8 Marketing Strategies for Private Dermatology Practices

Get eight proven marketing ideas to successfully differentiate your private dermatology practice for your competitors and attract more patients.

Author: Jennifer Highland, Content Manager of Miiskin | Reviewed by: Slavica Nikolić, SEO Specialist of Miiskin

When you start your own dermatology private practice, you are responsible for developing a marketing plan for your dermatology clinic. One of the best ways to begin your dermatology marketing strategy and marketing plan is by creating a solid online presence for your clinic because, without it, you’re losing patients.

On the other hand, with a solid online presence, it will be easy for your potential clients to find your dermatology clinic’s website, professional profile, and social media pages. Patients will also be able to ask you questions about your practice through these channels.

online marketing for private dermatology practice tips

Besides, it’s a well-accepted fact that people tend to search online before deciding to book an appointment. Today’s patients want to find out everything about you and go through reviews from other patients on different platforms. So don’t miss this opportunity!

The list below gives you eight great digital dermatology marketing strategies and ideas for your private practice

Build a solid online presence for your clinic
Build the customer personas for your dermatology clinic
Understand the job-to-be-done for each persona
Develop your value proposition and unique selling points of your private practice
Hire an agency to do your digital marketing activities
Implement teledermatology in your clinic
Develop a referral and loyalty program for your dermatology clinic
Socialize with other dermatologists

1. Build a Solid Online Presence for Your Private Dermatology Clinic

Patients nowadays want to know they are dealing with a professional, reliable dermatology clinic—otherwise, they will go to another clinic.

Develop a user-friendly and mobile responsive website for your dermatology clinic
Create business listings
Build social media channels
Get customer reviews for your website
Start a blog if you are willing to do it right
Create content optimized for search engines

In our article 6 ways to attract more patients to your dermatology clinic, you can read more in-depth about these six ways of building a solid online presence.

2. Build the Customer Personas for Your Dermatology Private Practice

A customer or buyer persona is defined as a semi-fictional character representing critical traits of an important segment of your audience, based on the information you know and the data collected from user research and website analytics. It would be best to build your personas based on actual data, not intuition.

Click on the image to enlarge

private dermatology practice customer persona

Two ways to ensure this is by conducting qualitative (customer interviews or focus groups) and quantitative research (website analytics, online surveys.)

Customer personas help you better understand your patients’ needs and how to address them.

They also help you create alignment across the organization and prioritize the marketing campaigns and initiatives to invest time and resources.

Request a PowerPoint version of this free Customer Persona Template to create patient profiles for your dermatology practice.

Request Customizable Customer Persona Template

3. Understand the Job-To-Be-Done for Each of Your Personas

The jobs-to-be-done framework is essential for any digital marketing strategy. It aims to develop products or services based on understanding the specific “job” your patients “are hiring” your “service” to do for them¹.

For example, in the case of Sarah, the customer persona mentioned above, she is not going to your dermatology clinic to do skin checkups and get fillers or other cosmetic procedures.

Sarah is “hiring” your dermatology clinic to “keep her cancer-free and help her look her best, and advance in her career.”

In this case, your “dermatology service” may be competing against another clinic, a personal trainer, expensive skin care products, and spas.

You may think that a personal trainer is not your direct competitor; however, Sarah has limited money to spend on herself because she also needs to pay rent, bills, food, and entertainment.

Therefore, if Sarah decides to pay for a personal trainer this month, she may not have any more money to spend in your dermatology clinic. In this case, a personal trainer competes against your dermatology clinic for Sarah’s money.

This information is helpful because to do some advertising, you can do it in the same channels where spas, personal trainers, or skin care products also advertise.

You can also consider cross-promotion with local businesses such as fitness centers, spas, or a shop selling skin care products. Although you are all competing for Sarah’s money, she may choose to buy skincare for one month, pay a personal trainer for another month and do some cosmetic procedures during another month.

4. Draft a Value Proposition for Your Dermatology Practice

To complete this step, you must build at least three customer personas with their respective jobs-to-be-done.

After that, you can create a table with the customer pain points on one side and how you address these pain points on the other side.

Customer Pain Points	How does your clinic address these points
Works long hours	Virtual dermatology visits
She is scared about skin cancer and wants to stay healthy	Extended opening hours and open on weekends
She wants to look good, but she has very little time for herself	State-of-the-art medical and cosmetic equipment
Dermatology clinics have a long waiting time for new patients	Waiting lines are reduced due to the teledermatology service offering
She wants to socialize at the same time	A special discount applies for two or patients booking cosmetic procedures together
Cosmetic treatments are expensive	Loyalty Card with a point reward system for cosmetic treatments

Hopefully, after completing these templates, you are aware of who your ideal customers are, what they want, how you can reach them, and where.

So developing a value proposition and unique selling points should be pretty straightforward.

Example of a value proposition and unique selling points statement for a private dermatology practice:

Advanced medical and cosmetic dermatology treatment offering patient-centric healthcare delivery.

Prioritized treatment
Short waiting times
In-person and virtual consultations

5. Hire a Digital Advertising Agency to Manage the Digital Marketing Campaigns for Your Private Dermatology Practice

After taking all these steps, you are now ready to approach a few digital advertising agencies to help lead your dermatology advertising efforts.

Digital advertising requires some serious skills! If you want to be successful, hiring a freelance digital campaign specialist or a specialized agency is the right way to go. Even if it sounds expensive, it is worth the investment in the long run. You need to spend money to make money.

To have a successful online marketing campaign for your private dermatology practice, many elements need to be implemented. Using specialists for your campaigns is the best way to ensure you will succeed.

Once you have narrowed down the list of potential candidates, you want to set up a plan for the activities you want to focus on:

If you have a small budget, experiment with one channel at a time and see which channel performs best:

Facebook
Instagram
Snapchat
Youtube
Google Adwords

You should also conduct retargeting campaigns, showing advertising for those who have already visited your website once. This type of marketing is not only very efficient, but it is also cheaper than other types of campaigns.

6. Implement Teledermatology in Your Dermatology Clinic

Teledermatology is one of the most common telemedicine applications, and it is usually delivered via live video conferencing (synchronous) or store-and-forward communications (asynchronous).

A live video conference is when patients and doctors communicate via a live platform such as Zoom for Healthcare or Doxyme.

Store-and-forward telemedicine is when patients use a teledermatology app or web portal to take photos of their condition, fill in their symptoms, and share this information with their dermatologist.

This type of communication is very efficient because patients can skip appointment booking altogether, get an answer from their dermatologist with a treatment plan, or are called in for an in-person consultation.

Implementing telemedicine in your dermatology clinic is a great way to promote your clinic to new customers for several reasons:

You can prioritize patients based on illness severity by triaging patients virtually
Patients can request urgent care directly from an app, and you can attend to those requests whenever you have the chance
Asynchronous telemedicine visits are much more convenient for you and your patients since you don’t need to be available at the same time
You can attend up to 20% more patient cases without working more hours
You can have more flexibility on your schedule by working some days or some hours from home
You can target young patients who prefer virtual dermatology consultations
You can increase the patient experience and satisfaction
Teledermatology is reimbursed at the same rate as in-person visits by private insurance companies

If you see the image below, you can see a pop-up on the dermatology website that says “Urgent Request Care.”

So, for example, if a patient with an acne problem doesn’t want to wait 30 days for an in-person appointment, they can download the Miiskin app, upload photos of their problem areas, answer the clinical questionnaire and share this information with you.

If the case seems straightforward, you can review the photos during a no-show visit or at the end of the day and initiate treatment immediately.

7. Build a Loyalty and a Referal Program

Reward the customers of your cosmetic treatments for being loyal and for bringing you new business. Create a loyalty card where they get points every time they visit your clinic for cosmetic procedures. Give them extra points when they bring someone to your clinic.

8. Socialize With Other Dermatologists in the Area

Whether you are setting up a new clinic or want to attract more customers, networking with other dermatologists in your area is always a good idea.

If they have more customers than they can handle, they could refer business to you in exchange for a referral fee. If you are setting up a new clinic, they can give you tips and tricks on what to do or what not to do. If they are looking to retire in a few years, you may get many new customers. You can always consult with them if you need a second opinion on a patient’s case.

Dermatology Marketing Ideas – Conclusion

We have provided you with eight actionable ways to get started with the digital marketing plan for your private dermatology practice. We recommend you follow these tips because they will help you bring more patients to your private practice and accelerate its growth.

Many dermatology clinics offer similar services, so you must find a way to make your clinic stand out. On top of that, there are some nationwide online dermatology services that are stealing patients from private dermatology clinics.

The difference between succeeding and failing is how you plan to market your practice, and the tips in this article can help get you started.

Let us know if this article was helpful to you and if we can improve something. We want to ensure that we share information relevant to private dermatology practices.

MIISKIN PRO PROMO

HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform for dermatologists

Miiskin PRO is a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform for dermatology that allows patients to request virtual or in-person consultations with a dermatology clinic via the Miiskin app. Dermatologists can offer asynchronous virtual care, renew prescriptions online or prioritize in-person consultations for the patients who need urgent care.

Virtual visits with Miiskin PRO are reimbursable by payers at a rate comparable to physical consultations.

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References:
¹ https://strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/

Teledermatology White Paper