How to Stay Booked When Competitors Undercut Your Pricing

Erica Crawford

Okay, I’m actually going to go ahead and get started now that you’re here and chatting. So first off, the largest part of this webinar is going to be the Q&A.

So what that means is that as we’re speaking, I want you to think of the questions you have, and I want you to put them into the chat or put them into the Q&A, and we will answer them as we go along. They could be really specific.

This is the best time for you to get as much advice as you need into any problem that you’re running into the practice, and we will do our very best to answer it. But that is arguably my favorite part of a webinar. And while it will be towards the end, it will be half of what we take up here as long as there’s enough questions to do so.

So I am Erica. I’m the president of Influx Marketing. We are a medical marketing company focused on aesthetics, plastic surgeons, med spa, wellness, and some other cash pay, so dentists and things like that as well.

But we have about 500 clients. That’s who I am. And this is Robin Dimond.

She is the CEO and founder of Fifth & Cor, an absolutely amazing agency that focuses a lot on traditional public relations, social media, and other forms of marketing as well. Robin, am I missing anything there?

Robin Dimond

No. Content. That’s really it.

Erica Crawford

The content creation, right? Exactly. So we have some overlap, but not a lot because she does a lot of PR and marketing companies don’t do PR, right?

So it’s a little bit of a different subject. So what we’re here to talk about is pricing really, and how to not have to compete with people who are undercutting you. And a lot of you know this, but in this post-pandemic era, which I understand is fairly long, but over the last six years or so, a lot of people have entered into this space.

A lot of money has entered into the space as well. We have private equity groups. We have large multi-location practices.

Many of which, Influx has as well, but it does add a lot of money into the space. And sometimes, they can make you feel like it’s really hard to compete. Sometimes it makes you feel like, okay, they’re super cheap, and that’s making it a problem.

Do I reduce my prices? Do I compete with their prices? How do I raise my prices?

And this is something I want to talk about because our clients are all on, I would say, the upper mid to the upper price range, meaning we don’t really have any practice that’s on the lower end of pricing. So we could talk a lot of that. I would say the vast majority of our clients are actually some of the most expensive practices in their cities.

So I want to talk about how we help them get there and what that required. So let’s get into it. I’m going to share some slides.

This will be about 15 minutes. Then I’m going to be sort of interviewing Robin and asking some different questions about PR and things that you could do at home, and then we’re going to get into the Q&A. So let’s go ahead and get going.

Okay, can you see my slides all right? Perfect. Okay.

So how to stay booked when competitors undercut your pricing. So I already did introductions. So first, let’s talk about the problem with competing on price.

First off, it creates a race to the bottom, but also arguably one of the most important things is it attracts a price shopper. Price shoppers are not loyal patients. They really, really aren’t.

They’re not a patient you want. So, you might go, “Oh, well, I discounted and I got that patient,” but that patient might not ever come back to you. Typically speaking, price shoppers are always onto the next Groupon or to the cheapest rate, and they won’t come to you for another service afterwards.

It also undermines your brand value, and of course, it lowers your profit margin. So this is some of the main reasons why you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to have this billboard, right?

Just an example of Botox being cheap. That’s just not what we want here. So let’s talk about why patients actually choose you.

So there’s always going to be a portion of price shoppers. My argument here is not about getting those price shoppers. It’s that you don’t want those price shoppers.

Those price shoppers are a small percentage of the market. They are not the majority of the market. I would argue that the people who are really aggressively price shopping in the aesthetic space is maybe 10% to 20% at the most, and that the majority of patients care a lot more about these things than they do about the price.

They care about the trust and provider expertise. They care about the emotional connection. This is really important because there is something I would just call a vibe check, meaning they’re seeing if the practice or if the doctor, provider, or injector matches their vibe.

And sometimes that matters more than expertise. Meaning I’ve sent a friend-- I’ll give an example. They were looking at different tummy tucks and looking at different tummy tuck surgeons, right?

And the tummy tuck she chose and the surgeon she chose, all of the surgeons were really good, but at the end of the day, I said, “Why did you choose him?” She’s like, “He was warm. I felt comfortable. I felt reassured.” At the end of day, she didn’t mention anything about his work.

Not really. It was all about her comfort level with the doctor. And I find that’s pretty common.

Of course, the work has to be good, but when it comes to that final decision, when they’re looking at, let’s say, two practices and they’re both in the patient’s eye equally as good, the final decision comes down to how they feel about you.

And there is a way to put that out, and we’re going to talk about that, and Robin’s going to cover some of that too. But a lot of that is in public relations, social media, and things like that. So social proof and reputation matters, word of mouth, Google reviews, things like that.

But most importantly, brand consistency, meaning you kind of look and act the same way everywhere. Your content has a certain voice to it. You look a certain way.

They could see that at every touchpoint, your website, your social media, the way your ads are written, any public relations about you. They kind of get a feel for who you are. So here’s an example.

These are just all our clients here. So they all have very specific vibes, and you could see it. You could get an idea of who they are by looking at it.

So first off, pricing is perception. High prices actually signify that something is high quality. It is.

Cheap is a little bit risky in aesthetics. So when something costs a bit more, it actually can be a very positive thing. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have been offered something that seemed a little bit too cheap.

It didn’t quite make sense to me, and it actually is something that makes me go like, “Oh, is that real? Is that the actual bag I’m trying to buy? Is that good quality?” Right?

So if you have something that’s too inexpensive, you actually might lose a patient by them going like, “Oh, why are they so much cheaper? There has to be a reason for that.” So it’s just not worth it. High prices, it signifies high quality.

It just does. So here’s just an example of just really solid social media here, which we could talk all about Robin. Right?

Her team did. But this is from her team, right? Just really showing a certain vibe, but it also shows a certain elevation because it’s not a cheap practice, right?

There’s just different examples. These are all different clients with different social posts. So first off, you have to earn premium pricing.

This one’s particularly interesting because this is a client doing Botox at $18 per unit. Now, what’s interesting about $18 per unit is, yes, it’s on the higher side, but he’s in Miami. And Miami, notoriously, is inexpensive.

If this was LA, $18 a unit, be like, “Yeah. Okay. It’s medium-high.” Or maybe medium, even for LA, right?

But for Miami, this is definitely on the higher end of pricing. He’s super transparent about it, has it on their website, which I actually like. That could be a whole another conversation, but I do like ranges on your website or starting at X price on your website.

But it works. He’s completely booked out, completely busy practice, and he’s positioned in a way where he can charge that amount for non-surgical, right? So this is the client.

Here you go. Miami Skin and Vein. Definitely, it’s all through his website.

It’s a very nice website. His whole thing, which obviously is going to be different, his whole brand is that it’s MD led, right? Which is going to be different in every practice what that brand is.

So what do you have to do first if you want to have a practice with higher pricing? First thing is a brand. You have to have a real brand.

Now, a lot of people hear the word brand, and they think that it means fonts and colors. Yes, fonts and colors have something to do with your brand, but it is arguably the smallest amount of a branding process.

A branding process is who you are, meaning it is your voice, what adjectives you use, what type of language that you use, what your practice looks like, what type of scrubs your staff wears, or what sort of outfits are they in. Your brand is everything about how you can be perceived.

And if you haven’t done an actual brand, like a real brand identity guide, you have to go through that process with a branding agency, meaning a really deep dive to find out this is who you are, here are the rules about your branding, these are the exact type of images that can be used, these are the exact type of patients you’re trying to target.

You should know your brand really, really well. And if you go at any point that you are uncertain about what your brand is, you should hire a branding agency, and you should figure out what that brand is.

Because anybody with good pricing has their branding 100% figured out to the point of it’s thought through every paragraph that’s written, with every image that’s selected, with every post that’s done. It is something that is meticulously thought through anybody who is touching any form of their presence.

So if you’re not there yet where you have that level of certainty on what your brand is, it is something you need to go take a step back with and work with a brand agency. And if your concern is, “Look, I don’t know what my brand is,” that is the job of a branding agency.

They ask you a bunch of questions all over the place in order to try to help you find that answer. So they will help you discover what that is. So you need an excellent website.

This is really important. Websites, if anything, have gotten more important over the years. I’m going to be doing another talk on AI in a couple of weeks.

But AI needs something to crawl, meaning a website to crawl. SEO needs a website. Your website is something that people land on eventually.

Even if they find you on social media, or if they find you from a referral, or they find you from a paid ad, all roads still lead to the website, meaning at some point they’re going to look at your website. So it needs to really represent that brand.

It has to be really, really good and ideally has real photos on it, and provider photos, and lots of imagery that really reflects who your practice is. Just some different examples. Okay.

Social media and PR, and I’m going to keep this really quick because we’re going to get into some of this with Robin a little bit later.

But I want to see a lot of good Google reviews, a lot of before-and-after photos on Instagram, your website, patient video testimonials, and you need a lot of more traditional PR, which we are going to talk about in a little bit. This is what I mean by PR, by the way. PR, sometimes everybody thinks Vogue and GQ, and that’s great.

If we could all do Vogue and GQ, fantastic. But PR can be local PR. I’ve seen people make it really, really big in some of the local articles, and it credentials them as well.

I saw somebody who put a gynecomastia sort of article. It wasn’t paid. It’s PR, right?

So they’re just talking about being an expert in gynecomastia. And they put it in their city’s local golf magazine. They got a bunch of traffic from it, and it’s really helped position them as a leader in gynecomastia.

So there’s a lot of different ways to do PR, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But most PR is a bit pay-to-play, and we will discuss that more.

But pretty much if you’re thinking of different people who are like, “Oh my gosh,” all the people who charge a lot and you see them all over social, I promise you almost all of them have PR companies and are utilizing PR to help with their pricing and their public perception.

And also like-When you do get a little bit more famous or bigger or well-known, sometimes there’s negative things that come out, and a PR company, frankly, helps bury them. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that is all part of the process. So I would say it’s an important thing to factor in.

Just a couple examples. Okay. So questions, when and how to raise your prices.

This is just my own experience. When you’re booked at about 80% is typically speaking when you raise your prices. You start with new patients to test response, meaning you might keep it with your existing patients, your pricing for a month or two.

And then I typically, though, with new patients, would go ahead and start with raising their pricing right away and see how it goes. If with the new patients, the conversion stays strong, meaning your patient care coordinator, whoever does your sales, is still booking the same amount of leads or very similar amount of leads.

Let’s say they booked five consults a day, and now your prices are a bit higher, and they’re booking maybe four to five consults a day. That’s solid. Then you know it’s okay.

You’ve made it. Now, if they then go from booking five consults a day to booking two consults a day, and let’s say some of these start falling off, and then your consults-to-booking percentage, let’s say you went from 70%, meaning 70% of your paid consults who visited your practice used to book a surgery, and then that number went down to 50%.

Okay, maybe we moved your prices higher too much. But if those numbers relatively stay the same and they only decrease a little bit, then you knowing that you’re doing the right thing. So after you test it with new patients for a couple of months, you then can start raising it for existing patients.

I do like to give a lot of ahead of time notice to existing patients, at least four to six weeks. I typically like to have some added value. There’s a reason you’re raising your prices.

It’s not just because cost of living. Right? It’s because you just came back from a conference and you did extra cavern labs, and you have refined your technique, and you have learned even more specialties on becoming an injector, or you’ve added these incredible stuff.

Something which you could figure out. There’s a way to kind of word everything. But something that goes, whether it’s more devices, whether it’s more training.

Maybe it’s now every time you give a surgery, you have a free hyperbaric chamber. Whatever it is, tie it into some sort of value. By the way, when we get to the slides, I’m going to answer all questions towards the end when Robin and I are doing the Q&A, just so everybody keeps that in mind.

Once again, and we could ask questions about this, I like sharing pricing. I like to be upfront about it every time. I like this.

It could either be a range or it could be a starting at. Starting at 50 grand or starting at $12 a unit or whatever it is. So you can peek.

People are like, “What about paid ads? How can I do paid ads and not have a discount? Or do paid ads and how do I deal with these guys who are also running paid ads who are super cheap?” Because we run a lot of paid ads here at Influx, a lot of paid ads.

And we typically don’t have a lot of discounts on our paid ads. It kind of depends on the practice. But you can run paid ads on a premium practice, which is something that people always get.

So premium doesn’t mean inflexible. You typically will do value-based offers, which will attract quality patients. You’re going to use rewards, bonuses, and bundles, but you’re not going to just be throwing out discounts, which I’m going to explain.

Here’s an example of a value add offer. Free HydraFacial after three RF microneedling sessions. That adds value.

It’s not a discount. You’re not attracting a discount shopper. You are giving them something.

It also encourages packaging, package bookings, which is really good. And it also enhances results, which gives better satisfaction. So you could look at how to do that in your practice, but there’s a lot of ways to do that.

For example, on surgeries, for example. I love it when my clients do this, but if somebody’s doing plastic surgery, they’re going to need some help with their scars afterwards. Right?

So I’m like, offer them a free CO2 laser. There’s generally not consumables. It’s super inexpensive.

It’s just your time. And then also it gets them to keep coming back in, and you’ll probably have a better chance of getting your after photos. Right?

You want them to come in post-op to get your before and after photos, right? Get them completed. Well, cool.

Why don’t you offer them a few sessions of CO2 along with every surgery that you’re doing? That’s value. Right?

And those are the things that really help somebody to make a decision. And that’s where they go, “Okay, this guy might be offering me a discount, but this person is giving me more value, which means my surgery is going to go better, or my non-surgical is going to go better.” Whatever it is in your practice.

Here’s just an example of different things we’ve done. Right? Memberships.

Do sculpture, get one IPL. Free LED facial with any chemical peel. Example of summer typically is a time when it’s slightly harder to book plastic surgery, which I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with, those of you with surgical practices.

But so we’ve often summer surgery specials. Right? Where it’s more like the aftercare kit.

Right? $1,100 in added value for apparel and compression garments and scar serums and whatever that is. Maybe it’s hyperbaric chambers, too, and all the things to help them heal and do better. So once again, it’s the framing, bonus, complimentary.

That’s the way to go about it versus discount. The design has to match your premium brand, and you don’t really want Groupon or not great graphics. We’ll bring into more of this later.

More photos. So we’re going to talk more about this in a little bit, but there’s a lot of educational TikTok real stories that you could do, email campaigns, retargeting ads, and sort of a lot of provider-led content so that you’re being more educational versus salesy, which helps.

And also, by the way, I’m definitely not against a new client special. I’m always about trying to get that patient in the door, as if for non-surgical, obviously. But just to kind of get them in the door is okay.So, and once again, here’s some ads.

You focus on experience. It’s just some images of ads that work really well. So you’re not being super discounty.

You’re just focusing on experience, credentials, right? You’re using real testimonials. You’re not using generic stock photos.

You’re using actual photos of either yourself as a provider or of your staff, right? So this is an example of a type of ad that performs really well, right? Another type of ad that performs really well, no discounts, it’s just credentials.

So, in summary, right, you can earn premium pricing with branding, trust, and proof. Visibility, reviews, and authority must come first. And value offers outperform discount.

So, you don’t want just more patients, you want better ones. So that is everything on my slides. And like I said, we are going to get into the chat.

Now is a good time for you to ask any questions in the chat, or you could do it in the Q&A. Both of them work completely fine. But before we get into that, I kind of want to turn over to Robin, sort of hear your thoughts and there’s so many different things we’ve discussed.

But I’ll let you start first, and then I’m going to ask you some questions since we have your expertise here.

Robin Dimond

Perfect. So I love what you were saying about adding value, and that’s really important. There’s a reason why every high-end luxury brand can charge more is because maybe it’s still the same leather that’s being used, but it’s actually in better hands.

It’s more quality, it’s craftsman. So think of yourself as a craftsman. I love hearing you say that, Erica.

And then go out there. You do not want-- We all know that an inexpensive or cheap patient is a cheap client, and they cause more problems. Right.

They’re going to nickel and dime you over 20 units that are being used over 25, and your time in that room is extremely valuable. So are your providers underneath of you. So bringing in the right people who are going to stay a long time, showing that you’re going to build a roadmap.

So I always say with my provider, I’m like, “So my roadmap this year, these are the things I want to get done.” She’s like, “Oh my gosh. Okay, great.” It’s a roadmap so I know what my journey is. I’m not nickel-and-diming each of the procedures.

I’m going, “This is what my results are going to be, and this is how we’re going to get this.” And so that’s really important, and I love that you said that. And then PR, your reputation’s everything. From a girly here who didn’t believe in it as much as I did.

Over the past, I would say six years, it is really important. That one Vogue article can cost you a lot of money. But getting in 97 local articles where your magazines, your local ones are actually pulling you up will help you rank.

Not only is it getting you better backlinks, but they’re covering your story. I think that’s really important. A lot of people need to focus on that.

So just to reiterate what you’re saying. And I think the last thing is follow with authenticity. I love that you said you paid for the-- Oh, you just did a Cadaver course.

Share your education with that person because I’m going to rather go to you. I live in what she called the Backyard Botox area, which is Miami. If it’s cheap, I’m nervous.

I’m nervous if it’s a real product. I’m nervous if it’s a real neurotoxin. Those are kind of the areas here.

So I want to go with a provider who shows the value and actually tells what their education is, too.

Erica Crawford

I love it. Okay. And I have more questions for you, Robin.

We’re going to sprinkle in some of the questions from you all. So here’s one. When a new lead calls, and the first question is, “How much is Botox?” What is the worst thing a front desk can say?

And what is the move that actually books the consult? So I could answer my opinion and you-

Robin Dimond

Love that

Erica Crawford

... Robin can answer hers. Okay, but I’m going to be very honest.

It’s going to be very opinionated, meaning you’re going to hear probably a slightly different response from me and Robin. I guess we’re about to find out.

But also depending on who you’re consulting, you might have a different response from Terri Ross or any of the other consultants out there who obviously do more on the sales training side of things. But here’s the truth. I don’t like to dodge people’s questions too much, because then they will get off the phone with you.

I generally try to get somebody to talk. Meaning the more that they can talk about themselves and what they want and what they’re interested in, the better. So asking them questions and doing the no answer, meaning you’re not really answering the question right away.

Be like, “Oh, well, were you interested in getting Botox?” “Okay, what parts? Okay, what are you wanting into?

Oh, how old are you?” Just getting a person to talk and be like, “Hey.” And after a while, so they’ve told you about how they’re telling you their story about how they have the aging or maybe they lost weight or whatever is causing them to call your practice. If you just get them to talk, because the truth is you don’t know.

You don’t know how many syringes that they’re going to need. You don’t know what areas that they are going to need Botox in. You really don’t know until they’ve come into the practice.

So if you could get them to talk enough where they feel really comfortable, and then you could get them into the practice and discuss that, that’s for the best. Now, I’m not against telling them the pricing, like roughly, “Oh, it’s generally about $15 a unit” or whatever that is, is completely fine to say.

But if you can kind of put that there once you’ve already had them talking a little bit, that is really the way to do it, getting them to talk as much as possible. We’ve definitely found that, I’m not trying to get you all on long phone calls forever, but sometimes the longer conversations increase the amount of bookings. That’s all.

What do you think, Robin?

Robin Dimond

I think I want to use a family example here. And it wasn’t toxin that they needed. It was they needed filler and Sculptra.

So when she asked my mom, literally, she said, “Okay, so what’s your areas of concern?” And then all of a sudden, “Hey, we actually would like you to come in because it might be the concerns that you don’t actually need it in.” And it was all of a sudden this whole new one. She was focusing on doing toxin down here, which was not the issue.

And so when you communicate with people, tell them that. I don’t give just pricing over the phone. I don’t know what packages you need.

And we always say that one size doesn’t fit all. You might actually need less units because we’re going to put them in the right placement

Erica Crawford

Yep, absolutely. And then I think, like I said, we’ll answer more, but I want to answer some more questions in here, because there’s actually some really good ones. Yeah.

A lot of questions. So, what do you suggest for new practices starting in highly competitive markets in terms of price points? I will answer this one.

So, everything I’m talking about, raising your pricing and all of that, and PR and stuff, it’s not necessarily all day-one moves. Meaning, it does take a little bit of establishment, it does take having some testimonials and having some before and afters and... You know what I’m saying?

It does take a little bit of build-up. So a lot of my clients started, what I would say, in the mid-tier, and they moved themselves up on pricing as they built up their brand, as they built up their public relations, as they built in the social media.

So I generally suggest coming into a market, if you’re brand new and you don’t have anything, nobody knows who you are yet, at a middle tier. So I don’t want you to be low. I don’t want you to undercut.

You don’t need to do that. But you also can’t come in on higher pricing either, because you don’t have that brand established yet. So mid-tier.

How do you find your mid-tier pricing? You secret shop. You just call a few practices, you find out what their pricing is, and you go right in the middle.

And prices that you trust, right? You’ll see if something’s like a super, how’d you say, backyard Botox. I’m not trying to get you to compete with those.

I want you to go check mid-tier, like normal practices, and then come in right in the middle. And then these things are done over time. It takes time to do it.

There’s a client I’ve had, and he’s in pretty major metro. He’s a plastic surgeon. He’s been open for six years.

He just increased his pricing for the third time. But it took time to get there. And now he’s actually one of the higher-priced surgeons in the area, which is fantastic.

But he wasn’t year one or year two. I think he started really increasing his prices, I would say, more around between year two and three. So it just takes a little bit of time.

But doesn’t mean come in cheap. I never want you to come in cheap, because that will set your brand a certain way, too, and will make it harder to raise your prices later, because then you have a certain type of patient, and I don’t want that. Just saying start in the middle and work your way up.

What do you think, Robin? Any other tools- ... they could use to move up a little faster?

Robin Dimond

I think it’s how people get to know you, too. Yes. So it is getting those local ones.

So just like if you had a practice in Fort Lauderdale, getting in “La Solis Times.” Why? Because now everyone on La Solis knows you and your calendar is getting booked. So look at what your calendar is doing.

And then also at the level of provider, too. That’s another way. “Okay, great.

Well, actually, so if you want to go ahead and see Erica, she’s highly trained. It’s going to be a little bit more, and getting on her schedule.” So that you can start raising your prices by tiers of level of people. That also helps.

But you have to put it out there. Don’t go cheap first. You don’t want those patients anyways.

And our cost per acquisition, and Erica can talk about this in the paid media world, a cost per acquisition is going to be the cost. You don’t want them to be... It’s 53% turnover now.

We don’t want that. We want to get good people who are coming back to you multiple times, and who are referring business to you.

Erica Crawford

Yeah, absolutely. And I have a question, because Robin, you’re like the queen of public relations. We talked about this briefly on a podcast.

But I always tell people this and they’re a little surprised. But how much PR out there do you think is pay-to-play? Meaning people are paying Forbes, paying GQ, paying Vogue.

Robin Dimond

You are. That’s why I said it’s super expensive. When people come to me and they’re like, “I want to be in Forbes,” I’m like, “Me too.

If you’ve got some money, let’s do it.” It is very, very expensive. And so when you look at your PR budget, it’s diversifying. You’re asking me to go straight to a Birkin?

Okay. We can, absolutely, but you better be able to pony up. And what you’re seeing other people are.

Now, when it doesn’t become pay-to-play, and I can actually use us as an example, is once people start seeing you and journalists start seeing you in that, they will start offering. We got picked up personally, four times this week for snippets because journalists knew they could get quick stories, and we already have a name and a reputation.

So that also happens. But you’re still paying the person to write this stuff, to spend the time. So it is a pay-to-play market, and you need to know that, and it is worth the investment in it.

And you can leverage that for your website. So your blog’s going to help you. It’s going to help your SEO.

You’re going to be able to use that pickup in your paid media ads, featured in these articles. You send it over to Erica and her team at Influx. You can get it in your social posts.

So your organic social team should be posting, “Just featured in ‘Miami Living.’” That’s really important.

Erica Crawford

And that’s why the local is so important, because you could pay a lot less compared to some of the big... And I’d argue it’s almost a little better in some cases if that’s your market, because it’s your local market.

Also, keep in mind that when we’re talking about PR, and the ROI in PR, unfortunately, it’s really hard to measure because you’re not necessarily going to get any patient to go, “Hey, I read about you in your local ‘Wine and Country,’ and that is why I’m coming here to your practice.” That’s very unlikely to happen.

It’s more about credentialing you. Yeah. So it’s showing your value.

It’s showing, “Oh, wow, look at this.” Somebody’s researching you and they’re going, “Oh, wow, he’s in all these articles.” Also, in the age of AI, like I said, I’m doing another webinar in two weeks that talks about AI a lot and how to show up in AI search.

But AI pulls very heavy from what we call third-party mentions, which is basically PR, is one of those things where if you’re mentioned a lot in PR articles, you’re more likely to come up in ChatGPT and these things as well.

So PR has a lot of value, it’s just not so direct, meaning it’s also not something you’re necessarily going to do day one, budget-wise. Just for full transparency, your first year your practice is open, you might be doing very heavy ads, some heavy... You know what I mean?

Some SEO, getting your website. And you might be hiring a PR company a couple years into your practice. It’s not necessarily something you’re going to spend money on immediately.

It’s something that, okay, you’ve gotten profitable. You’re at this mid-tier. Now you are ready to go to the next level.

You’re ready to grow to the next level. That is the point. Right now you’re trying to raise your prices.

Now you’re bringing the PR company. Now you’re doing heavier socials and things like that. It’s at that part of your practice’s career.

So yeah. So here is another. We’re going to keep going.

We have all these questions to get through, and if you have more, please keep putting them in. Let’s see. “When you offer a new patient special, do you still run the risk of attracting price shoppers who are just scheduling to get the deal?” Yes and no.

The truth is, I don’t want your new patient schedule to be overly aggressive. Meaning, I’m not trying to get you down to $8 unit Botox. You have a new patient special that offers them something that’s nice, but at the end of the day, your pricing is still high.

It’s a special off of your pricing, which is still-- You know what I mean? It’s still not super cheap. So that’s how you’re doing it.

Giving somebody $150 off when they’re doing a full session of Botox at $15 a unit. You know what I’m saying? It’s not too crazy.

Especially if you have really good providers who could help retain them. You will find that sometimes new patient specials are not the exact same as price shoppers. You might get some, but overall, the people even who are willing to pay money, kind of like a new patient special sometimes.

Okay. So let’s see. I love the next one.

“A lot of our patients are referred to us. What are some ideas- Oh, yeah ... about rewarding them?” That’s so important. So I love that you asked this question.

I take pride in sending the most people to my provider. We’re in the industry. We can get it anywhere we want.

Truthfully, we could go to a show and probably get an extra. I’m so loyal to my provider because she’s been loyal to me for the past seven years. But does she show up and do extra later hours for me?

Yes. There’s different ways of rewarding patients. Am I part of the VIP?

Absolutely. Does that mean I get the first invites when a new product comes out? You don’t have to reward them as that.

You just make them feel special, like they’re exclusive in those areas. And you can do that by, you launch a new product. “Hey, we just want to let you know about this new product.

We want you to be the first to test it out.” Or you send something home with them. “Hey,” I love the HydraFacial. “If you get three CO2s, you get this extra HydraFacial because you’re our VIP.” Start rewarding them that way so that they keep coming back.

The whole point is for us to spend more time. I probably see mine every eight weeks or six weeks. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but I do because I’m like, “Oh, wait, I need this,” or, “Now my hand needs it.” I just did IPL to my hands.

I’m like, “Wait, I need more hands on my face, and that’s not good.” So it’s, “Hey, because you’ve come in, let me go ahead and do that,” or, “Hey, this is a new skincare sample. Let me send it home with you.” Offer and reward them that way. Yeah.

There is nothing more valuable than a referral. Rob and I can talk about marketing and PR and social till our skin turns blue. But at the end of the day, a referral is just gold because the closing ratio on a referral is so crazy high.

So I like to reward them a lot. A little free thing here, a little special treatment, a lot of extra care, whatever that is. Everything Robin said.

It’s so valuable. There’s also referral programs and stuff, and some of them are available in an app, like loyalty programs and stuff. You’re able to do that.

But you could also just take care-- You know what patients you have that send referrals, and you could just take extra care of them, like Robin said. Okay, next one says, “When a competitor opens nearby and runs aggressive discount ads, do you recommend countering with your own promo, doubling down on brand, or ignoring it?” I typically ignore them.

I don’t care. Yeah. I don’t care.

You could also do something slightly different. Meaning, let’s say somebody’s running crazy breast aug ads, and they’re spending, let’s say they’re spending 10 grand a month, and they’re driving up the cost per acquisition, right? Because Google Ad is a bidding system.

So they’re making it really hard. Then do a breast lift ad. Right?

Typically, right? It costs more. Yeah.

And it actually, those patients tend to pay more. And for example, I don’t love doing liposuction ads, for example. We do them sometimes, but we would way prefer to do a tummy tuck or mommy makeover ad because liposuction just will happen along with that.

And in some cities, we’ll do liposuction. I’m not totally against it as a standalone ad. It just happens to be typically one of those things that the cost is driven up by really inexpensive practices because you have dentists doing lipo now.

Lipos has gotten very wild of a subject, so it’s very crowded. So sometimes you just want to also adjust slightly so that you’re not necessarily going head-to-head on something. When you just change it, just ever so slightly becomes a different keyword, and you’ll get as much traffic, if not more, from it.

But yeah, otherwise, unless they’re doing that, spending so much money where they’re driving-- I just ignore them. It doesn’t matter. And we also just think about as a business owner, what are their profit margins like?

And the lack of loyalty. Those practices also don’t sell very easily. Meaning, that could be a whole another talk later on.

But we work with a lot of different PE companies in the space, and when somebody is looking to buy a practice, a practice that’s been formed on ads and ads only, and doesn’t have a lot of retention, is not very attractive to buyers.

And that could be, like I said, fully separate, but if you’re really trying to build something that lasts, it’s kind of like the tortoise and the hare. Sometimes a slow, steady ride doesn’t have to be too slow, but it does take a little buildup. But that wins the race in the long run.

Let’s see. Robin, do you want to take the next one?

Robin Dimond

Yeah. It says, “What is a great strategy for targeting and bringing in new patients of caliber?” That is where we love to say it is PR in a different way. So if you know the caliber of the person, again, Miami price shoppers, and we’re using that.

There’s LA, there’s Utah, there’s Atlanta. Let’s just say this. Go where your ideal client is.

Partner with a Pilates group and use their PR. Do something that releases something together. Go with, if you know there’s a moms group that’s going to be-- I love CEO groups.

I don’t know why no one keeps marketing to us, but look, we have Zoom face all day long. If you’re going to talk about a bleph to me, I’m going to listen to you and probably sign up right now because that’s the only thing I look at under here. Upper or lower, you don’t even have to give me as a facelift.

So really focusing on the caliber of people. I think people ignore LinkedIn as a social platform.And I’d like to sit there and say LinkedIn is one of the best social platforms if you’re bringing in the caliber of person or the money of person.

It’s great to be on Instagram, it’s great to get TikTok, but nobody needs any more 23-year-olds getting lip filler. We need people who actually need a mommy makeover. And show your expertise there, because that is a whole world of social media people keep leaving out, and the acquisition cost is so much cheaper when you head that way.

Erica Crawford

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next question here. “So what if pricing has healthy profit margins, yet middle-tier pricing is on the lower end?

Sometimes raising prices pushes patients in highly competitive markets with smaller populations to change their buying criteria.” Yeah, that’s true. I’m going to be honest here. If you were to go like, “Erica, what is a high price?” I will counter with, “What city are you in?” Yeah.

Because it varies. And sometimes there are certain cities where it doesn’t make any sense why the pricing average is so high there. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but they’re maybe not very big.

But because a few surgeons or a few practices have pushed that pricing very high, it has made it unusually high in that city, even if it has a smaller population. And that does exist, and I will just say that what the pricing is depends on what you and your competition set it to be, meaning you got 30 practices, right?

And there’s going to be probably 10 to 15 in the low end, 10 in the middle, maybe five in the high end. It depends on how that breaks up. But in the end of the day, that’s what the pricing is for your area.

The truth is that you don’t have to raise your pricing. If you have good pricing for the average US market, and you have a good profit margin, and you are happy with where you’re at, you don’t have to raise your prices. But when I find out that surgeons are losing cases and providers are losing cases, right?

I’ve talked to it, where providers are booked up for months for injectables, and surgeons are booked up for six months for surgeries. You lose patients. You start to get to a point where patients don’t want to wait that long.

They don’t want to wait six months to go into surgery, right? They probably are willing to wait three or four months, but there’s a point when it’s going to say a little bit like, “Okay, now it’s five, six months? Okay, that’s a long time to wait.” It’s probably longer than they’re planning for.

Same thing with injectables. A lot of people want to be gotten in within weeks, let alone months. They can’t wait that long.

So you start to lose patients at a certain point. And I’d rather have you, if you just increase your prices and make that booking window a little bit less, you’re going to end up making the same amount of money, if not more, because of that, if that makes any sense. Let’s see.

I think there’s one more in the Q&A. Here we go. “Do you feel pricing that’s on the website would deter someone who potentially could have value propositioned over the phone for the additional 5K they were not originally budgeting for?

That has been our concern with posting pricing. Or does it simply weed out the true price shoppers?” So I am a huge fan of pricing on the website. You are not wrong.

That is very possible. I will tell you why I like pricing on the website. It’s because there are a lot of people who are looking up pricing who are not price shoppers.

AI pulls from it, SEO pulls from it, people want to know, and it’s not because they’re trying to find cheaply your services. They just want to know what you charge, right? And it does weed out some of the people.

I do like ranges. I have seen ranges that are wild, right? I’ve had breast aug on a website that’s 5K to 20K.

Because we don’t know what type of breast aug, and maybe you’d be willing to go down for something really simple and easy. You know what I mean? It depends on their body type and all sorts of things, right?

Just depends on things. Are they getting Motiva? Are they not?

You know what I mean? It just depends, right? And you can keep that range really loose, to the point of like, “Yeah, typically my breast aug is never less than nine grand,” but I’m willing to put the minimum on the website of seven because I’m willing to have those discussions and explain to them why.

You can have it be loose, but I do suggest having something on your website to weed out the people looking for a four-grand breast aug. You know what I mean? Or an $8 unit of Botox.

It will save your time. It’ll save you staff time, which also is valuable because you are paying your staff. Okay, perfect.

So I have a couple questions for Robin. Okay, so here’s one of my questions for you. Let’s say we have people in the audience here who cannot afford to hire you quite yet, although they should.

But say they can’t afford to hire you quite yet.

Robin Dimond

What do you suggest? What can they do on their own for PR in the meantime? For PR, I think there’s a couple different strategies.

Okay. So if you are not ready right now, and that’s okay. That’s totally fine.

Coffee or cocktails, we can talk about it. So I do take those. But- ... really what you want to do is look locally.

What are the local magazines? What are those local ones? Do not say yes to everything, because a local magazine or a local article will maybe be a little bit expensive, trust me.

When you ask them for the price, you can also sit there and say, “Okay, great. We’d love to be featured. We’re moving in here.” The other one is co-op doing.

So what we call it is co-op marketing, and going in and asking for your device companies, “Hey, is there any PR opportunities? Is there a PR budget for me?” A lot of these devices that you’re buying do have a co-op budget.

Say, “I’d like to use it towards these things.” And then you’re saying, “I will also give your name a recognition during that,” because they’re going to rank higher. So you can leverage that. And the last is looking at other businesses that are like-minded.

So what I say for the providers who are doing filler or something like that, okay, great. Go with a hairstylist who does extensions. Do something together as a press release to talk about how it’s going to be a whole makeover.

You can announce things on a wire very easily, and you should at least make one announcement a year, maybe two. The one announcement is, “Our two-year anniversary,” “It’s our four-year anniversary,” “It’s our five-year.” That’s great. Or if you bring in somebody who you just paid a lot of money for.

So, “We brought in a new provider. We have a new medical director.” Those are PR announcements. The other one would be if you did any give backs.

And a give back could be you and your team walked for something. It doesn’t need to be a financial one. It can be, “We walked for veterans.

We walk for women with cancer.” Pull in those opportunities and look for those because those are great stories that lay out there all the time. They’re for free.

Erica Crawford

Amazing. So there are some free opportunities for PR, so places-

Robin Dimond

Yeah, there are free opportunities, and those go-- That’s where you start. And we don’t want to sit there and say, “Go all in.” Like Erica said, you’re not ready sometimes. And sometimes I’ll look at it, and we’ve had conversations where people come to us, I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You have a spinning wheel of death on your website. I need to push you towards Influx. Use your money that way first.” Or they’ll say, “I don’t know who our brand...” We’re like, “Okay.” We sit down to do brand tone and brand guidelines, and they’re like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Hold on, I have a friend.

You need to go there, come back to PR later because you need to know who you are. You need to be able to have a website that they can land on once we start sending that traffic.”

Erica Crawford

Yeah, absolutely. By the way, if you want to reach out to Robin and her team, I put the contact information there. If you want to reach out to Influx, I put the contact information there.

Just so that you have it, it’s in the chat, so you should all be able to see it. Now, we’re getting towards the end here. Robin, first off, anybody have any other questions?

If there’s anything I might have missed, now is the time to add it to the chat or add it to the Q&A. And while we do that, Robin, any other tips that you have for

Robin Dimond

somebody who is trying to raise their prices or have more premium branding? Yeah, I would say we did talk about it a little bit, but we didn’t go very much into it. It is if you have negative reviews.

We’ve got to clean those up, and we’ve got to shove down negative with positive, and that’s the only way. Or if you’ve ever-- There’s crazy people out there, so they could- ... put your practice out on blast. Everybody feels like they’re an influencer now.

There’s ways of cleaning it up, but before you go gangbusters on anything, please clean up those. Look at those. Look at those bad reviews.

That is part of PR. If the nurse is no longer there that you might have had, you can write back on that Google review, “Hey, no longer here. We’ve gotten an extra training for people.

Thank you so much for your feedback.” So there’s a lot of different ways of pushing that down, and it’s part of PR. And then podcasts are part of PR, too. If you don’t have one, start one.

Do what Erica and I did. Yes. Now.

Start it. You can do a webinar. That is PR, and that gets you out there because they are going to ask you, “Where have they been featured before?

Can you send their media kit over?” And I’m like, “They’ve never been on it.” So get your name out there now, even if it’s speaking at a local college. Those are all things that we actually need for it before you start doing PR. Absolutely.

Also, just to add to that, a question came in, the timing couldn’t have been better because it says, “Crisis PR in aesthetics. If a practice has a complication, a bad review goes viral, or a former employee posts something damaging, what is the first 24-hour playbook?” I think we both can answer that one. Robin, I’ll let you go first.

Yeah. Okay. An employee is different than a client or a patient.

Let me just say that. So if it is a patient where it is a medical issue or something has happened, we need to talk to your compliance doctor or your compliance lawyer right away, and that is going to be something. We’re also going to need to make sure it’s not medical malpractice, all of those things.

If it is an employee, address it right away. And that’s all I can say. If it is something that’s in a negative employee, I’ve had it myself.

Employees that leave reviews are not normally positive ones, okay? There is such a high turnover. People will see that, and you can actually request Google to take it down, or you can explain to them, or you can address it.

There is defamation. I say before you do any of these things, put those in practice before you hire any of us. Defamation from your employees is going to be one of them.

They should not go out there and do it. If you don’t know, Korea actually does really strict rules about this. You can actually hurt a practice, and I think we should start adopting some of those rules, and that is that they need to sign these things.

They need to make sure that they’re doing those. But if it is a crisis, there’s a couple other things. We need to make sure your medical malpractice lawyer is involved.

We need to make sure it might not be the time to spin up something positive. Erica and I actually have shared somebody who had this between the pr-- And we come out and we say, “Look, we’re going to come up with a healthy plan first, and then we’ll start attacking it in a positive way.”

Erica Crawford

Yeah. It’s everything Robin said. Sometimes it’s ignoring it, sometimes it’s flooding with positive- ... sometimes it’s being silent for a little bit if it’s legitimate and there is something to address.

But it depends on what the scenario is. As in, one of the biggest difference that makes a company like Robin’s or mine make a decision is what is it? Is it true, or is it not true?

I will say that does have a big factor in terms of how we address it, right? If it’s something not true, there’s a lot of things that you can do. Google’s actually-- I love Google.

Google’s Business profiles and the Google reviews because you can get bad reviews or fake reviews removed. Whereas in like, don’t get me started on Yelp. I hate Yelp, and there’s not a whole lot you can do with their fake reviews unless you pay them.

But Google, you definitely can. That is the platform that matters the most. And then you flood it.

We’ve seen it all the time. I’m not going to name a name, but there was this plastic surgeon. Two years ago, he got sued for $5 million.

As in, he paid $5 million. And it was for fake reviews. It’s really legal in the United States to get fake review, and there’s something called review gating, which basically means that you only let the five-star reviews get posted, and if somebody wants to give you a four-star review or below, takes it someplace else.

Anyway, so he got in big trouble for it, for fake reviews, and for review tactics and pressure and everything like that.

And if you went to go look at him online right now, you would not find this lawsuit unless you Googled, “Looking for the lawsuit.” And it’s just because he’s flooded his socials and flooded the internet with everything, and he managed to bury something that I personally consider like, that was pretty bad. If you read the lawsuit, it is very bad.

It is not just like, “Oh, a few fake reviews.” Selling for $5 million is nothing, and the state sued him. It wasn’t just some random person. So that, to me, is a very extreme example of something that really bad happened to a practice that you literally cannot see.

Which is slightly scary that we can do that in marketing and PR, but you can. So there is always a way. Any other questions?

Otherwise, that’s kind of it.

Robin Dimond

I think that’s everything. And if anybody doesn’t have any other questions, I think we’re just going to call it. Once again, our contact information is in everybody, and you can reach out to us if you have further questions or you want to inquire about services.

But thank you so much for attending.

Erica Crawford

We love doing webinars. We’ll be doing a lot more.

Robin Dimond

Thank you, guys. We really appreciate it. Thank you.