In spite of the highly specialized personal services they offer, cosmetic surgery practices face many of the same marketing challenges of any other business.
In this conversation Conrad Bosmans, CEO of Look Your Best Media, explains both the common and unique challenges faced by these medical professionals and presents his ingenious approach to solving them.
What follows is a computer-generated transcription of our entire conversation. Please excuse any typos!
Frank Felker 00:22
Thank you, Dude Walker. Yes indeed, I am Frank Felker. Welcome back to Radio Free Enterprise.
My guest today is Conrad Bosmans. of Look Your Best Media in Laguna Beach, California. Conrad Bosmans. Welcome to the program.
Conrad Bosmans 00:39
Thank you, Frank, glad to be here.
Frank Felker 00:41
Conrad has a fascinating niche business, where he helps cosmetic surgery practices drive a steady stream of high-value patients in the door. Now, if you’re not somebody who operates a cosmetic surgery practice, I hope you won’t change the channel just yet. Because I think you’re going to be intrigued to learn how much the marketing challenges faced by those cosmetic surgeons are directly in alignment with what you have to put up with every day. And if you are a cosmetic surgeon or someone else who operates that type of practice, I hope you will stick around and be intrigued by the fact that the challenges you’re facing are very much identical to those faced by almost every other business owner in the world. So Conrad, let’s start with that. What types of challenges marketing challenges specifically, do the operators of cosmetic surgery practices face?
Conrad Bosmans 01:36
Frank, that’s a great lead-in because you’re exactly right. Some of the problems are unique to cosmetic plastic surgery practices. But as you said, most of these problems are fundamental to almost every business. So the three things that almost every business wants, but specifically cosmetic plastic surgery practices. Number one, they want to stand out from their competition. Number two, they want to fill their calendars with a predictable stream of eight level patients and procedures. And number three, they want to scale their time income button, they were everybody hoping that their digital presence is going to do the heavy lifting there. Because obviously, their existing patients and attending to the needs of their existing patients, prevents them from being able to scale their time they’re maxed out. And so while they are hoping that their digital presence will do the heavy lifting, the fact is, the vast majority of practices have a digital presence that’s actually working against them.
Frank Felker 02:42
Hmm. Well, that’s a that’s an interesting concept. They’re their own practices working against them. Obviously, that begs the question, What do you mean by that?
Conrad Bosmans 02:53
Well, it their digital presence is working against them. Because to have a digital presence that’s as consultative and as helpful as you are, it requires digitizing your valuable help and expertise, packaging it for multimedia delivery across today’s patient journey, and delivering it exactly the right way at exactly the right time on each patient’s individual journey. And as you can imagine, and that process is extremely painstaking, and time consuming. And once again, the vast majority of practice is already maxed out, helping with the pressing needs of their existing patients. So they just, they just don’t have the bandwidth to do it. And the result is that their digital presence, have a number of leaks or their patient journey has a number of massive leaks that’s costing them a fortune in leads, patients and profits.
Frank Felker 03:55
You know, it’s interesting that you say that, and I know that you know what you’re talking about. But maybe you could give our audience a little peek into how, how you came to know all of this about cosmetic surgery, surgery practices, you know, how are you happy to begin working with them in the first place and the experience you’ve had?
Conrad Bosmans 04:15
Well, I saw that they had a need, and I had a contact with a local plastic surgeon here. And I knew a couple of fundamental things. Number one, the process we just spoke about. That’s just too much for any businessperson. I spent all of my time dude, I’ve spent 1000s and 1000s of hours learning, mastering, and trying to apply proven best practices as they pertain to digital marketing. And so I knew that your standard business owner specifically your typical plastic surgeon just didn’t have the time to do that. On the second hand, I knew that they were very good at speaking About how they help patients achieve their desired results or amazing transformations. So I said, Well, how can I harness what they do well, and overcome the digital overwhelm side of things. And so I started a podcast series called the HD Lipo Podcast. And so as you well know because you were the host of 21, episodes.
Conrad Bosmans 05:28
So the thought was that we would harness the power of podcasting because it enabled us to scale the time of these physicians and share their expertise and guide their journey, one to many versus the one-to-one consulting that most physicians do. And it went very well. We had tremendous results as we went, and we had a few critical questions to answer. Number one, couldn’t be attract better than most. And our open rates and click rates were between 20 and 60%. Above the industry averages, so we’re going Okay, great, we can track better than most, then we said, well, can we gauge better than most? And the answer is yes, we had hundreds and hundreds of episodes downloaded and listen to which one to again, physician to scale their time and consult one to many versus the one to one that they do in a typical in their typical environment. And then we also were able to engage, we created a consultation of lead magnet that got hundreds and hundreds of patients to raise their hand and ask for ongoing expert guidance from each of our featured authorities on how to achieve their desired results.
This was outstanding and this is something that we’ve been building on since then it’s a consultative led feedback about that more later. So we could attract we found out we could attract really well we found that we could engage really well. So then the question became, could we convert better. And we had mixed results there because once we got the leads into the practices office, one of the practices was able to fill their calendar with a number of a level procedures, HD light bulb procedures went great. One of our other practices, we had 12 consultation scheduled, but we had mixed results in there, conversion rates were below their averages, their normal conversion rate. And so I kind of went back to the drawing board and see what’s going on here. And as I did a deep dive, I discovered that there were a number of massive leaks to out there each practices patient journey that were costing them a fortune in leads, patients and profits. So once again, I went back to the drawing board to say, Okay, how can you solve these problems in a way that fits into the existing routines and ecosystems of our featured authorities. And ultimately, that guides the patient journey in a way that that gives them an instant advantage over their competition, but more importantly, enables them to book a predictable stream of a level patients and procedures by building a consultative journey. So finely tuned, that once on the path, patients are irresistibly and permanently engaged. And that’s where we are now.
Frank Felker 08:41
I want to, and that’s a very powerful statement right there. And I want to come back to that in just a moment. But I think there’s something that was, I don’t know if I’d say glossed over but I want to make clear is that when you talk about how great doctors are at being concentrated, you mean in person within the practice in the room, where you personally meet with the doctor. And your process, as I know, as you mentioned, because I was part of that process is to draw that wonderful bedside manner, if you will, and intelligence and expertise and experience from the doctor and then make it available to anyone who wants to tap into it through the podcasts and other digital formats. Set the correct sort of restatement.
Conrad Bosmans 09:29
Yeah. You circled because we need to, we need to circle that highlight, do whatever we can. This is a major focal point. One of the other discoveries I made was the key to the success of every plastic surgery practice is their consultation, because the physicians ask the patients what their needs are. They diagnose their situation, and then they prescribe their ideal path to achieving their desired results. And it’s Very, very effective, because while they’re doing that, they do not need to declare their expertise, or by saying, Hey, I graduated from this college, I’ve got all of these accreditations. They demonstrate their expertise by virtue of the questions they asked, and how they got that patient journey. And so it’s very effective in showing how much they care about the patient, and also demonstrating their expertise and authority in the subject matter, conversely, their digital presences are the exact opposite of that. And it creates a genuine, because the typical, the typical digital presence is you get to their homepage, and they don’t begin a consultation instead, everywhere. that confuses people. And when confused, you lose patience, leads, prophets. And so what we want to do is, to your original point, is we strive to create a digital presence that’s every bit as consultative, charismatic and helpful as you are. Oh, that’s great.
Frank Felker 11:11
That’s very well put like that. Now, you talk about the leaks, the the losing leads, losing patients losing profits, and how, for example, at the homepage, somebody goes there, and they’re not quite sure, what’s my next step, where do I go, there’s too many options and so forth. I don’t want to, you know, steal your thunder, or take what you’re about to say, but let’s start with that. Where do they lose leads?
Conrad Bosmans 11:42
Okay, so the leaks, if you will fall under three categories, packaging, promotion, and delivery. So from a from a packaging standpoint, I’m talking about how you package and present your expertise. And the two biggest problems I see. Virtually every plastic surgery practice makes, is number one, not addressing the most pressing pain points or needs of their audience above the fold on their website. So that’s in the top section there. What you see instead is information that is very practice centric, meet the doctor, here’s all his accreditations. Here’s our staff. The fact is, the people that come to your website have a pain point, they’re there, because they have a pressing need. And they don’t really care about your practice, yet. They want their pain point addressed. And unless you address it, you risk losing them forever. So because they’re going to have to take extra steps and the more decisions they have to make, the more chance that they’re going to abandon your site. So that’s the first problem. Okay, once again, practice centric, first impressions. The second problem is the clutter and confusion that I mentioned before that map to everywhere, that’s got multiple links. It’s an encyclopedia, fire hose, whatever analogy you want to want to use of information. And once again, that clutter and confusion is ultimately noise, it creates confusion, and they have to make quick Make way too many decisions. And once again, people who were confused abandon your site, and you lose them forever.
So there’s a number of other packaging leaks that I, you know, I get into when we do our assessment for physicians, but those are the two big ones. Now, from a promotion standpoint, one of the biggest mistakes practices make is they acted right off the bat. So they get Okay, we need to do Facebook ads, we need to we need to obviously have a highly ranked content on Google. And the fact is that until they fix these leaks, they’re just throwing money away, because the vast majority of them are going to fall through the cracks. So the first thing is that they’re focusing on all these promotional tactics without while they still have all these holes in their overall patient journey.
So that’s the number one problem. The number two problem is that they’re overlooking their biggest goldmine, i.e. their email lists, their email list are with people who already know like, and trust them. And so it’s going to reduce the amount of time and energy to get new patients dramatically. But unfortunately, most of the email lists are, there’s a certain level of indifference felt by the people on your email list because instead of getting Personal guidance with they’re getting their email blasts about your latest offer. And this makes people think, you know, and once again, they’re going to leave you for your competition down the street.
So the single biggest opportunity from a promotion standpoint is to build better relationships with your existing email list. And another point to that is that when it comes to the decisions on your website, every single plastic surgery has the schedule a consultation now, that’s their call to action, and it’s all over every webpage that they’ve got. And that’s great for the 10 to 20% of people who are in the act now mode, that’s fine, you’re going to cap those people. But the fact is, 80% of the people are in the Learn More category. And unless you have a call to action that caters to them and engages the relationship, you’re going to lose them forever.
Frank Felker 16:10
And so what is your call to action for the cosmetic surgery? The target says 80%. What does that look like?
Conrad Bosmans 16:19
Well, we created what I call a consultative doorway. So for once again, for the 10 to 20% of people who are in the act now mode, schedule a consultation, that’s great, you’re going to capture them. And you
Frank Felker 16:31
definitely want to keep that they’re 100%,
Conrad Bosmans 16:35
you want to capture the whole 100% of your target audience to capture the 80% we’ve created a consultative doorway and in the form of a personal aesthetic roadmap. It says, hey, how can we help you. And we utilized artificial intelligence to begin the consultation process. So instead of having to snap to everywhere, we didn’t directly on their needs. And they may say, Well, I’d like to narrow my waistline, or I would like to reduce unwanted fat or reclaim my ideal body shape. In that case, they’re directed to a landing page that explicitly addresses that particular pain point. So we’re personalizing the journey, right from the get-go. And then we give them an offer to Would you like a, your personal asset roadmap that will guide you step by step down your ideal path to achieving your desired result? And that’s the lead bank that that I mentioned before that we got hundreds and hundreds of people opting in raising their hands and saying, Yes, please, I want your expert guidance, Dr. blank. And so that’s the critical element to succeeding today. personalization. And what we’ve done is we’ve harnessed artificial intelligence that enables it means that part of the process so the physicians and their teams can focus on the patients who walk through their doors every day.
Frank Felker 18:14
And you know, everything I understand everything you’re saying, one thing I’d like to reiterate is that here’s an area where there’s a similarity between cosmetic surgery practices and every other business in the world, which is, it’s a natural inclination of the business owner, to make the website about the business. This is who we are, this is what we do. These are the awards, we’ve won, etc. But what it needs to be about is the client, the patient, the customer, here’s, you know, you have this pain point. Oh, now you have my attention. We have a solution. Oh, really? Would you like to learn more? Yes, I would. And once you implement that approach, and that strategy, if you will, the when the person registers, they do a number of things, as you said, they raise their hand and say, I’m interested, or I have that problem.
The next thing they do is they give you their contact information in order to access the educational resources you’re offering. The third thing they do is that they implicitly or explicitly give you permission to continue to communicate with them until they opt out or buy or what have you. And, and so that’s what makes that education-based process so powerful. And I’ll just wrap up by reiterating this same problem almost every business has, they don’t understand that. They think of their business inside their own box of consciousness, instead of from the perspective of the client, who is not really interested in your business or how you do it or anything. They just want to know, can you solve my problem? And if that little mind shift can happen for a business owner, it’s extremely powerful.
Conrad Bosmans 19:55
Yeah, and you know, what you’re talking about here is, I think two critical paradigm shifts. The first thing is, is that the vast majority of business owners think, or businesses think of digital marketing or marketing in general in the form of tactics, because that’s most of the sales are initiated because somebody has a product that has a tactic. So hey, we do web design, hey, we do Google AdWords, in fact, is the paradigm should be on the customer, or in this case, the patient journey. It’s all about the patient journey, not the tactics. So that’s the first paradigm shift there. The second paradigm shift in the case of physicians, is that the I guess it’s a litmus test. And that is, is this exactly like my consultations? So whatever we’re doing here, whatever this touch point is, is it working? Is it acting exactly like our typical consultation? And if the answer is no, I can assure you, you’ve probably got some holes in your patient journey, and it’s working against you like that.
Frank Felker 21:11
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. So what you’re saying is, if the digital touch point, the video, the webpage, the PDF, the whatever, if it’s not in alignment, or working the way or as well as your consultation, you might as well toss it out and start over again.
Conrad Bosmans 21:29
Yeah, exactly. Like you say, it’s just a simple test, patient journey, so patient for customer focused, and then, you know, are you being consultative, i.e., how can I help so replacing that the map everywhere? I alluded to earlier with a How can I help guidance approach. So far, we’ve got we’ve got the packaging links of not having practice centric versus patient centric. First impression, you’ve got the the confusion in the clutter, that are turning people off. So those are your packaging leaks, from a promotion standpoint, overlooking or ignoring the 80% of people who are in the Learn More crowd, I cannot stress that enough. Because most businesses, and plastic surgeons in particular, are focused on new leads. And that’s great, and we want new leads. But those new leads, 80% of them are going to fall to waste, unless you plug these gaps at the back end of your funnel. So overlooking that 80% and not giving them that consultative doorway that will extend the relationship. That’s your biggest promotional issue. And then once you’ve plugged those leaks, then you can ladder up from there. So those are your promotional gaps. But the biggest gap by far is on the delivery side of things. And that’s where we talking about personalization and guiding those people down the path. And so I think the best example is something we touched on a moment ago, and that is your email list. The vast majority of email lists are just throwing out in personal blasts that scream we don’t care about. Because well think about somebody who wants a mommy makeover or doesn’t care at all about a no nose job. say there are some other irrelevant type of things. So when they’re seeking all these other things, they’re going to get about me, you knew that I was interested in this, but you keep sending me these things, and you’re just sending you offers. It’s huge turnoff, and is a massive, massive, actually that’s
Frank Felker 23:41
putting energy into driving people away.
Conrad Bosmans 23:44
Exactly, exactly. So that’s the first thing is in differences, the number one reason that patients abandon you for another practice, okay. Now, the second league is that most practices are under the false impression that their customer or patient relationship management system is going to help create a wonderful patient experience. But the fact is, either a, they may not have it or be if they have that system, they may not be there, it takes an enormous amount of time for their team to enter and retrieve that information. And once again, when you’re in a reactive environment, like a plastic surgery practice, there’s just no bandwidth for that. Okay, but even if they do, and once again, I’ve seen practices on both ends of the spectrum here, even if they enter and retrieve that information. The practice I saw that was the best of this. They were they were great. They were entering all efficient. I did a deep dive into what a bear patient’s journey from somebody who started the relationship I just asked him for pricing parameters for a particular procedure and what took them From there was the only thing I can describe it as friction. So there was a series of emails going back and forth. Yes, great. We can give you that pricing. Why don’t you schedule a consultation? Well, I don’t really want to do that. Okay, well, and they had five or six emails going back and forth. Meanwhile, I was able to see what that prospective patient was doing behaviorally on their website, and I saw that they spent hours and hours thumbing through all of these webpages trying to find this information. Well, I really wonder what the pricing was. And so that’s creating an enormous amount of friction. And the fact is, your team is never going to be able to enter or retrieve that information. So you know, your customer relationship management, your email, segmenting your email, you can never be able to do that. So
Frank Felker 25:52
I have a question because pricing, you know, price is always the number one stated objection, for a prospect choosing not to move forward. And price is always a very sensitive topic. Do you think that that practice was specifically avoiding having the pricing conversation, because they wanted to save that to later in the patient journey, where they could more readily overcome any objection?
Conrad Bosmans 26:17
It’s part of that. The other thing is that specifically with plastic surgery, pricing is very subjective. Everybody has different procedures and treatments associated with that. So there are parameters, but that does not mean that you cannot give people instant gratification who asked for pricing. I mean, you could create a cheat sheet that says, fine, here’s, here’s how pricing works, and send that. So you have immediate gratification. So there’s a lot of ways around that. But the fact is, you’re just going Yes, it’s very subjective. Here’s our cheat sheet that will give you a reasonable, so maybe like a range of prices. Right?
Frank Felker 26:50
Yeah. So okay. And another thing about that is you demonstrate to the patient, I heard you, people want to be heard. And when you can observe that that person spending hours, clearly, this was a critical piece of information for them, meet them where they are. So that’s great advice. I really like that Conrad. Right. Now, does that mean that your service even reaches into inside the practice as well?
Conrad Bosmans 27:23
Yeah, so just to sum up on delivery. So there’s three elements. Number one is the indifference. So you want to personalize the journey there. Number two is the data entry and retrieval. So you need to automate that. And then number three is frequently asked questions 90% of the questions that people ask our frequently asked questions, and our doctors and their teams answer those questions over and over again, which wastes a massive amount of time. So if you could have 90% of those answered before they walked into your doors, not only would it save you time, but it would also set the stage for an effective relationship with that patient. And so yeah, that’s, that’s a big deal. So how do we solve the delivery problem? So once again, what we’ve done is we’ve created a something we call your ideal patient funnel, and it harnesses artificial intelligence to segment your audience based on surveys that I alluded to before. So when they get on your site, they have a tasteful survey that just says, Hey, what are you struggling with? I, I’m a mom who wants to get her pre mommy body back, okay, boom in there. And they go immediately to a website that addresses that particular need, it speaks to them, it gives them a personal guidance. So we segment based on survey responses, and then we segment based on the behavior I alluded to before, which is most practices can see where the webpages that their visitors are visiting or the emails that so we’re able to segment that way, in once again, we’re able to tailor the emails to receive the landing pages they view and offers that they receive, specifically to their needs. And the best part about that is, is by segmenting this automated formula, it automates or leverages the Self-Service phase of today’s patient journey, because the picture is entering the information for you. So literally, all of the time that your team is taking, entering, retrieving data and nurturing that relationship. So it takes a massive amount of time for everybody in your practice while improve drastically improving your patient experience.
Frank Felker 29:50
That’s great. I remember when we were working together that one of the leaks and maybe this is something, you’re going to refer to what As that leads didn’t always get followed up with appointments didn’t always get confirmed. You know, people who appear to be a very strong and high value prospect ended up never coming in for their consultation. Do you have any services or solutions that address that? Well, that’s
Conrad Bosmans 30:21
exactly what the ideal patient funnel was built around. Once again, everything you just mentioned, whether it’s follow up, responding, nurturing, those are all proactive tasks or process, if you will. And once again, people just don’t have the bandwidth in a reactive environment to do those things. So recognizing that, we need to automate that whole process. And that’s exactly what we do. Once again, we harness the Self-Service phase and let the patient enter that information and retrieve that information. And that frees up your team to focus on the pressing needs of your existing patients, while still cultivating and nurturing awesome, long relationships with that learn more crowd. And that’s the biggest, that’s the single biggest gap, leak, it is and your ideal patient funnel, plugs that leak and and once again, increases your or improves your patient experience, while also improving your bottom line.
Frank Felker 31:30
That’s fantastic stuff. And obviously, again, that can apply to virtually any type of business. Provided that we’re willing to put in the time and effort to set something like that up for our business. Clearly, you provide that service for this article.
Conrad Bosmans 31:47
And I can tell you, personalization is the future. And nobody in the plastic surgery side of this is doing this. And so having your ideal patient that personalizes this on an automated basis will give you an instant advantage that will help you attract, engage, and convert more patients and turn them into repeat patience, while saving your team a massive amount of time, money and headaches.
Frank Felker 32:14
That’s great. So it’s a great competitive advantage externally. And something’s going to make your staff happier internally. So what’s not to like about that? I mean, we’re just about out of time, Conrad, but I wanted to ask you, somebody who’s been listening, somebody has been watching, and they want to learn more about what you do, what’s the best way for them to connect with you.
Conrad Bosmans 32:36
They can click the link below this episode and schedule a strategy call. And at that, during that call, we’ll identify your practices, biggest leaks of leads, patients, and profits. And we’ll outline your step-by-step blueprint for guiding the patient journey in a personalized way that makes you better known, liked and trusted than your competitors.
Frank Felker 33:04
It’s great. Now, we talked about a lot of stuff. As I say we’re a little short on time. But is there anything in question I haven’t asked you or thought that’s come to mind that you’d like to share before we go?
Conrad Bosmans 33:14
No, I think we we’ve touched on most of the critical elements.
Frank Felker 33:19
That’s great. Well, Conrad Bosmans, thank you so much for joining me today on Radio Free Enterprise.
Conrad Bosmans 33:25
Thanks, Frank. It’s been wonderful.
Frank Felker 33:28
Thanks again to Conrad. And thank you for joining us. Until next time, I’m Frank Felker saying I’ll see you on the radio.
Dude Walker 33:36
He’s the kind of guy who finds microeconomics fascinating. But go ahead and listen anyway. Radio Free Enterprise with Frank Felker.
