Using social proof more effectively on your website
Your website is your 24-hour shop window, and social proof should be woven into its fabric.
Firstly, your homepage should be rich in social proof to show visitors that they’re in good hands when they choose to undergo a treatment with you. You want to kill any scepticism that people who access your site via organic (search engine) traffic may have when they click on. So, present them with higher-level social proof such as affiliations, impressive numbers and media appearances right on your homepage.
Moving to your treatments and conditions pages, these are prime real estate for video testimonials, case studies and reviews from real patients who have had great results – this is the kind of authentic and tailored social proof that can really convert browsers to patients. Answering the questions that website visitors (or potential patients) have is the minimum you should be doing; those answers coming from a patient of yours hold even more power.
As practitioners look to set themselves apart from the crowd, aesthetic treatments are becoming ever more bespoke. Use “the wisdom of crowds” by noting on your treatment pages that patients who had X treatment also had Y to complement, and take-home skincare Z to maintain results. This is similar to algorithmic recommendations from services such as iTunes or Netflix, where users are shown things they may like based on what they’ve already shown interest in. Getting patients themselves to talk about this in reviews or videos is more trustworthy and feels less like a sell, while hopefully boosting add-on or follow-on sales.
Authenticity
Operating your aesthetics business authentically factors greatly into your use of social proof as marketing. For example, are you actually a member of that professional organisation, or have you just got a certificate from a CPD event they ran five years ago? To consumers that hold these affiliations in high regard, it is often possible to check credentials on linked registers. Organisations are also looking to protect the integrity of their membership, so expect contact from them if you are in fact being dishonest and attempting to mislead the public with the use of their logo.
If you’ve featured in any print, online or TV media, back up the logos on your homepage with a media section on the website, and reprint or link to the coverage there. Check for permissions first, but posting articles and video clips allows you to kill any scepticism as to their authenticity. Visitors can then decide for themselves if you are trustworthy, rather than be left wondering if you were a key feature in a big-time publication or programme, or if you actually barely received a mention.
Most consumers find it easy to spot fake affiliations and reviews these days, likewise a suite of 100 fake five-star reviews for a small business. Faking social proof via reviews is not only a red flag to consumers, but using the Google platform to exploit the system can get your business removed or even blacklisted. Even worse,paying for reviews breaks UK Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (2008), as well as advertising codes, and you would be breaking the law.
If you're new to the industry...
Congratulations on starting out in aesthetics. If you’re new to the industry or your clinic hasn’t been open long and you don’t have “impressive” treatment numbers or consented before-and-after photos yet, you can still employ social proof in your marketing.
Make reviews your priority and hold onto them like gold when you receive them. Then, you should use social proof from product partners as if they are your own. For example, Allergan recently celebrated having shipped over 100 million vials of Botox, so if this is your toxin of choice, shout about it, and drive home the message of why you use the products you do. You may also want to think about starting to build relationships with the media to help introduce your business and boost your profile.
Whether you know it or not, you are influenced every day by social proof. There are lots of resources online that discuss social proof in marketing – you may find you’re using one or two tactics already. If you’re not, try to integrate social proof across your website, social media and other marketing activities, and see what results you achieve.
Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a family-run digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver award-winning marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and aesthetic brands. Contact her on alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic
