Digital Marketing for Plastic Surgeons: 20 tips to get started

This year, you’re going to grow your plastic surgery practice. Digital marketing is a sure-fire way to do that.

But if you haven’t dedicated yourself to your marketing before, it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

Here are 20 of our best ideas that’ll help you get the ball rolling.

Tip 1: Define your target audience for your plastic surgery marketing

Before you can effectively market to an audience of your ideal patients, you need to understand them.

Yes, you already know which procedures work best for which concerns. But do you know where the people curious about your services hang out online? Do you know what they respond to on a plastic surgery clinic’s website or social media page? Do you know what kind of language will make them feel empowered to book a consultation?

That’s why research about your audience’s demographics, voice, and search keywords is key to a solid plastic surgery marketing strategy. It’ll inform all the marketing collateral you create going forward, so this is the best place to start.

Tip 2: Build a professional website for your plastic surgery practice & tailor it to your target audience

Think of your plastic surgery website as your practice’s virtual waiting room. When prospective patients visit, you want them to feel excited, comforted, and educated about their choice to seek your care.

That’s why nailing your plastic surgery web design is one of the most important tasks to prioritize in your digital marketing plan this year. And that’s not just about how the site looks.

Your website’s design needs to have beautiful pictures, yes, but you also need to make sure the flow follows your potential patient’s customer journey and that the copy makes them feel seen.

Tip 3: Optimize your plastic surgery website for search engines

Part of tailoring your plastic surgery practice’s website is ensuring that prospective patients find it when they’re searching for information about plastic surgery online.

That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. Make sure the evergreen pages on your website (naturally) incorporate the search keywords your target audience is looking for within the body of your copy and (especially) the headers. That way, search engines will be able to offer your page up to searchers looking for exactly that information.

And because most searchers will use their smartphones when looking for your services, don’t forget to optimize your plastic surgery website for mobile, too!

Tip 4: Create regular, educational blog content for your plastic surgery audience (and improve your SEO in the process)

When it comes to SEO for your plastic surgery practice, we’re sorry to say, but it’s not a one and done deal.

Yes, incorporating relevant keywords throughout your main website copy is a huge part of nailing your practice’s SEO. But SEO is a momentum game. So, creating a steady stream of high-quality, educational blog content will keep your site ranking high in the search engine results.

Plus, you can repurpose this awesome content in your emails (but more on that later).

Tip 5: Track (and optimize) your plastic surgery website’s on-page conversions

What do you do when you get your target audience to your website? Cross your fingers and pray that they’ll book a consultation? We sure hope not!

That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) becomes important. With CRO techniques like heat mapping, you’ll be able to disect how and why (or why not) prospective patients are interacting with certain parts of your website.

It’s important to set up your traffic and conversion tracking—like Google Analytics 4—properly from the start to begin gathering actionable data about your website’s function.

That way, you can tailor your copywriting and website design to encourage those prospects to reach out to you.

Tip 6: Invest in paid advertising for your plastic surgery practice

One of the most effective plastic surgery digital marketing techniques is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Yes, it’s also one of the bigger investments you’ll likely make to grow your practice, but it’s worth it because—when you do PPC right—the ROI is so high.

Consider running PPC campaigns with limited-time offers for a baseline, but high-demand service (like injectables).

Tip 7: Make your plastic surgery offer landing pages irresistible and grow your conversions

A landing page is where your prospective patients “land” when they click on your ad to get more information.

It’s arguably the most important aspect of any PPC campaign because it’s what guides a prospect towards making a purchase, giving you their contact information, or closing that tab and ignoring your offer.

It’s important to invest in solid copywriting, design, and content production for your landing pages to ensure they speak directly to those prospects, making your offer an easy “yes.”

Tip 8: Ditch the stock footage and infuse your practice’s digital marketing with high-quality images and video

One of the biggest disservices you can do to your plastic surgery digital marketing is using the same stock images as all your competitors. Or worse: being the only one to use stock footage while all the other plastic surgeons have gorgeous, custom-produced visuals that represent their practice and personality to a T.

Don’t be that stock footage plastic surgeon. Take your content production seriously.

Show off your pristine space, your incredible results, and your authority with images and video that’ll draw your audience in (and make the stock image plastic surgeons jealous).

Tip 9: Build a quality email list of warm leads and returning plastic surgery patients

One of the best ways to secure your future practice growth is nurturing a high-quality email list of current and prospective plastic surgery patients.

You can entice these patients to sign up for your emails by offering valuable content—such as e-books, discounts, or pricing breakdowns—in exchange for email addresses.

Then, when you’re ready to bring more patients in for a specific service or boost appointments at a quieter time of the year… your email list can be the reliable place to turn.

Tip 10: Entertain, educate, and segment your plastic surgery email list

Of course, to make the most of that growing email list, you need to keep them engaged. Don’t let warm leads sign up for your emails and then ghost them for several months. That’s just a recipe for them to get your emails once they’ve longer forgotten you and go straight to that “Unsubscribe” button.

Stay top of mind with your email list by sending them regular dispatches of updates, educational content, case studies, and special promotions.

And to make them even more engaged, segment your list into strategic categories to make their email experience with your practice feel hyper-personalized.

Tip 11: Give away (some) things for free to draw your plastic surgery leads in

No, we don’t mean setting up a “free dermal filler” station on your neighborhood’s busiest street (unless you want to)! Instead, pepper your emails, social media content, and virtual live events with as much valuable free content as you can.

One of the best ways to gain your target audience’s trust is to show them how great your free education and consultations are. Think about it: If a prospective patient sees how much value your free advice holds, they’ll have fewer reasons to not book a consult in your office.

Tip 12: Leverage the power of entertainment and education to grow your plastic surgery social media accounts

No, you don’t have to dance on TikTok (unless you want to).

But consistently posting on social media and sharing valuable, entertaining content is key to growing your plastic surgery practice in 2023—after all, plastic surgery is such a visual specialty.

Get creative and post Q&As, live events, case studies, and even comment on plastic surgery trends out in the world.

Tip 13: Collaborate with other medical aesthetics providers and businesses to refer patients to one another

Sometimes, a patient will come into your office, and you’ll realize that they’re not a good fit for your practice. And that’s okay! That’s why you probably have a list of providers or med spas you can refer out to.

Make sure those other providers know they can refer patients to you as well. This can be one of the best sources of warm leads for your plastic surgery practice.

Tip 14: Ensure your practice surgery practice staff is sales-ready

So you have traffic on your website and visitors are converting to booking consultations. Amazing!

But is your staff equipped to handle a higher volume of patient bookings? Are they trained to handle sales? Are your back-office operations going to make growing your practice easier or create more headaches?

Remember: Plastic surgery digital marketing is not just about getting new patients in the door. It’s about creating a holistic experience with your practice that makes them confident about booking with you—again and again.

Tip 15: Stay on top of your practice’s online reputation by monitoring and responding to your reviews

Yes, your best patients can do your practice’s digital marketing for you. After all, a great review of your plastic surgery services can be more effective at convincing a prospect to book a consult than the best copywriting or ad-targeting strategies.

Cultivating positive reviews, responding to reviews, and overall staying on top of your online reputation is key to growing your plastic surgery practice.

Tip 16: Optimize your digital marketing for local plastic surgery clients

When it comes to plastic surgery, just getting any leads is not the point. That’s why knowing your exact target audience is so important.

Odds are, you’ll mostly want to build a patient base in your local area, so factoring in location-specific details is key to targeting the right leads for your practice. You’ll want to nail local SEO strategies as well geo-targeting for your PPC campaigns.

Tip 17: Grow your practice’s authority (and SEO) through link-building

One of the factors behind your search engine rankings is how many (and which) authoritative websites link to your website. Those are called backlinks.

Build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources to improve your plastic surgery practice website's authority and SEO. You can begin growing your backlinks by reaching out to aesthetics industry publications, local media outlets, and influencers to secure guest post opportunities or press mentions.

An added bonus: When prospective patients see you being featured around the web, your authority will grow.

Tip 18: Consider growing your plastic surgery practice through influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a newer, but highly effective digital marketing strategy for plastic surgeons.

This form of social media marketing involves offering free or discounted services to content creators in exchange for reviews or promotion of your services on their social media pages.

By collaborating with influencers in the beauty industry, you can increase your reach and authority by getting in front of the influencers’ audiences. Plus, you can do that without needing to worry about creating the content or even distributing it.

Tip 19: Monitor your analytics and keep planning for the future of your practice’s growth

Like we mentioned earlier with SEO, you need to be on top of your practice’s digital marketing for the long haul to keep seeing results.

The best way to do that is to learn to monitor your practice’s digital marketing analytics, like SEO tracking with Google Analytics, conversion rate monitoring, and email A/B testing.

By being keyed into the fluctuation of these metrics, you’ll know when to change course with a particular marketing strategy and how to budget your practice’s digital marketing investments.

Tip 20: Bring a professional plastic surgery marketer onto your team

With a professional marketer on your team, you can rest assured your plastic surgery digital marketing will grow your practice effectively.

But you don’t necessarily need to hire a full-time employee. Consider a fractional CMO instead.

A fractional CMO is a part-time consultant who functions as an executive-level member of your team—without the executive-level fees.

You deserve to have pros handling your plastic surgery marketing? Hint: That’s us.

Now that you’ve absorbed these nuggets of digital marketing wisdom, your head may be swimming with all of the creative ways you can use digital marketing to grow your plastic surgery practice in 2023.

If a DIY approach to all of these digital marketing strategies doesn’t sound like the best use of your precious time… We agree.

You deserve to work with a plastic surgery marketing agency that understands your industry and can help you book more of your ideal patients. So you (and your staff) can get back to doing what you do best: serving those patients.

So, give us a shout. We can’t wait to start brainstorming with you.