and patient referrals were cited as the two largest sources of revenue. Key to both is strong patient connections.
• Practices are far from satisfied with marketing results: Nearly 60 percent of respondents cited lack of results (30%) and lack of measurement (28%) as the chief reasons for dissatisfaction with their marketing efforts.
• No practice surveyed focuses exclusively on repeat business from its patients but practices recognize its value: None of the practices surveyed focuses its marketing exclusively on generating repeat business from existing patients despite clear benefits and cost efficiencies. According to respondents, this is due to limited time and expertise.
• Practices see benefit to outsourcing patient marketing to an expert: While 92% of respondents said they are executing patient marketing internally, 60% said they would consider outsourcing to a proven expert. 
• Social media posts, email blasting and online advertising top marketing channels most oen executed by aesthetic practice staff: aesthetic practices are using internal resources to try to eectively execute a wide range of marketing tactics aimed at increasing revenue. Untargeted social media posts are used by some 60% of respondents. Email blasting is used by about 37%, followed by online advertising (32%) and print advertising (28%).

“The State of Healthcare Marketing 2017 report is a valuable tool to help aesthetic practices gauge how sophisticated their marketing efforts are relative to those of their peers—and to identify opportunities for change, growth and better results,” says Modern Aesthetics Editorial Director Paul Winnington.

To download the full report and view more comprehensive study results click here